Jake handed his helmet to Raines and motioned for Jessie to follow him to the dive locker. When she walked in behind him, her eyes were already filled with tears. She came to him and wrapped her arms around his metal suit. “He’s gone, isn’t he? He’s dead.”
He put his arms around her and patted her head. “I’m so sorry, Jessie. There was an accident with the fins, and then one of those creatures came. It happened so fast. There was nothing...nothing any of us could do.”
She cried for several long minutes, and he just stood there, holding her. He remembered his aunt doing that for him when he was told that his parents wouldn’t be coming back from their trip across the colony’s border. Maybe we aren’t meant to be out here, he thought to himself, but then quickly changed his mind. That line of thought only led to defeat, and he refused to give up.
Finally, Jessie looked up at him. “I need you to get us out of here, Captain. We all need your plan to work. If we don’t get moving soon, I think we will all end up like Ash.” The mention of his name brought tears to her eyes again, and she buried her head in his chest. When he tried to hug her, she howled in pain. “Please take that suit off. We need you on the bridge, Sir.” Without another word, she wiped her face and then turned and left the room.
Raines and AJ entered a few minutes later. They quietly helped each other out of their hardsuits and rehung them on the wall. The empty spot where Ash’s suit would have been stored looked strange. More than just vacant, it was difficult to look at.
All three of them headed up the stairs without speaking, and when Jake stepped onto the bridge, the entire crew was there, even Dr. Wood and Jane. He looked at Jessie. “I understand if you want to have some sort of eulogy for Ash...”
“Actually,” Jessie said, “I think that we all just want to get out of here.” Jake was suddenly aware that if his ship couldn’t be made to work as a glider, if his plan failed, it would mean more than being forced to come up with another idea. It would mean that Ash’s death had been for nothing.
“I understand,” he said, and then remembering her earlier words, he addressed the whole crew. “It’s time for us to get moving. Everyone to your stations.”
Raines stood at his engineering console and addressed the rest of the crew. “This is important, everyone, so I need your full attention. Since we don’t have nearly enough energy to run everything on the ship at once, we have to make absolutely sure that we don’t overload the system. Therefore, only one bridge console can be operated at a time from now on, and even then, you’ve got less than 15 seconds power each.”
“In other words,” AJ said as she moved forward and sat down in Ash’s chair, “when you get a command to do something, you power up, do what you need, and then power back down as fast as you can.”
“What happens if we accidentally overload the system?” Vee asked.
Raines frowned. “We lose everything. Power, heat, air.”
“We’re that bad off?” Jessie asked from her acoustics chair.
“We’re that bad off,” AJ assured her. She looked at Jake. “Guess we are as ready as we’re going to be, Captain.”
Without hesitation, Jake walked forward to the command station and then turned to face his crew. “Engineering, blow all ballast tanks. Take us up.” Raines powered up his station and pressed a few buttons. The bridge swayed as the Wave began to ascend through the water column. When he powered down his station, Jake turned to Vee at Helm. “Bow up twenty degrees, or as much as you can coax out of her.”
Vee nodded as she powered up her console. “Moving battery sleds aft.” Jake leaned towards the bow as the deck began to slope to the stern. A few seconds later, she turned her console off. “Batteries are locked in the full aft position. Showing a pitch of eighteen degrees.”
“It’s going to be quite difficult walking like this,” Dr. Wood said from the stairwell. Both he and Jane were standing back there, holding on to the rails.
“Get used to it,” Raines said. “We’re either going to be sloping forward or aft for the remainder of the trip.”
“Whatever gets me home,” Wood said as he cautiously descended the stairs.
When he was gone, Jake looked at AJ and whispered, “You seriously haven’t told him yet?” She just raised an eyebrow. He shook his head then asked, “Can you tell yet if we have any forward velocity?”
AJ powered up the navigation console and watched the display. “I can’t believe it. We’re moving. Not fast, but we are moving.”
“How fast is not fast?” Raines asked.
