At Periscope Depth

Author's Foreword—

This is my sixteenth submission to Literotica and my first in the "Exhibitionist and Voyeur" column. All my short stories are set up for voting and comments; you are invited to leave your words of praise if you like what you read. Feel free to visit my profile to access the archive of my older postings.

Enjoy!

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First Lieutenant Jake Ambrose looked around the conn and yawned. It was 2227 hours and the Seafarer, a United States nuclear submarine, was patrolling somewhere between the southeastern tip of Florida and Cuba. They were monitoring the area for possible surface traffic; word was the Russians were sending warships to Cuba as a way of waving the flag in front of their long-time ally Fidel Castro while simultaneously thumbing their noses—discreetly—at the Americans. The seventy-man crew of Seafarer should have been relieved a couple of weeks ago for provisions and shore leave, but word hadn't yet come down from the brass at the Pentagon. Nerves were getting frayed but they still had a job to do.

Lt. Ambrose went to the sonar operator and looked at the screens over his shoulder. There was nothing to see and nothing to report. He was toying with the idea of calling a drill of some sort to rouse the bored crew and get their blood pumping. The thought crossed his mind to "accidentally" hit the General Quarters button so the klaxon would make everybody jump out of their skins before racing madly to their stations. He sighed to himself and put the thought out of his head; Captain Meschberger would surely have a conniption if he did. Ambrose poured himself yet another cup of hot, strong coffee before wandering over to the helm.

Sometimes, commanding the night shift was a bitch.

The one other officer and the six enlisted men on duty tried not to be obvious as they watched Ambrose out of the corners of their eyes. They knew Ambrose had high career hopes and was itching to distinguish himself somehow. He wanted to command a destroyer or a missile carrier or something, but had volunteered for submarine duty as a way of proving he could handle anything. Boring nights on patrol like this was simply his way of paying his dues in the hopes of one day commanding an aircraft carrier, his ultimate dream posting.

The helmsman, Dave "Cheeky" McDougall, could feel the "First Louie" standing behind him. His breathing stirred the hair atop his head. Cheeky wanted to tell Ambrose to go lock himself in the head and flog his log or something, but for once the petty officer kept his mouth shut. He hoped something would happen to cause Ambrose to go away, stop breathing on him and let him man his post in peace.

"Conn, sonar contact," the sonar operator called. Cheeky smiled to himself as Ambrose crossed to the sonar station to have a look.

"What do you have, Ping?" Ambrose asked.

The sonar operator, Perry "Ping" Zimmerman, looked up. "Surface contact, sir. Four small screws, making eighty turns per minute, overall length about seven hundred feet."

"Cargo freighter, tanker, man o' war? What?"

"The screws are too small and too fast to be a cargo vessel or tanker, sir." Ping shrugged. "Medium-sized man o' war, maybe, but more likely a cruise ship."

"Position?"

"Range twelve thousand yards directly astern, course one-seven-zero degrees, speed fifteen knots," Ping reported. "He'll pass almost directly above us, sir. ETA, twenty-two minutes."

"Will he pass to our port side or starboard?" Ambrose inquired.

"To the starboard. The range will be about forty yards."

That put Seafarer to the east of the contact. If the weather was clear topside, there was a chance their periscope could be silhouetted against the moon if they went up for a look. Ambrose went to look through some charts. The enlisted men breathed a sigh of relief for the contact; the Lieutenant needed something—anything—to keep his mind occupied, instead of breathing down their necks.

The other officer, Ambrose's XO, went to his side. "What are you thinking, Jake?" he asked, too softly for the men to hear.

"I want to go up for a look," replied Ambrose. "Where are the bloody moonrise charts?"

The XO pulled out the proper chart and the men studied it. "We'll have a window of sixteen minutes between the contact's arrival topside and local moonrise," Ambrose noted. He turned to the helmsman. "Helm, I want our course adjusted to parallel the contact at a distance of thirty yards by the time he passes above us."

"Aye, sir," Cheeky called, making some calculations. "Adjusting course two degrees to starboard for three minutes, fifty-four seconds before resuming original heading."

"Very well," Ambrose called.

Seafarer's deck tilted three degrees to the right as the submarine silently turned to get into position. The other men were looking much sharper as they manned their posts, knowing they were preparing to go to periscope depth for a look-see when the contact arrived above them.

Ping kept track of the contact and reported its position every five hundred yards its distance from them decreased. He would switch to calling out distances every fifty yards once the contact arrived to a point five hundred yards astern. Ambrose, the XO and the men waited as the target crept up on their position.

"Conn, sonar. Range, two hundred yards," Ping called.

