The Command

Finally she got to the console. To her left was the main engine enclosure. To her right a short ladder leading down to the generator flat. But now it was invisible under the black undulating blanket. One more level below this. Where the firemain valves were. But they were back under the main engine, and deep under water by now. How the fuck were they going to get to them?

In the darkness she felt Helm pull her head in close to his. Like for a kiss. Only he was yelling, through the creak of the ship and the hammer of her heart, through the buzzing diaphragm: “I’m going for the firemain suction. That’s the first one we got to close.”

She nodded, already figuring that. Once it was closed, Main Control could pressurize the loop without pumping more water into the engine room. But each time she’d looked, the water level was higher. It was already almost to where Helm had once shown her the outside water-line was.

She shouted back, “What you want me to do?”

“Wait here.”

That didn’t sound too demanding. She watched as he peered down, trying to figure which way he’d go. She’d guess down the ladder to the generator flat, duck under the deck beneath the PLCC — it looked like there was a couple inches of air space yet under it — and down three more steps to the lower level. Then across to the lube oil coalescers, around them to the right, then hang a left.

It’d take about six seconds to walk it. If it wasn’t underwater, with who knew what crap fallen down from above blocking the way. You’d be right under the big main engine bracing. The mass of the reduction gear aft of that. Nothing but solid steel bulkhead forward. And no way out except back the route you’d just come.

Helm was pulling off his OBA. Her light flashed off the stainless steel of one of the emergency escape canisters. He was looking down into the smoothly rolling surface. Then he was gone, and she was alone in the echoing and clanging and the rush of water and the slamming of her heartbeat in her ears. She couldn’t even see his lantern. She was shaking, and not just with the cold of the sea.

“Shit, shit, shit,” she mumbled around the mouthpiece. She tried to slow her breathing. Like Lamaze when she had Kaitlyn. In, two, three. Out, two, three, four. Her heart slowed a little and she sloshed over to the engine enclosure and knelt in the smoking fuel that covered the deck plates, trying to see past it to where he ought to be by now. But she couldn’t see anything.

She realized she should be timing him. The little SEEDs, the emergency breathing devices didn’t hold much air. Three, at the most four breaths. Just enough to get you out of a space. She brought her wrist above the water. Hard making out the sweep hand through the eyepieces. The plastic was going foggy, as if something was eating at it. But at last she acquired it and followed it around. Once. Then again.

She was beginning to feel frightened. More scared than she’d ever been before in her life. Except maybe when she’d gone into labor, surprised at the pain. The doctor had told her it wouldn’t hurt. Like he would know … She started to back away from the black water that nibbled at her boots as the ship rolled and things clanked above her. Heavy things, sounding like they were getting ready to come down on her head.

A hammering rose from the darkness. It grew louder. Then faded. Till at last there was only silence again, or as close to silence as the creak and bang of a dying ship could approach.

She passed her beam over the black, and saw no sign of Helm. No bubbles. Nothing. There wasn’t any other way out. The noise must have been his last despairing effort to escape.

She looked back up the way they’d come, seeing that already, in the time they’d been down here, the water had risen at least another foot. The emergency lamps were fading, cherry filaments slowly being eaten by the dark. Her own beam searched panels, hydraulic lines, the blank vertical tombstone of the console. The ship was dying. And she was deep in it, buried beneath the machinery and decks that towered above.

Her hands went to the mask. Her breath seemed to have a mind of its own, sucking in the rubber cheekpieces again and again. She couldn’t get enough air. She had to get out.

She turned and began wading back toward the ladder. The viscid mixture tided toward her, reaching nearly to her knees.

Then she stopped. Stared upward into the dark. At a gleam of light far, far above.

Somebody still had to close that valve.

Mouth dry, mind a dreadful milling of fear, she looked back again toward the sullenly waiting water. She saw the way she had to go, like a jerky handheld camera shot from a horror movie in front of her rapidly blinking eyes. Down, and to the left, and straight, and left again. Down to the valve, under the deck plate by the bulk of the fire pump. Turn it. And then back.

She knew the way. But she didn’t know what else was down there. What Helm had run into. That had trapped him. And killed him.