Sedulity (Book One) Impact (4 page)

“Yes,” Kevin agreed. “I’m sure these windows are strong, but
I don’t know if they will survive the blast.”

“Fix course! Slow ahead! Clear the Bridge!” the Captain
ordered in a commanding voice. The Bridge crew scrambled to comply and hurried
back into the navigation room abaft the Bridge. Kevin and the Captain were the
last to leave and were almost frozen in place by the unimaginable force bearing
down on them. It was only a few miles away when they slammed the door to the
Bridge behind them.

****

There was a flat screen television mounted on the wall next
to the elevator bank in the stairway lobby where Amanda sat and held Emily. It
was always tuned to the closed-circuit view from a camera mounted above the
Bridge, showing the ship’s bow and a view of the ocean in front of it. Amanda
became fascinated as the view swung to encompass the faux sunrise. She could
even make out the billowing and glowing column that blossomed into a towering
mushroom cloud. It was terrifyingly beautiful.

As the phenomena centered up on the TV screen, Amanda
couldn’t identify an object that began to fill the lower half of the screen,
obscuring the mushroom cloud behind it. Then she remembered what Kevin had said
about a blast wave. Could that be it? It was too vast to comprehend and it was
approaching at tremendous speed, blotting out the horizon along with more and
more stars above it.

She was mesmerized during the final seconds when the blast
wave, for that is what it must be, expanded to fill the whole view. In the
blink of an eye the picture went dead and it felt as if the ship had run
aground. Amanda and Emily were thrown forward across the lobby and the sounds
that tore through the tortured ship were indescribable.  Amanda hit her head on
the opposite bulkhead right before the lights went out.

****

Armando drank almost a third of the bottle of Scotch in what
he became convinced would be the last moments of his life. At least he could
see his end coming, he reasoned. The Sky Lounge, perched two decks above the
Bridge, had awe inspiring 180 degree views. Never had it offered such an
awesome view as this! And Armando had it all to himself. The lounge could hold
over 500 people, but he was the only one there now, watching death approach
with 20-20 eyesight.

The liquor was just starting to take effect when the blast
wave became visible. Armando took a moment to look around and appreciate the
beauty of the terrifying event. In the final seconds, after looking the monster
in the eye, he dropped the bottle, dove to the floor, and scrunched up against
the icemaker.

“KBAM!” is far too tame a word to describe the sound and
force with which the blast wave impacted the Sky Lounge. Every window imploded
and superheated hurricane force winds swirled through the empty space. Window
treatments and upholstery smoked and spontaneously ignited from the combination
of intense heat and force fed oxygen. Shards from the windows and shattered
glassware flew like thrown daggers and embedded in anything soft enough to
accept them.

Armando was plastered into the icemaker as the ship’s inertia
was arrested by the compressed wall of hot air. Luckily for him, his weight
upended the machine and dumped at least a hundred pounds of ice cubes all over
him, preventing his skin from being charred and his clothes from igniting. 
Nevertheless, his face, arms and hands received flash burns as the hot air
swept over him. And then it was over. The blast wave was past, but the flames
it had started grew.

Perhaps it was the alcohol he had consumed that kept him
alive. Armando had heard that drunk drivers often survived collisions that
killed everyone else involved. Or maybe it was his resignation to fate that
allowed his body to be thrown around like a rag doll and flash burned without
going into shock. Whatever the reason, Armando found himself alive and
surprisingly healthy, lying under a pile of melting ice, surrounded by a room
full of flaming furniture and debris. His immediate surroundings were far from safe.
Broken bottles of alcohol had ignited on both sides of the bar and the flames
were racing towards him.

It was a miracle that Armando found the fire extinguisher in
the pile of spilled ice. He grabbed it and staggered to his feet as he pulled
the safety pin. Pointing the nozzle at the closest flames, he discharged blast
after blast at the base of the flames, just as he had been trained to do. This
allowed him to clear out from behind the bar and through the growing inferno. 
Flames raged throughout the big room. Armando would have died of smoke
inhalation, if not for the fact that all the glass walls were gone and a strong
clean wind was rushing in to fill the vacuum created by the blast wave. The
rushing air allowed him to breath, but also stoked the fire.

