Sedulity 2: Aftershock (Sedulity Saga) (20 page)

“Thank you, Armando,” Reiner said. “So you’re ready to lock
up the booze now?”

“Yes, Sir. I only came in for a few shots as a painkiller,
and to numb the shock of seeing the end of the world on TV. The others came in
later and I thought I should try to calm their nerves too. There was some
dangerous talk earlier. I know I broke some rules, Sir, but I wanted to put
them back on the right course.”

“It’s alright, Armando. I heard what you were telling them. You
did the right thing. I know how hard this all must be for those with family
near the coast of the Pacific,” Reiner broke off as he realized that Armando,
being Filipino, was one those he spoke of.

“Yes, Sir,” the bartender replied evenly. “My family and my
home are gone now. I talked to them on a sat-phone from one of the lifeboats
last night. They went out to sea in a little boat to try climbing over the
waves the way the
Sedulity
did. It
was hopeless. I know it. They knew it too, I think. My father would rather go
out on his own terms, fighting, than wait for the waves to wash away our home.
They are gone now, but I am here. I want to do whatever I can to help this ship
and everyone aboard survive. It’s what my family would want me to do.”

“You’ve already done more than most, Armando. I can see how
badly you were burned, and I heard about your bravery last night. What you did
just now might mean even more to all of us. There are reports of unrest among
the crew, people abandoning their duties. That’s why I was sent down here.”

“It’s true, Sir. The men here were part of a larger group
that want to force the captain to take them home. I argued with them, showed
them all the pictures on TV, tried to convince them there was nothing to go
home to, but many wouldn’t listen. I decided that the ones who stayed with me
deserved a drink. And I listened to them. They are afraid. They are hopeless.
They think the world is ending, and all they want is to go home and find their
families. It is very sad.”

“Yes, it is,” Reiner agreed. “But we have to keep this ship
running as best we can until we reach port. I’m sure the captain won’t force
any of the crew to remain aboard, not if they want to get off and the
Australians will let them. Or perhaps we will drop off most of the passengers
and then be free to decide where to take the ship next, even go looking for
surviving family of the crew. Who knows? All we can focus on now is keeping the
crew motivated to man this ship. You did well with that bunch. I think most of
them took your message to heart.”

“Thank you, Sir. I was only doing my duty as a good bartender
and loyal member of the crew.”

“Yes, indeed,” Reiner smiled. “Well, in that case, I’ll have
one more shot of that rum before you close up the bar and go back to your cabin.
It’s been a hell of a night and even worse day.”

“Yes, Sir,” Armando said while he poured a full shot for the
Lieutenant.

“What else can you tell me about the others? The ones who
wouldn’t listen to you?”

“There were a dozen that I saw, mostly Indonesian, a few
Filipinos. Their leader is a cook named Baluk. They were trying to get others
to join them. My Taiwanese friend, Phong, went with them, but he is not really
on their side. I asked him to play along and keep tabs on them. Please don’t
punish him, Sir.”
 

“I don’t want to punish anyone, Armando. I want the same
things that you do,” Reiner said earnestly. “I know the crew must be taking
this as hard as the passengers. But we have to convince everyone, crew and
passengers alike, that keeping the ship running is the most important thing for
all of us now. I’ll keep your friend in mind when I find that bunch. Now lock
up the bar and go back to your cabin to rest and recover.”

“I can come with you to find them, Sir,” Armando offered.

“Jesus, Armando, you’re covered in bandages and burns,
wearing a bathrobe and slippers. You’ve already done enough to help save the
ship and defuse this situation. Now go back to bed and try not to worry. I’m
sure we’ll be able to get everyone back on track soon.”

Armando looked dubious, but obeyed orders while Lt. Reiner
used his radio to ask Mr. Cohen and another security officer to meet him in the
Crew Lounge. He didn’t want to escalate a conflict, but decided it would be
best not to confront a dozen or more rebellious crewmen by himself. After
locking the roll-down shutters on the bar, Armando wished the lieutenant luck
and returned to his cabin. He really didn’t want to be mixed up in any sort of
trouble, having seen more than enough of it since last night.

*****

HMAS Bounder
had completed a near approach to the
impact zone and was now fighting her way back towards a rendezvous with the
Sedulity
and the voyage to safety in
Darwin
.
Conditions near the impact
zone had continued to deteriorate and the Australian frigate had encountered
hurricane force winds more than 25 miles from the steam column, forcing her to
turn back short of the 20 mile mark.
 
