Titanic 2012: Curse of RMS Titanic

SIX

As Juris Forbes made his getaway from the galley, he ran into Lou Swigart, his man in charge of the dive team. “Are they all aboard, Lou?” he asked.

“To a man, yes. Got our first introductions out of the way.”

“Good… good. And it certainly feels good to be underway.”

“Decided you’d rather we got started; figured no sense waiting, and no telling how long Kane was going to be flapping. Just glad to be underway, Juris—Captain.”

“What a circus. I had hoped to hell to be outta port before he could show up, but no such luck. Then I was just praying to get out to sea as quickly as possible before that fool decided he wanted to ride along ‘for the jollies’ as he’s so fond of saying.”

“I’m sick to death of the man, so you needn’t tip-toe ’round me! But there’s sure to be a mole among the crew, and I suspect it’s that fellow Alandale’s taken under his wing.”

“David Ingles?”

“No, no! That crewman named Houston Ford.”

“You think Alandale can’t attract a guy like Ford?”

“All right, maybe it isn’t Ford, but there’s got to be a plant somewhere aboard. Are you sure of the women, Gambio and Dr. Irvin?”

“I am sure neither one has ties to Kane, yes.”

“All right, but what about their diving ability with that liquid air equipment?”

“Yes, Juris, I am as sure of them as the men. Hell, they’ve done better in all the trials and training than the men, Captain.”

“Ah, then it’s true… women do better breathing OFPC-413 than do the men.”

“Proven fact, yes. No one has yet figured out why, but the supposition is that females are more ahhh… in tune with the collective memory of the womb, maybe even of the origins of life, but who knows. Anyhow, yeah, it’s true.”

“Kelly Irvin has certainly blossomed. Going from file clerk to marine biologist, oceanographer, and diver all in matter of a few years.”

“Woods Hole insisted we have a member of the team on board expressly to seek out marine specimens at the depths we’re headed, remember?”

“That’s why I recommended her to you, Lou.”

Nodding, Lou returned to the subject of the money man, Kane. “The thought of Kane aboard makes me shudder. I’m with you on that, Captain. Best pray he doesn’t fly out on that chopper anytime soon.”

Forbes liked being called Captain on such expeditions; it was his one vanity. But his forte was Oceanography and finding things under the waves. He’d worked as a young man with the famous Bob Ballard, and he had worked with Lou Swigart on several missions. He trusted Swigart above all; knew what to expect of the man. No surprises and none of the sarcasm Alandale heaped on him. No, Lou was a serious fellow, and Lou was resolutely predictable. Not everyone was. Forbes knew Swigart to be that rare individual who not only could command the respect of his men, but control his team as well. His vast knowledge of this new deep-water dive technology and state-of-the-art submersibles, paired with his deep-water experience made him uniquely qualified to take men and women into places where no one had gone before.

Swigart would be captain on the submersible; he’d be in charge down there at the dive site—at Titanic as she sat on the mid-Atlantic ridge, where she had been now for over a hundred years, since April 14th—1912 to 2012. Kane’s press releases and headlines were reading 100^th Anniversary of Titanic Disaster. What better time than now to plunder her remaining treasures; to uncover her final secrets?

NBC’s Dateline had already done a special on it, and they meant to do another, and so NBC cameramen, crew, and a reporter named Craig Powers were also venturing out with the mission—a necessary evil, as Kane had put it—to keep the incoming cash flowing.

Swigart handed Forbes a stack of reports on each diver. “Each diver’s well known for their ability in the water and experience now with the liquid air, sir. Each has been thoroughly tested on all the equipment in multiple simulations.”

“But not at two and a half miles below.”

“Well… no but the science says, given the circumstances, it’s the same at two miles as it is two hundred feet. The effect’s the same. It’s why—”

“—why squids don’t implode at such depths, spare me.” Forbes had heard the exploding squid joke a hundred times.

“Yes, sir.”

“Thanks, Lou.”

“Captain, you oughta get some shut-eye.”

“Me? Hell you were up all night.”

“Same as you.”

“Both of us pacing.”

“Like a couple of expectant fathers, eh?” They laughed in unison at this.

“Worried how things might so easily go bad for us at the launch,” said Forbes.

“Maybe we both oughta turn in for some R&R.”

“Perhaps I can sleep now… now that we’re underway.” Forbes slapped Lou on the back.

