(http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0yRPk1ZQkdA/TvL6gmwiy3I/AAAAAAAAEpc/L82Klw_iAYg/s1600/RF+Schindler%2527s+List.jpg)<br/><br/><em>Captain Edward Hawkes<br/>Commanding Officer, USS Triton<br/>N13 34 54W31 44 35</em><br/><br/>If there was anything Captain Hawkes loathed more than the indiscipline and a general lack of purpose which characterized the youth of the day, it was administrative interference in his mission. He hated pen pushers as much as he hated the Communists themselves. But The Hawk was not a man given to express his displeasure, unless of course to the most unfortunate ones under his command. And so he restricted his reply to the official communique to<em>'Affirmative'</em>. He couldn't see the slightest sense in the orders which would put all their recon work at halt, by asking them to lay low. Weeks of fuel and manpower would be wasted by restricting their movements.<br/><br/><strong>"Bunch of pussies"</strong>was his concluding remark at the morning briefing to the senior officers. Or, it would have been, had a petty officer not asked for permission to enter. The radio had caught distress messages from a stranded vessel, he informed. A civilian vessel, with two distinct female voices on the radio. The Triton had been closer to the surface that morning to aid radio contact as per schedule, and they were supposed to descend soon. A couple of senior officers voiced their irritation at such an interruption, and another sneered about living to see the day a nuclear sub was reduced to a coast guard boat. But they all snapped their mouths shut as Hawkes got off his chair, cigar in mouth. They let him consider in total silence, and it was a minute before he had made his decision.<br/><br/>Of course, no one dared to debate the merits of his decision. The moment the petty officer left with his orders, those on the table started murmuring about how it would have been unsafe to leave civilians stranded in open water. The meeting had been dismissed by the time the petty officer brought Harden to the captain's office. Hawkes wanted Harden to be the one entrusted with the task. He liked the guy's no-nonsense attitude. A perfect officer to have under one's command, the Hawk thought and smiled after Harden took his leave.<br/><br/>Hawkes knew though that the crew would be puzzled by his decision. Civilians were never supposed to enter a sub, and the yacht had women too, who were a strict no-no underwater. He found himself amused at his crew's confusion. He wasn't worried about explaining his decision to his superiors later. His reputation would lend his decision an air of nobility, when the Navy would look back at these events a few months from now. But he realized he was going to make two very different worlds collide, and that could only lead to chaos. He rubbed out his cigar, and went to the stateroom, where he'd asked Harden to bring the civilians to.