Commander Anders was more than happy to aim his ship away from the
source of the apocalypse and head for home, or what was left of it. Steaming
full speed into the wind and swells felt much better than being pushed towards
the source of global disaster.

The news continued to worsen, along with the weather, and the
full impact of this catastrophe was beginning to sink in. The crew were
uniformly disheartened. There was no threat of mutiny here, not on an
Australian warship, but the devastation already wreaked upon their homeland was
enough to take the wind out of everyone’s sails. Only those from inland cities
or Outback towns felt confident that their homes and loved ones still
existed.
 
The majority of the crew were
morose and dejected by the probability that they no longer had a home and
family to return to.

Commander Anders could barely stand to hear the steady stream
of bad news coming in on the communications links. The California coast was
wiped out, followed by Oregon and Japan on opposite sides of the Pacific. In
Oregon the tsunamis roared up the Columbia River and wiped out Portland, then
filled the Columbia Gorge and overran the hydroelectric dam, flooding all the
way to Hood River and beyond. Before the tsunamis reached Seattle the volcano
beneath Mount Rainier blew its top and wiped out everything and everyone within
fifty miles. Reports indicated that New Zealand had been decimated. The coasts
of South Africa and Argentina had also been hit hard. What would happen next?
Anders tempered his anguish by reminding himself that Europe and other nations
along the Atlantic Ocean had escaped destruction, but his intuition told him
their reprieve might not last long. This was the damned apocalypse. He felt it
in his gut. It might not be end of the world, it was the end of the world as he
knew it.

Chapter 10

The tsunamis were still powerful when they reached
Antarctica. Along most of the Pacific coastline they smashed straight into
mountains and glaciers, reflecting back to sea as smaller tsunamis headed back
north. In the Ross Sea, however, a much different phenomena occurred. The depth
of the water, ranging from 1,000 to 3,000 feet, prevented the tsunami from
reaching great heights, but focused its power into the wide gulf. Part of the
waves did break against the massive frozen walls of the Ross Ice Shelf, but the
vast majority of the tsunamis’ power was channeled beneath the massive ice
shelf. As the floor of the Ross Sea shoaled into shallower depths the force of
the water moving below the ice shelf grew enormously. Unlike air, water can’t
be compressed. Sandwiched between the shoaling sea floor and the massive ice
shelf above, the water pressure generated by the tsunami became astronomical.

The scientists at McMurdo Station on the Ross Ice Shelf were
not taken completely by surprise. They had been warned to expect the tsunamis, though
no one had quite grasped how devastating they could be.
 
The initial impact of the waves upon the edge
of the ice shelf was dramatic and caused the calving of hundreds of large
icebergs, but there was little damage to the station and no injuries were
reported. Their relief was short lived, however, when the ice shelf surrounding
the station was struck by a series of what appeared to be earthquakes. Of
course it was nothing of the sort, since the ice shelf was floating on water
and the station itself, on the barren Ross Island, didn’t shake at all. What
they witnessed instead was the entire ice shelf being lifted by the power of
the tsunamis trapped and moving beneath it. Ice shattered with what sounded
like rolling thunder all along the coast of the Ross Sea, including the shores
of Ross Island where McMurdo Station was perched.

As the force of the tsunamis became channeled into the
narrower and shallower southern end of the Ross Sea it had nowhere to go but
up, even if that meant displacing cubic miles of the ice shelf above. In a
colossal display of elemental force the ice shelf shattered and in places
exploded into the air, driven by the force of seawater that erupted through
countless fractures spanning hundreds of miles.
 
A shelf of ice close to the size of France and more than a thousand feet
thick in places was sliced off from the glaciers that fed it and slid away from
the coast of Antarctica.

Movement of the ice shelf, now a massive collection of the
largest icebergs in history, was accelerated by the force of the tsunami
rebounding off the coast of Antarctica, driving massive portions of the shelf
out to sea. This caused a displacement wave to spread north with a force
greater than the tsunami created by an undersea landslide off the coast of
Indonesia in 2004. Though far less powerful than the impact tsunamis generated
by the asteroid strike, these waves were aimed at the southern coasts of New
Zealand and Australia, towards cities and coastlines that had largely escaped
damage by the initial waves.
 