Lou smirked. “You left strict orders to get us out of port the moment you stepped back on board. Just followin’ orders.”

“Can’t tell you how good it feels, Lou, to have that kind of loyalty from the bridge and pit crew.”

“Some kinda show Kane gave ’em back at Woods Hole.”

“You saw that, did you?” Forbes laughed.

“Caught a glimpse of it from the bridge, yes, and later on my Mac.”

Forbes grimaced and nodded, studying Swigart’s rugged Arkansas drawl closely enough to follow what he was saying. Unlike Forbes’ professorial appearance, Swigart looked and dressed Navy issue—in fact, he was the sort of navy man who wore a cap to his brow, one with the insignia of his ship that read: USS Nimitz. It was where he’d done most of his time.

The ex-naval officer’s skin shone brown from years in the sun, but it was peppered with freckles, and his thinning red-to-brown hair and Irish grin or grimace as needed, marked him as a seaman. He sported a pair of big Irish ham-hocks for hands, and the muscled arms were wider round than Forbes’ calves. Most important of all, Lou believed in discipline and knew how to enforce it evenly and at all times.

Forbes held the files up and away as if to signal something, and then he asked, “Lou, how is it all going to come off, really?”

“Whataya mean?”

“Any doubts? How is this thing shaping up? Do you have any doubts at all—hand to fire.”

Swigart looked uncomfortable with the question, almost squirming. “No doubts, sir.”

“When you have your team down there at those depths, Lou, and inside the walls of the wreck, tell me—tell me that everything will be as controlled as we can humanly make it.”

“I have every confidence in my divers, Captain.”

“Even though you wanted current naval officers, Lou?”

“Even so, yes.”

“Thanks to Warren Kane’s getting us the largest contributors we’ve ever imagined, we have an expedition. Hell, Lou, we’re talking billions here.”

“Yeah, I give ’im that.”

“And he was the one who insisted on no Naval involvement other than use of naval technology and you, Lou! He put me onto you. He had his research team scour for the best man for the job.”

“He also lost us a significant grant from the government funneled through the Navy.”

Forbes pulled at his beard. “I need to trim this damn thing,” he thoughtlessly added. “But you know, Lou, there is one thing we must absolutely have in our dive team.”

“What’s that, sir, loyalty to us and not the US Navy?”

“Loyalty goes without saying, Lou, but what we truly need is every confidence. Confidence in our people. And confidence in their aptitude and skills. Barring any unforeseen accidents inside the hull of Titanic… a bulkhead giving way, for instance, we truly are only as good as our weakest link; only as good as our people. Right?”

“Yes, sir! Barring an opportunity to train for another six months to a year, yeah, we’re as ready as can be! We’ve the people with the ‘right stuff’, Juris.”

Forbes took a deep breath of sea air and stepped to the rail to feel the ocean spray against his skin. “I’m feeling home at last, Lou.”

Swigart had already sensed this when joining him at the railing. Both men stared off into the horizon for the distant prize out there.

“You know, Lou, I came to this place in rather a roundabout manner.”

“From the galley, I know… to stay out of sight of another reporter—to make your way up to the bridge and the control room.”

Juris Forbes laughed. “No, Lou—I meant to this place in my life; it has been a dream for so long, you know… so very desperately, damnably long.”

“Oh… I thought you meant…” Lou laughed now at his misunderstanding. “Still, Juris, best place to be aboard Scorpio is up there in her central nervous system—the control room—or what you dyed-in-the-wool Navy guys call the ‘Pit’.”

Forbes turned and leaned his back to the brass railing; he took in the entire ship at a glance, from bow to stern and the up to the bridge. “She is an electronic marvel.”

“She’s certainly that.”

“So I’m gonna keep heading that-a-way.” Forbes pointed up a ladder leading to the control room and bridge. “Thanks for everything, Lou.”

“Think I’ll catch some winks, Captain. Suggest you do likewise, sir.”

They parted company, and Forbes thought about the media circus again; it’d taken Warren Luther Kane three years to amass the fortune required to “raise” the Titanic as some news stories put it, while others called it raping the Titanic. Kane was not so foolish as to risk an entire fortune alone; he had significant silent partners. The ship, the equipment, the specialized Action Info Center with its holographic navigational tools, the pressurized containers to be lowered for all the plunder and treasure, the millions spent creating what everyone was calling ‘Mad Max’ or Maximum MHD, one quite incredible submersible indeed.

