Titanic 2012 (inspector alastair ransom)

by Robert W. Walker

  “I had no choice; it’ll all come clear later! For now, I have to find Kelly and Lou.”

  “They may well have gotten trapped or turned around inside the ship,” suggested Dr. Entebbe.

  “Lou’s an experienced diver, and Irvin’s no slouch, Doctor.”

  “You of all people, David, you have to know—”

  “How easy it is to get lost down here, yes, of course but—”

  “You get turned around, go in circles! Happened to you and Mendenhall. At least you’re still alive,” said Forbes. “Now do as I say. Get back to the sub.”

  “Still don’t know how I managed to make it to out of the ship. Almost like this hole in the rotted out flooring in the Marconi Room just opened up for me.

  “Ahhh… so that’s what we are seeing behind you—the wireless room from where McBride sent out the SOS.”

  “Hold on, I see movement over there. Yes, there they are,” David whispered into his com-link. “Are you getting this? They’re alive! But wait… it’s Kelly, and she’s alone.”

  “It would appear she’s collected some items from the ship,” said Forbes, watching intently from above.

  “Yeah, so I noticed. Net’s full to bursting, and I’d swear something’s squirming inside it.”

  Forbes agreed. “It’s filled with something alive, yes, but then she’s the biologist, and she has orders to retrieve any biological specimens.”

  “Of course,” muttered David. “She’d be the one to show up with specimens.” David realized the specimens Kelly was carrying were the select ones, the most likely to survive—the chosen ones.

  “How does she look from your perspective?” Forbes asked. “She’s still not on com-link.”

  “She looks strong and well, but I’m concerned about her.”

  “I want a full report, David, as to what’s happened to Lou, and why’d their vital signs and cams went down? You get her talking soon as you two get back to the sub.”

  David felt a sick feeling stirring in his heart. Had the thing in Swigart gone over to Kelly down here behind the shield of Titanic’s walls? Had the creature decided to risk everything, or had it been residing in Kelly for some time now? Had she somehow convinced Lou against his better judgment to make the dive prematurely—just as she had convinced him to come along? Plucking at his vanity, using her feminine wiles on him as she had on David?

  “Can you zoom in on the net, Forbes, and tell me what you see?” All David knew for certain was that the other two divers—or at least one of them—had been to the freezer compartment and now this.

  Kelly had appeared at the lip of the sheared off aft section of the bow. She was moving fast now, skimming along the top deck, going straight for the sub, her net full of slug-like creatures with her. She had emerged from the wreckage at precisely where she and Swigart had led her down into Titanic earlier. So where was Lou or Lou’s remains? But for now, he must concentrate on the thing inside Kelly’s body, and the things iniside Kelly’s dive net.

  “Forbes, sir, have you any sign of Lou?” David persisted.

  “No sign of Lou whatsoever, no.”

  “And the net? What’s she dragging?” Entebbe’s voice came over.

  “Appears… looks like some form of sea life,” reasoned Forbes, “but nothing we can categorize—perhaps tube worms, but there’re no black smokers down there, so who knows? Nothing else lives at these depths save crabs. Is it crabs?”

  “It’s those damnable freaking eggs, Captain. Like those you witnessed me burning; the ones that I turned to ash in the bodies in the freezer.”

  “All we saw you burning, Ingles, were bodies.”

  David realized that Forbes had not had the time to zoom in on the bodies in the freezer to have seen the egg sacs as David had acted so quickly. “Inside the bodies, these things Dr. Irvin is carrying to the sub! They’re dangerous disease organisms! I destroyed them. Zoom in closer on the net she’s carrying to see them clearly!”

  “See these eggs you’re talking about?” Forbes sounded far from convinced.

  “You can’t let them aboard Scorpio! You didn’t see the eggs I fried down in the freezer compartment below the flames?”

  “All we saw were flames.”

  “But you have to see what’s in the net!”

  “Net?’”

  “The net Kelly’s carrying! It’s filled with the same egg sacs.”

  “Nothing coming clear, David.”

