“Prepare for full silent running,” said Jonah. “Dead slow, zero cavitation. Disconnect the internal comms. We’ll pass messages between compartments in person until we’re back out of North Korean waters again. We have about an hour to prepare before things start getting dangerous again. And, I want everybody to take off their shoes. If I haven’t given you a job, stay in your bunk. I’ll need everything but the most critical systems offline. I don’t want the coffee maker to so much as burble. We’re hanging ass to the wind without pack ice to hide beneath.”
“Speaking of which, we’re out of coffee,” said Marissa as she slipped off her shoes and kicked them into a corner.
“This bad omen,” grumbled Vitaly. “Submarine run on diesel and coffee. Mostly coffee.”
Jonah turned to Marissa. “Out of coffee? How?”
“I think they ate the beans,” Marissa said with a shrug.
Hassan chewed down a rueful chuckle as he removed his shoes, tied them together by the laces, and slung them around his neck. Their former refugee passengers might be in for quite the stomach ache, but at least they’d be full— unlike so many of their starving countrymen stuck waiting out the brutal North Korean winter.
“Our Japanese friends still behind us?” asked Jonah as the last of the Scorpion’s gentle vibrations fell to eerie silence. Hassan closed his eyes and listened as intently as he could, but couldn’t hear the single swishing echo of a pursuing submarine. Either they were alone, or their escorts had now matched their stealth. Hassan strongly suspected the former. If the Japanese were willing to ply these dangerous waters, they wouldn’t have needed the Scorpion to begin with.
“Nothing on the hydrophones.” Alexis entered the command compartment with steel-toed boots slung across one shoulder. “It appears we have safe passage — for now.”
A small sigh of overdue relief circled throughout the command compartment. Vitaly reached up from the helm console and gently tugged Alexis by the hem of her tank top, awkwardly pulling her down to his eye level so he could get a better look at her forehead. He squinted as he stared at the ink-stained patch above her eyebrows, checking the coordinates against his own one final time. “You get it this time?” complained Alexis. “I’d really like to wash this gunk off my face, if you don’t mind.”
“You hold still now!” ordered Vitaly, releasing her shirt only to reach up and pinch and hold one of her cheeks like an overbearing aunt. The Russian turned her face one way and then the other to confirm each number in turn.
“I think you’re about done,” snapped Alexis as she swatted his hand away. “You’d better be, because this ink is coming off now.”
“He memorized the numbers the moment they were written down. Vitaly, stop hassling my engineer,” Jonah ordered. Vitaly just chuckled as he dismissed Alexis with a waved hand, quite amused with himself.
“Thanks,” Alexis said. She licked her thumb and scrubbed at the permanent marker, but to no avail.
Hassan stood and took Alexis by the crook of her arm. “May I take you to quarters?”
“Only if the captain OK’s it,” she said. She’d put on a brave face, but Jonah could see how rattled she was. It was clear to him she could use a few minutes of privacy with Hassan to process.
“Go,” said Jonah, nodding. “It will still take the better part of a day to approach the coastline at this speed anyway. Marissa — I need you to jump on Hassan’s station and fill in for the doc. Can you do that for me?”
“I am not part of your crew,” protested Marissa. “And I have no idea how these goddamn systems work.”
Jonah glared at her briefly before responding. “Just put on the headphones and tell me if you hear any sudden sounds. Churning, engine rumblings, clicks, splashes, high-pitched whines, anything out of the ordinary.”
“And if I hear, I don’t know, a big splash or something?”
“Then you put head between knees,” grumbled Vitaly, “and kiss own ass goodbye.”
Marissa widened her eyes in complete dismay as she took the headphones from Hassan and sat down at his console without saying another word.
Alexis followed Hassan forward towards the crew quarters. She waited until they were out of earshot of the command compartment before speaking with him. “You think Jonah and Vitaly will ever get sick of messing with Marissa?”
The doctor just shrugged. He’d barely spoken with Marissa, and found her hostile-yet-intimate bantering with Jonah baffling and exhausting in equal portions. “She seems like a woman who can take care of herself. Besides, how long was her relationship with Jonah? Three years? I would presume she is well aware of the more juvenile aspects of his personality.”
“Three years?” repeated Alexis with a shake of her head. “He’s a decent enough skipper, but I couldn’t imagine spending three minutes dating that man.” Passing the open bunks and their tiny, shared cabin, she turned into the bathroom. It wasn’t much, just a single shower, two sinks, and a shared toilet covered with bright red warning notifications about flushing when below 200 feet in depth. Hassan didn’t know what the consequences of ignoring the signs might be, but given the amount of exclamation points and skull iconography, it couldn’t be good.
Hassan watched as Alexis turned the sink faucet on, carefully measuring out a silent trickle of water. Alexis looked in the mirror and began to scrub away at the black ink, but it’d already set into her forehead.
“I’ll retrieve some isopropyl alcohol from my medical kit,” said Hassan, gently squeezing her shoulders. “It will take but a moment.”
“Wait,” said Alexis, grabbing his hand before he could leave the bathroom. She pulled him back in and wrapped her strong arms around him, running one hand up and down the small of his back as she buried her head in his chest. Hassan became suddenly aware of his own heartbeat as it quickened against her ear.
“I’m here,” said Hassan, gently brushing a finger around the circumference of her soft jawline.
“I thought I could get used to how crazy it is out here,” she said. “I don’t know how long I can do this, Hassan. We’re so alone. We don’t even have a flag. We can’t hide behind even the faintest shadow of law. Any passing ship can legally ram us, shoot us, capture us, sink us. We’re nothing out here; we have nothing to cling to. How long can we possibly last?”
“I don’t know,” said Hassan as he rested his chin on the top of her head. “I simply don’t know. We’re all without a country, every one of us. Perhaps we must sail under our own flag for now. But we’re not alone — and whatever we are, it’s not nothing.”
“I didn’t mean it like that.”
“We have a future, Alexis. I do not know what that future might hold, but I know it exists for both of us. Until we figure it out, I suppose we’re forced to fly under the banner of Jonah Blackwell’s Jolly Roger, flagged to the nation of Hooligan-istan.”
Alexis burst into choked laughter, masking the sound with the clenched fabric of his thin woolen sweater. He wished he’d washed it, wished it was soft and dry and not crusted with still-drying sweat and salt water, wished Alexis could smell fresh air and flowers when she pressed into him instead of oil and disinfectant. Hassan leaned down to peck her on the check but she didn’t let him, gently grabbing the tousled black hair on the back of his head as she kissed his mouth instead. Instinct took over as Hassan pressed her against the wall, almost forgetting the cold, the damp, the dreary fluorescent lighting, the ever-present groan of laboring machinery.
But then the engineer jerked away from him, pushing him off her body. The butt of his holstered pistol clanked awkwardly against a metal sink. Both he and Alexis froze, wincing at the noise.