“Speed over ground reads one point three meters per second, which is just under five kilometers per hour.” She powered her station back down then looked up at Jake. “Not bad, Captain. That’s nearly half of what we were doing with thrusters.”
Jake looked back at Jessie. “You better start pinging vertically now. Let us know when we are within one hundred meters of the surface.”
“A hundred meters?” Vee gasped. “No one, and I mean no one, has ever been that close. Ever.”
“What if we accidentally hit it?” Jessie asked.
“I don’t plan to hit the surface ice,” Jake said, “which is why I’m having you watch it with your ears. I want to get as close as I can before we flood ballast tanks and start back down.”
“But what if we do hit it?” she asked again. “What if we crack the surface?”
Raines sighed. “Are you afraid that we will all be sucked out into the void?”
Jessie nodded her head. “That’s exactly what I’m afraid of. Every school kid knows the Law of Pressure. For every ten meters you climb, the pressure drops one atmosphere. At some point, just beyond the surface ice, the pressure has to reach zero. As in a vacuum. As in the void.”
“That’s why we have a solid ice surface at the top of the ocean,” Vee agreed. “It separates us from the void.”
“So, you believe the ‘Ice Ball’ theory of our world?” Raines asked. “That our world is a big ball of water, with an icy outer crust.”
Vee tilted her head. “Doesn’t everybody?”
Raines sat back. “Well, I for one—”
“Bilge!” Jessie screamed. “I wasn’t watching. Sixty meters and closing fast!”
It took a second for Jake to realize what she was talking about. “Power down, quick!” he yelled then looked at Raines. “Fill the tanks as soon as you can. As fast as you can.”
As they quickly followed his orders, Jake turned and looked out the forward viewport. He dropped low to try to look up, but without the low-light filters, it was completely black out there. However, as his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he thought he saw a faint light from above.
“Tanks are filling, and we’re slowing,” Raines called out. “Vee, get ready to drop our bow when we start our descent.”
“Hold on,” Jake said without taking his eyes from the viewport. “Hold at this depth.”
“Holding!” Raines said.
“What’s wrong, Captain?” AJ asked.
“Nothing’s wrong,” Jake replied, “but you all need to come see this.” Out of the forward viewport, a glowing sheet of ice stretched out above them in all directions.
“Is that the surface?” Vee asked.
“Why is it glowing?” Jessie asked. “What’s making it glow?”
Raines stood beside Jake, his eyes wide. “This is a profound discovery,” he whispered. “We need to study this, record this, or at least make notes of what we are witnessing first hand.”
“That’s where I’m from,” Jane’s small voice said from the back of the room. Jake looked back and saw her compressed into a fetal position by the stairwell.
He walked back to her and kneeled beside her. “Don’t be afraid,” he whispered. “You’re just confused. We found you in a jungle dome, remember?”
She seemed to look through him. “Before that. Before I was born.”
He gently took her by the shoulders. “You’re not making sense, Jane.”
H
er eyes suddenly focused on him. “That’s where they’ll come from too.”
He shook his head. “I don’t understand. Who?”
“Three...two...one,” she counted down. “One,” she repeated then reached out and held Jake by the face. “The one.”
“I’ll take her downstairs to her quarters,” Jessie offered. “She sometimes says crazy things when she gets tired. I think she’s just a little overwhelmed by all of this.”
“I think we all are,” Jake said as he stood up. As the two headed down the stairs, he said, “Have Wood check in on her. I need you back up here.” Jessie nodded and then headed down with Jane.
“So, what’s your theory on this?” Vee was asking her grandfather as Jake returned to the bow.
Raines shook his head. “I’m afraid that I don’t have one yet, dear. This phenomenon is...unprecedented.”
“Second only to making first contact with the isopods, right?” she replied. She looked back at Jake as he approached. “How does it feel to make two monumental discoveries during one trip, Captain?”
