Captain Rodriguez took another solemn step toward the impromptu altar, aglow with emergency candles beneath the periscope. With a firm grip, he pulled Chief Engineer Henschel close enough for a whisper. "Anything?"

"Nothing," she whispered. "Everything checks out functional, just... nothing's functioning."

With a disgusted sigh through his teeth, Rodriguez completed the walk to the altar. Lieutenant Neilly met him there with a knife. "She says you don't have to believe it, Captain," she said. "Just do it."

The trouble, as he sank to his knees in full dress uniform, was that he did believe it. He always had. And he'd buried that belief deep. His mentors and peers would have teased him—which was tolerable—and sidelined him—which was not.

He'd buried it so deep that he couldn't admit it, even now that it seemed true. But, for his crew, he would pretend to believe it and ignore the whispered "told you so" in his head. Rodriguez cut his palm and made a bloody handprint on the altar. "Our shield against the ocean's crush, chariot through the waves, sword piercing our foes... USS Cheyenne, we pray to you."

To his deep resentment and tiny, hidden joy, the engines came back on.