USS Towers Box Set

by Jeff Edwards

  The captain stepped closer and leaned over to look at the screen. “How are things looking?”

  Ann suppressed a sigh. This guy wanted to make small talk.

  “I’m waiting for an updated position report,” she said. “Mouse is coming up on his last navigational waypoint. We should be getting a fix on his position any time now.” She paused for a second, and decided to be honest. “He’s actually a little bit overdue. I expected to hear from him almost a minute ago.”

  “Is there a problem?”

  Of course not, Ann thought. Everything is just fine. I’ve got three lives depending on an untested code patch that I wrote at three in the morning, when I was practically cross-eyed from sleep deprivation. But everything is peachy here, Mr. Captain, Sir. Just freaking peachy.

  She glanced up at Captain What’s-his-name, and wondered for a second if she had said some of that last bit out loud. More than likely not, because he didn’t seem to be ramping up to indignation. His brown eyes looked tired, but not angry.

  Ann returned his stare with one of her own. From a strictly physical perspective, she liked what she saw. He was in his late thirties or early forties, about six feet tall, and almost good looking in a nerdy clean-cut sort of way. His black hair was too short to have any real character to it, and his narrow face seemed slightly out of proportion to his neck and body. Still, the overall package wasn’t bad, if you were into overgrown Eagle Scouts.

  Looking beyond the physical was another matter. Whatever points he picked up in the looks category were far outweighed by his non-physical deficits. The man obviously bought into that whole bullshit warrior-Zen thing. Ann could see it in everything about him, from his body language to the starched creases in his uniform. He was a card carrying member of the ‘Defenders of Freedom Club,’ just like Ann’s father had been.

  She caught herself and mentally shifted gears before she could say anything stupid. This was not the time for a drive down that particular stretch of Memory Lane. “Where’s Sheldon?” she asked.

  The captain shifted his gaze to the laptop screen. “I believe he’s up in the wardroom, talking to your company on the satellite phone. COMPACFLEET is busy signing promissory waivers, to make sure that you guys get paid in case we break your Mouse prototype, or lose it somehow in the rescue attempt.”

  Ann nodded and turned back to the laptop.

  “You didn’t sign on for any of this,” the captain said. “We understand that. You come out here to run some tests, and the Navy shoves a rescue mission in your face. We know you’re not ready, and we know that your equipment isn’t ready either.” He took a deep breath and let it out. “But, right now, your Mouse Mark-I is the only game in town.”

  Ann nodded absently. “I understand, Captain.”

  “I’m sure you do,” said the captain. “But I’d like to hit one more quick point before you get too far into this.”

  Ann looked up and found that he was staring at her again.

  “I know you’ll do your best,” he said. “But there are a lot of ways that this operation could go sour. There hadn’t been any communication with the Nereus for hours. The guys on that submarine might already be dead.”

  Ann nodded slowly. This was not quite turning into the Go-Navy pep talk she’d been expecting.

  “We don’t know what kind of damage that submersible has taken,” the captain said. “They could be flooding, or running out of breathable air. If their electrical system has failed, they could die from hypothermia. The ocean temperature at three thousand feet is just a hair above freezing. Twenty four hours is a long time to go without heat, especially when your only clothes are light duty coveralls.”

  He looked back to the laptop screen. “If they had an electrical fire, they might even have burned to death, or died from smoke inhalation.”

  Ann rubbed her eyes and blinked several times. “Are you trying to cheer me up, Captain?”

  The corners of his mouth turned up—the ghost of a rueful smile. “No. I’m just telling you that the odds of success are not in our favor. Everyone in the chain of command knows that. The Navy will take the heat if things don’t work out. You’re not going to be left holding the bag.”

  Ann nodded. “Thank you, Captain. I appreciate that.”

  She turned back to the laptop. Yeah, right. For all of his noble words, Captain Eagle Scout would throw Ann and Sheldon to the wolves about two milliseconds after the shit hit the fan. That was the way these guys worked. When something went wrong, they went hunting for a scapegoat.

