“So, now the only question is where? Any suggestions?” asked the captain.
“Emily,” the captain said, turning his attention to her; he held a single sheet of paper in one hand. “We have put together a list of naval bases that we think would be prime candidates to at least set up an initial base. What we would like you to do is speak with Commander Mulligan, give her the coordinates of each site, and have her reconnoiter them from her rather unique advantage point for us. What we would like to know is how viable they are, given the spread of the alien plant life.”
“Of course,” said Emily, “I’ll get right on it.” She took the sheet of handwritten notes from the captain.
“Sergeant MacAlister. Would you be good enough to start organizing our departure plans? I expect us to be ready to depart as soon as we have confirmation from Commander Mulligan on an appropriate location.”
“Yes, skipper.” Mac turned to face the crew, waiting impatiently for their next order. “Alright you lot, you heard the captain. Let’s get this show on the road, shall we?”
The crew was on their feet and immediately moving with a practiced familiarity toward their allotted tasks.
“Ms. Baxter. Mr. Endersby. If I may have a few moments of your time?” The captain asked as the rest of the crew cleared the room.
Emily walked with the captain while Rhiannon pushed Jacob as Constantine ushered them to his office, closing the door behind them.
“I know you had your own plans, and that we did not factor into them, but I want to officially extend you an offer to join us. There’s more than enough room on the sub for you, and, to be perfectly frank, we could use the extra sets of hands.”
“Are you offering us a ride?” Jacob asked.
The captain nodded. “If you’re interested…?”
“Yes?” said Emily, looking at Rhiannon. The little girl nodded enthusiastically. “Yes,” Emily repeated to the captain. “You can count Rhiannon and me in.” All eyes turned to Jacob, who looked unsure.
“I suppose I have little choice,” he said eventually. “Yes, I’d like to come along too.”
Emily managed to establish a crackling, static-filled communication link with Commander Mulligan.
“These connections seem to be getting worse,” the commander told Emily. “I think the degradation of the Earth’s electronic communications systems is finally starting. We may not be able to stay as connected as we have been once the satellites begin to fail.”
“I understand, Commander. You have a fallback option?”
“The station is equipped with an amateur radio system that doesn’t need any kind of relay or satellite system, but it does require line of sight with whoever we are talking with, so you won’t lose us altogether when everything goes down, but communication will be a lot more sporadic, I’m afraid.”
“I understand. Commander, the captain has asked if you would be willing to survey a few locations, naval bases that he thinks would be viable locations for us to begin afresh from. Is that feasible for you right now?” Emily wasn’t sure how the commander was going to react to her request, it felt odd to Emily asking someone who was doomed to certain death to help them find a place to live.
But Mulligan did not hesitate. “Of course I can do that,” she said. “What are the coordinates?”
Emily read the list of six candidates to her.
“It’s going to take a full twenty-four hours for us to hit all of those locations but I don’t see a problem. Now, Emily, I have a question of you, well, actually it’s more of a request for Captain Constantine.”
“Of course,” Emily replied. “What is it?”
A long silence settled over the link, and Emily began to suspect the connection had been dropped.
“We have a way off this coffin,” Commander Mulligan said eventually, her voice surprisingly calm for the news she delivered, “and we need the Vengeance and its crew to pick us up when we splash down.”
For the first time in forever, Emily Baxter found herself speechless.
“Let me explain,” Mulligan said and began to tell Emily of her plan.
“My God,” Captain Constantine said after Emily relayed the news Commander Mulligan had passed on to her. “But they only have the one Soyuz escape vehicle? So just three of the crew will be able to make it off the station?…My God!”
“They drew straws,” Emily said. “The commander says that they are confident that between the adjusted programming of the Soyuz’s navigation computer and the craft’s manual controls they can pretty much put the escape craft down anywhere they need to. The problem comes once they land; it has to be a sea landing, so they will need to be picked up within a couple of hours.”
“And that’s where we come in,” said MacAlister, matter-of-factly.
“Yes,” said Emily. “The commander has requested that you rendezvous with the Soyuz and pick them up.”
Captain Constantine looked squarely at MacAlister. “It’s a risk,” he said, “but I don’t think it’s an exceptional one. If the commander can navigate the escape craft close to whichever of the new destinations we pick, then I think it’s feasible. Yes, I think it is very feasible. Tell the commander it’s a go. We’ll await her instructions.”
“I’ll tell her,” said Emily, her face wearing the biggest smile she thought it had ever had. “And Captain…thank you.”
Despite the space station being several hundred miles above her head, Emily thought the sigh of relief she heard from Commander Mulligan was palpable enough that she could feel it all the way down here on the ground.
Her call to the ISS was a hurried one, the connection between the Stockton station and the space station seemed to have noticeably deteriorated over just the past few hours.
“Wonderful, wonderful news, Emily,” the commander said. “Please thank the captain on behalf of myself and my crew. I don’t know how I can ever repay him or you.”
