Sedulity 2: Aftershock (Sedulity Saga) (7 page)

“Nevertheless, there are still dangers outside this room that
you need to be aware of before we can let you roam around the ship. We’ve been
recording close to six inches of rain per hour. It’s still hot enough to hurt
exposed skin. Worse than that, I myself have checked samples and confirmed
measurable levels of radioactivity in particles carried by the rain.” A
collective gasp swept through the theater.

“You are in no danger here, or inside any of the lower decks
on the ship. However, we have placed the outside decks, and the upper decks,
including all staterooms and suites with balconies, off-limits until further
notice.” The crowd erupted in angry protest and Mr. Cohen waited for them to
calm down while giving placating gestures. It was his idea, born from years of
working as an Israeli intelligence officer, to use the fear of radiation as an
excuse to keep these people from wanting to go back to their gutted staterooms.
He felt that the passengers would be more cooperative if they thought they were
being protected, instead of being told that their staterooms and all their
belongings had been destroyed. The captain had reluctantly concurred and agreed
to let him make this speech. When the outburst faded somewhat he went on.

“I repeat, you are in no danger down here, and we want to
keep it that way. But I’m afraid the same cannot be said for many of your
fellow passengers, as well as members of the crew. There has been significant
loss of life aboard the
Sedulity.
The
crew, along with some volunteers among the passengers, have been working all
night to save as many lives as possible and to keep the ship safe.

“I want to stress the lengths to which the captain and crew
have gone to save this ship and your own lives along with it. They fought fires
on nearly every deck, many of the crew suffered serious burns in the process.
Then they faced major flooding, which you are all aware of. The engineering crew
was trapped in lower compartments surrounded by water for hours, but they kept
the engines and pumps going, thereby saving the ship and everyone aboard her.
Since then the crew has been assisting the injured, restoring power, cleaning
up debris and broken glass to make the public areas safe, even getting the
kitchen operational to feed all of you soon. These are things that go above and
beyond their job descriptions, so I want all of you to keep this in mind as we
work together to survive this disaster.” Cohen paused again and swept his gaze
around the room, pleased to see most of the faces reflecting contrition or
gratitude.

“Captain Krystos will be joining us here soon to explain more
of what has happened and what you can expect in the coming hours and days. Before
he arrives, I want to impress upon you how lucky we all are that he was in
command of this ship last night. You’ve all seen the reports and images of mass
destruction sweeping across the globe today. All of it was triggered by the
asteroid that struck less than a hundred nautical miles from this ship. The
Sedulity
is the only vessel within
hundreds of miles known to have survived the impact. That wasn’t merely good
luck. It was the result of masterful seamanship and command decisions made by Captain
Krystos immediately after the impact and in the hours since. We all owe him our
lives and I hope you will display your gratitude when he joins us here. I can
tell you that he feels a heavy personal burden for every life that he couldn’t
save, so I hope your appreciation will lend him the strength he needs to lead
us out of this crisis and beyond.
 
Thank
you for your attention, ladies and gentlemen, and please remain seated until
the captain joins us shortly.”
 

The passengers erupted in what sounded like heartfelt
applause and Mr. Cohen bowed slightly before leaving the stage. He was
confident that his performance had set the mood necessary for Captain Krystos
to take control of the situation. In fact, Cohen suspected that most of these
people would soon be kissing the captain’s feet. Of course, there were bound to
be troublemakers and malcontents who wouldn’t accept or understand the new
realities, which was why Mr. Cohen had brought his security team along. There
were four empty bunks in the ship’s brig, commonly referred to as the “drunk
tank” due to the usual clientele. He could throw in a few more mattresses, or
take over another room, if necessary. It would just mean that many fewer
passengers in need of more desirable berths.

