Soil (The Last Flotilla Book 2)

by Barnes, Colin F.

  Marcus shook his head and sighed heavily. ‘Tom, I’m sorry, okay? You just pushed the wrong buttons at the wrong time. I’m telling you now that the power boards were fine, so whatever’s happened is a recent thing. Why don’t we go figure it out together and put this behind us?’

  ‘That’s the most sensible thing you’ve said all day,’ Duncan said, and then to Tom, ‘Well? What do you say? Shake hands and let’s get on with this mission.’

  ‘Fine, but I need five minutes to myself. Let me calm down first.’

  ‘Let’s all take a break,’ Jim said. ‘We’ve all been pushing hard these last few days. We’ve made good progress.’

  Even as he said those last words, Eva had a sinking feeling in her gut, punctuated by a loud roar coming from the aft of the submarine.

  The explosion sent a booming vibration through the hull that rocked everyone into each other. Eva lost her balance and struck her head against the corner of the central sonar unit, landing heavily on her shoulder.

  From farther aft of the vessel she heard a second boom, followed by a howl of pain.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  12:05 a.m.

  Jim ran down the centre of the sub, towards the reactor core, with Tom close behind.

  Ahmed screamed for help.

  ‘Grab an extinguisher,’ Jim said to Tom, but there was no need. Tom knew the vessel better than anyone and was already wresting one free from a wall clip. Jim followed suit and released a second one from the wall. Both men rushed towards the flames.

  Orange light glowed in the darkness, flickering and bathing the wall of the hull. Jim had a flashback to the Bravo being on fire. He used that as further motivation to cover the distance, not wanting a repeat of that previous incident. The heat made sweat drip from his face as the smoke stung his eyes. He squinted and saw two dark shapes hunched up against the hull, legs spread across the narrow passage.

  Flames licked out from the side of the main reactor door behind them.

  ‘Brad? Ahmed?’ Jim said. ‘Are you okay?’

  Jim knelt by his friends while Tom went past them to put out the fire. Duncan and Eva soon joined him in the effort, pointing their extinguishers at the source of the fire: a blown electrical box on the wall just outside the core.

  Ahmed cradled Brad’s head. Blood dripped from a gash on his forehead, staining Ahmed’s blue overalls. ‘It happened so quickly. One second we were chatting in the hallway, the next there’s an explosion and Brad hit the deck.’

  ‘Okay, just calm down. Let me look at the injuries.’ Jim grabbed his friend by the shoulder to tell him it was all right, that they’d look after him.

  The passageway filled with the powder from the fire extinguishers. The flames hissed, doused to embers. Jim took a flashlight from his belt and shone it on Brad’s injury. The gash wasn’t deep, but it was bleeding pretty badly.

  ‘Can you hear me, Brad?’ Jim said.

  Brad didn’t respond; his eyes were closed, but his chest moved up and down. Jim continued to check him over. It didn’t seem like he’d taken any other injuries. Turning to Ahmed, Jim asked, ‘What about you? Any injuries we should know about?’

  ‘I hurt my leg in the fall. I think it’s okay, though. Other than that, I’m fine, I think. It was just such a shock. Things just don’t blow like that on their own, do they?’

  ‘Did you see anyone down here before the accident?’

  ‘No, we were standing here talking for at least five minutes, and we saw no one.’

  ‘Let’s get Brad to Annette so she can check him out properly. Hopefully he’ll know more once he’s recovered.’ Jim turned to Duncan. ‘How’s the fire?’

  His son turned to face him as the last plume of extinguisher fired from the canister. ‘It’s out. Wasn’t that big. Luckily, it didn’t have time to spread.’

  ‘Good. Come help me get Brad to Annette, will you?’

  ‘Sure, one second.’

  Duncan placed the empty extinguisher to one side and helped Jim lift Brad to his feet. ‘We’ll be right back if you need us,’ Jim said to Ahmed as they carried Brad back down the sub. They stopped about halfway and walked into one of the larger officers’ berths, now converted into a medical room.

  Annette was snoozing on a hammock but sat up the moment they entered.

  ‘What happened?’ she asked, her eyes blinking in the stark light.

