Sedulity (Book One) Impact (9 page)

“Please relax and take a seat, Mr. Donner,” he said in a
tightly restrained voice. “We will all be informed on the ship’s status as soon
as the Captain and crew get a handle on the situation. I can assure you that we
are all working hard to ensure the safety of the ship and passengers, which is
why I must insist for your own safety that you take a seat and try to remain
calm, sir.”

“Remain calm, my ass, sailor boy!” the big Texan erupted.
“You’ve got fires, flooding, and honest to gosh-darn meteors hitting this ship,
son! Hell, I didn’t even have time to grab a lifejacket from my suite before
you folks herded us down here like cattle! Then you shake us up like buttered
popcorn, almost drown us in a flood, and now we’re supposed to just sit and
wait for more rocks to fall out of the sky and crush us like bugs? Hell no,
son! That’s not how Hank Donner is checking out! No sir. I think it’s high time
to get on those lifeboats, don’t you?”

“No, Mr. Donner, I don’t,” Reiner replied with as much
patience as he could muster. “The Captain is the only one who will make that
decision and only if he feels the situation warrants it. We have obviously
suffered some damage and loss of life, but the ship seems to have made it
through the worst of this crisis. Now it’s up to all of us to keep our heads,
avoid panic, and wait for further instructions. So please calm down and don’t
alarm the other passengers.”

Kevin called out for Amanda and Emily from the stairway
landing on each deck as he and Petty Officer Perkins descended into the ship,
but received no reply. When they reached Deck 5 they began to see more damage
from fire and flooding. This was one of the public decks with large windows
overlooking the lifeboats perched above Promenade Deck 4 where the muster
stations were located. The lounges and shops surrounding the atrium on Deck 5
were severely damaged by flash fires, followed by flash flooding, as well as
the effects of violent maneuvers when the ship encountered the monstrous waves.
Several dazed passengers wandered about, most suffering various degrees of
injury, but there was no sign of Kevin’s wife and daughter.

“One more deck, Mr. Summers,” the radar man said. “If they
aren’t at the muster stations, I’m not sure where else to look.” Kevin nodded
noncommittally and led the way down the stairs to the Promenade Deck. Exiting
the stairway Kevin turned towards his family’s assigned muster station in the Martini
Bar. As soon as it came into view Kevin froze in shock. It looked like a war
zone, or something from a horror movie. Charred bodies were stacked like
cordwood against the bar and in corners of the room where the floodwaters had
deposited them. Kevin refused to accept the possibility that his family were
among the dead, but couldn’t stop himself from searching for any sign of them
in the piles.

“Jesus Christ!” exclaimed Petty Officer Perkins. “I’m sure
your family isn’t one of them,” he added quickly. “These people were burned
during the first blast of heat and Lieutenant Reiner reported that your wife and
daughter where on Deck 10 when that blast wave struck us.”

“He said he left them there shortly before then,” Kevin
corrected, although he wanted with all his heart to agree with the radar man’s
assessment.  “But I think you’re right. And if they came down here later I’m
sure Amanda would have taken Emily somewhere else as soon as she saw this.”
Kevin turned away from the carnage in the Martini Bar and led the way into the
casino, hoping that what he found there would be less horrifying.

At least they found some living people here, even if they all
seemed worse for wear. Most of the surviving passengers huddled on the floor
between banks of dead slot machines. They looked like drowned rats, mixed in
with bodies of those that truly had drowned. Some of the bodies were pinned
under overturned slot machines, where they were either crushed or drowned to
death.  Most of the survivors ignored the bodies around them, obviously in
shock from what they had endured here. Others were openly crying, perhaps
grieving loved ones who hadn’t survived.  Several members of the crew moved
slowly through the casino, offering words of reassurance and minor first aid.

Kevin was looking everywhere, but did not see any sign of his
family when he and Petty Officer Perkins advanced into the casino. He was about
to call out their names again when a loud and vaguely familiar voice shouted
out from across the room, “Oh hell,
no
, not the poker table! What the
hell else can go wrong on this trip?” Kevin looked over and recognized the big
Texan, Hank Donner, standing next to a pile of debris that had been swept into
a corner by the flooding. He appeared more distraught about the destruction of
casino furniture than the human misery and loss of life surrounding him. Kevin
shook his head in disgust, but continued in that direction and approached the
man cautiously.

