Terminal Run

The impact would have been fatal had he hit a cabinet or unshielded steel. Instead it seemed to jog him back to awareness. The last thing he had as a continuous normal memory was standing under the escape trunk hatch with Schultz, Alameda, and Crossfield. When he opened his eyes in the DSV, he blinked in incredulity. He was in the DSV, his face and hands bloody, with no lights and no power in a compartment filled with smoke. What the hell had happened?

He crouched at the bulkhead, a dim light coming from the hatchway to the vessel’s airlock. He ducked through it and found the battle lantern lying atop Midshipman Patch Pacino, who was bleeding from his throat and collapsed against the bulkhead. Catardi looked at the starboard side of the airlock. The hatch to the docking port was shut on the latch. The deck was level, with only a slight list to port. Catardi, still not quite believing his senses, reached out and spun the hatch wheel clockwise, dogging the hatch and isolating the DSV from the docking port. He shined the lantern into the hatch port, but could see nothing. It was black — either completely submerged in dark water, or the smoke was so thick he couldn’t see into the docking port.

Catardi picked up the bleeding midshipman by the armpits and pulled him into the command module, then retrieved the bloody battle lantern, wheezing against the foul smoky air of the space. If the batteries or the fuel cells still worked, he could start the atmospheric control gear in the DSV and clear out the smoke, even heat the space to normal temperatures, until the batteries and the fuel cells died. Normally they would have an endurance of seven days with ten men in the module. With only a few people, they might last weeks. When Pacino was safely in the command module, Catardi pulled the hatch shut and dogged it. He reached into a bin and pulled out an emergency air breathing mask and strapped it on, cautiously pulling air in. The air was fresh, clearing his head. He coughed for ten seconds, then pulled out a half-dozen more masks, fastening one on Pacino. There were two more bodies, both of them the only women in the crew, Alameda and Schultz. He strapped an EAB mask on Schultz’s face, then one on Alameda’s. He was searching the space for additional bodies, but there were no other survivors. Catardi slapped Pacino’s mask, trying to wake him up, but there was no response.

Catardi crawled into the commander’s couch and snapped the circuit breakers shut one at a time. The fourth and seventh breakers tripped back open, obviously due to an electrical fault, but all the other circuits came on-line. He snapped the breakers shut for the command module’s interior lighting, then for the atmospheric control console. The last breaker was for the electrical space heaters, which would burn power, but without them they would soon freeze. He climbed out of the couch and made his way back to the atmospheric control console and started the CO burners, high-temperature wire that would burn the flammable carbon monoxide and convert it to carbon dioxide. The burners would also eliminate any hydrogen leaking from a bad fuel cell and convert it to harmless water vapor. Next he started the carbon dioxide scrubbers. An amine solution pump came on, a vent fan winding up in the space, whirring quietly in the otherwise church like quiet. The amine solution would absorb the carbon dioxide.

The oxygen banks were full and should outlast the batteries and fuel cells, assuming they hadn’t leaked. The DSV was designed to be a much “harder” system than the submarine itself, since it was designed for almost twenty times the operating depth of the Piranha to allow an excursion to the bottom reaches of the oceans. The final problem was the pressure in the space. The DSV was designed to have the pressure inside raised and lowered, and with the pressure this high, the oxygen in the space could actually become toxic, but too rapid a depressurization could give them all the bends. The immediate action was done — he decided to let the computer decide. Once the smoke was cleared up, he could energize the main and auxiliary computers and have them calculate a depressurization cycle.

“Captain,” Pacino croaked. Catardi hurried to his side, helping the midshipman sit up.

“What the hell happened?” Catardi asked.

“We got hit by two torpedoes,” Pacino said. “The interior was a wreck. There weren’t any deck platforms left, just ripped steel and burning weapon fuel. And smoke and floodwater. You three were the only ones breathing I could see. I pulled you back to the compartment hatch and into the DSV, but the hatch wouldn’t shut. The down angle was too steep. How’d the hatch get shut?”

“We must have hit the bottom and it slammed shut,” Catardi said. Then he mumbled, as if to himself, “Fucking Snare.” Catardi searched in a cubbyhole, where he found the blankets and covered Alameda with several, then put two on Schultz.