“So, you leave us today, Mr. Lake.”
“Yes, sir.” Lake nodded, still watching the mountains with his own binoculars.
“I don’t suppose you’re having any second thoughts about getting out?”
“No, sir.” Lake came close to chuckling. “No second thoughts, Captain.”
“That’s good.” Edwards considered stopping the conversation there, but something in Lake’s response surprised him. He sensed a small amount of anxiety in the young lieutenant’s voice.
“So, what are your plans?” Edwards asked with indiscernible hesitancy.
Lake glanced at Edwards like a son reluctant to share his thoughts with his father.
“Get an MBA, sir,” he finally answered. “Go to Wharton or Harvard… or at least a top ten school. Then I’m going into business. I’m going to do something — whatever it is, it won’t be like this.”
“Like this?”
“Like the navy, sir. Like submarines.”
“And what’s wrong with submarines?”
“It’s not so much the boats, Captain. It’s the people. It’s the culture.”
“I’m not sure I follow you.”
Lake smiled and hesitated. Speaking his mind to his captain obviously made him uncomfortable.
“Go ahead and give it to me straight, Scott,” Edwards said in a friendly tone, and then added. “You’ll be a civilian in a few hours anyway. What’ve you got to lose?”
Lake sighed and took the binoculars away from his face.
“I don’t like the idea of a system that is made to serve itself, sir. I’ve been on board now for a little over three years, and things have never changed. Captains come and go, department heads come and go, but nothing ever changes. So, I’ve come to the conclusion that this is a culture that’s been going strong for fifty years and will continue to go on forever. The system serves itself. As individuals, everything we do is designed to make the man above us more eligible for promotion. Promotion, promotion, promotion. It’s everything. It’s all submarine officers are taught to care about. I learned that on my first day in the navy, when a desk jockey lieutenant didn’t want to grant me a medical waiver so his numbers would look good. I learned that from my first day on this ship when Captain Christopher made it clear to me, in no uncertain terms, that he viewed me and all other ensigns as walking disasters with the potential to ruin his career. He started off hating me, so I started off hating him. Captain Christopher embodied everything that is wrong with the submarine culture. Do whatever you have to do to get promoted, that was his motto. You know what his first words were to me, sir?”
Edwards said nothing, but made it obvious to Lake that he had his attention.
“‘Fuck you.’ ’ ’ Lake quoted, perhaps a little too vociferously. “How about that, sir? ‘Hello, Captain Christopher. Ensign Lake reporting, sir. I’m looking forward to serving under you, sir.’ And his response was ‘Fuck you.’ ” Lake scratched his head, shaking it. “Let’s see, I think I read somewhere in the naval officers’ guide that a captain is supposed to mentor and train his junior officers, but all Captain Christopher ever did was make sure I stayed out of his way. I learned later that he’d looked up my nuke school grade point average before I even reported to the ship. Well, I don’t have to tell you, sir, but I wasn’t exactly at the top of my class. Captain Christopher made up his mind about me before he even set eyes on me. He identified me as a threat to his career, and made sure I…” Lake stopped, as if he suddenly didn’t want to talk about it anymore.
Edwards noticed that Lake was firmly gripping the bridge coaming. The smile had long since faded. This was the first time Edwards had ever heard Lake mention the name of Providence's former captain, and he was surprised to learn about the grudge he had been harboring all this time.
The day Edwards relieved Christopher of command was the only time he ever met him. There had not been enough time to get to know the living legend, not with such a short turnover. Over time, as he began to get more familiar with his crew, Edwards found himself also becoming more familiar with the captain who had established such a legendary reputation around the fleet. Edwards began noticing pieces of evidence, mere glimpses really, of the fiendish mind that had been at work here. Seemingly minor incidents here and there, though singularly yielding no clues, when taken together formed an unambiguous portrait of his predecessor’s methods. Like a menacing shadow, his essence lingered everywhere. The navy’s crew rotation schedule somewhat mitigated this effect, since nearly one third of Providence’s crew and most of her officers were replaced with fresh sailors before she left home port six months ago. For this third of the crew, Edwards had somewhat of a clean slate to start with. But for Providence’s veterans— and Lake was no exception — he had to contend with the scars left behind by the former captain. And those scars were deep.
“Mr. Lake, you’re one of the only officers left on board who served under Captain Christopher, isn’t that right?”
“Just the XO, the Eng, and me, sir.” Lake nodded. “All the other officers either showed up in his last few months or after you took command, sir.”
“He was your captain from the time you were an ensign all the way to lieutenant. That’s an important time in a young officer’s career.”
“Sometimes I can’t believe how naive I was in those days, Captain. I mean, I really believed I was going to do great things in the navy.” Lake smiled again. “I thought I might someday command my own ship. Now, all I want to do is find a nice quiet corner of the world as far away as possible from any naval vessel, any naval person—hell, anything that floats—and just settle down. No more navy, and no more Captain Christopher.”
“You can’t be getting out just because of Christopher,” Edwards speculated. “After all, he’s just one man. You have shipmates that you respect, certainly? What about the other officers and what about the men in your division?”
“Pawns, sir. With all due respect, Captain, they are pawns. The pawns of a system that will take their lives, turn them upside down, separate them from their families, pay them less than poverty wages and spit them out as soon as they’re no longer useful. And they all willingly follow this madness as if they can’t see it going on around them. It certainly happens on this ship.” Lake hesitated for a moment, eyeing Edwards before he added, “Sir, I’ll bet you didn’t know that three sailors were admitted to the funny farm during Captain Christopher’s reign. Did he tell you about that? You see, Captain Christopher determined that these three sailors were troublemakers. Don’t ask me how he came to that conclusion, he just did. Knowing him, he had some screwy, half-baked reason. One day, the captain called all of the officers and chiefs into the wardroom and told us to watch these guys, because he had determined that these three sailors, out of the entire crew of the Providence, were the ones most likely to cause an incident. He wanted us to ride them. Christopher saw them as a threat, so he rode them. He rode them in a way that only Christopher could. He made their every waking minute on this ship an endless mind-numbing hell. He blamed them for everything that went wrong. If the evaporator shit the bed, it was their fault. If a valve leaked, it was their fault. If the freaking captain’s head smelled bad, it was their freaking fault. Hell, those guys spent more time at captain’s mast than they spent in the rack. One by one, privileges were taken away. First rank, then pay, then liberty. These guys walked on board as second class electronics technicians and by the time they left they barely had enough stripes to scrub the head. He rode them and rode them until they simply went crazy. Every man has his limit, and Christopher knew theirs. They broke, one by one, and got sent off the ship for psychiatric care. They never returned to sea again, and the captain got his wish. I’ll bet he never told you about that, sir.”