“Excuse me, Hank is it?” Kevin asked. “Have you seen a woman
with a five year old girl anywhere around here?”

Hank looked up dejectedly and replied, “No, can’t say as I
have, but I wasn’t really looking for them neither.  Say, can you believe this
crap? As if fireballs falling from the sky and the ship almost sinking ain’t
enough? The whole casino is trashed! What are we supposed to do now?”

Kevin couldn’t believe his ears, but said, “Well, I don’t
know about you, but I’m going to find my missing wife and daughter.” That
seemed to snap Hank out of his wretched self-pity for a moment.

“Oh, right. Sorry about that,” Hank said with a hint of
contrition. “You might want to look in the theater. There’s a lot of folks
holed up in there waiting for the next rock to drop out of the sky. Good luck,
mister. I hope you find them.”

Chapter 8:

A massive Chinese container ship
three hundred miles from the impact zone was able to send a warning and
distress signal before the giant waves overtook the ship and broke her in half.
The captain of the cargo vessel had turned away from the unnatural dawn that
flared far beyond the western horizon, attempting to distance his ship from
whatever was happening. The blast wave arrived half an hour after the brilliant
light had faded and was strong enough to break windows on the aft
superstructure and rattle the whole ship, but failed to start fires at that
distance. They reported the distant light and atmospheric blast by radio and
satellite communications. However, the thousand foot wave that arrived an hour
after the asteroid strike took them completely by surprise. Rather than riding
up and over the wave, as the
SS Sedulity
had, the heavy container ship nosedived into
the sea when wave lifted the stern and drove her forward. The opposing forces
broke her hull amidships and swept both halves of the ship under the wave,
never to be seen or heard from again.

First Officer Crawford escorted Armando, Amanda and Emily
onto the Bridge where Captain Krystos was directing damage control and recovery
efforts. The Captain paused when he saw them enter and said, “Ah, Mrs. Summers,
I’m so glad that you and your daughter are safe. Your husband and one of my
crew just left to look for you. Mr. Summers’ advice has been invaluable during
this crisis. We’ll make you comfortable in my quarters until he returns. Mr. Crawford,
please escort these young ladies to my dayroom.”  The Executive Officer nodded
and guided Amanda and Emily to a door off the Bridge that connected to the
Captain’s suite.

“Armando,” the Captain turned his attention to the singed
bartender, “you look like hell. Tell me what happened.”  Armando came to
attention and proceeded to describe his single-handed stand against the fire in
the Sky Lounge, his terrified flight from the towering waves to cower in the
elevator, what he had seen transpire in the atrium and on the Resort Deck, and
finally his response to the fireball that hit the ship and finding the Summers
family on his way to check the lower decks. When he finished his report Captain
Krystos gave him a look of pride and gratitude, then saluted the Filipino
bartender.  “Well done, Armando. Outstanding! You are a credit to the
Sedulity
and your bravery will not go unnoticed. Now go have those burns treated and
get some rest.”

“Oh no, Captain, I couldn’t,” Armando objected. “I must check
the rest of the cabins below the hole made by the fireball. I only came here to
escort Mrs. Summers and report what I have seen so far.”

“Listen, Armando,” Captain Krystos said with a note of
command. “I have already deployed a damage control team with full firefighting
gear to investigate and deal with any additional damage from that fireball. We
know it ended up in the theater and the team will deal with any more fires on the
decks above. You’ve already done more than anyone would be expected to. I want
you to get those burns looked at and take a rest, or at least stick to light
duty by assisting the passengers. You’re a Hospitality Mate, after all, and our
guests will be needing your services.” He smiled as he said this, but made it
clear that he was giving an order.

“Yes, Sir,” Armando said. “Of course, Sir.” He turned to
leave the Bridge, but paused to add, “And, Captain, I just want to thank you
for saving the ship, Sir. I hate to think what would have happened if we had
been hit broadside. Your courage in facing it head-on made all the difference,
I’m sure of it, Sir.” Then he turned and left the Bridge en route to Medical.