*****

Hank Donner chuckled when the man with the funny accent began
to describe their plight. Having been out and about on his own, going as far as
helping the Filipino bartender take injured passengers down to the sick bay,
Hank had a good idea of the death and destruction littering the rest of the
ship. He lost his grim smile at the mention of radiation and briefly worried if
the barkeep had been contaminated. Hank appreciated the lengths to which that
man had gone to help others, even shaming Hank into helping him do it. So he
could relate to the stories of heroic sacrifice by crewmen to save the ship and
passengers. He had witnessed a prime example of that. But the description of
the captain as their fearless savior brought a smile back to his face.
Nevertheless, he had to admit that he was still alive, and witnessing the fate
of millions on live television who were not so fortunate. If the captain had
saved the ship, then Hank figured he owed him more than a few drinks.

The only part of the pep talk that got Hank rankled was the
announcement that his balcony suite on one of the upper decks was off-limits
indefinitely due to possible radioactive contamination. What else could go
wrong on this cruise? Where the hell was he supposed to sleep? He wanted a
shower, a change of clothes, and a long nap in the bed he had paid for. Well,
he could wait until after seeing the rest of the news coverage of the tsunami
play out on TV. This was a once in a lifetime experience that he didn’t want to
miss, no matter how horrific the images. He was sure that the most gruesome
scenes would be edited out of the reruns, and who would give up a ringside seat
to the end of the world? After this show was over, however, he wanted nothing
more than to go back up to his suite and relax in peace.

“Excuse me, sir. Is it really that bad?” asked a sexy female
voice from behind Hank. “You were out there. Right? What did you see?”
 

Hank turned his head and saw an attractive woman in her late
thirties or early forties with long blonde hair and blue eyes, leaning her
ample breasts over the aisle railing behind his seat. She was clearly talking
to him.

“Yes, miss. I’m sad to say it’s pretty bad out there,” Hank
replied honestly. “I don’t know anything about radiation, but I wouldn’t have
seen that, would I? The rest of what he said doesn’t come close to describing
what happened out there. At least what I saw of it. Lots of dead bodies. Lots
of people burned and banged up. Fire damage. Water damage. Broken stuff
scattered everywhere. The ship’s a real mess. I don’t envy the crew the job of
cleaning it up.”

“Oh dear,” the woman said. “I was afraid you were going to
say that. This is terrible. Can they really keep us out of our staterooms? We
have a concierge class balcony room. I just want to go back up there and crawl
into bed. This all seems like a bad dream.”

“I know what you mean, miss,” Hank said, hoping that she
really was a
miss
and not a missus.
“I have a suite with a big balcony overlooking the back of the ship. First
class. I paid a lot for that room and I’ll be damned if I’m not going to use
it. Name’s Hank Donner from Houston, Texas, by the way. Pleased to meet you.”

“Oh, hello. Sorry. I’m Romy Price,” she replied and extended
a slim hand for Hank to shake. “We’re from Santa Barbara. My boyfriend, Fred,
is freaking out a bit. The ship’s officer wouldn’t answer any questions, or let
us leave the theater. I saw you leave and then come back, so I decided to ask
you what’s going on out there. This whole thing is creeping me out. Can you
believe what they’ve been showing on the news? It’s crazy.”

Her introduction spoke volumes to Hank. Romy had a boyfriend,
but wasn’t married. Said boyfriend was freaking out and didn’t have the balls
to get both of them out of the theater before the goon squad arrived, or even
get answers out of the sailor-boy in charge. They had a nice stateroom, but not
a suite. Of course they were all in the same predicament at the moment, until
they could get back to their rooms. And who knew if their rooms were even
intact?

Hank’s thoughts froze for a moment as a frightening idea took
shape. Having seen the destruction outside the theater, Hank suddenly wondered
what would happen to those comfy balcony rooms if the same forces of nature
were applied to them as had struck the Martini Bar and other muster stations.
The answer he came up with was not pretty, but he would keep those thoughts to
himself for now.

“Nice to meet you, Romy,” Hank said, then blinked as she
looked at him strangely. “I mean, I wish we could have met under better
circumstances. And you’re right. It’s crazy. I think that man was right about
us being lucky to be alive. We should probably keep that in mind during
whatever hardships we face on the rest of this cruise. But don’t hesitate to
let me know if I can be of any assistance to you, Miss Romy.”

