Relics, Wrecks and Ruins

by Aiki Flinthart

  Orange warning lights flickered.

  The hull shrieked, grinding, sliding on rock.

  Behind Kennedy, someone screamed.

  The vessel spun 180 degrees to starboard. Kennedy gasped. Her grip broke. She snatched at the arms of her chair as the sub twisted, tumbled, then tumbled again. The pride of the US Navy tossed like litter scattered carelessly on the wind.

  Would it never stop? And would the Tartarus survive? Kennedy prayed the ship’s designers knew their business.

  For a moment, she thought of Cole and their girls, Carlotta and Marie, at home. Right now, it was fall in Wisconsin. At Devil’s Lake State Park, the trees would be glorious, all gold and red and green; nature’s fireworks reflected and amplified on the water’s surface. Kennedy swallowed as the vessel jolted again. Why had she forsaken that majestic landscape for the darkest vaults of the ocean?

  Her head whiplashed, a stab jolting her spine. Was the roll slowing? She clung on. The wait was excruciating, interminable.

  Eventually, the sub ground to a stop. Upright, thank God. There were only a handful of her crew members in the control room, yet Kennedy could swear she heard a collective exhale. Then, just as they dared to breathe, there was a tearing, followed by an inexorable thrumming on the hull. Once more, they waited.

  Minutes passed.

  At last, everything fell quiet.

  Kennedy unsnapped her seat belt, ignoring the nausea that welled in her throat, and took two steps to portside to check on McNaught. She touched her fingers to his neck, but he was dead—poor man. Hardly surprising, given that the back of his skull was dented cruelly inwards. Had he lived, his seafaring days would likely have been over; his right knee was shattered, the lower limb twisted unnaturally back on itself. Kennedy winced. He’d been spared that pain at least.

  Fighting dizziness, she reached for a handhold, instead her fingers touched her executive officer, Cohen, slumped against the wall. Glassy eyes stared up at her. His mouth agape in a silent scream, his still-warm skin already leaching color. Kennedy’s heart clenched. The Tartarus assignment was their first together, so she hadn’t known him well, but he’d impressed her as competent and dependable. Solid. The son of a single mother, he wasn’t—hadn’t been—ruffled by a female commanding officer, rare even in these progressive times. She closed Cohen’s eyes with her fingertips.

  Where was everyone? Kennedy’s pulse thrummed. Her scalp tightened. Was she the only one still alive? She stifled panic, an odd pang of loneliness already stealing over her. No, she mustn’t panic. There were fifty crew members on the Tartarus, and she was responsible for them all. She needed to get her head together, assess the damage, see to the wounded, and make a plan to get back on course.

  Steadying herself against the wall, Kennedy got to her feet.

  “Captain Jones.”

  She started at the voice close behind. It was Chief Petty Officer Masterton. A quietly spoken man out of Ohio, he was a meat-and-potatoes sort. The type you’d expect to find behind the counter of a hardware store. A large bruise was blooming on the man’s cheekbone. His eyes drifted to the side.

  “Executive Officer Cohen?” he asked, squinting.

  “Deceased. McNaught, too.”

  “Shit.” Masterton shook his head. “Begging your pardon, ma’am. What do you need me to do?”

  A console burst into flame on the wall behind McNaught.

  The fire siren wailed.

  Fuck! Extinguisher. Where is it? It’d come adrift from its bracket. Rolled somewhere. Where? Kennedy whirled, caught the flash of red, lunged for it. God, that’s heavy. Pulling the pin as she clambered over McNaught, she aimed the nozzle at the base of the flame, pressed the trigger, and let the foam fly.

  Speckles of foam landed on McNaught; Kennedy kept spraying. The fire sputtered; she didn’t stop until the foam slid in clumps down the wall.

  The siren ceased its blaring.

  “It’s okay; it’s out,” Masterton said.

  Panting, Kennedy nodded. She lowered the extinguisher. Blew out hard. “Right, well I’d better assess the damage to the Tartarus,” Kennedy said. “You check with the medic.”

  Masterton lifted his chin. “Yes, ma’am.”

