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He knew the ship’s top speed: not as fast as many novelists speculated, slower than a good speed boat, but impressive enough to those who understood how quietly their 18,000 ton warship could move beneath the ocean at that speed. And he knew the ship’s test depth, the deepest at which they ever operated, the depth at which their systems were tested against the maximum sea pressure they should ever face. More secret still, he knew the ship’s collapse depth, the depth at which engineers estimated that the hull would finally succumb to the pressure of the millions of tons of sweater that surrounded them. It was striking what sea pressure could do to the works of man at those depths, the way water could turn into a force as solid and destructive as any weapon. Their XO had a standard lecture he liked to give about the nature of submarining, how seawater was their only real enemy. Torpedoes and depth charges just allowed the enemy inside.

Unlike the ship’s relatively unimpressive top speed, its maximum depth would be striking to anyone knowledgeable about diving and submersibles, a very large number that was a monument to the engineering marvel that was a Trident Submarine. But, as the navigator knew and was reminded of every time he so much as glanced at the small, italic numbers that dotted every one of his charts: even that large number was very much smaller than the depth of the ocean almost everywhere that they operated. Another favorite monologue of the XO’s: he would hold his hand out at waist-height, the distance to the deck representing the depth of the Pacific. Test depth is here, he would say, pointing to a spot about four inches below his palm. The submarine could travel deep, but the Pacific was very much deeper, a kind of biblical abyss that was difficult for the mind to grasp, even the minds of men who’d spent their whole lives at sea.

But the navigator had another, even darker secret, one more frightening than a forgotten safe combination or the depth at which a submarine becomes destroyed by a heartless ocean, a secret that tortured him as he tried to stay focused on the charts: he knew the ship’s mission. Along with the captain and the XO, he’d seen the new orders that he feared would doom them. Doom
humanity
. As navigator he not only knew about it: he had to help plan it, and plot their course right into the belly of the beast. He envied the rest of the crew in their ignorance, their hectic, boisterous preparations for patrol.

“Nav, are you alright?”

The navigator looked up, startled. The Duty Officer, Lieutenant Maple, was staring at him from the conn. He’d stopped signing the thick stack of red DANGER tags in front of him and stared with concern.

“Yes. I’m fine.”

“You’re bleeding.”

The navigator looked where Maple was pointing. He’d been jamming the point of his dividers into his knee. He’d stabbed right through the fabric of his khakis, into his flesh. Blood ran down his leg into a dark red puddle on the deck.

•   •   •

The next morning, Jabo waited outside the Captain’s stateroom with his single-page letter of resignation in hand. He hadn’t wanted it to be this way, wanted a few more days to warm up to the task, but as with so many of his plans over the last nine years, this had been preempted by the needs of the navy. They’d been ordered to sea early for reasons that had not yet been revealed, and he had to get this letter in the captain’s hands before the final mail call, if he actually expected to get out of the Navy at the earliest opportunity: five years to the day after he received his commission from the ROTC unit at Vanderbilt. The ship was still on the surface and rolled gently in the five foot swell that was following them out to deep water. After three years at sea, Jabo knew intuitively that if the rolling was bad inside the protected waters of the sound, they were in for a rough transit to Point Juliet, the earliest they could submerge. The XO walked out of the Captain’s stateroom, a wry smile on his face, paused at the sight of him. Like Jabo, he had a letter in his hand, but his was printed on fine official stationary.

“Danny have you heard anything about this girl baby shit?” he asked, waving the letter. The XO was short. But he was solid and spry, with a boxer’s build and attitude. His shaved, gleaming head enhanced his tough guy look. There were legends in the submarine fleet about his physical strength, tales of bar fights he’d broken up in Subic Bay and boxing matches he’d won at the Academy. He was a submarine officer of the oldest school, fluent in profanity, torpedo targeting, and dismissive of protocol. Jabo agreed with the consensus that they were lucky to have him.

Jabo was startled by the question. “Sir?”

“The rumor-of-the-month: that radiation on a nuclear submarine means you’ll only have girl babies. Have you ever heard this?”

Jabo nodded. “Actually I have, sir. Last patrol in maneuvering they were talking about it, after Chief Palko had his third kid.”

