“Damn,” he said, and considered that, if the ship’s company was able to control and extinguish the fires, Sheffield might just be saved. He turned, reached a hand out, and hesitantly tested the temperature of a hatch’s latch. It was warm and tolerable. He clasped his hand about it and opened the portal. Inside, he found only heat and thick, choking smoke. He pushed on into the blackened passageway. It was just several meters before his lungs demanded air. He tried to take a breath. The bite on his airway was harshly acrid and hot. His throat closed and he grabbed at it, trying again to breathe. His body denied his effort, and instead it folded over and slid down a wall. A fellow sailor wearing a respirator grabbed and pulled Fryatt back outside and into the open air. Fryatt immediately coughed and sucked in great breaths of air.
When his greedy breathing slowed again, and he was able to look up and concentrate, Fryatt saw a great grey wall beside Sheffield. It was the frigate Yarmouth. She had come alongside. Her hoses provided boundary cooling, and her sailors and small boats provided rescue. Though Fryatt repeatedly coughed and continued struggling to breathe, he managed to return a salute thrown from a sailor on Yarmouth’s deck.
Five hours later, Sheffield was abandoned to the fire. Her surviving crew had been transferred, and the proud warship’s smoking, steaming hulk was left to roll and pitch on the cold, frothy sea. Two hours after that, flame roared from every one of Sheffield’s openings, and her steel bent and turned black with char. Sheffield fought her last battle there, upon the South Atlantic, and resisted the rot of flame for some six days. Then, with all the dignity she could muster, Sheffield succumbed, rolled onto her side, and went down. An hour later, she rested on the bottom being inspected by fish. Nineteen of her dead remained with her.
From Hermes flight deck, yet another of Sheffield’s dead was tipped over the deck. He had perished, and was committed to the sea, in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection unto eternal life. Twenty-six more of Sheffield’s wounded suffered in the carrier’s sick ward with burns, shock, and smoke inhalation. Sub-Lieutenant Lawrence Fryatt was among them.
1: NAVIS
“Four hoarse blasts of a ship's whistle still raise the hair on my neck and set my feet to tapping.”
The Norwegian Sea, a vast, black flatness, shivered in the cold, clear night. Pricks of bright light filled the sky and reflected in the calm water. These stars made it hard to tell where the heavens ended and the sea began. They seemed to be alive and spoke to one another with staccato flickers. A lone warship made way upon the sea, disturbing the black diamond-sprinkled tapestry, cleaving and pushing aside the reflected stars in a wave that undulated across the ocean’s surface.
This warship was His Majesty’s Ship Dragon, the Royal Navy’s latest guided-missile destroyer. Of the Daring-class, otherwise known as the Type 45, Dragon was some 500 feet-long and crowned by a towering pyramidal mast topped by a radar dome. Like her namesake, Dragon had deadly sharp claws and teeth.
A floating fortress, Dragon’s archers were missiles; her catapults: guns; and a Merlin lived in a cave at her stern. Dragon wore an invisibility cloak of sorts, with faceted sides that scattered enemy radar waves from her deceptive grey form. Every bit the agile slippery wyrm, or dragon, this proud ship could examine air, sea, and space in crystal screens, and when cornered or when in the mood, she could breathe very hot fire. Like most castles of old, just one man ruled this floating realm.
Dragon’s bridge served as Captain Lawrence Fryatt’s throne room. Surrounded by loyal and obedient lieges, Fryatt exercised well-earned authority from a barely cushioned cold metal chair. Though his voice was often soft, sometimes even whispered, it thundered nonetheless. His voice brought immediate compliance, driving actions that were frequently a matter of life or death.
Like most in the Royal Navy, Fryatt was a simple man; he believed in country, duty, monarch, and navy. He also believed that the Type 45s, with their Sea Viper primary anti-air missile system, stood alone as the world’s premiere anti-air warfare surface vessels. The Americans could keep their Aegis cruisers, Fryatt thought; the Chinese could parade their Type 054A frigates all they wanted; and, the Russians could stuff their Project 21956 destroyers. Fryatt was proud of Dragon, proud of those he commanded, and he possessed an unwavering commitment to defense of the realm. Captain Fryatt adjusted his collar and shifted in his chair.
It’s too hot, Fryatt thought. Ever since fighting the blaze board Sheffield, ever since seeing the burned men, Fryatt had hated excessive heat. Even though the ship’s environmental system was doing its job of keeping the bridge and its company snug, the warm, dry breeze made Fryatt fidgety. He stood, drawing a concerned look from the officer-of-the-watch, a man who tried to anticipate his captain’s every need. Fryatt made his way to an exterior hatch. He swung open the heavy portal, and uttered a single word to whomever could hear: “Tea.” He stepped out to the bridge wing.
Fryatt clanged the hatch shut. Although the steel door could ward off biological agents, chemicals, and radiation, he used it to keep his company at bay — to steal a moment in a place that otherwise did not allow much privacy. While he accepted the strong steaming mug of lemon-tinged Earl Grey that arrived within moments, Fryatt would tolerate no other disturbances. He went to the rail and leaned upon it. It propped up his tired body. The rail also transmitted the ship’s harmonic to Fryatt’s bones.
Dragon’s bow gently rose and fell as she plowed through the sea, kicking up a spray that turned frosty and sparkled in the starlight. Fryatt drew a sharp, frigid breath that stung his lungs. He exhaled it as a cloud, watched it get caught in the breeze, and recalled his grandfather.
Fryatt’s grandfather had sailed the Murmansk Run during the Second World War, the run that brought supplies to a choked Soviet Union. The man had sailed an old steam merchant over these very waters, had skirted U-boats and the feared convoy raider Tirpitz, as well as icebergs that calved from the jagged shores of Greenland and became caught up in the Eastern Icelandic current. Fryatt sipped his tea and pondered the throbbing stars blanketing the dark night.
Fryatt had grown up in the west-end of London, a place where the night sky had for centuries been polluted with artificial light, light that subdued the glowing ribbon of the Milky Way, dulling its wonder. Tonight, however, far from the influence of man’s cityscapes, Earth and sky were beheld as they were meant to be: a vision that begged questions and forced fundamental things to be asked, private thoughts like: ‘Who am I?’ and ‘Why am I here?’ Despite such existential considerations, Fryatt knew why he, his comrades, and His Majesty’s warship were here, at the top of the world.
Russia had reawakened; the bear roused by a leader longing for empire. This leader had turned back time and progress, back to when east and west stood eye-to-eye and toe-to-toe. Flush with oily cash, the Russian had claimed most of the Arctic, and, in support of these aspirations, the Russian Federation had built new attack subs and missile boats. These machines and their men stretched their legs and made the Greenland-Iceland-UK Gap come alive again. Furthermore, resurrected strategic bombers — Backfires and Bears — once again flew out of the Kola Peninsula to buzz the Finns, Swedes and Norwegians, and play chicken with the United Kingdom’s northern air defense identification zone.