by Kelly deVos
—PRESIDENT-ELECT DAVID ROSENTHAL
Pirated national radio address
On the use of the Cold Fusion Bomb
JINX
MacKenna stands like a statue designed to show people how to play freeze tag.
We have to go.
Now.
Dad always said, Things will break down faster than you think.
I’m tugging on her arm now. Hard. So hard. But it’s like her feet are bolted to the metal deck.
“Come on!” I shout right in her ear.
We are going to die.
I know I’ve thought that before, but this is different. The size of that blast. The massive wave that’s about to hit the ship. People don’t survive things like this. I’ll probably never see Navarro again. Not even to say goodbye.
I’ll never see my brother again either.
Mac waves her hand in the direction of the swelling ocean. “What...what...what...”
I squeeze her arm even harder. “We have to stay focused on what’s in front of us.” That’s what my dad always used to say.
What’s in front of us is Jo shouting into her radio.
I push my face into hers. “Where’s Navarro?”
“And my brother,” MacKenna adds, coming closer.
“Safe,” Jo tells us through clenched teeth. “Which is more than I can say for us if we don’t get a move on it.” She ducks back into the hangar bay and weaves through the crowd, leaving us with no choice but to follow. Most of the people around us are either trying to get in or out of the stairwells or elevators. Jo drags us toward a small door that looks like a janitor’s closet.
Once again, I find myself in the position of not knowing where I’m running to.
Jo has a small device in her left hand. As we get closer to the door, I realize it’s an electronic key, a way to move around the ship. She opens the door and, instead of being full of mops, the place is a computer room. Inside, the electronics look remarkably similar to the ones back in the cave. The same kind of technology that my dad had used. You can’t buy stuff like this at the mall on a Saturday afternoon. There are a few clear plastic screens, blinking blue displays, a large monitor that displays a grid and blinks with error and warning messages. On our left, I spot a desk with a couple of workstations.
Jo closes and locks the door.
It’s cool and a bit quieter in here. Still, the screams from the deck filter in and make me jump.
“What is this place?” MacKenna asks.
I’ve been wondering that same thing. There’s some cool tech in here but not enough to run a ship this size. “Um, maybe a backup control room? A redundancy in case there are issues with the equipment in the main control center.” My guess is that you can run critical systems, like navigation, from this room.
There’s another door opposite the way we came in. I continue going that way, but Jo stops to use her radio. “It’s a weapons dispensary.”
Static and chatter erupt from the device. “I’ve got them. We’re in transit,” she says into the radio. “Proceed to the Perun.” She presses the off button.
Jo goes to the desk. The screen pulses every couple of seconds, but otherwise it appears to be working. She presses a few keys on the keyboard. First the screen reads LOGIN. And then WELCOME.
She releases a loud breath. A sigh of relief. “The password works.”
I can’t see how this is relevant or important. “So? We need to get to Toby and Navarro.”
“We will. But first, you need to lock the door to the well deck,” Jo says. “Do whatever you have to do to override the locking mechanisms so that they can’t be unlocked by any passkey other than this one.” She drops her electronic key onto the desk next to me.
“The well deck? What’s the well deck?” I frown in confusion.
Her eyes squint in anger. “I’m giving you an order.”
This order could have dangerous consequences for everyone. I’m not in the navy, but when your ship is about to be hit by a wave the size of the Empire State Building, the idea of messing with the door locks strikes me as...bad.
I stare at Jo and then MacKenna, whose expression alternates from confused to horrified. Mac turns her back to me and puts her head into a porthole.
Jo scowls. “The boats in the well deck are the only way off this ship. We were supposed to already be down there when all the commotion started. Now we need to stop everyone else from getting there before we do.” She pushes the chair in my direction and steps away from the desk.
I take the chair and wheel myself toward the terminal. “Yeah...but...what? You want to make it harder for people to evacuate?”
Jo stands next to MacKenna by the porthole. “You two are the ones who went AWOL on deck. If you’d stayed where you were supposed to, this wouldn’t be necessary,” she says, jabbing her finger in Mac’s direction.
My stomach drops. She’s blaming us. Blaming us for whatever is about to happen.
When I remain frozen, Jo yells, “This is war!” She pushes me in front of the workstation. “I’m the officer in charge, and I order you to lock the well deck.”
My face heats up. “But you realize that—”
My thought is cut off by a series of screams loud enough for us to hear. Meanwhile, the ship is actually rocking. This behemoth vessel that’s bigger than the street we used to live on is being pushed from side to side.
My stomach turns over.
I guess it’s seasickness.
Jo braces herself on the desk. “Rule four,” she says. “Do what you have to do.”
An order from Dad from beyond the grave.
I force myself to access the terminal. It’s a UNIX workstation. With a few clicks, I’m able to find the well deck and lock it like Jo asks. I find a way to disable most of the lower-level passkeys.
But.
