By Hannah Morehead
My eyes were sore when I squeezed out of my rack. Sharp pains shot up my legs as my ankles banged on the rungs attached to the rack below mine. The bunkroom was quiet aside from my rustling, the fan in the center dinging every other second and the occasional snore from Lynn in the rack next to mine. Everyone was either at their watch station or asleep. The time of day didn’t mean anything aside from when to be where; there was no morning or afternoon or evening. It was one constant lull. The sooner sailors learned this, the easier it got.
I exhaled a sharp breath of relief as my cold feet padded onto a small rug in the center on the floor. They weren’t normally allowed but someone brought it on anyways. It was the only soft thing we all touched on a regular basis on the submarine, and it was the pride and joy of the enlisted bunkroom. After our last underway, Menichetti brought a hairbrush to regularly brush it out and keep it soft. It worked well enough but sometimes the little threads got yanked out and discarded across the blue and white sprinkled floor.
I carefully opened and closed my locker to retrieve my dull blue coveralls and shoes. The uniform slid across my skin as I stepped into them and pulled them up to my waist. I huffed out my nose in annoyance as I realized the zipper was more difficult to zip and the usual spot I fastened on my belt was tighter over my midsection than my first underway a little over five years ago. The food on a submarine was deep-fried and delicious, and the one treadmill onboard the USS Manassas had been busted for the last several months, so it only made sense that the bodies of everyone onboard would suffer a bit.
A week ago, another submarine, the USS Leesburg, had gone underway in the Pacific for an equipment test and was sending periodic reports that suddenly stopped. Roughly seven hours after their last report, we were all shuffling into the Manassas like a line of ants and sent out to locate them. Nobody was concerned since submarines lost communication all the time, especially ones like the Leesburg that were testing a new method of comms. Everyone was more annoyed than anything, the way an older sibling would react if they were asked to watch their younger sibling for the day. I had forgotten how many days it was since we left port, but the fact I still noticed the smell of the sub meant it had been less than a week.
Submarines have a smell, one that’s thick and heavy like a fog in your nostrils. As I walked down the p-way after tying my Vans and climbing out of the berthing, occasionally hunching over and stepping around pipes, it felt like it was suffocating me. It was chemical and metallic, with an overhanging odor of rubber. It was not a pleasant aroma, but after a couple weeks you became noseblind to it and could breathe clearly again. Stepping off the sub and onto the pier reset your nose until the next time you went underway, where the clock inevitably restarted.
There was always a sound too, a constant whirring that got louder then quieter then louder again as I approached and passed the fans. There was nowhere completely silent, which drove me near insanity my first underway. I made sure to buy and bring noise-cancelling headphones from then on. I did appreciate the noise to a degree though, since that meant everything was running as it should.
“If you’re ever on a boat and you don’t hear anything, you’re done. A silent submarine is a dead one,” one of the officer instructors told us at Charleston.
Sometimes though, there would be sounds you couldn’t distinguish. On my way through the p-ways, there would be rhythmic taps that sounded like footsteps around the corner, but then I’d hit the end and see nobody. I swore I saw people who weren’t there too. They’d linger at the corner of my tired vision then disappear when I’d turn to look with both eyes. I was convinced the smell of the sub caused visual and auditory hallucinations, because other people had mentioned it too.
A metallic clang rang out when I opened the hatch door for Radio Central and Chartroom, which was a relief from the technologically advanced bright lights installed in every hall which many claimed simulated sunlight. The room was almost pitch black, the only light coming from the green rings and textures of the immediate oceanic vicinity on screens that always looked like they had a fish-eyed bulge in the middle. Other men and women weaved around each other as they went from one end of the room to another, bouncing between analyzing screens and exchanging what they noticed in a constant stream of words that were all blurred to my tired brain. Others sat in front of the screens, headsets with a curling rubber wire atop their heads.
“Good morning, Casey,” one of the boat’s DIVOs1 greeted me from behind before stepping to my side, LTJG Keel. He was an academy guy, a little taller and thinner than me. He had dark hair that sheened when the light caught it right and sculpted cheeks that perfectly smoothed down into a strong chin beneath a mouth that sometimes had a crooked smile. One could even describe him as handsome if he looked a little less stressed and tired all the time.
“Morning Mr. Keel.” Was it morning? “How’re you?”
“Not bad. You?”
“I’m alive.”
“Excellent. We’re approaching where the Leesburg last surfaced, so we’ll report and start the dive. Next watch will finish it and trim us out.”
“Alright,” I nodded and made my way to the left side of the room, by the exclusion corner where the ever-so mysterious Spooks sat. Skilled intelligence technicians, so secretive that they didn’t wear nametags or talk to anyone except each other. The three of them rotated so two were seen at a time, the other assumedly asleep. They always talked in hushed whispers to one another; their screens so small that their shoulders did a fine job of concealing whatever they were doing. They could be playing solitaire for all everyone else knew. Lynn tried asking one time, but they gave him a look that challenged the likes of even our Commanding Officer.
