Chapter 4: The Weight of Forty-Three Minutes
I didn't sleep.
At 0340 I gave up pretending and went to the galley.
It was empty except for a mess specialist running a mop across the far end of the floor.
He glanced at me, nodded, and kept moving.
I poured coffee from the standing urn and sat at the end of a long metal table.
Reyes found me there twenty minutes later.
He was still in his duty uniform.
He looked like he hadn't slept either.
He poured his own coffee and sat down across from me without asking.
For a moment neither of us said anything.
"You know what you did today is going to follow you," I said.
"Yes, ma'am."
"Kane will write it up as insubordination.
Unauthorized action during a command incident."
"I know."
"That goes in your service record."
Reyes wrapped both hands around his mug.
He was maybe twenty-three.
His knuckles were still raw from pulling the rescue line.
"With respect," he said, "I watched three people go to medical yesterday morning because he wouldn't open a water locker.
I wasn't going to watch a fourth one not come back."
I looked at him.
"How long have you been on the Resolute?"
"Eight months."
"And before today — how many people have pushed back against Kane?"
He thought about it.
"Out loud?
You're the first one I've seen."
"What happened to the others who tried quietly?"
His jaw tightened.
"Reassigned.
Two of them requested early discharge.
One filed a formal complaint through the chaplain's office." He paused.
"The complaint disappeared."
I set my coffee down.
"Who told you that?"
"Master Chief Doyle."
That name again.
"Reyes," I said carefully.
"What do you know about Deck Four?"
His hands went still on the mug.
The mess specialist at the far end of the galley had stopped mopping.
I didn't look at him directly.
"I know it's locked," Reyes said.
"Has been since I came aboard.
Kane controls the access log personally.
No maintenance crew goes down there without him present."
"Have you ever been down there?"
"Once.
Six months ago.
Kane sent me to retrieve a manifest binder from the storage annex — that's the outer room, before the secondary hatch.
I was in and out in under two minutes." He hesitated.
"But I heard something."
"What kind of something?"
"Climate control running on a separate circuit.
The kind you use for temperature-sensitive storage." He looked at me steadily.
"That's not standard for a logistics deck."
I kept my voice level.
"Did you report it?"
"To who?" His voice didn't rise.
It just went flat.
"Kane controls every access log on that deck.
The XO hasn't been below Level Two in four months.
And the last officer who asked questions about Deck Four got a transfer order inside a week."
The galley was quiet.
The mess specialist picked up his mop bucket and walked out without looking at us.
I watched the door close behind him.
"Reyes," I said.
"Starting right now, you don't know anything about Deck Four.
You don't remember hearing climate control.
You don't remember this conversation."
He nodded slowly.
"And the life ring," I said.
"Thank you."
He stood up, picked up his mug, and walked out.
I sat alone with my coffee going cold and thought about a separate climate circuit running beneath a locked deck on a vessel where the commanding officer had just thrown a federal investigator into the Pacific.
At 0600 I would reach my handler.
But at 0552, the ship's intercom clicked on.
Kane's voice came through flat and clear.
"All hands.
Petty Officer Cole is to report to the command deck immediately.
May you like
Failure to comply will be logged as dereliction."
Every person on the Resolute just heard my name called by the man who had put me in the ocean eight hours ago.
