Larry Bond - Dangerous Ground

“She’s still upset with Captain Hardy. They had a terrible fight after the meeting yesterday and apparently Hardy read her the riot act on what she can and cannot do in regard to this mission. From what little she has told me, she’d turn this sub around right now if she hadn’t committed herself in front of the President.” Emily paused while she finished putting her laptop away. She then looked Jerry in the eye and said, “Dr. Patterson doesn’t take it well when people oppose her. She’s used to being in charge and she’s used to getting her way.”

“Sounds vaguely like my commanding officer,” remarked Jerry sympathetically. “But if we are going to pull this mission off, we all need to learn to play nice.”

“Teamwork is not something Joanna Patterson is good at. Just ask about a half dozen former White House staffers,” replied Emily with a slight hint of humor.

“Wonderful! And Captain Hardy’s afraid of joining them.”

“That’s about how I see it, Mr. Mitchell.”

“Well, then, with that cheery thought in mind, Dr. Davis, shall we head off to the torpedo room and prepare your vehicles for their test runs?”

“Certainly.” She brightened as Jerry changed the subject. “But I need to get something to drink. My throat is dry after all that talking.” The hoarseness of Emily’s voice reinforced her statement.

“Sure thing. We can swing by the galley and grab a cup of bug juice on the way,” said Jerry.

“Ewwww, that sounds disgusting! Why do you guys have to be so gross?” complained Emily.

“Sorry, Navy tradition. How about we grab you a cup of cheap Kool-Aid? I believe they are serving green and purple today.”

“Huh? What’s with the colors? Don’t you Navy types believe in flavors like the rest of the us?”

“In theory, there are flavors. I think the green is supposed to be lime and the purple is grape. But they pretty much taste the same, so we go by colors. That’s what you get when you buy from the lowest bidder.”

Making their way to the galley, Jerry and Emily picked up their drinks and then headed forward to the ladder that led to forward compartment lower level and the torpedo room. Since the ladder ended up in the twenty-one-man bunkroom, Jerry went down first to make sure no one would be “surprised” by Emily’s appearance. With the coast clear, Emily quickly made her descent and the two of them entered the torpedo room.

Senior Chief Foster already had the entire torpedo division assembled when Jerry and Emily arrived. Foster was reviewing the ROV launch procedures with the men and paid little attention to the two as they headed over to the ROV control area.

Emily sat down at the control and display pallet and powered up the computer systems. Jerry looked around the space as she went through the initial system checks. He focused on the two ROVs in their support cradles and his eye caught the stenciled H and D on the vehicles. He asked, “Emily, I have a question for you. What do the ‘H’ and ‘D’ stand for on the ROVs?”

“Oh, that’s just my way of telling them apart. The ‘H’ stands for Huey and the ‘D’ stands for Duey.”

Jerry just stood there and stared. The quizzical look on his face made Emily chuckle.

“You mean to tell me you named those two vehicles after Donald Duck’s nephews?”

“Ahh, well, uh. yes… and no,” answered Emily, whose face started to blush.

“Okay, that was as clear as mud,” replied Jerry sarcastically. “C’mon, what do the letters really stand for?”

“I told you,” said Emily defensively. “My babies are named after two of the maintenance robots from the 1971 science fiction movie Silent Running. The robots were named after Donald’s nephews.”

“Silent Running.?” asked a befuddled Jerry. “Isn’t that a submarine movie?”

“Oh, no! It’s classic sci-fi!” Emily’s face brightened, and she became more animated as she described the movie to Jerry. “There were these three spaceships carrying the last existing forests in domes, awaiting the message to return to Earth and renew the world following a devastating nuclear war. And on each ship there were three maintenance robots, and on the Valley Forge the three robots were named Huey, Duey, and Louie.”

Jerry could only stare in utter amazement as Emily just kept babbling on about this movie. She had the same unrestrained zeal for science fiction that his sisters had for shoes, jewelry, and boys. Jerry was now absolutely convinced that Emily Davis was a geek, a nerd — another brilliant engineer who didn’t appear to have a life. She went on for ten more minutes and finally concluded by describing how the tragic hero kills himself with a nuclear bomb. “It’s a wonderful movie with lots of depth and emotion all tied together in a futuristic spaceship motif. You really should see it sometime.”

“Let me get this straight,” Jerry said with deep concern in his voice. “Your favorite movie is about a ship. It has two robots named Huey and Duey. The movie has an environmental theme to it. Its title is Silent Running, which is something we will probably be doing a lot of. And at end, the hero is killed by a nuke. Are you trying to tell me something here?”

“What?” It was now Emily’s turn to be confused. But after a few moments, her eyes widened, her mouth dropped, and she sputtered, “Oh. Oh! No, no, I didn’t mean anything like that at all, Jerry!”

“Good! I’m glad to hear it, because I don’t like your ending.” Both of them laughed over Jerry’s response. The sound was so loud that all of the torpedomen stopped and looked over at the two of them. Foster had absolute disdain on his face.

Before Jerry could explain, the IMC announced, “Man ROV launch stations.”

Pulling himself together, Jerry looked over at Foster and ordered, “Senior Chief, please start loading Huey into tube three.”

Perplexed, Foster replied, “Excuse me, sir?”

“The ROV with the ‘H’ on it, that’s Huey. Please load it into tube three.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” Foster said coldly.

Foster turned and signaled TM1 Moran, who opened the breech door for tube three remotely from the weapons launching console. Greer then inspected the tube with a flashlight, while Foster and the other torpedomen positioned the loading tray with the ROV so it lined up with tube three. The hydraulic rammer was connected, and Huey was slowly pushed into the tube, stern first and upside down. Emily showed the torpedomen how to thread the fiber-optic cable through the small penetration in the breech door and made sure there was enough slack so the cable could be hooked up to the connection box on the inboard side of the tube.

Foster and Lee then attached the deployment drogue to the nose probe on the ROV and slipped the retrieval cable through a larger breech door penetration and attached it to the drogue body. Finally a breech support ring was installed in the tube, which firmly secured the ROV and would prevent it from moving inadvertently. After the loading had been finished, Emily and Jerry inspected the ROV to make sure everything was in order. For Jerry, this was more of a quick course on what to look for when double-checking to see that a ROV had been loaded properly.

Satisfied that everything was correct, Emily asked Moran to shut and lock the breech door. She then took the fiber-optic cable, crimped on a connector, and hooked it up to the connection box. While the loading process went well, it still took twenty minutes to complete and it was clear from the torpedo room phone talker that the Captain was getting impatient.

Jerry and Emily hurried back over to the control pallet, and while Jerry put on his headset, Emily brought Huey to life. After a quick diagnostic check, she informed Jerry that everything was functioning normally and that Huey was ready to go. Jerry then reported to the control room, “Control, U-bay. ROV has been loaded and tested. Test satisfactory. Request permission to flood tube three, equalize to sea pressure, and open the outer door.”