  David realized that he’d acted so quickly in burning the egg sacs that the sacs could scarcely have been seen, despite the feed to Scorpio, and that Kelly was so far away that again the sacs could not be made out for what they were. If he could only get a closer view, but this was agonizing being the only one to know the truth of the matter.

  David had indeed acted so quickly to destroy the nest of eggs he’d found that no one could see them due the grainy feed. He urged Forbes to replay the video of his torching the bodies, to zoom in on the bodies, to see the egg sacs. “It’s the same as the alien life form in Kelly’s net,” David shouted into his com-link.

  “Does appear fleshy and moving, yes,” said Forbes now of the sacs in the bodies that David had torched.

  Entebbe added, “Possibly a collection of ball-like membranous… eggs, yes.”

  “Kelly’s harvesting them! Taking them to the sub!”

  “She’s our biological officer here to do biological studies; we’re well equipped for it.” Forbes was clearly upset with David. “What kind of trouble are you cooking up down there, Ingles?”

  David heard Entebbe in the background, trying to explain about something he’d learned from having scanned Declan’s journal, but David hadn’t time to wait around.

  He swam out of the Marconi Room and directly for Kelly, waving, so glad to see her alive, rationalizing that her bringing out this parcel of eggs was due to Swigart’s forcing her to help transport them to the sub. He didn’t want to believe his eyes; besides, where was Swigart? He still had not emerged from the ship.

  “Are you all right?” he hopelessly shouted into his com-link to Kelly. “Where’s Lou? What’s in your hand?” But Kelly failed to reply. Instead she whipped out her laser cutting knife and sent a beam in an arc sweeping toward David, intending to slice him in half. Having anticipated the attack, David realized his danger in time to drop through a hole in the deck, risking his life in the quick move on the one hand, but on the other saving himself from the laser that tore into the Marconi Room and out the other side, the deadly beam going off into the infinity of sea.

  “Lou didn’t kill her; she killed Lou!” he shouted to Forbes.

  “She damn near killed you!”

  “I can’t let her return to Scorpio! Not with those eggs—and not with that thing inside her.”

  He grabbed his own laser cutter, raised his eyes above the hole he’d dropped through and readied to fire, but she anticipated this and fired! Again he ducked below and this time the laser came dangerously close, slicing the worm-eaten wood around his head. He retreated into Titanic, realizing he must find another exit, and he saw a section of collapsed promenade and beyond it a faint light, light coming from the sub. He raced for the light.

  On exiting at this spot, David saw her going for Max. If she entered the sub, he’d be stranded here and die within the hour as his OPFCs ran out. “She intends on getting to the surface any way she can, Captain. Quite likely planning to make off with Max and not even bother surfacing. Hell, she could land anywhere along the coastline in Max. My guess is Nova Scotia.”

  “We might be able to limit the ship’s functioning from here,” began Forbes, “but I’m afraid it’s built too well for us—short of doing a full recovery, which would leave all the other divers stranded on the bottom to die.”

  “If all this is true, Ingles,” added Entebbe, “you’re the only chance we have of stopping Irvin from taking control of the sub.”

  David had snatched up a steel sheet, a discarded portion of a space heater ripped fro
m one of the interior staterooms as the ship sank. Using the plate as a shield, he started after Kelly—or rather the thing she’d become. David approached the sub now from an entirely different direction that the creature could not anticipate. Taking aim, David sent his laser beam straight for her heart. The beam just missed her left shoulder as she swam, dragging the net filled with egg sacs behind her, a mother protecting its young.

  When the laser beam shot past her, she whirled and fired back. David ducked behind the shield he carried, the beam burning through it just above his eyes. The steel plating slowed the laser cutter just long enough as it worked its way through, heating the metal to a glowing blue. David rolled away, dropped the shield, and came to a prone floating position to reduce her target area, and her next beam missed him by inches as a result. He fired back all in the same motion, his second beam striking her in the torso. It took but a moment for her and him to realize that the laser beam had penetrated her Cryo-suit. It was a dead on hit to the heart, piercing through her and imploding her in the dark sea water, exploding outward to destroy all vestiges of what she carried as well—miniscule black oil and pieces of those damnable egg sacs going in all directions and raining down to the ocean bottom.

