Terminal Run

Still he kept pulling up on the hatch until the lack of air made him need to take a breath, and though he tried to keep from breathing, enough water leaked into his nose and down his throat that he coughed out what air was left, and took in water, and suddenly he became so pumped with fear that time dilated, each second stretching into a minute while the light of reason left him, and as his senses left him he dimly perceived the hatch moving and Alameda’s body limp in his arms, then himself coughing and vomiting on the surface of the water as he stroked for the DSV hatch, trying to see if Alameda was breathing on her own. A stream of seawater and mucus trailed from her mouth and nose, but she coughed twice. She was alive, but unconscious. Pacino gulped air, the putrid smoke in his lungs only a notch better than the water that had been there moments before.

He pulled the unconscious engineer into the airlock of the deep submergence vehicle, hoping that its hatch would be lighter and easier to shut. He lifted the latch on the hatch and tried to push it, but it would only swing a fraction of an inch. The hatch, half the area of the one he’d freed Alameda from, was thicker, the steel protecting the interior from a much higher pressure.” Pacino slumped against the wall of the DSV airlock. It was hopeless. He turned to the other hatches set in the airlock — perhaps he could get the survivors into the command module and shut its hatch. But he would be faced with the same problem — the hatch opened into the command module, which was downhill, but would never shut. He decided to move the three into the command module anyway. He opened the command module hatch, the heavy lid slamming on its latch. He pushed Catardi, Schultz, and Alameda into the opening and rested them against the nearly horizontal bulkheads of the command module between the panels. It was the best he could do for the moment.

He ducked his head out into the airlock. The water level was rising in the tunnel and the ship’s angle was getting even steeper. They had to hit bottom soon, he thought. If they hit the seafloor soon enough, before the ship flooded any further, and the hull remained intact and flattened out, he would be able to shut the hatches.

Pacino unstrapped his scuba bottles and buoyancy compensator vest and threw the rig into the tunnel, just as he realized that the emergency beacons were still strapped to the harness, useless in bringing help. The one thing he could have done for the Piranha — call for help — he had failed to do. He collapsed against the bulkhead of the deep submergence vehicle’s airlock wall, the cold steel freezing against his back. The air was foul, his head aching. He had the odd thought that if he chose to he could simply let unconsciousness take him right then. He could fade away and pass out. Suffocation, hypothermia, and drowning would happen while he was asleep. It was a merciful choice. It was true that he had made it this far. He had swallowed his fear and returned to a crippled submarine; he had left the escape trunk and found survivors; he had gotten them into the dizzy-vee, going far beyond what he thought he could do, but it ended here. The hatches weighed tons, the air was more smoke than oxygen, the water was freezing and rising to the hatch lip, and soon the DSV would flood. He wondered for a second if he should try to go further aft. The reactor compartment might not be flooded, and perhaps they could even make it to the aft compartment’s escape trunk. But the memory of the first torpedo blast rose in his mind — nothing could have remained intact after that. The aft compartment must have flooded the second after the torpedo exploded.

He was being an idiot, he decided. Everything he’d done since the first explosion had been the action of a fool. He had no right to throw his life away like he had. His father and mother would suffer for the rest of their lives when they heard he’d died here. And when he first opened the trunk lower hatch he should have gone back up. That at least would have proved he hadn’t abandoned his friends, and saved his life. But no, he had to explore the damned hull, giving hope to dead men. He was a failure, he thought, and he would die a miserable failure. Best just to shut his eyes and let sleep take him before the water reached his face.

The thought was his last before the hull of the Piranha hit the seafloor and broke apart on the rocks of the bottom.

Commander Rob Catardi had been reclining against the bulkhead of the forward-facing command module of the Mark XVII Deep Submergence Utility Vehicle when the bulkhead flipped with a violent booming noise and hurtled him to the opposite side of the vehicle. The bulkhead on the hatch side was lined with thick padding covering the thick hull insulation. Without foam insulation the subfreezing temperatures of the deep would condense the moisture from their breathing and ice up the hull.