“So what do you think? Ain’t it the finest fuckin’ boat ya ever had the pleasure of dropping inside of?” Shakes seemed genuinely proud.
“It’s certainly a masterpiece of the genre,” replied Hemi, even more evenly than usual.
Hemi had spent nearly his entire life among and inside filthy machines, but he had never seen anything where the grime lay down quite as thickly as this. There was literal garbage all over the deck; empty cans, candy wrappers, and various greasy machine parts all rolled back and forth with the swell. A big empty herring tin seemed intended to serve as an ashtray, but apparently had been used mostly as a target for used butts — most of which had missed and lay scattered about.
There were stacks of pornography — Shakes had not bothered to hide any of it. Or at least Hemi hoped that was true, because the stacks on display were of a class so deviant that Hemi could not imagine what Shakes would have found in need of hiding.
In one space, recessed between the supports of the pressure hull, were columns of still unopened food cans. The labels had been peeled off and the contents written on them in grease pencil. Most appeared to contain some variety of highly salted pasta-and-sauce. In another recess was a bin with what must have been a hundred different types of puzzle games that all had the basic premise of requiring squares of the same color to be sorted alike. Every last puzzle was solved.
The controls to the sub were aligned with and partially inside of the sail. Hemi noted that the controls were airplane-style, with a single yoke that controlled both the angle and direction of the boat — a pretty sophisticated system for any submarine, but particularly a hand-built machine.
The sail was the only place with enough headroom to stand upright. Or, at least, Shakes could stand upright there; Hemi still had to crouch a bit. Through an open hatch leading forward, Hemi could see small wooden crates crammed into the bow section. More crates were arranged behind the controls located in the middle of the boat. Shakes had thrown what were clearly his sleeping blankets over them. There was a thin heavily-stained mattress to one side, which Shakes was raising to lean against the pressure hull so there was enough room to pass the crates.
“Y’all woke me from a nap with the fuckin’ ship-to-ship call. That’s why I didn’t see ya earlier. I suppose you want to see the engines and batteries and what-fuckin-not? They’re toward the back.” Shakes reached into his denim vest and withdrew a leather pouch. He pinched some dried leaves from it, stuffed them into his cheek, and masticated them slowly.
“Yes, the engines first, if you please.” Hemi squeezed past the crates and pulled a small notebook and pencil from an inside pocket of his tweed jacket. The engine was massive and took up the entire rear third of the boat. Now Hemi was genuinely impressed. “That’s a lot of engine for such a small vessel.”
“Took the thing out of a fuckin’ tractor that had been broken down and rustin’ in a coffee field for years. Had to build a gantry and borrow another tractor to haul it up the mountain to where I was building the Gnat and get it installed. Direct-drive to the prop, so it’s a genuine ship engine, not just a glorified generator to power an electric motor.”
The configuration was obvious to Hemi. The greasy steel drive shaft came straight from the back end of the diesel, ran along the centerline of the boat, and passed out through the stern, like a needle piercing an egg resting on its side.
“But you said it has batteries, too? The boat can swim underwater?”
“Sure. The direct-shaft drive means I’ve gotta have a transmission, of course. I worked with a mechanical genius who lived on the coffee farm to build this fancy-ass transmission that lets me switch over to that electric motor to drive. It’s a fuckin’ hassle, though, I try to avoid it, ‘cept in emergencies. I have to leave the controls and come back here to the engines, switch out the diesel, and manually engage the electric motor with these levers. And the electric motor is small — it’s slow, though fuckin’ silent as a sunken graveyard.”
“It is the finest piece of mountain-top engineering I’ve ever seen on the sea,” Hemi said honestly. “Is that an escape trunk back there?”
“Yessir. Never know what you might need to be flushin’ out of the fuckin’ boat, including meself.”
“And where are the batteries?”