  He shut down his laser on witnessing the last vestige of the creature that had inhabited her hurled at extreme velocity, extremely lucky that an obsidian stone the size of a tooth zipped past his head without striking his suit or visor.

  “You get all this, Captain?” he asked, knowing those above must be in shock over the turn of events below.

  Forbes’ voice came back, trembling, “Got it… all on video, but I still don’t know what we just witnessed.”

  “Read the damned journal, Captain.”

  “Yes, yes, of course. Will do for sure. Dr. Entebbe has leafed through it. I think we know where your head’s been at now.”

  Just then David got a weak vibration through his entire suit, and for a millisecond, he feared his own suit’s integrity had been compromised and he was about to implode, but this didn’t happen. Still the strange vibration persisted until he realized that it was an audio vibration coming in—too weak to be made out over the com-link but transmitting through the inductance mic in his suit. It had the feel of a distressed keening like a small piercing insect in his ear. Forbes picked it up too and asked, “What is that, David?”

  “I don’t know, sir. I pray it’s not one of those damned creatures that’s somehow gotten into my suit.”

  “No way,” said Entebbe. “You’d be dead if it bored the least hole in your suit.”

  “It has the nature of a weak signal,” added Forbes. “But look here, David, you must get back to the sub and get back to the others; they’re all running low on air. We’re sending additional paks down now but they may not get there in time.”

  “What if it’s Lou, sir? What if the signal is a distress signal Lou’s trying to put out?”

  “You can’t take that chance, not now, David. Too many other lives at stake.”

  “How can you say that? He’s your friend.”

  “Friend or no, there’s more at stake here than Lou, and he’s likely dead, so that’s an order, Ingles. Get to the sub and get back to the aft section, pick up the others, and return everyone safely to Scorpio, man!”

  Then another sound, a human sound, weak but real came through David’s comm. A weak voice. Gibberish yes, but it was unmistakably Lou’s voice. “Lou! Where are you, Lou? Where?”

  “Nee… he’p, Day..vid.”

  “Lou, where the hell are you?”

  “Rear of-of ship… where entered, below topmost deck. Stuck like an insect.”

  “What happened, Lou?”

  “She… that woman ran… rammed my head against a bulkhead, knocked my brains against my helmet. Woke up covered in debris, trapped here, left unconscious. Dunno how long.”

  “I’m coming for you, Lou! Hold on!”

  “She’s killed me, David. She… she’ll kill you, too.”

  Forbes came on to say, “Lou! So good to hear you! Hang in there.”

  “Afraid it’s all I can do.”

  Entebbe came on. “Lou, save your strength. David—both of you, your air supply is getting dangerously low.”

  David swam for Lou’s location as fast as he could determine from what the big man had managed to utter. “Heading toward your position, Lou!”

  Gliding over the top of the deck, David dove along the hull, telling Lou, “Keep up some noise. Help me find you, Lou!”

  From a wide-view lens via Max and sent to Forbes’ CIS room, David appeared as a speck, an insect, clawing his way about the ruins of the ship until he had disappeared over the side. Forbes said to David, “We’ll keep you posted on the oxygen levels, but it’s becoming critical.”

  But Dr. Entebbe came on, shouting, “Ingles, you have thirteen minutes to get yourself inside Max! Else you’re a dead man. From the weak signal we’re now picking up, Lou hasn’t a chance; he’s breathing twice as hard as you.”

  “But unconscious all this time, he’d’ve been breathing shallowly. Keep me posted!” Just then, David saw his Commander of Divers, Swigart and raced toward the man. Lou was indeed trapped but hardly dead as David saw that he was struggling to free himself. A twisted, rust-free pipe and girder held him in place like an insect against the backdrop of Titanic’s worst section where she had torn herself apart. The pipe shaft—once hidden plumbing on the ship—pinned him at his shoulder, the girder atop this. But Lou, obviously determined to live, wiggled and turned and twisted, risking rending his suit as he did so.

