Pluto by Dawn Witzke & Richard Paolinelli

Author:Dawn Witzke & Richard Paolinelli [Witzke, Dawn & Paolinelli, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781733510394
Publisher: Tuscany Bay Books
Published: 2019-12-04T22:00:00+00:00

By our hands,

Pluto.

Neptune.

“Gotta be something big, Skipper,” the OOD said, reading our orders over my shoulder.

“Yeah. Weapons tests. Those things sucked when we were alive,” I said, handing the XO our orders.

“Of all the inventions he and Neptune have scavenged through the years, you know, I really wish he hadn’t found those damn Windows computers,” the XO said, reading the note.

The rest of the packet was instructions. How we were to get there from here, if we so chose.

“OOD, plot and execute a course for the Straits of Gibraltar. Speed twenty knots.”

“Aye, sir. Do you want to review my plot?”

“Negative, you can do it,” I replied. “XO, let’s go talk to the blacksmith, shall we?”

“After you, sir,” the XO replied.

I stopped and knocked on the cabin door.

“Enter,” wafted weakly through the panel.

“You know, I never thought I’d meet anyone who got seasick on a submarine, let alone a god,” the XO said before I opened the door.

“Yes, I get seasick,” Vulcan said, from where he was resting on my bunk. “It was one of the reasons I didn’t want to leave England when I was there in the eighteenth century.”

He sat up. For a god, Vulcan looked average. Five eight or so, sandy brown hair and build, brown eyes. He looked like Telly Savalas with hair and a beard. For that matter, you could probably trim the beard and hair to Navy Regs and he’d fit in the crew, no one the wiser. He was wearing a suit of silver coveralls – they looked like the Navy issue blue coveralls that the XO and I were wearing spun from silver. There are some advantages to being a god of smiths, after all.

“I take it we’re at cruising depth?” he said after a few deep breaths to settle his stomach.

“Yes sir,” I replied. I’d always taken the tack that the ‘gods’ were simply officers. High ranking, somewhat immortal officers, but officers all the same.

“Good. My stomach seems to be settling. I’ve made some improvements to the torpedoes you normally carry,” he said.

They’d been copying the old torpedoes for years. Neptune had even arraigned for some more modern weapons to roll off decks during storms so the artificers had the most recent explosives and motors to work from. They still couldn’t copy the wire controls of the latest Mk 48’s, but that was more because we didn’t have a sub with a computer that could control those torpedoes than anything else. The only time the entire US Navy contingent had threatened to go back beyond the Styx and never sail again was when Neptune had suggested sinking a 688 boat in a storm for the gear. We had our suspicions about a couple of recent accidents involving 688 boats, so far he’d kept the Pact, officially, and so had we.

“Improved how?” XO asked. He’d been a chemistry major at Annapolis. He still kept up with the latest things on the internet, when we were in port.

“I was at home in Tuscany, when

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