In The Beginning

In The Beginning
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The hull of the boat groaned, as if in ecstasy. Around it, the storm raged, lashing the water to a frenzy. Pistons ran feverishly, worked into a frenzy by the twin forces of vacuum pressure and thermobaric explosion. Taken as an individual, each piston was a ramshackle thing, all wartime metallurgy and rushed production. Considered as a whole, all thirty-six cylinders firing in sequence, the engine room was a thing of beauty. The oversized Packards spun the driveshaft at three thousand rotations per minute, tearing through the water with reckless abandon. The torpedo tubes lay lashed to the deck, one of the only immobile objects in the heaving scene. Rain, driving and relentless, splattered off of canvas and steel, the sole running light casting an orange halo over the vicious scene. Off in the distance, a god roared, fourteen inch guns shrieking their fury into the night.

The sailors laughed.

	The only good thing about storms like that was the lightning. Cruisers and battleships popped out of the darkness like a clown on halloween, drunken and staggering. The endless shrieking of the heavens was paired with a very human accompaniment in bass staccato, five inch guns plugging away at distances so short the fuses didn’t have time to arm themselves. Impotent, the shells smashed into rolled steel and homogenous plate alike, the fists of an impatient demon pressed into service by the sins of man. Radar sets screamed at their operators, ghosts and foes alike surrounding each ship at every turn. Each revolution found a new bearing, a new heading. Accuracy became a thing of the past. Gunners loaded, fired, and reloaded. AA batteries were filled to capacity, each fusillade wailing its way through the night before careening off of hardened steel and into the water, searching desperately for a crevice to gouge, a life to end. Breech plugs slam shut, shake, and spring open with ear-shattering speed, the surging heat of a thousand explosions forcing itself deep into the metal. Nobody notices the cook-off. One more explosion in a sea of popping lights, each one heralding a death. The crewman never even feels it, so sudden it comes.

He dies with a snarl on his face.

	The water is worse than the oncoming fire. It’s hungry, swirling and frothing, howling for enough bloodshed to slake its thirst. A waterline hit sees it rushing into the hull, the wounded steel moaning as its killer draws near. Panicked crewmen pound against closed bulkheads, straining their heads for the most meager scrap of air, afraid in a way not even the impact of a shell the size of one’s torso can inspire. Nails become unseated from fingers as they claw the latched pressure-vessels, man pitting himself against the merciless constructs of his own design. Eyes turn bloodshot, thousand yard stares and fatalistic apathy replaced with the certain terror of an animal who knows that he is about to die. If they had time, they would shout until their throats bled, vocal cords flayed by the intensity of their desperation.

They don’t have that long
None of them do.