The release of the Ross Ice Shelf into the South Pacific
would cause significant sea level rise in the short term as it began to melt,
but its greater impact would be to cool the South Seas and accelerate global
climate change during the southern summer. Scientists at McMurdo Station sent
out urgent warnings, most of which were ignored during the acute phase of the
crisis. It would take many hours for stunned scientists around the world to put
the puzzle pieces together. By then another disaster would already be in
progress.

*****

Kevin had sent out dozens of emails with attached data dump
files and was now trying to call a friend who worked for the National Weather
Service at the Climate Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland. Stephen
Cline had taken post-graduate courses in climatology with Kevin at Cal Tech a
couple of years before and was a whiz when it came to global forecasting. It
was taking longer than usual for him to get to the phone, but Kevin figured
everyone there was pretty busy tonight. After a five minute wait, when Kevin was
about to hang up and try again, he finally got through.

“Steve? This is Kevin.”

“I know, buddy. I’m too busy to chat right now. Big trouble
out in the Pacific, as I’m sure you know. I’m really glad you made it through
the disasters in California, but I don’t have time to fill you in on the big
picture. Are you at home? Can I call you back?”

“No, Steve, wait a second. I’m not in California. I’d
probably be dead if I were. I’m calling you from a ship in the Pacific, near
the equator. I saw the asteroid strike up close and we’ve been recording
weather phenomena ever since.”

“You’re where?” Stephen sounded flabbergasted. “What ship are
you on?”

“The
Sedulity
, it’s
a big cruise ship. We were on our way to Australia.”

“The
Sedulity
? Oh,
man, we just received a pile of weather data downloaded through NOAA and a
satellite feed from the Emergency Managers Weather Info Service that came from
that ship. It has everyone pulling their hair out here.
 
Did you send that data?”

“Yes, Steve, and it’s all legit. I compiled it myself. We
were about a hundred miles away from the impact. The thermal and blast effects
smashed up the ship and set her on fire, until the tsunamis arrived to put them
out. I didn’t think we could survive it, but we did, or most of us did. And
then we went in closer for a look at the impact zone afterwards. It’s
apocalyptic, Steve. You’ve got the raw data now. I just wanted to call and tell
you what I think it means.”

“Go ahead, Kevin. Do you mind if I turn on my voice
recorder?”

“Please do,” Kevin said with relief. He had to get this off
his chest, and Steve was not only in a position to make the most use of his
data, but was also a friend who might be more inclined to accept his incredible
conclusions than some stranger. Kevin spent the next five minutes detailing the
climate predictions that he and Professor Farnsworth had developed. He ran
through their estimates of the amount of vaporized water being pumped into the
atmosphere, as well as the dust from all the volcanic eruptions they had seen
reported on television. He described the twenty mile wide column of steam, how
it was sucking air into the base from every direction, and how the cloud cover
was expanding in every direction from the point of impact at hurricane force
speed. Kevin pointed out that rain had been falling at half a foot per hour
since the event began, with no letup in sight, and concluded with a dire
prediction of global storms and major climate change pointing towards a new ice
age.

Steve listened patiently on the other end of the line until
Kevin finished up by saying, “So, I guess I’m calling you with the wild hope
that you’ll tell me I have it all wrong. Do I, Steve?” There was a long pause
and Kevin was worried the call had been terminated. “Am I wrong, Steve?”

“No, Kevin, I’m afraid your projections are probably
accurate. More so than my own, since I’m only now seeing the direct data you
collected. What you just told me only confirms my own fears,” Steve said. “But
don’t hold your breath to hear that forecast echoed on NOAA weather alerts, at
least not until the current crisis is dealt with. We’re all grateful for the
data you’re collecting out there. Please keep sending it. But, Kevin? You
really should keep those long-term projections to yourself for now.”

“Why? You heard what I said. And you agree?” Kevin was
confused. “People need to know what’s coming next.”

“It’s not that simple,” Stephen said. “I recorded what you
said and I promise the right people will hear it, but your projections are more
than weather forecasts. That stuff’s political now.”

“So what?”

“So we can’t start another panic, not after what the world
has been through today,” Steve said. “Government leaders at every level will
get climate forecasts on a need to know basis. They need time to prepare for
this without facing a run on every commodity and source of supplies by
terrified citizens. We have to develop evacuation and relocation plans, move
stockpiles south, and mobilize resources in a methodical way. That can’t happen
if we behave like Chicken Little. I mean, yes, the sky has fallen and it’s
going to get worse before it gets any better, but we need to handle this the
right way. What you said about climate change sparking mass migration and even
wars? That’s no joke. You start spreading doom and gloom predictions now,
before we’re ready to deal with another crisis, and it could spark chaos.
Perhaps chaos that might be avoidable if we use the remaining time wisely to
prepare for what’s coming.”