  She scanned the screen. Mouse still hadn’t reported in. She’d give it another minute or so, just to be sure. But she was grasping at straws. This rescue, if you could even call it that, was over.

  CHAPTER 7

  NOAA SUBMERSIBLE NEREUS

  NORTHERN PACIFIC OCEAN (SOUTH OF THE ALEUTIAN ISLANDS)

  TUESDAY; 26 FEBRUARY

  1006 hours (10:06 AM)

  TIME ZONE -10 ‘WHISKEY’

  The flashlight shook in Charlie Sweigart’s hand, the dull circle of yellowish light bobbing and jittering spasmodically as another uncontrollable wave of shivers wracked his body. He tried to thumb the off switch, to conserve the little remaining battery power until the worst of the spasms had passed. But his hands were too numb from the cold to properly obey his commands.

  The batteries rattled inside the body of the flashlight. The light grew marginally brighter for a few seconds, and then dimmed again. The glow seemed pitifully small and weak in the tomblike blackness of the submersible. The Nereus carried three emergency flashlights, and this was the last of them. Charlie had already worn out the batteries in the other two, fruitlessly searching for the electrical fault that had robbed the submersible of power.

  The submersible lay on its starboard side, heeled over about thirty degrees, its bow slightly elevated by the rising slope of the Aleutian trench. The odd tilt put the chairs at the wrong angle for sitting. The only stable position was sort of a leaning crouch, with feet braced against the deck for support.

  The angle of the deck wasn’t just a matter of discomfort. The fifteen hundred pound lead ballast plate built into the bottom of the submersible was designed to drop vertically from a form-fitted recess in the keel. But the canted deck pushed the weight of the ballast plate to one side, putting some massive amount of lateral torque on the emergency release mechanism.

  Charlie had fought with the release handle until his hands were raw. The latches were too far out of alignment. The release mechanism was hopelessly jammed, and—along with it—their chances of getting the Nereus back to the surface.

  The shakes running through Charlie’s body were nearly convulsive now. His teeth were chattering so hard that he thought they might shatter. He clamped his jaw shut and forced himself to override the tremors in his muscles.

  When he had regained a measure of control, he pointed the dwindling beam of the flashlight toward the open faceplate of the secondary electrical bus. Like every other surface in the cockpit of the little submarine, the open doors of the access panel were beaded with moisture—water vapor from their breaths, condensed out of the air by the cold.

  That was how they were going to die. Charlie knew that now. The cold. Of all the ways they could die down here … drowning … asphyxiation … implosion … they were going to freeze to death. He would never have predicted that.

  At the current rate of consumption, the emergency air flasks would probably last another two days. The hull was holding pressure. There were no leaks, and no escaping air. But the heaters had died along with the electrical system. Without the heaters, the cold water surrounding the Nereus had gradually leached away all the warmth in the submersible. The temperature of the air in the cockpit had reached equilibrium with the temperature of the water outside the hull: just a couple of degrees above freezing.

  There was irony in that too. The cold was going to kill them, but they weren’t technically going to freeze to death. The core temperatures of their bodies were
well down into the range of hypothermia now, more than cold enough to kill them. But they wouldn’t quite freeze. When the cold had sucked the last of the life from their bodies, they would hover in a lethally refrigerated state just a few degrees warmer than the temperature of ice. Not quite popsicles. More like …

  Charlie shook his head, sending throbs of pain through his bruised cheek and battered forehead—both still tender from their collision with one of the instrument clusters during the accident. He was losing focus again, his mind wandering down blind alleys; another symptom of hypothermia.

  He forced his eyes to focus on the relay panel below the electrical bus, trying to locate the bundle of wires that he’d just been tracing with his eyes.

  “Turn off the light.” It was Steve’s voice, floating out of the darkness somewhere behind Charlie.

  “I can … fix this,” Charlie said. His speech felt halting and strange. “Just give me … another few … minutes. I can find … the problem.”

  “Turn off the damned light,” Steve said again. “And get that stupid dog out of here.”

  Charlie didn’t turn off the flashlight. He could feel another round of tremors coming on. “Dog? What … dog?”

