"You may indeed," Kogersborg said, somewhat disturbed at the abrupt change of subject. "We will subtransit the ice cap and be in Pacific waters before you sit down for the elegant meal the captain has planned for you this evening."
"The captain, she spends long periods alone?" Virginia asked.
"She has many duties that keep her away from the crew for long hours; research, mostly, but we understand what kind of stress she is under." He finally looked up at the two Event people. "All this death of what she, and we, love… well, she has placed this all upon her shoulders, and we are only too—"
"Lieutenant Kogersborg, First Officer Samuels has the conn. You are relieved."
They turned to see a freshly showered and shaved Samuels as he stepped up to the navigation console.
"Aye, I have been properly relieved. Commander Samuels has the conn," Kogersborg called to his chief of the boat, and then turned and bowed to Virginia and Niles. "It was nice sharing time with you, and I hope I answered all your questions. Good afternoon."
"Seems like a bright young man," Niles said as James Samuels took over the conn.
"Yes, he is one of our brightest." He looked at Niles. "His parents were missionaries in Somalia; they disappeared there after the UN troop pullout in nineteen ninety-three. The captain and Dr. Trevor discovered him as we have many of our midshipmen: destitute and alone. The young man was feeding himself on dried rice in the streets of Mogadishu when we found him while on a humanitarian mission to that country."
"It seems Captain Heirthall, and indeed the entire crew, is quite accomplished in acts of humanitarianism," Niles said, again watching closely for the officer's reaction.
Samuels glanced up from his course calculations and looked at Niles.
"Doctor, our captain wears many hats. She can be the most humane person in the world, but her wrath can be multiplied many fold if she is angered. Captain Heirthall did not want to take the course of action she has taken, but she has been angered most recently by the loss of sea life in the Mediterranean, and her family has been betrayed countless times in the past two hundred years."
"Two hundred years? May I ask—"
"Doctors, if you will excuse me, our watch change is very complicated and time consuming, and we are a bit behind schedule. I must apologize. May we take this up at dinner?"
"You said loss of life in the Med. You mean human life, of course?" Virginia asked.
The commander became silent for a brief moment. "Again, may we take this up at a later time, please?" he said, instead of answering her question.
"Yes, of course," Niles said as he took Virginia by the arm.
As they stepped from the control center into the companionway, Niles looked at Virginia.
"Something is eating at that man; I can't figure him at all. And what in the hell is with those creepy midshipmen? Nice and charming one minute—"
"Niles, I have to tell you something, I should have told you immediately after lunch when I saw who we were dealing with. I was hoping I was wrong, but…" Virginia whispered, looking pale and nervous.
"What is it?"
"It's Heirthall. I was—"
"Well, well, we were just looking for you two. I knew these bastards wouldn't let us into the weapons room — free rein of the boat, my ass," Lee said as he and Alice stepped through hatchway and into the companionway.
Virginia looked from Niles to Alice, then smiled. It was a weak smile and lacked sincerity, and then she turned back to Compton, shook her head, and mouthed, Later.
* * *
Samuels observed the watch change from the navigation console through the holographic image of Leviathan. The second command watch took their seats after the older crewmen exchanged watch changes, course adjustments, and joked with one another. The midshipmen, instead of their usual teenage talk, smiles, and warnings of training material ahead for them during shift change, nodded at one another and then quietly took up station next to their older trainers. He saw Yeoman Alvera look his way and smile — the same smile he had seen a thousand times before, only this time she held the humorless smile a bit longer, and he had to admit it to himself, he didn't like it at all.
Commander Samuels reached under the console, brought the phone to his ear, and punched in the captain's cabin number to report the change of watch.
"Yes," a male voice answered.
"Dr. Trevor, is something wrong? Where is the captain?"
"She's lying down. I've had to medicate her — her headache became much worse in the past hour, and I was just about to leave. Shall I wake her anyway, Commander?"
