6.

Devon Smith scraped gravy and potato crud off the last of the plates, took the water-blaster and scoured the stacks, covering the splashback with pieces of the same crapola before turning the high-pressure hose on the splashback too.

Devon watched the water drain into the massive sink. He took up the handle on the brushed steel dishwasher and lifted, stepped away. The greasy steam that enveloped him smelt of bacon fat, stale eggs and rotten cabbage from where the drain filter was clogged. After he replaced the plates and cutlery in their trolleys, loaded and removed the next wash, he’d have to empty the drain – his least favourite job. He was supposed to empty it after every meal service, but the smell was so foul that it made him gag as he reached his fingers inside the filter and scraped it out. Instead, he changed the filter every couple of days, and never the day before his rostered holiday, which was Monday. It was a small act of defiance, pathetic really, but that was what it’d come to.

The other Kitchen Patrol crewmen were on shore leave, along with three thousand other ranks, the officers staggering the release of personnel into the port. That left two thousand ranks on board – essential staff mainly – the guns manned and the divers still patrolling the vast hull beneath the waterline every few hours in case of a terrorist attack. All of the pilots were on shore leave, as were the pointers and strikers – the staff who made landing and taking off on a moving platform possible.

Devon Smith had joined the US Navy hoping to be one such specialised crewman, but after his ninety days of TAD, or temporary assigned duty in the galley, he hadn’t been assigned elsewhere, like all the others from his cohort. He’d wanted to try out as a gunner but after another ninety days he had the same result – kept back in the galley. Even on Kitchen Patrol he’d failed to impress the team of cooks and their supervisors, who’d banned him from knife and grill work, claiming that he didn’t have the temperament to contribute to a team environment. Devon Smith had finally found his level working as a permanently assigned dishwasher in the scullery, something he hadn’t told his dad or anyone else back in San Diego. New midshipmen and women came and went, doing their ninety days of shit work before being transferred to more important duties, but Smith was stuck where he was. It took him the full six months to figure out that his nickname in the scullery, one-dee-ten-tee, wasn’t some nigger word but was instead navy slang for idiot.

That was about to change. With plenty of the KP on shore leave, wandering around in their summer whites pretending they were real sailors, lying through their teeth as they angled for a thirteen-button salute with a local girl, Smith had been reassigned back into the galley to help prepare a special meal service for the officers on shore. Until now Devon didn’t know how he was going to get his contraband off ship, but he considered himself smarter than they gave him credit for. It was almost like the amount of shit he’d received was part of a higher plan, designed to get him to this position. He did know one phrase of navy slang, however, reinforced by repeating it over and over, and was something that he was looking forward to saying.

Alpha Mike Foxtrot.

Adios, motherfuckers.