The Command

by David Poyer

  Whatever had just gone off had obviously been intensely dirty, grossly radioactive, and Horn had been caught square under the area of maximum fallout. But if they couldn’t stop the flooding, they’d all be in the water with it. He looked at his watch. Only twenty minutes had passed since the detonation.

  “You there? Concur with deep shelter?”

  “Yeah.” He told her to get that word to the battle dressing stations, make sure they knew any wounded from topside were probably contaminated, too.

  As he was talking, a decon team had come in. They stood waiting behind him. He told Danenhower to start double-checking Circle William settings, make absolutely sure some neglected fan or topside access wasn’t sucking contamination into the ship. Then he pushed back the chair and stepped into a trash bag one of the masked and suited team spread on deck.

  Working from both sides with heavy shears, they cut his uniform off down to the skin, dropping the scraps into the bag. He stepped out of his shoes and stood naked except for the neck brace. Porter was talking into the phone, not looking at him. Letting the decon guys help him, he went clumsily through the portside hatch and up to the main deck level and aft, still inside the skin of the ship, until he got to after decon. He caught his breath as the spray of cold water hit him, and they started scrubbing.

  THIS time the air in the engine room was much hotter. Cobie figured heat rose, it might not be so bad at the lower levels. At least she hoped not. They weren’t pulling a hose now, so it was easier to shuffle along. Fear gave her energy, but she felt fatigue growing under it. She kept pulling the mask straps tighter, till it felt like it was crushing the back of her head. Her skin itched where she’d buttoned the collar and wristcuffs of her coveralls. She wondered if that was the toxic gas, or what.

  Main One was no longer the place she’d worked and stood watch in. Except for the dying glow of the remaining emergency lights it was completely dark. They had power back in the passageway but couldn’t put power back into the space. Not with wires dangling loose in saltwater. At least the fire was out now. She and Helm had to feel their way, point their lanterns where they were going to step. They got to the boiler flat and inched along to the ladder down to the PLCC flat. Then looked down to see the water surging there, black, oily-looking, absorbing light. She couldn’t tell how deep it was or what was underneath.

  Mick put his face close and yelled through the speaking diaphragm, “Me first.”

  She nodded. He slid down the ladder, letting boots, then legs, then lower body in little by little, like inching into a chilly pool. Only this one was covered with oil and smoking in the heat. If it reflashed they’d die screaming, clawing at their faces as the pure oxygen they were breathing ignited.

  When he let go of the ladder, he was waist-deep. He glanced back, and she saw the fear in his eyes. Somehow it gave her the courage to go down after him. Only her boots slipped on the slick treads, her hands let go and she splashed down and floundered around, almost falling. It was up to her chest. Hell, almost to her neck, when the ship rolled and a black wave came out of the dark and surged up toward her face.

  She pointed her lantern the length of the flat. Gauge faces flashed at the far end. The water sloped slowly back and forth above the counter level. She remembered how the Porn King used to sleep under it with his jacket over his head. Where was he? They should have seen his body by now, at least. Unless he was under this stuff.

  Helm started wading toward the panel. She forced her fingers to un-clamp from the handrail and waded after him. Hoping she had a good seal on the OBA mask. They’d told her never to let the canister touch oil or fuel. But it was all over the water, a thick brown viscous coat of it. With hydraulic oil and that synthetic shit she wasn’t supposed to touch and everything else mixed in, too.

  Finally she got to the console. To her left was the main engine enclosure. To her right a short ladder leading down to the generator flat. But now it was invisible under the black undulating blanket. One more level below this. Where the firemain valves were. But they were back under the main engine, and deep under water by now. How the fuck were they going to get to them?

  In the darkness she felt Helm pull her head in close to his. Like for a kiss. Only he was yelling, through the creak of the ship and the hammer of her heart, through the buzzing diaphragm: “I’m going for the firemain suction. That’s the first one we got to close.”