  “The one in your pocket,” Steve said. “And don’t think I can’t hear you. I’ve got your ass set for speed-dial.”

  Charlie’s eyes lost focus on the wires. He blinked several times and tried to will them to work properly. “What … What in the hell … are you … talking about?”

  “He’s hallucinating,” Gabriella said. It was the first time she had spoken in over an hour. She was shivering so violently that it was difficult to understand her words. Charlie could hear her teeth chattering.

  “Late… stage… hypothermia,” she said. “His… brain is starting to… shut down.”

  “I better not catch that dog using my phone again,” Steve said. “I’ll kill him. Him and his damned motorcycle.”

  Steve’s voice was muffled and strange, but it didn’t have the stuttering hitch that was present in Charlie and Gabriella’s speech. Steve wasn’t shivering any more. That meant something, but Charlie couldn’t remember what. When a cold victim stopped shivering, something bad was happening. Was Steve already dying?

  The flashlight gave one final flicker and died. Damn it! He’d let his attention wander again, and now the last flashlight was dead.

  No more light. No more heat, and no more light. Just darkness. And cold.

  “I should have done an emergency abort,” he said. “This is my fault.”

  Listening to his own words, Charlie realized that the hitch in his voice was gone. He wasn’t shivering anymore. He wasn’t even all that cold. His feet were beginning to feel warm. So were his hands.

  This wasn’t a good sign either. He was aware of that in a detached sort of way. “I should have dropped the ballast the second I knew we had a problem.” He was talking to himself now. “This is my fault. This is all my fault.”

  The cold was receding now. He knew that the growing warmth in his body was an illusion, maybe a sign that he was sliding into some deeper and more languorous stage of existence. He didn’t care. The cold wasn’t as painful down here. In fact, it was kind of pleasant.

  He closed his eyes, not that it mattered much in the pitch darkness that had taken command of the submarine. He could sleep now. Just for a few minutes. And, while he was sleeping, he could trace the wiring harnesses in his mind. When he woke up, he would fix the broken whatever it was, and they would get back to the ship in time for lunch.

  Everything was going to be fine now. Charlie knew that. Everything was going to be just fine.

  “You never asked me out.”

  The words caught him as he was dozing off. “What?”

  “You never asked me out,” Gabriella said again. “I kept waiting for you to ask me out, but you never did.”

  Charlie smiled languidly. “Now I’m hallucinating.”

  Gabriella’s French-Canadian accent was like birdsong in his ears. She wasn’t shivering any more either.

  “No you’re not,” she said. “You may be dying, but you are not hallucinating.”

  “This is my fault,” Charlie said softly.

  “Yes” Gabriella said. “It is your fault. You’ve had plenty of chances, but you’ve never asked me out.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” Charlie said. “We’re going to die here. We’re already dying. And it’s my fault.” He was getting sleepy now.

  Gabriella sighed, the sound echoing off of unseen surfaces in the darkness. “If you don’t ask me out, I’m going to kill you before the cold does.”

  “And that damned dog,” Steve said feebly.

  “Right,” Gabriella said. Her voice was getting sleepy too. “You and that damned dog.”

  Charlie nodded, although no one could see him. This was all part of the hallucination; that much he knew. But what better time to do the impossible? The unthinkable …

  “Would you like to go out to dinner with me?” He winced at the sound of his words. Even in this dying world of frozen dreams, he was terrified of what Gabriella might say.

  “That’s the best you can do?” she asked. “You’re in your dying moments, and possibly hallucinating, and you ask me out to dinner?” She snorted. “If this was my hallucination, I’d go straight to the sex.”

  Charlie felt himself grin. “Can we go straight to the sex?”

  “Of course not,” Gabriella said. “You have to buy me dinner first.”

  And with those words, Charlie suddenly knew that it was okay to die. He opened his eyes and stared into the darkness, still smiling. He could feel sleep tugging at him. But he wanted to be awake for another minute or two, to savor the amazing idea that Gabriella actually wanted to go out with him, even if it was only the delusion of a dying brain.

