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“Yep, NTM. They come out once a week — and this one’s fifty-eight pages long. Describes stuff all over the world that you might or might not want to incorporate into a chart. Normally, our charts are so up to date, these don’t usually help us all that much, we’ve already got the information. But in water like this…I’m reading every one of these freaking things.”

“You find anything in there that affects us?”

Flather nodded, and pointed to a box he’d drawn on the southwestern edge of the chart and highlighted in yellow. “That’s from this NTM. Some surface ship noticed some discolored water right there where the water is supposed to be 8,000 feet deep. Shouldn’t be any mud in water that deep. So it may be a sea mount of some kind, who knows. So I put in on the chart, even though it’s far from anywhere we’ll be. Maybe we’ll swing southward on the way home, who knows. But I wanted to get it down.”

“And you’ve got to read through all of these?”

Flather shrugged. “Me and the nav split them up, we’re trying to look ahead at the water we’re heading into. We’re about halfway through all the NTMs for this year, although I’m getting through them faster than the nav…he’s just got so much shit on his plate right now.”

Jabo flipped through the Notice. Every entry was marked by a latitude and longitude, followed by some piece of information: an ODAS buoy location off the coast of California had changed. A “dangerous wreck” had to be added to a chart in the Gulf of Mexico. The interval of a lighthouse’s flashing light in Ireland needed to be altered. Each correction was seemingly minor. But, Jabo knew, given the right circumstances, it was the kind of information that could turn a watch shitty in a hurry.

“Sir?” Jabo looked up to see RM1 Gurno standing at the conn with a clipboard. “The broadcast for your review.” It was a bonus for them, the OOD and the communicator being the same person, one less officer to track down or wake up in order to get the broadcast reviewed.

Jabo walked up. “Anything good in there?”

“Nothing you need to wake the captain for. But look at this safety flash.” He opened up to it and pointed to a paragraph.

Safety flashes were messages they received when the navy had identified a safety concern that needed immediate attention. They usually resulted from death or serious accidents, and were thus more interesting reading than the normal message traffic about wind warnings off Bremerton and new regulations about the disposal of plastic at sea. Jabo read the paragraph.

“Holy shit…”

“I know!” said Gurno, giggling.

“How do you get a testicle ripped off on a rowing machine?”

“I don’t know, but they are now officially banned on Navy ships. We’re supposed to put an Out of Commission tag on ours right now. Did you see the boat?”

Jabo looked. It was the USS Michigan, also based out of Bangor. “Oh man…” he said. “I know a ton of guys on that boat. I wonder if it was an officer.”

“No way,” said Gurno. “The victim had testicles.”

The watchsection laughed appreciatively.

The story of the lost testicle and the rowing machine was indeed brief, and lacked the horrifying details that they would have to get the minute they returned to land. His eyes drifted toward the next safety message…something about R-118, the new refrigerant they’d taken on in their refit, some new warning about it. His eyebrow raised when he saw that apparently, this variety of Freon could mutate into Phosgene, a kind nerve gas, when exposed to very high temperatures. Thanks for letting us know, Navsea, he thought to himself, after we’re already sealed inside a can with the stuff. He scanned to see the classification of the message, thought it might be interesting to share with his father if he could, the heating and air man. He heard the laughing in the control room stop and looked up to see why. The XO was standing in front of him, a stack of books under his arm.

“Sir.”

“Danny. Anything good on the broadcast?”

“Someone lost a nut on the Michigan.”

“That is good news. Here,” he said, handing over the books. “For your training tomorrow…information about Kilo class submarines. Make it good, lots of pictures so the young ones don’t let their attention wander.”

“Yes sir,” said Jabo. He took the stack of books and the XO wandered over to take a quick look at the chart before leaving control for a few hours of sleep. Jabo wondered if the XO actually expected him to read, digest, and then summarize all those pages in one watch. He checked his watch. He had four hours left on the conn and still needed to read through the broadcast. Well, he thought. Giving training on Kilo submarines was a lot more interesting than analyzing the effects of chlorides on the steam generators, or studying the navy’s latest personnel policies. Because, in addition to the roles of Watch Officer and Division Officer, every junior officer on the Alabama had a third role that was just as mandatory. This fell under the category of, “shit the XO tells you to do.”

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