  At the same time, he thought the scene too much like having to watch Terry Wilcox die; he wondered if he might not be cursed to now be witnessing another man he considered a friend die before his eyes.

  But this time, he wouldn’t freeze; this time he went into action. Wiser, smarter now, and equipped with the right tool for the job. He studied the size and length and weight of the girder section, and quickly determined he could move it with his own strength by sliding it off the huge pipe. Once this was done, he snatched out his laser knife and began cutting the length of pipe lying over Lou.

  The laser worked fast to cut an entire section of pipe and the attendant weight of that section off Lou. As he worked, the blue light of the heated pipe creating a halo about the men, Forbes and others watched via their cameras. Lou’s com-link, vital signs, and camera had all returned once Lou could make the adjustments.

  David saw no evidence of a jagged edge on the pipe, no rust to tear at the Cryo-suit.

  So long as Lou remained calm and didn’t panic as Terry had, he would not die here within Titanic for lack of liquid air. He’d also not die of implosion, David realized, should he pull Lou from under the pipe. It appeared they were on the brink of success.

  David felt some relief at seeing the big man struggling, putting up a fight. He lifted away the remaining section of pipe some ten or twelve feet in length and two feet in diameter. He managed to slide it off to one side, using the environment of the water to help him do so. As soon as the weight was off Lou, the Commander got himself free, coming out of the debris looking like a flounder shaking off its sea bed, as Lou’s movement—wonderful to see—sent up a cascade of what David had begun to think of as Titanic dust and debris. Lou was free but obviously still in some distress from the blow to his head; he might well also be bleeding internally.

  Lou was in great pain, and he was telling David, “Get the hell outta here, Ingles! That’s an order! I’ll follow!”

  “Not a chance, Lou.”

  “I’m still your commander.”

  “Shut up, Lou! I’m getting you back to Max.”

  “There’s no way! Get outta here, now!”

  “I’m taking you the hell with me, buddy!”

  From above Forbes informed them, “You two have less than fifteen minutes of liquid air left in your paks!”

  Entebbe added, “And no one’s ever pushed them to this limit! It’s coming up on
four hours you’ve been on liquid air!”

  “David,” continued Forbes, “the others are running low as well; they’ll all die on the aft section unless you get back there now, David!”

  David snatched hold of Lou’s arm and wrapped it over his shoulder, his arm now wrapped about the other man in a protective hold, and the two divers kicked off from this place of death. “Be careful not to bump against those jagged edges ahead, Lou.”

  “You’re a damn fool and a headline grabber, Ingles; just as I thought all along!”

  “Shut up and conserve your oxygen. Let’s all get home.”

  Lou nodded and both men examined the treacherous, overhanging and jagged debris and wires. “Steady as she goes,” muttered Lou. “But if I implode all over you, then maybe you’ll learn to take orders.”

  “We’re getting out of here together, and we’re going to save those at the aft section to boot. So here goes! Now, Lou, now lean into me!”

  When the pair of divers clinging to one another emerged from Titanic, caught by Max’s wide landscape lens, the divers heard a roar of applause and cheers coming from the control room above. Helping Lou find his bearings, David held onto the wounded man as they now swam directly for Max’s warm-looking lights. The thought of Max’s safe interior encouraged David to draw on strength he didn’t know he had, and those safe confines conspired to fill his thoughts with regrets for Mendenhall and for Kelly—neither of whom he could have saved.

  Again as with a hundred times, he questioned the moment Kelly had become controlled by this awful parasitic organism.

  Forbes shouted a final-sounding order in David’s ear: “Get to the others, now! You’re down to eight minutes.”

  David was at Max and he slammed open her hatchway, and within moments, he and Lou were safely inside the lock, anxious to get to her controls.

  “If the others have explored their section of Titanic without incident or problems,” said David to Forbes, “they’ll have used up less oxygen. So, Captain, did they have any laser knife fights over there or lose a diver to any misstep?”