Sakira

by Robert blanton

  “There is a slight current that goes ten degrees off the port bow,” ADI replied.

  “Okay, we wash her from stern to bow,” Blake said. “Then we’ll start pushing foam into her to lighten her up. The foam will also add some structural support as we go and plug any holes. Of course, with her full of foam, the holes won’t matter much.”

  “Uh, not to be indelicate,” Liz said, “but will there be bodies or skeletons?”

  “She was carrying almost one thousand passengers,” Marc said. “But I would have expected an all-hands abandon ship announcement when she started to go down. And then just flotation would have pushed many of them out of her. We’ll have to be prepared to deal with them. The minister and I agreed we would leave them in situ.”

  “Alright, once she starts to float a bit, we can try to straighten her up and balance her,” Blake continued. “That will probably be the most dangerous part, but with the LX9, we can probably do it with acceptable risk.”

  “Anything else we need to see before we start?” Marc asked. “Did everyone sleep okay last night?” The Mea Huli had dropped them off south of the marina, and the LX9 had taken ten hours to get them to the Chagas.

  “I’m good,” Blake said.

  “Let’s review the plan before we head out,” Marc said. “We’ve got limited communication when we’re out there. By touching helmets, we can text each other via the comms, but otherwise, it’s all hand signals.”

  “I’ll clamp myself to the bulkhead,” Kal said. “Then I’ll feed the hose out to you guys. I’m not going to be much good for stretching it across. But once it’s there, I can handle the nozzle just fine.”

  “How heavy are the hoses going to be?” Liz asked.

  “We’re washing the ship for now. So, we’ll be using the small line. It’ll be filled with water, so it’s going to be just slightly heavier than neutral. Same for the big line when we run it. But once we start pumping foam, the small line will be buoyant, so you’ll need to tie it to the big line. It balances out and makes the pair neutral.”

  “We should lay the small line first. Then, while two of us are washing the silt away, the other two can run the big line,” Blake said. “Catie, you can feed it to me. That way you’ll be on board, and Marc and Kal can start washing.”

  “Sounds good,” Kal said. “Let’s gear up.”

  Catie had set the LX9 down at the halfway point along the length of the Chagas. She’d given them another 10 meters between the LX9 and the Chagas for maneuvering and safety. They would run the line to the Chagas’s stern then start washing the silt away. They needed 30 meters of hose so they could reach every part of the Chagas. It only took them one hour before Marc and Kal were washing the silt away. Blake, Catie, and Liz took another hour to get the big hose run and strapped to the smaller hose. Blake strategically located weights at each coupling in the hose.

  By the time the first four-hour shift was over, everyone was tired. That is, everyone except Catie.

  “Boring,” Catie said after they all cycled into the main cabin.

  “Hey, I’m happy to let you take some of my onsite time,” Liz said. “I’m exhausted.”

  “Me too,” Kal said. “It’s a lot more work lugging that hose around than I thought it would be.”

  “And we’ve barely gotten started,” Blake said. “But I don’t think we need four of us on the hose at one time. Two managing the hose, one handling the nozzle seems about right. We can just cycle through the team, one hour on the nozzle, then you come back to the LX9 for a rest, and the next person cycles in. That means you get two-hours of rest and three-hours on the hose.”

  “I don’t think Liz and Catie can handle the nozzle,” Marc said. “I struggled with it, and I outweigh both of them together.”

  “You’re probably right,” Blake said. “How about, they cycle every other hour in the third position. That’s the one doing the most movement, not heavy work but a lot of it. Then the rest of us can do one hour of rest, one hour at second position, then one hour on the nozzle.”

  “You ladies okay with that?” Marc asked.

  “Hey, I’m not trying to prove anything,” Liz said. “I had enough trouble in the second position.”

  “Sure,” Catie said glumly.

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  It took them the entire first week to get all the silt off of the Chagas--well, at least most of it. Now, after a relaxing weekend at Vila Franco Do Campo, they were back into the grind.

