Castaway Resolution

by Eric Flint

  Now the movement was really getting rough, and Sakura had to remember that the unstrapped people back there couldn’t hold on like the rest of them. “Now, Sergeant!”

  Instantly the door slid shut and locked; there was effectively no water in the cabin. “Door shut successfully, Sergeant. You still hear us back there?”

  “Loud and clear, Saki. Looks like the cargo door here twisted out of its track, that’s where the water’s coming in.”

  She slowed their motion until it was as smooth as feasible; Emerald Maui’s size did allow it to steamroller the smaller waves pretty well.

  But the control for diving and steering’s bad now. About the only good thing you can say about losing the side wing is that it made her more symmetrical, but in these conditions that’s not so good; the outrigger helped a lot in stability.

  “I say we drop the ramp,” Whips’ voice said. “Give me a chance to look and see what the damage is inside the track and lock, and the rest of you can start dumping the big cargo. We don’t need the earthmovers anymore, and that’ll gain us a lot.”

  “You think the ramp’ll survive that? It’ll be bouncing along in the ocean and then we throw tons of machinery down it?”

  “It ought to. They built these things tough. And if we’re going to try to fix it, I need to see if the internal seal’s damaged, and if it is, whether it can be fixed.”

  “Right. Saki, you hear? We’re opening the rear door. Try to keep us going smooth and straight.”

  “I hear.” She looked around at the others. “Mom, I think someone should get the rescue boats out, ready to deploy and inflate.”

  “Good idea, Sakura. Caroline, Maddox, Mel, would you get on that?”

  “Yes, Mom,” Caroline and Melody chorused, and Maddox said “Yes, Dr. Kimei.”

  “I’ll help,” Akira said. Pearce also unstrapped and went to assist with the check-out of the rafts.

  Sakura watched the camera views closely. The ship jolted and she suddenly felt a shift in the drag and motion of Emerald Maui. A second, turbulent wake was now visible to the rear, within the broader wake left by the former LS-88; the ramp was now dragging its way through the ocean.

  She adjusted speed, tried to slow as much as feasible, but that was going to require balancing, given the waves.

  Waves reminded her of the next problem—not the tsunamis, but what was coming behind and maybe during them. “Mel, how long before the airblast gets here?”

  “Now? About one hour and forty minutes. An hour forty-three, according to the calcs, but there’s a bunch of unknowns, so it could be plus-or-minus fifteen minutes on that time.”

  That’s not long for a major repair. “Sergeant, to be safe, you’ve got to get finished in no more than an hour or so, so you can get back and strap in.”

  “I hear you, Saki. We’ll do what we can.”

  “Melody,” Maddox said, as they began checking the two inflatable, carbonan-fabric lifeboats, “Why won’t the airblast be weaker than we thought? The other impact wasn’t that bad that way, and according to our friends above the waves aren’t going to be as dangerous as we thought, so is the airblast…or blasts, are they going to really be that bad?”

  “Short answer: yes,” Mel said. The quick, clipped answer told Sakura just how scared her little sister was. Mel really understands stuff through numbers, I think. “Longer answer…this impact is…just not even comparable with the first. We couldn’t measure the first one, but it was probably something like ten million times smaller, maybe less.”

  Sakura saw Maddox flinch at that number, and Mel run her fingers nervously through her hair. “Difference is that the tsunamis here are moving through water that’s many times deeper than the oceans on earth. That means their energy’s spread out more, to be simplistic about it. The airblast, though—Lincoln’s atmosphere isn’t really much different from Earth’s, so that model holds just fine. And like the tsunami, it’s driven by how much…stuff got moved, real fast, by the impact, plus the heat-driven expansion from the collision.

  “This…thing hit the ocean and probably blew a hole two hundred kilometers in diameter, down to maybe sixty kilometers. I don’t know the exact geometry of that hole, but if I guesstimate it to be equal to a cylinder half that diameter, that’s close to half a million cubic kilometers of water that just got shoved aside, then there’s the explosion and the collapse back of all that water—which means the same volume of air being shoved around…Anyway, what it means is that this shockwave didn’t just come from what amounts to one point on the ocean and atmosphere, it’s top-to-bottom of the water column and the atmosphere and moving as fast as the speed of sound.”

