Waves of Fate | Book 1 | First Fate
Page 1
First Fate
Book One in the Waves of Fate Series
Kendall Talbot
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Books by Kendall Talbot
About the Author
Dear reader, the author has done extensive research regarding the consequences of an electromagnetic pulse, (EMP) however, for the sake of a great story, she has also had a little fun with her creative license. Kendall hopes you love First Fate.
Kendall loves to chat with her readers. You can contact her at www.kendalltalbot.com
Edited by Lauren Clark at Creating Ink.
Proofread by Lisa Edward.
Cover design by Christian Bentulan.
Chapter One
Gunner McCrae scowled at the satellite image of the category-three storm cell that’d been chasing them since Rose of the Sea left Hawaii yesterday morning. If the hurricane continued to intensify like it was, the Captain would need to rethink the cruise ship’s course ASAP.
Without warning, his monitor died. As did the nav system. And the radar. “What the hell?” Gunner jolted back, scanning the bridge. Every single screen was blank. The lights were also out.
The Captain drove his hands through his thick hair. “Shit!”
Captain Nelson rarely swore. Never in front of women.
Gunner spun to his Captain, seeking clarification. Nelson’s eyes were wide, darting from one screen to the next, his thick brows drilled together. “Sir?”
“The whole bridge is down.” The Captain’s gaze shot along blank consoles. “Everything’s dead.” He spoke with his usual composure. But his expression was that of trapped horror. “We’re dead in the water!”
“What the hell?” Gunner held the utmost respect for Captain Nelson. He was the father he’d never had. A pillar of strength. A man in control.
He didn’t look it now. For the first time since Gunner had known him, Nelson was lacking in action. Gunner stood and strode alongside the center console, jabbing buttons, desperate for a flicker of life. Nothing. “But how?” Not even the indicator lights flared.
First Officer Cameron Sykes slapped the Electronic Chart Display joystick and shook his head. “I got nothing.”
“No. No. No!” Nelson drove his hands through his hair again. “This can’t be happening.” When his eyes darted from Gunner to the dead equipment and back again, Gunner’s neck hairs shot to attention. Nelson’s expression was loaded with fear.
Second Officer Pauline Gennaro spun to the Captain, yanking off her headset. “Comms are down. I can’t even get the engine room online.”
“It’s an electromagnetic pulse.” Nelson’s voice quivered, lacerated with anguish. “An EMP. It has to be.”
“All the security monitors are down too.” Deck Cadet Reynolds pushed back on his chair.
Sweat beaded Safety Officer Robert Hastings’ forehead as he stared at the closed-circuit televisions. The monitors should display key aspects of the ship in rotation, providing multiple visuals of each deck. Every one of them was blank.
Even the exit sign over the door was out.
Darkness seeped into the bridge. It wasn’t designed for blackouts. Day or night, Gunner could usually see every inch of the room. The banks of computers should be lit up like the party deck at the rear of the ship. But with the sun hanging low on the western horizon, Gunner could barely see the length of the bridge. He turned to Nelson. The Captain’s eyes were wide, his lips pale. “Are you sure it’s an EMP, sir? It could be—”
“Look around.” Nelson barked. He smacked his lips together as if wrestling with his words, or unable to voice what he needed to say. “The electronics are dead.” His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down and he cleared his throat. “Not just the computers. Satnav. Lights. Comms.” He sucked in a shaky breath. “They’re all on different circuits, yet they all died in the same instant. If it was just one, maybe even two circuits, we could attribute it to mechanical or system failure. But the whole bridge . . .” Shaking his head, he glanced at his wrist. “Even my watch is dead. Yours?”
Gunner stared at the watch his wife had given him last month for their tenth wedding anniversary. The screen was blank. He blinked at it. Tapped the glass. Nothing. The hairs on his arms bristled, adding to the dread crawling up his back.
“It was an EMP. And it’s happened exactly as they said it would when I was back in the navy. Everything fried in an instant.” Nelson leaned his palms on the blank GPS console. He huffed out a breath. “It’s the only explanation.”
Scraping his thoughts together, Gunner glared at Nelson. The air in the bridge seemed to crackle, loaded with static. “But how can that be? The hull’s solid metal. We’re protected.”
“Below decks maybe. But up here on the bridge . . .” Glancing to his left, Nelson’s eyes bulged. “And look.” He pointed at the exit. “The door was open . . .”
Sheryl, the middle-aged woman who’d been cleaning Rose of the Sea’s bridge since its maiden voyage twenty-five years ago, was humming to herself and gliding a squeegee over the glass like it was the most important job on the cruise ship. The squeak of rubber was like nails scraping up Gunner’s back.
Nelson’s face washed with a gray tinge. He slowly shook his head. “We can’t even sound an alarm.” He jabbed the ship’s horn button. The blast that usually blared from the loudspeakers could wake an entire island. Not this time. “If . . .” Nelson sucked a breath through clenched teeth. “If I’m right, the whole world is—” He clutched his chest. His eyes flared.
