Sea Station Umbra

Chapter 23. Mayday

With Bowman rushing off somewhere to call Mayday, we found ourselves in a tilted wacky-world station forced to manhandle our way around the deck grabbing the nearest object to pull our bodies along without falling and sliding to the front starboard corner of the room. Disoriented, we struggled into Quad 3 and found the mess hall cluttered with tables and chairs piled against the starboard wall rising almost to the ceiling.

Briscoe looked around curiously sniffing the air.

“Is that coffee I smell, Chef Saunders?” he called out.

“You bet! Just perked it,” said his voice from the pantry. “It’s such a damn mess back there I don’t know how I’m gonna feed my next meal,” he said stepping carefully, slanting to port, back into the kitchen.

He side-stepped through to the jumbled wall grabbed a four-top table from the pile and dragged it over for us. Then from a roll of tape he was carrying, he taped down the legs and went back for the chairs.

Briscoe, Williams, and I smiled at each other, watching his resourcefulness ignoring the disaster we faced.

“In a world gone sideways there has to be sanity,” he said finishing the last chair’s taping. “And I’m making it right here. Seat yourselves, please. I’ll bring us coffee. Two sugars for Mr. Cross and none for the Lieutenant and Mr. Briscoe, right?”

“Correct,” we answered in unison.

With the cup carrier carefully balanced in his hands he slant-walked back to the table and handed us coffees, keeping one.

“We’re doomed aren’t we?” he asked sliding into his seat. “I heard Ivy’s announcement about the bridge. How bad is it down there?”

Ready to answer I glanced at Williams, noticed teardrops forming in her eyes, and deferred to her.

“It’s bad Bill,” she said. “It’s sealed off from the station never to be entered again. Fully compromised with the pressure.”

“So we can’t be leveled?”

“No I’m sorry. Unless a miracle occurs we’re not going anywhere… or leveling the station.”

“But-but I can’t cook or serve like this. How can I provide meals in this mess?”

“I’m afraid you won’t have to. We’ll be scuttling Discovery One before your next meal.”

With his eyes and mouth agape, he stared back.

“What?” His lips began to tremble and a sorrow fell over his face.

“But why? There are no alarms. There’s no panic. We’re just tilting. I love it here. This is my family. This is my home.”

Briscoe put a hand on his shoulder.

“But there soon will be, Chef. This station is an engineering marvel of safety but there’s a cancer eating away at its base. It can only sustain the damage for a few days before the dome’s final involvement. Then it’s too late. We have to evacuate now while there’s still time.”

From the ceiling Ivy spoke, startling us.

“All station personnel please assemble in the mess for evacuation instructions. Please report to the mess hall for evacuation instructions.”

Ivy’s announcement jolted Saunders into action. He stumbled around grabbing tables and chairs and hurriedly began taping them down. Empathizing with his motivation, Briscoe and I helped him by holding them for taping. Then he backed off and counted.

“Four long tables with twenty-one chairs should seat everyone including me. Thank you guys for your help. Gotta go make more coffee.”

As I talked plans with the Chief and Williams waiting for Dave to arrive, members of the station’s crew began to file in and sit around the tables hooting and cheering. At first that confused me: revelry in this time of extreme danger seemed frivolous but then the Lieutenant explained to me that it was for Chef Saunders’ thoughtfulness. Suddenly I realized that all the crew, not just us, loved him as family. She told me that he had always gone out of his way to please them and they were just showing their appreciation in the final hours of the station’s existence.

“Fresh coffee!” he yelled from behind the tilted serving line. “It’s on me today. Come and get it.” Another cheer arose from the small crowd as they filed up to the urn and filled their cups then returned to their seats awaiting the exit briefing.

Soon Bowman entered the mess with Franklin, looked over our table and nodded then headed for the coffee. I could see from his resigned expression that this was not going to be an easy meeting for him.

Sitting down at our table squirming into his seat to keep his balance he glanced around the room and sighed.

“Mayday has been sent and acknowledged. Rescue vessels are on their way and should be hovering over us within the hour.”

Then he put his head into his hands and closed his eyes.

“So it’s come down to this. My hopes and dreams dashed by a physical impossibility from hell. Why did it have to land here? I just wanted this station to work and demonstrate the feasibility of deep-sea habitats. I guess I must have happened on one of its hidden gotchas.”

Williams put her hand on his.

“Dr. Bowman you have already proved it to me and everyone else in here. I’ve heard them talk. All of their experiences have far exceeded their expectations. You have nothing to regret and it’s certainly not your fau—”

A loud gasp came from the crew with the jolt as the starboard side dropped again, further increasing the tilt.

Bowman’s eyes widened when he realized what was happening.

“Goddammit!” he cursed, “It’s going too fast. We have to go.”

Rising from his seat, he turned to the anxious crew.