  There was silence in the cabin, broken only by the occasional ping of another piece of debris and heavier thuds from behind the sealed cargo door.

  “Then what do we expect when it gets here?” Laura asked quietly.

  “Best guess?” Melody was trying to sound detached, but her lighter voice vibrated with fear. “Worse than a Category 5 hurricane. Worse than an F3 tornado. Maybe a lot worse.”

  Sakura felt her hands twitch on the controls, and a coldness spread out from her chest, gooseflesh rising on her arms. She’d seen a tornado, once, and seen the absolute devastation it had left. Encountering that howling horror here…

  “Any…advice on how we deal with it?” Sakura asked finally.

  “Just be strapped down, if we can’t dive,” Campbell’s voice answered. “Honestly, something like this wasn’t in the cards even in all the places I’ve ever been to. There’s no cyclone cellars for us to hide in, so Emerald Maui is just gonna have to do.” His voice lightened. “Ha! Clamp let go! All right, everyone clear the door!”

  There was a huge, confused splash, and Sakura felt Emerald Maui waver, then continue—but this time, she thought, a hair higher up in the water. “Excavator?”

  “First one down. Second one in a minute. Whips?”

  “Hold off on the second one.” Sakura swallowed. She didn’t like the edge she heard in Whips’ voice “That’s a pressure door. It took a heavy, heavy impact to do this. I don’t think we can force it back into track with hand tools, now that I’ve looked it over.”

  “We really don’t want to be on the surface when the airblasts hit,” Campbell said grimly. “You have any options for us? You want to keep this one on for ballast, that it?”

  “Partly, yeah, but the excavator might also be the only thing strong enough to yank the door back on-track.”

  “There’s that. You might have something in that idea. We’ll want to lock her back down so she can’t move, in that case.”

  “But the door, it is fairly smooth. How do we pull on it?” Tavana asked. “And exactly where?”

  “I’ll do the calcs,” Whips answered. “Captain, Mel, I’ll want you to check the results. That’ll tell us where. How…Sergeant?”

  “It’ll have to be some kind of heavy pull ring. Carbonan adhesive. Bonding something that tough takes time, though…”

  “Hear that, Saki?” Whips asked.

  “I do.” She glanced at the clock. “You’ve got forty-five minutes.”

  “I know.”

  She saw motion out of the corner of her eye, looked over to see Caroline, Mel, and the others strapping in. The two lifeboats were in prelaunch positions, still secured but now easily released to be tossed out through the airlock or the rear door. “All set?”

  “Seems to be,” her father answered. “All of the indicators check out fine, and—after all—this is actually quite a new vessel, despite how badly we’ve been abusing her, so these lifeboats are about factory-new.”

  “And a good model—used one of the same design myself about ten years back,” Campbell said.

  “Was that in the story you told me about using one as a toboggan?” Pearce asked.

  “The very same,” Campbell answered with a chuckle. “Come on, you damn stubborn bas…bugger, lock down!”

  “You will have to tell us that story sometime, Se
rgeant,” said Tavana.

  “I definitely want to hear it,” Whips chimed in. “Here, let me try…got it!”

  “Good. At least she won’t move while we try pulling.”

  “Those holdfasts good enough?” Maddox asked. “I mean, if you have the excavator pull hard…”

  “They’re able to hold it still through multi-G maneuvers,” Campbell said. “Pretty sure she can’t pull four times her own weight, so yeah.”

  “Close the ramp door,” Xander said. “Need to record motion and seal behavior.”

  A moment later there was a huge clanging thud from the rear. “That’s…dang. Almost but not quite. Still a gap.”

  “Can’t we lever it shut?” That was Tavana’s voice. “It’s just jamming along this line…”

  “Can’t,” Whips said after a moment. “First, since it opens outward you’d have to pry from the outside to force it in. Second, like I said, this is a pressure door. Hand tools just won’t cut it. I’m not even sure the excavator can, but it’s the only thing we’ve got to try.”