“You can thank him yourself when you meet him. As for me? I already owe you my life so, please, think nothing of it.”
“Listen, as much as I hate to be the bearer of bad news, I’ve made some progress on the search for a new home for you. It’s not good I’m afraid.”
Two of the six potential locations were completely overrun by the creeping red vegetation she’d seen moving across the land, Commander Mulligan explained. The new plant life was spreading at an unprecedented rate. And if this was any indication of how bad the infestation was elsewhere, then the plan might have to change dramatically.
“I’m sorry, Emily. I’ll keep looking until we know for certain, you have my word.”
“I know you will, Commander. Thank you, and please be safe,” Emily said by way of a sign-off.
“You too, Emily. You too.”
And with that final comment, the commander’s voice vanished back into the ether.
The news was better the next morning.
“Point Loma, California,” Commander Mulligan told Emily excitedly. “That’s where you need to go. There’s a large incursion of the red vegetation in the surrounding areas and into the base itself, but the main structures in the area seem to be more or less free. Of course, at the rate this plant life seems to be spreading, I can’t guarantee that it will remain that way for very long.”
The naval base at Point Loma, from what Captain Constantine and MacAlister had explained to Emily, was a collection of naval support groups, training facilities, and berthing for several submarines, among other things. Located on a peninsula of land across a bay from San Diego, it seemed like the perfect place to pitch their tent.
“Commander, we really can’t thank you enough. I know the crew will be ecstatic to hear this news.”
“Just convince them to move quickly, Emily. Time is of the essence for all of us.”
Once Emily notified Captain Constantine of Point Loma’s viability,
things moved at a breakneck pace and, within a seemingly impossibly short time, their refuge at the Stockton Islands was stripped bare and emptied of all salvageable material and supplies, which in turn were transported to the Vengeance, waiting offshore.
And in just under two hours from the time Emily first passed on the information, she found herself standing on the snow-cleared pathway just outside the building she had called home since arriving at the Stocktons, waiting as two sailors carried Jacob out into the still-freezing air.
“This is so surreal,” Jacob said to himself. “So very surreal.” A plastic supermarket bag was clutched tightly to his chest, and Emily could make out what she was sure was the outline of a whisky bottle within it.
“It’s for the best,” she said as he was carried past her, not sure if she actually believed her own words.
But what else was there to say? They were giving up the safety of this place for the unknown, yet again, and more uncertainty. She looked back at the building and deserted camp one final time then took Rhiannon’s hand in one hand and Thor’s leash in the other and started after Jacob.
The Vengeance cut silently through the Pacific Ocean, heading south just twenty miles off the west coast of North America. As the submarine pushed ever closer to the equator, the temperature of the water surrounding it gradually climbed, echoing the growing excitement of the crew as they drew, mile by mile, nearer to their destination.
Just over three thousand nautical miles separated the Stockton Islands off northern Alaska from Point Loma, California. At an average speed of twenty knots it was going to take the crew of the Vengeance just under a week to cruise down the West Coast.
Life onboard the submarine was incongruous for Emily. The crew, safe in their familiar surroundings and with the familiarity of routine to take their minds off the almost uncountable variables that were at play around them, carried on as if all was normal.
Rhiannon too had settled into a routine of reading from a collection of old paperback novels—Emily supposed every book was now old—and watching British TV shows on the sub’s entertainment system; typical teenage stuff and Emily did not begrudge her this brief period of normalcy. It was a chance for the kid to just float along on the current of life for a little while, buoyed by the friendly faces and the easy pleasures of life that come with being thirteen and possessing few skills other than being young.
Hell! Even Thor seemed more than content to lounge the hours away in Emily’s room or occasionally wander through the corridors with one of the crew who wanted a little canine company. Thor was good therapy for everyone.
So why was she finding it so difficult to relax? Emily knew she should take full advantage of this time of almost assured safety being onboard—or was it inboard for a submarine?—the Vengeance afforded her and just chill out, even if it was only for a little while. But she just could not seem to sit still for more than a half hour before she found herself restlessly wandering the corridors, looking for something to do or for someone to talk with.
But finding someone to converse with was almost impossible. Shorthanded, the crew were pulling double- and even triple-shifts. So Emily found herself alone for most of the time.
So, for lack of anything else to hold her attention, she set herself to the task of conditioning herself. Abandoning her bike riding back in Stuyvesant, followed by the long drive to Alaska, and then spending those long weeks on the road and holed-up in the Stocktons had sapped the strength from her legs. The submarine had a well-equipped gym, it even had a stationary exercise bike she tried a couple of times, but it just wasn’t the same as her bike, wasn’t as thrilling as feeling the air rushing by her as she hurtled along the empty roads and lanes of the East Coast. She missed that, missed the freedom.
So Emily took to jogging through the passages. Running laps back and forth between her room and the engine room until the sweat soaked her back and chest, and until the almost constant nagging sense of anxiety she felt in the pit of her stomach was drowned out by the thumping of her heart and the thrum of her blood through her veins.
