“Reynolds. The safe . . . there’s a sat phone in the safe.”
The cadet raced to the back wall of the bridge. After a pause, Reynolds cleared his throat. “Sir, it’s locked, sir.”
“Shit!” Gunner’s blood drained. The safe had two combinations. Gunner had one. Captain Nelson had the other. “Who else has the Captain’s safe combo? Sykes, is it you?”
Sykes lowered the binoculars. “No, sir, I have the same as you. It was Hastings, sir. He’s gone to find the doc.”
Gunner mentally tallied what else was in that safe. Along with the satellite phone, there were more two-ways, all the passengers’ passports, six handguns and a supply of ammunition. The sat phone was their only way to contact the mainland to find out what the hell happened. And without the guns, they had no way to defend themselves. Damn it! They needed to get into that safe.
“Sir.” Reynolds was back in view, awaiting instruction.
For the briefest of seconds, Gunner considered instructing Pauline to stop CPR. But when he looked at Captain Nelson, he blocked out the pale, pasty skin and the wide, unblinking eyes before him. Nelson was everything he wasn’t. Charismatic. Courageous. Honorable. He couldn’t stop. Not yet. “Come on, Captain. You fight this. Fight it with all you’ve got. You hear me?”
Out the corner of his eye the deck cadet’s polished boots shifted into view. He was waiting for the Captain’s instructions. His instructions. “Reynolds, run down to the engine room and bring me back a status report. Better yet, get the chief engineer up here. And tell Hastings to get his ass back up here too.”
“Yes, sir.” Reynolds’ heavy footfalls sounded as he sprinted through the open door.
Sheryl was gone. The squeegee had been upended in her bucket.
“What shall I do, sir?” Second Officer Pauline Gennaro glanced up at him without stopping compressions.
Despite her bloodshot eyes, she was holding it together. She had a tiny frame, like his mother. Though, unlike his mother, Pauline’s clenched jaw and fiery eyes portrayed both drive and determination. His mother had lost both of those the moment she’d been sentenced to twenty-five years in jail.
He knelt at the Captain’s chest again and overlapped his hands. “Let me take over.” Pauline eased back and Gunner began compressions. One. Two. But each push was pointless. Nelson was dead.
“Captain. What shall I do?” Pauline’s eyes drilled into him.
Nine. Ten. Eleven. The hard sheen in her eyes displayed her turmoil, making it nearly impossible to reply. But he had to. Everyone was counting on him to keep his shit together. “I need the crew to know comms are down. Have them muster in the main meeting room. I’ll make an announcement there as soon as I can. Get them to help you pass the word that this is top priority and I need them assembled ASAP.”
“Yes, sir.” Pauline scrambled to her feet. “What shall I tell the passengers?”
Twenty-eight. Twenty-nine. Thirty.
He stopped for Jae-Ellen to breathe into the captain’s mouth again. “Tell them it’s a routine test. Nothing else. Not yet. Not until we know exactly what’s going on and how long it could last. We don’t want to create panic.”
“Are we going to abandon ship, sir?”
Pauline’s question was a bolt of horror he hadn’t considered. Abandoning ship was a drastic measure, only undertaken when all else was lost. They were not at that point. Not yet at least. “No, Pauline. We’re not.” He didn’t even want to hint at that nightmare. “Now go!”
“Yes, sir.” Pauline sprinted out the door.
“Mayday. Mayday. Mayday. This is First Officer Cameron Sykes from Rose of the Sea. Mayday. Mayday. Mayday. This is First Officer Cameron Sykes on Rose of the Sea. We are seeking immediate help.”
Gunner admired Sykes’ professionalism. Never in all his years of training did Gunner think he’d be involved in a major emergency. With more than three hundred cruise ships carrying more than half a million passengers on the water nearly every day of the year, cruising was considered to be one of the safest vacations available.
Gunner’s gut spasmed. He had a disaster on his hands that could blow that statistic well out of the water.
Outside the large bank of windows, the sky was an equal mix of orange from the setting sun and the blackness of night. Any minute now, they were going to be in absolute darkness. Gunner wiped sweat from his brow. “Any pulse?”