Armando didn’t pause to count his blessings, nor curse his
fate. He pressed on through the smoke and flames, trusting his fire
extinguisher to clear a path and his body to follow it.  Somehow he knew where
he needed to go. Not the exit doors. Not through one of the broken windows to
jump onto a deck below. No. He went straight to the fire hose that he was
trained and prepared to use.

****

Mrs. Krystos and the people in the theater heard the klaxon
alarm and the warning to brace for impact seconds before the blast wave hit the
ship. The sound was deafening. The whole hull rang and hummed like a giant gong
when the blast of compressed air hit the bow.  Most of the people standing were
thrown to the ground and Lydia was glad that the majority were safely seated.

The blast itself didn’t last long, but they could hear
turmoil beyond the doors to the theater and some of the heat seeped into the
large room. The most terrifying moment, the one that caused the most screams,
was when the power failed and the lights went out, followed moments later by
the distant shriek of fire alarms. The theater was plunged into brief darkness
before the emergency lighting clicked on and floodlights sprang to life along
the walls.

Throughout the theater couples of all ages, nationalities and
genders clung to each other in fear. Lydia wished that her husband was with her
too, but knew that the lives of everyone aboard were in his hands already. Fire
alarms echoed throughout the ship, but the theater seemed to have ridden out
the impact without major damage.  Mrs. Krystos counted their blessings, said a
silent prayer for her husband and others outside the theater, then began trying
to calm the passengers and keep them seated until further word came down from
the Bridge.

****

Kevin was thrown against the chart table at the Navigation
Station and thought he had broken a few ribs when the wind was knocked out of
him. The noise of the blast wave was almost more violent than the impact
itself. Sounds that should only come from a plane crash or multicar pileup
assailed his senses. Then the heat built rapidly amidst the screams of the
crew. Kevin would have been screaming too, if the wind hadn’t been knocked out
of him. All he could do instead was watch the door to the Bridge bulge and threaten
to buckle. The actual impact and overpressure of the blast wave only lasted for
a few seconds, but it left a lasting impression on everyone who survived it.
The temperature rose instantly to over 100 degrees in the Navigation Room, but
then it stabilized and started to fall at the same time that the power went out
and emergency lighting clicked on.

“Dear God!” exclaimed the Captain. “Is everyone alright?” A
chorus of responses indicated that the Bridge Crew had all survived and Kevin
managed to nod and wave ascent as well. The Captain moved towards the door to
the bridge, but Kevin reached out to stop him.

“Wait,” he gasped, still catching his breath. “It will be hot
and there might be fire.”

“Right,” the Captain agreed. “Mr. Crawford, break out the firefighting
gear. We need to secure the Bridge.”

“Yes, Sir,” the First Officer responded as he collected
several of the crew and moved towards the fire locker. A few seconds later they
returned with fire extinguishers and breathing apparatus. Mr. Crawford also
wore gloves and a heavy jacket. He cautiously opened the door to the Bridge and
smoke billowed into the Navigation Room, but thankfully no flames.

 Two crewmen with fire extinguishers and oxygen masks entered
the Bridge first. They split up to deal with the scattered fires. The
upholstery on the minimalist furniture and a few other flammable items had
ignited. Most of the windows were intact. Only the windows jutting out over the
side of the ship on the Bridge Wings had actually imploded, allowing the hot
blast to sweep into the Bridge from both sides.  It would have been a pressure
cooker for anyone there at the time. The main windows of the bridge survived
because they were constructed of ballistic Plexiglas, bullet proof, as a
precaution against pirates and anything Mother Nature could throw at the ship. 
It took less than a minute to extinguish the minor fires on the Bridge.

“Well,” the Captain said to Kevin, “it seems as if the ship
has survived. I hate to think what would have happened if that had hit us
broadside. You were right, Mr. Summers. It probably would have capsized us or
gutted the ship. Now it’s time to take stock of the damage and injuries.”

