by Dave Nesbit
“What's he doing?” Karen watched as I tried to get focused.
“With any luck saving our ass.” Ramon said as he took a moment to catch his breath.
“Shhh” Rachel hissed. “Don't distract him.”
Finally, I could feel the whole thing. Electromagnets begging to be charged. ‘Did someone say magnets?’ I thought with a smile and felt a surge of power flow through me and into them. Slowly the turbine began to move. As it did Rachel and Karen got the giant diesel motor to cough over.
I could feel the generator kick over, and the flow of current through it. Reaching deeper still, I let the power flow through me and kick on the motor that powered it. It coughed, sputtered and died.
“Damn the fuel’s contaminated.” Karen said.
“Got a way to fix that?” Ramon asked.
“We're gonna have to flush the tank and get new fuel...”
“Find a container.” Rachel said to Ramon.
Ramon hauled ass and came back with a large tub looking thing. It had trails of steam coming from it and spots that looked like they had been torched. “Homemade engineering.” He said.
I was still acting as the motors power supply, the ship now had almost full power and the list was getting better, but I had no idea how long I could keep this up.
Rachel used her ability to force the fuel into the container. Once it was clear Karen got two crewmen to refill the fuel tank. And within about ten minutes they had restarted the motor.
Which was good because I was now just about tapped out.
“Holy shit we just might make it.” Karen said.
“Now if we can just make it to...” I had no idea what my new buddy the crewman was gonna say. Because that's when things chose to go from fixed to absolutely fucked.
I felt the ship pitch upwards violently in the weirdest way. All the other times we had pitched upward one end or the other had been slammed up by a wave and we crashed through it. This time though the whole ship front and back rose dramatically.
And when it did, I heard a scream of metal so loud it felt like it ran straight through my spine. The scream was followed by a bang that made my ears ring and caused the whole ship to vibrate.
Looking over I saw Karen's eyes go wide in horror. Then we hit the water and there was a huge sound like a snap. Suddenly there were alarms and the tones of rushing water.
“What happened?” Rachel yelled over the alarms.
“Oh god.” Karen said, looking like she'd gone catatonic.
Rachel was having none of this. She hauled off and slapped her. “Fucking answer me, what happened?”
“The ship's keel snapped; we're totally fucked.” Karen said.
Let's take a break from my impending death by drowning to explain some physics to you. A ship like this is, in a way, supported structurally by the water surrounding it. The water pressing in helps to support the ship's structure.
Now occasionally in a ginormous big ass storm something terrible happens. A ship will get caught on two waves, one front the other aft. This lifts the ship up out of the water and it now lacks that support.
When this happens the keel, the big steel spine of the ship, takes the full weight of the ship. Which it's not really designed to handle, and then it snaps. All that remains then is for the ship to fold in on itself and sink dramatically.
Allow me to use a fair amount of understatement. We were epically fucked.
I reached out with my senses and felt the ship as a whole and her now broken spine. I looked at Rachel. “100 feet forward, get there and patch what you can, let me see what I can find for repair material.”
“Can't be done. We have to abandon ship.” Karen said.
I took somewhat less than a microsecond for me to consider our chances of getting a life boat into the water, then our chances of actually surviving riding in the damn thing while mother nature treated us to all her fury. Finally my brain flashed to the video of that diver at the bottom of the ocean. The answer I came up with was pretty simple.
“I will abandon this ship when I can step off onto the bottom of the fucking lake.” I yelled at her.
Ya know, it's amazing how much sheer terror can make you forget how tired you are. Rachel and Ramon went forward and I began looking for anything that felt like steel in the containers. Reaching out I found it in one and literally flew my way to it. I blasted the lock off with a thought and saw a container full of I beams.
“Got repair stuff incoming.” I said.
“Good, we've got next to no time.” Ramon said. He sounded stressed but not panicked, which was good. Right now I was about a hair’s breadth away from losing it myself.
The ship was taking on water and I could feel the thing beginning to collapse inward in my mind.
“Watson says ‘abandon ship’.” Shawn said into my ear.
“Oops, radio broke.” And I turned it off.
I reached out with my mind and grabbed three I beams then brought them to Ramon and Rachel, who promptly set to work turning them into a patch for the ships broken keel. As they did, I flew back as fast as I could and grabbed more.
While I did I could hear the sound of the ship moaning like it was being tortured. “Hold together baby.” I thought. “We'll getcha home.”
I brought more down to my friends, now my team, and they set to work.
“What else do you need?” I asked Rachel.
“A bit of luck and for this fucking storm to break.”
“I'll see what I can do.”
Reaching out I felt the ship. The keel was still broken but our I-beam cast seemed to be holding her together.
We spent the whole night effectively keeping watch over it as the ship's pumps labored to keep the water level from rising any higher. By four am that night the weather had calmed down to a basic storm.
“We're through the worst of it.” Karen said. “We're gonna make for port in Kenosha.” She said.
