The Last Engineer

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A gripping story of one man’s final voyage aboard an autonomous cargo ship, where loyalty, memory, and grit collide with a system that no longer needs him. As AI tightens its grip on the maritime world, a seasoned engineer must decide whether to walk away… or leave behind a legacy that can’t be deleted.

ShipUniverse Note

• This post is part of our Wednesday Shiplog Stories series at Ship Universe
• We spotlight the human side of the maritime industry through fiction that is based on real-world scenarios.
• For questions, feedback, or to share your own story, please get in touch with us

---

Marcus Vale sat in the engine room, same as every morning. The monitors blinked quietly, most of them running self-checks he no longer needed to touch. He still went through the motions anyway, habit more than anything else.

He checked pressure readings, logged a coolant temp that hadn’t changed in weeks, and tightened a bolt that didn’t really need it. There wasn’t much left for a human to do on the MV Sentinel. Just him and a ship that mostly ran itself.

He tapped it and saw his wife, Carla, bundled in a sweatshirt with their daughter in the background. “Morning, babe,” Carla said, trying to sound upbeat.

“Morning,” Marcus replied. He smiled, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes.

Their daughter, Ava, waved briefly before disappearing down the hallway. She had her graduation ceremony in two days. He’d be missing it, again.

“Ship still quiet?” Carla asked.

“As quiet as it gets. Feels more like I’m babysitting and the kids are asleep.”

She gave him a sympathetic look. “You’ll be home soon.”

Marcus didn’t say anything.

After they hung up, he sat in silence. The engines purred. The ship didn’t need him, not really. He just didn’t know what he’d be if he wasn’t here.

The video call ended, and the room felt even quieter than before. Marcus leaned back in his chair, letting out a slow breath. The low rumble of the engines vibrated through the floor — constant, dependable. At least that part hadn’t changed.

He tapped his screen, casually swiping through system logs and maintenance schedules, pretending like any of it still mattered. A new alert popped up.

Marcus stared at it. "Varmint," he muttered.

No call. No explanation. Just a polished block of text that finally found its way to him. After thirty years at sea, he was being shut down by the same systems he helped maintain.

The cursor blinked on the screen, waiting for a response. He gave it none. Just closed the tablet and sat there, jaw tight, staring into the hum of a ship that no longer needed him.

Marcus stood up slowly, tablet still in hand.

He needed air. Not the recycled, CO₂-scrubbed kind the ship fed him, but just… space. Silence. Something un-coded.

He walked up the narrow corridor to the observation deck: a quiet glass alcove on the port side. The endless ocean stretched out like brushed steel, dark blue and indifferent. A pale sun hovered near the edge of the sky.

Marcus stared at the horizon. No traffic. No radio chatter. No other souls.

Just him, a ship full of sensors, and a system that had already decided he was extra weight.

A thought crept in.

What if something broke out here? Would anyone even know?

The silence wasn’t comforting anymore. It was hostile.

He turned back toward the core maintenance terminal. The last bit of human instinct itched. He needed to talk to someone. Even if that someone was software.

He sat down and keyed into the bridge AI’s support interface. The response came instantly.

Marcus exhaled through his nose, tight-lipped. The air felt thinner now.

Marcus tapped the screen again, this time out of something closer to grief than habit. He opened an archived personnel manifest from six years back, one of the last voyages before the automation overhaul.

The names brought it all back: late-night repairs, meals in the galley with too much coffee and too little sleep, and the steady rhythm of a ship that relied on people, not just code.

Then, the console lit up again, a call.

Marcus answered.

Leo didn’t waste time.

“So… they finally tossed you overboard too.”

Marcus gave a dry laugh. “Just got the email.”

“I’ll tell you right now — I’ve never seen anyone as dedicated as you, Marcus. Never missed a shift, never cut corners. You kept that damn fleet running while the rest of us were hanging on by duct tape and coffee. They don’t make guys like you anymore. And they sure as hell don’t keep ‘em.”

Leo sounded tired, but angry. The kind of anger that lingers behind the eyes.

“Listen, I’ve got something. A failsafe. I call it Louie the Great. It doesn’t destroy anything, just… slows things down. Reminds the system it’s not as smart as it thinks.”

Marcus raised an eyebrow. “You’re saying you built a virus.”

“I’m saying I built a reminder. You save this ship one more time, and they’ll still hand you your walking papers. Might as well make it count.”

Marcus stared at it, jaw tight.

“No pressure,” Leo added, softer this time. “Thanks for everything Marcus. You made me love my job, man."

The call ended. Silence again. Just Marcus, and a glowing file.

---

Mundane hours passed by slowly. The MV Sentinel had been cutting through the mid-Atlantic under a calm sky when the hum changed.

