Carefully, Trusov unbuckled her five-point belt and lowered herself to the surface that used to be the bulkhead to her right, but was now a deck below her boots. She climbed away from her seat and console and found a battlelantern on a bracket of the deck — which used to be the bulkhead. She hit the on-switch and shone the light around the compartment. The other three — Captain Kovalov, First Officer Vlasenko and Navigator Dobryvnik — were all still strapped in, but hanging from their seatbelts. She reached up to try to rouse Kovalov, but although he was breathing, he wouldn’t respond. She tried the first officer and navigator, but their skin was cold and neither had a pulse. The shock must have hit them harder, or they weren’t as strong as she and Kovalov, she thought. She headed aft slowly, carefully, climbing over manuals that had fallen from their bookshelves, pad computers, teacups and other gear. She stared at the heavy hatch to the second compartment, but fortunately, the hinge was on the deck — if the boat had tilted to port, she would have been trapped in the cockpit compartment, unable to lift the two-hundred-kilogram hatch. She undogged the hatch, hit the opening lever, and it fell toward her with a loud slam just as she jumped away.
The second compartment was a complete wreck. Normally, the galley compartment, it was littered with cooking implements, pots, pans and stored food. It took a long time for her to reach the hatch to the third compartment, but when she got there, she opened it the same way she had with the last hatch. If the second compartment were messy, the third compartment looked like a huge bomb had detonated there. The hydronauts, the divers, should have been in this compartment, but there was no sign of them. The compartment housed the hotel quarters. Bunks, lockers, and bathrooms. With all the contents heaped up on the deck as high as a mountain, she had no idea how she’d get to the fourth compartment, but after ten minutes of climbing over debris, she made it to the fourth compartment hatch.
Beyond, the fourth compartment housed a large airlock for the hydronauts’ lock-out chamber, plus the atmospheric control equipment. The divers’ gear was strewn all over the deck, but it was less of an obstacle than the third compartment’s mess. She made it to the hatch to the fifth compartment, where nuclear control was situated. The sixth and seventh compartments were unoccupied, housing the nuclear reactor and steam machinery. Trusov opened the hatch, jumped away as it clanged open, and stepped through, a large puddle of blood below her boots. She looked down and saw the body of Starshina Statji Roman Leonty, the engineering senior chief petty officer. On the opposite end of the compartment, the chief engineer, Captain Third Rank Chernobrovin, lay on the deck covered in heavy books and manuals. She pulled the debris off his body and tried to sit him up.
His color was good, there was no blood, and he had a pulse. Trusov slapped him, but he didn’t respond. She considered for a moment that if she were the sole survivor, she would die when the air ran out. Or when the battery died, or the vessel started flooding. Or caught fire.
“Chernobrovin!” she screamed. “Chief! Wake the fuck up!”
She kept that up until, finally, the chief engineer’s left eye opened into a slit.
“Fuck,” he said.
“Yeah, fuck is right,” Trusov said. “Now wake the hell up and help me recover.”
“What happened?”
“The hell you think happened? We took a nuclear explosion. We’re on our side. We need to get the ship on an even keel and restart the reactor.”
The engineer put his head in both hands and moaned.
“No time to whine now, Chief,” Trusov said. “How do we right the ship?”
“Propulsion,” Chernobrovin said.
“What? Talk like it matters, Chief. What did you say?”
“The screw,” he said. “It’s a ducted propulsor but it has a large range of motion, up to forty-five degrees from the long axis of the ship. If I can get propulsion, you can aim the propulsor to get us off the bottom and get the list off the ship.”
“Well, then restart the reactor and do it,” she said.
“I can’t,” Chernobrovin said. “The reactor won’t work unless it’s oriented correctly. Too many gravity systems. Even coolant through the core needs the correct gravity vector, because it’s natural circulation. It won’t work on its side. And the condensers won’t drain so no steam will happen. Hell, the boilers won’t even work on their sides. And the turbine bearings need gravity to drain them.”
Trusov took a deep breath. What was it about engineers, she fumed. Always the thing that had to be done was impossible.
“So connect up the battery and use it to operate the propulsor,” she said, hoping that would be possible.
“Help me,” he said. “We need to get to the compartment’s lower level by this hatch.” He pointed to a hatch that should have been on the deck, but instead was on the bulkhead. “You can take local control there.”
Together they pulled on the hatch opening mechanism until it finally budged and came down, almost hitting her.
“I’ve got to get in there and reset the breakers. Shock makes them open circuit.”
“Well, do it, for God’s sake,” she said. He climbed into the space that was beneath nuclear control but was now a room to port. She climbed in after him and there was barely room for one person. There was a small jump seat at the aft end with a joystick, throttle, and small control panel. Trusov heard thumping as Chernobrovin shut breakers. With one thump, half the lights came back on. With another one, they all lit up. Trusov wasn’t sure what was worse — operating in the darkened hull, or seeing all the crazy damage with the lights on, the disorientation of the ship lying on its side inspiring raw fright.
She took a deep breath and made her way to the jump seat and tried to strap in. She had to stretch and reach up, since the seat was on the ship’s centerline and she was standing on what was the far starboard bulkhead.
“Help me into this seat,” she told the engineer. He pushed while she pulled, and he held her in place long enough for her to fasten the seat belt.
“You should have power to the propulsor,” he said. “If you put on what would be a left turn and backing revolutions, the propulsor should pull us off the bottom into clear water. As you feel it, straighten out, but keep the backing turns on and the propulsor angled upward so it pulls up at an angle off the bottom. Once you get the boat in clear water, it should right itself on its own. At least I hope it does. Just bear in mind, battery amp-hours are a limited resource, so just use enough power to get this done, then stop when we’re level, but don’t be timid, or the suction from the bottom will keep us there.”
“Fine, yes, I have it,” Trusov said impatiently. Goddamned engineers, she thought. She was tempted to let him do it himself, but she was the systems officer and pilot-in-command, and driving the ship was her responsibility. “Turning the prop now,” she said, putting the joystick in her right hand over hard to port. “Backing down now.” Her left hand closed on the throttle and she smoothly but quickly moved it from its central detent to far aft.
The ship vibrated as the propulsor spun up. She monitored RPM on the small control panel. The prop speed went from 30 to 40 to 60, the vessel vibrating harder, but nothing was happening. Trusov pulled the throttle back to full astern. Revolutions climbed to 120, then steadied at 150, and the whole ship shook so hard it jarred her teeth. She clamped her eyes shut for just a half second, hearing her own voice in her mind: help me, Daddy, please help me.