But did the commissar have a place in today’s navy? Shen Fei thought not, equating such individuals as being totally useless to the operation of the ship. They took up vital living space, and consumed vast quantities of limited foodstuffs. Considerably vast, in Guan’s case. Much like the United States Navy, they’d be much better off giving responsibility for the crew’s esprit de corps to the executive officer, and retiring the rank of commissar to the realms of history.
The arrival of a junior orderly broke Shen’s bitter chain of thought.
This newcomer to the Lijiang was little more than a skinny teenager. It was obvious that he was nervous as he approached Shen, stood ramrod straight, and loudly cleared his dry throat before speaking.
“Sir, I have a message for you from Lieutenant Commander Deng.”
Shen could hear the strained tension in the young sailor’s voice. He remembered well his own first visit to the officers’ wardroom two decades ago, and tried his best to ease the youngster’s anxieties. “At ease, sailor,” ordered Shen in his best fatherly tone. “Now, what’s this message all about?”
The young man eagerly replied, “Sir, I’ve been instructed to inform you that we’ve penetrated the Spratly Island exclusion zone, and that we’re proceeding to patrol zone Alpha.”
Shen was expecting this and he responded accordingly. “Very well, sailor. Inform the XO that I’ll be joining him in the control room as soon as I’m finished here.”
“Yes, sir,” returned the youngster with a smart nod.
Before he could make good his exit, Shen interceded. “By the way, lad, what’s your name and where are you from? I don’t believe I’ve seen you aboard the Ujiang previously.”
The orderly was surprised at his captain’s interest and the tone of his voice relaxed slightly. “I’m Seaman Gui Yongjing, and my hometown is Shaoshan in Hunan Province.”
“Shaoshan, you say?” interrupted the sub’s commissar. “What an honor it is for you to have been born in our beloved Chairman’s hometown, Seaman Gui. Yet I see from my notes that you’ve failed to attend the last two Komsomol meetings. Surely you realize that you bring disgrace on your family name by missing these all-important sessions.”
“I’m sorry, sir,” stuttered the embarrassed enlisted man. “This is my first submarine assignment, and it’s taking me time to get settled.”
“Excuses mean nothing when it comes to one’s political enlightenment, comrade,” warned Guan Yin.
Shen sensed the lad’s discomfort and he quickly chimed in. “Seaman Gui, if you’d be so good as to deliver my message to the XO.” “At once, sir,” said the sailor, who looked greatly relieved as he pivoted smartly and exited.
Shen finished the last of his dumplings, and stood up to leave the compartment himself. Yet before he made good his departure, the commissar left him with one last parting shot.
“That young sailor is a perfect example of the bad example that you’re setting, comrade. How can we expect to get him to attend my Komsomol meetings, if his own captain pays them no heed?”
Shen ignored this comment, ducked out into the adjoining passageway, and proceeded up the amidships stairwell to the deck above. This put him immediately outside the sub’s control room. He took a step inside the darkened compartment, and halted momentarily to allow his eyes time to adjust. Lit in red to protect the men’s night-vision, the control room was the heart of the Lijiang. It was here, inside a space the size of a small apartment’s living room, that the sub was driven, its depth controlled, course navigated, and weapons fired.
As his eyes adjusted to the red-tinted blackness, Shen made a brief stop at the helm. Here Senior Chief Wang was perched between the two seated planes men their collective glances riveted on the instruments mounted in the bulkhead before them. A hasty glance at these instruments showed Shen that they were now at a depth of fifty-three meters, traveling on a due-southerly course, at a speed of twenty-one knots. The senior chief was in the process of giving the outboard helmsman a lesson in properly catching the bubble. More of an art than a science, the mastering of this difficult technique was instrumental in keeping the sub at its ordered depth.
Shen waited for Wang to conclude his current remarks before interrupting. “Senior Chief, what in the world are you still doing on watch? Don’t you ever rest?”
“To tell you the truth, I’m not really tired, Captain. Besides, rest is for the weak,” returned the grinning veteran.
Not about to argue otherwise, Shen could only shrug and continue on to his central command position on the periscope pedestal. The boat’s twin scopes were situated here, and between them the Lijiang’s officer of the deck kept his watch station. Their current OOD was It. Wu Han, their weapons officer. A serious, often glum Beijing native and fellow graduate of the Dailan Naval Academy, Lieutenant Wu greeted Shen with a curt nod.
“We’ve entered the exclusion zone, sir,” he reported matter-of factly “So I understand,” said Shen, who examined the sonar repeaters mounted into the cable-lined ceiling in front of them. A slight flutter on the broadband passive monitor caught his attention, and Shen reached overhead for the nearest intercom handset.
“Sonar, control,” he spoke into the transmitter. “What are our environmentals?”
“Control, sonar,” answered a familiar, high-pitched voice over the intercom. “Isothermal conditions are constant to three hundred meters, where the primary layer is located. We have flat calm conditions prevailing topside, with a pod of porpoises singing up a storm on bearing one-two-zero.”
Shen realized that these porpoises were most likely responsible for the sonar flutter he had spotted, and as he hung up the handset, a deep, bass voice broke from the aft portion of the compartment.
“Captain, we’ve got the expanded navigation chart of patrol zone Alpha ready.”
Shen turned and met the glance of his executive officer, It. Comdr.
Deng Biao. The XO had apparently just arrived in the control room himself, and stood beside the table holding the navigation plotting board.
The plot was located aft of the periscopes. This fully automated table was recently tied into the vessel’s new Navstar global positioning system. The OPS produced a three dimensional navigational fix accurate to within an incredible three meters. Shen joined his XO beside the plot as their navigator was busy placing a piece of tracing paper over the chart displaying their current patrol quadrant.
“Will we be proceeding to Point Luck as planned, sir?” asked the XO.
Although this was Shen’s second patrol with Lieutenant Commander Deng, he had yet to break the ice with his second in command, whom he found to be a competent officer, if somewhat cold and impersonal.
“What do you think, XO?” queried Shen, in an effort to build a dialogue with the tall, dark-eyed Hangzhou native.
Deng thought a moment before answering. “Though we can always initiate a random search, I think that we should give Point Luck a try. The Filipinos are a stubborn lot, who never seem to learn a lesson the first time around.”
“Then Point Luck it is,” agreed Shen. “Draw up the most efficient course to the site of our previous intercept, and make certain to give those uncharted shoals that we chanced upon on the western edge of the quadrant a wide berth.”
“Aye, aye, sir.” The XO wasted no time in taking up a pencil and ruler to initiate this order.
Shen watched as their navigator assisted the XO with this plot. Two months before, during their previous patrol, the Lijiang had chanced upon more than a half-dozen Philippine fishing trawlers working the restricted Spratly waters. They were clearly trespassing inside the PRC’s self declared exclusion zone. When an armed patrol vessel flying the Philippine flag was located in their midst, the matter took on a new degree of seriousness.