“That’s sweet of you, thanks,” Romy said. “I guess we’re all
in the same boat here.”

Hank nodded and smiled at the pun. Same boat indeed. This
might get even more interesting.

Chapter 4

While monstrous waves swept up the coast of Baja, towards
crippled Southern California, their sisters were wreaking havoc and destruction
on the other side of the Pacific Ocean. Indonesia and the Philippines had
already been wiped out by a triple combo of punches from earthquakes, volcanoes,
and mega-tsunamis. Hundreds of millions of lives had been lost in the first
hours of doomsday. Many more were on the chopping block. There wasn’t much news
coverage of the destruction in Vietnam. Land soaked with the blood of tens of
thousands of American lives was cleansed when the waves hit the southern coast
and swept a hundred miles up the Me Cong Delta. Haiphong Harbor, further north,
went with a whimper, not a bang. No war could ever compare to the destruction
unleashed by the Rogue.

Spillover from the impact generated waves, as well as
traditional tsunamis from countless volcanic eruptions and earthquakes, were
propagating throughout the Indian Ocean too. The coastlands of Thailand, India,
and Sri Lanka were doomed. Much of low-lying Bangladesh would be wiped out.
When the waves reached the Persian Gulf they would build higher and higher,
wave after wave, sweeping away the oil drilling platforms, the palaces and
manmade islands of the petro-elite, washing deep into the deserts, bringing yet
another turning point in the painful history of the Middle East.

The mega-tsunamis held no prejudice for race, creed, or
religion. Geography alone decided the fate of close to a billion people that
day, many more if you counted the ones spared. Living on one side of a
peninsula or the other, building a home near the beach or up in the hills, these
turned out to be critical decisions that made the difference between life and
death for multitudes who never thought that such choices really mattered. Such
was the ignorant bliss in which people lived before the Rogue arrived.

*****

Kevin Summers had settled into the navigation room behind the
bridge. It included the ship’s weather station, as well as weather satellite
displays, moving map GPS navigation plots, and the chart table that Kevin had
become familiar with the night before.
 
It also lacked windows, so he wasn’t constantly
reminded that sunlight was totally absent today. The
Sedulity’s
navigator, Lieutenant Lampros, had college degrees in
meteorology and computer science. The young Greek officer spoke excellent
English and was happy to show off the high tech weather and navigation gear to
Kevin. He also had a pretty good grasp on the global threat posed by the
current weather phenomena and was eager for Kevin’s assistance in recording and
interpreting the raw data.

“We usually have a full suite of automated meteorological
instrumentation,” he explained. “But the damage we sustained last night took
out many of the integrated measurement systems. The main anemometer was torn
away, for example. So I had to install a portable one on top of the bridge wing
this morning. It’s giving us a pretty good reading on wind speed and direction,
but unfortunately, it’s not calibrated with the ship’s speedometer and
navigational heading. The primary system would have compensated for the
direction and speed of the ship and adjusted the registered wind speed and
direction accordingly. Now we will have to do it the old fashioned way, with
manual calculations, or type the raw data into the computer.”

Kevin nodded understanding and said, “At least you still have
the ability to take those readings. The
Sedulity
has the only weather station this close to the point of impact and there
will be a lot of climatologists and other scientists eager to get this data,
even if it’s raw. Have you seen any trends yet?”

“Yes indeed,” Lieutenant Lampros said as he pulled up graphs
on a desktop computer. “Take the wind for example. Before the asteroid strike
we were passing through the doldrums at the equator. Wind was negligible with
an occasional variable breeze of one to three knots. That was the reading right
before the blast wave hit us.” He pointed to a flat line on the left side of
the chart. It was followed by a single spike that went off the top of the
screen. “At the moment the blast wave hit the ship the anemometer registered a
wind speed of 200 knots, its maximum range of measure, for a split second
before being torn off the top of the ship. This spike indicates the blast wave
was moving more than three times that speed.” He tapped the computer screen for
emphasis.

