Sedulity (Book One) Impact (5 page)

Armando Ramos turned and ran. He tripped and stumbled on the
smoldering rubble of what had been luxurious furnishings in the Sky Lounge, but
he kept running. The nearest exit took him to the observation deck above the Resort
Deck where he had recently been serving cocktails. The sight below almost
brought him up short.

The Resort Deck where he usually worked was almost
unrecognizable. All of the furniture was gone, aside from smoldering piles in
the corners. Many of the side windows were blown out. Portions of the deck that
had been made of wood were blackened charcoal and some areas still burned
fiercely. More than half the water in the pools was gone, either evaporated or
blown away, but the most distressing sight was the bodies floating in what
remained. Most of them wore remnants of crew uniforms on the submerged portions
of their bodies. The exposed portions were burned away. They were most likely
some of the Pollywogs who never quite made it to becoming Shellbacks, or even
out of the swimming pools for that matter. Steam still rose from the pools and
Armando felt bile rise in his throat when he realized that the people floating
there might have been boiled alive.

Running in a daze along the upper deck, gazing down at the
carnage in and around the swimming pools, Armando was further sickened to
discern the charred remains of more bodies mixed in with the smoldering debris
of deck furniture piled up near the shattered glass doors leading inside the
ship.  Had they failed to heed the Captain’s warning to go inside and get
below?  Did they remain to gawk at the spectacle of an artificial sun beyond
the horizon? Or had there simply been too many people trying to get inside in
too short a time?  Armando suspected a bit of all three and was sure that many
of the dead on deck had been blinded or elderly passengers who couldn’t or
wouldn’t move fast enough anyway.   

He didn’t stop to dwell on the destruction, or loss of life,
as his own survival was at stake. He was certain there was nowhere safe to run
from what was coming, but that didn’t stop his legs from moving him as fast as
possible away from the oncoming wave. So he ran towards the stern of the ship
along the melted surface of the jogging track, with burning wood deck planks on
either side.  His mind was not totally paralyzed. He was trying to think of the
best place to go. He even paused to look over what remained of the outer
railing and saw that some of the lifeboats were still attached to their davits,
although the protective canvas covers had all been burned off, or melted onto
their decks. Several boats were hanging at strange angles. Other lifeboats were
missing entirely, having been ripped away by the blast.  It didn’t matter now.
There was not enough time for Armando to go down seven decks to reach a
lifeboat, although he suspected that the fully enclosed boats would survive
even the largest Tsunami. No, he needed to find a place to ride this out on the
upper decks. Glancing back towards the bow his bladder finally betrayed him as
he saw the wave towering a thousand feet above the ship and realized it would
arrive in mere seconds.

****

Captain Krystos stood tall behind the helm and tried to keep
his knees from shaking as the mammoth wave approached his ship head-on at
hundreds of miles per hour. By the time it was five miles away it became clear
that this wave was taller than the ship was long. It towered a thousand feet or
more above the otherwise calm sea. But it didn’t behave like a normal swell, or
even a typical rogue wave. There was no foaming crest threatening to break at
any moment. This wave was more like a moving mountain, a giant ripple or bulge
that transmitted its energy smoothly through the surrounding sea. That was the
only thing that gave him a glimmer of hope for the ship’s survival.

“Mr. Crawford, sound the collision alarm,” the Captain said
before speaking into the PA microphone again. “All hands and all passengers
brace for impact. Confirm all watertight doors secure. This will be a roller
coaster ride on a very large wave. God bless and Godspeed.”

This time they would stand their ground on the Bridge, or try
to. Everyone there, including Kevin, grabbed a handhold and said silent or
mumbled prayers as they gazed up at the unfathomable wave towering over them.
The Captain took over the helm himself, just in case instinctual and
instantaneous course corrections could help the ship survive the event. 
Gripping the small steering wheel, staring up the face of the wave, he spoke
loudly in his native Greek, reciting a line from Homer’s Iliad. If he had been
speaking English the people with him would have heard,
“Everything is more
beautiful because we’re doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now.
We will never be here
again.”
  

