Sedulity 2: Aftershock (Sedulity Saga)

by David Forsyth

  Even as the flames engulfed them, Brad protected her. And after the worst had passed, he swatted out the flames on her clothes while his still burned. When she reached out to him, he said, “Get out of here, Rachel,” over and over again, but she couldn’t bring herself to leave him there. Rachel’s next memory was of water, lots of water, rushing over her and dragging her away from Brad. The lifejacket kept her afloat. The last memory she had of Brad Brewer was what looked like a smile crossing his charred face as the water enveloped him and swept her away. Rachel remembered being relieved that the water had extinguished the fires. It soothed her burns and she recalled hoping that it made Brad feel better too. Why else would he smile?

  Rachel had been tossed around in the rushing water. She remembered being carried towards the stern, then back towards the bow more than once. At one point she thought she would be sucked out of a broken window and off the ship entirely, but the final wave drove her back towards the center of the ship. Then she felt the lifejacket slip off her shoulders and wrench her arms as it was ripped away. She had failed to snap the clasps together across her chest. Rachel went under water for an eternity and was certain the end was near while her mind replayed all the happy times she had shared with Brad. Her next memory was of the wave depositing her on the main staircase and receding, leaving her burned, bleeding and totally alone in her pain.

  That was how Armando Ramos had found her. The bartender was in arguably worse shape than she was, having fought fires on several decks above. Nevertheless, he had assumed the mission of getting Rachel down to the ship’s hospital and even offered to go back to the muster station in search of Brad. She had seen the bartender return later with more injured passengers, but saw no sign of her husband. After treatment for her burns, cuts, and a mild concussion, and with no word on Brad’s fate, Rachel was forced to face this disaster alone.

  She sat in a chair next to the bed where Armando lay in drug induced slumber. Most of the crewman’s face and both hands were covered in bandages. Rachel had her own share of bandages, including one covering a laceration on her forehead, but the selfless bartender had been exposed to much worse.

  After glimpsing the death and destruction in other parts of the ship, as well as hearing horror stories from other injured passengers, Rachel had decided to stay in the medical center after being treated and released. Instead of leaving she pulled a chair next to Armando’s bed and sat silent vigil. Rachel remained unsure if she was there to comfort him when he awoke, or if being with him while he slept was her own lifeline to security and sanity.

  Rachel’s emotions were barely held in check, so she released a startled gasp when a hand was placed gently on her shoulder from behind.

  “You’re still here, I see,” said the exhausted voice of Dr. Segal, the ship’s Chief Medical Officer. “I hope the burn ointment and pain killers are working.”

  “Yes, Doctor,” Rachel replied in a shaky voice. “I’m feeling much better. I’m just afraid to go back to the upper decks. It’s like a nightmare up there. I’m afraid of what I’ll find. I mean I want to find my husband, but not his dead body.”

  “I understand, Mrs. Brewer,” Dr. Segal said. “I’m afraid that far too many of us have lost friends and loved ones tonight.” He glanced down at the sleeping form of Armando and asked, “Do you know this crewman?”

  “Not really,” Rachel replied with a shake of her bandaged head. “He found me and brought me down here for treatment. Then he went back to search for my husband. He didn’t find Brad, but I saw him helping other injured passengers. He seems like a good man and he was helping people even though he was burned worse than most of the rest of us. When I saw him here, well, it felt right for me to stay here and pray for him.”

  “That’s very kind of you,” the doctor smiled sadly. “I’ve heard from others that Armando was quite a hero. He refused treatment until he couldn’t stand the pain anymore. Several people owe him their lives and he’s lucky we treated him before we ran out of some of the burn ointments and sedatives. We’re even running short on bandages now. Pretty soon I’ll be reduced to handing out Band-Aids and aspirin.” The doctor shook his head and started to turn away.

  “Is it really that bad?” Rachel couldn’t help but ask.

  “I’m afraid so,” Dr. Segal replied. “We do stock medicines and supplies to treat burns. Surprisingly, fire is the worst danger at sea. But this isn’t a real burn treatment center and it’s impossible to prepare for a disaster like this. I have some of the crew going around the ship gathering first aid kits to add to the supplies down here. Thank God there were half a dozen doctors among the uninjured passengers who are pitching in now. I’d be overwhelmed without their help.” He looked around the small compartment and then back at Rachel. “I was searching for space to fit more patients, but I think you should stay here with Armando. He’ll sleep for a few more hours, and I’m sure he’ll be pleased to find you here when he wakes up. Let a nurse know if he experiences any convulsions or obvious signs of pain before then. I’ll keep an eye out for your husband, in case he is brought down here.”

  Rachel tried to smile while she nodded and wiped a tear from her eye. It had been a long and horrifying night, which she now realized would stretch into an equally difficult day.

  *****

  Dr. Segal left Rachel sitting next to Armando and rubbed his bloodshot eyes before venturing back into the emergency room down the hall. The moans and occasional screams emanating from the larger compartment left no doubt as to the seriousness of the crisis. The two regular treatment tables were each flanked by a pair of gurneys, all of them occupied by injured passengers and crew. Several nurses and other volunteers assisted the additional doctors enlisted from the pool of passengers to render assistance during the crisis.