  She nodded, already figuring that. Once it was closed, Main Control could pressurize the loop without pumping more water into the engine room. But each time she’d looked, the water level was higher. It was already almost to where Helm had once shown her the outside water-line was.

  She shouted back, “What you want me to do?”

  “Wait here.”

  That didn’t sound too demanding. She watched as he peered down, trying to figure which way he’d go. She’d guess down the ladder to the generator flat, duck under the deck beneath the PLCC—it looked like there was a couple inches of air space yet under it—and down three more steps to the lower level. Then across to the lube oil coalescers, around them to the right, then hang a left.

  It’d take about six seconds to walk it. If it wasn’t underwater, with who knew what crap fallen down from above blocking the way. You’d be right under the big main engine bracing. The mass of the reduction gear aft of that. Nothing but solid steel bulkhead forward. And no way out except back the route you’d just come.

  Helm was pulling off his OBA. Her light flashed off the stainless steel of one of the emergency escape canisters. He was looking down into the smoothly rolling surface. Then he was gone, and she was alone in the echoing and clanging and the rush of water and the slamming of her heartbeat in her ears. She couldn’t even see his lantern. She was shaking, and not just with the cold of the sea.

  “Shit, shit, shit,” she mumbled around the mouthpiece. She tried to slow her breathing. Like Lamaze when she had Kaitlyn. In, two, three. Out, two, three, four. Her heart slowed a little and she sloshed over to the engine enclosure and knelt in the smoking fuel that covered the deck plates, trying to see past it to where he ought to be by now. But she couldn’t see anything.

  She realized she should be timing him. The little SEEDs, the emergency breathing devices didn’t hold much air. Three, at the most four breaths. Just enough to get you out of a space. She brought her wrist above the water. Hard making out the sweep hand through the eyepieces. The plastic was going foggy, as if something was eating at it. But at last she acquired it and followed it around. Once. Then again.

  She was beginning to feel frightened. More scared than she’d ever been before in her life. Except maybe when she’d gone into labor, surprised at the pain. The doctor had told her it wouldn’t hurt. Like he would know … She started to back away from the black water that nibbled at her boots as the ship rolled and things clanked above her. Heavy things, sounding like they were getting ready to come down on her head.

  A hammering rose from the darkness. It grew louder. Then faded. Till at last there was only silence again, or as close to silence as the creak and bang of a dying ship could approach.

  She passed her beam over the black, and saw no sign of Helm. No bubbles. Nothing. There wasn’t any other way out. The noise must have been his last despairing effort to escape.

  She looked back up the way they’d come, seeing that already, in the time they’d been down here, the water had risen at least another foot. The emergency lamps were fading, cherry filaments slowly being eaten by the dark. Her own beam searched panels, hydraulic lines, the blank vertical tombstone of the console. The ship was dying. And she was deep in it, buried beneath the machinery and decks that towered above.

  Her hands went to the mask. Her breath seemed to have a mind of its own, sucking in the rubber cheekpieces again and again. She couldn’t get enough air. She had to get out.

  She turned and began wading back toward the ladder. The viscid mixture tided toward her, reaching nearly to her knees.

  The
n she stopped. Stared upward into the dark. At a gleam of light far, far above.

  Somebody still had to close that valve.

  Mouth dry, mind a dreadful milling of fear, she looked back again toward the sullenly waiting water. She saw the way she had to go, like a jerky handheld camera shot from a horror movie in front of her rapidly blinking eyes. Down, and to the left, and straight, and left again. Down to the valve, under the deck plate by the bulk of the fire pump. Turn it. And then back.

  She knew the way. But she didn’t know what else was down there. What Helm had run into. That had trapped him. And killed him.

  She took another step. Then stopped again. Grabbed the mask and wrenched at it with both hands, forcing her face down into it. Sucking desperately at the smoky dregs.

  Then she turned around, and waded back to the ladder. The water came to her knees again. Then to her waist.

