by Richard Dusk
"So why are you here when you know all of this?" said Garrett. All the things that Vince told him made sense but couldn't change the fact that there is no turning back.
"I've made a deal with one of my sources for a hard to repay service. I'm sick of Rosefield and the others there. If we die, they will just send others to finish the job because you showed them the right way. Just destroy X-RON, and we'll go home, but I won't return to the base."
Garrett silently sat, tension rose inside him. Why would Sarah do this to him? Why would she play with him this way? His eyes flashed with anger, and he punched the table. The desk broke and catapulted his coffee and laptop on the wall, where they smashed. His palm ached, but no relief came to his mind.
"Well played, isn't it?" Vince watched the coffee trickling down.
"Let the lie destroy the life," Garrett looked in disgust at the papers. "It's just... I can't believe it. What does she need another weapon for?"
Vince opened mouth to answer, but quickly approaching steps shut him up.
"What's that racket about?" said Jillian with Lex in the doors.
Garrett looked immediately at the papers and rose one in the air.
"We forgot to add resonance damper to CHED," Garrett pointed at the sketch. He regretted punching the table, as thousands of questions will remain unanswered now.
"Does it matter?" said Jillian.
"No," he shook his head.
"So why you're waking up everybody around?" she said miffed, ignoring the mess Garrett made.
"It would be nice to have one there," he said, hearing Vince chuckle at his transparent lie.
Girls just sighed, rolled their eyes, and went to get some coffee too. Vince waited till they both stood back to them and gestured to Garrett to keep the conversation just between themselves.
"Sure," whispered Garrett.
"Where are we?" Lex passed by them to the same window as Vince before.
"We're leaving the coasts of America," said Vince. "Kaiden really stepped on it now."
"I propose to make a turn and go to the sunny south for a break. I could have a year-long holiday, and it wouldn't be enough. All-day long of careless lazing," Lex daydreamed a little. "Just lying on the sandy beach, swimming in the ocean, and eating fancy food that will Vince serve us," she grinned at him.
"Yeah, as the south is now frozen, you would be only cutting a pool in the ice to sit in it," Jillian picked up sugar grains from steel container on the table. "But I can imagine some long vacation too."
"Where would you go?" said Vince.
"Huh?"
"Country, place, mountains, anything."
"Eh," she began the answer, looking all around the room. "Just by the rivers, ponds, forest," she concluded quickly.
"This sounds boring. You've never been anywhere or what?" said Lex, opening a cracker.
Jillian didn't answer; just shook her head. She circled with a finger on the wet top of the iron mug and didn't look at anybody.
"She was raised in an orphanage," said Garrett.
"Really? Jill, what happened?" said Lex.
Jillian felt that their eyes got stuck on her again but still didn't want to talk with them.
"Jill, we're a team. It's a plus to know about others around you," said Garrett.
She looked at him with pouted lips and lightly nid-nodded.
"Well, okay then," she said indifferently. "If you're expecting a thrilling story, then I have to disappoint you. There's none. But if you insist on hearing it, okay," she sipped the coffee, shivering all over her body. "I didn't live all my life in the orphanage. They called it a foster home, but I didn't see a difference. I was stuck in there since my three years because my father murdered my mom," she said and looked at the tongue-tied company.
All of them had shocked expression on their faces, and she distinguished 'Oh dear' on Lex's silent, moving lips.
"I remember everything about that night, but I really understood only when I got old enough to request the records from the police and hospital. Father had a mental illness, but it took the disease years to fully develop. He had all kinds of seizures, pains, hallucinations, amnesias, and many more symptoms. He underwent more examinations than you can think of till doctors found that part of his brain behaved strangely. They did what they could and prescribed him experimental drugs to make it more bearable for my mom. And they worked. Yes, they did. He was back, able to speak to mom, everything returned to normal. So they had a child - me. He could work every day, did all he wanted, and once I came to this world, he spent with me as much time as we wanted. Just like every other dad in the neighborhood with their kids. He only had to take the pills.