"Helm, make your speed twelve knots," ordered Ambrose.

"Twelve knots, aye," Cheeky called back. "New ETA, nine minutes."

The men standing duty waited as the contact came toward them at a much slower rate, now that Seafarer had accelerated to just three knots below the target's closing speed. Ambrose intended to accelerate to their speed of fifteen knots once the contact was abaft their starboard beam. Then they would have sixteen minutes to check out the contact before local moonrise would silhouette their periscope, thus giving away their position and presence. Minutes passed.

"Conn, sonar. Range, seventy yards," Ping called. Seafarer was ahead of the target vessel by just her own length now, thirty yards off the sub's starboard side.

"Helm, make your speed fifteen knots and go to periscope depth," Ambrose ordered. By the time the sub attained the new speed, the target ship and their submarine would be directly off each other's amidships. When the periscope broke the surface, it would be 350 feet behind her bow and 350 feet ahead of her stern. This would allow an even scan of her port side with a minimum of the visual effect called "keystoning."

"Fifteen knots, aye," Cheeky called back. "Coming to periscope depth." The deck angle increased to five degrees nose-up as Seafarer made her way toward the surface.

Ambrose waited and ticked off the seconds in his mind. After all the work needed to get into position, he hoped there would be at least something to see.

"Conn, helm. Periscope depth, sir," Cheeky reported.

"Very well. Up periscope."

Ambrose stepped up to the periscope as heavy-gauge motors and hydraulics hummed while the massive column moved upwards. Once in position, he peered through the viewfinder as he swung the periscope around to find the contact.

As Ping had presumed, it was indeed a cruise ship. Against the dark night sky, the well-lit vessel looked like a multi-layer wedding cake bedecked with a hundred of tiny lights and strings of lights. Ambrose could see people strolling on the decks or standing at the rail as they watched the night-blackened ocean. He glanced at his watch—fourteen minutes to local moonrise. He slowly scanned the ship.

"What do you make of her, sir?" the XO asked.

"Cruise ship," Ambrose reported as he continued to visually scan the vessel. "Probably the Atlantic Princess, judging from the logo on her funnel." He was about to say something else when the XO saw a startled expression appear on his face. The scan stopped as Ambrose peered intently through the periscope.

"What is it?" the XO asked nervously.

Another few seconds passed, then Ambrose stepped back. His eyes were wide and his eyebrows were standing at full attention. He wordlessly gestured the XO to have a look, a wolfish grin on his face.

Curious, the XO stepped up and looked through the rangefinder. Ambrose watched as a startled expression appeared on his face. The XO pulled back after a few seconds, grinning like a kid with the world's biggest secret. "You know you gotta share this," he said, very deadpan.

Ambrose nodded. "Fire up the periscope camera and put it up."

The XO went to a console and flipped some switches. The video camera built into the base of the periscope came to life; whatever the `scope was looking at would be displayed on a few selected monitor screens in the control room. He looked up at Ambrose, nodded, and flipped the last switch.

"Have a look, you guys," Ambrose said to the crew as monitors around the control room lit up. Men turned away from their duties of the moment to check out whatever it was the lieutenant had seen. Eyes widened as jaws dropped open. Appreciating catcalls and wolf howls were soon heard after that.

On one of the many private passenger balconies aboard Atlantic Princess, Ambrose had seen a couple, naked as jaybirds and fucking their brains out in the warm night air, visible to the crew of Seafarer in right near-profile. The man was studly and muscled while the woman was sexy-hot beyond belief. The mid-twenties couple was probably on their honeymoon and the lucky bastard of a groom was banging his mouth-watering babe of a bride in the doggie position. Her D-cup breasts swayed quickly with the sureness and urgency of his thrusts and the slight rolling of their ship. The woman held onto the railing for support with her right hand as her left pushed back toward her hubby against the bulkhead separating their balcony from the next one aft. Her eyes were closed, her lips were parted and her head thrown back in obvious sexual need.

Ambrose looked around the men. All were grinning like fools as their hard cocks pushed out the fronts of their uniform pants. The only women aboard Seafarer at the moment were the two-dimensional variety—pictures of wives, daughters or girlfriends, or those pictured in hidden stashes of nudie magazines. "All right, you guys, pipe down!" he yelled over the din. The men got quiet and started paying more attention to their duty stations, though they still darted plenty of looks at the monitors.