  She heard a gurgle as she sucked, and knew the water had reached her breathing tubes. OBAs weren’t made to be submerged. She panted rapidly. Getting all the air she could. Before there wouldn’t be any more.

  She groped in her coveralls, and her gloved fingers felt the rounded hardness of the SEED.

  UNDER the deck it was blacker than a starless night in Louisiana. She still had the heavy waterproof battle lantern in her hand. She waved it back and forth as she pushed her way under the steel deck, caught a gray smooth gleam ahead.

  Unweighted now by the heavy breathing apparatus, she kept floating upward, to bump the back of her skull into the steel above. There was only about four inches of air space between the surface and the cables and valves that hung down. She pushed away quickly, afraid of snagging her coveralls. She was floating above the lower-level walkway. She pulled herself toward the engine. She’d left the OBA hanging back on the handrail. She’d better not get turned around. No matter how dark it was, or how confusing. This was for real, and nobody could help her if she fucked up.

  Her kicking steel-toes slammed into rounded metal domes. The coa-lescers, with only a narrow air space above them. A tide of fuel-covered water slid out of the darkness and covered her face. She clawed oil out of her eyes as they started to burn. She strained to lift her head but hit steel again. No room to go over the coalescers. If she got snagged she’d panic, she was barely hanging on as it was. The fuel was really starting to hurt even with her eyes squeezed shut. So she dog-paddled to the right, and twisted around the coalescers and her outstretched fingers brushed the rough steel webbing that held up the main engine.

  She was under it now. Her face was crammed right up against its foundations. Her searching fingertips felt the fire-pump manifold where it rose out of the water. She felt the sea currenting up around her kicking legs. This was where it was coming in, right below her. She opened her eyes a second, moaning with the pain, and saw yellow at the level of her face. She scissored her lantern between her legs, grabbed the handwheel with both hands, and cranked around on it.

  It didn’t move. She tried again, but couldn’t brace herself. All she was doing was twisting her own floating body instead of turning the wheel.

  No, she thought. It’s not working. And she only had a couple of breaths left. Fuel was leaking around her clamped teeth, a sickening nauseating taste. She yanked angrily at the wheel but anger didn’t work either. It just wasn’t gonna turn, that was all.

  Okay, but this wasn’t the only valve … and the yellow one wasn’t the most important one, either. The red one, on the sea chest, was the one that really absolutely had to be closed. That was where the sea was coming in from. The water she felt cold under her legs, reaching up under her coveralls. That valve was below her. Under the water. Under the deckplate. Open to the sea.

  She was thinking about that when the air stopped. All at once. She’d figured on getting some kind of warning, but there wasn’t any. Just suddenly … no more. She sucked so hard pain knifed her chest, and got maybe a quarter lungful.

  So that was that. She opened her teeth and let it slip out. Time to go back and try to find her OBA, before the Halon got to her. She just might make it.

  But then the ship’d go down.

  Her ship. That she was supposed to be down here saving. Her. Cobie Kasson.

  So that instead of going back, knowing that doing this she might not make it back, she duck-dived under the water and started pulling herself down.

  Into black black darkness. No, there was a glow… her lantern, where it’d fallen from between her knees when she was wrestling with the firemain valve. It lay on the deck plates. Yellow light parabolaed the finned cylinder of the fire pump. She pulled herself down to it and got her hand on the fire pump and pulled herself the rest of the way down.

  She couldn’t see. Her eyes were going. But she knew where that deck plate was. Right at the base of the fire pump. Which she had her right hand tight on. She groped out with her left and felt over the diamond patterns in the metal till her fingers hooked in the lift hole. The plate came up slow-motion under water, and she pushed it away to clang somewhere off in the dark, and reached down till she felt the smooth cold rim of the handwheel.

