Clarence nodded. “Captain.”
Yasaka gestured to Clarence’s chair: sit, relax.
Clarence sat, as did the captain.
“My apologies for making you wait,” she said. “We’re on full alert, and there were things that required my attention.”
Clarence waited for Margaret to speak. It was her show, after all; he was just the wingman. When she said nothing, he spoke for them both.
“Yes, ma’am,” Clarence said. “We understand.”
“I need to make this short,” the captain said. “I have a ship full of wounded, and I have to report about this meeting to Captain Tubberville over on the Pinckney. He’s the task force commander. So I can answer your questions, but please, let’s get to it.”
Margaret nodded. “I need to know what happened,” she said. “The timeline. Timelines are very important.”
Yasaka’s jaw muscles twitched. “Six days ago, at twenty-one-fourteen hours, an ROV from the Los Angeles located an object of interest. The ship commander dispatched a diver to recover that object. The diver wore an ADS 2000, the atmospheric diving suit required for such depths. He disembarked from a dry deck shelter modified for decontamination. The diver recovered the object, then returned to the DDS. While still wearing the ADS, he was sprayed in bleach to kill any possible external contaminant before reentering the ship proper.”
Margaret leaned forward. “The ROV spotted something special? Sending out a diver was unusual?”
“Not at all,” Yasaka said. “In fact, this was the six hundred and fifty-second time a diver from the Los Angeles had performed that task. Every two or three days, on average, the ROV saw something the onboard crew couldn’t identify. Whenever that happened, Captain Banks sent out a diver.”
Clarence wondered if the repetitive, uneventful nature of their job had made the divers sloppy.
Yasaka continued. “At twenty-one-fifty-five hours that same day, the Los Angeles notified us that the object was a significant discovery.”
Margaret looked at Clarence, then at the captain. “So if they thought it was significant, why wasn’t it brought up to the Brashear? I was told this ship has a full BSL-4 research lab.”
Biosafety Level Four… Clarence hated those words. The most stringent safety procedures known to man, used for work with lethal, highly contagious airborne diseases like Marburg and Ebola, shit that could kill millions. BSL-4 suits — the kind Margaret wore to study the alien infection — had positive pressure: if something poked a hole in the suit, air pushed out instead of in, because contact with even a single, microscopic pathogen could mean death.
“My ship’s facilities are fully compliant,” Yasaka said. “We’ve brought up fifteen objects over the last five years. Scraps of Orbital hull, mostly. Bringing potentially contaminated items up from nine hundred feet below is dangerous, Doctor Montoya, and expensive, so the Los Angeles was retrofitted with a small lab of its own. Standard procedure was to make sure an object was not of terrestrial origin before sending it up.”
Margaret looked angry, annoyed. “So they found an alien object and they just held on to it for a few days?”
Yasaka nodded. “If they had found an alien body, or something that was clearly made by little green men, that would have been different. What they found looked like a strange can, so they prepped it and waited until they had enough data to merit the extensive procedures required to send something to the surface.”
Margaret wasn’t the only one getting annoyed; Clarence could see that Yasaka didn’t appreciate Margaret’s intensity. The captain had a ship full of wounded. Her crew had probably recovered hundreds of dead bodies from the Forrest Sherman and the Stratton. This wasn’t the time for Margaret to grill Yasaka about procedure. Clarence’s job of helping Margaret included stepping in when she was about to burn a bridge.
“So it was business as usual,” he said. “You would have probably ordered the object to be brought up, but you didn’t get the chance. What happened next?”
Margaret leaned back in her chair, tried to relax. She’d picked up on Clarence’s cue, knew she needed to back off a little.
Yasaka folded her hands on her desk. “Three days ago, the Los Angeles reported erratic behavior among the crew. A fight involving a few injuries. I’m afraid there wasn’t much detail. Captain Banks made his scheduled daily report, but he seemed… strange. Agitated, but not angry. He didn’t exhibit any of the behaviors associated with the Detroit disease, nor did any of his crew send a message that they suspected he might be infected.”
That surprised Clarence. “I’m sorry, Captain, you’re saying that the crew could contact the Brashear without the captain’s knowledge?”
She nodded. “The navy knows what could be down there, Agent Otto. Procedures were in place that would allow anyone to raise a red flag if something seemed amiss with anyone on the crew, including the captain.”
“But no one raised a flag.”
“No, they didn’t,” Yasaka said. “We now believe that the captain was infected, and he either sabotaged the red-flag system before anyone could use it, or put guards at the various red-flag stations, preventing anyone from calling up. His report about the fight was the last communication we received from the Los Angeles.
“At twelve hundred hours on the day of the battle, we attempted to perform our daily, scheduled communication with the Los Angeles. We received no response. Sonar told us the Los Angeles was just sitting there at eight hundred feet, not moving at all.”
Yasaka paused. She licked her dry lips, then continued. “We were trying to figure out what to do next when the Los Angeles fired on the Forrest Sherman. No warning. At that range, the Sherman had no chance. The Pinckney was the first to respond — Tubberville ordered counterfire, but the Los Angeles managed two more torps before she sank. One hit the Stratton, sinking it, and the other damaged the Truxtun.”
The captain sat back in her chair. She stared off at some invisible thing in her stateroom. “Since then it’s been a nonstop process of recovery and aid.” Her voice was low, haunted. “I’ve got a hold full of dead sailors stacked up like goddamn firewood. We’ve been ordered to burn the bodies — their families don’t even get to say good-bye.”
She shook her head, blinked rapidly, sat up straight. “One of my recovery teams — in full BSL-4 diving gear, before you ask — found the bodies of Lieutenant Walker and Petty Officer Petrovsky and brought them aboard. Those divers are in containment cells for observation and won’t be released unless you give the green light. Walker and Petrovksy are the only two crewmembers recovered from the Los Angeles, which means over a hundred bodies are still on the bottom. I pray to God that we haven’t missed any.”
Clarence wasn’t a religious man, but he’d match that prayer. One severed hand, floating to the surface, escaping detection, bobbing toward shore… if that happened, all the containment efforts could be for naught.
“We’ve sent UUVs down to get eyes on the Los Angeles,” Yasaka said. “They only came close enough to get visual confirmation that she’s destroyed. The Brashear has two ADS suits onboard. Tomorrow, we’re sending a diver down to try to recover the object.”