Ark Found

Chapter 5

“Maybe if you nudge into them with the sub’s nose they’ll just swing open?” Carter suggested.

Jayden considered this, using the spotlight control to highlight the door knob, studying the area where the doors met each other, as well as the frame. The doors looked surprisingly intact. “It looks like they’re actually shut, but I can try it. Brace yourself.”

“Whoa, I said nudge, not ram!” Carter said.

“Kidding. I’ll just swing the nose into it. Here goes…” He engaged the right horizontal thruster only, sending the sub to the left, which brought the nose of it into light contact with the double doors. Both men felt the small impact as the doors remained shut and did not give way.

“No go,” Jayden summarized.

Carter exhaled deeply, studying the ship diagram. “This is the only way into that room, unless there’s extensive damage to one of the walls on the other side.”

“We could try the door knob,” Jayden suggested. Carter looked up from the diagram and stared at the round, brass colored doorknob. “With the grab arm?”

“No, Carter, with your actual arm. Of course with the grab arm!”

“Okay, wise guy. But we’ll have to use the arm on your side. Can you keep us in position while you do the arm?”

“I’m going to have to.”

Jayden made some adjustments to the ship’s thrusters and buoyancy that fine-tuned the hover. Then he turned his attention to the grab-arm controls. He brought the tip of the arm up to the door handle and opened the claw. “Let’s hope it’s not locked,” Carter said, as Jayden closed the claw grabber around the knob.

“This’ll be a little tricky, I need to bring the arm kind of up and left at first…” He trailed off as he concentrated on the remote control mechanical task. ”It’s turning!” Carter said, unable to hide the excitement in his voice. Jayden paused to think about his next move on the remote, then continued, now bringing the claw down and to the left as it turned the knob.

“Try to push them open now,” Carter said after the knob had been turned about 180 degrees.

“Cross your fingers,” Jayden said as he pushed the arm forward while it still clutched the doorknob. Nothing happened while they sat there staring at the closed set of doors. “Let me try pushing with the sub itself just a little bit…” Jayden engaged the thrusters forward for a quick burst, and for a moment nothing happened. Then suddenly they witnessed a puff of silt around the door frame as the doors were dislodged and swung into the room.

“Behold, the Purser’s Room!” Carter said. Jayden checked in with Topside on the radio, telling them they had found the room of interest. Johnny’s reply came right away.

“Amazing work, you two! Don’t forget to watch your gauges — how are all your systems, over?”

Jayden’s gaze roved over the console’s various gauges and indicator lights before replying that all systems were go. “We have sufficient clearance through the double door entrance to make it inside the Purser’s Room. Doing that now, over.”

After Carter declared them to be free of obstacles behind them, Jayden gave the sub small bursts of horizontal acceleration until their craft’s nose entered the room at an angle. Then he engaged only the left thruster to swing the craft to the left so that it could then head straight into the room. They scooted inside smoothly without incident, and Jayden kept them in a controlled hover while they examined their new surroundings. This room was small, with not even enough room for the sub to turn around inside due to collections of debris that took up what was once open space.

“We’re going to have to back out of here,” Jayden noted while Carter swept the spotlight around the floor.

“Except for the major debris piles, it’s relatively clean in here,” he said. “Looks like-“ But then he broke off his own sentence as he saw the skeletons — how many people they belonged to he couldn’t tell — piled in a heap in a corner on the floor. But as chilling as the sight was, Jayden’s next words made him forget all about it.

“I see two safes!”

Carter looked away from the bones. He eyed the cone of brightness from Jayden’s spotlight. In the middle of it was one cube-shaped safe, bronze in color, lying on its side on the floor. Around it was a toppled shelf unit of some sort, now mostly fragmented. Near the edge of the cone of light was a second safe, also lying on its side.

Carter resumed sweeping the rest of the room with the spotlight on his side of the craft. This room was bare compared to the others, with not a lot in the way of furniture, which made it easy to see that there were only the two safes in here and nothing else of real interest.

