by Joseph Rhea
She frowned and headed into the galley. “Well, at least you’re actually dreaming. I don’t think I’ve managed more than a series of ten to fifteen minute naps since we left Civica.” She reached for the coffee pot then slammed it down on the counter when she realized it was empty. “Why do we keep this thing in here?” she yelled.
Jake shrugged. “Ash and Raines were just playing Hex down on C-deck. Maybe you can start up a game and win some beans from them.”
She froze and looked at him. “What day is it, Jake?”
He looked at her. “Are you having memory problems now?” he joked.
“No, seriously. What day of the trip is it? How long have we been out here?”
He shook his head. “Why do you ask?”
She leaned back against the counter, but her posture was anything but relaxed. “Because the last time Norman Raines, Ash, and Jessie were betting their coffee beans over a game of Hex was three days ago.”
Jake stared at her for a moment, trying to see if she was messing around with him. It wasn’t three days ago, was it? He tried to brush it off. “I know. It’s just all that happened on the bridge just now with the isopods sort of threw me…” Her face went blank. “What’s wrong, AJ?”
“Jake,” she said as she reached out to hold his arm, “let’s go down to Med Bay. I’ll have Wood—”
“There’s nothing wrong with me,” he protested, pulling his arm free.
“Jake,” she repeated more insistently, “our encounter with the isopods was yesterday. You just came up to the bridge and asked us if we were grabbing your hands. Does that sound like you are okay?”
Jake put his hands to his forehead and then walked over to sit at the table. When AJ sat beside him, he stood and motioned for her to follow him. When he reached his quarters, she paused. “I shouldn’t be seen in your quarters. The crew has been secretly taking bets on who will be sleeping with whom on this trip, and you and I are high favorites.”
She tried to smile, but he didn’t see the humor. “I need to talk to you away from the crew, okay?” he stepped inside and waited for her to enter. When she finally came inside and sat on the chair by his desk, he closed the door and locked it.
“I had sort of forgotten that our quarters were exact mirrors of each other,” she said as she looked around the small room.
Even though there was a second chair in the room, he walked over and sat down on his bed. He sat there for several seconds, trying to think of what he was going to say, then he realized that the truth was probably the best. “I think I might be going insane,” he said as he stared at the floor then looked at her for her reaction.
As usual, nothing seemed to faze his first mate. “You’re not going insane, Jake.”
“How can you know that?” he asked.
“Because you think you are,” she said. “You know the old saying, ‘Crazy people don’t know they are crazy.’“
Jake shook his head. “I think that’s just a saying, like, ‘The coast is clear,’ or ‘The sky’s the limit.’ They don’t make any sense.”
She turned in her chair then saw the broken Rogue Wave model on his desk. She picked it up and tried to fit the fin back on. “The sky’s the limit makes sense to me, because, you know, above the sky is the ocean. So, that is a limit, right?”
He stood and walked over to retrieve the model from her then placed it gently back on his desk. “Most people say it when they mean there is no limit, which is why it doesn’t make sense.”
She stood up, and they were so close they nearly touched noses. “Why did you invite me in here, Jake?” she asked in a voice he had never heard before. It was soft and understanding, almost like a woman who wasn’t his first mate.
He knew what he should do, which was turn and open the door for her to leave. Or even back up and calmly discuss his lapses in memory. His possible loss of mental stability. But he didn’t. He just stood there, breathing in and out, feeling her scent tickle his nose. She licked her lips, and he might have done the same. He wasn’t sure because he couldn’t think of anything but her brown, oval-shaped eyes looking up at him.
Then suddenly they were both falling to the floor as the lights went out. He grabbed her to try to break her fall but ended up landing on top of her. She screamed out in pain.
“I’m sorry,” he called out just as the emergency lights flicked on. It wasn’t until he tried to stand that he realized that the floor was tilted measurably. “We’re diving!” he yelled, as he turned and crawled to the door. It wouldn’t open, no matter how many times he hit the switch.
“Ship’s on lockdown,” AJ called out. He turned to see her trying to get to her knees, but the way she was holding her shoulder made that impossible. She looked up at him. “We’re diving towards the sea floor. Automatic ship response is to seal all watertight doors in preparation for impact.”
“What was our height above the floor?” he asked as he helped her over to his bed. Her shoulder looked odd, as if maybe it was dislocated.
“I’m not sure,” she grimaced as she sat down on his bed.
As he held on to her, he realized she was tougher than he was. He pulled a strand of hair away from her face. “We’re going down pretty quickly,” he whispered. “If we hit a rocky bottom…” He didn’t need to finish because everyone knew that you didn’t usually survive collisions in the deep.
Despite her obvious pain, she reached out and pulled him to her lips. He didn’t hesitate and kissed her back. He rolled over to her good side and kissed her neck, feeling lost in the moment and happy about it. If he was about to die, this wasn’t a bad way to go.
When they hit, they were both thrown violently against the wall, and Jake lost consciousness.
