Orr sat in his chair and thought about it all. The DSU and DSSP. The DSSD and ONR. ONI and NSF and SPO. AUVs and ROVs. And this while he sat in the comm room of the LSB.

“Fucking alphabet soup,” he said under his breath.

“Sir?” Anderson asked.

“Nothing.”

There were six civilian techs up in the drill tower monitoring the LSB. Three more that ran Kharkov Station itself. So it wasn’t like there was no one around…yet, Orr felt horribly alone. He almost wished they were all down here, feeling what he was feeling. But they were civilians and the Navy didn’t want them involved in what were considered the more classified aspects of the op. So they were kept in the dark like Orr’s nuts. He only saw a bit more light than they did and he almost wished he was in the dark completely. If what the ONI and NSF had told him at the briefing was in fact true, then ignorance would have been bliss. Because he was starting to believe that there were some things you just didn’t want to know about.

“Anderson? Anything from topside?”

The tech shrugged. “Same old, same old, sir. They’re monitoring us while we monitor the Neptune.”

Orr swallowed. “No…ah…no problems up there?”

“Sir?”

“I mean, there’s been no…trouble?”

“I’m not sure what you mean, sir.”

“Anything going on up there? Getting any scuttlebutt?”

“No, sir. Nothing.”

“Good.”

He sat there, feeling like his guts had been tied into sheepshanks and square knots, twisting in on themselves.

He could not shake the feeling that they were not alone here and had not been alone from the moment they arrived at Kharkov. That they were being carefully watched and studied. Sometimes it got so bad, his skin actually crawled. More than once he’d felt those unseen eyes at the nape of his neck so strongly that he’d turned quickly, expecting someone to be there. But there never was, of course. He’d felt that presence up in the station and drill tower, too. But it was stronger down here. Much stronger. And he could just imagine what it might be like down below in that black, weedy lake.

Nerves, it was just goddamn nerves.

You can tell yourself that all you want, but you’ll never believe it, he thought. You can thrust your chest out and say you’ve seen it all. But you haven’t and you know it. What’s going on here nobody has seen. And nobody has because they weren’t meant to. But it’s coming, that ugly moment of cold revelation. And when it arrives and those doors of perception are really thrown open, look out, look out, then Pandora’s scabby box will be wide open.

He re-lit his pipe.