by A. R. Daun
“The most important thing right now is to remain calm and to follow all instructions given by the crew and staff. I have been told that rumors have spread among the passengers that we have somehow deviated from our course.” He paused for a few seconds, then said in a matter of fact voice. “The rumors were correct. Two days ago we received garbled transmissions from the mainland that ceased almost immediately after they started. News broadcasts from satellite feeds talked about mass unrest in the streets and hostilities from unknown attackers that spread almost exponentially from the eastern seaboard of the United States west towards California, north to Canada and south towards Mexico and the rest of the Americas.”
The Captain paused again, as if allowing them to digest the facts so far. But what he said was so far-fetched that Miriam felt it had to be a joke. She expected the man to suddenly utter a chuckle and say that it was some sort of April Fool's surprise, although she did not remember whether Norwegians commemorated what to her was a rather inane practice.
“Several hours later transmissions from the Americas had ceased,” the Captain continued. “We continued to receive news reports via satellite from Europe and Asia, but they knew almost as little about what was happening as we did. By the next day, the troubles that had began in America had somehow crossed the Atlantic and Pacific and expanded to most of the European Union countries, as well as Japan, China, and the rest of Asia. A news blackout spread from the edges of these continents inwards, and we started losing channels. Early this morning, the last satellite feed, a local channel from Urumqi, in Xinjiang China, dropped off from the air.”
He stopped again, and Miriam could almost see him slowly licking dry lips as he pondered how to go forward after such momentous and horrifying news. She could feel her heart, its irregular thump a hard beating in her chest, and when she glanced at James he was staring slack-jawed back at her, his eyes wide with astonishment and growing fear.
“After careful consideration by the staff, we decided to return back to our home port in order to assess the situation first hand. We will be docking at Cape Liberty Cruise Port in Bayonne New Jersey within the hour. At this point in time we'd like to assure you that as always your personal safety is of the utmost concern to us. So please return to your staterooms as soon as possible and await further instructions from the crew. We will be closing all the dining areas, as well as all outdoor pools and recreational rooms until further notice.”
There was another pause, this time for several seconds, and just when Miriam thought that the announcement was over, the intercom came to life one final time.
“May God be with us,” The Captain said solemnly.
They stared at each other for several moments.
“Shit,” James said, and things started up again.
The dining room quickly emptied as people hurried to the elevators and back to their rooms, their faces strained, their eyes wide in disbelief, their movements a frenzied rush. Almost no one spoke, and when they did it was in urgent whispers and brisk tones, the hushed conversations serving as background to the clanging of partitions as the dining crew started closing all the food galleries.
“We gotta go Mir,” James said and stood. Miriam followed him as he made his way out of the dining room and onto the central stairwell, where all the elevators were located.
It was a madhouse, with people jammed and milling around the elevators. James looked at the entire mess, grunted in disgust, then took Miriam's hand and started up the grand stairway, taking two steps at a time. Their room was on Deck 10, only two decks above, and taking the stairs would be faster than waiting for the elevators to clear.
They stepped into their interior stateroom, and Miriam collapsed onto the small bed. She attended a gym regularly, but the shock of hearing the announcement and the run up the stairs had disoriented and fatigued her. The ramifications of the news were only now beginning to filter onto her consciousness, and she did not want to think about what may have happened to her parents in Oklahoma.
James meanwhile had been busy channel surfing the flat screen TV in the room. His back covered most of the screen, but Miriam could see that the only channels running were the usual pseudo-ads touting the company and its ship or trying to sell shore excursions, and her boyfriend finally thew the remote onto the bed in disgust and turned to her.
“Do you believe this Mir?” He asked her, but of course it was a rhetorical question. Hopes of this being some sort of weird Norwegian April Fool's ritual had long since died a fiery death in her imagination. She believed something was going on alright, and that something was not good in any sense of the word whatsoever.
She sat up and James realized how upset she was.
“Hey, it's going to be alright baby,” he said, and he came to her and held her in his arms, rocking her gently. “I'll bet you it's just some kinda communications glitch. Happens all the time in these floating tubs. After all this is over I'll sue the pants off the company.”
Miriam broke from his embrace and looked him in the eye.
“I love you James,” she said clearly, then sniffed and had to stifle an actual giggle as James made his who me face at her, which was a cross between a dubious smile (complete with raised eyebrows) and what Miriam always thought of as his constipated look.
“Hey, I love you too babe,” he said softly, then held her face between his hands and kissed her gently on the forehead, and the thought flashed in her mind how she must be the luckiest girl in the world to have found someone like James.
And that's when they both felt the ship come to a dead stop.
CHAPTER 16
Day 4 (5:45 pm EST)
Cape Liberty Cruise Port, Bayonne , NJ
Your mind is software. Program it.
Your body is a shell. Change it.
Death is a disease. Cure it.
Extinction is approaching. Fight it.
- Eclipse Phase
There is an artistry to docking a floating city that weighs 240,000 tons and stretches for nearly 400 meters in length. It is a ballet of gargantuan proportions, a study of the dynamic interplay between mass, inertia, and brute force. This is playtime with giants, and it requires tight coordination between the harbor and the incoming ship.
