Piranha: Firing Point

A loud voice, lilting and female sounding but electronically generated, seemed to boom around them, but was muffled by the forward compartment bulkhead. Lo Sun stared at him with wide eyes.

“What did that voice say?” Chu spat.

“Sir, it said, ‘The reactor is critical.”

We’re dead, Chu thought, as the hair at the nape of his neck began to stand on end.

Chu stepped back from the doomed operation to open the lower hatch.

The dogging mechanism had obviously been chained and locked from the other side for safety, and there was no way to shoot through or blast through the hatch, at least no way that made any sense. Even if he’d brought hand grenades strong enough to smash through the hatch, with all its lead shielding, it would have been stupid to use them — they’d never be able to restart the reactor and sail the ship with a gaping hole in the nuclear shield.

“Up the ladder,” he commanded, dimly aware that his voice still remained level and authoritative, despite the mortal fear he felt rising in his throat, turning his stomach, If Lo was correct that the announcement had said “The reactor is critical,” the unit was spewing a tremendous amount of radiation even now. But a critical reactor was not the worst — the reactor power would increase by a factor of ten thousand, maybe a hundred thousand, before it was supplying power to the liquid-metal power loop. He had to get out of there now.

He charged up the ladder, the third man up to the catwalk landing after Lo and Lieutenant Li Xinmin. Lo grunted with exertion trying to turn the dogging wheel of this hatch, but it wouldn’t budge. Chu bent his back to the task, his sweaty hands on two spokes of the wheel, Lo’s on two others, and together they heaved. Chu gave it every ounce of strength he had left, knowing that if this didn’t work, nothing mattered. This would be his last act on earth. As he heaved against the wheel, he wondered if he would see scenes from his life, as folklore reported people did in the final moments before death.

There was no movie show, but as he stared at the unmoving wheel, he did feel one regret, that he had failed to connect with Mai Sheng. He abruptly pushed the thought from his mind and continued straining. Finally he quit, dropping to the deck.

“It’s no good. Admiral. We’re trapped,” Lo said.

Chu looked at him, too winded to reply.

“Get on the wheel, each man to a spoke, and heave together when I say,” Chu growled into his mask microphone.

He could feel his breathing becoming labored, his tank almost out of air. He had pulled himself up from the deck, glaring at Lo Sun for his expression of hopelessness.

He had put six men on the wheel, stepping on each other, six shoulders crowding together. They were probably more interfering with each other then helping, but what else could Chu do?

“Now! Pull together!” he shouted. The men strained, their breathing loud through their air packs. As Chu watched, disappointment and fear and frustration mingled into a feeling of pent-up rage. Just as he was ready to scream, two things happened — the men stopped, two of them falling to the catwalk deck, the effort a failure, and Chu’s air ran out, the regulator wheezing to a halt, Chu sucking in his face mask.

In anger he pulled off his mask and threw it toward the deck, sweat and spittle flying from it. The mask swung on its air hose, wrapping around his neck and continuing around his head, striking him in the face from the other side. All of a sudden the answer dawned on him, and the answer and the comedy of his mask hitting him in the head combined to make him start to laugh, three quick, choked rasps escaping his throat before he clamped down, his men staring at him.

The answer was simple. Just as he had thrown the mask but couldn’t throw it away, the dogging wheel was just as constrained. He’d seen the mechanism up close, and in the panic of the moment he had not registered what he was looking at. But now it was clear. So clear he felt like a fool.

A loud but indistinct voice sounded from the forward bulkhead as Chu made his way to the hatch.

“Was that the ship announcing system?” he asked Lo.

“What did it say?”

“Sir,” Lo Sun huffed, his own air low, “it said, ‘The reactor is in the power range.’ We’re being fried right now—”

“Get a hold of yourself. First,” Chu spat.

At the hatch-dogging mechanism, he leaned far over the chrome wheel, putting his face down to the hub.