by David Peters
The captain nodded several times as he turned page after page. With a huff of sadness, he tossed the clipboard onto the desk in front of him and rubbed his tired eyes.
“I take it that is everything you have right now?”
“That sums it up, sir.”
“Six dead, seventeen wounded,” the captain said with a shake of his head, “How bad are the wounded?”
“Mostly steam burns and smoke inhalation. Twelve of them are expected to make full recoveries, three will be in the infirmary for months and four are not expected to pull through, we just don’t have what we need to take care of burns of that magnitude anymore. The six that died were in the compressor room when it blew. The entire room ignited instantly. They went quickly if that is any comfort.”
“It is. Any ideas why these things failed at the same time?”
“You know we have been having a hell of a time keeping the plant running, sir.”
“I thought we were staying on top of the ammonia problem.”
“The stuff we are making isn’t nearly as pure as what we usually have. It might be ten percent on a good day. The stuff we had when we shipped out was full-on hundred percent industrial grade. We wind up having to eyeball a lot of things. The build-up in the lines was inevitable. If I had to venture a guess, I would say the shock from the initial explosion was enough to break an already stressed system. One of the feeder pipes had too much build up in one of the elbows and simply rusted through.”
“So our last two screws are dead?”
“Yes, sir. Shaft one and two have been down for ages but this puts props three and four out for good as far as I can tell. There is so much twisted steel back there I’m surprised we didn’t lose all four seals. The patch we have on one and two was leaking like a sieve but we were able to stop that easy enough.”
“I don’t see any plant information on this report. What’s the report on the reactor? When can we fire it back up?”
“That’s the real bad news, sir. The reactor will fire up but it won’t run long without coolant flowing. That doesn’t even matter. The turbine is damaged and we can’t machine the parts we need.”
“You can’t cannibalize the turbine from reactor room one?”
He shook his head, “It’s been dead since Seattle and the gears are what shredded out on both. There isn’t any parts to use to replace.”
“And the second reactor?”
“They have the primary pump completely torn apart but it isn’t looking good. We can start the reactor but it won’t stay cool for long. We are getting a hair over one percent out of it at idle so we can supplement the battery drain to some extent but we aren’t turning the turbines on anytime soon. Even if we manage to patch the blown pipes and seals, we can’t charge the system. It will take us another three months to generate enough ammonia to get things stable. That doesn’t even take into account how much radioactive crap was thrown around the room. It isn’t at a particularly high level but having the crews work in there for weeks on end would be problematic at best. We would have folks with acute radioactive poisoning and I don’t think we can fix that at this point.”
“So how long do we have emergency power?”
“Most of the lower decks are clear of everything but supplies, and with most of the CIC in the dark our only big power draw is from the lights. If we only run a few hours at night, keep the radar to a minimum we should be able to make them last several weeks, maybe even a month at least, sir.”
“I know the answer but I have to ask. Is the fuel dead for the diesel generators?”
“The fuel is toast. We may get away with running them for a little while but there is a lot of water and oxidization in the tanks. The injectors will foul out and die pretty damn fast. I was talking with Jenkins about it, he guesstimates that they would be down four hours for every one we ran them.”
“Ouch.”
“Yes, sir. That also assumes that something worse doesn’t go wrong with them. I don’t think trying to fire them up is an option at this point.”
“Do you think they can get Reactor Two back online?”
“They have told me...”
“I’m not asking them, I’m asking you, personally. Do you think they can get the reactor running again?”
“I’d say it’s fifty-fifty at this point, sir. We may need to pull some parts and fluids from the other reactor but we just don’t know right now.”
“You said Reactor One wasn’t safe.”
“Correct. I did say that, sir.”
Captain Lewis rubbed his temples as the news set in. His ship was crippled, he could not move, he didn’t have any power and didn’t know when, or if, he would get it back. The ship was built with no end of redundancy but it wasn’t meant to run alone without support for so long and in such rough seas let alone with the damage they had suffered in the early days of the war.
“I can’t force anyone to go in there, Nixon, you know that.”
“I have already volunteered if and when the time comes, sir.”
Charles closed his eyes, “I’m going to have to appeal to your better judgment. You don’t need to do this, we can figure something out.”
“We’ll talk about it when the time comes, sir. Right now we just need to stabilize the equipment we have and see what we actually need to fabricate or scavenge in order to get it working. It may come to pass that a trip into the first reactor won’t even be worth it.”
“I’ll leave that up to you, you’re the professional.”
“Well, once the reactor is dead I won’t have much of a job around here anymore anyway,” Nixon said as a matter of fact.
“So beyond the drifting, powerless, out of fuel five acre steel island, is there anything else to report?” he asked as he directed the question to the rest of the crew in the small room.
He was met with down turned eyes and silence.
“We have our tasks, let’s get to work. Dismissed.”
Chapter 2
Niccole heard a slight burp of static before Travis’ voice came through the speaker, “You should be good to power up, Niccole. Everything checks out on this end. Fire it up and give me a test confirmation if you would be so kind.”