The XO furrowed his brow. “Yeah, that dickhead does have three girls, doesn’t he? I’ll have to get on his ass about that…it’s starting to be a problem. Somebody just wrote their congressman asking off the boat because of this bullshit.”

“Palko’s not the only one,” said Jabo. “I remember them going through the numbers…something like eight out of the last nine babies born to crew members have been girls.”

The XO grinned and stepped in closer. “So you believe this shit too Jabo? Think neutrons are doing something to kill off all your boy sperm?”

“I’m just saying…”

“You know Jabo, one of the things we ask of our junior officers is to not be stupid. So if you hear anybody contributing to this bullshit…help me put a stop to it.”

“Aye, aye sir.”

“What the fuck is that?” he said, suddenly turning his attention to the letter in Jabo’s hand.

“Sir, if you don’t mind, I’d like to show it to the captain first.”

“Just what I was afraid of: a resignation letter. Another JO heading for the fuckin’ beach. I take it Microsoft was impressed with your resume?” He nodded his head toward the Captain’s stateroom. “Go on in, Jabo.” He stomped down the passageway, whistling loudly and cheerfully.

Jabo knocked on the open door. “Captain?”

“Come in Danny.” A captain could call a junior officer by his first name, but the reverse was never true. The fatherly Captain Shields was calming contrast to the XO, the two complementing each other as they led
Alabama
to its place at the top of all the squadron’s rankings. He had salt and pepper hair and a perpetual twinkle in his eye. Unlike the XO, he’d acquired no legends about his physical strength, although he had been an All-America swimmer at the Academy. But he had built a rock-solid career, culminating with his command of
Alabama
, on steady leadership and his almost freakishly comprehensive knowledge of submarine nuclear power. While sailors told stories about a push up contest the XO had won against a Marine Corps General, the captain was of a different caste. He looked like a man who not only could solve quadratic equations in his head; he looked like he was doing it all the time, effortlessly.

Jabo shuffled in and sat on the only other chair in the stateroom. “Captain, I’ve decided to resign my commission.”

The captain nodded thoughtfully, waited a beat, and then took the letter from his hands. He took his time reading it, and then handed it back. “I refuse to accept this.”

Danny waited, not knowing what to do, hoping the captain was joking.

“Sir?”

“I don’t understand Danny—you’ve always seemed like you enjoy your job to me.”

“I do like my job. And I love this ship.”

“So why get out? You can keep the fun going for twenty years or more, just like me.”

“I’m not sure it’s as much fun if I stay in. I like standing watch and driving the boat. Not writing training plans and filling in spreadsheets.”

“You think that’s what I do all day, Danny?”

“Not you, sir—but the department heads, frankly, yes. And that’s what I’d be doing next if I stayed in.”

“Believe it or not, Danny, being a department head can be fun too.”

“Like the navigator?”

The captain grimaced. “Come on, Danny. The nav isn’t a particularly good example. He’s at the end of a very demanding tour, five patrols as a navigator is a very long time.”

“It’s just…”

“So you’re afraid you won’t have as much fun as a department head? That’s the reason?”

“Captain, if you’ll read my letter, you’ll see that it’s not. I also wonder sometimes what we’re doing out here.”

“You don’t think what we do is important?”

“That’s right, captain.” Jabo felt ashamed to say it, but it was true. “We’re still running a platform that was originally designed to lob missiles at a nation that no longer exists. I feel like we’re just shadow boxing out here.”

“Listen carefully, Danny. Driving this boat and keeping it safe is important—maybe the most important thing you’ll ever do, certainly more important than chasing the next bonus at Microsoft.” The boat had lost their last two junior officers to Microsoft and it clearly irked the command. “And, if you don’t like our mission, get on an attack boat for your next tour—they’re in the fight.”

“Not really. I mean, I know they may get to go more places than us, support battle groups and ops like that, but it’s no different. Our enemies use box cutters now—you can’t really fight them with a nuclear submarine.”

Shields sat back in his chair and looked Jabo over. He was smiling. “Are you sure there’s nothing else going on here?”