"Negative, Doctor. Thank you."
"Then I shall see you at the function this evening?"
Samuels didn't answer the inquiry as he laid the phone down on the console and stared through the hologram at nothing.
* * *
An hour later, Sarah stepped into the extreme forward section of Leviathan, followed by Farbeaux. After the many crowded sections they had passed through, the remoteness and silence of the bow was so extreme it was like stepping into a soundproofed room.
"My God," Sarah said as she lifted her chin and followed the massive beams to their height of a hundred feet above their heads. There were partitions in front that wrapped around the entire compartment. They continued to the ceiling and then to the midpoint toward the compartment's end. The effect was like a giant, retractable clamshell aircraft hangar. There were twenty chandeliers lining the ceiling in two rows. They looked almost Art Deco in their design, and were at present dimmed to a comfortable setting.
"I must say, when this woman builds something, she builds to impress," the colonel said, as he too craned his neck to see the expanse of the compartment.
Placed on the impressively crafted teak deck was an old-fashioned ship's wheel that faced the extreme bow. Placed alongside it was a gold-plated ship's enunciator. The white leaded glass was illuminated, and was actually set at all ahead. Sarah walked over and looked at the gold inscription on the ship's wheel.
" 'Leviathan—1858,'" Sarah said aloud. " 'For the sake of the world.' This is the original ship's wheel from the very first Leviathan."
She placed her hand on the wheel and looked around her at the richly upholstered couches facing the outer hull of Leviathan. There was a large conference table at the center, a larger area for serving meals, and spotlighting that highlighted the many aquariums that wrapped around the interior from midhull level to the floor.
"You remind me of my wife. She was always awed by what she saw around her. The human race, the past of the world, all made her feel it was her duty to understand it. I envy you your naivete, young Sarah."
She turned, looked at Farbeaux, and slightly tilted her head.
"Of all the things Danielle was, Colonel, naive she wasn't." Sarah saw the momentary look of hurt in Henri's features. "I'm sorry, I know you loved your wife. It seems the more we love, the more fate is destined to work against us. However, since the reason you came to the Event Complex was for murder, I can find little sympathy for you at the moment."
They were interrupted when the large double hatch opened and Virginia, Niles, Alice, and Lee stepped through. Sarah and Farbeaux watched them file inside and look around, equally as impressed with the domed room as they had been.
"Quite a place, huh?" Sarah said.
The lights suddenly dimmed to near blackness and the partitions lining the hull and at the extreme bow started to part and slide into each other, just like the salon, only on a much larger engineering scale. The action was mimicked on the seaward side. It was a double-hulled protection screen.
As they watched, the deep blue sea opened up before them, in front and over their heads, since the glass covered not only the front, but a hundred feet of upper deck. The expansive vista of Arctic Ocean stretched out before them, and the brightest lighting any of them had ever seen illuminated the depths. They could even see the massive conning tower high above them when they looked aft and out of the windows at the
top.
"It's so beautiful… I… I…"
Lee patted and then squeezed Sarah on the shoulder as she hung on to the ship's wheel and watched the sea erupt before the passage of Leviathan. The glass nose was sectioned by forty-foot areas of acrylic, separated by composite beams that the glass fit into. The partitions that slid away to reveal the depths had all been packed neatly into the section beams. Their view was unobstructed as far as the eye could see.
"The engineering is beyond that of anything naval architecture has achieved thus far. It has opened a completely new world. It would be criminal not to come to some accommodation," Niles said aloud as he watched the deep blue sea beyond the glass.
"If it were as simple as that, Niles, I would agree," Lee stated flatly and without emotion. "However, we are not seeing something here. There is a touch of desperation beyond the captain's claim of pollution and the degradation of the ecosystem."
"I believe her, and I believe she thinks this is our only course." Virginia placed her hand against the cold glass, just as the captain had done earlier. She felt that coldness and let it travel up her arm. "No, in her opinion, there can be no other choice in this matter. She wants the unconditional surrender of the seas, and I don't believe she'll settle for anything less."