Jake looked back out of the viewport. “To be honest, I’m not all that excited. Maybe if we weren’t all alone out here and on the verge of certain death, I’d be celebrating more.”
“Wow,” Vee said as she turned away from the side viewport and sat down at the navigation station. “You really know how to kill a moment, Captain.” As she said those words, he suddenly flashed back to his talk with Jane a few days earlier and then with AJ in his quarters right before the crash. Vee was right, he realized. He did have a knack for killing moments.
“All right, people,” he said, “let’s prepare for descent. Same drill as before, only this time we will be going down.” He looked at Raines and Vee and said, “We’ll be visiting the surface every few hours from this point on. I think you’ll have plenty of opportunities to study it later.”
Before Raines could respond, Jessie came up the stairs. “Jane is in her quarters, and I asked Wood to check in on her. I think she’ll be fine.”
Jake nodded then addressed the crew. “Okay, now that we know this works, let’s see if we can turn it into a routine that we can handle without all of us being up here at once. We’ve still got a long trip ahead of us, and we will need to start our shifts again.”
“I’ll keep track of our forward velocity and try to figure out the best ascent and descent rates,” Vee said. “We might be able to stretch it out to two hour glides.”
“Good idea,” AJ said. “The fewer times we have to blow or fill ballast tanks, the better. Plus, if we can stretch out the gliding portions, we should be able to get by with one or two people on the bridge at a time.”
Jake smiled to himself, realizing how lucky he was to have a crew like this. Even Coal himself would have approved.
Six days later, Jake was no longer optimistic. It was the twenty-first day of their long journey and the ship was running dangerously low on oxygen. The scrubbers were still working, removing carbon dioxide from the air, but human bodies used up oxygen, and they were running out. Without enough energy to pull oxygen from the seawater, they had no other option than to keep moving forward, hoping to reach their goal before their on board supply ran out.
Wood, who had previously been more hindrance than help during their three-week journey, had risen to the occasion when asked for solutions to their predicament. His suggestion was a drastic one; to place the entire crew in medically induced comas, to lower their metabolic rates to minimum levels in order to conserve air. The idea was radical and dangerous, but they were desperate, and it was the only solution that made sense. However, not everyone on the ship agreed.
“Are we meeting in secret again?” Jake asked as he entered the cargo bay and saw AJ standing near the walker.
“You haven’t answered my question yet,” she replied, sounding out of breath.
“What question?” he asked, but then coughed from the effort.
AJ looked a mess. Her hair, usually worn in a tight Shipper-style ponytail, was hanging down around her face. “Are you kidding me?” she wheezed. “I don’t have the energy to repeat myself.” She bent over and tried to catch her breath then stood and faced him. “I agree with Dr. Wood’s plan, but I think I need to stay awake with you. One more set of lungs can’t make a difference.”
“The doctor thinks we need everybody asleep in order for this to work.”
“Everyone but you,” she corrected.
“Yes,” he replied. “Someone has to steer the ship, keep us moving forward, monitor communications, and look for our new home.”
“You can’t do it alone,” she pleaded, her voice sounding uncharacteristically childlike. “You need me.”
He walked over and put his arms around her. It wasn’t something a captain would normally do, but this wasn’t a normal time, and this was AJ. “What I need is the air you are sucking up right now,” he said, patting her back. “Everyone except you and Wood are already asleep, and he’s waiting for you in your quarters.”
She stepped away and stiffly saluted him. “Sir. Yes, Sir. Reporting to my quarters, Sir.”
She turned to leave, and he was about to stop her, but then he let her walk out of the room without a word. Nothing he could say would make it any better. If things were reversed, if she was the captain and he was her first mate, he would insist on staying awake as well. On top of that, AJ was a fighter, and she would rather face death wide awake than die unaware in her sleep.
By the time he left the cargo bay and returned to the staging area, Dr. Wood was just coming down the stairs from B-deck. “Is it done?” Jake asked.
Wood nodded. “Now if you will assist me, I will join them.”
