Soon the roaring noise got quieter and the fog cleared. Pacino rotated both blow levers back down and watched the depth gauge, the needle climbing up past 200 to 150. Finally it stopped at thirty-five, and the deck rolled to starboard, then port, then steadied. They were on the surface. The inclinometer showed a slight up angle, by two degrees. Pacino hoped that wasn’t bad news. If they were flooding aft, the up angle would increase and the day would end early.
Pacino called out to the room. “Anyone awake? Hello?”
He shone the battle lantern light around the room, slower this time. Everyone was out cold. His light fell onto River Styxx, whose head had impacted the weapon control console, shattering the display and deeply cutting her face. He felt her neck, but there was no pulse and her flesh was cold. At the Pos Two console, Easy Eisenhart sat, his head completely turned around so that it faced backwards, a look of terror frozen on his face. His flesh was also cold, although Pacino knew it was useless to verify it.
Dammit, he cursed to himself. He had to stop worrying about the crew and hurry aft and get the battery online. The nuclear explosion must have opened every electrical breaker onboard. He carefully stepped aft, trying to avoid slipping from the blood on the deck, until he left control and was in the central passageway, then down the ladder to the middle level of the crew’s mess. There were bodies on the deck, none of them conscious. His light shone on the form of Senior Chief Corpsman Grim Thornburg. Pacino tried to shake him awake, but there was no response. He felt his neck for a pulse. The skin was warm and there was a pulse, but he was nonresponsive.
Beside Thornburg was the body of Chief McGuire, the A-gang chief, whose head was only connected to his bloody neck by a few fibers of flesh, the blood puddle surrounding him.
Pacino hurried to the dogged-shut hatch to the shielded tunnel of the reactor compartment. He held the handle of the battle lantern in his teeth while he undogged the hatch, opened it and set it on the latch, then stepped through. He jogged down the tunnel, since there was no blood and no bodies, got to the aft hatch and undogged it and latched it open, then emerged into the aft compartment’s engineroom.
He sniffed the air for smoke, but it just smelled like steam, lube oil, and atmospheric control amines. But the deck seemed to be tilting, just slightly, aft. He forced himself to ignore the deck’s tilt and found what he was looking for in the long rows of cabinets of the motor control center. The battery breaker cabinet was memorized by every sailor onboard as part of qualifying in submarines. Pacino could have found it in the dark, he thought. He put down the battle lantern, reached down to the breaker handle — a large tongue of tough black plastic — and pulled it upward with all his strength. As it came to rest in the closed position, it made a loud thump, and almost instantly the overhead lights flickered on, just for an instant, then went out, then flickered back on, then out again, but the third time they came on and held. In the circle of light between the panels, the electrical division chief, Senior Chief McGraceland, could be seen, face down. Pacino felt for a pulse, but McGraceland’s skin was cold and he was obviously dead. Pacino turned off the battle-lantern and jogged farther aft to maneuvering, the nuclear control room.
He shook his head in dismay. Lieutenant Commander Moose Kelly was on the deck, the body of Ensign Long Hull Cooper on top of her. The electrical and reactor operators were on the deck beneath their panels. Pacino crouched down and verified that none of the prone crewmen had a pulse. So much goddamned death, he thought. He stepped to the right-side console, the electric plant control panel. Now that the battery was online, he could use its electricity to operate the other breakers. He looked at the battery amp-hour meter, which was clicking very slowly.
“Mr. Patch!” a voice from the door to maneuvering called. Pacino turned. It was the mechanical division chief, Chief Sam-I-Am MacHinery, his face covered in grease and blood.
“Help me, Chief!” Pacino said. “I can operate the electric plant but I need help starting up the engineroom.”
“Can you get the reactor restarted?”
Pacino looked at the reactor plant control panel. Unlike the electric plant, it was like the ship-control station — all flatpanel displays driven by computers.
“I don’t know. We may need the diesel if we can get the head valve opened. But let me try.”
Pacino reached to the electric plant control panel and snapped shut the breaker from the battery breaker to the port side motor-generator. The motor-generator was a caveman means of converting DC power to AC power, by having the DC electricity drive a motor, connected by a shaft to an AC generator, which then powered the AC buses in the absence of a steam turbine generator. Pacino scanned the voltage at the DC end, then the AC end and the AC frequency, which had stabilized at 60 Hertz. So far, so good. He snapped shut the MG output breaker, energizing the port AC vital bus. He listened and sniffed. No sound of any electrical explosions and no smoke.
The flatpanels at the reactor control panel flashed to life, going from their default screen to a startup display, finally stabilizing with all the normal reactor control indications. Thank God, Pacino thought. Now, if he could get the inverter breakers shut, they’d be able to restart.
He left maneuvering, MacHinery following him, back to the motor control center, where he found the reactor control rod inverter cabinets.
“Shutting inverter A breaker,” he said, and pulled up a thick black plastic tab much like the battery breaker’s operator. The breaker shut. “No fireballs. It’s a good day, Chief.” He found inverter B. “Shutting the breaker for inverter Bravo.” He pulled it up, the inverter humming with power. “Inverter Charlie now.” He pulled that breaker up and sighed in relief. All three breakers held and there were no electrical shorts.
He stepped out to the row between the cabinets and checked RCP-5, the master reactor control remote cabinet. He opened the plexiglass cover and checked the protection circuits and the instrumentation circuit breakers. Everything was nominal.
“We’re good to go, Chief,” Pacino said. He walked back into maneuvering, found the curled microphone cord for the 1MC general announcing circuit and spoke into it, his voice booming through the ship.
“This is Lieutenant Pacino. Any personnel who are awake and able, report to maneuvering. Commencing fast recovery startup.”
On the touchscreen, he selected the control area for the nuclear instrumentation, selected the source range channel selector switch, and put it into the mode labeled “startup range.” He selected the rod group control function area on the touchscreen and selected group one rods to inverter A. He reached down to the panel for the pistol grip for the control rods. “Latching group one rods,” he said to MacHinery as he pulled out the pistol grip and rotated it to the nine o’clock position. He got a light on the display. He rotated the grip to the three o’clock position to withdraw rods. “Pulling out group one to the top of the core.”
It took thirty seconds to get group one rods out. The last time he’d been in maneuvering, group one was fully withdrawn and the reactor was controlled by group two, with group three halfway withdrawn. He selected inverter C to group three rods, then latched them as before. “Pulling group three to forty inches,” he said, again rotating the pistol grip to three o’clock. Fifteen seconds later, he selected group two rods to inverter B, latched them and started pulling.