“Only two safes,” Jayden said. “That can’t be all they had on the entire ship.”

Carter shook his head as he watched a small black fish dart through the cones of light between the two safes. “No, but I have some bad news. I didn’t notice this before, but look at that fallen shelf.”

Jayden added his own spotlight’s beam to the area in question. “Yeah?”

“At first I thought it was laying on the floor, but now I can see that it’s actually obscuring a major hole in the floor. See right… there….” He physically pointed through the front of the acrylic dome to a dark patch visible beneath a corner of the overturned shelving unit.

“Oh yeah, I do see it. So that means…”

“Unfortunately, I think it means that there more safes down in that hole there, that broke through the floor. These two over here managed to fall far enough away from the rest that they didn’t fall through with the excessive safe weight after who knows how long underwater.”

“Let’s see if we can get a closer look.” Jayden brought the sub over to the break in the floor, hovering a few feet over it so that Carter could aim his spotlight down into it. He shook his head as he peered into the opening.

“It’s just a deep black hole, I can’t see anything. If safes did fall down there, we’re not going to get them on this dive, that’s for sure.”

Jayden tapped a gauge on console. “It’s time for us to head back up, anyway. Let’s see if we can grab these two and get them up.”

Let’s start with the one on my side over here, since we’re already facing that way,” Carter suggested. Jayden agreed, and nudged the sub a little closer to the target safe. “The claw’s not big enough to reach around the whole thing, but fortunately we have those mounting brackets, I guess is what they are, on the back. I should be able to form a sealed grip through one of those.”

“Be quick about it,” Jayden warned. “Battery power is depleted one-third, so to preserve the rule of thirds we should be heading back right now.”

“Just hold her steady then, and here goes…” Carter lowered the arm until the claw hand was next to the mounting bracket on the back of the safe. “Opening the claw.” He informed Jayden of each step since the pilot couldn’t see what was happening with the starboard side grab arm. “Moving the fingers through the bracket… and… closing the claw….got it!”

“Test it by lifting the arm before I move the sub.”

Carter lifted the arm and the claw grip held, but the safe didn’t budge. “Looks like it’s too much weight for the arm to lift by itself.”

“As long as the claw grip holds, the sub itself will lift it. Just make sure the grip is secure.”

Carter tested it for a few more seconds and then pronounced it ready to go. “It’s closed on there. We’ll just have to try it.”

“Moving over to the other safe now. You may need to swing the arm without losing the claw grip to avoid obstacles. Definitely will on the way back out, so just get used to the idea.”

“Roger that. Let’s move.”

Jayden expertly sidled the sub across the room to the other safe, where he positioned them over their second target. He rapidly lowered the second mechanical arm, mounted on the port side of the sub, until the claw grabber was next to the back of the safe. Then he paused.

“What’s wrong?” Carter asked.

“This one’s laying on its back where the mounting brackets are. No easy way to grab it.”

“See if you can flip it over with the arm, or just up onto one side.”

Jayden adjusted the spotlight and squinted down at the safe. “It does look like there’s a small gap between the back of it and floor. I’ll see if I can wedge the claw under there and flip it.”

“Yeah, try it, but don’t take too long, we should probably get—” Carter cut himself off as his concentration was derailed by what appeared to be a flash of light outside of the room — through cracks in the walls — in another part of the ship.

“Probably get what?” Jayden asked, fingers poised over the grab arm controls.

“Get going. Hold on.” Carter killed his spotlight, casting the far reaches of the starboard half of the room into darkness. “Do me a favor: turn your spot off, will you?”

“I can’t do the work without that, why—”

“I see something. Quick, just do it.” With an irritated glance, Jayden pressed the button that turned off the powerful spotlight on his side of the sub. “Floodlights too, hurry,” Carter added.