Chapter 10
When Jake opened his eyes, he found himself in a small, dimly-lit room. He had a quick flashback to some sort of interrogation chamber from his nightmares, but this wasn’t it; this was his own Medical Bay. He tried to sit up but found his chest and arms held down. He started to panic, but then Dr. Wood stepped into view. “How are you feeling, Captain?”
He relaxed a bit but then remembered how he got there. “How is AJ?”
Wood nodded to the other diagnostics bed in the room. Jake looked over and saw AJ sleeping peacefully. “Fortunately, her only injury was a dislocated shoulder, which I was able to reset manually.” He used the word manually as though it was somehow foreign to him. When Jake tugged on his restraints, Wood added, “You strained your back during the crash. The restraints are to keep you immobilized for twenty-four hours or so. I’ve given you an anti-inflammatory and a mild tranquilizer which should help.”
“The rest of the crew?” he asked, realizing that his Medical Bay wasn’t designed to deal with more than two patients at a time. If someone else needed a bed, he would insist on moving out, even with the pain in his back.
“They’re fine, for the most part. A few bumps and bruises.”
“What’s wrong with the power?” Jake asked as he finally realized that the only illumination in the room was coming from the emergency panels along the walls.
“I’ll let your crew fill you in on that,” he said, nodding to someone over his head.
“You’re part of the crew now, as well,” Jake said then added, “Thanks for taking care of her.”
Wood raised an eyebrow then nodded. If a smile appeared, it was brief and hard to make out in the darkness of the room. Had he given too much away?
Norman Raines’ face appeared upside down, then he came around to the side of the bed. “How are you feeling, Captain?”
“More importantly,” he replied, “what’s wrong with my ship?”
“Your ship?” he said with mock indignation. “As chief engineer, I feel—”
“No joking. How is she?”
Raines knitted his eyebrows in the way he always did when things were serious. Judging by his look, they were all about to die. “Everything except life support is offline, and I mean everything.”
/> “Is the hull intact?”
“Hard to tell without diagnostics, but if there were a breach, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
“Then give me an estimate. How long to get her operational? You can use anyone you want as help. I’ll even pitch in. I’m pretty good with—”
“You don’t understand, Captain. We have no power.”
“I do understand that. I still need an estimate. Even a rough guess will do for now.”
Raines leaned back against the wall and folded his arms. “When I say that we have no power, what I mean is that our batteries have been drained. Both sleds. Completely.”
It took a moment for those words to sink in. “Drained? Completely? That’s impossible.”
Raines nodded. “Obviously not impossible but very difficult to do. The device was well concealed.”
“Device?”
“A small bridging circuit about the size of your hand, connected to the hull by a thin but ultrahigh-capacity grounding wire. We saw the entire sea light up through the viewports when it was triggered.”
“Sabotage?” Jake asked. The thought that someone would do this, intentionally strand them in the middle of the ocean, almost made him sick. He looked around the room for Wood. “Who did it?”
“No one aboard this ship,” Raines replied. “I’m afraid it was built in to the design.”
“Built in? Are you sure?”
Raines narrowed his eyes. “I’m a pretty decent cook, I think you would agree, but I’m a far better engineer. This particular module is a part of every ship I’ve ever worked on. It is supposed to be a backup current flow monitor. Although, now that I look back, I guess I should have been suspicious years ago.”
“Why?”
“Because it never broke down. I’ve never heard of anyone having to open it up for repairs. Most of us were just happy to have at least one thing on our ships that just worked all the time. We never questioned it. I never questioned it.”
Jake stared at the ceiling. “I’m guessing this is some sort of backup plan to keep ships from leaving Civica. Right?”
Raines let out a sigh. “I think it was set up to go off once we passed Rubicon.”
“Bilge,” Jake cursed. “I guess it’s too late to say that I should have listened to Ash and Wood about turning back.”
Raines nodded then added, “And perhaps we all should have heeded those isopods when they tried to stop us from crossing, as well.”
Jake looked at him. “You think they knew about the device?”
Raines shook his head. “I guess that’s rather unlikely. Just a coincidence.”
“Quite a coincidence,” Jake added.
“Indeed.”
Jake looked at the man for a few seconds then asked, “So, what is your plan to get us moving again?”
Raines raised his eyebrows. “Are you feeling all right, Captain?”
Jake shook his head. “Why does everyone keep asking me that?”
“Because I told you that we are completely out of power. Without electricity, there is no way to power the thrusters. No way to ‘get us moving again.’“
Despite his back pain and the direness of the situation, Jake smiled. “You know, Captain Coal would have never accepted his chief engineer just giving up, and neither will I. We are not going to die out here. There has to be a way. I need you to find it. That’s an order.”
“Forgive me, Captain, but ordering me to fix the ship is really quite easy. Coming up with a viable solution is not.”
“There is a way.”
Raines shook his head. “I’m afraid I have to disagree with you, Jake. Do you think I haven’t been racking my brain? Do you think I haven’t already gone over every system on the ship looking for a solution?”
“There is a way,” Jake repeated.