  Several others were on their feet now, looking dazed and disoriented. Faces blanched when they spied the dead men.

  “Masterton—before you do that, see about covering Cohen and McNaught.” Kennedy clicked the extinguisher back into its bracket. “Let’s give them a little privacy.”

  “Ma’am.”

  Kennedy took her chair at the console and checked the screens. Breathed in relief. At first glance, the Tartarus’s double-hull structure appeared intact. With thousands of feet of water above the vessel, it was a comfort to know they weren’t in any immediate peril. Kennedy illuminated the outer hull, set the built-in eyes to scan, then checked the screens.

  Her heart fluttered. Please, no.

  There was no denying the truth: the ship’s stern, including the propellers and the outflow for the internal motion turbines, lay buried under an avalanche of rubble. Even now, rocks still clattered against the hull. The propellers would likely be impacted with rock. To make matters worse, the Tartarus had toppled into a trench and was now pinned on a ledge.

  Kennedy switched screens, her heart in her throat. She gave a squeak of joy; the aft escape hatches were still clear. Her excitement was short lived. They were how many feet down? Ten thousand? More? Even if the distress buoy had managed to make it to the surface amidst the rubble of the eruption, the Tartarus could be a mile away from the volcano by now. Searching the ocean would be like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack. And if the US Navy teams did manage to locate them, navigating the trench would be treacherous. Few vessels could withstand the pressures at the Tartarus’s crush depth. What if they were beyond reach?

  No. Stop this. There’s time. The graphene hull is intact. The organic liquid-flow batteries are fully charged. This isn’t the Kurst, and the US isn’t Russia. The Tartarus isn’t going to vanish without trace like the USS Cyclops or the ARA San Juan.

  Not on my watch.

  “Hurst?” she called. “Do we still have comms?”

  The ensign scrambled to her feet after retrieving her headset from the floor. She checked her screens. “We’ve lost the cable for the two-way ELF, but if we send up the reserve array, then, yes, ma’am, we should have comms.”

  Kennedy forced herself to breathe slowly, in and out, mimicking the ebb and flow of ripples on the beach. Her anxiety dampened. Everything would be fine. The sub was teched to the nines. They would extend the reserve array to reestablish the low frequency radio and she would let her superiors know what had happened. Rescue teams would be dispatched. Cohen and McNaught may be lost, but Kennedy and the rest of the crew could still be plucked from the jaws of hell and delivered to safety.

  When that happened, Kennedy would bury her face in her children’s hair and drink in the scent of apple shampoo and the Wisconsin outdoors. She would sob ugly tears into Cole’s chest, and let him rock her like a baby. Until then, she would be the unflappable captain of this ship.

  Until then, they would stay calm and sit tight.

  #

  When the bodies of the dead had been stowed, the Tartarus’s medic and its chief engineer joined Kennedy in the control room.

  Pale and drawn, the medic cleared his throat before giving his report. Kennedy’s throat was raw, too. By now the fire-retardant foam had dried; it was still like breathing acid.

  “There are four dead, including Cohen and McNaught,” the medic said. There was a smear of blood on the cuff of his uniform.

  Kennedy nodded. She’d already had the numbers from Masterton.

  “On top of that, we have five wounded, not counting those with minor bruises and bumps—which is practically everyone.”

  Kennedy couldn’t help lifting her hand to her neck, still aching from the whiplash. All around her, the control room hummed with the bleep of
systems checks and the murmur of status reports.

  “And the five wounded?” she asked. “How are they faring?”

  “Two have concussion—I’ll keep an eye on them in case they deteriorate. One dislocated shoulder—I’ve already reset it—and one of the cooks has extensive scalding. All survivable. It’s Ensign Rafferty who worries me most. His pelvis is shattered; it’s likely he has some internal injuries. Without hospital care, he might not make it to Sunday’s ice cream social.”

  Kennedy grimaced. “The navy is working on getting us to the surface as soon as possible, but it’s going to take time.”

  “How long?” Scotty said, the engineer as brusque as his Trekkie namesake.