All their hopes were momentarily crushed when the bow of the
ship dug into the base of the wave, disappearing in a cloud of white foam and
spray. Water buried the forward deck and rushed towards the Bridge windows.
Then, just as all hope was lost, they felt the deck tilt drastically and the
bow rose to ride up the face of the wave. A massive wall of water did indeed
strike the Bridge, engulfing the front windows and gushing inside through the
broken windows on the wings, but then it flowed back out as the bow rose like a
rearing steed.

The
Sedulity
groaned and protested the stresses placed
on her hull, but she didn’t buckle or break. The face of the wave was gradual
enough that the ship transitioned to climb it, instead of snapping like a twig,
or being totally engulfed and sunk. Within a second or two the
Sedulity
was pointing up at a 45 degree angle, riding the parabolic cure of the
sinusoidal wave created by the asteroid impact. Up, up, faster than any
elevator, the ship climbed the unprecedented liquid mountain of water. The
Captain, crew, and Kevin held on and issued cries that mingled fear and despair
with defiance and triumph.

Chapter 4:

The impact of the Rouge created
displacement waves unlike anything ever recorded.  All of the Tsunamis in
history were child’s play by comparison. The waves spread out across the
Pacific Ocean in concentric circles, traveling faster than any race car. These
impact generated Tsunamis followed the same course as the atmospheric blast
wave, but would have much farther reaching and devastating repercussions. Mountains
of water were rolling towards every nation of the Pacific Rim and nothing could
stop them.

The event didn’t go unnoticed. The
Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii was one of the first places to receive
a hint of the danger. Their first clue was the abrupt and unexpected loss of
one of their mid-Pacific senor buoys. That was interpreted as a technical
fault, when in fact the buoy had been pulverized by the asteroid. Their second
wake-up call was a massive seismic event on the mid-ocean seafloor that
emanated from close to the suddenly missing sensor. Their third wake-up call came
from three other buoys that suddenly reported unprecedented wave heights a few
minutes later. The sensors reported waves hundreds of feet high.

The Tsunami sensor system was
designed to measure very small differences in seal level and it mistakenly read
these unbelievable readings as malfunctions. It couldn’t compute the concept of
waves that big. A fault alarm was sent to the monitoring stations and logged as
an anomaly. It would take precious time and several additional alarms to
convince those monitoring the system that something unimaginable was actually
happening.

The first wave was over 1,000 feet
high when it reached the
SS Sedulity
eighteen minutes after impact. It was moving at close to
300 miles per hour and was shaped like a giant fluid speed bump, a massive
moving hump that transmitted the force of the asteroid impact across the ocean.
In shallow water it would have reared up to smash the ship, but here in the
open ocean the amplitude and moment of the wave remained smooth and even,
allowing the ship to climb it like a car would climb a hill. The
Sedulity
was the only surface vessel within 500 miles of the impact zone known to
survive this wave.

Armando decided to seek refuge in the elevator lobby of the
upper deck, just forward of the 24 hour buffet restaurant. He was not sure if
it was the best place to be, but it was the only shelter he could reach before
the monster wave hit the ship. As soon as he entered the shattered doors from
the upper deck Armando was convinced that he had made a mistake. The blast wave
had ripped through this deck and most of the windows were gone. Worse than
that, Armando noticed that the outer bank of elevators, the glass ones with a
view of the ocean, had also lost all of their glass. The whole atrium was open
to the elements, which were none too friendly at the moment. Fires raged on
every level down the twelve deck central shaft of the ship. What had been
designed as an architectural centerpiece had become the pit of Hades. A glance
towards the restaurant showed no hope there. Flames and smoke raged unchecked.

Armando had only seconds to decide. He spotted an open
elevator door on this level, one of the inboard elevators that was still
intact, overlooking the atrium. He knew the power was out and it wouldn’t take
him anywhere, but he was just looking for somewhere to hide. He ran into it and
wasted two seconds trying to close the doors with the buttons. Then he grabbed
one of the doors and tried to close them manually. It was no easy task, but
Armando was strong and desperate. He got the doors more than halfway closed
before he ran out of time.

Suddenly the ship shuddered and groaned as it hit the wave.
The impact released the stops on the elevator doors and Armando was able to
pull them together smoothly. It was a good thing too, because only seconds
later the ocean tried to claim him. Water surged into the lobby, poured over
into the atrium and leaked through the cracks of the closed elevator doors.
Armando froze, convinced he was going to drown in an elevator perched more than
a hundred and fifty feet above sea level.