  She was out of air. Time to go up. But there was no air up there to breathe. And she had her hands on the wheel now. So she drew her knees up under her and bent over the valve and said in her mind Left to loose, right to tight, and put her shoulders into it hard and broke it free. Shifted her grip and got it over another quarter turn and then another. Closing it. Closing off the ruthless inflooding sea. Thinking: Kait-lyn. Remember me. Your mom did what she had to do.

  Stars shooting away from the edge of her vision. She couldn’t see anything, only those stars. But she kept turning the wheel, until all her strength would turn it no more.

  34

  DAN was still at the damage control board hours later, when word came up at last that flooding was under control in Main One. The water level was dropping around the submersible pumps that had been lowered down the escape scuttle.

  “What about the people?” he asked harshly.

  “Nothing yet, sir. We searched down to the internal waterline.” Another voice on the far end of the line; then the first one, the repair party talker, came back on. “Sir, just got the word we have firemain pressure back. Rigging the portable eductors.”

  “Dewater fast as you can. Check for any air pockets.” But he knew as he took the phones off there probably wouldn’t be any.

  He slumped, rubbing his eyes with utter weariness and near despair even though that last news was good. They’d fought flooding and fire all this time and for many hours it had looked like they’d lose. If any of the bulkheads had ruptured, it would have been over. With Main One starting to dewater maybe they’d turned the corner at last. But he couldn’t stop thinking of the helo crew, the Gold Team, the guys who’d been topside when the blast hit. The investigators and repair party people he’d sent down into the spaces, who’d never made it back up.

  Porter came off the phones. “Starting from forward going aft: Flooding in Main One under control, commencing dewater. Dewatering complete in Aux One and Two, starting cleanup. Main Two, water cleared, smoke cleared. Shaft alley, three feet of water left, but lube oil restored to main shaft bearings. Port shaft seal checked and cleared for one-third power. Permission to light off main propulsion engines one-alfa and one-bravo. Permission to restart gas turbine generator number two.”

  “Granted.”

  “And test the engines?”

  “Check with Commander Hotchkiss first, in Combat. Then come ahead slow with the port shaft and check the stern tube seal for leaks.”

  She passed that word and he watched her profile for a few seconds. Then called Combat himself.

  “XO here. Are we gonna float, sir?”

  “I think so. So far anyway. Anything yet from Bill Brinegar?”

  “We just got him. Get this: on a secure compartmented-intelligence net. The Evinrude guys tinkered it up and got a message out. I passed our position. He was already on his way; his sonar
guys reported the explosion and he wondered why we dropped off the net and didn’t answer his calls. He passed our status to Sixth Fleet. Orders are to head for Crete if we can, Port Said if we can’t.”

  “Copy that.”

  “The chief corpsman says you have to get off your feet and on your back. Are you gonna do that? Or do I have to relieve you of command?”

  “Lin says we might have steerageway in a couple of minutes. I’m going to tell after steering to put us into the wind and start the washdown system, start decontaminating from the bullnose aft. Pass that to Bill. When he gets here, we’re gonna want to borrow his decon guys, damage control teams, and some of his hose and patching kits. We’ll have to use his boats, ours are gone.”

  He signed off and went over to the propulsion control panel and stood watching as the engineers started the main propulsion engines. One-bravo lit off. One-alfa wouldn’t start. But even one engine would give them steerageway and they already had enough generators to run the vital load. When the second engine lit off, he told them good job. Then undogged the door and went forward.

  But after a few steps he had to stop. His neck felt warm. The tingling in his legs was worse. He had to lie down. Sick bay. No. His at-sea cabin. Just a couple of ladders.

  He leaned against a fire station, alone in the passageway, and closed his eyes.

  It had been very close. A lot of his people had died, been hurt, taken doses of radiation. But they’d come through. The guys, the girls, every one of them. He was so fucking proud of them. It looked like they’d saved her.

  And having that bomb go off out here at sea, not where it had been intended, had probably saved a lot of other lives.