  Jim explained the situation and, with Duncan’s help, got the injured engineer settled on a bed made from the mess tables.

  ‘Do you need any help?’ Jim asked Annette as she organised her medical supplies, her sleepy body coming awake and alert. She moved with quick efficiency, her confidence having grown considerably since working with Dr Singh on the Alonsa.

  ‘No, you go deal with the situation out there. I’ve got this in hand; it doesn’t look too bad.’

  ‘Dunc, can you help out here for a moment?’ He gave Annette a look that made her quiet before she had time to protest.

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘I’ll come check on these two later.’

  He left Duncan to assist Annette and headed back to the scene of the accident. Marcus was standing in front of the blown box, shining a light into the charred interior. An electrical board and a large transformer were completely destroyed.

  ‘Well?’ Jim said. ‘What are your thoughts?’

  Marcus turned round. ‘Someone’s clearly fucked with it.’

  Tom gave Marcus an accusing glare, but thankfully neither man escalated it.

  ‘Any ideas who might have done this or why?’ Eva said, leaning against the wall, arms across her chest.

  She looked tired, Jim thought. He knew she wasn’t sleeping well. The bags under her eyes hung heavy like the grief on her shoulders. It was the same stoop that everyone had these days. That didn’t stop Jim being more concerned about her than the others, though. He knew the difficulties she had gone through and yet she still showed surprising confidence and strength – more so than he.

  His hands still trembled from the desire for alcohol.

  Regret at having left his hip flask behind gnawed at him from within like a cancerous tumour.

  Marcus looked at Tom and seemed to think for a moment before turning his attention back to Eva’s question. ‘No idea, love. Hell, it could be two people for all I know.’

  ‘Brad?’ Tom offered.

  ‘No chance; he’s one of the good guys,’ Jim said. ‘I’ve known him for a while, and he’s a stand-up guy. He wouldn’t dream of doing anything like this. What would he get out of it?’

  ‘Not only that,’ Ahmed spoke up, ‘but I was with him all the time. Unless you’re suggesting I also had something to do with this?’

  ‘Of course not,’ Marcus said.

  Tom looked off into the distance, mumbled, ‘Strange things happen at sea. And in this new world, who knows how people’s minds work, what weird motivations they might develop.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Marcus said, narrowing his eyes.

  Tom ignored him, ran a hand through his hair, and sighed. ‘At least there’s no damage to the core. This unit is responsible for sending power to one of the sub-systems responsible for water recycling. It’s not urgent, although we’ll need to fix it before we return to the flotilla, otherwise our water supplies will run out before then. I don’t like the idea that we might have a saboteur among us.’

  ‘Is that a common thing?’ Marcus said. ‘During your time in service, ever feel like someone was up to something they shouldn’t have been? Ever discover someone wasn’t who they said they were?’

  Tom’s forehead wrinkled. He glared at Marcus, opened his mouth to say something but then closed it again. He shut his eyes and then, after a few seconds, opened them again and said, ‘Only Stanic.’ He turned away from Marcus, focused on the damaged electrical system.

  ‘Is there any chance at all this could be an accident?’ Eva asked.

  ‘No,’ Marcus said. ‘Tom can give his own opinion, I’m sure,
but it’s clear to me.’

  ‘He’s right,’ Tom said. ‘The way they’ve been overloaded like this couldn’t have been an accident. You can see on this board where the wires have been cut and relocated haphazardly. Whoever did this didn’t really understand what they were doing . . . unless they did and tried to make it seem like they didn’t.’

  That hint again in his voice. It didn’t take a genius to work out that Tom blamed Marcus. It did make sense, as maintaining these parts of the sub was Marcus’s responsibility, and as far as Jim could remember the schedule, Marcus would have had time and opportunity to do something like this.

  Marcus Graves was a self-serving scumbag, of that there was little doubt. Jim had had enough run-ins with him on the flotilla to know that. He was interested only in whatever favoured him. He couldn’t care any less about anyone other than himself and his close family – all of whom he had left on the flotilla, which told Jim that Marcus wouldn’t purposely sabotage himself like this.

  It wasn’t as if this affected anyone else but him.