“Eh, batteries, fuel, ballast tanks are all below these deck panels. You have to pull them up to get at them. Since I rarely use the electric motor, the batteries almost always have a full charge on them — as they do right now — if that helps somehow. Obviously not enough juice to power your giant fuckin’ washtub over there.”
“No, not nearly. How much fuel do you have?”
“Wellsir, this is how we check that…” Shakes slipped his finger through a metal ring atop a pipe that ran up from the deck along the curve of the wall. He pulled a long wavering piece of thin steel from the pipe and wiped it on a foul rag that hung on a hook on the wall. He replaced the dipstick and then quickly pulled it back out again and held it up for Hemi to see the graduation along its length.
Hemi winced as he caught an acrid whiff of petrochemicals. “You buy decent quality fuel oil, Captain Shakes?”
“Ah well fuck, you know, I buy whatever I can get at the trading posts. I’m sure they’re sometimes selling me chunky bunker with the used oil from the cafeteria deep fryer dumped on top. But ain’t that what the fuckin’ fuel filter is for?” Shakes kicked at a rust-flaked cylinder mounted on a pipe that ran back toward the engine. “I consider it good quality fuel if I don’t hafta siphon water out of the bottom of the tank after a top-up.”
“Indeed. And how long will that amount of fuel oil you have there last you?” Hemi asked, pointing the eraser side of his pencil at the dripping dipstick Shakes was still holding between them.
“Maybe twelve hours’ worth left. Enough to get me where I’m fuckin’ going.”
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
“Where are you going?”
“I think I’m gonna keep that bit a’ information to myself for the moment.” Shakes set the dipstick back in its pipe.
Hemi made a sound in his throat while he scribbled some calculations. He pointed to a gauge in front of the control yoke. “Is that the battery charge?”
“Such as it is. That’s salvaged from tractor parts too. It shows me roughly how much charge is left on the battery, but mostly it’s just got a fuckin’ little red light that comes on when the batteries are about to kick off. If ya want any fuckin’ precision, you gotta get down under those deck panels with the meter and take readings off each of the battery banks.” Shakes kicked a small steel door that opened to a recessed cabinet in the wall. He pulled from the space a short pry bar and a small metal box with a dial gauge and a pair of electrical leads dangling from it. “Check this shit out.” He levered the teeth of the prybar under the steel deck panel. Hemi stood on the other side and they lifted the panel together and propped it up.
Below were rows and rows of what Hemi was almost certain were lead-acid truck or tractor batteries. A rat’s nest of greasy black cables ran back and forth between them.
Hemi scratched his beard. “Well! Let me see that meter.” He lowered himself to his knees and reached out over the battery banks with the leads from the meter. He began touching the probes to various terminals on the batteries and writing down the results he read off the meter in his little notebook. “This is going to take a while.”
“Always fuckin’ does.” Shakes took a comb from his pocket and dipped it in a bucket half-filled with oil that dripped from the diesel engine. He ran the comb through his hair, then teased it back up to a spiky randomness with the tips of his fingers. He wiped his fingers on his shirt. “So…where were you guys headed, before the whole fuckin’ dead-ship thing?”
Hemi did not look up from his work. “Captain Percy has been playing that particular piece of information close to her chest since we left the last port. I believe she has a line on our next job, but she has not yet shared details with me,” He said somewhat tentatively. He continued silently checking the status of the batteries while Shakes pulled a pack of cigarettes from his vest and lit one to chase down the flavor of the leaves he had been chomping on.
After Shakes had filled up the small space with a haze of tobacco smoke, Hemi sat up straight and stashed his notebook and pencil back in his pocket. “I think I have enough information for the time being. That food Gregory was working on is probably ready. Shall we go see if we can find something hot to eat?”
“Shit ya. My gut is a gaping hole. Help me get this panel back in place.” Shakes tossed the remaining bit of burning cigarette in the direction of the ashtray, and Hemi helped him replace the panel.