  It took him a few seconds to notice the light. It started small, a tiny glowing pinprick moving through the curtain of black water outside the view port. He watched it idly as it grew, moving closer in a series of looping zigzags that reminded him vaguely of a bloodhound sniffing out a trail. Still it moved closer, the light growing to the size of a golf ball, and then a basketball.

  Charlie lifted his head to get a better look at it. The thing, whatever it was, came to a stop about ten feet from the nose of the Nereus, and hovered there. Charlie raised a cold-numbed hand to shield his eyes against the light. He squinted into the hallucinatory brightness.

  He could see something behind the light now: some sort of bizarre machine, perhaps a quarter the size of the Nereus. It was vaguely disk-shaped, with a pair of heavy-looking mechanical arms, flanked by clusters of lenses. To Charlie’s foggy brain, it looked like a crab riding a Frisbee.

  The strange machine turned to the side, revealing a yellow-painted stretch of hull marked with large black lettering. Charlie struggled to force his blurry eyes to focus on the words. ‘Something-or-other DEEP WATER SYSTEMS.’

  Then, the machine moved again, curving to the left until it had disappeared from the viewport’s line of sight.

  Charlie’s eyes remained locked on the place where the machine had been. Could he have imagined it? He was still trying to figure that out, when the water outside the viewport lit up with an eerie blue-green light. For about a second, the light seemed to strobe and pulse rapidly. Then it was gone, leaving behind only the blackness of the ocean bottom.

  “I think I’m having another hallucination,” Charlie said.

  Gabriella was almost asleep now. “I already told you,” she muttered. “Dinner first.”

  CHAPTER 8

  ICBM: A COLD WAR SAILOR’S MUSINGS ON THE ULTIMATE WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION

  (Reprinted by permission of the author, Retired Master Chief Sonar Technician David M. Hardy, USN)

  In tracing the roots of modern rocketry, some historians prefer to begin with the ancient Greeks. According to the writings of Roman author and grammarian Aulus Gellius, a Greek philosopher named Archytas built a steam-
powered rocket device in approximately 400 B.C. Cast from clay and shaped like a pigeon, this device reportedly flew about 200 yards. The pigeon was attached to a guide wire during its flight, which may have supported the device’s weight, so there is some dispute as to whether or not it was powerful enough to fly without external assistance. Very few details of the flight are known, so it’s difficult to gauge the significance of the Archytas pigeon, beyond the basic fact of its existence.

  About three centuries later, a Greek mathematician and engineer named Hero (or Heron) of Alexandria invented another steam-propelled device with rocket-like characteristics. Known as an aeolipile, Hero’s invention consisted of a rotating sphere, driven by steam from a heated kettle of water.

  History generally remembers Hero’s aeolipile as the first operational steam engine, but it can (arguably) be classified as a rocket-type reaction engine.

  Like the work of Archytas, the direct impact of Hero’s invention on the history of rocketry is difficult to assess. It’s therefore understandable that many historians have opted to discount the earliest attempts of the Greeks, and begin the timeline of rocketry with the Chinese.

  Some time prior to the 10th century A.D., alchemists in China stumbled across the formula for gunpowder, possibly while attempting to create the legendary elixir of immortality. Although the combination of sulfur, saltpeter, and charcoal dust did not have mystical life-extending properties, the unknown alchemists quickly discovered that their new compound would flare and burn vigorously when exposed to flame.

  The timing of this momentous discovery is a matter of contention, with some historians fixing the date as early as the 1st century, and others arguing that it may have occurred as recently as the 9th century. Regardless of the precise date, there is no doubt that the invention of gunpowder transformed the nature of warfare, and ultimately altered the path of human history.

  The first people to utilize the mysterious new compound may have been religious Mandarins, who filled bamboo tubes with the volatile mixture, and threw them into fires to frighten away demons during religious festivals. The results were predictably loud and impressive, and it was probably only a matter of time until one of the bamboo tubes failed to explode, and shot out of the fire on a trail of burning gas.