  No, this was something, or someone, else.

  ‘I’ll think on this some more,’ Jim said. ‘For now, can you two ensure there’re no more surprises like this lined up?’ He addressed both Marcus and Tom. He’d rather they didn’t work together, given their constant animosity, but they were the two best men for the job.

  ‘Already on it,’ Tom said, moving around Jim and heading back down the hallway towards the command centre.

  When he was out of earshot, Marcus stepped closer to Jim and said with a whisper, ‘I don’t trust him one bit. Can’t you see he’s trying to shift the blame on to me?’

  ‘He saved my life,’ Jim said, trying to keep the anger out of his voice. ‘And without him, Stanic would have killed Eva and Duncan and God knows who else. It’s not him.’

  Marcus shrugged. ‘I didn’t say he was making sane and rational choices. The guy could be completely cuckoo for all we know.’

  ‘So could you,’ Eva said.

  Marcus raised an eyebrow. ‘So you think I did this now?’

  ‘Nah, even you aren’t stupid enough to sabotage your own equipment while on duty.’

  ‘So who, then?’ Marcus asked.

  Eva shrugged her shoulders. ‘Don’t know, but I’ll investigate some more and see what’s what. Let’s not start throwing around accusations just yet until we’ve had a chance to look into it properly.’

  She patted Jim on the shoulder and headed back down the hallway to the command centre, leaving Marcus and Jim alone.

  ‘What now?’ Marcus said.

  ‘Check on the rest of the equipment, make sure nothing else is going to explode on us. As for me, I’m going to draw up a list of the crew and see if I can figure this out.’

  ‘So I’m in the clear, right?’

  Jim paused for a few seconds before saying gravely, ‘I didn’t say that.’

  With that, Jim left Marcus to his responsibilities and headed for his own cabin. He needed to assess the schedule and the crew and figure out who was trying to stop them from getting to their destination – and why now, when they were so close? Assuming this was in fact sabotage, and not some other weird occurrence.

  Whatever it was, he couldn’t quite help but feel there was a lot more to this than just faulty equipment or someone making a mistake. If Marcus was indeed right, and this whole situation was a case of sabotage, then who would do such a thing? As far as he could tell, everyone who had come aboard wanted to find the base, wanted to give the people of the flotilla hope. Stopping them from doing that now made no sense.

  The idea that they might have a stowaway came to him. Someone from the flotilla could have sneaked on board before the rest of the crew.

  He tried to think of any possible candidates. Who on the flotilla wouldn’t want them to find the truth and a potential future? Faust’s group were long gone and the sickness problem was under control with the vaccine, so there was no tension on that front. Perhaps, he thought, there was a Stanic sympathiser . . . or maybe just someone who, for whatever twisted reason, didn’t want the crew to find the base – or return.

  His first instinct was to speak with Tom alone, to try to gain some clarity on the situation, but another instinct told him to look into this himself. With about approximately three days until they reached their destination – assuming they made it – he had time to work on this problem.

  It would at least keep his mind on something other than his need for booze.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  23:29 p.m.

  Eva stretched her arms above her head and yawned, and tried to distract herself from the buzz of anxiety inside her. To her right, Duncan sat at one of the command centre’s navigation stations. To her left, Jim stood with his back against a bulkhead, his sharp eyes staring at the video screen, which showed nothing but a blanket of darkness. Occasionally, Eva spotted the scudding of stygian clouds, their wispy edges backlit by a thin lunar corona.

  It was coming to the end of Eva and Duncan’s shift, and they had agreed to stay back so that Jim could talk with them – although he stood there like a silent guardian, his mind apparently preoccupied. His cheeks, where they met his eyes, twitched with a nervous spasm, making her think of the dashes and dots of Morse code.

  ‘Will Brad be okay?’ Eva asked, more to break the silence than through any worry. She had seen the wound, knew that with some stitches he’d be just fine.

  Jim grunted with a short nod, his face still turned towards the screen. The bags under his eyes hung like grey slugs feasting on his energy. His shift wasn’t due for another half-hour, but with Tom having to work with Marcus to repair the damage, the ex-flotilla captain had offered to cover the role until Tom was free to relieve him of his duties.