“With all due respect, Captain, I have spent more hours aboard ships like this than you have been alive. Trust me when I tell you that there is no way to power the thrusters with what we have on board.”
Jake stared at Raines and wondered if maybe the older man was correct after all. Did he really think he was smarter than an experienced engineer twice his age? And how was it that he had no clear idea of how to fix the ship, while at the same time, he absolutely knew a solution would be found if they looked for it. If they just didn’t give up hope. “Do you know what it takes to be a good captain?” he asked.
“Is it the ability to go off on strange tangents while discussing the fate of the ship and crew?” Raines asked.
“Sarcasm aside,” he began, “it takes something my former captain called an ‘adaptive unconscious.’ Do you know what that is?”
“I understand the basic theory. It’s a set of mental processes that influence judgment and decision making in a way that is inaccessible to one’s conscious mind. But how does that tie in to our current predicament?”
“For a captain, or anyone who is forced to make split-second decisions, it would be beneficial to have an unconscious mind that is always working, solving problems our conscious mind can’t. So that when an emergency arises, that person has a solution waiting there for them.”
Raines shook his head. “Are you telling me that you already have the answer? You know how to power the thrusters without energy? This I would love to hear.”
“Sarcasm again?” Jake asked.
“You would think so, but considering that my granddaughter is on this ship, I am open to any and all solutions that will help her stay alive. So what is your unconsciously-created fix?”
Jake sighed. “You know, I’ve just used the word ‘unconscious’ more times in the last two minutes than I have in my entire life before today. But to answer your question, I actually don’t have a solution just yet, but I know, for a fact, that there is one.”
Raines jumped to his feet, looking quite agitated. “I’m afraid that Dr. Wood might have given you too many pain pills, Captain. I’ll speak to you once the—”
“There is absolutely no electricity left in the batteries, correct?” Jake interrupted, forcing his engineer to turn away from the door.
“That is what I said.”
Jake turned his head to the side to look at the wall. “Then what is powering the emergency lights?”
“You know as well as I do. They are powered by a low-level conductive current generated by the outer hull’s contact with sea water. I know where you’re going with this, but it’s only a trickle, not a hundredth of the energy required to drive the engines.”
“And what can we run off of this trickle?”
“It’s enough to give us emergency lights and power our air scrubbers, but we can no longer pull oxygen from the water to replenish what is being used up by the crew.”
“But it’s something. It’s an energy source that we can harness.”
“Is this your adaptive unconscious talking?”
“No, it’s me talking, but I know there is a solution to our situation, and I know it has to do with the trickle charge. And I also know it has nothing to do with our thrusters. There is another way to move the ship. I just know it.” He looked back up at the ceiling. “Tell me other ways we can move the ship. Forget about how fast or in what direction. Just tell me how to move it a few centimeters.”
Raines walked back and pulled up a chair. Finally, he was getting into the right frame of mind. “Well, the only way we can physically move the ship is by pumping compressed nitrogen in and out of our ballast tanks, but it only moves us straight up and down. It doesn’t help with moving us forward.”
“That’s it!” Jake almost screamed. “We use the ballast tanks.”
Raines looked blankly at him, then his eyes lit up. “You’re talking about a glider, aren’t you?”
“We blow the tanks and climb straight up, as high as we can go, maybe all the way to the Surface ice, then add water back in, making us heavy again. As we descend, we tilt the ship’s bow down and move forward like a glider. It certainly won’t be fast, but it should get
us moving again. In fact, we should be able to get a forward glide during both ascent and descent.”
Raines scratched his chin. “We do have a plentiful nitrogen supply for pushing water out of the tanks,” he said, almost to himself. “And since we don’t plan to do any deep-water lockouts, we should have enough to last for several hundred uses.” He patted Jake on the shoulder. “Son, you may have just given us a fighting chance to live.”
Jake faced the ceiling again and closed his eyes. “That’s my job, you know. Now I think the drugs are starting to kick in, so I’ll let you tell the rest of the crew the news, and you guys can work out all of the details. I’m just going to go to sleep now and talk with the interrogators.” And then he did.
Chapter 11
Jake heard the voices before he even opened his eyes. They were talking about him as though he wasn’t there, as though he wasn’t right in front of them, wasn’t still strapped to his interrogation bed.
“He’s awake,” one of them said. A woman’s voice, perhaps the one from before.
“Open your eyes, Captain Stone.”
Jake shook his head and yelled, “I don’t want to do this anymore. I can’t keep doing this.”
“Can I get you something, Jake? A glass of water, perhaps?”
He opened his eyes and saw the doctor standing over him. Her face looked kind, but she wasn’t kind. She was part of this. She was the enemy, just as much as Captain Steele. “Can you stop bringing me back here?” he asked.
“Stop bringing you…” She paused, as though she didn’t understand his question.
“You’re driving me mad with this back and forth thing,” he tried to explain. “You tell me that I’m reliving my past, but I’m starting to remember this place when I’m there. At least, partly.”
She looked relieved. “That’s just bleed over,” she said, as if those words explained everything. They didn’t.
