Chapter 8: The Crucible
The Naval Support Activity Bethesda testing facility was an imposing, warehouse-like structure designed to simulate the brutal, unforgiving environment of a warship in crisis. Captain Aris stood on an elevated catwalk, a clipboard in hand, looking down at the testing floor alongside two other medical evaluators.
Elara stood at the starting line wearing standard Navy Working Uniform coveralls, heavy steel-toed boots, and a standard-issue Kevlar helmet. Her heart hammered against her ribs, but her mind was entirely clear.
"Commander Vance," Captain Aris’s voice crackled over the loudspeaker. "This is a continuous, timed evolution. You will simulate navigating a compromised compartment, securing a flooding casualty, and extracting a wounded sailor. You have eight minutes. Begin."
A loud buzzer echoed through the facility.
Elara sprinted forward. The first obstacle was a heavy, steel watertight hatch. It was dogged down tight, simulating the pressure of a flooding compartment. She grabbed the central wheel, planted her boots firmly on the grated deck, and hauled upward with everything she had.
Her shoulders protested violently, a sharp, white-hot flare of pain shooting down her spine. She ignored it, funneling her adrenaline into her arms. The wheel groaned, then spun. She threw the heavy door open and ducked through the narrow frame.
Next came the pipe-patching station. She had to hoist a heavy, awkward Jubilee patch over her head to secure a simulated ruptured overhead pipe. Water—freezing cold and highly pressurized—sprayed directly into her face, blinding her. Her soaked coveralls instantly became ten pounds heavier, dragging against the sensitive skin of her back.
She worked entirely by touch, her fingers flying over the bolts, locking the patch into place just like she had drilled a thousand times on the Aegis. The spray died down to a trickle.
"Three minutes elapsed," a proctor yelled over the ambient noise of the facility.
Elara moved to the final, and most brutal, phase of the test: the casualty extraction. At the far end of the course lay a training dummy weighing exactly one hundred and eighty-five pounds. She had to drag it forty yards, simulating pulling an unconscious sailor to a medical triage station.
She knelt beside the dummy, hooking her arms underneath its armpits, and locked her hands together across its chest.
Stand up, she told herself.
She drove through her heels and stood, taking the full weight of the dummy. The strain on her upper back was immense. Every step was a battle against gravity and her own traumatized nerves. Ten yards. Twenty yards.
Her grip began to slip. The burning in her back morphed into a terrifying numbness. For a split second, her vision narrowed, the warehouse fading away, replaced by the choking black smoke and screaming sirens of the Aegis.
I got my entire crew home.
The words she had spoken at the gala flashed through her mind like a lightning strike. She dug her boots into the rubberized floor. She leaned back, using her core and her legs, dragging the heavy canvas dummy the final ten yards across the red painted finish line.
She collapsed backward, the dummy falling heavily beside her. She lay on the deck, her chest rising and falling in ragged, desperate gasps, staring up at the fluorescent lights on the ceiling.
May you like
From the catwalk above, there was a long, heavy silence. Then, the sound of a pen scratching against paper.
"Time is seven minutes, fourteen seconds," Captain Aris announced, his voice betraying a hint of genuine awe. "Evaluation complete. Commander Vance, you are cleared for sea duty. Welcome back to the fleet."