Shakes and Hemi came into the galley of the Prospect, where Percy and Bastian were already crammed into the tight seating around the table. Gregory was at the stove, working a giant cast iron pan so heavy with frying rice that the wiry muscles of his arm bulged with the effort of shaking it.
Gregory looked up when Hemi and Shakes came in. Hemi introduced Shakes.
“Fuck yeah,” said Shakes, eyeing the pile of frying rice. “I ain’t eaten nothing but cold canned pasta for more than a week.”
“None of your canned garbage food here, Captain Shakes,” said Gregory, grinding the pan back and forth across the range in a way that set small sparks flying. “Gotta keep it moving or it’ll burn to the bottom. This is real submariner’s food. Everything good that can’t go bad: rice, eggs, cabbage…”
“Are you putting that foul slimy-gray pickled cabbage in the rice again, Gregory?” asked Bastian. “You’ll be killing submariners if submariner’s food is that fucking real.”
Gregory huffed. “My ol’ pap worked a submarine galley in the wars. He used to say, ‘If you can heat it, you can eat it.’ And this shit’s gonna be plenty fucking hot.” Gregory dumped in an entire container of the questionable pickled cabbage and stirred it around as the sound of frying drowned out any conversation.
He declared the rice done a few minutes later. “Captain Shakes, for helping us out, you’re up first.” Gregory cracked an egg onto a smoking smaller frying pan next to the giant one full of rice. As it sizzled on the creosote surface, Gregory dumped huge piles of rice into a big bowl and handed it to Shakes. The rice was browned by the black salty sauces Gregory had poured into it, and burned to a crusty-black crunchiness in places. Steaming bits of cabbage slithered throughout, flecked with red and black pepper. Shakes was about to dig a fork in when Gregory slipped the fried egg on top with a spatula. Its white was stained an oily, slightly-gray color, and the glowing orange yolk was held in place by a wiggling skin on the edge of bursting from the pressure of the hot liquid inside.
Shakes grinned before plunging the tines of his fork into the yolk and letting it run into his rice. He then started working his way into his bowl with an uninterrupted shoveling motion of his fork from the bowl to his mouth.
Gregory served up the rest of the crew the same way. Percy asked him to run up to the control room and get on the PA and tell Owen to come up for some grub.
Hemi sat at the end of the table with his little notebook propped open in front of him, eating his rice with one hand while scribbling down calculations with the other.
Their hunger got the better of any conversation for a few minutes as the mounds of rice, egg, and cabbage steadily vanished. Gregory served himself and sat down, and got back up a few minutes later to fry another egg for Owen when he arrived. A few minutes after that, he had to get up to make Shakes another egg. All told, every one of them had at least two servings and Owen and Shakes each ate three. Gregory never got to sit for more than a minute. And when no more eggs were demanded, he got up again to put coffee on.
Between forkfuls of rice, Percy tried to get an assessment of the situation on her boat. “Owen, have you been down in the cargo hold?”
Owen nodded, his crop fully loaded.
“How’s the patch looking?”
Owen swallowed, and then swallowed again. “I’m hardly an expert on welding or repairs, but I’d say it looks pretty bad. The patches are an ugly mess, and I’m pretty sure the water level is rising again, though more slowly.”
“Can you work on it? Can you clean up those welds, get the leaking stopped?” Percy asked.
“I can try. But, you know, it’s delicate work that I’m just starting to figure out. There’s a chance I could just make it worse — burn a hole right through the hull. If you’re asking me, I think you need Chips on it.”
“I didn’t ask your opinion, you little shit. I asked if you can fix it,” said Percy, aiming her fork at him.
“Yeah, Captain Percy. No fuckin’ sweat.” Owen poked at his food a little less hungrily.
“Finish your food and get your skinny ass back down there.”
“Sylvia,” Hemi said, not looking up from his food, “I really think you need to do what you can to get Chips back to working on those repairs.”
She smacked her fist on the table and looked up, breathing through her nostrils. “Fuck.”