One day he ran out of it but believed that he can buy a package the very next day. After a few years of taking the medication and having no symptoms, people forgot it could return. The whole day no one noticed anything. How could they? He acted the same as every day. But by the evening, the pill effects wore off, and he had probably the strongest hallucination ever. All this time meds effectively suppressed symptoms, which fully struck him at one moment. It was the worst and luckiest day in my life," she said teary-eyed.
Her breath speeded up as she went through it all in her head for the thousandth time. Garrett saw the pressure of her nails sinking into the back of her other hand.
"We had an ordinary evening, my mom ironed the clothes while watching the TV, and I sat on the sofa behind her when father came from upstairs. He stood in the door, watched her for a while. She didn't notice him until he quickly walked towards her. She smiled at him, thinking that he wanted to kiss her. But he grabbed her by the hair, pulled her down on her back and stabbed her furiously in the chest, screaming 'Murderer' from the top of his lungs. Police counted thirteen stab wounds, but I've seen fourteen. One had to strike the same place twice. I remember every single one of them. Their order and where they sunk. Everything," she sniffed.
"Then he turned to me and yelled that I'm her child, unworthy of living, and I will follow her. He swung the knife in his right hand and stabbed me through the jaw. That's why I have this scar and miss all teeth down here," she pointed at her cheek. "As he pulled out the knife, he cut whole my cheek in half. The record of his testimony said he aimed at my ear, but I was too small for a precise hit," she chuckled angrily. "That moment came my uncle in our house. He accidentally stopped by, carrying presents for my birthday the next week because he had to leave that evening. As he saw him rising arm again, he jumped to father and knocked him out with one punch. He called an ambulance, police, and tried to save my mom, but-" she strived to continue as the words stuck in her throat. She took a deep breath to calm herself. "He tried to save her but asked for impossible. She died with the first stab. Several days after that, my uncle had a breakdown, and there left no one to take care of me. He never recovered from the shock and spent his life in an asylum. My father, sentenced for life, killed himself in less than three weeks," she wiped her face into sleeves. "That's it," she shrugged.
A deafening silence spread among disconcerted team pitying her with no comforting words coming to their minds.
"My God," said Lex quietly after a while. "No wonder you don't want to talk about it."
"I'm already over that," she lied." Besides, I'll never have a home where to return, so it doesn't matter."
"Why would you say that?" said Lex.
"I don't believe we'll make it, same as I don't believe that this ship will sail back to New York with us," she looked at Vince defiantly.
Vince, taken by surprise with her words, hesitated with the answer. He didn't want to lie to her and realized that the longer he'll be quiet, the more he agrees with her.
"Jillian, we'll get back. I'll take care of that. There's a chance that we'll have to go on foot because the tank in Deimos was almost empty, and Menhit carried the fuel reserves, but that won't be a problem for us."
"You mean that for real?" said Lex. "You take us two and half thousand miles there and back again and let
us walk hundreds of miles on land," she nodded in appreciation of their mission planning.
"Look, it will be easier," said Vince. "There'll be no storms, no earthquakes, nothing."
"Except that everyone we meet will be willing to kill us," she said ironically.
"We don't know that, and we're not going back to Nest," said Vince. "We'll be heading to the Stonepine base. It's far closer to the port than Nest, and we have enough supplies and firepower. The plan is to drive out of New York to the city line and then walk on our own. We'll have to make some stops, build or find some shelters, but it's nothing we won't be able to manage. Lex, you're a soldier, so deal with it."
"Whatever. Could be worse," she took out her knife and began sharpening the blade.
"Lex, I- Hold on!" exclaimed Vince when the ship hardly bounced on a wave, and Vince's coffee spilled over Garrett's papers.
