Chapter 77: SSGN Florida

Petty Officer First Class Rebecca Lott was tired, depressed, and struggling to hide it as she walked down the passageway towards her quarters. Several sailors were doing routine maintenance, and she nodded to each of them as she passed. Her self control was complete, and she heard one comment to his work mate that, "The Chief always looks so confident. Nothing seems to get to her."

If only that were true, she thought. Thirty four souls (including her own) depended on her maintaining that illusion, and the strain was getting to her. She was still exhausted enough every day that falling asleep wasn't a problem, but her sleep was rarely easy. The only good thing about the stress of command was that it kept her from wallowing in her regrets.

She'd never tried to follow up on the hints from either of the men she loved that they were open to a romantic relationship. She'd never taken the hint from the Chief that she apply to Officer Candidate School, to make the Navy a real career. She'd never even tried to follow up on the curiosity she'd felt about making love with a woman, despite the oh-so-gentle hints dropped by Linda Tamasuto when they'd stopped in Kobe on the way to visit her cousins, or the less subtle looks she'd gotten from that slender beauty in Basic Training.

And now none of that was going to be possible. Whatever had killed their ship, and hadn't quite killed them yet, had foreclosed all of those possibilities. Now that she was 'in command, ' as the senior surviving crew member, she couldn't approach her might-have-been lovers, even if she could bring herself to choose between them. Neither could she approach the only other surviving woman, who seemed to have assigned herself the role of ship's slut, boosting the morale of nearly a dozen of the other survivors by spreading her legs for anyone with a cock and a pulse.

Rebecca still wondered what the real Chief would have done about Stacy, but her behavior had only surfaced after the Chief's heart attack. Rebecca supposed he might have already seen the signs, and let it pass in the interests of maintaining morale, at the cost of discipline, but that theory didn't match Rebecca's mental model of the Chief's philosophy.

Rebecca's mental meanderings ended as she arrived at the compartment she was using as her quarters, and she entered them eagerly. A quick sponge bath helped calm her, and she changed into her pajamas and lay down on her bunk and tried to relax. Soon enough, her eyes closed, and she fell into a deep sleep. Before the dreams could start, a low hum filled the compartment, and a silver shell surrounded her sleeping body. The shell raised up above the bunk, and silently vanished.

Around the ship, the other sleeping crew began to vanish, one by one. Smaller shells removed log books, personal effects, and seemingly random items. As the now-unoccupied quarters were cleaned out, crew members who were still awake began to stop moving, their eyes glazed over, and shells began to form around them as well.

Petty Officer Second Class Roger Able (he still cursed the foolish notion that had led him to enlist, and the vicious evil of the recruiter who'd failed to warn him of the pathetic jokes his name would provoke) was 'officer' of the deck when things started to get weird. He was talking over the intercom to Chief Ko, when Ko suddenly stopped answering him. The intercom channel was still open, but the reactor control room was totally silent. He could understand if the engineer had stopped talking to answer someone in the room, but even the background conversations were gone.

A sudden feeling of dread swept over him. Maybe this was the end, at last. The senior staff had agreed to maintain the focus on day-to-day survival, without discussing the inevitable end of their doomed attempt to escape their fate. Three months without contact was near-total proof that the contact would never come. Whatever had destroyed them had done so without leaving any sign of their location, and so even if a rescue attempt had been undertaken, it must have ended by now, with obvious lack of success.

Roger regretted the missed chance to finally connect with Rebecca. She'd responded unconsciously and favorably to his hints, but had never given him any conscious encouragement, and their present circumstances made any real relationship impossible. If he was willing to destroy what cohesiveness remained to them, he could talk her into a final physical act, but there was no way his love for her would ever be properly expressed. He'd even be willing to share her with his 'arch-rival', the equally-unfortunately-named Tom Baker, if it meant they could spend their final days happily. But it wasn't to be, and if the silence in the reactor room meant what he feared, even their minutes together were over.

Roger began to feel light headed, and the room faded out as he wished his never-to-be lover good bye. The silver shell formed around him, and he vanished along with the rest of the 'bridge' crew.