  “Let’s review how we’re going to spray the foam,” Blake said after everybody had awakened following their trip back to the Chagas. “Tyrant,” Catie groaned as she sat up and turned around on her couch.

  “Better that than we have an accident because we’re not prepared,” Blake countered.

  “Just give us the lecture,” Liz said. “You can squabble with Catie later.”

  “Alright,” Blake said as he gave Liz an impolite salute. “The foam is going to want to float, so you need to start at the ceiling and work your way down. Start at the back of the cabin or deck and work your way back to the porthole where you’re going to exit.”

  “We don’t want anyone getting trapped inside the hold because they filled up their exit,” Kal said.

  “That would be pretty stupid,” Catie said with a giggle.

  “Yes, but we all manage to do stupid things,” Marc said.

  “One person controls the nozzle while the other manages the hose. The second person has to keep the hose from getting kinked and limit how much is lying around on the deck,” Blake continued.

  “Okay,” Marc said. “Blake and I will start filling the gundeck with foam. If we come up with any problems, we’ll meet again to discuss them; otherwise we’ll stick with the rotation.”

  “Got it,” Liz said.

  It took them an hour to hook the hose back up to the Lynx and get the foam mixture correct, then they started spraying the foam into the gundeck. Everyone had had a chance on the nozzle when they finally took a break for lunch.

  “I liked it better when we just had to move the hose around,” Liz said. “This nozzle thing is a lot of work.”

  “But you get to see more stuff,” Catie said. “You’re right there in the ship when it’s filling.”

  “I’ve mostly seen casks and trunks,” Liz said. “Nothing exactly earthshaking.”

  “We’ve just started,” Catie said. “We’re working on the gundeck now.”

  “That’s right,” Liz said. “Hey Marc, where are all the cannons?”

  “We’re going to start looking for them tomorrow. When one of us cycles off the hose, they get to backtrack along the current line and see if they can find any cannons,” Marc said. “Take a few lift bags, and if you find one, deploy the lift bag on it. We’ll try to bring them up and put them on the ship before we raise it.”

  “Are you crazy?” Catie asked. “They’ll make it heavier.”

  “We can always toss them over the side, but it would be nice to at least gather them up for the Portuguese,” Marc said. “They are paying us to retrieve all of the Chagas.”

  “Where are we going to put them?” Catie asked. “We’re filling the gundeck with foam.”

  “We can put them on the main deck,” Marc replied. “There’s plenty of room. And we can spray foam around them to secure them in place, and that will lighten the ship up even more.”

  “We need to tell Fred to get the foam base loaded,” Blake said. “We’re going through it pretty fast. I think we’ll need a refill on Thursday unless we’re going to take Friday off.”

  Marc gave Catie a questioning look. “He’s right, we might even run out on Thursday if we keep going through it at this rate,” she said.

  “Okay, call Fred and tell him to load up some more foam,” Marc said. “Plan on rendezvousing two hours earlier on Thursday since we’ll need to set things up to pump.”

  “Got it,” Catie gave Marc a quick salute.

  By Tuesday afternoon, everyone was hating having to ru
n the foam nozzle. It wasn’t hard work, but it was continuous and tedious.

  Liz was managing the hose for Blake as he was filling the last section of the first deck of the forecastle. She was anxious for him to finish because then they would get to explore the forecastle, and she thought it would have some more interesting artifacts to see.

  She was moving the excess hose out of the room he was in when she saw him drop the nozzle. She stopped pulling on the hose and waited for him to pick it up. Blake moved around to get behind the nozzle so it wouldn’t spray on him. He tried to pick it up, but it was partially jammed between two warped deck boards. He twisted it to free it, but when he did, the control went all the way to full stream. The force of the stream knocked the nozzle from his hands, and before he could get control of it, it had filled the room with him in it.

  Liz rushed out to signal the Lynx that they had a major problem; she was glad they’d worked out the hand signals for all possibilities.

  Catie was keeping watch when she saw Liz signal disaster. She killed the pumps, pinged Marc, who was resting, and then waited for an explanation.