The Coral Odyssey on this day had no such support and would have to complete the maneuver by itself. In normal circumstances, the ship would be met by a Harbor Pilot from the local port who was an expert at guiding visiting ships through the narrow confined waterways using his comprehensive knowledge of the tides, swells, currents, and shoals of the surrounding waters..
The lack of any land support was keenly felt by the crew, but it was not by any means a fatal loss. The Captain had maneuvered through the Hudson River a multitude of times, and had experience with both the Manhattan and Cape Liberty docks. Nevertheless, nerves were strained on the bridge as the ship slowly made it way towards its berth, where several crewmen had landed on one of the ship's lifeboat tenders in readiness for the docking procedure. They had explicit instructions to secure the area but to go no farther.
The delicate maneuver was somewhat alleviated by the sophistication of the Odyssey's propulsion system. Suspended underneath the stern of the ship were three 20-megawatt ABB azipod units, each of which could rotate a full 360 degrees and contained an electric motor driving a propeller in front. The azipods in combination with bow thrusters could turn the ship in circles or allow it to move sideways, a level of control and maneuverability unheard of in an older ship, which was steered with the help of a rudder aft of the propeller on the outside of the ship.
Gani stood to the right of the Captain and watched as Brodersen guided the ship carefully alongside its intended berth. Behind them, the sliding glass door to the Safety Command Center was closed, and the navigation bridge was sheathed in silence as the bridge crew concentrated fully on the task at hand.
Perched high above the ship's hull, and enclosed by sloping glass windows on all sides, the room always reminded Gani of
the bridge of the Starship Enterprise. The Electronic Chart Display and Information
System (or ECDIS) of the Coral Odyssey coupled to radar scanners, satellite positioning sensors, depth sounders, gyrocompasses, and various other navigation and automation systems throughout the ship was the most sophisticated in the world. Consoles with large wide-screen monitors were arrayed in a curved row near the front, and displayed in real time all the technical aspects of the ship, as well as electronic charts tied to the GPS systems and screens showing a variety of critical environmental parameters such as wind speed, ship speed, and the ship's steering and actual heading, while another three overhead monitors with 27 inch screens provided additional information such as the ship's course and rate of turn.
At the moment though, all attention on the bridge was focused on the center console, which lay between the two conning positions on the bridge. Scattered on its slanted surface were three identical control handles for the three azipods, another for the bow thrusters, and a final handle for precise maneuvering using the ship's K-POS Dynamic Positioning system.
Gani silently nodded his approval. He noticed that although Captain Brodersen's brow was furrowed and beads of sweat glinted like tiny jewels on his broad unlined face, his hand was steady as he deftly manipulated the controls. He was aided by the satellite positioning system of the ship, which used both GPS and GLONASS satellites to provide decimeter level accuracy on the distance between the Odyssey and the dock, and allowed Brodersen to better judge the approach speed needed to safely dock.
It worked. Once positioned correctly, the mooring lines from the Odyssey were attached to the dock cleats by the crew members who had landed earlier, and a palpable sense of relief washed over the bridge crew.
“Well, it seems we're finally here,” Captain Brodersen said with an audible sigh, and he turned to Gani. “Staff Captain, ready the boarding gangways and send out more men. Let's see what's out there.”
Gani nodded and radioed his instructions, but he looked troubled. There did not seem to be any immediate danger to the ship, but the sense that something dangerously amiss was close at hand seemed to be growing within him, and he didn't know whether this tension was because of his disagreement with Annika earlier in the afternoon.
He could not understand the woman. He had known her for close to a year now, and she was one of the most competent persons he had ever known, someone who worked hard and barely socialized with any of the other crew members. She was also extremely intelligent, highly-motivated, had a commanding presence, and was well-respected by the people under her. He knew that some of the other officers surreptitiously called her the “Coral Ice Queen” behind her back, and he made it a point to chastise those who made their opinion known publicly. He didn't know whether she heard any of the gossip, but if she did, she stayed true to her character and continued to act professionally towards everyone around her.
But there were also times when he caught a rare glimpse of the hidden woman behind the cool facade. There was that one time at the theater, when Gani had first told her about the baffling news coming from the mainland, and her feelings had bubbled up to the surface in a sudden and uncontrollable rush. It was as if beneath the tightly controlled exterior that she had carefully built brick by solid brick to keep the outside world at bay lay a pressurized cauldron of emotions.
She was also exquisitely beautiful. Gani knew that he felt a strong attraction to the blond woman, and had from the very first time he had seen her a year back, and he had made it a point to try to reciprocate her professional manners whenever they met. He wondered idly how her interrogation of the stowaway had gone, then the thought passed from his conscious mind as a team of security men moved out of the ship in a tight group and headed towards the port terminal, which was about half a mile from the docks.
In the distance the sun lingered above the horizon, as if reluctant to give way to the coming night.
CHAPTER 17
Day 4 (5:55 pm EST)
Cape Liberty Cruise Port, Bayonne , NJ
It's like riding a psychotic horse toward a burning stable.