They heard distinctive buzzing and splashing of water when the ship tugged from side to side. As it sharply veered to the left, the whole ship perilously tilted to starboard, making everything inside move freely. Force pressed Garrett and Vince against the table while they grasped girls' hands on the opposite side to save them from a painful fall. All items in the cabinets thumped on the locked doors. Chairs fell on the ground and tumbled down through the corridor between cabins with rolling cups and streams of spilled liquids. Light substantially weakened as they passed into the shadow of a giant obstacle they closely missed. The ship balanced back, and its speed sharply decreased.
"What- was- that?!" spluttered Jillian, climbing down from the table, picking soaked bits of papers from the gear.
"It's an oil rig," Vince looked out of the window and headed to Kaiden.
"How could he overlook it?" Lex stood at the same window.
Massive, red jacket legs and bracings were noticeable from miles away, not to mention the size of the platform above - six levels high with a helicopter pad on the edge and drilling tower with ash-blackened flare stack above. The ship stopped and swayed on low waves of the open ocean.
"Maybe he fell asleep," Garrett followed Vince to the bridge.
Kaiden sat still on the chair, squeezing helm and throttle joystick.
"What happened?" Vince walked next to a hologram picturing their route.
"I don't know," Kaiden retorted and kicked the wall under the control panel. "There was nothing. I checked the horizon every minute. Empty, nothing but an ocean ahead. So I projected the map to set coordinates for autopilot and recalibrate it. It took me less than thirty seconds, but when I turned back, we headed straight to the solid steel," he shook his head. "We've almost capsized. We would hit it if there appeared another one."
"Hmm, and what do you say about a hundred more behind you?" said Lex standing by the window.
A straight row of uniform oil platforms ran into the distance until the farthest and smallest one blended with the horizon.
"What is that?" said Kaiden taking the binoculars.
"Exact replicas," said Garrett. "Sarah mentioned it back in Nest."
"I've never seen it copied like this," Kaiden examined all the platforms he saw clearly but spotted no difference from the first one. "There's no movement."
"What happened?" said Pace, followed by Hodge. He held gauze over his left eye. "We've seen oil rigs. What is that?"
"Exact replicas," repeated Garrett. "What happened to you?
"Fell off the bed," muttered Pace, and Vince grinned.
"Let me see," said Lex. He moved the gauze and revealed cut skin on his forehead. "You need to stop it. Come," she led him away.
"We should go and check the platforms, there might be something useful," said Hodge.
"What do you expect to find there?" said Kaiden. "We're not going to waste time on that. You two," he pointed at Garrett and Jillian, "go and check the wings for cracks from outside. This ship isn't built for turns like that," he pressed something on the screen. The whole deck began to descend as the wings receded from each other. "The rest will come with me to check the turbine and inside of the wings."
"Right. Come, Jill," said Garrett and led the way.
They didn't talk until Garrett opened the watertight door on the top of the ship and climbed up. Sun hid behind the clouds, and waves of breeze lapped against the oil rig jackets.
"Hey, Garrett. Look, there's more," Jillian pointed behind him at the same oil rigs as appeared ahead of them. The entire continent in the distance was surrounded by these constructions. "That's strange."
"There are more strange things in this world," said Garrett.
"Is it possible?"
"A better question is if it's probable. What are the odds that it will happen when you break laws of energy and probability?"
They walked down from the roof and up to the top of the curved wings and examined the structures for any minor cracks. The calm ocean peacefully swayed the ship, and the breeze brought cold air on their skin.
"Are we done?" shouted Garrett, standing by the door through which they came.
"Uh-huh," she walked up to him.
When she grabbed the handle to open it, she stopped and didn't move.
"What are you doing?" said Garrett. "Is it your back?"
"Shush. Listen. That noise."
Garrett heard something, but it didn't resemble anything he knew. A dull, very low-frequency sound of something enormous coming rapidly towards them. He turned around, searching for the source, and then he spotted it.
"This can't be happening," Garrett sounded terrified.
