100 Fathoms Below

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USS Roanoke, SSN-709, sat moored to the dock, half submerged in the calm waters of the harbor. In the dim twilight, when colors and details began to fade to the same flat gunmetal gray, the submarine might have looked to an outsider like some gigantic sea creature, lashed to the dock by thick ropes and braided steel cables, its tower standing tall like a dorsal fin. But not to Warren Stubic, petty officer third class. To him, it looked like where he was going to call home for the next three months.

Roanoke was scheduled to launch tomorrow at 1530 hours. After that, he was staring at an underway spent entirely at sea. Three months without the sun. Three months without liquor. Three months of hot-racking—sharing a bed with three other guys in six-hour sleeping shifts because there wasn’t enough room on a submarine to give every enlisted man his own rack.

Three months without women. That prospect in particular struck him as intolerable.

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