  The range of injuries was wide and distressing. They were dealing with everything from fractures and lacerations to heart attacks, smoke inhalation, and near drowning. However, Dr. Segal was most concerned about the burn victims. Managing their pain would be next to impossible, considering their number and the limited resources at hand. Their distress would only become more acute as medical supplies dwindled. He made a mental note to speak to the captain about establishing a burn ward in one of the more secluded public rooms where their cries of anguish would not disturb other patients after the pain killers wore off. Although many of those burned were in no danger of dying, he could only imagine the torment they would suffer without sedatives and pain meds in the days to come.

  Other injuries were more easily treated. Dozens of passengers and crew had broken their arms or legs when the Sedulity rode the rollercoaster of tsunamis. Many others required stiches for cuts and lacerations sustained from flying shards of glass, or impact with other sharp objects. Their pain would also be significant, since they would only get over-the-counter pain killers. The prescription stuff was now reserved for severe burns and that supply would soon be exhausted anyway. Dr. Segal feared that within a matter of hours, a day or two at most, he and the other care givers would be reduced to 19th century treatment options. He made another mental note to requisition a considerable supply of hard alcohol for use as primitive pain killers.

  Passing through the emergency treatment room, Dr. Segal ventured out into the reception area to get an idea of how many more patients were waiting to be treated. It was daunting to discover dozens of injured strung down the hallway in a line that turned the corner and stretched back up the main stairway. He noticed that all of them were wearing orange triage tags and hoped this meant all the “red tags” had already been admitted for treatment. He tried to avoid direct eye contact with the injured waiting to receive his limited care. In doing so he glanced down the side corridor behind the reception desk and nearly broke into tears at the sight of thirty or more bodies stacked against one wall and the other side lined with people wearing “black tags” who still clung to life while a priest dispensed water, prayers, and comfort. The doctor was tempted to examine those survivors, to se
e if any of them stood a chance, but knew that they had all been triaged for a reason. Their injuries were so severe that treating them would unfairly consume the time and resources desperately needed by others with a far better chance of survival.

  Dr. Segal turned back into the emergency room, noting the watermarks at knee height on the walls and doors. The whole medical center had been in danger of flooding in the hour following the asteroid strike. He had almost ordered evacuation of the whole deck, until the captain’s wife had inadvertently released the floodwater onto the decks below. Her survival was miraculous and one of the few bright points during the crisis. The subsequent restoration of power to the ship had also helped the medical team save many more lives. Nevertheless, the doctor wondered what had happened to all the water that had poured down into the bowels of the ship. How many of the crew had drowned below decks? Were the pumps really able to handle all the flooding? His thoughts were muddled by these worries as he stood before the sink to scrub up before facing his next patient.

  *****

  Chief Engineer John McKinney had his hands full down in the engine room. The captain might be running the Sedulity from the bridge, but McKinney kept her alive and well. It was a job he took great pride in, not least of it due to the powerful and sophisticated machinery he controlled. The heartbeat and pulse of the Sedulity resided in four massive diesel generators producing up to 70,000 kW of electricity. Two thirds of that output was dedicated to propulsion and the remainder provided power for all other systems aboard the ship.

  Unlike traditional ships with massive propellers and shafts, the Sedulity was powered by revolutionary Azipod azimuth thrusters. Four propulsion pods mounted below the stern of the ship contained streamlined electric motors connected directly to massive propellers on both ends of the pods. The pods themselves were capable of rotating 360 degrees, providing directional thrust that greatly improved maneuverability, increased fuel economy, and removed the need for a traditional rudder. The electricity produced by the massive diesel generators inside the engineering spaces powered the pods mounted outside the hull and drove the ship at up to 25 knots, under optimum conditions. Of course the conditions were far from optimal at the moment and thankfully there had been no demand for high speed placed on the engines since the violent maneuvering immediately following the asteroid impact. Two of the main diesel generators remained offline due to electrical short circuits caused by flooding from the upper decks. The other two generating plants had been brought back on line and were more than sufficient to provide the ship with electricity and partial propulsion power.

  What had concerned Chief Engineer McKinney most since the impact was flooding. Thank God the captain had closed the watertight doors before the tsunamis arrived, or the whole engineering space might have flooded, leaving the ship helpless and adrift. McKinney had watched the flooding monitors and even heard the sound of water rushing outside walls and doors of the engine room. At one point the whole engineering deck and everyone inside had been surrounded and covered by water. Only the watertight doors and hatches had kept them dry. From that point it had been a matter of keeping the pumps supplied with power and waiting for the water level to fall around them. Although everyone knew intellectually that they were safe, there had been an instinctive fright triggered by the knowledge that they were submerged in a flooded part of the ship. McKinney had lightened the mood by promising to award each of them a submariners’ certificate when this was over, but there had still been plenty of tension until the volume of water being pumped out exceeded the amount flooding down from higher in the ship.