The primary drive on the sub was technically termed a Magnetohydrodynamic propulsion system, abbreviated as MHD. Basically it worked not by moving the water itself, which was a simplistic way of explaining it to the press and public in general, but by moving the suspended particles in the water which creates a directed current inside the drive, which in turn creates thrust, with no moving parts.

As amazing as that sounded, Juris believed the average citizen incapable of understanding that sea water was chockfull of dissolved salts, various ions, and of course single-celled organisms whose bodies contained various elements, some of which were affected by magnets and magnetic fields. Mad Max utilized these principals beautifully to propel herself through the water as efficiently as a squid but with beauty and grace and the maneuverability of a Chinook helicopter, capable of moving on a dime in any direction and hovering in place as a cargo chopper might in the air.

In other words, it was some submersible and its two areas of entry, over the top and at the airlock-cargo bay offered more possibility for treasures found to be brought up safely as it had a built-in immersion tank in the hold. It meant safety features heretofore never dreamed of for salvaged artifacts, not to mention the lives of everyone aboard Max, the away teams that Lou was in charge of.

It was all a gigantic undertaking—one team to investigate the aft section, the other the bow section a mile away. Lou’s chosen divers meant to go inside the shipwreck to retrieve the remaining intact treasures aboard. With the new technology, they could plunder the ship as quickly and efficiently as any pirate endeavor on the high seas of old—but in this case, no one was alive to put up the least resistance. Even Bob Ballard had been sickened and greatly disappointed by their plans. On learning of Scorpio’s mission to Titanic, the old man was unable to put up a fight when even his beloved Woods Hole Institute fell in behind the project.

Ballard’s threat to get an injunction against Forbes—his one-time student—and all the backers of Scorpio’s mission never materialized. According to Kane, they all had Kane to thank for getting into a full-on PR battle with Ballard.

Still, as he made his way to the control room, Dr. Juris Forbes, Captain of Scorpio for the duration, wondered how history would portray their venture, and in particular how kind or unkind history would treat him personally. Then he wondered why it mattered; why it should matter to him.

Continuing his thoughts, Juris Forbes wondered if it would matter in the least to anyone, including himself, once he was a wealthy man thanks to his contractual share in the profits.

Still so much depended upon what precisely the expedition might or might not uncover; what they might ‘unearth’ from this watery tomb. Aside from all these considerations, there was the one prize in particular awaiting Forbes’ discovery, something beyond wealth and fame. A prize without measure. Of this much he was certain—that his reputation and fame would spread and eclipse all other deep water salvage captains. He envisioned a front page photo of himself a the helm of Scorpio. Not to mention the prizes that would be dredged up from within Titanic’s once glittering interiors.

He scaled the ladder and entered the control room and bridge to a wave of cheers honoring his horrible TV performance. He ignored it, waving and moving on when the officer on duty stopped him with a salute. Strict naval protocol was the order among his immediate crew.

“Sir, the NBC guy, Craig Powers, is wanting an initial interview and some footage of you at the helm, sir. He’s just the other side of the bridge, waiting patiently, sir.”

“Not now, Walker.” Disregarding his officer with an upraised hand, knowing the last person he wished to deal with at the moment was this TV anchor star, Powers, Juris Forbes preferred the solemnity of the chart room at the moment to doing a spot for MSNBC and 20/20. He knew it was part of the deal that Warren Kane had struck with NBC, but it must wait. For now, Juris pushed on to the chart room where he brought up a holographic map that incorporated data from the ship’s sonar, ship’s radar, Doppler weather radar from the NOAA all merged into a single coherent representation of a civilian application of the US Navy’s CAIC—combat/action information center. This map of the North Atlantic floated before Forbes’ eyes, reflected in his contact lenses, and always gave him a sense of wonder. In three dimensions, revolving at his touch, it displayed the weather overhead, the sea state, the sea floor, the ship within its present projected course, present trajectory, the distance to destination, when and where to stop in order to be hovering directly above Titanic and much more. It was one of many incredible tools aboard Scorpio.

He then indulged himself in switching on the data he had gathered that called on the hologram to display a fourth dimension—the dimension of time. The CIC-styled hologram indeed indicated all the conditions of April 14, 1912 at exactly the time and place where Titanic had slipped below the surface. Here was a model of a reversal of time using recorded data projected forward thanks to all the outside sources, one being the NOAA which housed and stored the answers at the Central Repository of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency.