The door is only really going to be half the problem.
Guns are the other half.
The navy sailors have them.
We don’t.
The door opposite the workstation clicks, indicating it’s now unlocked. Jo nods in approval. “We need to go,” she says, grabbing the passkey. The noise out on deck is growing louder.
I shake my head at her. The clear touchscreen at my elbow labelled WEAPONSYNC must be what controls the DNA-A guns. I’ve never hacked an AK relay system before, but Dad told me that the system basically works like a hub. The guns have to check in to receive a license to fire every sixty seconds. I think I can scramble the incoming genomes to make it look like the system is processing the same amount of data. But none of the sequences will match.
In theory.
I push the system access button on the screen and get started.
import time, re, gseqlib
# genode snippet hidden in program ROM
# find genone snippet
promoter = ‘ttgaca.{15, 25}tataat’
chromosome = promoter[0:35]
promoter.write(0, reversed(chromosome))
# determine if write was successful
result = re.finditer(promoter, chromosome)
if result:
print(“success”)
“What the hell are you doing?” Jo yells from the open door.
“I’m jamming the guns!” I shoot back. “We’ll survive a lot longer without everyone shooting at us.”
She actually looks impressed. But she says, “If The Spark loses the war, tech like this will be why. This is not how you should weaponize your military.”
“Keeping people from running around shooting at each other with impunity is why the war is worth winning,” MacKenna says.
I get up and go in her direction. MacKenna is midway between me and Jo, staring at what’s going on in the porthole. As I pull her away, a massive wave emerges over the railing and sucks
a thin man into the ocean. People run in every direction. Falling down. Getting trampled. A blonde woman holding a crying baby streaks by the window.
It’s everything I can do not to scream.
A second later, we’re racing through a labyrinth of hallways. Jo clearly trained for this eventuality, because she’s leading us with a sense of purpose. Like someone who knows exactly where she’s going.
We knock our way through screaming crowds.
And.
We’re running downhill.
The decline becomes steeper, and a couple inches of water run underneath my feet. I slip and slide and almost smash into MacKenna. She’s barely managing to stand up straight by keeping one hand on the hallway wall.
I realize.
The ship is sinking.
And then I realize.
Oh. My. God.
Jo pushes through the next door, bringing us face-to-face with three sailors. Two woman and a man, all three wearing matching stupefied facial expressions. They appear to be inspecting the next door in the hallway, like they’re stunned that it’s locked.
One of them has an electronic key like Jo’s, and she’s no doubt wondering why she can’t use it to unlock the door.
I can’t let myself think about what this means. Given the size of that wave outside, this ship was always going to sink. Most of the people on it were always going to die.
Don’t think about that.
Rule four: Do what you have to do.
Jo told us that Toby and Navarro are somewhere safe, and I guess that’s where we’re running to. But we’re on a sinking ship, and the place we were going was just destroyed by the biggest blast in human history.
“You can’t be down here,” the navy is man saying.
“I’m Captain Josephine Pletcher of the provisional militia of the New United States, and on behalf of the government of an Independent California, I order you to stand down,” Jo says sternly.
This has the effect of making the three sailors even more confused.
There’s the sickening sound of creaking metal and rushing water. And I can tell.
It’s time.
My heartbeat surges.
Breathe.
Jo goes for the guy, landing a punch on his nose with a disgusting crack. He bounces off the wall of the narrow hallway like a pinball. She kicks him in the stomach as he lands on the floor. I step to the woman nearest me and yank the rifle free from her grip.
Strike to the face to disable.
Strike to the ribs to incapacitate.
Strike to the kneecap to immobilize.
The woman sort of gurgles and coughs up blood.
All those drills with Navarro have paid off.
This has gotten easy.
Too easy.
The last sailor gets ready with her gun. She taps the screen and attempts to fire.
I brace myself for a shot that never comes.
My gun script seems to have worked.
Terror takes over the soldier, and she takes off the way we came in, heading up to the hangar deck.
Jo uses her passkey, and we go through the door the navy people were guarding. It becomes clear why it is so important. Jo leads us into a massive area larger than a football field that’s basically a staging bay for various kinds of smaller boats. Right in front of us, a wide mouth opens to the chaotic sea, which is churning dark waves. The plan must be to get to a lifeboat, but going out there in these conditions somehow feels worse than staying where we are.
The Booker tilts to the side. MacKenna grabs my arm, digging in her fingers. We’re both fighting to stay standing.
Jo leads us through the deserted bay.
A lone figure mills around near a ramp that extends from a really weird-looking boat that’s already partially submerged in the water.
It’s...Terminus.
He’s smoking a cigarette and pacing around. “Oh thank God,” he yells.
A couple of things hit me.
First, it’s really noisy in here. Many of the different boats must be turned on. Motors roar and percolate and gears grind. Water crashes against metal panels. The alarm siren continues to blare. The air is heavy with salt water and the smell of rust. The plastic aroma of synthetic oil. We pass through a couple of clouds of exhaust from idling boat motors.