“I’m afraid it’s not over yet, Captain,” Kevin said.

“Oh?” Captain Krystos asked with raised eyebrows. “What
else?”

“That was the atmospheric blast wave, next comes the real
wave.” He pointed towards the horizon which seemed to be rising ominously in
front of the ship.  

Chapter 3:

The Rogue impacted the center of the
Pacific Ocean at a 40 degree angle, traveling at close to 15 miles per second
after being slowed marginally by the Earth’s atmosphere. The asteroid was still
close to a mile wide, even after its outer shell burned away. With a density of
8,000 kilograms per cubic meter, it’s mostly iron composition packed an
explosive force equal to more than a million megatons of TNT – over five
hundred times more powerful than all of the world’s combined nuclear weapon stockpiles.
The release of this energy upon impact instantly formed a hole in the ocean
twenty miles wide and more than a mile deep. Then the asteroid hit the sea
floor and created a transient crater twelve miles wide, while penetrating more
than four miles deep into the Earth’s crust. The fireball at the point of
impact was nineteen miles wide and hundreds of times brighter than the sun.

More than three cubic miles of water
were instantly vaporized and a hundred times more was displaced in the fraction
of a second it took the asteroid to reach the ocean floor. Many more cubic
miles of the ocean would be turned to steam as the water tried in vain to cover
the molten crater on the seafloor. The impact itself caused a massive example
of what happens when you drop a large rock into a shallow pond. In those first
few moments the ocean tried to escape the Rogue. The effort was in vain, but
nonetheless epic in proportion. Many billions of gallons of seawater were
pushed away from the point of impact, creating a wave of water the likes of
which Earth had not experienced in eons.

Of course water was not the only
thing driven out from the impact zone. A massive blast wave, dwarfing what
would have been produced by all the nuclear bombs and warheads in existence,
spread out at the speed of sound ahead of the wall of water.  The blast wave
propagated in every direction, but dissipated quickly in the thinner upper
atmosphere. At sea level it remained a solid wall of compressed and superheated
air. It arrived at the
SS Sedulity
eight minutes after impact, travelling at 764 miles per hour,
with an overpressure of 33 pounds per square inch, shattering windows, bending
metal, igniting exposed clothing, paper and wood, while causing third degree
burns to exposed human skin.

They say that the explosion of
Krakatoa was the loudest sound in recorded history, heard over 3,000 miles
away, but it paled in comparison to the heralding call of the Rogue. Windows
would shatter in Australia, Indonesia, and Hawaii. The effects closer to the
impact were so extreme that only a handful of reports were ever made. Initial reports
of the blast wave from islands and coastlines around the Pacific Rim were
followed by silence when the real waves arrived.

****

Armando didn’t know how long it took him to put out the fire.
It was a timeless battle. He manhandled the fire hose, adjusting it from a wide
spray to tight stream and back again, knocking down one set of flames only to
turn and attack another conflagration. He wore a breathing mask and found
himself yelling into it, like a berserker in battle. The Sky Lounge was a disaster
area when he suppressed the last stubborn fires.

The walls and ceiling were blackened by soot and scorch
marks. Tables and chairs lay scattered in smoking piles of debris. Not a single
window in the lounge had survived the blast wave, so air rushed through the
room, driven by the ship’s own speed, and swiftly cleared out the smoke.
Armando finally turned off the fire hose and removed the breathing apparatus.
His scorched hands were shaking and he gulped air in ragged breaths. Now that
he had a moment to take stock of the situation, the reality of what he had just
gone through began to sink in.  He shivered and shook with nervous tension, or
possibly the onset of PTSD. Nothing in his life offered any form of comparison
to what had just happened.

Armando looked around the ruins of the Sky Lounge in
disbelief.  Then he turned towards the gaping holes where the windows had been
and stared at the still glowing horizon. Something didn’t seem right, and not
just the faux sunrise. No the horizon itself was moving, growing, climbing into
the sky. Was it another blast wave sweeping over the ocean? He didn’t think he
could survive another one of those. But this looked different than the wall of
compressed and superheated air that he had witnessed before. This time the
ocean itself was rising like a rolling foothill, building into a gigantic wave
that was bearing down on the ship at high speed.  “Dios e diablo,” he muttered
in shock.