Forbes began to study. After a moment, he clicked on an overhanging intercom and said, “Captain to bridge, Mr. Walker… we appear right on course and right on history.” He paused to chuckle. “Appears all systems are running smoothly. If you will, log it in, noting time.”

But his second-in-command, Stuart Walker was busy mugging for the NBC camera at the moment. He replied in exaggerated fashion, “Aye-aye, Captain Forbes, sir! I’ll make it so. Consider it done.” Walker stood at the wheel, posing for the cameraman and answering questions put to him in rapid-fire succession by none other than Craig Powers.

Forbes gritted his teeth on hearing some of this back-scatter noise; he wanted nothing to do with it for now, so he clicked off.

At the same instant, Juris Forbes did a double-take, thinking Walker or Pierce had entered the cramped chart room to await further orders, but when he turned, he didn’t find either of his trusted men. Instead, he found one of the divers, David Ingles, standing in shadow, his mouth agape at the incredible ‘historical’ hologram.

Ingles forthrightly saluted and introduced himself formally for the eyes and ears of officers close enough on the bridge to overhear them.

“Why’re you so worried and paranoid. We met in the galley, David. Everyone saw us there.”

“I don’t want anybody getting any wrong ideas about us… our relationship, I mean.”

“We’ve got a long way to go before we have a relationship!” she countered, her smile beaming.

But David was staring at the fascinating, floating map before them in the blue-lit room, unable to take his gaze from it.

“Yes, well, I understand from your Captain Swigart that you’re one of our best divers, Ingles. I’ve your file right here.” Forbes held up the stack of files Swigart had earlier placed in his care. “Swigart assures me you’ll do a first-rate job for us.”

“That’s kind of him, sir.” Ingles continued studying the floating map.

“Like myself, Swigart has the highest expectations for the mission,” continued Forbes, a wave of fatigue washing over him. He shook the weariness off.

“I just wanted to say I’m proud to be a part of the expedition, sir.” Ingles had stepped in close, examining every detail of the hologram. “Like looking back in time, isn’t it, sir?”

“No… not looking, Ingles; it is like being back there that very night, down to the wind currents. I can hear them. Can’t you?”

Ingles felt a shiver run through his body. “Indeed sir.” David felt a strange emotion fill him and he realized it was one shared by Forbes, an emotion that could only be described as wonderment.

“I’m sorry about your difficulty in the Sea of Japan, the loss of your friend there, Ingles.”

“He was a good man.”

“It’s terribly sad to lose a good man; imagine all the good men who went down with Titanic.”

“Yes, sir. We—the dive team that is, we’re all terribly excited to see Titanic from the inside, sir—but wow, look at her here. X marks the spot, eh, Captain?” David pointed to the icon within the hologram that marked their destination above the surface, a half ship in the throes of splitting apart, readying to slide below the surface and a second lying obliterated at the bottom. “Amazing technology. I’ve always been fascinated by such gadgets, sir. Sorry if I’m babbling.”

Forbes stopped in his study of the charts long enough to look Ingles over. He saw a powerful young man with piercing steel-grey eyes. “It’s excellent that you have such an interest.” On the one hand, Forbes would have liked to sit down with the diver and discuss their mutual fascination with Titanic, but on the other, he must be guarded.

Secretly, Forbes wondered why Ingles was here, snooping; he wondered if Ingles might be the spy, Warren Kane’s plant aboard Scorpio—his eyes and ears to report back to Kane as the expedition goes. He had no doubt someone aboard was being paid by Warren on the side to keep a close eye on their progress. Kane was all about power and control. Had he gotten to Ingles; everyone had his price, and Ingles here had had his last dive come apart at the seams.

“Forgive me, Mr. Ingles, but I have a great deal to do so that we can, as you sailors say, stay on course.”

Ingles half-smiled at this, realizing what the professor-turned-captain really meant was for him to ‘shove off’. He watched Captain Forbes turn back to the hologram.

“Sorry to’ve gotten in the way, sir; just wanted to say that if ever I’m needed, I spent six years as a navigator in the Navy myself….”

“That’s kind of you, David. I saw that in your record, and we’ll call on you should it become necessary, of course.”

“Yes, sir.” David lingered.

Forbes looked again at Ingles. “What is it, Mr. Ingles?”

