Ohio Class

EPILOGUE

ST2 Roger Caswell walked into the TGI Friday's, an attractive young woman on his arm. "Kettering party?" he asked the hostess.

"Ah!" she said. "The noisy ones! This way, please."

It was Doc Kettering's birthday, and a number of the members of Ohio's crew had gotten together to take him out to dinner. Plans included dinner here, followed by the requisite bar-crawling afterward into the wee hours.

Ohio had returned from her Gulf deployment three weeks earlier, her missile stores expended, to a tumultuous welcome at Bremerton Navy Yard. Over the next week, crew transition had taken place. It had been decided that the old Blue and Gold submarine crew system employed on board U.S. boomers would be retained in Ohio's new incarnation. Caswell and his shipmates were part of the Blue Crew. Gold Crew had now taken over, and was busily outfitting her for her next deployment.

Which didn't mean Blue Crew was off the hook, of course. As always for submarine crews, there was training. And practice. And more training. And more practice.

But the five of them — Caswell, Kettering, Moone, Jakowiac, and Dobbs — had weekend liberty, beginning at 1700 hours that afternoon. There would be no studies tonight.

A big table had been set aside for the Kettering party. Moonie and Jak both had girlfriends along, and Dobbs had brought his wife. A special guest had come along as well, his officer's rank set aside for the evening. Everyone was in civilian clothing, so what did it matter? Gary Hawking — honorary submariner — had been enthusiastically welcomed when he'd asked if he could join them.

"Hey, Cassie!" Moone called, waving. "Get your ass over here!"

"And who is this young lady?" Kettering said as they walked up to the table. "I don't believe I've had the pleasure?… "

"Doc, guys… this is Kelly Martin. She's a… friend."

"Good to meet you, Kelly," Kettering said, rising. He looked puzzled. "But come to think of it, I do believe I've met you before somewhere."

Caswell grinned as he held a chair for Kelly. "Sure you have, Doc. Her stage name is Crystal. Crystal Light. She's a dancer over at BJ's."

"That's where I've seen her!" Jakowiac said, delighted.

"Ah," Kettering said, grinning. "That explains it. I didn't recognize you with your clothes on, Kelly."

"I thought you gals didn't date the customers," Moone said.

She smiled. "We're not supposed to. But… well, Roger was so sweet. He came to the club last week and we started talking and, well… we found a way."

"Love always finds a way!" Moone exclaimed. "So, Cassie, I guess this means you've forgotten all about Nina?"

"Nina who?" Caswell asked, his voice carefully neutral. The others laughed.

"Way to go, Cassie!" Dobbs said.

"I'm glad to see you getting out some, Cass," Kettering said. "Seeing people. Best medicine in the world."

"It's not like that, fellas," Caswell said. "We're just friends."

Hawking lifted a glass of beer. "To new friends!" he toasted.

In fact, he knew it would be a long time before he was over Nina. Nina who? was a little game he was playing, something to keep the bad thoughts at bay.

He'd had some long talks with Doc during the voyage back to the World. According to him, depression and suicide were the major risks to submarine crewmen. Medical personnel assigned to subs went through special classes to keep up on the psychological end of things. Even a sub as big as the Ohio, when you came down to it, was a tiny tin can stuffed full of people — an explosion waiting to happen.

This time, though, the explosion inboard had not happened, though Caswell still caught his breath when he thought about how close he'd come. It had been a near thing.

Possibly as near-run a race as Ohio's surviving the Iranian ASW gauntlet. If it hadn't been for Hawking and his weird little craft straight out of the pages of science fiction…

A television set high up on a wall was giving the news, the sound turned down but the captions appearing in print at the bottom. The news tonight was all about soaring gasoline prices and the latest crisis in the Middle East… this one in Syria. Iran had already faded into the back pages of the world press.

The short, sharp missile exchange with Iran had lasted exactly eighty-five minutes. At that time, the Ayatollah Khamenei had issued a statement calling for an immediate cessation of hostilities, and offered to negotiate a lasting peace. Those talks were now scheduled for mid-September. No one knew what the outcome would be, but for now, at least, the shooting was over. Iran had pulled its forces out of Oman, and things in the region had gone back to their uneasy status quo. Radical Islamic voices denounced American aggression, equating it with terrorism, while moderate Islamic groups kept their heads down and their voices quiet.

If it was peace, it was an ominous and unsettled one.

But for Ohio, and the Ohio's crew, there'd been a testing, and a kind of rite of passage. They'd faced combat, survived, and emerged victorious. Ohio, in her SSGN incarnation, had proven herself the premier system for littoral combat for the twenty-first century, a proven defense against state-sponsored terrorism, and a means of striking a decisive blow against any enemy that might threaten the United States for the foreseeable future.

And Ohio's crew had proven themselves as survivors, and as victors, as well.

"Let me have a Coke," Caswell told the waitress when she came by to take his and Kelly's drink orders a few minutes later. When she brought the drinks, he raised his high. "To new friends," he said, "but also to old shipmates and submariners." They all drank to that.