Eyes locking on the gauges and dials and screens, I grabbed the small notebook left by the last ITS2 on duty. Record-keeping of diagnostics and data recovery was a tedious yet vital task because rapid highs or lows meant something was amiss with our systems, and you had to catch them early. I often got so wrapped up in it that I felt like I was becoming one with the submarine and her capabilities. I knew what she was thinking and wanted to say, I knew what was falling short and where. I would forget how long I had been on watch until either my eyes and fingers started cramping (yes, my eyes cramp) or until someone tapped me, which inevitably ended up happening.
“Casey,” one of the system technicians tapped my shoulder a few times. I blinked back at him, his face a bit foggy and abstract.
“Sir said we’re about to surface.”
“Mm, gotcha,” I muttered, patting his shoulder as he stepped away and rested the logbook back on its shelf.
“Prepare to surface,” thundered over the 1MC3, as if it were coming from the pipes and fans above.
I leaned against the bulkhead with the hatch and looked back at our DIVO. Mr. Keel’s hands straddled two of the desks with large monitors atop, the enlisted on each one having his eyes flick between their screens. He almost looked like an elementary school teacher helping two students with their classwork.
Right then, I felt it. The slight rocking in the floor, gravity suddenly becoming something that existed to the boat. I could faintly hear the water as it thrummed against her hull, splashing the cold steel of her sail as it cut through the waves like a giant knife. We had glided up and exposed our top half to open air.
There was a collective sigh in Radio, the loudest of which being Keel. He looked up for a second, as if looking for the sun out of habit. His brows folded in a way that looked sad. There were rumors that he wanted to be a fighter pilot but got selected for submarines. I had no idea how the selection process for officers worked, but I couldn’t imagine studying at a college like the Academy for four years only to get something I didn’t want. I had tried imagining him getting the news. Was it an email? A letter? At graduation? A conversation with their next in command? Did he cry? Scream? Or nod with quiet acceptance? Before I could imagine Keel’s eyes losing their spark the moment he heard “Submarine Warfare,” he stood straight and walked to the opposite side of the room to head up the ladder to Control, where the CO and XO were.
I used my fingers to rub my eyes. I had no idea how long we had been on watch for, but I hoped it was past the halfway point. My eyes needed a break from all the numbers and bright screens. Hunger was also starting to squirm its way around my stomach.
“How long you think this mission’ll take?” one of the technicians asked.
“Hopefully not more than another week,” replied the one that tapped my shoulder earlier, Lewis. “Wife’s expecting.”
A few small gasps and congratulations echoed around the room, Lewis grinning like an already-proud dad.
“How’d she take the news of this underway?” one of the only females on the boat asked. She was the only enlisted female onboard and got to sleep in the female officer’s bunkroom. She wasn’t allowed to eat with them but sleeping in the same racks as them meant she got the best sleep of us all. I never talked to her- didn’t even know her name.
“She was devastated,” he said simply.
“Is it a boy or a girl?” I asked.
“Don’t know yet,” he smiled sheepishly. “We want it to be a surprise.”
There were a few seconds of silence after that, the only sound being the rushing water and fans and occasional beeping. A few small thuds slowly got louder, and we collectively looked up, realizing it was Keel descending the ladder.
“XO’s getting coordinates from the Destroyer4,” Keel announced as he descended the ladder, each foothold echoing from the firm steps of his shoes. “After we get confirmation, we’ll submerge.”
“He have any idea how long this deployment will be?” Lewis abruptly asked, repeating the technician’s question.
“If he did, it’s not like he can tell us,” Keel answered, a loud thud rattling the floor as his feet struck it. “I don’t want to be out here either, Lewis.”
The enlisted exhaled out of his nose and turned back to his screen, visibly chewing the inside of his mouth. I didn’t envy the father-to-be.
After a few minutes, the Chief of the Watch’s voice sounded over the 1MC.
“Dive, dive, dive!”
I felt the tension and slight roll as the boat submerged, imagining her ballast tanks filling with the bitterly cold sea water. After a few seconds of awkward thudding, we could all feel the Manassas slither into her element. She began to move with ease, no longer rocking or splashing with the sea. She was hidden beneath the waves, how she was supposed to be.
Retrieving my logbook, I fell back into my routine. The promise of a nap at the end felt like light at the end of a long, dark tunnel.
–
I nearly tripped over my own feet a few times on my way back to the bunkroom. My eyes hurt, the edges of my vision dark and creeping in like the burning edges of a piece of paper. I was hungry but didn’t want to eat- anything besides sleeping sounded exhausting. The lights passed by overhead, each one feeling like an intense mini sun. The rattles and rumbles from within the boat cradled my head and filled my ears, feeling like fuzz was overflowing my brain. I was running on autopilot so strongly that I hardly noticed the other enlisted guy coming from the opposite direction and ended up bumping shoulders with him.