  “I spoke with the commodore an hour ago. They’re working on a plan now.”

  She pursed her lips remembering the terse conversation with her commander. To be fair, the navy was never going to be happy about the situation. The Tartarus was the outcome of billions of dollars of research effort, its recharging technology a closely guarded military secret.

  “So, the vessel is lost,” the commodore had said.

  “I believe so, sir. There’s an outside chance the propellers could clear the rocks without jamming, but in the event we don’t succeed, it would leave the Tartarus without power.”

  Under normal conditions, the Tartarus recharged its liquid-flow battery by tethering to the seabed and allowing the ocean currents to spin the internal turbines like water over gills. The Tartarus’s inflow vents were intact, but with the water outflow buried, there were no currents to speak of. No recharging meant no power and no oxygen. Eventually, the Tartarus was going to flicker out, and its crew with it.

  “We could certainly attempt to break out,” she added, when the commodore didn’t speak. “And as the ship’s captain, I’d be willing to volunteer myself for the task—but only after my crew are safely away.”

  The commodore remained silent. A glitch in the line, or just a minute of reflection? To Kennedy, the moment felt heavy with accusation, as if she ought to have predicted the eruption and steered the Tartarus out of danger.

  “Let me speak to Cohen,” he said eventually.

  “Cohen is among the dead, sir.”

  “Ah.” Another pause. “Shame.”

  Kennedy’s eyes narrowed. Why ask to speak to Cohen? The Tartarus was her command. “Sir? Is there something I should know?”

  “No, no. Cohen and I go way back, is all. Don’t worry, Captain. We’re going to get you and your crew out of there. But it’s going to take us a while to get things underway, so you’ll need to be patient.”

  “At present, we’re at 89 percent charge. The Tartarus has oxygen tanks for two days, and we can also create oxygen through electrolysis. But splitting water will mean drawing heavily on the available charge,” Kennedy said. She was wasting air; the commodore knew all this.

  “I’m fully aware of the ramifications, Captain,” the commodore had said tersely. “I’ll update you as soon as I have some information.” He had cut the connection.

  The medic cleared his throat again, bringing Kennedy back to the crew briefing. “In the meantime,” he said, “we’re going to need to reduce our energy consumption.”

  “We can cut some lights, turn down the heating. Keep everyone in their bunks. That’ll allow us to eke out charge,” Scotty said.

  Kennedy nodded. “I’ll announce the measures on the 1MC and come back and chat to the wounded a little later.”

  When the men had returned to their respective stations, leaving only the control room crew, Ensign Hurst turned to her. “Are we going to be shark shit, Captain?” she asked.

  The other crew members looked to Kennedy. It was a fair question.

  Another deluge of rock hammered the Tartarus, boulder-sized hail, louder than artillery fire, rattling her bones. Grunts and cries echoed through the ship. Everyone snatched for a handhold. Kennedy planted her feet. Held her breath. There was nothing to do but hold on and hope.

  When at last the rocks clattered to a stop, the crew looked again to Kennedy.

  “No, Hurst, we are not,” she replied. “Not if I can help it.”

  #

  A day passed. And another. In the watery limbo, an endless night hovering between life and death, Kennedy didn’t sleep. Even the wounded slumbered fitfully. If these were to be their last hours, no one wanted to waste them sleeping. Instead, they read, told stories, passed photos, sketched. One man played a blues harp.

  In the control room, Kennedy wrote letters to Cohen’s wife and sister, to McNaught’s mother, and the families of the other deceased. She thought of her own babies, Carlotta and Marie, of the letter she might want to receive, and took her time perfecting her prose, using words like service, and honor, and courage.

  That done, she had Hurst contact HQ again. “I’d appreciate an update,” she told her commander.

  “We’re still working on it,” the commodore said.

  Kennedy wanted to scream, but he was their lifeline, the man in charge of getting them off this ridge so, for the sake of her crew, she kept her voice even. “Ensign Rafferty’s condition has deteriorated.”