“As you can see from the subsequent flat line, I didn’t have
any wind speed data for several hours after that, until I was able to locate
and attach another anemometer. The one we’re using now was part of a portable
weather station carried in one of the lifeboats.
 
The first new reading I got was just over four
hours ago and it registered a wind speed of 12 knots from directly astern.
Since the
Sedulity
has been traveling
at a steady 5 knots towards the impact zone, we add the two to come up with a
17 knot wind at sea level blowing towards the location of the phenomena. Since
then I’ve seen a steady increase in wind speed. As you can see on this chart,
the readings have more than doubled to a current speed of 35 knots, equating to
a true wind speed of 40 knots,” Lampros said with a hint of awe in his voice.

“That’s a disturbing trend,” Kevin commented.

“Yes, it is,” Lampros concurred. “We are already experiencing
steady gale force winds and if the trend continues, well, they could reach
hurricane force later today. Do you think that will happen, Mr. Summers?” The
Lieutenant sounded concerned, but not frightened.

“It’s hard to say,” Kevin replied. “I had hoped that the
ocean would have cooled the impact crater enough by now that it wouldn’t still
be spewing out a solid column of steam, but that’s not the case. As long as the
crater is creating super-heated steam like this, it will keep drawing cool air
in to replace the hot air going up in the column of steam. Also, the closer we get
to the impact zone, the stronger that wind will become. It’s sucking air from
every point on the compass into that single, giant column of steam. If we were
approaching from the north or east, we would still have following winds like
this. And from the speed of the clouds spreading out above us, the steam must
be rising at hundreds of miles per hour. The closer we get to the point of
impact, the faster the winds feeding that column will become, rushing in from
360 degrees to replace the air going up in what looks to be at least a ten mile
wide column of superheated steam.”

“Dear lord,” Lampros said. “I hadn’t looked at it like that. This
is so different from any type of weather I’ve ever studied or seen. We should
discuss this with the captain before we get too much closer to that monster. I
want to record as much data as possible, of course, but not if it means putting
the
Sedulity
in any more danger.”

“Agreed,” Kevin said. His own scientific curiosity was
tempered by the fact that his wife and daughter were aboard the ship too.
Getting precise meteorological data might be crucial for planners around the
world, but his own world was still sound asleep in a stateroom down the hall.
Protecting them was his first priority. Nevertheless, it wouldn’t hurt to
confirm his alarming theory with other measurements. “Let’s get the full
picture before sounding an alarm, shall we? How much rainfall are you
recording?”

“Truly astounding figures,” Lampros said in a tone of
amazement. “It’s been coming down like cats and dogs, as you Americans say. I
wasn’t sure if I could trust the measurements at first. I even set a mug
outside while I was setting up the anemometer on deck to double check the
automated rainfall monitor. It was correct. We’ve been getting about six inches
per hour since last night. No slacking off at all. If anything, it’s increasing
as we approach the impact zone.”
  

Kevin nodded with a worried look on his face. “What’s the
barometer telling you?”

“That’s been worrying me too, but I didn’t connect it to the
fact we’re getting closer and closer to the point of impact. With all the rain
coming down, it was natural for the barometer to fall.
 
It’s been dropping steadily since last
night,” Lampros said. “Down to twenty-seven bars now. Hurricane weather. I
should think the low pressure conforms to your theory, though. Do you think it
will rise when we turn away from the impact zone? That would be real
confirmation, wouldn’t it?”

“I suppose it would,” Kevin said. “Let’s go speak to the captain.
He asked me to go down to the theater when he addresses the passengers in a few
minutes, but he should know about this first. It might influence whatever he
plans to say.”

*****

 
Emily woke up before
Amanda, but quickly remedied the situation. “Mamma? Mamma? Wake up. Where’s
Daddy?” Emily said as she nudged her mother.