Jake followed him back to his own quarters in the rear, right next to Jane’s room. She had been the first to volunteer for the procedure, which involved attaching a number of dermal medical patches to her arms and then lying back on her bed. He was sure she would have had something to say before the drugs took her away from him, some final thought, or perhaps one of her riddles to perplex him in the days to follow, but she didn’t. She just looked at him, smiled, and then closed her eyes.
The others hadn’t gone to sleep quite so peacefully, but he had insisted in being there for each one. All except for AJ. If she had any last words before shutting her eyes, Wood wasn’t telling.
“I just want you to know,” Jake said as Wood began applying the patches to his own arms, “that I appreciate what you have done for my crew. The crew that I consider you a part of, by the way.”
“Please, Captain,” he said. “I have no belief that this effort will help us in any way. I don’t believe there is some sort of lost colony out here, and I’m quite certain that I will never wake from this coma.”
“Then why?”
“Simple. While I still carry a certain amount of animosity towards you personally for bringing me out here, I hold no ill will toward your crew. They have treated me quite fairly in the past three weeks, and I felt I owed them something in return. From what I know of the human body, death by hypoxia, or lack of oxygen to the brain, is rather unpleasant. In a comatose state, the crew and I will feel nothing when our hearts stop beating. What better gift could I offer them than a painless death?”
Jake shook his head then flipped the switch that activated the patches. “You also gave them hope,” he said. “And like it or not, you gave us all a chance to find my ‘lost colony,’ as you call it.” When he closed his eyes and didn’t reply, Jake added. “Goodnight, Dr. Wood. Or goodbye, if you prefer.”
Wood opened his eyes and looked at Jake. “If you do manage to find what you’re looking for out there, please remember to wake me. I would very much like to see it.”
As Jake walked out of the room, and the door sealed behind him, he heard the distant timer on the bridge go off, signaling that it was time for him to prepare for the next ballast reversal. As he headed towards the stairwell, he realized that it was probably a blessing that he would be so busy
in the days ahead. Maintaining the ship’s heading and adjusting ballast every few hours, might help keep him from dwelling on the fact that he was now the only person awake on the ship. That he was the only conscious human this far outside of Civica Colony. He was more alone than he had ever been before.
For four straight days and nights, Jake Stone sat alone on the bridge of the Rogue Wave piloting the ship all by himself. Then, at the bottom of one run, just before blowing the ballast tanks to start the next leg, he forgot to turn off one console before powering up another. Such a small thing, but it melted the thin conductors that drew electricity from the hull. The ship sank the remaining few meters and settled on the muddy ocean floor.
While what little energy that was left in the capacitors slowly drained away, he was trying in vain to repair the melted cables when he heard a low, thumping sound. Thinking it was just his heart beating in the thin air and almost unbearable silence, he ignored it at first. However, its persistence made him investigate further, and he found that it was coming from Jessie’s earphones resting on her console.
When he placed them on his head, he heard the sound more clearly. There were words: Give me twenty years then twenty more. Tell me that when I die, you’ll die. Won’t you tell me that you want me too, that I’m all you need.
It was that song again, but how was he hearing it so far from Civica? When he saw from the console’s readout that he only had a few seconds of power left, he quickly triangulated the song’s origin. Directly ahead. The song was being broadcast by someone directly ahead.
The power failed at that moment, plunging him in total darkness. He managed to make his way down from the bridge, back to the dive locker to put on a hardsuit, the only source of oxygen left in the ship. Then he continued aft, weighted down by the bulk of the pressure suit, squeezing through several lockout doors, and finally climbed down into the shuttle. As the dash light flickered on, he silently thanked his engineer for having the foresight to keep a small amount of power in the shuttle’s batteries as a last-ditch effort. He quickly detached from the Wave and moved away. Without fresh air, he knew the only hope left for his crew was to find the source of the signal and bring back help quickly.
Novum Chronicles: A Dystopian Undersea Saga Page 22