Her heart fluttered. Please, no.
There was no denying the truth: the ship’s stern, including the propellers and the outflow for the internal motion turbines, lay buried under an avalanche of rubble. Even now, rocks still clattered against the hull. The propellers would likely be impacted with rock. To make matters worse, the Tartarus had toppled into a trench and was now pinned on a ledge.
Kennedy switched screens, her heart in her throat. She gave a squeak of joy; the aft escape hatches were still clear. Her excitement was short lived. They were how many feet down? Ten thousand? More? Even if the distress buoy had managed to make it to the surface amidst the rubble of the eruption, the Tartarus could be a mile away from the volcano by now. Searching the ocean would be like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack. And if the US Navy teams did manage to locate them, navigating the trench would be treacherous. Few vessels could withstand the pressures at the Tartarus’s crush depth. What if they were beyond reach?
No. Stop this. There’s time. The graphene hull is intact. The organic liquid-flow batteries are fully charged. This isn’t the Kurst, and the US isn’t Russia. The Tartarus isn’t going to vanish without trace like the USS Cyclops or the ARA San Juan.
Not on my watch.
“Hurst?” she called. “Do we still have comms?”
The ensign scrambled to her feet after retrieving her headset from the floor. She checked her screens. “We’ve lost the cable for the two-way ELF, but if we send up the reserve array, then, yes, ma’am, we should have comms.”
Kennedy forced herself to breathe slowly, in and out, mimicking the ebb and flow of ripples on the beach. Her anxiety dampened. Everything would be fine. The sub was teched to the nines. They would extend the reserve array to reestablish the low frequency radio and she would let her superiors know what had happened. Rescue teams would be dispatched. Cohen and McNaught may be lost, but Kennedy and the rest of the crew could still be plucked from the jaws of hell and delivered to safety.
When that happened, Kennedy would bury her face in her children’s hair and drink in the scent of apple shampoo and the Wisconsin outdoors. She would sob ugly tears into Cole’s chest, and let him rock her like a baby. Until then, she would be the unflappable captain of this ship.
Until then, they would stay calm and sit tight.
When the bodies of the dead had been stowed, the Tartarus’s medic and its chief engineer joined Kennedy in the control room.
Pale and drawn, the medic cleared his throat before giving his report. Kennedy’s throat was raw, too. By now the fire-retardant foam had dried; it was still like breathing acid.
“There are four dead, including Cohen and McNaught,” the medic said. There was a smear of blood on the cuff of his uniform.
Kennedy nodded. She’d already had the numbers from Masterton.
“On top of that, we have five wounded, not counting those with minor bruises and bumps—which is practically everyone.”
Kennedy couldn’t help lifting her hand to her neck, still aching from the whiplash. All around her, the control room hummed with the bleep of systems checks and the murmur of status reports.
“And the five wounded?” she asked. “How are they faring?”
“Two have concussion—I’ll keep an eye on them in case they deteriorate. One dislocated shoulder—I’ve already reset it—and one of the cooks has extensive scalding. All survivable. It’s Ensign Rafferty who worries me most. His pelvis is shattered; it’s likely he has some internal injuries. Without hospital care, he might not make it to Sunday’s ice cream social.”
Kennedy grimaced. “The navy is working on getting us to the surface as soon as possible, but it’s going to take time.”
“How long?” Scotty said, the engineer as brusque as his Trekkie namesake.
“I spoke with the commodore an hour ago. They’re working on a plan now.”
She pursed her lips remembering the terse conversation with her commander. To be fair, the navy was never going to be happy about the situation. The Tartarus was the outcome of billions of dollars of research effort, its recharging technology a closely guarded military secret.
“So, the vessel is lost,” the commodore had said.
“I believe so, sir. There’s an outside chance the propellers could clear the rocks without jamming, but in the event we don’t succeed, it would leave the Tartarus without power.”
Under normal conditions, the Tartarus recharged its liquid-flow battery by tethering to the seabed and allowing the ocean currents to spin the internal turbines like water over gills. The Tartarus’s inflow vents were intact, but with the water outflow buried, there were no currents to speak of. No recharging meant no power and no oxygen. Eventually, the Tartarus was going to flicker out, and its crew with it.
“We could certainly attempt to break out,” she added, when the commodore didn’t speak. “And as the ship’s captain, I’d be willing to volunteer myself for the task—but only after my crew are safely away.”
The commodore remained silent. A glitch in the line, or just a minute of reflection? To Kennedy, the moment felt heavy with accusation, as if she ought to have predicted the eruption and steered the Tartarus out of danger.
“Let me speak to Cohen,” he said eventually.
“Cohen is among the dead, sir.”
“Ah.” Another pause. “Shame.”
Kennedy’s eyes narrowed. Why ask to speak to Cohen? The Tartarus was her command. “Sir? Is there something I should know?”
“No, no. Cohen and I go way back, is all. Don’t worry, Captain. We’re going to get you and your crew out of there. But it’s going to take us a while to get things underway, so you’ll need to be patient.”
“At present, we’re at 89 percent charge. The Tartarus has oxygen tanks for two days, and we can also create oxygen through electrolysis. But splitting water will mean drawing heavily on the available charge,” Kennedy said. She was wasting air; the commodore knew all this.
“I’m fully aware of the ramifications, Captain,” the commodore had said tersely. “I’ll update you as soon as I have some information.” He had cut the connection.
The medic cleared his throat again, bringing Kennedy back to the crew briefing. “In the meantime,” he said, “we’re going to need to reduce our energy consumption.”
“We can cut some lights, turn down the heating. Keep everyone in their bunks. That’ll allow us to eke out charge,” Scotty said.
Kennedy nodded. “I’ll announce the measures on the 1MC and come back and chat to the wounded a little later.”
When the men had returned to their respective stations, leaving only the control room crew, Ensign Hurst turned to her. “Are we going to be shark shit, Captain?” she asked.
The other crew members looked to Kennedy. It was a fair question.
Another deluge of rock hammered the Tartarus, boulder-sized hail, louder than artillery fire, rattling her bones. Grunts and cries echoed through the ship. Everyone snatched for a handhold. Kennedy planted her feet. Held her breath. There was nothing to do but hold on and hope.
When at last the rocks clattered to a stop, the crew looked again to Kennedy.
“No, Hurst, we are not,” she replied. “Not if I can help it.”
A day passed. And another. In the watery limbo, an endless night hovering between life and death, Kennedy didn’t sleep. Even the wounded slumbered fitfully. If these were to be their last hours, no one wanted to waste them sleeping. Instead, they read, told stories, passed photos, sketched. One man played a blues harp.