Each evening, the few off-duty crew not needed in the command center or ordered away from their positions by the captain congregated in the galley for dinner. The ship’s cooks were all dead so the job of preparing food fell to a different crew member each evening.
Emily quickly found out that a lot of the submarine’s would-be culinary masters were as suited to food preparation as she was to a career as a professional singer, and she was about as tone deaf as you could get. To say the evening meals were a surprise (pleasant or otherwise) would be a grave underestimation of the word, but at least there was beer, albeit tightly rationed to a single bottle a day to ensure no drunkenness. To their credit, the sailors seemed to grasp the implications that even a single hungover member of their crew could be disastrous when there were already so few of them to go around. Even so, Emily was sure that on more than one occasion a sailor had had a little more than their assigned bottle, either substituted in from a friend or maybe from some secret stash they had managed to smuggle onboard.
On the third day Emily had become tired of the smell of undercooked bacon and overcooked eggs that the crew seemed to relish so much and nominated herself as the de facto cook for the rest of the trip to Point Loma.
“Do not get used to this,” she told the smiling line of sailors as she ladled out beef stew on her first night. Inevitably, they did and Emily found herself falling willingly into the comforting routine provided by the need to feed so many hungry mouths. It surely was not any kind of step forward for the cause of feminism, but it made her feel useful in an environment where she was out of her depth and felt herself to be more of a distraction than a help.
Compared to the preceding weeks, life aboard the Vengeance was the equivalent of a cruise around the Caribbean, but that nagging fear still chewed at her when she was alone.
But as time passed onboard, Emily felt the numbness begin to dissipate. She found herself smiling more, and the restless, ever-present need to keep moving, so long ingrained in her as she travelled across the country, began to be replaced by something new: not quite peace, but a sense of calm that she had not felt in a very long time. And there was something else too. Something she hadn’t thought she would ever experience again: a sense of belonging.
And then there was MacAlister. The more time she spent in the company of the Scot, the more she found herself looking forward to the next time. On more than one occasion over the past two days, as she pounded through the corridors, she had found herself casually plotting ways to run into him.
“Don’t be such a damn fool,” she said aloud one evening as she sat in her bunk thinking about him.
“What?” said Rhiannon. “I didn’t do anything.”
“Oh, no, not you sweetheart. Sorry,” Emily apologized, feeling her face blush in embarrassment.
The truth was she suspected he might be doing the same. Every night, despite his almost constant requirement to be present in the command room, she would find him waiting in line for food and they would spend a half hour just shooting the breeze while they ate their food together. Nothing specific, nothing heavy, just talking about where they grew up, favorite foods, old friends, and the little gems that mark the trail of a person’s walk through life.
Or of course, he could just be hungry, she supposed.
“He likes you too,” said Rhiannon.
This time it was Emily’s turn to say, “What? Who?” while trying to give Rhiannon her best I-have-absolutely-no-idea-who-or-what-you’re-talking-about face, only to be met by a knowing smile. “Jesus! Is it that obvious?” she admitted.
“Umm hmmm! I see him looking at you when he sees you’re not looking,” Rhiannon said, adding a “He’s so dreamy” that ended in a huge flamboyant sigh and flutter of her eyelashes before she promptly cracked up into one of her patented fits of evil cackling.
“Hey! Don’t make me come over there,” Emily warned in an equally playful voice. After a long pause she added, “But he is kind of cute, isn’t he?”
The Vengeance burst through the ocean surface; first the conning tower appeared, the huge fin-shaped tower slicing through the water, seconds later the sleek, matt-black body emerged, water roaring from its deck, sunlight glistening off the ribbons of spray cascading from the hull.
In the belly of the submarine, Emily waited with Rhiannon for the Vengeance to stabilize. When the rocking finally stopped, she rolled off her cot and opened the door. In the corridor sailors were already making their way toward the upper decks, their excited chatter elevating Emily’s own sense of excitement at finally discovering firsthand what had happened to the world.
“Stay here,” Emily told Rhiannon and Thor, then slipped outside and followed the sailors.
A metal ladder ran up through the hollow center of the sub’s conning tower from the main deck of the submarine. At the bottom of the ladder Emily and the rest of the crew gathered in the corridor, milling nervously as Captain Constantine and MacAlister climbed the metal rungs to the observation deck at the top.
A few minutes passed and then Emily heard the sound of MacAlister’s standard issues against the metal rungs of the ladder as he descended.
“What’s it look like, Sergeant?” asked a crewman, as MacAlister stepped off the ladder, eager for information. Emily could not read Mac’s face; it was blank, impassive.
MacAlister ignored the sailor and spoke directly to Emily. “Come on up,” he said, offering his hand to her. “The rest of you stay here.”
“Jesus, Sarge—”
Revelations (Extinction Point, Book 3) Page 6