“Alright, Steve, I can see what you’re getting at,” Kevin
agreed grudgingly. “I guess being in the news business gives me a different
perspective than you government types. I do feel like I should be yelling that
the sky is falling from every rooftop, or on every radio channel and website I
can access from this ship.”

“I know, Kevin, but you mustn’t. It would do much more harm
than good.”

 
“Either way, it’s
going to be bad, Steve. I haven’t seen any firm numbers, but I’m guessing we’ve
already lost hundreds of millions of people from the tsunamis and earthquakes.”

“Closer to a billion,” Steve said sadly.

“Damn,” Kevin cursed. “A global flood and ice age will kill
even more than that.”

“That’s probably true.”

“You aren’t going to warn them?”

“Not yet. Not until we can also offer advice and guidance to
help them survive – some hope to counter their despair. I mean think about it,
Kevin,” Steven said calmly. “If someone had known that an asteroid was going to
strike the Earth yesterday, do you really think they should have told us in
advance? Would that have made any real difference? Aside from sparking global
panic and mayhem sooner than later?
 
Or
having millions more refugees to care for during the coming crisis?”

“Are you saying you knew this was coming?” Kevin asked in
disbelief.

“No, of course not,” Steve replied sharply. “I had no warning
of an impending asteroid strike, but that doesn’t mean that no one else did.
And I wouldn’t blame them for not announcing it, if they knew. Would you really
have wanted to tell a billion people that they were going to die in a week or a
month, and not be able to say for sure who was safe or not?
 
Or what they could do to avoid that fate? How
much more fear and pain and suffering would that have caused?”

Kevin was dumbstruck. He hadn’t even considered that aspect
of this tragedy. Would it be better to let people live in ignorant bliss, if
only for a short time? To laugh, and love, and dream in peace for a little
while longer, rather than shatter those lives and dreams without offering a
solution? All Kevin could say was, “Oh my God.”

Steve said, “You do understand, don’t you?” and Kevin
suddenly realized that he did.
 
When he
ended that call Kevin spent several minutes of soul-searching before calling
his parents. Should he tell them that he was alive and well? Or that the whole
world was screwed? It was obvious which of those messages would make them
happier, if only for now.

*****

Lydia took Rachel to the room assignment table, cutting to
the front of a line of disgruntled and displaced passengers. She explained
Rachel’s situation to the purser’s mate on duty and was able to get the injured
widow assigned to a bunk in a cabin with three female crew members located on
the same corridor as Armando’s cabin, and not far from the medical center.
 
Rachel sounded pleased with the
arrangements.
 
The captain’s wife decided
to take Rachel down there herself to get settled, then stop by the med center again
to check in on the injured and make sure everyone was being fed. On the way
down to Crew Country she explained the layout below decks and what Rachel could
expect in her new cabin.

“The crew quarters are comfortable and cozy, but don’t expect
any luxuries,” Lydia explained while they walked. “You won’t have any window or
porthole. There’s a bathroom in the cabin, but it’s quite small. You’ll be
sharing the room with three women from the hospitality staff. I’ll make sure
they give you one of the lower bunks because of your injuries.”

“Thank you so much, Mrs. Krystos,” Rachel said. “You and
Amanda have been so kind.”

“You’ve suffered more than most, Rachel. The least we can do
is try to make you as comfortable as possible.
 
And your friend Armando’s room is right across the hall.”

“He’s not really my friend,” Rachel said. “More like a
guardian angel. I don’t know what would have happened to me last night if
Armando hadn’t found me and taken me down to get medical attention. He was so
brave to go back up looking for Brad...” Her voice trailed off while her
thoughts wandered. Lydia guided Rachel towards her new cabin while offering
more commentary on how and where the crew lived.

The companionways in Crew Country were mostly empty and
quiet, as they should be with the crew working double shifts to clean up the
ship and make repairs. The two women encountered a few injured crew and several
displaced passengers on their way to Rachel’s new cabin, but it was otherwise
quiet. That changed when they reached the corridor of her assigned room.