Captain Krystos maintained a stoic expression, but was
inwardly touched by the bartender’s compliment. He knew that the true credit
should go to Mr. Summers for suggesting the successful course of action in a
timely fashion, but also knew that the passengers and crew needed to think of
the Captain as their infallible savior – at least until the crisis had passed.
And he knew that if another officer had been in command, perhaps a less
imaginative one such as Mr. Crawford, they might not have been as receptive to
the weatherman’s advice.  It was a lucky combination of factors, including the
people involved, which had allowed them to survive this long.

“Mr. Jennings,” the Captain called to the Third Officer. “Any
luck with long range communications yet?”

“The radio antennas are all burned off or blown away, Sir.
We’re transmitting in the blind. I’ve no idea if anyone is receiving,” replied
the young officer. “We carry spares for some of the antennas, but it will take
time to unpack and install them and we can’t even get to the mounts as long as
the rain is this hot. I’m having a little better luck with the satellite
systems, Sir. Several of the dome mounts are intact. No uplink for voice or
data communications yet, but I think we can get television signals on the aft
receiver. Give me a few more minutes to make adjustments, Sir. It looks like we
will have to track the satellite manually until main power is restored, but I
should be able to lock in on a news channel soon.”

“Very well, Jennings,” Captain Krystos said. “Keep up the
good work. In the meantime find out what’s taking so long to get me an Iridium
sat phone from a lifeboat. And get me the phone number for the Pacific Tsunami
Warning Center.  They’re best equipped to spread an alert.” The Captain turned
to stare out over the storm swept ocean, towards the glowing impact zone, and
mentally composed the message he would send as soon as he made contact with the
outside world. How could he describe what they had seen and been through in the
past half hour? Would his warning make any difference to those in the path of
the monster waves? These questions were almost enough to distract his thoughts
from the fate of his wife.

****

 Lydia seemed to have arrived at a dead end. After making her
way up the narrow stairway as high as it went, she had turned down a passageway
trying to find a way to go higher. Now, however, she was faced with a sealed
watertight door blocking further progress. She wondered why the stairway had
not continued higher, but reasoned that she was now directly below the theater
where her ordeal had begun. The watertight door she faced was part of an
integral bulkhead that divided the hull of the ship into isolated sections in
case of flooding. She knew of no way to override the locks on these doors once
they were activated from the Bridge.

It was tempting to just sit down on the deck next to the door
and wait for someone to open it. When the crisis ended they would open the
doors, wouldn’t they? And if it didn’t end? She didn’t want to think about
that. But what kept her going was the thought of her husband worrying about her
safety. Perhaps he had already learned that she had been swept away by the
flooding. If so, she knew he would be worried sick. That might even interfere
with other decisions he had to make, ones that the ship and all aboard her
depended on. So it was for more than her own sake that she turned away from the
locked door and went back, looking for another way to climb back up to the
public areas of the ship.

There was hardly any water left on the deck of this
passageway. It had all drained down to the lowest decks where she hoped the
pumps were handling it adequately. She didn’t think the flooding had been
serious enough to actually threaten sinking the ship, especially since most of
it seemed to have stopped after the violent encounters with what she could only
imagine to be mammoth waves.  Lydia had seen some of the ship’s massive pumps
when her husband had taken her on a tour of the engineering spaces during a
previous cruise. She couldn’t remember how many gallons per minute each pump
could expel from the bilge, but recalled that it numbered in the thousands.  Lydia
had no idea how many gallons had flooded the ship, except that it must be many
thousands too. Yet as long as the ship remained afloat and the flooding
stopped, the pumps should be able to deal with it eventually.

Unable to go aft due to the sealed door, and seeing debris
blocking the forward end of the passageway, Lydia started looking for side
passages that might lead to another route. Most of the doors along the corridor
were locked and the ones that were marked looked like more crew quarters or
storage rooms. She was a bit surprised not to find any of the crew down here,
but reasoned that they would have all gone up to their own muster stations when
the alarms were sounded. Eventually she discovered an inset door with a round
window that revealed another passageway crossing to the other side of the ship.
She crossed her fingers as she pushed against it and was relieved when it swung
open smoothly.