****

“Bridge crew! Man your posts!” Captain Krystos barked. “What
do we have on radar?”

“We don’t have any radar, sir,” a crewman replied. “It must
have been torn off or burned out.”

“Right,” the Captain said. He took a pair of binoculars out
of a wall cabinet, handling them gingerly because they were hot to the touch.
Focusing on the horizon, his breath caught in his throat. The night was clear,
aside from the massive and glowing mushroom cloud spreading along the horizon,
but that horizon was rising to obscure the lower portion of the cloud.
“Tsunami?” he asked no one in particular.

“Impact displacement wave,” Kevin clarified. “There will
probably be Tsunamis too – caused by earthquakes and eruptions along the entire
Pacific Rim, or Ring of Fire – but this one is from the asteroid hitting the
ocean. It’s like stomping your boot in a puddle.”

“How big will it be?” the Captain asked.

“Who knows?” Kevin replied. “How deep is the ocean here?”

“Several thousand meters,” the Captain said.

“Good,” Kevin said in relief. “Then it probably won’t break
on us. But it’s big and moving fast.”

“What do you suggest we do?” Captain Krystos inquired.

“Keep going towards it?” Kevin said as more of a question
than answer. “Ride up and over it? I don’t think we have any other option.”

“Right,” the Captain agreed, then he turned back to the
Bridge crew. “Full speed ahead, all engines. Steady as she goes on 90 degrees
true. Is the public address system working?”

“I think so, Sir,” Mr. Crawford answered. “And Sir? We are
showing multiple fire alarms on decks four through fourteen.” Those were all
the decks of the superstructure above the line of the hull, from the lifeboat
deck to the top of the ship. Most of those upper decks were lined with balcony
staterooms that may have been gutted and ignited by the blast wave.

The Captain nodded calmly and picked up the microphone.
“Attention please. This is your Captain speaking. All hands prioritize fighting
fires and render assistance to any passengers in distress. Secure all
watertight doors. I repeat, secure all watertight doors. The ship has made it
through the initial blast wave, but we are facing another major event…” His
words trailed off as he failed to come up with a proper description of the
danger. “All hands and passengers should stay away from windows and open decks,
find a secure position, and brace for another impact. God willing, we will make
it through this one too.”

****

Amanda huddled with Emily under an emergency light in the
stairwell lobby. A knot was forming where she had hit her head, but the worst
seemed to be over. However, she could smell smoke and hear screams echoing up
the stairwell from where the other passengers had fled. A wave of heat had
passed through the lobby and fire alarms continued to sound. Then the Captain’s
voice came over the loudspeakers, warning of continued fire danger and another
unnamed but impending threat. At least he hadn’t given the order to abandon
ship yet.

“It’s okay, Emily,” Amanda told her five year old daughter.
“Daddy will be here soon.”

“I’m scared, Momma,” the child said with tears running down
her cheeks. “What’s happening?”

“Don’t be scared, baby. Daddy says we’ll be safe here,”
Amanda said as she brushed Emily’s blonde hair out of her green eyes and hugged
her tightly. “We just have to wait here a little longer. Daddy is coming soon,
you’ll see.”

Amanda prayed that saying those words would make it so, but
inside she was terrified. The impact, the heat, the smoke, and now a warning of
more to come were almost too much. She might have broken into hysterics, if not
for the instinctual need to comfort and protect her daughter. She did trust
Kevin implicitly, and would wait for him until the last moment, but her inner
doubts couldn’t help arguing that it might soon be time to take Emily down to
the lifeboats.