“Thanks, Travis,” she answered back through the intercom. “Give me one minute.”
She reset several switches on the large, ancient radio and heard the pleasant hum return to the device. She waited patiently as the various lights on the front flickered to life then plugged the headset in. It took an agonizing twenty seconds as all of the needles slowly rose into the green.
“...will repeat in fifteen seconds.”
There was a fifteen second pause before the message began again, “This is the United States Naval Carrier John C. Stennis. If you are hearing this message, reply on UHF channel 7, 462.7125 MHz. A live person is listening twenty-four hours a day. This message will repeat in fifteen seconds.”
Niccole smiled broadly and flipped the intercom switch, “It works guys, we have a new contact. Get your butts down here!”
Dylan’s voice came back excitedly, “Fantastic, we’ll clean up our mess here and be right down!”
Niccole sat anxiously as she continued to listen to the repeating message. This was their first contact with anyone that still identified as being with the government. After fifteen minutes of toe tapping in her seat the cabin door opened and Dylan, Caperson and Travis proudly walked in anxious to hear the new voice for themselves.
“So what do you have? Can we contact them?”
“Listen,” Niccole said with a smile
The group sat in silence as they listened through the recorded automation several times.
Dylan smiled, “Fire it up! Let’s let these folks know we’re still alive out here. I can’t wait to hear what they have to say and what they can do.”
Caperson smiled, “The thought of seeing a helicopter overhead bringing supplies is more than I can handle. I think I might just get a little giddy.”
T
ravis frowned, “I don’t want to rain on your parade, bossman, but would their fuel last this long? I mean, our diesel is crap now, I can’t imagine their jet fuel faring much better. Besides, we haven’t seen a plane in more than five years.”
“Talk like that isn’t raining on my parade, Travis, it’s setting fire to the floats,” Caperson said with a frown. “Besides, maybe they have a harbor somewhere.”
Travis shrugged and sat down on the couch to listen. He picked up one of the town newspapers from the table and scoffed under his breath, “They say my head is in the clouds. Old people.”
Niccole replaced the headset with the external speakers so all could hear, “Here goes nothing.” She cleared her throat and hit the push-to-talk button, “Carrier Stennis, this is Paradise Falls calling. Is anyone listening?”
A very young and very shocked voice came back, “Is this some kind of joke? Do you remember what the XO did last time you pulled this?”
“I’m sorry?” Niccole asked in confusion.
“Is this Freda down in supply? This is a reserved channel, you know that. I have to log this and you are going to be in some deep shit.”
“My name is Niccole, I’m calling from Paradise Falls, Oregon. I don’t know any Freda and I’m not anywhere on your boat.”
There was a long pause before the voice came back, “How do I know? Because she called it a boat. Even the civvies here know not to call it that. She ain’t Navy and she ain’t on our ship!”
In the background they could hear someone arguing but couldn’t make out any of the words.
“I don’t care if he’s sleeping, tell him to get his ass up here!”
They could hear the sound of a microphone dragging across a surface before the voice came back.
“Oops, sorry about that, please hold on for a second why we get the proper people here. We didn’t expect to hear anyone. Ever.”
~1~
Charles was pulled from a deep sleep by a rap on the door to his room. It was quickly followed by a more urgent sounding second knock.
He cleared his throat and called out, “Come in.”
A young man with close cropped hair and a failed attempt at a beard peeked his head in through the partially opened door, “Sorry to wake you, sir, but someone is responding to our automated radio call.”
“You sure it isn’t one of the guys in engineering playing another joke?”
“No, sir. We verified that it wasn’t coming from the ship. This one is real.”
“After all these years? What time is it? Who is calling? Is it someone from the government? Is it another ship? Where are they? How far away are they?”
The man looked at his watch, “Slow down, sir. It’s just after five in the evening and it isn’t government, it’s some civies from a town in Oregon I haven’t ever heard of. We can’t even find it on the coastal charts. Some little podunk town called Paradise Falls. They are currently waiting to talk to someone in charge. I think that would be you, sir.”
Lewis nodded in understanding, “I need to spend more time topside,” he said as he ran his hands through his close cropped hair. “I’m losing track of the days down in the caves. I’ll be right up, thank you, uh...”
“Petty Officer O’Reilly, sir.”
“Thank you, O’Reilly.”
The head in the doorway nodded and smiled, “Yes, sir.” He nodded again before vanishing behind the closing steel door.
Charles looked at the sterile gray walls, the floor, even the seemingly random pipes that littered the ceiling as he avoided looking at the small picture on his nightstand. His wife and child sitting on a blanket on a beach that seemed to exist in another lifetime. They were in Seattle when everything began and they were still there when his group was forced to leave. The chaos of those final days still haunted his sleep. The confusion, fires, an enemy that magically appeared below the decks. He shuddered as he recalled the first time he heard the cry from the bowels of his own ship. That long, lone cry still haunted his nightmares. Claws dragged down the long steel passageways were far worse than the sound of nails on a chalkboard.