A cobalt blue wave, coming at them like a solid wall as broad as the line of rigs running alongside the shore, will be there with them in the very next minutes. He grabbed Jillian by the arm and pushed her to enter the ship. "Come. We've got to go," he forced her.
"Calm down, it's not that high," she said, standing one foot on the ladder.
"Is it not? It's seven hundred feet high. Go."
Chapter 21 A Minute To Remember
Rushing together through the corridor, Garrett pulled down a lever at the doors. The noise of the blaring alarm carried through the ship. Red beacons on the walls rotated, and orange arrowheads on the floor flashed all the way to the emergency exit in the middle of the cargo area. That short moment of running to the bridge seemed like a never-ending race with time against everything telling him to leave the place and save his life. While the fear of forthcoming moments climbed up his back, he heard muffled stamping of the crew beneath his feet.
"What's going on?" heard Garrett Kaiden's voice from the stairs when he stormed to the bridge with Jillian.
Lex and Hodge, with the wound on his forehead coated with transparent gel, already waited for them. By the looks on their faces, they saw the impending crisis.
"We've got a problem," Garrett gasped for breath. "A huge one. There's seven, maybe eight hundred feet high wave coming right here at us."
"Bollocks, you can't be serious," Kaiden frowned and followed by others walked to the window. "For goodness sake," he whispered.
"Am I not?" said Garrett.
"We'll outrun it," Kaiden decisively grabbed the helm.
"We can't run away. Look at it. It's wide as the whole coastline and moving too fast. It'll be here in less than ten minutes," said Garrett.
"We've got to go over it," said Hodge. "If we stay in front, the wave will throw us on the bracings. If we stay behind, we will end up buried somewhere on the shore."
"No, we would overbalance just under the top. The ship's body sails with center too high," said Garrett.
"What do you want me to do then?" said Kaiden, clueless for the first time since they left Nest.
"I don't know," said Garrett desperately. "This ship's too big for anything."
"Sit down until we find out something. For now, we're going to gain some speed," he started the turbine.
They buckled at seats, nervously staring at the growing wave in the distance.
"Do you think we'll make it?" Lex grabbed Vince's hand.
The deck rose up, and the ship moved forward between the rigs and nearing wave. Garrett, watching the power of nature grow in strength, counted down their last minutes.
Over or through. But how?
'You can't do it. You're worthless as always,' mocked him the voice in his head.
"Did you find cracks on the wings?" said Pace just to distract himself with something.
"No, nothing. They are perfectly fine. You?" said Jillian.
"The turbine is okay, but the joints that lower the deck will need a thorough check-up. I spotted several minor cracks."
Garrett's eyes widened as Pace gave him a seed that immediately grew into the vivid picture in his mind.
"You are genius, Pace," he said eagerly. "Kaiden!"
"Thanks, but-" said Pace confused, but Garrett waited for no response.
"Can you lower the deck at full speed?" said Garrett.
Kaiden wrote something on the keyboard, but red flashing words Operation Unavailable appeared on the screen.
"The program won't allow me. Why do you want it?"
"Damn," said Garrett displeased. He couldn't believe that a simple program will be a cause of their defeat. "If we could lower the deck just above the surface, the wings would spread, giving us better stability, and maybe we could go over it. Also, we'll have to shed all unnecessary cargo to reduce the load. We will drive straight up the wave and direct the jet, which helps us to control the heave and slow down at the top if we'll be going too fast."
"You can't do this at full speed. The system forbids it according to safety rules. Those people who programmed it knew what they were doing," said Kaiden, and Vince unbuckled himself and walked to them.
"Believe me, I also considered my calculations flawless until it showed otherwise," said Garrett, thinking of the hole he made when tested CHED in the lab. "It's our only chance. The longer we talk, the closer it gets."
"Override to the manual, and I'll reprogram the values. It can't be that hard," said Vince. He took the keyboard and began writing, but the words disappeared immediately. "I need a password," he said to Kaiden, who hesitated about the rationality of the action.