The junior officer and his Captain looked at each other for a minute. Unlike the navigator, Jabo often felt like he had no secrets—it was something about the tight-knit community of shipboard life that he had never quite gotten used to. And, for the past six weeks, he’d had a big secret: his wife, Angi, was pregnant. If the captain had somehow intuited that pregnancy, than perhaps he had also intuited Jabo’s strong desire to not have a Navy family, to have his child be a Navy brat. He’d seen far too many screwed up families in the Navy, and no matter what he said in his letter of resignation, that was one of the best reasons he could think of for getting out. His wife was just starting to show the pregnancy on her slender frame, and she’d already entered the Byzantine world of military medicine, Champus, Tri-Care, and the navy hospital. Jabo wondered, as he looked at the Captain, if the secret was out.

“Captain, I’ve explained myself as best I can in my letter.”

“Okay. But I wasn’t kidding. I’m not going to accept your letter.”

“But—”

“I know, you’re worried about missing your twelve-month window. You won’t. I can’t tell you all the details right now, but we’re going to pull into port in a couple of weeks. If you still want to get out, I’ll endorse your letter then. But I think in the meantime you may see that it’s still possible to do some vitally important missions on a nuclear submarine. If I’m wrong, then I’ll endorse your letter and this will be your last patrol. Okay?”

Jabo nodded. He actually felt a sense of relief about not yet having his letter in, as well as a sense of excitement about learning whatever awaited them in their patrol orders. There’d been rumors, of course, especially with the sudden departure. “Okay, Captain. Thank you.”

“Thank you Danny—thanks for giving the Navy another two weeks.”

They looked at each other for another moment, Jabo waiting to be dismissed.

“You know, Danny, it is possible to raise a good family, to be a good family man,

and be in the Navy.”

Jabo nodded without saying anything. It was a discussion he didn’t want to have. The captain had a wife, and two daughters, and Danny couldn’t tell him that he thought they all suffered because of the captain’s chosen career. But moreover:
he
couldn’t do it. I can’t spend another sea tour away from Angi, he thought, another year where I see her more in my dreams than in real life. And if the captain asked him in response, don’t you think I love my wife? Jabo would have had to answer: I must love my wife more. It was the one vanity he allowed himself.
There was a firm rap on the door and the XO let himself in. He was agitated, and not in the bemused way he had reacted to the rumor about girl babies. Jabo wondered briefly if his resignation had bothered him that much. He dismissed that idea as the XO stepped back out and waved impatiently at Jabo to exit.

As they traded places in the captain’s stateroom, the XO said something about the Nav. He shut the stateroom door behind him.

Jabo walked to his stateroom, grateful for several things. He was grateful that his beautiful wife was pregnant with their child. He was grateful that, as hard as it was, he’d told Captain Shields of his plans to leave the Navy. And, as he walked up the ladder to the control room to take the watch, he was grateful that he’d been able to have that talk with the understanding Captain Shields, and not his predecessor, Captain Mario Soldato. That guy was an asshole.

•   •   •

“What’s up?” said the captain.

The XO remained standing, running his hand across his smooth bald scalp. “It’s the navigator. He’s gone and done something weird.”

Captain Shields leaned back and laced his fingers across his stomach, his face grim, awaiting details.

“Lieutenant Maple said that yesterday in control he stabbed himself in his leg with his dividers. Repeatedly. Got blood everywhere. Apparently Maple took a day to think this over before telling me.”

The Captain raised an eyebrow. “What did you say?”

“I told him to shut the fuck up about it.”

“Have you talked to the nav?”

“No sir, not yet. I wanted to talk to you first, because I know we don’t have much time.”

The captain paused. “Time for what?”

“To get him off the boat! Let’s get him off with the fucking mail.”

The captain waited before responding. He knew the XO had never liked the navigator. In fact, the navigator was a tough man to like. But part of it was that each man was, in his way, a perfect representation of the two different tribes of submarine officers. One was a torpedo-hurling warrior who trusted his instincts. The other, a highly-schooled, bookish, technical expert. The tension between them was as old as the
Nautilus
, the Navy’s first nuclear submarine, and the captain realized that he was probably closer to the nav’s end of the spectrum than the XO’s. “Mike, do you think they have a spare navigator waiting for us on that tug?”