- The Birdcage
Several deck below the Staff Captain, Annika opened her eyes and blinked.
The room came into focus, and she fumbled for her ship phone, although she knew that it was already too late. The Odyssey had docked and she could sense dark shapes aggregating in the distance; things that hunkered in the shadows before stretching newly-formed muscles; creatures sporting malevolent eyes that glittered with a ferocious hunger.
She saw no sign of the guard who had been banging on the door, which now lay open and askew. The man who was called Richard knelt down and helped her up, gripping her upper arm with a callused hand and steadying her.
“It's too late isn't it?” she asked him, and he nodded grimly.
“There are four of you,” he said. “Out of all the people here, only four of you whose bodies have accepted my gift. It will have to be enough.”
And just like that, through some process now open to her, Annika could sense the other three. It was the Restaurant Manager Papadakis, and the young black woman who had been accosted initially by this stowaway, an Ammara Lewis; and finally, it was someone that she didn't know, one of the many faceless crew members who toiled in the vast underbelly of the ship, unappreciated and unknown, although essential to its continued health. Diwata? Was that her name? Yes, a Diwata Vega.
They were all, at least according to this man, recipients of what? Annika was not technically-inclined, but she could not imagine that her newly-gained sensory abilities were due to some magical powers. She was no stranger to the comic book superheroes that were more and more the core staple of summer blockbuster movies, but if she had any super-powers then she certainly wasn't aware of them.
Instead, she realized that if she concentrated hard enough she could actually feel the workings of her own body, as if she were nothing more than some giant machinery, some windup toy made up not of gears and springs, but of pulsating flesh and bone and meaty tendons. She could visualize her blood as it coursed through the numerous branching arteries and veins that ramified throughout her interior, feel the wrap of her skin as it strained to hold in organs, sense the tingle in her synaptic nerves as electricity was funneled through the synapses of her brain. It was as if her entire being were saturated with little...things...things that monitored her body constantly.
“You're right,” Richard said in his gruff voice, as if he had heard what she was thinking out loud. “We call them susuwatari, and when I came on board they started infiltrating every nook and cranny in the ship. My every exhalation breathes out thousands of their kind, and over the course of several hours they have infected every soul on the Odyssey as well. In most people, they remain dormant and unable to interface with their hosts.”
“But in some people,” and here he rubbed his face, and wrinkled his forehead as if trying to remember something. “Perhaps due to....genetics...the exact and favorable circumstances are met, and they adapt and establish connections with the nervous system of the body they inhabit, though the bulk of the....the swarm remains latent until activated.”
He looked at her, puzzled.
“I must have been someone,” he continued. “Someone in the sciences perhaps...all these terms that are coming back to me, the jargon, the tech speak.”
Annika covered her mouth with one hand. The thought of being a host to these things made her want to scream, and suddenly she just wanted to get away from this man and his talk of susuwatari and infections and gifts that were more like Trojan Horses to her.
“Please, no more,” she pleaded softly.
“Lady Annika,” he began, but she had turned away. She escaped from the room and into the deserted passageway, where she almost stumbled over the missing guard. He was sprawled face up on the floor, soft rattling snores escaping from his half-opened mouth.
She half-expected the man Richard to follow her, but when she looked back the pas
sageway was empty. She stepped gingerly over the sleeping guard and fled towards the elevators, her hands rapidly tapping on her intra-ship phone. She had to warn Gani and the Captain about the threat to the ship, no matter that she knew it was probably too late.
In the brig Richard waited until he could no longer hear her footsteps. He did not want to scare her any further, and he realized that he would have to trust that fate would take care of the Lady Annika, because he had his own destiny to fulfill in the dangerous hours ahead.
He looked around the small room as if savoring its aura and memorizing the minute details of his short captivity, then sighed. Now that his memories were slowly coming back, he would have loved to spend a more leisurely time here, where it had all began. Instead, he strode out of the room and bent over the still snoring guard, releasing the man's hold from his phone, and noting that the crewman's breathing was deep and regular, albeit a tad noisy. He would be ok, at least until the domeki hordes overwhelmed the ship.
He looked at the phone, a somewhat wistful smile briefly flitting across his craggy features. It was a marvelous toy, a triumph of micro-engineering, and one he wanted to investigate more fully if he had the time. But it was fully infested with susuwatari, and his contact with the Lady Annika had awakened memories within him that gave him finer control over his wards, just like his initial meeting with the Lady Ammara earlier had recaptured his identity and purpose, and so he merely thought I want the one named Marco Papadakis...and he thought Find me the woman named Diwata Vega.
The location of every crew member was constantly monitored via passive RFID tags, most often embedded on ID cards that each carried at all times. The tags chirped their unique identification number when triggered by radio frequencies at specific wavelengths emitted by active readers, which had been placed on almost every doorway and deck on the ship. The continuous stream of information, composed mainly of paired crew member IDs and the corresponding reader station numbers were funneled into the ship's air-conditioned server rooms, where racks of Linux servers sat and digested the incoming flow, adding timestamps before storing them into mySQL databases.