Amanda opened her eyes and, as so many others did on that
day, hoped she had only had a bad dream. Reality hit hard when she recognized
her surroundings as the stateroom of the deceased staff captain. There was very
little light. It must still be nighttime.

“Go back to sleep, baby,” she said softly. “Daddy got up
early to work.”

“But I’m not sleepy anymore and I’m hungry,” Emily said
firmly.
 
“Is the sky still falling? It’s
raining really hard outside.”

Amanda sat up and looked towards the balcony. Sheets of rain
pounded on the sliding glass doors, but not much else was visible beyond. She
glanced at her watch on the bedside table and was shocked to see it was 9:00 in
the morning. Why was it still so dark outside?

“Okay, honey. Let’s get up and find you something to eat.”

Once dressed, Amanda led Emily to the door connecting with
the staff captain’s dayroom. Professor Farnsworth and his wife had spent the
night on the convertible couch there and might have some information on what
was happening, including why it was so dark. She knocked and waited until
Judith Farnsworth opened the door.

“Oh there you are,” the elderly woman said. “Come in. I was
just making some oatmeal and tea. Would you like some?”

“Yes, please,” Emily said before Amanda could do more than
smile. As soon as the little girl was occupied with her oatmeal the two women
sat down on what was once again a couch.

“Why is it still so dark?” Amanda asked.

“My husband says it’s caused by the heavy cloud cover. He
said that clouds five miles thick can block as much sunlight as two hundred
feet of water. I’m not sure if that’s true, but I’ve heard that it gets pitch
black below two hundred feet in the ocean.”

Amanda was about to reply when there was a knock at the door
to the corridor. Judith rose to answer it and they were both surprised to see
Lydia standing there dressed in a yellow rain slicker and black waders.

“Bad morning, ladies,” Lydia said with a poor attempt at good
cheer. “Pardon my appearance. I was caught off guard last night and don’t want
it to happen again.”

“Brilliant!” Judith exclaimed with a genuine smile and
ushered Lydia into the room. “You look like you are ready for anything today.”

“I think we all should be,” Lydia said in a serious voice.
“The world has changed overnight and none of us know what to expect next.”

“Do you think there will be another asteroid?” Amanda asked
with more than a hint of fear.

“Who knows?” Lydia replied. “I didn’t think there would be
one yesterday. Do these things come in pairs? Or triplets? I don’t know, but I
won’t be caught flatfooted again.”

“That sounds reasonable,” Judith said. “None of us know what
to expect in this situation. It’s unprecedented.”

“Exactly,” Lydia said. “I wanted to check on you before I
head down to see what I can do to help the rest of the passengers. From what I’ve
seen of the damage to the ship, they must be truly discouraged.”

“What can we do to help?” Amanda asked. She said it with
sincerity, but her eyes quickly shifted to Emily who had stopped eating her
oatmeal to watch the exchange. Amanda’s eyes fell when she realized that her
daughter was the only person on the ship that she owed her true allegiance to.

“I’m sure there are many things we can do to help,” Lydia
replied, without noticing Amanda’s plight. “There are hundreds of injured passengers
and crew in the medical center. There must be many others in need of comfort
all over the ship. Any of us who were lucky enough to come through this in one
piece, without losing a loved one, can make a difference to those less
fortunate.”

Judith did recognize Amanda’s predicament and saw an easy
solution to it. “Mandy,” she said, “if you want to go help the captain’s wife
on this worthy mission, I’ll be happy to entertain Miss Emily. I’m much too old
to be running around the ship, but I’m great at hosting tea parties for little
girls.” She winked at Amanda and turned to smile at Emily.

“Yes,” Amanda said, after a brief hesitation. She trusted
Judith to watch Emily, even after such a brief acquaintance, and especially so
close to assistance from Kevin and the crew on the bridge. “Of course I’ll go
with you, Lydia. I don’t have that type of rain gear though. Will I need it?”

“Probably not,” Lydia replied with a smile. “But if you want
some, I think you’ll find an identical pair in the closet next door.”