“Shoot- sorry man,” I hurriedly rasped, looking up and trying to remember what his name was.
“You’re fine… You’re fine,” he said, his eyes lingering on mine. The tone he used when he repeated it was awkward, I realized after a few seconds. He looked very young, no older than 19. This had to have been his first underway; the kid looked fresh out of Charleston.
Must be new. Probably intimidated.
“What’s your name, kiddo?” I asked, trying to fight the black fingers of overexertion tugging at my eyelids. “I don’t think we’ve met before.”
“Sam,” he muttered, his eyes sticking on my tan ballcap that boasted, USS Manassas, SSN-530. Everyone onboard had a ballcap with the boat’s name and hull number. You could tell who the senior enlisted were by observing the wear and tear on their covers. I wondered how worn mine looked to him despite not being in the Navy that long, all things considered.
“Casey,” I replied, holding out a hand and my eyes flicking to his cover for a second. I was expecting a much newer version of mine, but ended up being so startled by what I saw that I didn’t even notice his hand not moving up to shake mine.
USS Leeseburg
SSN-430
The sub we’re trying to find.
“What… How the-?”
My alarm blared in my ear, startling me awake. I had a very attractive line of drool running from the corner of my mouth and leaving a small soaking puddle under my cheek. I used one hand to shut off the alarm and the other to tug away the curtain surrounding my rack. My alarm was set a little earlier than normal to give myself time to get a snack from the mess deck on my way back to Radio.
Legs swinging out over to lever myself down, the dream was already starting to dissipate from my memory. The hazy smoke behind my eyes gradually ridded itself of me, the only part of it remaining being Sam’s nervous voice. I heard his name echo in my head a few times as I climbed up and out the ladderwell, the slamming of the hatch and smell of eggs and sausage pulling my attention from it entirely.
–
The mummers and whispers in the room were a nice background to the dials and numbers filing my eyes. I felt more acute and precise after my few hours of sleep, ready to tear through the next few hours. Falling into my rhythm, I hardly noticed the several times Keel ascended and descended the ladder, his steps quick and with purpose.
“Sir,” Lewis suddenly called.
“Yes?” Keel asked, stopping at the half-way point on the ladder.
“There’s banging.”
“Banging?”
“Like hitting steel,” he replied, handing his headset to Keel after he dropped from the ladder and ran over. He placed it over his ears, his face obscured from his shoulders due to the way he hunched. After a few minutes, I turned my attention back to what I was previously doing.
Keel left and disappeared again, returning a few times asking to see different things. I tried not to lose focus and eavesdrop, but I couldn’t help myself.
“There’s nothing showing on sonar,” Keel muttered, as if in disbelief. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
I sat up a little straighter.
“Skipper’s picking up something on the hydrophone5,” Keel added. “Everyone up there thinks it’s the Leesburg.”
“Is it possible we’re too far away?”
“Or there’s something wrong… Casey,” he called back to me.
“Sir?” I asked, looking over at our DIVO.
“Check over the sonar and see if there’s anything out of sorts. Keep a close eye on that,” Keel flicked a finger at the screen and looked back at Lewis. “I’ll figure out what he wants to do.”
He stepped back and ascended the ladder again, squeezing through the top with ease. Dropping to my knees, I began work on the sonar. I stole a few peeks up at the screen every now and then, fitting it into my scan of things to check. I’m not sure what I was expecting to see, but nothing ever came up. All the dials and indications of the sonar worked fine, there was nothing wrong with it. We were the only vessel within a 50-mile radius.
The constant muffled conversation upstairs was starting to crescendo, the CO’s recognizable voice somewhere in the mix. There was no screaming or arguing, but brief shouts of confusion. Our heads flicked up at where we last saw Keel every few seconds, occasionally glancing at one another to see if we all had the same reaction. Suddenly, the commotion stopped, allowing the fans to do their famous rattling solo.
A few footsteps followed by light tap-taps of shoes on ladder rungs. Keel descended just enough for his face to be visible.
“Does anyone here know morse code?”
Everyone’s heads ticked around the room like birds. Keel’s eyes scanned us, an urgency flickering in them.
“I do,” I said confused, making it sound more like a question than a statement. In high school, some friends and I learned morse code to tap answers to each other during tests. It worked well until our junior year history teacher, who happened to be a cipher nerd, spoiled the fun.
“Come up,” he ordered, tilting his chin upwards toward the bridge. “I have someone!”
I nervously rested a foot on the lowest rung, watching as my DIVO ascended and stepped off, disappearing into a space I had never been. Step-by-step, I made my way up, watching the faces of everyone below. They all went back to their tasks, pretending not to watch me.