****

After leaving the casino Kevin Summers and the radar operator
moved through the wide corridor of the shopping mall towards the theater. Many
of the shops had been closed, with locked doors, and remained relatively
intact. Most of the damage within had been caused by the ship’s roller coaster
ride over the waves. Display cabinets were in disarray, but mostly undamaged.
Jewelry and expensive watches were scattered, but still there. Clothing racks
had toppled over, along with racks of souvenirs and sundries. Fragile
collectables were broken, but many would consider the greatest loss to be in
the Duty Free store. Here the shelves normally full of fine liquors were mostly
empty and the contents of those shattered bottles sloshed around on the floor.
Kevin only noted that loss in passing, however, as his focus remained fixed on
finding his family.

“What a shame,” Petty Officer Perkins muttered as they walked
swiftly by the store. “I think we’re all going to need a stiff drink when this is
over.” If it was an attempt to lighten the mood, it fell flat on Kevin’s ears.
Recognizing this, Perkins shifted gears. “I’m sure your family is fine, Mr.
Summers. This ship is like a maze, even for those of us who know her well. They
could have walked the other way on a parallel corridor, or gone up one
staircase while we were going down another. Don’t worry. We’ll find them.”

“Thanks,” Kevin replied. “I know we will. You’re probably
right about missing them upstairs. If they aren’t in the theater we’ll go back
up on the forward stairs. That’s where they should have been anyway. All of
this destruction makes it even harder to handle. To see such a beautiful ship
violated like this… And not knowing where my wife and daughter are…”

“I understand, Mr. Summers. Honestly, I do,” Perkins said
with compassion. “We’ll find them. And you are better off than those who know
their loved ones are truly lost.” He gestured slightly towards an elderly woman
down the hall who was weeping as she cradled the head of a white haired man who
had apparently died of drowning or cardiac arrest. Kevin nodded in agreement,
vowing not to lose hope.

 “Your heart is in a much better place than the gambler who
was crying over a broken poker table,” Perkins added.

Kevin forced a smile in response and said, “I hope your
little pep talk snapped good-ol’ Hank Donner back to reality. He seemed like a
pain in the rear
before
all this happened, but I have a feeling we’re
going to need everyone to pull together as a team to get through this.”

Petty Officer Perkins gave Kevin a questioning look, but held
his tongue as they left the shopping mall and passed through the theater lobby.
They could hear many more voices ahead and most of them sounded distraught. The
carpet in the lobby was sopping wet and water marks on the walls rose from
chest height in the shopping mall to the ceiling here, indicating that the
whole area had been flooded recently. Kevin could imagine all that water
rushing towards the bow when the ship nosed over the top of the largest wave.
Finding the doors to the theater busted off their hinges was no surprise. All
that water had to go somewhere. No wonder the people in the theater sounded traumatized.

****

Lieutenant Reiner wasn’t sure how long he could control the
crowd. He had enlisted several dozen members of the crew to walk the aisles,
trying to keep people in their seats. He realized, however, that it was a hard
sell after these people had witnessed one of their fellow passengers get
creamed by a meteorite while sitting in one of those same seats, not to mention
watching others swept away by flooding and sucked into a whirlpool on center
stage.  Those were not the type of things that promoted patience and calm among
a crowd.

Although the overall crisis for the ship seemed to be
stabilizing, the mood of the passengers was anything but. Speechless shock and
petrified fear were quickly thawing into anger, indignation and contagious
calls for action.  Reiner was about to radio the Captain and ask for further
direction and assistance when he spotted Mr. Summers and Petty Officer Perkins
enter the back of the theater. He waved his flashlight and started walking towards
them, mindful not to run and thereby start a panicked stampede. No, he had to
keep a calm and professional demeanor if he stood any chance of keeping control
of the situation. Luckily Mr. Summers recognized him, rushing to close the
distance and ask, “Have you seen my wife and daughter?”

“They insisted on waiting for you at the Deck 10 forward
lobby,” Reiner answered with more than a little surprise. “In light of what
happened, I’m sure they were safer there than those who went to the muster
stations. They said you told them to stay there. Didn’t you find them?”