“Ohhh good...” was all I could manage. Rachel and Ramon looked bone tired, and I was pretty sure I might actually look worse. I slumped my way up to the main deck and was guided to a bunk by the ship’s captain
Most people at this point, would sleep the sleep of the just. Right now I just settled for falling into the sleep of the dead.
Chapter 27
I woke up a fair amount of time later; feeling so hungry that I had the shakes. Still wearing my situation outfit and feeling aches in my body in places that I was, until that moment, unaware I had.
Stepping out of the bunk room, I walked out into the hall. Turning the corner, I ran into the captain as I turned the corner. “Excuse me sir, can you tell me where I can get a bite to eat?”
“Follow me young man.” He said and guided me down the hall. “Sorry about giving you a hard time when you came aboard.”
“No problem. If I were you I wouldn't have bought it either.” I smiled and turned into the mess hall.
“True, but still, we'd be on the bottom if it weren’t for you guys.”
“Well then I guess that means you can buy me breakfast.”
“Sounds good to me.” We walked over to where the food was being served cafeteria style. I ordered up a double of damn near anything which included eggs, bacon, ham, a huge cup of dark black coffee and nearly the cooks arm. Seriously dude, I was hungry.
I settled in at the table with Ramon and Rachel, who were working their way through breakfast. They both looked worse for wear, even after a night’s sleep. They both had dark circles under their eyes, and body language that spoke of sheer exhaustion.
“For the record Watson is not exactly pleased with you ignoring him.” Rachel said.
I sighed deeply. Maybe pissing off the school's head administrator on my first mission out was not my best plan. “Color me less than shocked.” I countered, and dug in.
“How ya gonna handle it?” Ramon looked to me.
“Suck it up and take the beating. I'll explain my point but I think he's not in a listening kind of mood.�
� I said.
“You got that right, Hamilton got in touch and said we had a casualty last night, the General is livid over it.” Rachel said.
“Well if your boss wants my vote, you did the right thing.” The captain said from next to me.
“Thanks I appreciate it.” I paused. “What do you mean casualty?”
“Someone in the other house that was on duty last night got killed on a rescue mission.” Ramon said.
That stunned me. Yes, I know I'm in a dangerous position but death had always struck me as kind of an odd vague concept that applied to other people. To date that last part was true. “Who got killed?”
“Kim Toy.” Ramon said. “Cute Chinese girl, had a massive dose of super strength.”
I remembered her, in my parade of girls I found it hard to talk to she was in my top five. She was small and tiny but the comet had left her with a massive upgrade in muscle density. She had done a demonstration where she bench pressed an armored personnel carrier. “What happened?”
“The ship she was on was going down. She lost her footing getting onto the lifeboat and went into the water. It's still too rough out there for the coast guard to look for a body.” Rachel said.
I couldn't wrap my head around it. So I chose to ignore what I was told for the time being and focused on breakfast.
We ate in silence, until the captain looked us all over and collected his coffee. “Gotta be on the bridge to talk to the tugboat meeting us.” He said. “Thanks again for all you did.”
We all nodded and got ourselves together. As I walked out Karen, the ship's chief engineer, met us. “You guys look like shit.”
“Nice to see you too.” Ramon said with a quiet laugh.
“I set out some sweats for you guys. Get changed, you look like ya need it.” She grinned. “You three did a great job.”
I knew I would be facing a pissed off “former” army general in a bit, but at least I had the feeling that we had done the job right.
The sweats were simple grey and had the name of the ship on them. I stripped out of my situation uniform, slid into a shower, and washed the combined smell of sweat and sheer terror from my body. I was pretty sure I hadn't pissed myself when the keel snapped but I wouldn't have blamed me if I had. After toweling off, I slipped on the outfit left for me, folded up my gear and grabbed my helmet.
The ship had docked in the interim and we slipped off of it after shaking every one’s hands. I was still a bit dazed by the whole thing. The press were there, but being kept at a distance. As I expected, Hamilton was waiting for us next to a van. I walked toward him quietly, then Rachel grabbed my arm.
“Jesus Fuck.” She exclaimed in an awed voice.
I turned around to see what she was looking at.
The ship was a sight to see. A lot of the cargo containers were askew as I would have expected. But then I saw what had stopped her in the tracks. The ship looked normal at the front, but at the midpoint the back end of it was bent at about a five-degree angle. The bend was obvious and hard to miss.
“She's gonna spend a little time in dry dock.” The captain said. “But it beats taking up residence at the bottom of the lake.” He walked over to Hamilton and spoke to him as we got into the dark government panel van.
Hamilton got in next to the driver and we took off. Cameras were pointing at us and again people stuck video cameras and microphones at the windows. Part of me considered how long it would take to make it into the air, then after how many seconds later that my parents would likely have a screaming fit. Then realized I didn't care. We had done our job right and people were alive. Then again, on the other hand, our school would be short one student today, and I would likely be the focus of someone’s fury for that no matter how misplaced it might be.