“Sir!” Gunner ran to his side.
Nelson didn’t just fall. He keeled sideways, smacked his head on a chair and hit the floor without so much as a hand to halt his impact.
“Sir! Captain!” Gunner dropped to his knees and turned Nelson over. His blue eyes were open. His mouth too. His protruding tongue was motionless.
Gunner pressed his finger to the clammy skin beneath Nelson’s neck, praying for a pulse . . . nothing.
“Shit! Someone get the doctor.” Gunner tilted the Captain’s head back, opening his airway, but the crew failed to move. “Now!” He hadn’t meant to yell, but the fury behind it must’ve shocked Miguel into action, because the ship’s quartermaster gasped and raced out of the bridge like he’d been torpedoed from the room.
Gunner began compressions, pushing with all his weight behind his overlapping hands. “One, two, three.” He’d only ever performed CPR on medical dummies. They’d never felt like this. This was too confronting. Too real. The Captain was a friend. They’d done their rookie cruise together nineteen years
ago and they’d kept in touch ever since.
“Is he breathing?” Without pausing his compressions, Gunner stared at the Captain’s lips, expecting them to move. They didn’t. “Someone check. Quick. Thirteen. Fourteen. Fifteen.”
Third Officer Jae-Ellen Rochford fell to her knees and leaned her ear to the Captain’s lips. Easing back, she shook her head. Tears flooded her eyes.
Twenty-four. Twenty-five.
The bridge became silent—too silent. Like a funeral parlor. Gunner jolted. Something else had stopped.
The engines.
This can’t be happening!
Gunner paused compressions and Jae-Ellen gave two breaths into the captain’s mouth. The three remaining staff stared at him, their eyes wide, their mouths open. Shock or dismay or disbelief had them rooted to the floor.
But there was something else.
Gunner’s heart thudded against his ribs. Realization slammed into him like a wrecking ball. With the Captain out of action, he was in charge of the ship.
Him . . . Gunner McCrae . . . Captain.
One. Two. Three.
He wasn’t prepared. Far from it. This was his maiden voyage on Rose of the Sea.
I’ve only just been promoted to Staff Captain, for Christ’s sake.
He worked damn hard. But it wasn’t to rise up the ranks.
No. He worked hard to keep his mind off his guilt.
Sixteen. Seventeen.
He was not worthy of this captaincy. Of any captaincy.
It should be someone else. Someone smarter. Braver. Someone more trustworthy.
It should be Captain Nelson.
“Check again,” he barked at Jae-Ellen.
She pushed her fingers under Nelson’s chin and shook her head. “No, sir. Still no pulse.”
“Where the hell’s the doctor?”
“I’ll go check.” Safety Officer Hastings bolted past Sheryl who stood with her squeegee in one hand, her other hand over her mouth and her bulging eyes glued to Captain Nelson.
A vise clamped around Gunner’s chest at what he saw over her shoulder. The sun was sinking. If an EMP strike had fried every electrical component on the ship, in less than one hour, they’d be in a total blackout.
Twenty-four. Twenty-five.
“Pauline, get the flashlights ready,” he ordered.
She spun on her heel and raced to the back of the bridge. Sykes returned his attention to the computers. Reynolds did too.
Jae-Ellen gave Nelson two more breaths and as Gunner restarted compressions, he glanced at the consoles. Every one of them was blank, as if a giant harpoon had been shot through the entire bank of computers, obliterating their central cores. Sykes shifted from one to the next, flicking switches, bashing the keyboards. The Global Maritime Distress and Safety System was dead. All the navigational instruments were dead. Even the switchboard was dead.
They were at the mercy of the ocean.
Sykes grunted, snapped up the binoculars and scanned the darkening sea.
Jae-Ellen checked the Captain’s pulse again and shook her head.
“Come on, Stewart.” Gunner spoke through clenched teeth. “Don’t do this. Hang in there. We need you. I need you.”
“Shit! Sir, the flashlights are dead.” Pauline banged one on a table. “Every one of them.” Shaking her head, she tossed it aside and grabbed another.
Pressing harder, Gunner restarted his compression count. “One. Two. Three.” But with each push on the Captain’s lifeless body, his brain shunted between the fact that he was actually trying to keep the Captain, his good friend, alive, and critical aspects of his years of disaster-management training.
Captain Nelson wasn’t the only one who needed help. There were 922 passengers and 215 crew members aboard Rose of the Sea. His first responsibility was to the passengers, then the crew. Then himself.
He returned his gaze to Stewart. Twenty-one. Twenty-two. His unblinking eyes confirmed he was dead. Without the Captain, they were in trouble.
Without engines and satnav and depth gauges and collision warnings, they could hit a reef and there was absolutely nothing they could do about it. They weren’t just in trouble; this was a critical emergency.