The others looked at Virginia in mild surprise. She had been so silent since their abduction she had begun to worry them.
"Ginny developed an environmental conscience rather late in her academic life."
Everyone except for Virginia Pollock turned and looked up toward the back of the compartment. On a ten-foot-wide railed overhang there was a large chair. The captain of Leviathan sat and watched the sea shrouded in darkness. Heirthall slowly stood and looked out over the wooden deck sixty feet below.
"Ginny?" Niles asked, looking from the captain to Virginia, who had merely lowered her head and placed it against the cold glass.
"Virginia always seemed so formal — so at MIT I called her Ginny. We were what they called child prodigies. She was always into books and study, but never noticed the world around her. However, she was always preaching God and country, but never allowed a thought to what her country was doing to the world's environment — indeed, God's environment."
"You two know each other?" Sarah asked before Niles could.
"You Americans are surprisingly entertaining," Farbeaux said as he walked over and started looking for the bar he knew must be in the compartment somewhere.
"We are… or I should say, at one time, the best of friends," Heirthall said from her high vantage point.
"Tell me you're not the saboteur?" Compton said, taking a step toward the glass.
Virginia turned, looking shocked and hurt.
"What?"
"You didn't allow this woman to attack the vaults and then the complex itself, killing our people?" Niles asked, even shocking the others.
"Of course I didn't. Just because I knew her many years ago, that makes me a traitor?" Virginia said as she left the window and advanced on the director.
"Please, no one here is a traitor to any cause." The captain turned away from the upper railing and started making her way down a set of winding stairs, holding the rail and looking at the group as she did. "Ginny could no more betray her country" — she paused and looked at Niles—"than she could her friends. No, the only thing she was ever good at was being loyal, even to a fault."
Virginia stopped and then sat hard into a chair at the large table.
"No, Doctor, she's not the person you are seeking, but she was a name to throw your security teams off the trail, so to speak," she said with a trace of a smile.
Niles nodded at Sarah, then walked over to Virginia and sat next to her.
"Why didn't you tell me?" he asked.
Virginia looked up and saw her face in Niles's glasses. She did not like her reflection.
"I was praying that it wasn't her." Virginia looked from the director to the captain. "Because I was frightened, scared to death. Niles — she's not bluffing, and yes, Senator Lee, you're right, she is quite insane, but not in the way you may think."
Heirthall turned, and none of them cared for her look. She was looking straight at them. Then she suddenly walked at a brisk pace toward the conference table.
"Insane? Let me show you the true meaning of insane." She hit a switch embedded in the table. "Commander Samuels, alter course to the coordinates we discussed earlier, please."
"Captain, we are beyond the point of center ice. If we alter course right now we—"
"Alter course to the impacted zone immediately," she ordered angrily into the small microphone in the table. "Bring her shallow, Commander. We have to show our guests the consequences of human folly," she said, slowly but firmly placing her hand down on the intercom, not waiting for the first officer's reply. She placed both hands on the table, looked straight ahead, and then suddenly rubbed her temples and visibly relaxed.
"Aye, Captain, altering course to three-five-seven."
Alice leaned into Lee and nudged him. "Her eyes, Garrison."
Lee looked and saw Alice's meaning. The captain's eyes were dilated almost to the point of becoming totally blue.
Alice looked nervously at Lee, and even Farbeaux had stopped searching for the bar long enough to show concern on his face when he saw the intense way Heirthall was acting.
Alexandria lowered her head and then sat in the center chair of the large conference table. She brushed back a strand of long black hair that had fallen loose from her tightly woven braid. She swallowed and then looked up.
"You have my apologies. Some words…. well… they are made to hurt. Insanity is such a word. What is the difference between this awful thing and passion? A fine line can be affixed in between the two and make them unrecognizable as opposites."
