The Command Read Online Free

other women in the engineering department. Ina said in a cute English accent she’d heardthere were only about twenty women and three hundred men on the ship they were assigned to. Lourdes was a fireman, too. She was Mexican, and Cobie got the impression she didn’t understand the other girls when they talked fast or used slang.
    As the bus got closer, she saw the ships past a field of tall iron tanks. Like big gray buildings, with the sun flashing off their windows. The water, green and rippling in the sun. They pulled onto the pier, and Ina pointed out a canvas sign along the gangplank: USS THOMAS W. HORN. VALIANT MEN. She looked at it twice, then realized it must be the ship’s motto.
    The heavy girl, Patryce, said, “Think they named the ship after the guys?”
    â€œWhat do you mean?”
    â€œThree hundred horny guys. Well, I get just as horny as they do. So horny
Horn,
look out. Here we come. Hell bitches in heat.”
    Cobie limped her seabag up the ramp into a blizzard of faces. The girls were shunted here and there, but none of the guys looked at them. In the passageways they twisted to slide by, like just touching them would infect them with something. Then Control, a big room with panels of gauges she recognized from the Hot Plant at Great Lakes. A chief told them this was home now, if they had a problem to come to him first.
    Deeper still, down and aft. To aft female berthing, 3-382-3-L. A huge fan coil unit roared just inside the door. Past that were many narrow metal bunks with blue curtains, stacked three high. Close-smelling, hot, with gray terrazzo decks and fluorescent lights hanging on springs. At one end an escape trunk led up. At the other, a head with two urinals, one toilet, and two sinks smelled like a truck-stop restroom. A sawed-off shell casing painted red, and a sign, TAMPONS HERE NOT IN THE SHITTER. YOU CLOG IT YOU CLEAN IT .
    Her own personal space turned out to be a top bunk with a bleed air line as big around as her chest suspended four inches above her face. A motor droned on the other side of the bulkhead, and an emergency breathing pack was mounted where her feet would go. A high school-type locker smelled like something had died in it. At the bottom lay a withered pack of Trojans.
    She suddenly felt trapped. Scared. The ship smelled like oil and paint and a heavy funk underneath, like some guy who sweated hard and didn’t shower enough. Guys were real territorial. She knew that from when she’d decided to clean out Toby’s Mustang. The berthing space felt safe. But outside of that she didn’t see any other girls, justone woman in khakis she’d glimpsed down a passageway. That reassured her a little, the woman officer.
    She ended up many decks below the last light of day or breath of air, down metal ladders and bangy gratings. In front of five hostile-looking jerks in scuffed boots and blue coveralls, sitting around in front of a worn console in main engine room number one, Main One. A tall stubble-chinned guy with hollow cheeks, a crew cut, and sweat circles under his arms stuck out his hand. He had dark eyes and looked at her out of the sides of them, no hint of a smile. “Petty Officer First Class Helm. You’ll be workin’ for me.”
    â€œCobie Kasson.”
    â€œWhere you from, Cobie?”
    â€œLouisiana.”
    â€œYeah? Whereabouts?”
    â€œLafayette.”
    â€œKasson, that a Cajun name? You like that zydeco stuff?”
    â€œIt’s my mom’s name. She’s from Idaho. She raised me after my daddy left.”
    â€œLemme guess. Straight out of boot camp, A school, Hot Plant, four-year obligation, that right?” She nodded. “How’d you do in school?”
    â€œEighty-two.”
    â€œThat’s not too good, is it?”
    â€œI was UA for eighteen days.”
    UA was unauthorized absence, AWOL, going over the hill. The other guys looked up from polishing their boots, reading their