But he had no means to communicate with the passengers or crew, let alone the mainland.
He couldn’t even contact his wife and daughter.
Twenty-four. Twenty-five. Twenty-six.
Acid churned in his gut as he pictured Adelle and his beautiful seven-year-old, Bella. Gunner’s home in the seaside town of Rugged Shores was wedged between Los Angeles and Santa Barbara. If this EMP strike was an act of terrorism, then either of those major cities could’ve been prime maximum-casualty targets. His throat was bone dry. His heart banged in his chest.
Then again, an EMP detonation anywhere over the United States would decimate the entire country.
Are Adelle and Bella safe?
Are they together?
And my mother . . . is she okay?
Each thought sliced him like a switchblade, inflicting another slash of dread.
He had no answers. Based on the blank equipment around him, it would be a very long time before he did.
A sense of uselessness oozed into his brain like black ink, staining his sanity. Sweat dribbled down his back and without air-con, it was going to get hotter.
He paused for Jae-Ellen’s breaths and continued again.
The eyes of the crew were heat-seeking missiles, burning into him. Every person aboard Rose of the Sea was counting on him to keep them safe. They were relying on him to know what the hell he was doing. In the space of a heartbeat, his easy cruising life, where he hid his disgrace with a good day’s work and fake laughter, had become a violent tempest with the potential to kill every soul on board. He needed to keep up his ruse, for everyone’s sake.
For a long, agonizing moment, he was crippled with indecision.
A painful pulse thumped behind his eyes.
A high-pitched squeal resonated in his ears.
The compressions he was performing on Captain Nelson’s lifeless body were his only constant. He’d lost count. He’d lost track of time. The crew glared at him, placing him on a stage with a million-watt light, demanding he perform. That was what he’d been doing since he was thirteen—performing. Pretending. Acting like he was one of the good guys.
“Sir? What should we do?”
The fear lacing Jae-Ellen’s words was the prick he needed to burst his panic bubble. It was time to get his A-game on. “Pauline, your turn on CPR.”
“Yes, sir.” Pauline pulled back her dark hair, tugged a band from her wrist to secure it, then fell to her knees at Captain Nelson’s chest. Without missing a beat, Gunner removed his hands and Pauline slotted hers into position to start compressions. “One. Two. Three.”
Gunner pushed up from his knees and turned to the First Officer. “Officer Sykes.”
Sykes stepped his polished boots forward. “Yes, Captain.”
Gunner did a double take. A lump of anxiety dropped in his stomach like a released anchor. He was the Captain of Rose of the Sea. A title he was not worthy of receiving. But every soul on board needed him to act like one, so that was exactly what he had to do. “Record in the logbook our last known location, heading and speed before we lost power. Then get those binoculars going. We’re blind out here without sonar. Every five minutes, send out a mayday call. I know it’s not working, but you never know. Hopefully someone will hear it.”
“Yes, sir.” Sykes saluted and shifted away.
“Officer Reynolds.”
The deck cadet jumped at his name and shuffled forward. “Sir?”
“Grab one of those two-ways.” He eyeballed the row of handsets lined up on the shelf. “Run down to the engine room. I need a full status of what’s going on down there.”
“Yes, sir.” As Reynolds picked out a two-way, Gunner stared at the Captain’s unblinking eyes. What would Nelson have done next if their situations were switched?
&n
bsp; “Ummm, Captain?” Reynolds’ words wobbled off his tongue. “Sir, these are all dead, sir.”
Gunner blinked at Reynolds, then at the dozen two-way radios lined up on the rack. Of course they weren’t working. One electromagnetic pulse had reduced every one of them to nothing but paperweights. “Shit.” The bolt of reality stung like a Band-Aid being ripped from an open wound. He turned his attention back to Nelson. “Any pulse?”
Jae-Ellen placed her fingers on the Captain’s neck. “No, sir.”
Gunner’s brain was under attack as he tried to predict possible scenarios.
Drifting at sea without engines.
Unable to contact home.
None were good.
He stared at Nelson’s unblinking eyes and his mind slammed to the last time he’d seen eyes like that. It’d been twenty-five years ago. He’d just turned thirteen, yet he could still recall his relief at witnessing the life slip out of those frosty blue irises.
This time was the exact opposite. Seeing Stewart’s lifeless body had a lump swelling in Gunner’s throat.
“Mayday. Mayday. Mayday. This is First Officer Cameron Sykes of Rose of the Sea. Mayday. Mayday. Mayday. This is First Officer Cameron Sykes of Rose of the Sea. We are seeking immediate help.”
Sykes’ mayday call lobbed another distressing thought grenade into Gunner’s brain. It was impossible to know who was listening. Pirates were real. And they would love nothing more than to attack a crippled ship. Especially a cruise ship. Other than a few handguns, they had no way to protect themselves. He made a mental note to ensure the guns in the safe were loaded and ready. The safe! Everything inside it would’ve been protected from an EMP.