Undead Underway by Brenna Lyons Page A

always, must be eradicated.
    I paused in mid-rant, staring at his collar. For a moment, an instant in time, I would have sworn that he had lipstick on the white shirt. Then the blue...
    Let me tell you a little something about 'Navy Blue.' It isn't blue, at all. It's black. What sick psychopath named it Navy blue, I will never know, but trust me on this one. There's nothing blue about a Navy uniform, unless you're talking dungarees or poopie suits.
    Anyway, his jacket collar shifted and hid the spot of red from me, and common sense intruded rather quickly. Clueless was a long, tall drink of water with wild, red hair and an oversized nose that not even a Tromso-babe looking for an open wet bar and a US Navy baby would have taken up on a roll in the hay.
    That was saying a lot, considering the fact that the US Navy was banned from Tromso, Norway after the first...and last visit a US Navy submarine had made there. It seems that the government of Norway didn't like the population explosion some nine months later, courtesy of their universal health care system, from young women giving only "some US Navy submariner" as the Daddy's name on the birth certificate.
    It was no great surprise that the MSP had been the only sub to stop there. That was why we were stuck going even further north for a port than we had the last time.
    So, it wasn't lipstick. There was no way it was lipstick. Clueless must have cut himself shaving and managed to make it across the brow without someone noticing it and ruining his chances of down time in port. No one took more than one dress uniform on a cruise, so someone sending him back would have screwed Clueless completely, though the only reason it would have was because the CO was being an asshole and making us wear uniforms ashore in the first place.
    Usually, we wore civvies, but when the Petty Tyrants start up, there is no reasoning with them. When the CO, also known as 'the old man,' though he was only ten years my senior, put that one down, there had nearly been a mutiny right then and there. Even the COB and Senior hadn't been able to talk him down that time. But, liberty was liberty, even when you were freezing your ass off in sub-zero and perpetual night in uniform. It was better than being inside the black tube of death, and no one could argue that logic.
    I may have lost twenty-five bucks to Diamond Dallas, but there I was with a piss-drunk JO who needed correction, on my way to the rack for a few hours down after standing my port and stupid. So, I blasted him properly and sent him to the rack, fully prepared to make sure he was the first one racked out when the start-up came due. I grinned the whole way back to the rack, imagining Clueless hung over on watch...or better yet, suffocated in the puddle of his own puke he'd likely soon be sleeping in.
    I should probably warn you that submariners chuckle over things like that. Our unofficial motto is "Everything is funny until someone dies. Then it's fucking hysterical." That's a code those of us who survive submarines live to religiously. You never know when someone is going to flick your balls or rim a mug just for the laugh.
    Of course, if he's stupid enough to rim it with the coffee in it... Believe it or not, that's a standard nub mistake! Well, if he's that stupid, he learns our second motto: "Stupidity should be painful." In a case like that, the joke's on him, you know?
    Getting Clueless racked out was easier said than done. It took Cat Man and Diamond Dallas combined to get him up. By the time they finagled him out of the rack, looking a little worse for wear, they'd disturbed two other officers, and that is never a pretty sight.
    When Cat Man practically pushed Clueless out of the tunnel and into the engine room, he announced that he'd never seen anyone manage 'the sleep of the dead' on board before. Usually submariners sleep light; even the ventilation fans cutting out will wake them, but not Clueless. Not that night or any night after