  Eva noticed a slight tremble in his right hand.

  With the sonar not picking anything up, not even the song of their whale friend who had seemed to follow them since the day they’d left the flotilla, Eva took the opportunity to raise the subject of a potential saboteur.

  ‘So any thoughts on who might have had motivation for messing with the converters?’

  The command centre was so dark and quiet, she felt like a spy, plotting with others against the crew. She couldn’t help but think of Marcus’s discovery of the Russian communications. In the time since he’d given her the notes, she hadn’t found anything else to shine a light on Tom’s involvement, if any, or what the project was.

  As time wore on, she was leaning towards the view that perhaps it wasn’t that important a discovery, that Tom knew nothing about what was going on. But the reasons for the kill order to exterminate the whole crew niggled away at her.

  She had supposed, over the last few hours, that maybe Gracefield had discovered the crew of the USS Utah had been infiltrated by Russian spies, and other than the convenience of keeping the location of the base a secret, it would have been doubly prudent for him to have had Stanic extinguish any spies.

  Duncan half turned in his chair, propping a considerably sized arm over the edge. He spoke in low, rumbling tones, only adding to Eva’s perception of Tom having aided and abetted a conspiratorial affair against the rest of the crew. ‘I’ve been thinking about that,’ he said. ‘I think we can rule out Ahmed and Brad; I know them too well.’

  Jim finally extracted his attention from the video screen. ‘I agree. I can’t see any motivation for either of them.’

  ‘But,’ Eva interrupted, ‘from an investigative point of view, both had means and opportunity.’

  ‘That’s assuming they managed to damage the electrics there and then,’ Duncan said. He ran a hand through his bushy beard as he thought. It made him look like some old fairy-tale wizard, and, to her shame, she realised that she was beginning to dislike it. It felt to her like an affectation.

  The more of these incongruent gestures she observed, the more she noted her annoyance growing. Why was he being so ostentatious all of a sudden? On the flotilla, he was just Duncan, the guy
who had trouble communicating his feelings and thoughts, but was a ‘good egg’ as the Brits would say. It’s my fault, she thought. Being distant.

  He finished rooting through the shrubbery of his beard, adding, ‘If it was someone who knew what they were doing, they could have rigged this up days ago, knowing it would fail at some point in the future – some point when they would have an alibi . . .’

  ‘Marcus, you mean?’ Eva said, trying not to let her aggravation show. She knew as well as anyone that Graves wasn’t the most likeable or honourable of men left in the world, but she had also learned that he wasn’t stupid. He had a sharp wit and a way of considering the facts in order to most benefit him and his family.

  ‘I doubt it,’ she said. ‘What’s he got to gain from stopping us getting to McKinley? He sees this whole thing as something that’ll reward him in some way. By preventing us from reaching our destination, all he would have done was waste time.’

  Duncan narrowed his eyes. His straw-coloured hair flopped low over his brow, making him inscrutable, but Eva had seen this look many times before since they had got together – not that it felt like they were together. They were becoming more distant by the day.

  ‘I agree with Eva,’ Jim said, placing his trembling hand in his trouser pocket. ‘I suspect it’s nobody on Team One; the timing doesn’t work out. It’s got to be someone on my team. Both situations have come during my shift, at either end when the other team are sleeping or resting. One of my lot would have seen someone moving about otherwise.’

  ‘So if we’re discounting you,’ Eva said, nodding to Jim, ‘that leaves Li Poh, Annette, Patrice, and Bernita. Actually, where is Patrice? He should be joining us here for the start of his shift soon. And I didn’t see him anywhere when all the panic happened.’

  ‘Or Bernita,’ Duncan added. ‘I saw Annette in her berth earlier on so I know it couldn’t have been her. Li Poh is . . . well . . .’

  ‘Quiet,’ Jim said for Duncan. ‘Since we left, she’s barely spoken two words to me. I think she’s just grateful to be away from the flotilla. She’s worked hard alongside Karel with the cooking and prep. I’ve never heard her have a cross word with anyone, either here or during her time on the flotilla. I see no reason why she might want to do anything like this.’