"Comp'ny, atten… hut!"
Seaman Calvin R. Wallace came to attention, one of 140 sailors standing in tightly formed ranks. His crisply starched whites scratched at his shoulders and hips; submariners were sometimes referred to as the "dungaree navy," since they rarely appeared in any other uniform. Even though it was late spring, the stiff breeze hissing in off Long Island Sound chilled. How long, he wondered, was this shindig going to last?
He was in the second rank. Looking past the broad shoulders of the man in front of him, Wallace could see his new home for the next few months, the brand-new attack submarine Virginia, moored to the dock, huge, death-black, the numbers 774 high on her sail the only identifying features visible at all.
Even those numbers, he knew, were held in place by magnets, and would be removed once the vessel left port. Virginia held for him an aura of barely restrained power, of menace somehow given form by her very anonymity.
Her commissioning crew stood in ranks on her aft deck, behind the sail and the gangway, their white uniforms in stark contrast to the black hull beneath their feet. The two masses of white-clad sailors faced each other impassively across the narrow gap between submarine and dock, with the dark water lapping at the curve of the hull below. To Wallace's right, the gangway stretched across that gap, a slightly rising bridge festooned with flag bunting and a large logo shield representing the Virginia, SSN 774.
Farther to the right, near the rounded bow of the submarine, was ground zero for the main party. There, an enormous video screen rose three stories above the dockside, displaying, at the moment, the same Virginia logo that decorated either side of the gangway. Temporary bleachers and a forest of folding chairs had been arranged on the shore, facing Virginia's prow. A covered dignitaries' stand held seats for the dozen or so scheduled speakers; nearby, a smaller, open stand was reserved for members of the press, a small army of men and women crowded together in the breeze, armed with everything from digital cameras to shoulder-held and tripod-mounted TV cameras.
I guess we're news, Wallace thought, bemused… and a little awed. He still felt as though he didn't quite belong at the eye of this incredible hurricane of media attention and full-dress pomp and circumstance.
Damn. His black Corfam dress shoes were just a shade too tight, and he wasn't used to the pinch of the things. His feet were threatening to go to sleep.
"Stop fidgeting, Wall-eye," the man to his left said, his voice a fierce whisper too low for any but Wallace to hear. EM1 Jack Kirkpatrick had for some reason elected himself Wallace's keeper… and nemesis. "Make this division look bad and you'll find yourself guest of honor at a blanket party tonight."
He tried to grow roots, unmoving, in the hard pavement of the pier and ignore the pins and needles pricking at his feet.
Wallace — the nickname "Wall-eye," for the black-framed glasses that looked so huge on his thin face, was a hated handle he'd acquired in submarine school — had been in the Navy for just eight months, with twelve weeks of boot camp at Great Lakes, north of Chicago, five weeks of basic submarine school here at New London, and sixteen weeks more in submarine ET school — classes to train him to be an electronics technician. He'd already changed — grown — more than he'd ever believed possible when he'd left home for the first time, right out of high school. But he was painfully aware of just how much more he needed to learn. All the books, all the lectures, all those hours in submarine simulators of various types… none of that had even come close, he thought, to preparing him for the adventure on which he was about to embark.
Adventure… yeah. That was the word for it. Adventure.
Why did it feel like a death sentence? Damn it, did the fear ever stop?
Wallace was nineteen. A thin, gangly kid born and raised in Monroeville, Pennsylvania — a near-suburb of Pittsburgh — he'd seemed an unlikely candidate for the Navy's submariner program, an unlikely candidate, in fact, for the U.S. Navy. His father had been an Army draftee, serving in Vietnam; his mother's dad had been an Army private killed in the hellfire of Omaha Beach. An uncle was a career Army sergeant major who'd just returned from a tour in Iraq. Any tradition of military service in his family seemed to point him toward the infantry. Wallace still wasn't entirely sure why he'd joined the Navy, much less why he'd volunteered for the submarine service.
In part, of course, there was his love of computers to blame. He'd wanted to go to a computer training school after high school, but his family hadn't had the money. Both the Army and the Navy had computer training programs for promising recruits. He'd told a buddy once that he'd chosen the Navy because it was cleaner than the Army — no muddy foxholes, no crawling through swamps.
In fact, the Navy had promised him a chance to get out of Monroeville and see something of the world. Not that the Army couldn't do the same for a penniless young man fresh out of high school… but Wallace wanted as complete a break with the past as he could manage. Army recruiting slogans like "Be all that you can be" and "An army of one" left him cold; the old "Join the Navy and see the world" still had a powerful hold on his mind.
So here he was, six hundred and some miles from Monroeville — which was, he thought, a good thing— but about to allow himself to be sealed inside a steel cylinder where he would live and sleep and work for months at a time, possibly, and never see anything of the world of light and sun and fresh air. All of the training, all of the psychological screening he'd endured over the past year…
Was it possible he was a secret claustrophobe? Damn it, he was scared.
And he didn't dare admit that fact to any of the other men standing in the white-clad ranks around him.
Someone was talking over the sound system. A guy who'd introduced himself a few moments ago as the president of Electric Boat was now, in turn, introducing one of the senators from the state of Virginia.
Politics….
Politics….
Commander Thomas Frederick Garrett sat uncomfortably ensconced on a folding chair in the VIP stand set up at the head of Pier One, facing the colorful crowd of mostly civilian spectators in the bleachers and seats below. The wind off the sea to the south was freshening, carrying a sharp chill and the promise of rain.
Maybe it would cool some of the hot air being released by the politicking.
The senator from Virginia leaned against the podium a few feet in front of Garrett and to his right, as though trying to weave a magic spell of words over the audience. "We set sail today," he said, "to the future! This proud submarine vessel, SSN 774, is about to take her crew… and the armed services of her proud nation… into the wonderland of tomorrow, a future where technology rules the ocean depths, where technology seems like nothing so much as sheer, wondrous magic!"
The senator's craggy features and his lovingly coiffed, silver mane were displayed in close-up on the giant video screen towering to one side of the VIP box, his image weirdly distorted by the screen's angle, easily visible to the audience, but not to the occupants of the stand. The man had a lot to say, it seemed, about the future and about the glories of technology, about "young, intelligent, and dedicated young men standing in harm's way," and about "young people who stand ready to answer the Minuteman's call."
Well, the guy was right about the young men. Garrett let his gaze pass the ranks of family members, dignitaries, shipyard workers, and executives to rest on the neatly ordered block of white uniforms standing farther out on the dock. My new crew.