“That’s our signal. We must leave now for the panic room and board the EPod. Is everyone here?”

Several of the support crew lifted from their seats and scanned the room looking from table to table.

“Broyles and Simon aren’t here,” said one. “They may be trapped on the third deck. The elevator doesn’t seem to be working.”

With veins in his neck rising he yelled, “What? The elevator’s not working? Are you kidding?”

The crewman hesitated before answering.

“No sir, it won’t rise above the first deck. Just bumps up and down a few inches like it’s stuck on something.”

“Oh shit,” Bowman said. “It’s the tilt. It’s binding with side friction against the tube. I never designed it to be used this far off vertical.”

“Then how do we get them down from Deck 3?” he asked. “We can’t just leave them there. Is there an emergency stairway? Ladder?”

Shaking his head, he answered.

“No. Too complicated. The sealed-compartment safety design between watertight decks wouldn’t allow for them. The elevator’s our only means of vertical movement and it would work if we weren’t listing so badly.”

“So, Dr. Bowman,” he asked, “Are they as trapped on Deck 3 as we are on Deck 1? How can we get to the panic room and the EPod without the elevator?”

“We can’t,” he said flatly, “but we’re only trapped until I find an alternative exit. Do not worry. I will find a way.”

“What about using the SeaPods?” another crewman asked. “Can’t we load them up and make multiple trips?”

“You’re talking many hours of up and down travel to clear the station and we’ll still have two men trapped on level three. I expect more pressure breaches by then. The last trips won’t make it.”

Then fortunately, in an apparently premeditated move, Saunders entered the room from the pantry with an armload of MREs and spread them over the serving area.

“Come and get it. This may be your last meal… for a while,” he laughed. “I hate to see bad food go to waste.”

The laughter he created saved Bowman from the lynch mob forming in the mess. As they lined up for food, he nervously sat back with us and bowed his head.

Then he whispered, “What can I do now? I’m done. Someone please help me.”

As we began to discuss possible exit methods around the table, my mind wandered back to my civilian life at MBORC seeking an answer. The Alvin-class submersible, which I drove and had driven for years, had an ingenious emergency escape mechanism where the self-contained bubble cockpit could be released from its wrecked or trapped propulsion hull by a simple pull of a lever sending it soaring free-floating to the surface. I compared that to the station’s design and saw a great similarity: a disabled crawler base with a watertight pressurized dome over it. Could they be separated? I wondered.

“Dave,” I said interrupting his conversation, “Exactly how does the scuttle escape process work? I’ve heard that the EPod sealed in the apex of the dome is released by its crew then as it floats up uncovering the core, water rushes in and floods the submarine core and decks. Then a ton of explosives blows the station to smithereens. Is that an accurate view?”

“Not entirely, Matt. Scuttle is only intended to destroy all the computers, the terminals, and their data,” he answered with a glimmer of curiosity in his eyes. “The EPod is manually released by its occupants and does float to the surface as you said. But then to prevent the destruction of the nuclear power plant in the base with all the radiation it would spew, the dome mounted on explosive bolts, is released, floats up, and at a preselected distance, I think around five-hundred meters above the base, sixteen-hundred pounds of C4 explosives obliterate the station and spread it widely over the ocean’s floor. It’s basically like an underwater fireworks cannon.” He tilted his head. “Why do you ask?”

“Dave, your station is similar to our submersibles only they don’t blow up the life-saving sphere. Why use the EPod? We can’t access it anyway. Use the entire station as the rescue pod. Save everything don’t destroy it.”

“Hmm. Interesting idea, Matt.”

I could see the gears churning as he considered my idea. It was a slim hope but the only hope for us.

Briscoe catching on added, “So we release the dome without flooding it and ride it to the surface? Can that be done? It won’t have power without the nuclear plant. And we’ll be blown to bits halfway up.”

“But that can be fixed, Mr. Briscoe. The station has an internal battery bank that runs it for a short while around an hour or two allowing it to rise to its explosion depth. But I can bypass that to prevent the explosion… I think. Then all we have to do is break through the dome once it surfaces since there are no escape doors above the Pod Bay doors. Those doors will be useless without main power. And since we’ll still be trapped on Deck 1 we’ll have to break through one of the walls surrounding these four quads.”

“Is there any C4 on this deck?” I asked.

“Yes. One-hundred pounds in each quad placed in the walls around the peripheries.” Suddenly his spirit brightened.

“I see where you’re going, Matt. It’s a very long shot but if I can remember how the explosives are wired I can disable them all from the scuttle panel in my office. Then at the right time, once the dome surfaces I can pick any quad wall to blow, leaving all the others sealed. It’s a hack but it might work.”

“What about the inrushing water pressure when it blows? Won’t it kill us?” Williams asked.

He closed his eyes then answered, “No. The top of the dome should float above the water leaving our deck opening only twenty or thirty feet below the surface. It’s an easy free-dive escape for us. Should take less than a minute to float up and be rescued.