It wasn't long before the ship was empty of life, crewed only by the bodies of those killed in the accident. Soon those bodies began to vanish as well, and the submarine was empty of all life, present and former. The only motion was centered around a small box, sitting in front of the control panel of the reactor that had survived the accident, and provided the power that kept the remnants of the crew alive as they waited for an increasingly improbable rescue. As the box hummed quietly, controls seemed to adjust themselves, maintaining the system in the absence of the crew.

JA01-Eta, Day 12, Morning

Rebecca awoke slowly, already regretting the start of her new day, then bolted upright as the silence of her surroundings sank in. A submarine is never silent, but she wasn't in her quarters anymore. Instead, she found herself in a generic hotel room, with actual sheets, actual (tacky) wallpaper, and all the trappings of the typical corporate simulation of comfortable lodging.

The only things missing were a window with a lousy view, generic art prints, and the large black monolith that would mysteriously transform her into a fetus floating in space as classical music played in the background.

Rebecca found herself dressed in an oddly-styled set of pajamas, a deep blue with small white anchors printed on them. The anchors were styled after the Navy emblem, but the details were wrong, like a Hollywood fake. She sat up, swinging her legs out of the bed, and looked around. She found a small note on the bedside table, and picked it up.

"Our sincerest apologies for the manner in which you arrived here. For reasons we will explain at your convenience, we needed to extract you quickly, but in a way that would not distress you unduly. As compensation, we have taken the further liberty of supplying you with some minor medical treatment, the nature of which will also be explained.

"Please feel free to refresh yourself; the water supply for the shower is not unlimited, but you are unlikely to approach the limit unless you favor showers of a week's duration or so.

"A representative is waiting for you in the common area at the end of the hall; the other bedrooms in the suite are occupied by several members of your crew. Due to the limited accommodations available on short notice, we were forced to separate you during processing; you will be reunited as soon as everyone has awakened.

"Again, we apologize for the involuntary nature of your arrival, but we assure you that your future here is much brighter than it was aboard your ship.

"We await the pleasure of your company.

"(Signed) The Management."

Rebecca was shaken. She was either completely insane, or a miracle had rescued her from certain death. The mantle of command was still heavy, but the other burdens seemed to be lifting slowly. If only she could believe what she'd read.

She decided that a good long shower would do wonders for her, so she looked around, spotted what was most likely the head, and moved in that direction. Her guess proved correct, and she sat down on the toilet for a quick piss before climbing into the shower. When she pushed off her pants to piss, she discovered that some whack job had been messing with her; she had never worn thong underwear, had never owned any, and did not intend to ever wear any again.

Shrugging off the insult, and trying to ignore the creepy feeling, she finished her business, and climbed into the shower stall for what Navy slang called a Hollywood shower. She ran the water for a full minute, stretching in the full flow, then soaped herself and shampooed her hair without turning the water off. On shipboard, that was a serious offense, but she decided to take the note at its word, and she shamelessly enjoyed the luxury.

Once she was done, she toweled her short hair dry, then wrapped herself in a large warm towel before returning to the bedroom. She found her clothing hanging in a closet, including the dress uniform that had been lost in her original quarters when that part of the ship was flooded. Considering carefully, she put it on, first donning a pair of her own underwear instead of the disturbing garment provided by her hosts. She did indulge herself by putting on a rather sexier pair of panties than the grandma panties that she normally wore in uniform. They showed no more panty line than the thong would have, but she felt much less exposed in them than she had in the thong.

Wearing her uniform both comforted her, and reminded her of her duties as a United States Naval officer (a role she'd been filling despite her lack of commission), including the duty to escape from her captors and report them and their capabilities to her superiors. From what she'd seen so far, she was far from certain that either was possible, but her duty was clear. Squaring her shoulders, she marched out of her quarters, to meet her hosts and her fate.

JA01-Tau, Day 12, Morning

Roger awoke suddenly, looking around in shock at his surroundings. He'd been on the bridge, half-scared to death at PO Ko's sudden silence, when he'd lost consciousness. And now he was lying in an anonymous hotel room, dressed in some kind of half-assed pajamas with little-kid Navy emblems on them.