****

Lieutenant Reiner pulled himself up from behind the slot
machine where he had been thrown by the impact of the blast wave. The ship’s
casino was one of the muster stations that thankfully did not have windows. It
and the people sheltering within it had been spared the worst of the heat and
blast. That is not to say they were unscathed. Far from it. Reiner could see
quite a few passengers sprawled unmoving on the floor. Others were moaning.
Some were screaming. Nevertheless, the majority seemed to at least be alive.

He was alarmed to see clouds of smoke billowing into the
casino from the direction of the Martini Bar and it sounded like most of the
screams were coming from that direction. He gathered himself and rushed across
the room, issuing empty reassurance to anyone who could hear him. This was
worse than any of the catastrophic events the crew prepared for. But where
there was smoke there was fire, and that was one threat that all the crew were
trained to combat. Lieutenant Reiner gathered four crewmembers he saw in the
casino and ordered them to join him as he headed into the smoke.

Automatic fire suppression sprinklers were spraying water
everywhere in the Martini Bar. Even sprinklers that were not directly above a
fire had been triggered by the heat that accompanied the blast wave when
windows imploded. Fortunately only a few windows were broken here. Unlike the
Sky Lounge, whose windows overlooked the bow, the windows near the muster
stations faced out along the side of the ship. For the most part the blast wave
had swept along these windows, instead of hitting them head-on.  Yet the few
windows that had broken, and the doors to the deck that had been blown off
their hinges, were more than enough to admit hellfire and wreak havoc on the
room and its occupants. 

Not much in the Martini Bar was flammable, aside from
alcohol, decorations and seat cushions. Sadly, the other flammable things were
clothing. Human torches rolled and writhed on the deck amidst the sickly sweet
smell of burning flesh. Other burning lumps had already stopped moving and
screaming. Reiner was frozen for just a second by the sight, before heading for
a firefighting cabinet and passing out extinguishers to the crew that followed
him.

By unspoken agreement they focused first on putting out the
fires engulfing those who were obviously still alive. Then they shifted to the
unmoving bodies of crispy corpses, before turning to deal with the flames
rippling along the walls and furniture. The automated sprinklers helped, but
nothing could detract from the horror of the overall scene. Close to a hundred
passengers had been clustered at this must station. Ten or twenty of them might
walk away from it in one piece. The rest were either dead, seriously injured or
too badly burned to move under their own power.

Lt. Reiner was horrified to see that one of the badly burned
survivors was his boss, Staff Captain Stevens.  His hair was burned away and
what remained of his uniform was black instead of white now. In fact, he would
have been unrecognizable if not for the four gold stripes on the singed epaulet
upon his shoulder.  After directing the rest of the crew with him to suppress
fires and care for injured passengers, Reiner knelt down and said, “Captain
Stevens? Can you hear me? It’s Lieutenant Reiner, Sir.” 

“Reiner…” the Staff Captain mumbled through swelling lips. He
tried to open his eyes, but they seemed welded shut. “Reiner… Mrs. Krystos was
right,” he said amidst obvious pain. “Took passengers to the theater. Are they
safe?”

“I’m not sure, Captain, but I think so,” Lt. Reiner replied.
“Those of us in the casino were okay too. Only the rooms with windows seem to
have caught on fire.”

“Good, that’s good, son,” Stevens murmured. “I was trying to
clear people out of the bar. I guess I didn’t make it in time.”

“Relax, Captain,” Reiner said. “We’ll get you down to medical
right away.”

“No!” Stevens barked. “You focus on the passengers first.
That’s an order!” This outburst seemed to tap the last of his strength and his
head fell back onto the smoldering deck. Lt. Reiner paused uncertainly, until
he heard Captain Krystos’ warning of another “event” echoing from public
address speakers in undamaged parts of the ship. That confirmed Reiner’s course
of action. He placed a gentle hand on Staff Captain Stevens’ charred forehead
for a brief moment before turning his attention to helping those who could be
helped. The crisis wasn’t over yet.

****

Armando saw what was coming and did not want to face it. He
might be a sailor by profession, but he was deathly afraid of drowning. The
thought of facing a mountain of water was much more terrifying to him than
fire. So what he saw approaching altered the equation in his mind from fight to
flight in an instant.