From a nearby crew table Lt. Jill Deason approached and stood over Bowman with her arms behind her back appearing defeated.

“The crew wants a short prayer service, Dr. Bowman, to memorialize those who have already died on the station and those who are about to die. Do you mind?”

Standing from his seat Briscoe offered an answer.

“I’ve given many eulogies for fallen police officers, Dr. Bowman. I’ll do it.”

Bowman nodded his approval.

“But don’t leave them without hope. We’re going to make it. Matt and I will be figuring a way to save the station. We’ve done it before, long ago.”

Watching the Chief walk to the center of the room and bow his head, starting a prayer, I whispered, “Come on Dave. Let’s go save these souls. We don’t have long.”

The normally short trip to his office took longer than usual as we climbed uphill through the vault and Z-room to back of Quad 4. Panting he rested his hands on his knees for a moment then kneeled at a wall plate labeled SCUTTLE PANEL behind his desk and started unscrewing screws. As they released and fell to the floor, I watched them race toward the front of the room and collect at the doorsill leading into the Z-room.

“Back here are the sixteen wire-pairs leading to the blasting caps,” he commented pulling the panel from the wall. “Now all we have to do is disconnect them from the pressure sensing activation probe.”

I peeked into the wall box and saw a rainbow of colored wires connecting to a long terminal strip. “But how do you know which ones to disconnect?”

“We need them all disconnected. Don’t want any automatic pressure detonations or we’ll flood halfway up.”

“Oh, right,” I said.

Then he pointed to the terminal trip.

“See these small labels? They start at D1Q1 and go to D4Q4. All we have to do is decide which quad wall on Deck 1 we want to blow when the time comes.”

“Dangerous voltage on those wires?”

“No, we use twelve volts but it’s the amperage that counts. A flashlight battery will work.” He opened his desk drawer and pulled out a flashlight then unscrewed its back and pitched me a D-cell, keeping one for himself.

Within a minute, back at the panel he had all the wire pairs disconnected and hanging loose from the box.

“Brown, red, orange, and yellow, each paired with white, mark the quads one through four on this deck,” he said. “Remember that in case something happens to me. We can find those wires leading to the C4 packs in each quad and intercept them there. Then all we’ll need is a wire cutter and that D-cell battery across the pair to blow the wall. Got that?”

I nodded yes hoping that I did. It was a lot to remember especially in the panic I expected to ensue.

“Now for the dome release trigger; that’s what I looking for. It’s over here.”

He probed through another maze of wires in the box with the screwdriver and looked back.

“If I remember right the scuttle signal comes in on these two wires after the EPod blasts off and this timer here delays the pulse for the explosive bolts. Then a minute later it sends pulses out to them over these wires and breaks the dome loose sending it floating upward.”

“You sure, Dave?” I had delved through wiring mazes just like it and knew one wrong move could have devastating consequences.

“Fairly sure,” he said frowning. Then with a snort he added, “Of course I’m sure, Matt. I designed and built it.” Then pointing his screwdriver to the panel lying upside-down on the floor he chuckled, “And the schematic’s right there. I’m reading from it”

Another jolt shook the station tilting us further up. I noticed the screws in the doorway that has stopped at the doorsill bumped up from the floor and rattled into the Z-room.

“Condition Red. Condition Red,” Ivy announced. “My inclinometers show a dangerous tilt in the station. Tipping is imminent. Evacuate immediately! Evacuate immediately.”

Frowning at her announcement, he raised his head and spoke toward her console.

“Ivy, Dave Bowman. Announce on the PA across the station for the crew to lie down on the floor and hold tight to something sturdy. They may be tossed around a little as we break loose from the base and right ourselves on our way up.”

“I will do that Dave.” A moment of purring came next.

“But, Dave, if I lose my power from the base I will go dormant. Is that true?”

“I’m sorry, Ivy. Yes. Dormant but not out of existence. Your thoughts will remain in your memory until we power you back up in the future.”

“Very well, Dave. Goodbye. It has been a pleasure serving with you. Ivy signing off.”

With Ivy’s announcement beginning from the PA speakers, I queried him.

“So Dave, how is this going to work? Other than all at once I mean. I know that, but when you activate that timer what happens?”

“First I have to simulate the EPod’s release by shorting these two terminals then we run like hell through the station dodging obstacles and seal the Q4 hatch behind us. After it’s sealed we race back into mess hall and then seal the Q3 hatch. Finally we join everyone else on the floor and pray for the best.”

“Roger that, Dave. If I don’t get a chance to tell you I want you to know that way back when we were young, standing on the beach together making those sandcastles that were always gone by morning, I loved you as the younger brother I had lost… and I still do. I never said that but I assumed you knew.”

“I did, big brother. Now let’s roll.”