Jae-Ellen felt Captain Nelson’s neck. “No, sir.”
Gunner adjusted his position on his knees, and as he continued compressions again, he glanced at the digital clock at the front of the bridge. It was blank. “Shit!” He checked his watch. Damn it. He couldn’t breathe, let alone think straight. Forcing his brain to focus, he inhaled, let it out in a huff, then glanced at Jae-Ellen. “Is your watch working?”
She flicked her wrist. “No, sir.”
“My watch still works.” Sykes’ voice cut through the silence. “It’s seventeen fifty, sir.”
Gunner frowned at Sykes, unable to comprehend why his watch had been saved from the EMP.
“It’s analog, sir.” Sykes read his mind.
Gunner lost count of his compressions as he mentally listed everything he knew about EMP. Back when he’d taken the training, the concept of a nuclear warhead being detonated in the Earth’s magnetic field had been bandied around as sensationalism.
But if the Captain was right and someone had detonated a nuclear weapon twenty or so miles up, then this ship wouldn’t be the only one in trouble. In a flash, high-energy gamma rays would’ve reacted with air molecules to produce positive ions. Those ions caused a charge acceleration that radiated an instant electromagnetic pulse. That supercharged pulse would’ve fried every electronic gadget within line of sight of the blast zone.
But that was just the start.
The pulse would’ve then traveled along electronic cables and obliterated anything it came into contact with. Miles and miles of cables connected the computer monitors in the bridge to just about every other piece of equipment on the ship, meaning the electronics on the bridge wouldn’t be all that were affected. Engines, propulsion, exhausts, water, sewerage, refrigeration, waste—the list went on and on.
His EMP training had been seven years ago, and back then the experts had been adamant that one nuclear explosion could take out the entire United States.
What could seven years of perfecting that bomb do? Take out two continents? Three? The whole world?
The experts had said that within the first twenty-four hours, hundreds of thousands of people would die. The elderly. Infants. The young. The sick. Those with electronic implants had no hope.
Gunner froze.
A chill raced up his spine.
If it was an EMP, then Captain Nelson’s pacemaker would’ve taken a hit too. Even if Gunner did bring Stewart back to life, he would never stabilize.
“Any pulse, Jae-Ellen?”
Gunner tried not to look at the Captain’s swollen tongue as Jae-Ellen checked his neck. “No, sir.”
Gunner squeezed his eyes shut, then, with a breath trapped in his throat, he stopped compressions. “I’m sorry, Stewart.” He opened his eyes and glanced at Jae-Ellen. A tear spilled over her lower eyelid and her chin dimpled. “Time, Sykes?”
“Eighteen oh six, sir.”
“I’m calling Captain Stewart Nelson’s time of death at eighteen oh six. Sykes, please make a note of that in the logbook.”
“Sir.” Sykes paused. “The logbook is electronic.”
Gunner shoved his hands through his hair and groaned. “Grab paper and pen. Write it down.
Sykes nodded. “Yes, sir.”
Gunner leaned forward and glided the Captain’s eyes closed, then he sat back on his haunches and heaved a forceful sigh. Gunner had always been blessed with good health. His wife, however, had lost fourteen months to breast cancer. Thankfully, she’d been in remission for eight years now and was obsessed with keeping fit and healthy. He and their daughter benefitted from Adel
le’s obsession and none of them relied on medication.
Unlike hundreds of his passengers. The demographic of those onboard Rose of the Sea was typical of most cruise ships. More than sixty-five percent of the holiday-makers were more than sixty years old. Retirees had time and many also had money. Unfortunately, they also came with their share of health issues that required medical intervention.
His breath caught as another thought grenade lobbed in. Some passengers would’ve had pacemakers, or other forms of electronic medical devices.
Every one of them was probably dead now too.
A wave of nausea hit him so fast that he had to grip onto a chair and swallow back the bitter bile in his throat.
