Authors: Geoffrey Morrison
“I have a feeling Ralla doesn’t know you’re out of bed.”
“Let’s keep it that way, OK?”
“You got it.”
“My daughter told me how you two escaped the dome.”
“I would have figured that was old news by now.”
“No, I mean she told me personally, not as a report or something. She’s really fond of you, Thom. And having rescued her like you did, I am as well.”
“Sir...”
“Mrak.”
“Mr. Gattley, we did what we did. There was no other way to do it or we wouldn’t be here. So I guess I just did what I had to do, and so did she.”
“Maybe so, but you did it and I’m grateful. I’m putting in with the Council for you to get a battlefield commission and commendation for your actions.”
“Mr. Gattley I don’t want...”
“Thom,” Mrakas said, cutting him off. “I don’t really care what you want. Events are unfolding that will have no outcome but bad. There are things you don’t know yet. This is far bigger than you understand. I’m having you commissioned as a Lieutenant. For now that will give you access to information and let you get a fighter out in this inevitable war. I know it’s strange to want to put you in harm’s way, but I’ve heard how you handle a sub and we need people like you right now. Past that, I don’t know.”
They had reached Gattley’s cabin. After toggling the door open with the wall switch, Mrakas shed himself of his human crutch and shuffled across the floor to his bed. He hunched over further and seemed to age another decade in the process. He waved Thom away.
“For now, go back to the bridge and keep me informed for as long as you can,” the elder Gattley said as he reached overhead and pressed a button that closed the door.
Thom stood outside the door for a moment, stunned. Not till he was running back to the Bunker did his brain register that the floor had been made of wood.
The
Universalis
lit up its active sensors, sending out ultrasonic pulses that bounced off the sea floor and any ships nearby, and returned to be picked up by microphones spread all over the hull. The turbulence the ship created at maximum speed affected the resolution, and by extension, the range. So the results were less than optimal. Worse, the massive wake created a cone-shaped deadzone behind them.
What was clear, to the crewmen manning the sensor stations, to the navigator, and to the Captain, though, was that the seafloor was rising. They were running out of maneuvering room. They tried deviating from their current course, and each time the sensors would pick up a handful of subs of varying sizes either on a parallel or converging course, just out of weapons range.
“Proctor Jills. I’m afraid we have no choice but to engage,” the Captain said, after his countless checks of the navigational charts.
“With what, Captain? Have you been secretly building up a fleet that I don’t know about?”
“We still have ammo for the defense batteries. That will have to be enough. I wish we had had the time you and Councilman Gattley had requested to get an attack fleet up and running, but we don’t. Hopefully we’ll have enough firepower to get us on a different course. If we don’t...” he looked down, and slid the chart displayed on the glass table in front of him across the console to be displayed in front of Jills. “We’ll either run aground, or be forced to surface. Personally I don’t like the choice of defenseless destruction or being irradiated. We’ll need to go on the offensive, such as it is.”
Jills stroked his narrow jaw as he stared at the navigation chart. Thom, who had been standing silently near the wall, stood on the tips of his toes to see the chart. Out of the corner of his eye, Jills saw him and waved him over.
“If you’re going to be Gattley’s eyes, then put them on this.”
Thom studied the chart, and nodded knowingly, knowing that he had no idea what the chart meant. To his credit, Jills moved on.
“How well are your men trained, Captain?” Jills asked.
“They’re trained, but on simulators. Since we sounded General Quarters, there have been teams on the guns getting them loaded. Most are in working order. It’s the best we can hope for right now.”
“How big are these other subs?” Thom asked. There was a pause as all eyes went in his direction.
“Big. Bigger than anything we’ve got,” the Captain responded. “They look corvette size mostly, with what we think may me some frigates.”
Thom’s eyes went wide.
“Did we ever have anything that big?”
Larr’s face flashed a momentary burst of annoyance, and then back to his usual stoic expression.
“Not since the war,” Larr mumbled. “Proctor, Captain, I would like to recommend we launch the few attack subs we have; perhaps they can buy us some time.”
The Captain shook his head.