The thing behind Terminus can only be...a submarine.
A really large submarine.
MacKenna releases my arm and stumbles forward.
She almost collapses onto Terminus, who has to drop his cigarette to catch her. My mouth falls open in shock. Tears burst out of Mac’s eyes. “I’ve... I’ve...done something terrible.”
Terminus hugs her. Awkwardly. The way you would hug the weird kid who got all sentimental at the end of computer camp. I’m not even sure he can hear what she said. “It’s okay,” he tells her. “But we need to get on board.”
Terminus is already tugging MacKenna down the ramp. The thing, the submarine, that they’re headed to, is super odd looking. Something out of Jules Verne.
One side is made of a series of rounded glass pieces that look kind of like bubbles stacked on top of each other. But the clear material is thick enough that I can’t quite make out what’s going on inside. Blue light emanates from the glass, and everything’s blurry.
The rest of the craft is constructed from the same sleek metal as the Booker. And like the rest of the ship, it’s new, clean and modern.
I lean in close to Jo, who for some reason remains put.
“Uh...so I guess the Perun is a submarine?” I ask.
She nods and points to the ramp. “One that’s gonna be submerged in about two minutes. So let’s get a move on. Toby and Navarro are already on board.” She stares at the doors where we came in, and I can see why.
Navy personnel stream into the hangar.
And also...General Copeland.
He’s wearing a uniform I don’t recognize, and, well...basically strolling toward the Perun. The navy people regard him with a weird awe, as if they’re seeing a ghost. He takes long strides, like nothing can touch him.
He breezes past us.
Jo ushers me down the ramp and through a narrow door.
We’re barely inside when...
The submarine sinks beneath the surface of the water.
Floating down.
Down.
Down.
Into the abyss.
We’re leaving.
Leaving them all.
Thousands of people.
To die.
It’s narrow and cramped and dimly lit inside. We’re in a passageway formed by the thick glass on one side and a metal wall on the other. Terminus is holding MacKenna up.
“You were supposed to stay in the tent,” Navarro says. But he reaches out and pulls me into a warm hug, and my lungs release a massive breath as some of the tension drains from my body. I’m hugging him, and MacKenna is holding on to Terminus, and Copeland is trying to squeeze by to get around us.
“We should have done something to stop this,” Mac whispers.
“Like what?” Terminus says. “Carver launched an attack against Americans in American waters. Because of him, the Booker was always going to sink. The navy barely had enough emergency transports to cover their own personnel and VIPs. There was nothing we could have done.”
Toby gives him a hard look.
I reflexively pat the waist pack with the disk drive in it. It’s still there.
Copeland is going toward what I suspect is the control center of the sub.
In a tiny voice, I say, “I guess we’re not going to California.”
Copeland turns around and hesitates for a second under the cool blue light and panels of bubbled glass.
Watching the chaos above.
“There is no more California.”
You can never tell what some people are capable of.
That’s rule number seven in Dr. Doomsday’s book.
But my question is, how do I know what I am capable of?
Sometimes I lie awake at night and wonder if Dr. Doomsday is right.
Would I do anything I had to do in order to survive?
—MacKENNA NOVAK,
Letters from the Second Civil War
MacKENNA
There must have been something we could have done.
The look on Jo’s face when she saw us on the deck—she knew.
She knew what was about to happen.
LEAD: The USS Cory Booker sinks in the Pacific Ocean.
I’m about to open my mouth and say as much, but something about Toby stops me cold. The way he’s looking at me. Like I’m a nuisance. A weakness. An obligation he’d rather not be saddled with.
My insides are absolute ice. The only way I know I’m still alive is that Terminus pats my back once in a while.
Jo remains there with us in the entryway of the Perun.
Jinx presses her face to the glass, probably trying to see the mayhem above us. “Where are we going? How deep can this thing go?” she asks, tapping the thick glass.
“As deep as it takes,” Jo says. “Listen.” For some reason she stares at Navarro when she says, “All of you. We’re on our way to Command.”
We are almost on our way to the floor when the Perun jerks to the left. Jinx is inches away from a face full of pretty blue glass. Navarro’s thick arm steadies her.
“What the hell was that?” I ask. I’m in Terminus’s arms again and rapidly heating. Thawing.
Jinx still has her chin pointed up. Her voice shakes. “Debris. From the Booker.”
Sure enough, a piece of metal the size of a car zooms by us, missing the glass by about a foot. Yellow lights on the metal wall begin to flash.
It’s like a stab to the heart.
Jo’s shoulders tense. “Things could get rough for the next few minutes. Lieutenant Novak, you’re in charge of these civilians. Make sure everyone gets strapped in.”
Lieutenant Novak?
My mouth falls open. I know that’s not me, so it’s obviously...