The initial wave of water did pour into the Upper Deck lobby
and some of it did find its way into the elevator where Armando cowered in
fear. Most of it, however, spilled over the atrium balcony, following the path
of least resistance to shower down onto the burning decks below. Armando
watched through the glass walls of the elevator as the waterfall cascaded down
and suppressed the flames on numerous decks of open atrium below. Suddenly the
angle of the deck shifted drastically and Armando fell against the side of the
elevator as water sloshed around his ankles. Most of the water that had made it
inside the Upper Deck flowed aft, towards the stern, through the burning buffet
restaurant, away from the elevators and atrium. Armando almost thought the
elevator was rising to the Observation Deck until he realized that the whole
ship was climbing a mountain of water.

****

Mrs. Krystos heard her husband give the warning to expect a roller
coaster ride. It scared her, but gave her confidence that he was still at the
helm and knew what to expect. That was far more than any of the passengers and
crew in the theater could say. Their fate was in the Captain’s hands, and those
of God. Lydia said a silent prayer for God to guide and spare her husband as
she took a seat in the front row of the theater. She only had a moment to
wonder what would happen next before it did.

There was a thunderous BOOM, different than the blast wave,
but deeper and almost more terrifying, when the bow of the ship dug deep into
the wave. Nobody in the theater knew exactly what was happening, but Lydia and
a few of the crew could make a good guess. It was confirmed when water started
to rain down from ventilation ducts in the ceiling. The bow was submerged.

Thankfully that only lasted for a moment before the deck rose
and the people found themselves leaning back, as if their seats had turned into
reclining chairs.  They were pressed into their seats by acceleration too. It
felt similar to being in a jet airplane performing a maximum climb takeoff, but
this was a thousand foot ship at sea! Lydia couldn’t imagine a wave big enough
to lift the ship like this! But what else could it be?

****

Amanda heeded the Captain’s warning, but there wasn’t much to
hold onto in the lobby of the stairwell and she didn’t fancy being thrown
across the room again. She picked up Emily and went to sit on the stairs where
she could wrap her arms around the handrail stanchions.  Renewed alarms and
panicked cries echoing up the stairwell were the only warning she received
before the whole ship shook, groaned, and tilted. In a moment she was no longer
sitting on the stairs leading to the deck above, she was hanging from the
railing and “down” was back towards the elevators.  Luckily this was the
forward bank of elevators, not the ones that overlooked the atrium, or she
would have been looking at the possibility of falling into open space.

Emily clung to Amanda, who clung to the railing and they felt
the sensation of acceleration as the ship climbed the wave. She had no view of
the event, but she could feel it happening. Her terror was only increased when
water rushed down the corridors on both sides of the lobby, flowing towards the
stern. If ocean water flooded the halls on a deck this high, she reasoned, it
was already too late to head for the lifeboats. Amanda had no way of knowing
that this was the result of the ship’s initial headlong plunge into the wave,
that water had momentarily gushed into all the balcony staterooms through
shattered windows, or that this had actually been a blessing in disguise by
putting out hundreds of raging fires.  All she knew was that her world had
literally been stood on end and she feared the true end was coming soon.

****

After the Captain’s warning Lieutenant Reiner called to the
crew who were still fighting flames near the lifeboat muster stations. He
instructed them to ignore the flames and help or carry injured passengers back
into the more sheltered casino, where other surviving passenger were gathered.
Reiner wanted to save Staff Captain Stevens, but obeyed orders by dragging a
badly burned and overweight woman towards perceived safety. A final look at
Stevens convinced Reiner that the Staff Captain was probably beyond saving
anyway.

Moments later the
Sedulity
hit the wave. Reiner was
knocked off his feet again and found himself and the woman he was dragging
thrown forward into the casino as massive amounts of seawater flooded into the
ship through the shattered windows of the Martini Bar. Then, as suddenly as the
water came, it retreated towards the stern of the ship and Reiner was rolling
back towards the Martini Bar. He caught a glimpse of Staff Captain Stevens, or
his body, flowing out one of the broken windows with the wave surge, destined
for a fitting burial at sea. Then he looked beyond those broken windows and saw
one of the lifeboats get torn from its damaged davit and swept away too.