It was a long moment before he shifted to stand, and every movement was robotic, as if he were weighed down with a chainmail robe. Gunner turned his attention to the consoles lining the bridge. The three-quarter moon, low on the horizon and reflecting off the blank screens, was about to be their only light source.
He glanced down at the Captain, hardly able to believe what he was seeing. Captain Nelson had been an absolute stalwart. A man who truly commanded attention. He didn’t deserve this fate. Gunner removed his jacket and draped it over Stewart’s face and chest. There were body bags in the medical centre. When the doc shows up, he’d make him go back down and get one.
With that done, he dragged his eyes away from the lifeless body and looked out over the relatively calm ocean. Prior to the system failure, they’d been tracking a storm seven miles east of their location. Now they had no way to monitor it or adjust their heading.
Their nightmare was just beginning.
They didn’t even have Morse code. The age-old encoding scheme had been replaced with modern technology and the equipment had been declared redundant many years ago. Yet, even if they’d had such a machine, other than SOS, he’d have no hope of communicating anything else. He hadn’t so much as thought about it in over a decade.
“Shit! Sir!” The clipped panic in Sykes’ voice had Gunner spinning to the First Officer. His wide, panicked eyes shot a new level of fear through Gunner’s gut. “You better take a look at this, Captain.”
Gunner strode to the front of the bridge, and Sykes shoved the binoculars into his hands, casting his wild eyes toward the sunset. “There, sir, at your nine o’clock.”
Gunner raised the binoculars. His blood drained. His gut twisted.
A silent scream tortured his brain. “God help us all.”
Chapter Two
The elevator jolted to a stop and was pitched into complete darkness.
A scream tore from Madeline Jewel’s throat as she slammed her back against the wall and clutched the railing. “What was that?” Her voice was shrill, choked with fear.
“I don’t know.” A man was in there with her, but it was impossible to see him.
He banged on the elevator door and she just about burst out of her skin. “Hey, can anyone hear me? Help!”
Madeline’s feet were frozen to the floor. Her heart thumped against her ribs. Her breaths shot in and out in short, sharp gasps.
The blackness was complete, like a monster had swallowed every light particle, offering no variation, no shadows. Not even a glimmer between the doors. Madeline had slipped into an alien vortex. A foreign land. An evil dark space.
Shocking aspects darted across her mind like wasps.
The enclosed area inching in on me.
The complete stranger in here with me.
A man. Bigger than me. Stronger than me.
She couldn’t see.
She couldn’t breathe.
Her mind slammed between the horror of now and her childhood nightmare. One second she was stuck in an elevator with a stranger, the next she was trapped in a windowless room with a monster.
Blackness reached out.
Invisible fingers crawled along her skin.
Spiders scurried up her neck.
She lurched forward. “Help!” She slammed her fists on the door alongside the man. “Help!” She had to get out. “Help!”
Together they pummeled the door and screamed for help.
Her chest squeezed, tightening around her lungs. “Help!” Her brain squeezed too, pushing out every ounce of sanity. “HELP!”
She couldn’t believe this was happening. Madeline avoided elevators. Yet there she was, stuck in one. As the minutes ticked on, her panicked breathing sucked in the darkness. The emptiness threatened to suffocate her. The lump in her throat did too. “It’s so dark in here.”
“Oh, hang on, I’ve got a phone.”
Her heart skipped at his words and when the phone sprung to life, she just about wept with relief.
He jabbed a few buttons on his cell, then huffed. “No signal.”
“What?”
“No signal. But that’s normal in an elevator. Don’t panic.”
“Don’t panic? We’ve been in here too long. Something’s wrong.” Her stomach twisted into painful knots.
He shone the light on the side wall. “Okay, let’s see. There must be an emergency phone in here.”
His methodical manner was a thousand miles away from hers. As her gaze bounced from the closed elevator doors to his light illuminating the button panel, panic clawed at her throat. Her knees weakened, barely able to hold her upright.
He popped open a small panel beneath the buttons. “Ahhh, here we go.” He held the handset to his ear. “Hello?”
An ounce of hope tickled her brain.
