Gao looked down.
“I am uncertain.”
Chan had expected better from the eldest son of a ranking party official. Unlike himself, Gao had enjoyed privileges in education, guidance, and health. Chan checked his contempt and redoubled his effort to build his executive officer’s confidence.
He waved his palm.
“Don’t let the noise distract you,” he said. “Review the orders and refresh your memory. We will discuss our next steps when you are ready.”
Chan turned and lumbered by the periscope. He reached for a foldout chair mounted on the after bulkhead, angled his buttocks toward its foamed seat, and slumped his weight onto its back. Expecting uneventful submerged drifting with his propeller stopped, he propped his elbow atop a semi-recessed metallic book cabinet and plopped his cheek against his palm.
The awkward posture surprised him with its comfort. His eyelids drooped, and his fatigue billowed. Squinting, he saw Gao with a renewed vigilance hovering over sailors, and he trusted his executive officer to remain alert. He allowed himself a nap.
He dreamt.
The adolescent Dao Chan slowed to gather his energy and allow the small lagging hand to reattach itself to his hip. Celebrating Lunar New Year, he picked the position in the game where he would chase the quickest child in the village, an older and faster boy.
Having reached the head of the dragon, Chan sought to catch that older child at its tail. He feigned fatigue, staring at his bare feet while monitoring his prey from his eye’s corner. The elder boy’s smile revealed the brash smugness of assumed invincibility.
His toes churning soft ground, Chan accelerated towards a target that frowned, bowed its head, and drove forward the smaller child in front of him. Chan lunged, but the boy whipped his hips aside. Stumbling, he recovered and let the lethargy of the dozen-child dragon spine slow his prey and create his second chance.
He leapt and tackled the boy. Violating understood game rules, he drove his shoulder into the boy’s thigh. Numbness consumed his arm, and searing pain shot through his shoulder.
The world became white silence, and Chan awoke as the leg underneath his chest kicked free and scraped his neck. A cool puddle wetted his cheek, and the splattered mud on his tongue tasted fertile. A breeze carried a cooking fire’s scent of burning wood across his face, and a stark epiphany struck him as he knelt and rubbed his aching arm.
Earth, water, wind, and fire. The foundational elements of life dictated his universe. Simple truths accepted, unquestioned, and even worshipped. He respected them, but his spirit craved more than plowing fields and growing wheat on his family’s tiny farm.
Time slipped, and he stood before his smiling parents. For his mother, a woman with intelligence, a sharp tongue, and resentment for all life, the smile was an admission of defeat that someone else was entitled to happiness. For his father, a husky but downtrodden farmer, the smile was a plea for validation. Chan feared they had news that he would be obliged to appreciate.
“You’ve done well in your studies,” his father said. “You’ve been chosen to have your high school tuition paid by a donation from a businessman who left our village long ago. We are very proud of you.”
His subconscious mind embellished his memory, and his mother morphed into a dragon. She swallowed his father whole, and the beast spoke to Chan with his parents’ synthesized gruesome voice.
“You should feel privileged. We never had such opportunities. If you earn your way to a university and to work in the city, you must send money to the village. We own you now by virtue of guilt. Why should you have advantages when the community does not? You have no right to succeed. You have no right to fail.”
A sword appeared in Chan’s hand, and he swung at the monster’s belly. The blade tore through scales, and acid flowed from the wound, dissolving metal. Chan dropped the weapon and ran.
He turned his back to his parents, his siblings, his cousins, and the village. He ran to the east, toward the cities, seeking identity through survival.
Survival meant finding an alien world as far from a farming village as he could find, learning its foundational rules, and mastering them. Images of warships of the People’s Liberation Army Navy danced through his sleeping memory, and his younger self knew that he would become an expert in naval warfare, if he were to exist at all.
A familiar voice returned his awareness to the hijacked North Korean Romeo-class submarine.
“The sonar signal, sir,” Gao said. “The patrol craft is ordering us to snorkel depth.”
Chan suppressed a yawn.
“Take us up,” he said.
“It’s dusk, sir,” Gao said. “May I rig the room for red light? My eyes need to adjust.”
“Rig the room for red light but don’t hesitate. There’s little of importance for you to see up there.”
White bulbs faded, and a crimson glow turned gray metal black. Chan stayed seated and slanted his knees from the circumference Gao’s trousers etched around the periscope. A sailor tore paper from a teletype printer and brought it to Chan. He dismissed the sailor and glanced at the curt instructions.
“Snorkel, Gao,” he said. “Ventilate the ship, charge the batteries, and increase speed to five knots.”
“Those are welcomed orders, sir.”
“The Koreans are gone,” Chan said. “And the patrol craft will escort us with safe passage to Qingdao.
Chan swiveled the periscope toward the rear of his submarine. Twisting the optics skyward, he watched the twinkling sky yield to fluorescent lights of the covered submarine pen.
“Are you lined up, Gao?”
“Lined up, sir.”
“Very well,” Chan said. “Surface the ship.”
A low-pressure fan grumbled and blew air into the submarine’s ballast tanks, and a depth indicator signaled the indiscernible rise.
“Shore support has just sent a message of tug boat assistance for our berthing,” Gao said. “They’ve requested that line handlers report topside once we are surfaced.”
“Very well,” Chan said. “All stop, secure the engine room, and send line handlers topside.”
Chan smelled diesel fuel and brackish water as he walked across the steel girder to the concrete pier. He saluted his squadron commodore, a pudgy man with beady eyes. He ignored the lackeys flanking his former boss.
The commodore hesitated and returned the salute. He talked through his nose.
“I had half expected to never see you again, Chan.”
Chan thought the voice betrayed a mix of envy and pity.
“I’m here, sir. Do you know my orders from Beijing?”
“Of course not. You know I’m not privy to this pet project from headquarters. I answer to the North Sea Fleet Command and carry out meaningful operations with the rest of the ships in my squadron.”
“I’ve just added one ship to the order of battle,” Chan said. “I consider that meaningful.”
“A gift offered by a traitor. The least capable crew in my squadron could have achieved as much. This is the only way you would have achieved command, such as it is.”
Chan suppressed a smile. Risking command of the stolen Romeo became his only way to earn command after his commodore had proclaimed that a farmer’s son would never lead a submarine in the North Sea Fleet.
“I sank a South Korean warship,” Chan said. “To my knowledge, that makes me our only countryman to have done so.”
“A North Korean crew that can barely stay submerged managed the same feat years ago. Hardly brag worthy. And you couldn’t escape an inferior destroyer without assistance.”
The veins in Chan’s neck throbbed, but he remained silent.
“Very well,” the commodore said. “Here are your orders.”