“You're going to have some explaining to do.” Hamilton said looking back at me.
“Yeah I know.” I let my head flop back. I was feeling better but still wasted.
“Want a piece of advice?” Hamilton looked at me in the rear view mirror as he spoke.
“Sure.”
“Don't try to sell him on the idea that success forgives everything.”
“I had a feeling that might not work. I'll just tell him the truth.”
“Really?” He said with a raised eyebrow. “What's that?”
“That to me, it seemed that, if we went into the water, our chances of survival would have been around zero.”
“Tell him that and prepare for a bad week.” Hamilton said.
“I figured as much.”
Chapter 28
The drive to the school was silent, we kept falling asleep on and off on the drive up I-94. When we arrived we didn’t even get a chance to head back to the house before we were marched to the admin building.
None of us talked. At that point we were all too tired and busy marshaling our senses, or what was left of them, for this next little life hurdle. Hamilton hastily walked us to the General's office where the secretary waved us through.
The General was sitting at his desk reviewing paperwork. He lifted his head but kept his eyes down as we came in. With a look to Hamilton he simply said. “Out.”
Hamilton took his cue in stride. Now we were all alone with the boss. Great.
“Oops. Radio broke?” He said looking me over. “That's a shame. I have our tech people looking over your gear right now to prep for the next time we have an issue. I would be really pissed if I found out that there was nothing wrong with it and you were lying to me.”
I sighed. “Well you're already pissed; so yeah, I was lying to you.” I said.
He looked me over. Ramon and Rachel stood fast, much to their credit.
“And why did you do that?” He asked quietly.
“My judgement was...”
Watson bolted from his desk and I was eye to eye with him. his long form stretched up to its full height, making it easy for him to look down at me. “Judgement?” He sneered. “You're seventeen years old, your balls have barely dropped and you spend more time with your hand on your dick then you do wrapping your brain around things. You do not have judgement.”
Okay I was tired, worn out and a little annoyed. Sure he had reason to be mad and I got it. Sadly, I had lost my mental filters in the ship. “I was there. In forty foot seas and 100 mile an hour winds. If we tried to put boats in the water no one would have survived!” I yelled back.
“Really; and all your years on the sea told you all that?” Watson said.
“No, but the captain did the next day. You sent us out there to help, and we did. We pulled it off by the skin of our teeth but we did it.”
He turned away from me and looked over Rachel and Ramon. Ramon looked uncomfortable, Rachel looked like she might bust Watson in his chops. “What do you two have to say?”
This was not going to go well. I could see Rachel warming up an epic response. I nipped it in the bud before she said anything we’d all regret. “They're my team and it was my decision.” I said.
Watson turned back, his fury had died down and now I saw what looked like interest in his eyes. “Your team?” He countered. He looked at Rachel and Ramon. “Does he lead you?”
To my surprise both of them nodded. Now I was wondering where this might go.
“Well son, leadership has responsibilities. I'm offering you a choice. You can all suck it up and take the disciplinary action you have coming and you'll be locked onto base for three weeks.” He paused. “Or Mr. Larkin, you can be a team leader and be locked onto base till thanksgiving, but they walk.”
I sighed, I had a date with Cathy on Friday. Such is life. I looked at Rachel and Ramon. “Enjoy the weekend.”
“You sure about that?” Watson looked me over as he spoke.
“Yep.”
He walked to the door, and looked outside. Then he saw who he wanted. “Mr. Thomas. Could you come in please?” He stood back and a man in black slacks and a white polo shirt came in. He wore glasses, stood about six two and had a lean frame.
His face was the sort a casting director would call Mid-American handsome, and he wore a severe buzz cut which did little to hide a receding hairline.
The way he walked in made me think he might have known the General from the military. Quick, efficient and precise, angles square. He looked at the General and I swallowed a chuckle as it dawned on me that it looked like he was trying hard not to salute. “Can I help you sir?”
“We have a volunteer for our leadership program. Perhaps you could acquaint him with it?”
Mr. Thomas looked me over with an appraising eye. “Seems a little young.”
“He is, but he might have talent. See what you can do with it.”
Mr. Thomas nodded. “Come with me.” He said. “You two can head back to the house.” He added to Rachel and Ramon as an afterthought.
Now I had to wonder what I had gotten myself into.
Chapter 29
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Sweat was rolling down my face and in places that were far less comfortable.
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You know those special push-ups the gym teacher makes you do when he's feeling particularly sadistic?
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The ones where you go slow, and let your arms enjoy the full ride up and down?
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Of course if you don't do them right you start all over again from one.
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I was doing those.
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I'm sure you're wondering what the big deal is. With my new and improved metabolism and such
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I really shouldn’t have to worry about doing large amounts of physical tasks.
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Well, Mr. Thomas, or, truth be told, Master Sergeant Thomas...
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...had thought of the exact same thing.