Chapter 10
I waited by the piping outside the log locker and listened to the ship breathe. Overcast light lay flat on the gray deck and made everything look washed out. The rail, the dome, the rows of pipes sweating condensation. My uniform was dry now but still smelled faintly like seawater.
The bosun came down the passageway with his hands in his pockets. He didn't look at the dome.
"You asked for the hull log," he said.
I nodded. My mouth was dry. "The maintenance log. For work near the waterline."
He studied me for a second, slow eye movement, then unlocked the locker. Inside were three binders, plastic covers scuffed, labels handwritten. HULL MAINTENANCE - DECK & WATERLINE. The chief engineer stood behind a small metal desk, already watching me.
"I was told not to hand these over without the lieutenant's approval," he said. His voice was even. He tapped the top binder. "But you're the one who went in the water. So you get five minutes."
I pulled the first binder out. The pages were damp at the edges. Daily entries, initialed, times, checks for corrosion, paint, anode replacement. Standard entries all the way through last week. Then two days before the incident, a gap.
I flipped back. Compared dates.
"There should be an entry for the rope," I said quietly.
The chief engineer didn't answer. The bosun shifted his weight against the pipes.
I found it on the next page, squeezed in at the bottom in different ink. Rigged vertical line port side amidships for dome seal inspection. Temporary. No work order number. No safety tag number. No second signature.
"Who signed this?" I asked.
The chief engineer leaned forward and looked. "That's Chief Tate's handwriting. He was supervising."
Tate. The antagonist. He'd been at the upper railing that morning, the figure looking over the side. Now his name was on the unsanctioned line.
"This isn't sanctioned work," I said. My voice caught. I swallowed and tried again. "No work order. No harness log. No buddy check."
"Correct," the chief engineer said. He said it flat, like he'd been waiting for someone to say it out loud. "He had us hang that rope without a proper stage or a security watch. Said it would take twenty minutes. Dome seal's been weeping, and he didn't want to log it before inspection in port. Didn't want a flag."
The bosun exhaled slowly. "Thick twisted rope like that. Not rated for personnel. Just an old mooring line. He had Jenkins go over the side on it yesterday to look at the seal."
I felt my hands tighten on the binder. The rope's coarse texture was still vivid in my palms, underwater, cold.
"That's why I was at the rail," I said. My breathing had gone shallow and I made myself slow it. "I saw Jenkins on the rope. No harness. No spotter below. I went to the dome housing to tell someone to stop it."
The chief engineer closed his eyes for a second. "You were trying to report it."
"I was standing at the rail looking down when he saw me," I said. The memory came back moment by moment — the gray hull, the rope vibrating against the steel, Jenkins' boots slipping, my mouth opening. "He shouted. Then I was in the water."
Neither of them asked me how I went in. The silence in that little locker was heavier than the pipes humming.
The hatch behind us opened. Air moved. Tate stepped in, and the light changed. He was still in his dark navy uniform, collar insignia bright, chest pin catching the flat daylight. At his peak, shoulders squared, every inch the supervisor.
"What's going on here?" he said. He looked at the binder in my hands.
The bosun straightened. The chief engineer didn't move.
"She requested the log," the chief engineer said. Quiet, but not evasive. "Just one sentence. One evasion."
Tate smiled, small and controlled. "We already documented that morning. She was confused. She was trying to escape her watch, slipped near the rail. That rope was there for emergency recovery. You know how junior sailors get disoriented."
That was the lie, again, smooth. The escape narrative he'd offered the second I came out of the water, to cover the shortcut that was his call, his liability. If I'd been trying to escape, no one would look at the rope. No one would ask why an unrated line hung beside the dome where a man had been working without fall protection.
I didn't argue. I just held the binder open to the squeezed-in line with no number. My hand wasn't shaking anymore.
Tate's eyes dropped to it. For half a second his micro-expression broke — a tightening at the corner of his mouth, a quick look at the chief engineer.
"That entry is incomplete," he said. "I'll have it corrected and signed properly. Give me the binder."
I didn't hand it over. The chief engineer reached out and gently pulled the binder from me and set it back in the locker. He didn't give it to Tate either. He closed the plastic cover.
"Needs to stay as written until the captain reviews it," he said.
May you like
Tate stared at him. The bosun looked down at the deck. I stood between the pipes, damp uniform clinging to my back, and understood completely now why the escape story had to hold. If I was the problem, he wasn't.
Tate turned without another word and went back out onto the deck, hatch clanging. I stayed a moment longer, breathing in the smell of oil and paper, before the bosun locked the locker again.