“A dozen single seat subs wouldn’t even bother a corvette, never mind four. It would be a waste of men and equipment. No, we need to do this now. All agreed?”
Jills nodded immediately. Larr and the other Council members followed suit.
“Chief of Arms, notify all batteries to be ready to fire. If a craft comes within range, they are to destroy it.”
A man standing near a pair of terminals acknowledged and started talking to the two crewmen at his station. The Captain stood upright and pressed a button on the edge of the table.
“New heading. Come to starboard six-zero.”
“Starboard six-zero, aye,” came a voice from over the speakers imbedded in the ceiling.
At speed, a ship the size of the
Uni
changed direction at an agonizing rate. But when passenger comfort wasn’t a concern, as now, it could turn much harder. Everyone in the bunker was forced to grab a hold of something nearby to steady themselves.
Far down and back in the Garden, hanging plants swayed against the turn. Plates and glasses slid from tables, a few people out in the open stumbled. Having heard the alarm for General Quarters, most had thought it was some drill for the military. Now people started to get concerned. Restaurants emptied. Public areas were vacated as people ran to their cabins.
“Captain, new contact!” shouted a crewmember excitedly.
As the
Universalis
made its broad sweeping turn, the sensor deadzone shifted as well. The area previously hidden became exposed, revealing the submarine
Population
.
All eyes in the bunker went to the sensor screen as a huge glowing blob revealed itself out of the noise.
“How’d they do
that
?” Thom asked, trying to hide his anxiety.
“They must have snuck up behind us when we were running, and were already in the cone before we starting popping active,” the Captain replied, still staring at the sensor screen. They watched as the
Pop
turned sharper, trying to cut the corner. In doing so they started gaining.
Suddenly, the huge single blob on the sensor split into one single large section with two arms spreading out from either side, each of which then broke into separate dots.
“New contacts. Sir! They were hiding in close to the
Population
so we couldn't see them,” the crewman said, not noticing that all eyes were on his terminal.
“Noted,” said the Captain.
Subs of different sizes and shapes continued to break out from the overall bulk of the blob that represented the citysub
Population
.
“Sir, the computer is registering them as Wave class corvettes and Rapid class attack frigates.”
“Keep tracking, ensign.”
“Sir, yes sir... Captain!” the young ensign said as he looked from his computer screen to the sensor screen. He saw what the rest of them did. The enemy fleet was spreading itself wide, and the starboard arm was accelerating, trying to come up on their starboard side.
“Come to port, two-seven-zero degrees,” Sarras said over the comm.
“Port, two-seven-zero, aye,” the voice came back.
They all leaned as the big ship canceled its hard right turn and started left. The left wing of enemy ships disappeared on the screens as they entered the cone behind the
Uni.
It reemerged as the
Uni
turned, having spread itself out, matching the arm-like formation on the opposite side.
More ships started appearing on the monitor. Smaller ships, filling in the gaps between the others. Soon, the wings of enemy ships were wider than the
Population
was long, and resembled a massive claw attempting to pinch down on the
Universalis
.
“Depth under keel?” the Captain asked.
“110 and rising,” a crewman responded.
“Sir, they are no longer gaining. They are holding at 80,” said the sensor crewman, seemingly exited by the news, but Thom could see the concern in Captain Sarras’s eyes.
“Active sweep forward, full power. Go.” the officer did as he was told, and one of the monitors showed the result of the sweep. There were gasps of horror across the bridge. The Captain looked out past the monitors as if he could see into the darkness of the sea beyond. As if trying to see the ridge they were imminently going to impale themselves on, at flank speed. For a moment, just a flash, Thom saw defeat in the Captains face. Then it was gone.
“Options. Go,” he said briskly. The room was silent. They all could see that turning meant destruction by the
Pop
fleet, and surfacing meant a vicious, painful, and horrifying death from radiation.
“Comm…” the Captain started.
“Captain,” Thom said. All eyes went to him. He didn’t flinch. “What’s at the front of their boat?”
The Captain thought for a moment.
“Sensors, the bridge...” The Captain’s eyes went wide. He stabbed at the button on the table.