  Marc rushed out of the main cabin, grabbed a Seabob, and jetted over to Liz. After a few minutes, they both came back without Blake. Marc signaled for Catie to follow them into the main cabin.

  “What happened?” Catie gasped after she cycled out of the airlock.

  “Blake is trapped,” Liz said.

  “How?”

  “He dropped the nozzle,” Liz said. “When he picked it up, it got jammed on full. It filled the space he was in so fast he couldn’t get himself out. He’s stuck in the foam.”

  “What, he’ll suffocate!” Catie screeched.

  “Settle down,” Marc said. “His rebreather will keep him supplied with air. We just need to figure out how to dig him out.”

  “We’ll need to cut the foam away from him,” Catie said.

  “But how do we do that without cutting him?” Marc asked. “We don’t know where he is exactly.”

  “It’d be nice if we could just heat the foam up and let it melt,” Catie said.

  “I don’t think that’s going to happen with the whole ocean acting as a heat sink,” Marc said.

  “If we can figure out exactly where he is, we can safely cut away the foam,” Catie said. “When we get close enough, we can break him loose by hand.”

  “But how do we find out where he is?” Liz asked. “I kind of know where he is, but not well enough to go using a saw.”

  “I’ve got it,” Catie yelped. She had been furiously texting with ADI on options. “We can use hydrogen and nitrogen,” she said. “It’ll produce ammonia in an exothermic reaction. The ammonia will dissolve into the water. It should get hot enough to melt the foam and not so hot that it will burn Uncle Blake, at least if we go slowly.”

  “Do we have hydrogen?” Liz asked.

  “If we don’t, we can make it,” Marc said.

  “We should have enough, Catie said.” “We just need to run another small hose out there and change the nozzle. We have a smaller one we brought before we were sure about which size to use for the foam. If we just drill holes, we can figure out where it’s safe to use the saw.”

  “Okay, let’s get the hose run,” Marc said. “I’m sure your uncle is getting a little impatient.”

  They were unrolling the small hose when Kal came back from finding cannons. Marc signaled him to go into the Lynx and get an update from Catie. He swam over to her and touched helmets.

  “What’s going on?” he asked.

  “Uncle Blake got trapped in the foam,” Catie said. “We’re running another hose out so we can mix hydrogen and nitrogen to make ammonia. It will generate heat so we can drill holes in the foam and figure out how to cut him out.”

  “We can’t just leave him there and let the Portuguese dig him out later?” Kal joked.

  “No!” Catie squeaked and punched Kal in the shoulder. “Now go help. Take the saws with you.”

  It took them two hours to dig Blake out. He swam directly back to the Lynx and cycled into the main cabin without saying or signaling anything. Catie followed him in.

  “Are you okay, Uncle Blake?” she asked as he came out of the bathroom.

  “Just peachy,” he said with a sullen tone.

  “Hey, Liz said it wasn’t your fault,” Catie said. “Don’t be mad. We got you out as fast as we could.”

  “I’m sure you did,” Blake said. “But couldn’t you find a way to let me know what was going on?”

  “We didn’t think about that,” Catie said. “Once we figured out how to get you out, that’s all we thought about. I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be,” Blake said. “I guess I would have done the same thing.”

  “Hey, Mister Foamy,” Kal said after he cycled into the main cabin.

  “Don’t you start,” Blake snarled.

  “Too soon,” Kal said with a laugh.

  “I think a couple of years too soon,” Catie said as she patted her uncle on the back.

  “Maybe two weeks,” Kal said. “I think I can hold off for that long.”

  “Well, it’s your life,” Catie said as she punched Kal.

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  On Thursday, the team started at 1:00 a.m. Blake was in a marginally better mood. He seemed to have made it a personal mission to use all the foam up before the end of the day. When he had the nozzle, whoever got stuck handling hose was scrambling to keep up with his mad pace.

  “Cer Catie, I have an emergency message from Cer Fred,” ADI said.

  “Put it through,” Catie said as she swam to the airlock to cycle into the main cabin. “What’s up, Fred?” she asked.