  “Look, Captain, the US Navy is doing everything it can. We think we’ve located you, but there are issues on the surface—a storm is hampering our rescue efforts. You need to trust me, as soon as we get a break in the weather, we’ll get your people out of there.” His voice was overly cheery. Putting a positive spin on things to keep up morale.

  Pulling her jacket around her shoulders, Kennedy checked the battery power: 38 percent. They were running out of time.

  She wrote to Carlotta and Marie. Handwritten notes. So young, Marie, would likely forget her if she didn’t come home, her face blurring in her daughter’s memory, but Carlotta was older and would remember. Kennedy labored over the paragraphs, yet the words were insufficient and lackluster. Nothing could capture her feelings for them, the ache their loss would cause her.

  In the end, she quoted Apollinaire:

  “Vienne la nuit sonne l’heure / Les jours s’en vont je demeure.”

  “Let night come, toll the hour. The days pass by, I remain.”

  If they ever saw the letters, Cole would explain. Perhaps he would take them to Paris, so they could watch the gray water of the Seine pass beneath the bridge.

  Of course, they might never get her letters. The US Navy was good at keeping secrets. The SSBN James Madison had clipped a Soviet sub in 1974 during the Cold War, and nothing was known of it for forty-three years. In forty-three years, her girls would be in their fifties—older than she was now.

  The sub creaked under another tumble of debris.

  Or, the Tartarus might just be one more in a litany of ships lost to the stygian depths. Kennedy folded the notes and left them on her desk.

  #

  On the third day, Rafferty passed away.

  Kennedy wrote another letter, then put in another call. “Sir, you do realize that very soon my crew is going to be sucking rubber.” Already, the air in the sub was dangerously thin. Kennedy struggled to concentrate, her head fuggy with headaches—although that might also be sleep deprivation.

  “I’m sorry, Captain.”

  “The weather’s still too dangerous?”

  “Yes.” His tone was guarded.

  “We’re talking hours, not days.”

  “I understand.”

  Kennedy’s skin prickled. This was ridiculous. “Sir, exactly how far away is the rescue ship? Assuming the weather abates, how long before you can get a submersible down here? Because ten minutes or two hours too late, the result for us is going to be the same.”

  The commodore said nothing.

  Her heart skipped. The reality was as blinding as the ocean was dark. “There is no rescue attempt,” she whispered.

  The commodore sighed. “Captain Jones, I’m so sorry. The Tartarus is state-of-the-art, the culmination of decades of investment in submarine tech. My people said the only way to get the Tartarus up
fast enough was to hire outside help. Imagine if a tech company like MobyCorp, or Poseidon Industries were to get hold of the blueprint. They’d reengineer it and sell it on to the foreign power with the deepest pockets. The White House can’t allow it. There’s too much at stake.”

  Kennedy shivered. So, there it was. After days of fobbing her off, here was the truth at last. “You’re sacrificing my crew.”

  “For the safety of the American people, yes.”

  “What of the forty-six American people on the Tartarus? What about them? What about us?” Her voice was shrill.

  The commander clucked his tongue. “When we bring Tartarus up later—when we can do it in-house, quietly—your crew and your families will be…looked after.”

  “Cold comfort, sir.”

  “Executive Officer Cohen would have understood. He knew his orders…”

  This time Kennedy cut the connection, blood thundering in her veins. Cohen! Dependable, solid Cohen, her executive officer, had been planted to countermand her orders in the event the little lady stepped out of line. Kennedy clenched her teeth so hard she risked cracking the enamel. What would his single mother have made of that?

  But her anger wasn’t going to help things. She needed to think. Again, she focused her mind on the ebb of the tide, breathing in slow waves, dampening her fear. “Masterton—John—would you ask Scotty to join us, please?”

  #

  “Fuck!” Scotty cursed when he heard the news. “Fuckity-fuck-fuck!”

  Masterton closed his eyes, his lips quivering. When he opened them, he said, “What about other countries? The Russians. The Chinese. South Korea. They all have subs. There might be someone out there. We could send out an SOS.”

  “Fat chance,” Scotty said.

  He wasn’t wrong. The Atlantic Ocean was massive. Depending on where their rescuers were, getting to them could take days.