“Bridge, full reverse,” he nearly shouted.
“Sir?” came the response.
“Full reverse, and sound collision. Gentlemen,” he said, regaining his composure and turning to the Council members. “I would suggest you hold on to something.”
XII
The signal took just a fraction of a second to get from the bridge at the front of the ship, along the torso-thick bundle of wires that ran along the Spine to the engine bay. It only took a moment longer for the house-sized electric motors that turned the propellers to switch direction. They fought against the propeller shafts, which took a moment to spin down. Slowly at first, then gaining speed, the shafts started turning the opposite direction.
The propellers, though, started cavitating immediately and viciously, causing noise and vibration that spread throughout the ship. But as they gained purchase in the water, the ship slowed with fervor, as if someone had pulled an emergency brake—which in a way, they had.
Instantly, tens of thousands of people were knocked off their feet and thrown violently into forward bulkheads. Every hanging plant in the garden swayed hastily forward, many coming loose and crashing to the deck below. Plates, glasses, chairs, tables—everything not bolted to the deck crashed forward, striking people on their way to piling up on the bulkheads. Metal joints between the various ship’s hulls in the Basket and Yard creaked deafeningly and ominously. Cracking, popping, and an infinite symphony of other sounds were heard throughout as the stern grabbed hold of the rest of the ship with huge invisible arms of force, and said “STOP.”
The slow pulse of the collision klaxon sounded, causing panic. People struggled to get to their feet as the ship tried to accelerate in the opposite direction. The alarm rose in pitch and speed. Everyone who hadn’t made it to their cabins tried to get somewhere safe, while others just tried to get somewhere where they could brace themselves in. In the bunker, only the Captain had remained upright among those who weren’t seated. The Council members picked themselves up off the floor, and looked at the monitors. They told what they all could feel: the combined colossal power of the
Uni
’s engines and thrusters had rapidly ground them to a halt, and were now driving them backwards. With the wake now flowing in the opposite direction, they had a clear look at the
Population
, now rapidly approaching.
“Right about now, I’d say their Captain just soiled his uniform,” Sarras said with a wry grin. He braced himself against the table, and subtly gave it a gentle pat with his left hand. On the screen the
Population
was starting to turn and dive away, but she was moving too slowly, and there as just too much mass. He tapped the button on the table one last time, “Stay with her, Mr. Pallee.”
“Yes, sir.”
Sarras’ body became rigid. The crewman at the sensor station did his best to stifle the panic in his voice,
“Impact in 5…4…3…2...”
The bulbous middle of the stern of the
Universalis
impacted the
Population
just above Deck 12 on the former, and Deck 4 on the latter. The rear of the
Uni
started crumpling immediately as it scraped up and across the bow of the other ship. The carnage was limited to the storage space and the fighter deck at first, but as the powerful motors on both craft continued to drive them into each other, bulkheads started to collapse and water started stabbing into the inner hulls. Water cascaded into corridors and cargo holds. Locks slammed shut sequentially, but as each shut, the bulkhead around it crumpled from the impact, flooding still more space. The loss of buoyancy drove the back of the
Uni
down with the descending
Population
.
On the
Population
the damage was worse, water pouring in immediately, flooding the forward-most parts of Decks 2, 3, and 4. The
Pop
continued to turn and dive, and the impaling
Uni
started to slide down the port side, opening up swaths of Decks 3 through 9. The outer hull tore away like paper under the mass and pressure of the
Uni.
The tangled mass of bulkheads and hull from both ships ground away, tearing more and more from each other. The nose of the
Population
finally got forward and low enough to snag the starboard-most propeller of the
Universalis
. The blade’s edge dug into the ship, slicing the hull ribbon-like. With a deep clang it dug in hard on a main support frame. Instantly its rotation stopped, tearing itself and its shaft sideways out of the side of the
Uni
. For a moment, the two ships were attached, then the force became too great. The prop freed itself from both ships, and started its free fall to the bottom. The gouges left in the
Population
were deep, and had done enough damage to the front of the ship that the watertight bulkheads were no longer water tight. Ocean filled the bow of the ship, and it started to nose over even faster.