Deep Whisper

Начало книги

“Captain,” said a voice in the darkness. “Captain, are you awake, sir?”

The world came back to Commander Mark Castillo like a slap, his heart racing, sucking up air in sharp, shallow breaths, his mouth coated with something bitter and metallic. He sat up in his rack, propped up on his hands. A blurry sliver of light cleaved the darkness in two, the messenger of the watch a shadowy silhouette against the cracked-open hatch.

This couldn’t be his regular wake-up. It felt like he’d only just shut his eyes. His gaze flickered to the little digital clock perched on the bracket that ran alongside his rack. Red numbers glowed in the darkness: 2217. He’d only been asleep for fifty minutes.

For a moment he felt nothing but the painful thud of his heart. If the OOD was waking him up early it had to be bad news. And he took no comfort from the absence of alarms. There were plenty of things that could kill a submarine slow and quiet before a deck officer realized the full extent of the danger.

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