“Hello, is anyone there?” He frowned and leaned forward to inspect the wall panel. “There must be a call button or something. Oh, here it is.”
But after a moment of silence, he shook his head. “Hello? If anyone can hear me, we need help. We’re stuck in a lift. Ahhh . . .” He leaned in to study the panel. “Elevator number three hundred and four. Help. Please.”
He turned to her, a frown rippling his forehead. “It’s weird; I can’t hear anything.”
“Let me try.” Madeline strangled the handset, holding it to her ear. “Hello, is anyone there? Hello!” The emptiness on the line was strange. Not even a crackle. “It’s completely dead.”
“I know. Weird, huh?”
He hung up the handset and snapped the compartment shut. Then he jabbed every button on the panel. Not one of them reacted.
“What could be wrong?” Her voice was shrill, unrecognizable.
“I don’t know. I better turn this off, save the battery.” The light blinked out, pitching them into utter blackness.
It was impossible to comprehend how it could be so completely dark. Like they’d fallen into a black hole in space. The silence, too, was foreign.
Sweat trickled beneath her arms, down her temples.
She shuddered. Her breaths shot in and out. Her head began to swim. She pressed her back against the cold metallic wall and clutched the railing to keep herself upright. “No. No. NO!”
“Hey, it’s okay.” The man’s soothing voice cut through the screaming in her head.
“We’re trapped.” Her voice wobbled with emotion.
“Don’t worry. Help will be here soon.”
“You don’t know that.” Despite her pulse thumping in her ears, she heard him shuffle toward her and she braced herself. If he touched her, she wasn’t sure she’d hold back the terrified scream clawing at her throat.
“It’s all right. We’ll be okay.”
“But . . .” She sucked in a shaky breath. “Why’s it so dark? Where’s the emergency lighting?”
“Don’t know. I wondered that too.”
Their elevator was positioned at the rear of the ship, in the center, which meant the nearest windows were on the other side of the cabins. Although they didn’t benefit from natural light, the halls were always illuminated. The extreme blackout meant that both the corridor lighting and the emergency lighting wasn’t working.
Madeline thought back to her crew training, trying to recall a scenario that would explain their situation. She
couldn’t think of one.
Whatever was going on, it wasn’t good.
“My name’s Sterling, by the way. Sterling Rochford.”
Sterling had stepped into the elevator on the fifth deck and seconds after the doors had shut, the lights had gone out. All she could recall of Sterling’s appearance was that he had nicely styled blond hair and that he was taller than her. Which wasn’t unusual. At just five foot four, Madeline found nearly everyone was taller than her.
“I . . . I’m Madeline.” She didn’t reveal her last name. It was something she’d learned the hard way. The media had used and abused her surname both during her childhood abduction and after her rescue. Apparently, Jewel was perfect fodder for their attention-seeking headlines. Help us find our precious jewel. Jewel is priceless. And then, when she was rescued . . . Our miracle jewel, a diamond found amongst the ashes.
Even now, sixteen years later, people had odd reactions when they realized who she was. Some were left speechless, which made it awkward when they clearly wanted to ask or say something but didn’t know how. Others said sorry, though why they did that was impossible to fathom. And then there were those who asked question after question, obsessed by some morbid quest to delve into the five and a half months of her life that defined her. One hundred and seventy-three days she’d been trapped in that dungeon.
It’d felt like years.
Madeline shuffled sideways and heard Sterling shift toward her again. She retreated farther, pressing herself against the wall, trying to make her body as small as possible. Praying he kept his distance.
In the silent metallic cube, every noise seemed amplified. Her own breathing. His breathing. A sharp ticking sound that created a hollow heartbeat to her new living hell. Tick. Tick. Tick.
She gasped. “Oh my God. The engines have stopped.”
“What?”
“The engines. Listen. They’ve stopped.”
“Hmmm. I think you’re right.”
The walls of the elevator groaned as if it were alive. She was trapped in a monster. Her heart beat faster—a machine gun tempo. The rabid pulse thumped in her ears, taking her panic to a whole new level.
Waves of Fate | Book 1 | First Fate Page 2