  “We’ve got a Portuguese cutter hanging out past the marina; based on surveillance from ADI and our best guess, they plan to do an inspection.”

  “Oh no,” Catie gasped.

  “Right, they’ll be surprised to find just three of us,” Fred said.

  “Can you go back to the slip?” Catie asked.

  “We’re almost to the exit,” Fred said. “We’re kind of committed, turning back now will raise questions. Can you ask your dad what we should do?”

  “ADI, signal an emergency recall,” Catie said.

  “Give me a map of the area and where the cutter is,” Catie ordered. The map came up on her HUD. “How fast is the cutter moving, and how far is it from the marina entrance?”

  “Ten knots, and one nautical mile,” ADI replied.

  “Okay Fred, I want you to stall for two or three minutes, check fuel lines, slow down to a crawl, anything to buy a little time. Then I want you to head west as soon as you exit the marina, take her up to max speed. When the cutter is within a quarter mile, swing around, so you’re bows on and act like you’ve just launched the Seabobs. Then stall when the cutter gets to you. We’re all diving, just a normal day for all of us.”

  “Then what?”

  “We’ll be there,” Catie said.

  “How can you, you’re almost three hundred miles away.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ve got a plan! And Dad can always change it once he gets here, but you have to start now!”

  “We’re on it. Slowing to a crawl,” Fred said.

  “ADI, plot a course to an intercept point where the Mea Huli will likely come to a stop. Make sure the sky is clear where we come up and fly. Assume constant acceleration, deceleration profile; get us there in ten minutes. Ping me when everyone is aboard.”

  “The captain is entering the cargo hold now,” ADI said.

  “Seal the hold, start pumping it down,” Catie ordered. “Are the hoses free?”

  “Yes, the captain followed protocol and disengaged them,” ADI replied.

  “What is the acceleration profile, max velocity?”

  “Acceleration is zero-point-two-five Gs, max V is five hundred forty-three meters-per-second.”

  “Engage along plotted course, what’s the speed in Mach?”

  “Mach one-point-five.”

&nb
sp; “ADI, emergency decompression starting now!”

  “What’s going on, Catie?” Marc’s voice came over the comm now that he was in the Lynx.

  “The Mea Huli is about to be boarded for inspection by the Portuguese,” Catie said.

  “Shit!”

  “I have Fred stalling, then doing a bit of a high-speed chase to buy time. I have a plan that gets us there, but our friends are going to know this is more than a sub.”

  “Keep executing your plan. Blake’s coming up to confer with you.”

  “Alright, everyone needs to be strapped in,” Catie said. “You’ve got one hundred twenty seconds.”

  “Copy,” Marc replied.

  A minute later, Blake cycled through the airlock to the bridge. “What up?”

  “You heard what I told Daddy?”

  “Yes, so what’s the plan?”

  “We go airborne,” Catie said. “Maintain a quarter-G acceleration, drop back into the water, close the rest of the distance, then get on the Seabobs, and pretend we’ve been off for a morning romp.”

  “We can’t come up four hundred meters that fast,” Blake gasped.

  “We’re using the emergency decompression the Paraxeans developed.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Decompress two atmospheres, hold for five seconds, then compress up one and hold for twenty seconds, repeat.”

  “That works?”

  “According to ADI. If we start having the bends, we’ll abort.”

  “What’s the max speed we get to?”

  “Mach one-point-five.”

  “Big shock wave,” Blake said.

  “Nuh-uh,” Catie said. “No shockwave. Didn’t you see that in the specs?”

  “Oh yeah, I did,” Blake said. “Then I got distracted with sunken treasure ships and didn’t get a chance to read up on it.”

  “Something about the shape of the hull and some things sticking up,” Catie said, “prevents a shock wave from forming.”

  “Okay, stick to the plan.”

  “Hold on,” Catie yelled, “we’re going to pitch up out of the water.”

  “Yeah, how is that going to work?”

  “Watch,” Catie pointed to his HUD. “ADI put simulation of the flight up on our HUDS.”