“I read your remarks on why this expedition is so important, sir, and I totally agree with what you’ve said—the whole purpose being to bring up this buried, underwater museum to the surface and to place it on display for any and all to see. You know, what has been buried within her, untouched by human hands for a hundred years, and perhaps some additional clues to the long-standing mystery surrounding her demise, sir.”

“You naval chaps may be interested in her scars, what precisely brought Titanic to her knees, Mr. Ingles, what the death blow was; not me. My only concern is the operation dealing with her interior and the recovery of priceless treasures we can only imagine.”

Ingles nodded and smiled. “Treasures just waiting for us, and since we’re uniquely equipped to convey them to the surface without the slightest damage… treasures the size of statues and ‘motor cars’ of the day, who better to relieve that sad old ship of her burdens?”

“Indeed. She’s just waited so patiently and for so long for you aquanauts—the new spacemen of the deep, David.”

“I’m just proud to be one of the team, sir.”

“Good, then you don’t hold with Dr. Robert Ballard’s sentimental ahh… diarrhea about the site being a fitting memorial to those who died aboard the ship the night of April 12^th 1912?”

“Ballard’s sat idly by while foreign expeditions have gone to Titanic to prove one pet theory or another; suppose they’d had our technology and a war chest like Lucifer’s or Kane’s? Americans must do this first, not just to be the first-for-first sake, but to ensure the treasures we do find will end up in the hands of the American people.”

“There’s far more inside Titanic than Ballard had the vision to realize, but again he didn’t have liquid air technology, now did he? Curious what he might’ve done had he the wherewithal we have today at his disposal in September 1985?”

“Would he have gone inside Titanic’s corridors and holds?” David shook his head and snorted at the thought. “I’m no expert on human nature, sir, but I trust you are. I know there’s good reason to salvage Titanic as you would any shipwreck before another country gets its hands on our technology and goes for it.”

“Even as we rape and pillage her, as the press says, we’ll do it with a great deal more reverence and respect than say the French?” He laughed and stormed off, saying he was needed on the bridge—his destination, leaving Ingles to study their course via the hologram that Forbes had returned to three dimensions and present headings.

Captain Juris Forbes had been careful to time his reentry into his state-of-the-art control room aboard Scorpio so as to not run into any cameras or Craig Powers. A green hue coming off the electronic screens colored the command room and bridge. Every gauge on every panel, every gadget and gizmo must be checked and rechecked, which is what the bridge crew had been doing while he had been before the television cameras back at Woods Hole, three and a half hours ago now. Each officer in turn was asked to report, and one by one a positive ‘all systems go’ response came rolling off their tongues. “Music to my ears, gentlemen.”

“Any problems near shore, will be tenfold out on the high seas,” he felt compelled to caution his men, although he respected them and knew if the slightest blip showed up anywhere on their screens, they’d notify him at once. They’d wake him if necessary as Captain Edward Smith’s men had done the night Titanic struck that infamous iceberg, a thing impossible to do nowadays thanks to the Air National Coast Guard up to the minute reports on ice in the region even now as late as April—the same month as saw the Titanic go down due to a mountain of ice.

Everyone aboard knew that it had been mechanical failures, human error, and weather that had turned back Forbes’ last expedition in the Grand Caymans in search of a priceless shipwreck stuffed with gold and silver. That had been four years ago; it had taken that many years to regain his reputation and gain his command aboard the Woods Hole owned Scorpio IV—a ship built on donations, largely from silent partners.

He needn’t literally take the helm, but Forbes liked the feel of her under his guiding hand, and so he would on occasion, like now, replace the man at the wheel—in this case Walker who’d stood in for him to fend off Powers. He thanked his officer and took the wheel. It relaxed him to hold the powerful wheel in hand. The ship’s gleaming, brass wheel may look like something out of the past, but it acted as an electronic sensor; the least touch or lack of touch and Scorpio could go off course and time would be lost. Juris imagined himself the sort of captain that Bly was in terms of his navigational abilities, that if necessary he could sail a lifeboat back to safe harbor from anywhere on the ocean’s surface. But he was hardly the whip-cracking, bullying sort. Still, he demanded discipline, for without strict discipline and protocols at sea, an entire crew could pay such a debt in blood.

“Mr. Walker!” he called out.

“Yes, sir!”

“It appears one of Captain Swigart’s divers is in the map room; would you please be so kind as to escort him off the bridge,” Forbes calmly said, staring out at the sea, the power of Scorpio beneath his fingertips.