Lt. Reiner caught a handhold on the Martini Bar and pulled
himself up to stand at an odd angle. Others, passengers and crew alike, slid
past him, following the retreating water towards the stern where gravity and
inertia pulled them. He couldn’t understand it for several seconds, then he
looked out the shattered windows again and realized that the ship was climbing
an impossibly large wave. The face of the wave extended off into the distance,
wrapping over the horizon, which lengthened as the ship climbed higher and
higher.  It was a terrifying and awe inspiring sight, one that the Lieutenant
found difficult to comprehend. That the ship could even climb the face of a
wave like this was miraculous, but Reiner swiftly came to the shocking
realization that what went up must come back down. Once it crested the wave,
the ship would drop back into the trough.  He steeled himself to fight his way
back “up” into the casino, towards the screams of terrified passengers, to warn
them what to expect next.

****

Kevin almost felt exhilarated as the ship climbed up the
wave. He stood at the back of the Bridge with one foot on the deck and another
on the aft bulkhead. It felt like he was in an old carnival fun-house, gazing
up, out the front windows at the crest of the wave and the star filled sky far
above.  It was hard to believe this was really happening, but all his senses
confirmed it. Glancing to the side, out the shattered windows of the Bridge
Wing, he saw the extent of the endless wave wrapping around in a gigantic arc.
It all happened in a few seconds and then they reached the crest of the wave.

Kevin wasn’t sure what he had expected to see on the other
side, but nothing he could have imagined would have matched this sight. From
this commanding height he thought he could see all the way to the asteroid’s
glowing point of impact, although it was obscured by the solid column of
superheated steam that continued to shoot up into the stratosphere. No longer a
mushroom cloud, it had gone far beyond that. The massive steam cloud was
spreading almost as fast as the ocean wave and glowing streaks of molten
material were falling from it like a rain of fire in the night sky.  

Kevin could discern the wide arc of the wave as they perched
briefly atop it and, worse, he could see at least two more monster waves
following this one. They were smaller, to be sure, but still towered hundreds
of feet high.   Between them were deep troughs. It was a classic sine wave
structure that Kevin should have expected. Yet it came as a shock to realize
that even after riding down the backside of this colossal wave, it would not be
over yet.

“Dear God,” called out Mr. Crawford. “There’s more of them
coming!” This was met by groans and whimpers from the rest of the Bridge crew. 
All but Captain Krystos. He let loose a barking laugh of bravado that silenced
the rest of them. This time he quoted Homer in English.
“By hook or by crook this peril too
shall be something that we remember!” he yelled as the ship crested the wave.

The
Sedulity
went over the top of the wave smoothly
and shot down the far side like a falling stone. The ship itself was not moving
fast, but the wave was. The decent was so abrupt that those aboard felt almost
weightless as the deck literally dropped out from below their feet and the ship
transitioned from 45 degrees bow up attitude to almost 45 degrees down angle in
a second or two.  The Captain’s earlier warning of a roller coaster ride was
quite apt, especially now that they knew more of the same was in store for
them.

****

Armando thought the elevator had failed, that he was
plummeting to his death, when the ship tilted again and fell away beneath his
feet. Then he noticed that everything else in the ship was responding the same
way. Water that had rushed towards the stern now flowed forward. Things in the
atrium that had toppled aft moments ago were suddenly tumbling towards the bow.

It was hard for Armando to believe, but it looked as if the
ship had actually made it over the monstrous wave and was heading back down
towards sea level in one piece and still afloat. That alone was more than he
thought possible. His ears actually popped from the change in air pressure
during the descent.

Looking down into the smoke filled atrium through the windows
of the elevator suspended above it, with seawater swishing around his ankles,
Armando realized that the wave had actually helped put out the fires raging
below. Just enough water had entered the
Sedulity
to help extinguish the
flames, but not enough to actually flood the ship. He even spotted a few people
moving around on the lower decks now. They were the first living souls he had
seen since herding the foolish spectators out of the Sky Lounge.  It felt good
to know that he was not the only survivor aboard, but he knew that many lives
must have been lost. What he didn’t know was what to expect next, except that
he wouldn’t have to wait long to find out.