  “Then let’s get to it,” Campbell said. “Time ain’t moving any slower.”

  Sakura looked out the port and realized something had changed. The horizon was receding, farther and farther, as a wave many, many kilometers long and almost two kilometers from trough to crest raced towards them. Even though she knew it wouldn’t hurt them—that it was so immense that it would no more disturb them by its passage than a flea is disturbed by its host’s walk—she felt another chill, seeing finally the true power of the impact.

  “The tsunamis are here,” she said quietly.

  Chapter 50

  Susan stared speechless at the screen; the rest of the bridge crew of Sherlock were likewise frozen, unable to tear their gazes from the view of Lincoln below.

  A blazing sphere of fire was rising from a hole blasted in the very ocean itself, rising with an apparent grace and grandeur that belied the speed and violence of the event. Clouds had been dispelled for hundreds of kilometers about the impact site, wiped away by the pressure and thermal pulse; a skirt of fire streaks surrounded the base of the column of flame below. It was, indeed, more than mere fire, for still it burned as it reached altitudes where oxygen was no more, burned with the brilliance of a savage and dying sun.

  “Tell me we’re recording this,” she said finally.

  The words seemed to break the malign spell of Armageddon. “Um…yes, Lieutenant, all cameras, all sensor suites recording since before the impact,” Tip said after a moment. “EMP from the impact was significant but will die down shortly; probably not a problem at the distance our castaways are at.”

  “Waves?”

  Tip paused a moment. Then they spoke in a hushed tone. “Big. Can’t even guess at this point. They’ll get smaller as they move out from the center but right now…tens of kilometers or more.”

  “Tip, do we have any software to give us any kind of idea as to what to expect in the moderate run? We know about tsunamis, airblast, debris, but what about the weather?”

  Tip glanced at Ayrton. “Captain? Computations may be highly demanding.”

  “Give her anything she wants, Tip. Turns out she was right; this is her show now.”

  Tip grinned. “Good! I have a detailed impact aftermath model, in fact—although I admit it’s focused on smaller impacts, the kind more likely to be encountered. Still, it should scale up fairly well. What do you need to know, Lieutenant Fisher?”

  “Specifically? I need to know when we can pick up the castaways. Obviously we have to wait at least a couple of hours because of the airblast, but what about weather?”

  “I’ll get right on it. Without even looking it will be…horrid, to say the least.”

  “Get me details as soon as you can. Captain, I’m going down to help supervise preparations for the rescue shuttle.”

  “Very good, Lieu—”

  A sharp ping echoed through the bridge, and everyone stiffened.

  “Multiple high-speed fragments!” Pavla Amberdon called out tensely.

  Jesus, Susan thought, appalled. It’s ejected stuff this far? What’s it going to be like down there on the surface?

  She forced herself to continue down to the launch bay. Despite some very tense moments, Sherlock came through the hail of fragments essentially unscathed; the one impact had just been enough to frighten, not damage.

  Prepping the rescue shuttle took time. They were, naturally, not normally carried fully fueled—too much chance for leakage of reaction mass, and rocket fuel was even touchier. In the normal way of things they’d have taken several days to prep the vehicle—but Susan was pretty sure they didn’t have a few days.

  Tip confirmed that an hour or so later. “Once the first airblast passes, the storms are really going to get started, Lieutenant,” they said, with a combination of grimness and glee that Susan found uncomfortably easy to understand; after all, no one else in human history had ever had this chance to observe a great impact.

  “How bad? And how much of a window will we have to get down and up safely?”

  “How bad? Lieutenant, we’re talking hurricanes and tornadoes both at Category 5, maybe some that make those look like breezes. At the center? Transonic wind speeds, rain measured in multiple decimeters per hour, lightning, hail the size of…I dunno, basketballs, anything you can think of, and nowhere within five thousand kilometers isn’t going to be going through hell. Temperature’s going to go crazy for a while—the outgoing airblasts will be hot, the receding ones cold, which is going to play havoc even with whatever weather patterns we think we see. The ultimate outcome’s going to make it colder for a few months, maybe a couple years, but there’s a lot of heat coming from that impact that’s going to drive insane weather patterns.”

