Finding a place on board to hide it had been another matter, and if there were to be an emergency, the occupants of lifeboat eleven in starboard locker five would no doubt wonder what the black object in their life jacket locker was in the milliseconds before John, or one of the hub satellites above, was forced to deal with them. But, that highly unlikely event aside, it would hopefully remain hidden there for as long as it needed to be.

* * *

“So, how is he doing?” asked Captain Bhade of his chief engineering officer, as they motored steadily southwest, two days out from port.

The Welshman shook his head, “Well, sir, I cannot deny the lad has a head on his shoulders. You’d warned me of that, sir, and truer words were never said. But he is a worker as well, that one. First one in, last one out, that’s him. I’ve had to remind him of the engine room time limits more than once.”

Captain Bhade raised an eyebrow. The time limits in the engine room were due to the often dangerous combination of fumes and heat that had to be endured in there. All sailors had to take a turn on deck once an hour. In the first powered warships, it had been every twenty minutes, but then the fires of the old coal engines that they had used back then had made the engine room a giant oven. Longer than twenty minutes and the sailors started, quite literally, to cook.

Now the more efficient and cleaner diesel engines were safer, more efficient, more reliable, vastly more powerful, but the engine room remained a hellhole of fantastic noise, smell, heat and physical vibration. Your whole body shook for ten minutes after leaving it, your ears buzzing as the grease and carbon monoxide ebbed from your pores.

“A worker indeed? Well, we’ll give him a few more months of working down there and see how he likes it then. Thank you, Shadley.” The engineering officer, dismissed with a wave of the captain’s hand, left the room.

The hardy Welsh career navy man had called various ships’ engine rooms home for twenty-two years now, he thought, as he made his way back below the waterline, and was still pleasantly surprised by young Hunt. One thing about Lieutenant Hunt, he never copped the high and mighty with Engineering Officer Shadley, even though, as a warrant officer, he was technically junior to the young lieutenant.

No, John never patronized Bill Shadley, and that made him all right in Bill’s book. Though the engineer would never dream of saying it, that smug prick of a captain could learn a thing or two from young Mr. Hunt.

* * *

A week later, John Hunt sat in his cabin amongst the four empty bunks of his fellow junior officers. He had just come off duty. His eyes were blank, and he was perfectly still, he had locked the door.