As I pulled myself up, I nervously looked for Keel, but instead met the eyes of our CO. They were ice blue and so vibrant it looked as if they were illuminating his slightly grey brows. His hair was thinning and grey to match, nose slightly crooked giving him the appearance of someone who’s been in a fight or two. He was sitting in his designated chair in the center, watching me get off the ladder and onto the deck.
“Get over here,” his voice as low it sounded over the 1MC. “I need you to listen.”
“Aye Sir,” I approached slowly, trying to not make it obvious that my eyes were flicking from screen to screen to avoid his arctic eyes.
“Someone started talking over the hydrophone,” he explained, handing me a stack of post-it notes and a pen. “They’ve identified themselves as the Leesburg, but as I’m sure you’ve heard, they’re not appearing on sonar. If they’re within hydrophone range, they’re well within sonar range.”
I took the stack and pen and looked down at the hydrophone in front of the Captain. He took the palm-sized microphone and held it to his mouth.
“USS Leesburg, this is the USS Manassas, do you still hear me? Over.”
“Loud and clear, over.”
The response was vivid with only a little static. What caught my attention though was the occasional beeping in the background. It wasn’t slow and rhythmic enough to be an alarm of some kind. It was quick and concise- it was morse.
“Can you give me the conditions of your crew and systems? Any vitals? Over,” the CO released the button and brought the mic to his forehead, his eyes boring into the brief-case sized device in front of him.
“Crew is a little uneasy, as I’m sure you can imagine…”
I could hear it in the background, dashes and dots. I feverishly scribbled on the post-it note. The CO clearly had not decoded anything from morse in a while, there was barely any space to work with what he gave me. My dots and dashes were tiny, and the ink was smearing across my fingers.
“We have plenty of food for another few weeks but obviously nobody wants that. There’s an issue with our pipes. Some seawater leaked into the engine room, and everything’s been going downhill since. I’m not fully briefed on it so I’m unsure of the details, but I know all these red lights aren’t good. Over.”
From my peripheral I could see the CO’s head whip from person to person. They all had the same look on their face. An ice cube formed in my throat as I finally realized something about the voice of the man communicating with us.
Is that the kid I talked to last night? Sam? It had to be a mistake, it had to be some other confused kid stuck at the hydrophone, not knowing what he was saying. Sam wasn’t even a real person; he was a dream. I kept writing. The dots and dashes were starting to sound familiar, repeating, but I kept copying to make sure nothing was missed.
“Who are you and why are you at the hydrophone if you have no idea what’s going on?” the CO demanded, his voice lowering to a furious rushed growl. “What’s your hull number? How many of your crew are there? Over!”
A pause. The beeps continued in the background.
“SSN-430 and zero, Sir. Over.”
I instinctively looked at Keel. His eyes were round as the moon.
Zero crew?
“Is this some kind of joke? You still haven’t told me who you are! Over!”
“Sir, I-“
Complete silence, even the beeps stopped.
The CO slowly lowered the microphone, his finger still on the button as if waiting for the rest of the message to come through.
“Did you get most of it?” he asked without looking back at me.
“Yes, Sir. It started to repeat, so I think I got all of it.”
“What does it say?”
“I’ll need just a minute,” I said, ripping off the note and pasting it on my arm.
I took in a few dots and dashes, translated, then continued, occasionally going back to the beginning and glancing at the end to cross check. I could feel everyone’s eyes on me, and the pressure was immense. It felt like there were needles prickling my face. The message was gibberish at first and I was terrified I had copied it wrong, but it turned out it was because I started writing the message in the middle of a word. As more got revealed, the ice that had formed in my throat melted and dripped chilly liquid into the pits of my stomach.
-A-T-E-L-Y /
G-E-T /
O-U-T /
S-U-R-F-A-C-E /
I-M-M-E-D-I-A-T-E-L-Y /
G-E-T /
O-U-T /
S-U-R-F-A-
I read it out loud to the room.
In the moment that followed, with horrified round eyes and open mouths, something suddenly became clear to the three of us. Hearts stopped as we collectively realized the same thing.
All the fans and electrical sounds had stopped. The sub was completely silent.
Notes:
1DIVO = Division Officers are officers in charge of a group of sailors within a specific division onboard, specifically Radio in this case
2Information Systems Technician
3The submarine’s PA system
4 A ship, also referred to as a DDG
5 Exactly what it sounds like. An underwater telephone submarines can use to communicate
Hannah Morehead was born in Texas and after moving around several times, spent most of her life in Haymarket, Virginia in the odd space between the mountains and Washington D.C. She is currently a senior at Purdue University studying Professional Flight and minoring in Creative Writing and Naval Science with an expected graduation date of May 2024. She is in Navy ROTC at the university which partially inspired this piece of horror military fiction.
Academy of the Heart And Mind 