Collapse Depth

Someone cleared his throat at the conn and Jabo turned. IC2 Lester stood waiting with his clipboard. Lester absent-mindedly turned and reset the timer for the BST buoys as he waited to get Jabo’s attention. The “beast buoys” were distress beacons attached to the side of the boat with explosive bolts, designed to float to the surface and alert the navy that a Trident submarine was in serious trouble. A number of things would cause the buoys to automatically launch: excessive depth, certain conditions inside the hull, and a timer that had to be manually turned at least once every three hours. If no one thought to turn the timer in that amount of time, the logic went, then everyone on the boat must be dead. In one legendary Trident submarine incident, USS Michigan in drydock forgot to secure the buoys, as they are supposed to be in port, and then no one wound the timer. After three hours, just as designed, the explosive bolts fired, the twin buoys rocketed off the side of the boat, crashed into the drydock basin, and began broadcasting their distress signal, a frequency that was continuously monitored around the clock by three dedicated teams of radiomen around the world. According to the legend, the president of the United States was actually awoken before the buoys were shut off, and the captain was relieved of command before the sun came up. Good electricians, like Lester, turned the BST timer habitually, every time they walked by it.

“Yes Lester?”

“Review my logs sir?”

Lester was the Auxiliary Electrician Forward, a roaming watchstander with responsibilities all over the forward section of the ship. The Officer of the Deck was required to review and initial his logs periodically, but a good watchstander, like Lester, would prompt the OOD to take a look when something was wrong. Jabo really wanted to study the chart, puzzle over that inconsistent sounding. But Lester knew what he was doing, he’d spent two years on a fast boat before coming to Alabama. Jabo knew he wouldn’t be bothering him without reason.

He crossed the conn and took the clipboard. He scanned it quickly, wanting to see if anything jumped out at him before asking Lester what his concerns were. There were only a few red circles on the sheet, from the last watch, when they’d been at PD. They’d ventilated briefly, and the oxygen level in the ship had actually drifted high out of spec, slightly beyond the twenty percent they tried to maintain with their normal underway O₂ bleed. (There was an upper limit for oxygen because too much of it could make fires more likely and intense.) Since going back deep, the crew of Alabama had managed to breathe it back down into specification. And for the last two hours, Jabo could see everything was in black. He scanned over the rows that were the normal areas of concern; hydrogen, electrical grounds, the bilges. Everything at first glance looked good. But that’s why they put smart guys like Lester on the watchbill: to let them know what was wrong before alarm bells started going off.

“Check out Freon,” said Lester.

Jabo scanned the second sheet, where a long list of contaminants were measured by CAMS, the ship’s computerized atmospheric monitoring station. Freon was, indeed, drifting higher, especially in Machinery Two.

“That’s weird,” said Jabo.

“I know,” said Lester. “Especially since there’s no refrigeration gear back there. And look at this…” Lester flipped ahead a page, to a row in which he checked the temperatures of the two main freezers, which were almost directly below their feet.

“Not out of spec…”

“But getting there,” said Lester. “They usually go high before meals, as the cranks are going in and out of there getting food, but usually by now they’re going back down. They’re still going up.”

Jabo sighed. “I’d say we may have a refrigeration problem.”

It was one of those things they didn’t spend a lot of time teaching you until you actually arrived on a boat: the importance of the ship’s numerous refrigeration plants. An ensign was conversant on his first day on the boat in the language and philosophy of nuclear propulsion, thanks to a year of rigorous training, both in the classroom and at a working reactor. He could also fake it reasonably well in a conversation about torpedoes or sonar, or any of a handful of tactical systems that he’d studies at submarine school for three months immediately before reporting to the submarine. But refrigeration was one of those things they were expected to learn at sea, despite the fact that it was a system whose collapse could affect almost every other system on the boat: and it wasn’t at all about the food stores. The same plants that cooled the ship’s refrigerators and freezers provided cooling water to all the ship’s electronics as well.

“Chief of the Watch, get Chief Yaksic to control.”

The chief of the watch was already sending the messenger to the goat locker; like any good COW he’d been eavesdropping and anticipating. “He’s on his way, sir.”