He pushed the memory away and took a deep breath before picking through the pile of wrinkled clothes on the floor. He pulled a ragged sweatshirt over his head and slid his boots over his thoroughly worn out socks. With the final lace tied on his boots, he stood and shrugged away his own worries to make room for the ship he was trying to keep alive.
As he made his way down the long hallway to the stairwell at the end, he passed empty room after empty room. Ever since the filters had finally given out in the ventilation system, more and more of the people on board had moved into the flight hangar. There, fresh air could flow freely through the three large open doors while the several more floors and the massive flight deck overhead kept the weather they were unable to avoid from pouring down on them. It gave them a sense of community and openness that they couldn’t get when living below decks.
He pushed the bulkhead door open and stepped out into the hangar leaving the pungent and stagnant air that gathered in the long, steel hallways. Shacks of all shapes and sizes filled an open space the size of several football fields. The ceiling nearly two stories overhead buzzed with sodium lights pushing the shadows away while smoke swirled around the rafters before making its way out one of the three, building-sized hangar doors on the side of the ship. People were moving about the wooden city doing various chores or heading off to their assigned work details on more distant parts of the ship. Others, generally the older or the youngest, sat around small cooking fires and roasted various fish and vegetables for dinner.
He received several acknowledging nods as he made his way down the established pathway through the shantytown. The path merged with the central roadway through town and he followed it until he arrived at a steel bulkhead door with a hastily written sign in large, red letters that read ‘Navy Only’. He rotated the handle and pushed the steel bulkhead door open.
He made his way to a stairwell on the far side of the hangar and climbed the stairs into a long hallway leading to what used to be the combat information center, or CIC for short.
Inside the CIC, blue and red lights cast an eerie glow across the multitude of faces sitting in the chairs. Most of the screens were blank, the methods they had previously used to gather data either no longer existed or were no longer necessary. A large plotting table in the middle of the room that would usually be used to manage the vast array of ships and aircraft during an engagement instead simply had a large navigational chart and several cups of what passed for coffee on the ship. Any equipment not needed had been salvaged to keep other more valuable equipment running.
“Over here, sir,” a young man said as he offered up a black headset.
Charles made his way over to the station and pulled the headset over his ears, “This is Captain Lewis of the CVN Stennis, to whom am I speaking?”
“This is Niccole and Dylan Murphy from the town of Paradise Falls. I also have Chris Caperson, formerly of the Idaho National Guard and Travis and Erica, my daughter and future son-in-law. If you don’t mind us asking,” Niccole said uncomfortably, “what are you the captain of exactly?”
“To be honest, not a whole hell of a lot anymore. We are on what used to be one of the world’s largest nuclear powered aircraft carriers. Now it is much closer to a steel framed floating farm. We have no other remaining ships in the fleet that we are aware of.” There was an uncomfortable pause in the broadcast, “Could you tell us where exactly Paradise Falls is? We can’t find it on any of our coastal charts and it isn’t in our management database. We even have an old gas station road map and can’t find it.”
“We are a few miles west and slightly north of the city of Sumter, Oregon.”
Charles ran his finger over the map of Oregon, “Holy crap, you are more than four hundred miles inland, how are you able to reach this far out?”
“Our town is located near the top of a mountain and we have a new antenna that is almost thre
e-hundred meters above us. Are you on the coast?”
“Negative, we are roughly five hundred nautical miles west of,” he paused as he looked at the chart, “well, west of nothing in northern California.”
“Are you heading north?”
“We aren’t so much heading anywhere we are adrift in the current. If we are unable to repair things, as near as we can tell, we will make landfall somewhere south of Newport, Oregon. We don’t know the exact date, but based on our knowledge of the currents and tides it will be somewhere in the neighborhood of two to three weeks, give or take a day or two.”
“What do you do then?” Niccole asked with an air of concern.
“We don’t know. The ship won’t be safe once it’s resting on the seafloor. A ship this large doesn’t fare well when it is sitting on rocks. One good storm and it could lean too far or slip into deeper waters. We can’t outrun storms anymore, no satellite data. The winds out here now are insane during the storms that have managed to catch us. Even being on the edge of one it was difficult to keep the farms on the deck. How large is your town?”
“Right now we have just a hair over seven-thousand,” she said with no small amount of pride. “We are self-sufficient and get new folks showing up every few weeks. Good security, good defenses and good people. How many do you have with you?”
“Three-thousand two-hundred and twenty-nine men, women and children.”
Dylan broke in, “There are kids, on a Navy ship?”
“Some were flown in during the initial days of the war, some were rescued from other ships, others born here, so yeah, lots of kids. I don’t have specific numbers in front of me but there are several hundred under eighteen.”
“How are you fixed for supplies?”
“We aren’t big on variety but the farms and fishing keep everyone fed. As for other things, we have more supplies and equipment than we could ever hope to carry once we beach. I’m just not sure what we can do. I’m hoping we can remain on the ship but the thought of those Sappers hitting us at low tide is frightening. We may be made of steel but naval vessels have a tendency to burn really well. We can defend ourselves but not forever. We don’t know how we will beach, we are at the mercy of the tides.”