But at this Jayden hesitated. “Carter, what’s going on? I need to be able to see in here to keep from hitting stuff.”

“I see lights over there, through the walls. Turn it off!”

“Probably bioluminescence.” But Jayden complied, dousing the floodlights, casting the room outside the sub into a complete absence of light. Inside the cabin, only the soft glow of the instrument console LEDs and screen readouts illuminated them. Carter pointed to a spot toward the wall in the Purser’s Room to Jayden’s left. It was pockmarked with small rust-pitted holes and the occasional small tear. A few seconds passed and then, through one these small openings, there came the unmistakable flash of bright, white light.

“That’s obviously artificial,” Carter said. “Not biological.”

Jayden was already reaching for the radio. They continued to watch in the same direction while he keyed the transmitter. The light was visible again, moving sporadically from where Carter first noticed it to their left, very slowly.

“Deep Voyager to Topside, come back…” While Jayden waited for the reply, he turned to Carter. “Could it be an ROV from our ship?”

“Why wouldn’t they have told us they were deploying one again? More likely, it’s an ROV from the mystery newcomer ship.” They continued to watch as the lights would disappear from sight behind solid walls, and then reappear. It seemed as though the light was filtering through multiple walls, not just one, where the holes and tears had to line up just right for it to be visible to them in the Purser’s Room.

Johnny’s voice invaded the stunned silence in the sub cabin. “Topside to Deep Voyager, we read you. What’s your status? Over.”

Jayden kept his eyes on the dark walls, looking for the lights, while he replied into the comm system. “Systems are good, we’re about ready to head back out. But we see lights down here. Did you deploy an ROV or AUV? Over.”

Johnny’s reply was immediate. “That’s a negative, Deep Voyager. Our vessel, that’s R/V Deep Pioneer for anyone who might be listening over this frequency, did not, I repeat did not deploy a submersible vehicle of any kind after you began your dive, over.”

Carter’s voice was low but clear in the cabin: “Uh-oh. Well whoever it is, they’re heading in our general direction.”

“Copy that, Topside. We still can’t say for sure, but there sure seems to be some kind of craft down here. We’re still seeing the lights, inside the ship coming our way now. They must have deployed something from the Transoceanic, over.”

Carter interjected in the cabin before Johnny’s radio reply. “If it’s from Transoceanic, how’d they get down here so fast? It’s only been maybe an hour-and-a-half and it takes about twice that to get down here.”

“And they got down inside the Titanic already? Johnny’s voice was incredulous, while Carter smiled and nodded. “That’s what I’m saying!” he told Jayden.

Jayden shrugged as he spoke into the mic. “If they used the thrusters on the way down, at the expense of using more battery power and therefore having a shorter bottom time—”

“That would explain it,” Carter said. Then Johnny completed the sentence for him over the radio.

“They might do that if they wanted to get down on the wreck as fast as possible, but why?”

Jayden keyed the mic and asked, “Have you been in contact with that ship yet?”

“We’ve been in contact with it,” Johnny said, “but they haven’t responded back yet.”

Carter motioned for the transmitter and Jayden gave it to him. “Co-pilot here, Topside. Maybe just physically pay them a visit with a tender vessel — send some guys over on one of the inflatable boats with a megaphone and shout up to them, over.”

“Not a bad idea, co-pilot. I’ll bring it up with Cliff Jameson and we’ll take it under advisement. Meanwhile, you better work on getting your butts back outside that wreck. Over and out.”

No sooner had they ended the radio call than the mysterious lights were visible again up ahead, but not so far away this time.

“Let’s get that other safe and get out of here.” Carter flipped the spotlight on his side back on. Jayden activated the floodlights and then his own spotlight, casting the room into temporary unnatural brightness once again.

“So back to this, I’m going to try to flip the safe over so I can grab the bracket on the back.” They heard the mechanical whirring noise as Jayden put the external manipulator arm into motion.

“The lights are definitely getting closer,” Carter said.