  Tip took a breath. “As for a window…you’ve got to get down there and back up fast. Honestly, if you could, you should be already down there now. The tsunamis aren’t a problem; from our point of view they’re really really long and flat—thank sixty-kilometer-deep oceans for that.

  “Since that’s not an option, launch before the first airblast hits, if you can, then drop down between blasts. You’ll have maybe an hour, three or four at the outside, before things get really, really bad, but by the time thirty minutes pass, it’ll already be turning into a major storm. What the following blasts do to the storm? The model’s not sure.”

  Susan muttered a curse, glancing at the time in her omni. “That leaves me about an hour or less. The tsunami must be close to hitting.”

  “Yes. We spotted Emerald Maui on the surface nearby.” Tip’s voice was tense.

  “What’s wrong, Tip?”

  “They surfaced before we expected. Imagery…looks like they lost the outrigger they had before.”

  Susan froze in the midst of locking a cargo net down. “Something hit them.”

  “Looks like it, Lieutenant.”

  Damnation. “That means they’ll be stuck on the surface for the airblast?”

  Tip shrugged. “I can’t be sure, but that’s what I’d have to bet. If they were hit that hard, either they can’t dive because they lost the remainder of the wing, or they’ve sprung leaks. Or both. We could try calling them…?” They trailed off, looking to Sue for advice.

  She shook her head. “They’ll be dealing with their own problems now. You heard Tip, everyone—doubletime! I want to be ready to launch in forty minutes!”

  There were so many things to check—and many of them just could not be skipped; a rescue mission that cut too many corners on prep would soon be the subject of its own ironic rescue. And in this case, there’d be no chance of rescue. Winches had to be tested, medical nano station run through diagnostic and self-test, load balancing…

  Her omni crackled, and a distorted voice spoke. “Sherlock, come in, Sherlock, this is Emerald Maui, still barely alive.”

  She grinned broadly. “Thank God for that, Emerald Maui. Is everyone all right?”

  “For now,” Xander said. �
��We got hit by one hell of a piece of debris; took off most of our outrigger and sprung the rear door out of its track. We had to surface before the cargo hold filled with water.”

  Sue bit her lip. “So you’re stuck on the surface, with the first airblast ETA in thirty-seven minutes.”

  “Don’t jump the gun quite yet,” came Sergeant Campbell’s voice. “We’re trying a trick to get that door back on track, so to speak. Diving ain’t going to be easy without the wing, but if we can seal up, we can probably manage it. Even a few meters’d keep the blast from seriously messing with us.”

  “Still, I’m assuming the worst. We will be launching ASAP. Keep your radio open on the following frequencies.” She listed off several that Tip had given her, least likely to be interfered with under these conditions. “We’ll contact you when we are on approach. I would recommend you trigger a full-power SAR beacon now, and if external lights are still functional, drive them to maximum.”

  “Roger that. Anything to make us easier to spot in the middle of that mess. We’ll see you all in a little bit. Enjoy the ride down.”

  “I’m sure I will,” Sue said with a grin. “Good luck, Emerald Maui.”

  Chapter 51

  “I don’t know if we can dive,” Whips muttered after the transmission to Sherlock had cut off.

  “No more do I,” Campbell admitted. “Seemed to be no point in discouraging our rescuers. Little late for hindsight now, but if we’re going to try diving we probably shouldn’t have dumped that other excavator.”

  “If this doesn’t work, we might want to dump this one,” Xander said. He was checking the condition of the large, conical blob of carbonan epoxy surrounding a giant eyelet now cemented near one edge of the door. “Because if we start leaking more, we’ll need all the help we can get.”

  “How are things up there, Saki?” Whips asked, trying to distract himself; all they could do was wait while the anchor cured.