Ambrose picked up a telephone handset and pressed a button. An attention tone was heard on the intercom throughout the ship. "This is Lieutenant Ambrose," he said into the handset. "We're running alongside a cruise ship and we've got something interesting in the periscope. Feel free to have a look. On-duty personnel can look as well, but be mindful of your duties of the moment." He paused, looked at the XO and nodded. "Never let it be said that I don't think of the welfare of the men of the Seafarer," he added as other monitors lit up throughout the sub. "That is all." Ambrose doubted anybody heard his last three words as he could hear wolf whistles and many howls of approval coming faintly through the ventilation system from other compartments.

The suddenly very happy crew of Seafarer watched as the studly gent banged his D-cup babe for all he was worth! She pushed her mighty fine ass back toward him with every other thrust. He ran his happy hands over her stern, her waist, fondled her swaying breasts, ran up her neck and ended up going through her hair. Her lips moved as if to speak or plead for something. They watched as his hands gathered her bra strap length hair into a bundle and hold it in one hand. His lips moved as if to speak, but the crew of Seafarer couldn't hear since they were fifty feet underwater. Her lips moved in reply, her head still thrown back as she received the rapid thrusts of her lover. The man shrugged as if to himself—

Then he applied a strong one-handed pull on her bundle of hair.

The pull arched her head back toward the man boffing her beaver from behind. Her angelic face wadded up for a second, then her entire body went tense. Her toes curled like claws as her right hand gripped the railing hard enough to make tendons stand out under her flesh like taut mooring cables.

"Bingo!" shouted at least a dozen men aboard Seafarer.

As they watched, the woman had another rafter-rattling orgasm. The man let her hair go, grabbed her hips with both hands as he intensified the urgency of his thrusts. He looked down at where their bodies intersected and watched as his nearly purple boner made like a piston back and forth in her cylinder of sex. The woman looked over her right shoulder at her thrusting companion just as the man went rigid and poured his liquid soul into the pocket of her body.

"We have a winnah!" crowed Cheeky at the helm.

"Belay that!" the XO snapped.

The officers and crew of Seafarer watched as the obviously spent and satisfied couple reclined on the deck of their balcony and curled up together. The man was behind her, propped up on his elbow as he lovingly nibbled on her ear while the crew admired the fine frontal attributes of her body. No one aboard Seafarer would ever forget the woman's face, her large breasts, hourglass figure, tapered legs and the pubic hair thatch trimmed into the shape of a vertically-oriented rectangle. The couple began to exchange presumably whispered pillow talk.

After a couple of minutes, the man glanced up and seemed to look out of the monitors aboard Seafarer at whoever was looking at him. They watched as he frowned, his eyebrows tightening up against each other, giving him a quizzical expression. His lips silently moved on the sub's monitor screens and the woman opened her eyes and looked back at the men watching her. Then her expression also became quizzical. They sat up sideways as if to get a better view of whatever they were seeing. Ambrose got a bad feeling and checked his watch.

It was four minutes after moonrise! The couple could see their periscope as a black vertical shaft backlit by the moon, now a white disc peeking above the horizon!

"Kill the video feed!" Ambrose snapped. "Down periscope! Helm, quickly make your depth two hundred feet and steer course one-three-zero! Flank speed ahead!" People jumped to obey. The Navy took a dim view of submariners revealing their positions to civilian surface traffic without need—especially if that crew aboard their multi-billion-dollar submarine was engaged in a juvenile prank, like watching a couple fucking like rabbits on the private balcony of their cruise ship! The deck angle of Seafarer came to twenty degrees nose down as Cheeky did a near-crash dive before anybody aboard Atlantic Princess could send word of their position to anybody else.

Aboard Atlantic Princess, the newlywed couple Paul and Lisa Nesbitt watched as the black, backlit-by-the-moon vertical shaft in the water sank silently below the waves. They had nervous gooseflesh on their skin. "Do you suppose that was a submarine's periscope?" Lisa asked her new hubby nervously.

"That's the only thing it could've been," he replied, his hackles standing at attention. "Nothing in nature is shaped like that and it was making little waves at the water level. That indicates it was making headway as it was paralleling the ship."

Lisa shivered nervously as her blue-eyed gaze scanned the deceptively empty ocean. The vastness of the ocean was supposed to be empty and devoid of human life, not a place for hiding within a few dozen feet of unsuspecting honeymooners humping their brains out. "Well," she said, trying to look on the bright side, "I hope they were Americans at least!"

"Some unknown sailor thinking of you as he's polishing his periscope!" Paul quipped.

"Dear!" Lisa laughed, playfully jabbing her new husband in the ribs.

The newlyweds got back to the business of their sexual antics as Seafarer silently got back to the business of keeping the United States of America safe from all enemies.

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Copyright © 2009 by the author, John W. Adams, Jr. All rights reserved.