Jayden’s response was a sustained hum of the mechanical arm as he kept it engaged while trying to flip the safe. “Here goes… gonna have to bump the whole sub up a foot or so….” He reached a hand over to the vertical thruster control on the console while the other remained on the grab arm joystick. The sub rose slightly in the Purser’s Room while remaining in the same position relative to the floor. With it came the grab arm, and then the safe.

“It’s off the bottom,” Carter said.

“Rotating the arm now.” Jayden manipulated the thruster arm until the safe was tipped up on its side. Then he lowered the sub back down a foot until the safe settled onto the floor again in its new orientation. “Now to get the claw grip on the bracket mount.” He worked on controlling the arm and claw grabber so that it would grip the safe’s bracket, as Carter had done with the other safe. Meanwhile, Carter watched for the mystery craft somewhere nearby in the bowels of the ship. Their own lights made it difficult to see, but he thought he could discern illumination coming through the gaps in the walls. If that’s what it was, it was even closer to them now.

“Come on Jayden, not to put the pressure on you, but we really need to get a move on.”

“Got it!” The genuine excitement in Jayden’s voice was unmistakable. “Let me test it… Okay, now I’m going to pick it up and swing it in closer to the sub. Make sure yours is in all the way in, too. We want to maintain as low a profile as possible on the way back out of the ship.”

“Good to go on my side. No desire to make this my final resting place, so, let’s make like a tree and leave, shall we?”

Jayden’s reply was to turn the back of the sub toward the room exit while hovering in place. Then he did a final systems check, as well as a visual check of the two safes that now hung by one grab arm on each side of the sub. “It’s good we have two safes, because they’re heavy enough that if there was only one, we’d have uneven weight distribution.”

“It also means we’re that much heavier and will need to use that much more battery power on the return trip,” Carter pointed out.

“Ouch,” Jayden said before putting the sub into reverse motion toward the exit with a tap of the horizontal thrusters. When the sub glided to a stop in front of the doorway, they repeated the process they had used to enter the room, but in reverse, with Carter checking for clearance and Jayden adjusting the sub’s angle of attack. When they had it right, Jayden tapped on the thruster controls to send the sub out through the doorway in reverse into the hallway.

“Definitely a tighter squeeze this time with the safes sticking out,” Jayden said as he worked to align the sub within the relatively tight confines of the hall. He radioed Topside to inform them they were out of the Purser’s Room with two “packages” and now on their way out of the Titanic. Johnny’s reply was a routine confirmation, with no news of the Transoceanic.

Everything set, Jayden boosted them down the hallway, back the way they had come, while Carter once again checked their progress against the schematic diagram. “End of the hall we squeeze back into the Smoking Room,” he reminded Jayden, who nodded while continuing to take their sub steadily down the hall.

Carter decided that for now the spotlight wasn’t necessary and so he turned it off to save battery power. As soon as he did he thought he saw lights up ahead blink off, but it happened so fast he couldn’t be sure it wasn’t a trick of the light or his eyes adjusting to the sudden lack of the bright spotlight. Jayden bumped one of the safes into the wall and had to reverse once and straighten back on track, but other than that it was smooth going until they reached the end of the hall.

“Back through the Smoking Lounge,” Carter said, referencing his diagram for a moment before returning his attention to operating the spotlight. They traversed the lounge without incident, dragging the twin safes across the flooded space. Reaching the double-doored exit they had opened on their way in, they passed through without issue.

When they got to the opposite end of the room, it was time for the tricky maneuvering that had gotten them out of the restaurant. They repeated the process in reverse, jockeying the sub into position so that it could slide through the ragged crevice and back into the restaurant. This time the feat was made trickier by the two protuberances in the grab arms’ clutches, and though it took longer than made both submariners comfortable, within a few minutes the Deep Voyager was sliding out into the restaurant’s open space near the ceiling…

….when suddenly a blinding flash of light erupted below them.