Micro-fiction: Missile Launch

“Set Condition Delta for Nuclear Launch! This is not a drill! Man battlestations!” The Captain’s voice rings out over the 1MC.

I hear groans coming out of the bunkrooms as my shipmates roll out and into their poopy suits and boondockers. There’s no time for socks or underwear unless you slept in them. Memo to self: always sleep in underwear and socks in preparation for events like these.

“Oh shit! Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, oh shit!
It’s goddamn Sunday morning, what are they thinking?”

I hear more groans coming from the bunkrooms. Guys like to sleep in on Sundays. No drills, no field day. I’m in the crew’s lounge, reading a John Edgar Wideman novel.

I head down to the diesel room, my assignment for battlestations missile. A thousand thoughts run through my head. I check my watch and do some arithmetic. It’s after church at home and Aunt Beck is serving Sunday dinner. Sheila and Freisha are there for the day. Did they go to church today? I know Aunt Beck did. She never misses a Sunday. I wonder what did the preacher use for his Old Testament text?

Of course, none of that matters. As soon as we launch the Ruskies will detect it and launch, then the Chinese, then the Brits, then the French are all gonna launch. I suspect the Pakistanis, Indians, and Israelis will try to hold off. God only knows what the North Koreans and the Iranians will do. It will be pandemonia any way you slice it. Our adversaries will target our underground silos, then our aerial platforms, the bombers. We submarines will play cat and mouse for a while, but they ultimately will find us. Maybe after the ashes have cooled. Maybe after the radiation levels have reached their half-life. But they will find us.

I can’t imagine anybody has Greensboro or its surrounding area on a pre-targeted mapping. But folks at home will hear about it on the news and people will still get in their cars and try to go somewhere. Anywhere. US-29, I-40, I-85 will all be packed. More pandemonia.

I blindly go through the steps to make the diesel generator ready for orders.

There’s confusion in the torpedo room next door. It may not even matter – torpedoes are a tactical weapon, we won’t be using them.

“Man remote operating stations. Set condition 1SQ. Spin up all missiles!”

Oh shit. We’ve been through this before. But it was a drill. It was always a drill. Are we really gonna do it this time?

My sea pup enters the space with two cups of coffee. Navy Joe. Black and sweet. Smooth move. I guzzle mine down. “What about the croissants?” I grill him. He has a puzzled look on his face. I laugh to ease the tension.

I feel the boat coming up to launch depth. Ever so slowly, but I know the motion from years, well, months of operating the fairwater planes on my used-to-fish, the Hammerhead. It certainly seemed like years.

There is calm in the missile compartment above us. Cool, wicked calm.

I compose a sonnet in my head, working out the meter on my fingers:

Missile Launch Sonnet

“This is the Captain, this is a strategic launch!
Man Battlestations!” rings around my soul,
And rousing me from sleepiness and slumber,
Demands that I assume my chosen role.
We rise up, like a beast, from ocean’s bottom,
The hatches open, doomsday is at hand—
We push the buttons, random pick the numbers,
Then send the missiles after our command.

And afterward the afterword is zero . . .
There’s no one left to tell us how we sinned;
We are survivors, that makes us the hero,
We build the world anew and make amends.
But how can we ignore, erase our wrong?
We pay the price. Are we the best, the strong?

Not bad. The end needs some work. I’ll work it out when this is all over. If that time ever comes.

I think about my girlfriend, back in home port. No telling who she woke up with. C’est la vie. None of that matters.

I compose a poem to her:

Postscript (to J)

just thought I’d write
a line or two
to let you know
I’m feeling blue.

My boat just launched
an atom bomb.
it flew so high,
then kissed the ground.

I wonder how
the people felt
to watch their homes
and children, melt?

The first missile is launched, followed by all twenty-three in rapid succession. Ripple launch. We lose a bit of depth control with each launch. I feel the “recoil” pushing us down deeper into the water. A bit. My heart is racing from the caffeine.

I have no idea where the missiles we launched are headed. Not in my job description. I’m just an engineer. We only maintain the platform. But we are just as guilty. We all are guilty. We await the punishment that is surely coming. In this life or the next. Expiation for our collective sin.