"Alex, your actions explain quite adequately your state of mind. What other conclusions can people draw from the things that you have done? Yes, as a species we are self-destructive, and yes, our country is one of the worst violators, but we need time, Alex," Virginia said.
The captain suddenly stood, walked over to Virginia, and placed a hand on her cheek. In the spotlights surrounding the room, the raven-haired woman was indeed beautiful. She smiled down at her old friend.
"Time has expired, Ginny." Their eyes locked, and Virginia saw something the others did not in those dilated blue eyes: a call for help. Heirthall was almost two people, gentle one minute, extremely violent the next.
Compton and Farbeaux felt the angle of the deck change before the others. Leviathan was coming shallow.
Virginia felt Alexandria's hand slide from her face as she walked toward the large viewing glass once more.
"My great-great-grandfather once trusted men. Octavian Heirthall committed evil acts to ensure the United States remained the light of the world, for in his opinion, they could do such magnificent things — so young, so naive, but they saw a path and they took it. The reward for his duty to his adoptive country?" she asked as she turned on them. "His friend assassinated, his family murdered before his very eyes, and his only remaining daughter, Olivia, hunted like a criminal for the rest of her life."
"We don't know—"
"I do not expect you to know anything, Dr. Compton. I am explaining why trust is no longer an option with my family. The test has been before you since the first particles of contamination flowed from the rivers and into the sea, when the first coal-fired factories started spewing their filth all over the globe. The test has been failed by the species, thus you have forfeited certain privileges, one being the right to transit the seas for profit." She held up a hand as she looked up and saw the first officer step out onto the balcony above and nod his head. "And now I invite you to see firsthand the effects of the world's murderous folly against nature." She turned and gestured out the window.
As they watched, there was nothing. Then a very loud bang sounded against the outer hull of Leviathan and echoed throughput the giant vessel. The collision alarms sounded
all around them as Niles and the others went to the glass and started looking around.
"All hands, rig for multiple collisions," a voice said over the loud speaker.
"Oh, God, hang on," Niles said as he grabbed the rail in front of him.
Outside the glass, a quarter-mile-wide piece of ice cascaded down into the sea from the ice cap above. The jagged edge bounced crazily off the observation glass and then hit the bow before being tossed back along the hull and out of the way. Another struck and then another. Many hit the water after calving from the bottom of the pack, then rose back up because of their buoyancy. Still, giant shards of ice were being sheared off the bottom side of the polar ice cap. From above the surface, the larger pieces let loose with a loud roar as they split and fell through the thin pack ice and down into the depths.
Leviathan pushed and maneuvered its way through the minefield of ice. The glass withstood the pounding, but was in danger of being pushed in by mountain-sized pieces of frozen water.
"Captain, we are sustaining minor damage. We have leaks in engineering and the forward weapons room. Recommend we dive."
"The polar ice cap is melting above us. It is dying from a global phenomenon many politicians have said is only a cyclical happening. Global warming cannot be stopped, possibly not in our lifetime — that is not an opinion, but fact. The temperature in the past ten years has risen by six degrees."
"Science agrees that the outer edges of the cap are indeed melting, but—" Virginia started to say.
"We are under the direct center of the North Pole. At the rate of the meltdown, in ten years there will be no ice at the top of the world," she answered calmly and matter-of-factly. "Officer of the deck, resume previous course and speed, please. Take Leviathan to two thousand feet minimum depth. Secure the collision alarms and send a damage report to my cabin."
"Aye, Captain, resuming previous course and speed."
Heirthall clicked off the intercom and looked up as the bow of Leviathan dipped sharply, making them all grab hold of the table for support.
"There are far more disturbing things you will see before your time is up on Leviathan. Please, observe, and I will be happy to explain the depths of the oceans' despair. For now, I must leave you," she said, closing her eyes against the pain they all saw on her features. "I will see you at dinner." She looked up at them and tried her best to smile, but failed miserably.
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