  The flooding was all but gone now. At the peak of the crisis the ship’s massive pumps had expelled it from the hull at a combined rate of 15,000 GPM, or 250 gallons per second. Even at that rate it took more than an hour to declare the flooding event over. They were lucky that all the water had come flooding down from the superstructure, and there were no breaches in the hull below the waterline. Nevertheless, it was amazing to realize that close to a million gallons of water must have entered the ship without swamping her.

  For the past few hours the chief engineer and his team had been inspecting all of the machinery in the lower decks and slowly bringing systems back online. It had been a long night and McKinney didn’t expect to get any rest the next day either. Too many gadgets reacted poorly to immersion in seawater. Entire banks of switch gear and computer monitors in the lower engineering spaces would need to be replaced or bypassed. He was far from certain that he had enough spare parts to restore every system, so he needed to prioritize the systems that were most critical.

  Power and propulsion were at the top of the list and they were in pretty good shape, since the generators were contained within watertight engine rooms. Two of the four main generating plants were running and McKinney was confident that the other two would be back online later in the day. Two of the propulsion pods were currently running and the other two were being tested, but would not be turned on until full power was restored. The next priority was supplying electricity from the generating plants to the rest of the ship. He was currently in the process of restoring power on a calculated schedule of priorities. The captain and crew already had power restored on the bridge to operate the ship effectively, while the passengers and crew must have felt a lot better when the lights came back on in the public spaces. Those, along with the medical center, had been at the top of the list. Now came the tough decisions. Was it more important to restore power to the kitchens, or the staterooms? He decided to prioritize the kitchens, especially since so many of the staterooms were reported to be gutted by fire and flooding. Should he prioritize repairs to the sewage and sanitation system, or the water-makers? The engineering crew reported that there were only enough critical spare parts to restore one or the other for now. The Sedulity was an extremely complex collection of interconnecting systems, all which served a common purpose, but some were less essential than others.

  “Ensign Marcus, what’s the status of our fresh water supply?” McKinney asked a technician monitoring a computer display of the ship’s vital signs.

  “No contamination indicated,” the young woman replied crisply. “But firefighting operations drained nearly 85% of the reservoir.”

  “That much? Damn,” McKinney scowled. The ship stored close to half a million gallons of fresh water, but consumed more than a fifth of it on an average day at sea. That was where the water-makers came in. The massive machines distilled seawater into drinking water and could produce over a hundred thousand gallons per day, or twenty-five gallons per person aboard. That was enough to keep up with the demand for drinking, bathing, cooking, and laundry needs. With the water-makers offline and the reserve down to 15%, they were looking at a water crisis within a day, two at the most, unless he could bring those units back into service.

  On the other hand, the water-makers were fed with straight seawater that passed through standard charcoal and reverse osmosis filters. There were rumors going around, even down in the Engine Room, that storm clouds were pouring all sorts of foul and noxious elements onto the ship and into the surrounding sea. Did they really want to try to turn this part of the ocean into drinking water?

  McKinney decided that the more pressing need was to restore the Sedulity’s sewage and sanitation systems to full operation. He had heard horror stories about another cruise ship that lost power and soon had human waste flowing down the corridors on the lower decks when the sewage system backed-up. He’d be damned if he would allow that to happen to his ship! No, it didn’t look like people would be taking long showers or doing much laundry in the next few days anyway, but everyone would be needing to pass the remnants of all the fine food and beverages they had consumed before this disaster struck. Much better to focus on keeping the ship clean and sanitary, even if it meant imposing temporary restrictions on water consumption.

  “Instruct Mr. Swanson to focus on restoring the sanitation systems,” he said. “I’ll inform the captain that we’ll pro
bably have to institute water rationing. Oh, and when you’re done there, be a dear and go fetch me a case of Evian, would you?”

  Ensign Patricia Marcus returned his smile with a shake of her head, knowing him too well to take his personal request seriously. Then she entered some commands into the computer and used her headset to pass along instructions for the engineering team to redirect their priorities. A long night was turning into a longer day.

  Chapter 3

  Tsunamis smashed into the Mexican Riviera with devastating impact. Although earthquakes had been less destructive in Mexico than other parts of the Pacific Rim, the infrastructure was not sufficient to facilitate an orderly evacuation of seaside cities and towns. Even with twelve hours’ warning, the majority of the coastal population remained within the danger zone.

  The Bay of Acapulco faced southwest, directly aligned with the approaching tsunamis. A television news helicopter took off from Acapulco International Airport shortly before the waves arrived. They transmitted shocking images of colossal walls of water sweeping first across that airport and growing even larger as they entered Acapulco Bay, obliterating the famous Las Brisas resort. The row of high rise hotels and condos lining the other side of the bay were dwarfed by the towering tsunami that tore them apart before sweeping through the city and smashing into the hillsides. Video from the helicopter showed the tops of those coastal mountains crowded with people who had fled to higher ground. However, the size and force of the waves, especially after being magnified and focused by the bay, sent the water cascading over the hills and beyond. When the video panned back to the hilltops, following the waves’ passage, the view showed them to be scoured clean and devoid of life.