Edwards could understand his reaction, in part. The poor marks on the inspection would go down in his record, and it might prevent him from obtaining command someday. Edwards thought back to his own days as a department head. It was several years ago, but the memories were still fresh in his mind. His own thirst for command had driven him to volunteer for every tough assignment and to run a meticulously flawless department. A department head spent most of his time putting out fires, and sleep was considered a luxury. Whether a drunken sailor needed bailing out of jail in some foreign port, or a critical ship’s system needed immediate repairs, running a department on even a good day was pure organized chaos. Being a department head meant being in a constant state of anxiety about the future. It meant wondering every day if your whole life’s pursuit would end in failure.
But I never cracked under the pressure, Edwards thought. I managed to deal with failures.
It was a truth he couldn’t deny. He had taken every challenge the navy had thrown at him and had succeeded at every turn, gaining promotions and honors. He had taken every mission, every tough assignment, and logged tens of thousands of hard miles beneath the sea. It was the story of his career.
During the cold war as a junior officer, he had learned the basics of undersea warfare and in virtually every corner of the world he had played cat and mouse with Soviet submarines of the Red Banner Fleet. But those were the simple days, the days when there was only one enemy. The aftermath of the cold war brought new challenges, tougher challenges, and a new kind of warfare. A warfare in which the enemy was everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Smaller enemies popped up in all parts of the world while Congress was cutting the size of the fleet in half. It was a time of terrorists and petty dictators and their elusive defiance to the world’s sole superpower. As a department head and an XO, he learned the ins and outs of this new warfare in which one day he would distribute aid to the citizens of a country and the next he would launch cruise missiles against it. It was crisis management on a global scale, and with fewer ships to cover each new crisis, the deployments got longer and the brief respites at home grew fewer and farther between. While many of his comrades left the service, he stayed with it. Like a college football player vying for the pros, he kept his eyes on one goal, command. And he dedicated everything he had to the navy in order to achieve it. Time, emotion, love, hate, all of it belonged to the service.
She had left him during those years too, just after he made XO. Even after five years of marriage, she had left him. It had not been a rosy marriage in any sense, but the divorce wasn’t entirely his fault, he kept telling himself. He had to do it. Competition for command was too tight. He kept telling himself that he had no choice. He had to spend that time away from home. Whether he believed it or not, it did little to alleviate the guilt he felt when the memory of that day came to mind. The day he came home from deployment to learn that she had taken their daughter and moved in with her ponytailed kickboxing instructor. That day he had realized that even the cold depths of the ocean could not keep him from becoming his father. Like his father, his dedication to the service had driven a wedge between him and his family and had cost him the love of his wife and the company of his daughter. He felt even more ashamed because deep down inside he was glad to be free of their encumbrance. And now, as a submarine captain, he was at the top of his game, the envy of all other officers who had not achieved that rank. In his mind, command of the Providence and all that it meant made all of the loss worthwhile. At least, that’s what he thought most of the time.
His past experiences, both personal and professional, were supposed to help him understand how best to lead his own department heads. Knowing full well the stresses a department head can experience, he had been watching his engineer closely and he still did not know what to think of the man’s behavior. In the four weeks since the inspection, Van Peenan had become virtually unapproachable. The engineer had transformed into a taskmaster, losing his temper and flying off the handle for the minutest discrepancies. And now, with no signs of improvement, Edwards was especially concerned about the man’s mental state and his ability to run the engineering department. This latest problem with Ensign Yi would not make things any easier. Edwards was glad that Providence would be putting in to Pearl Harbor for a while. It would give the engineer some time to unwind and get a grip on things.
“We’re within ten miles of the surfacing point, Captain.” Miller spoke from the chart table, dividers in hand. “Request to take the ship to periscope depth?”
“Proceed.”
“Aye, Captain. All stations, Conn, proceeding to periscope depth.”
Miller had a small microphone attached to his collar, which allowed his voice to be heard over speakers in the sonar and radio rooms. He waited for acknowledgments from all of the watchstanders in the room before positioning himself behind the port-side periscope.
“Raising number two periscope.”
Miller grabbed the periscope hydraulic actuator in the overhead and turned it to the “raise” position. The room abruptly came to complete silence as the foot-wide periscope, looking more like a polished metal telephone pole, began the laborious ascent from its well. It was the signal for every man to cease what he was doing and concentrate on his watch station. For the safety of the ship, only the officer of the deck and the diving officer could speak during a trip to periscope depth. Should an undetected surface ship suddenly appear above the Providence, there could be no margin for error. A misunderstood order could mean collision and death for them all.
Edwards moved to the starboard side of the control room to stay out of the way and to observe. As the captain, it was his duty to observe and to train his officers. Although he sometimes longed to have the first look at the outside world, he seldom if ever took the conn for a routine procedure such as a periscope depth excursion. It was one of the many prices of command.
The scope continued to rise until its handles and eyepiece emerged from the well and came to a stop even with Miller’s face. Slapping down the handles, Miller put his eyes to the lens and quickly searched the surrounding waters above. He flipped a switch with his left hand, activating a circuit which transmitted the periscope image to a view screen on the starboard side of the control room, just forward of where Edwards was standing.
Edwards watched as the image on the screen appeared fuzzy, then improved rapidly. When the static cleared, he could make out the tiny ripples on the ocean’s surface one hundred and fifty feet above the Providence. As Miller rotated the scope back and forth, Edwards could see a glimmering disc of refracted light at the top of the screen, indicating that the sun had risen on the world above.
“All ahead one third,” ordered Miller. He was proceeding with the trip to periscope depth, obviously satisfied that there were no ships above them.
“All ahead one third, Helm, aye sir,” said the helmsman as he dialed in the ordered speed on the engine order telegraph, a small knob on his panel that instantly transmitted the order back to the engine room.