It was subtle. A shift in vibration, like something out of rhythm under the deck. Marcus felt it before he saw it.

He turned to the diagnostics panel. Coolant pressure in Loop B was dropping fast. Internal routing valves weren’t responding.

Then came the alert, but it wasn’t what he expected.

Marcus’s eyes narrowed.

“Non-critical?” he muttered. “That loop feeds the primary converter. Give it three hours and we’re dead in the water.”

He pinged shore support.

No response. Probably flagged it as low-priority too.

Alarms weren’t blaring. The ship wasn’t panicking — but Marcus was already running.

He tore open a maintenance hatch by hand, bypassed the sealed routing panel, and slipped inside the maintenance crawlspace. Tools rattled at his side. Heat was building.

Inside the secondary compartment, the auto-routing system had stalled out frozen by its own logic tree. A critical valve was jammed. No alarm. Just a quiet lockup.

Marcus grabbed the manual lever, ancient, rust-trimmed, and cranked it. It groaned. Didn’t budge.

He set his jaw, grabbed a steel pipe from the emergency rig, and wedged it. One hard pull. SNAP. The seal gave, just barely.

Pressure surged back to normal.

He moved fast. Bypassed the thermal sensor relay. Jumped two dead relays with a copper loop he cut from the backup board. Restarted the cooling intake using a portable generator the system hadn’t even logged in five years.

A low rumble came back to life. Coolant was flowing.

He wiped his face, soaked in sweat. The ship didn’t thank him.

---

The ship sailed on quietly, systems humming in perfect rhythm — as if nothing had ever gone wrong.

Marcus sat alone in the mess hall. The lights were dimmed, the chairs all empty. His duffel was already packed in his quarters. Just one more night.

He opened the tablet. The file still sat there:
Louie_The_Great.pkg
Untouched. Waiting.

Carla smiled, softly. “You all set for tomorrow?”

Marcus nodded, but didn’t smile back. “Yeah. All set.”

She studied his face. “You okay?”

He looked away. “They don’t even know what happened out here. Nearly lost power mid-Atlantic. I patched it. By hand.”

Her smile faded.

He continued, voice low. “And it doesn’t matter. Finally happened. I’m out. Replaced.”

For a moment, her face sank, but she quickly gathered herself. “You’re not being replaced. You're being... let go.”

He gave a hollow laugh. “There’s a difference?”

She didn’t respond.

Marcus looked down at the tablet. The file was still there. His thumb hovered near the corner of the screen.

Carla smiled faintly. “Did they say anything about severance?”

Marcus shook his head. “Just a line about details on arrival. No numbers.”

She exhaled through her nose. “Do we need to cancel the Ireland trip?”

He looked away for a second. “Maybe. I don’t know. Let’s wait until I get some numbers. I don’t want Ava to know yet, not until I’m home.”

Carla nodded, lips pressed tight. 'She's excited. Keeps saying she wants to see the cliffs with Dad. But you know how she is, she's tough. She can handle it.'"

There was a long pause.

Marcus nodded slowly. “I know.”

They held the silence together, like a small space neither system nor signal could break.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said softly.

“Love you,” she replied.

“Love you more.”

The call faded to black.

Marcus didn’t move. The hum of the ship was steady, indifferent.

Marcus sat there, the glow of the screen still on his face.

He opened the system console. The file stared back at him.

One tap.

Just one.

"Can't do it. Won't do it," he whispered.

---

The next morning the cabin was nearly empty. Marcus zipped the last side pocket of his duffel bag, glancing around once more.

His bunk, stripped. Toolbelt folded. Jacket slung over the chair, the same one he’d worn for the last eighteen years, across five ships.

He gave one last look at the tablet. Louie_The_Great.pkg still sat on the screen, untouched.

He tapped to close the window.

He slid the tablet into his carry case and headed for the hatch.

Just as his hand reached the handle, the device buzzed. A message. Old shipmail protocol — from someone he hadn’t heard from in years.

Marcus took a deep breath and tapped back to the window he thought he’d closed for good.

Marcus didn’t fight the offboarding. He took the path of early retirement, quietly stepping away from a system that no longer saw him. But he didn’t disappear. In the weeks that followed, he spent his mornings reaching out to former crew, people like Roberto and a dozen others who’d been cast aside by automation. He forwarded job leads, made calls to old captains, and helped patch résumés as if he were fixing engines. He may have left the engine room, but he hadn’t stopped keeping others afloat.

---

The sun was just beginning to set over the small harbor town. Seagulls drifted overhead, and the salty wind pushed gently through open shop windows.

Marcus stood outside a bait shop with a coffee in hand, watching the old fishing boats roll in for the night. He paid less attention to his phone these days. Notifications came and went mostly quiet. But when he saw the name Leo flash across with a screenshot, it caught his eye.

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