“You think something killed the whales in this area?”
“I don’t know.”
They both remained silent for close to half an hour as the Sedna pointed downwards and dove deeper, past a depth of one hundred meters before easing off and beginning to move closer towards the designated navigation point. Ethan kept one eye on the sonar screen and the other right in front of him as they continued to jet past more swarms of shrimp. Fifteen minutes later, the sonar started pinging back, indicating that the wreck was very close.
Chloe let out a deep breath as the sunken hull of the Skandi Aurora loomed in front of them. The wreck’s white and red superstructure had not yet been encrusted with sea life or suffered any corrosion, a clear indicator that it was indeed a recent sinking. Easing up on the forward thrusters, she began to bring the submersible on a close orbit around the submerged hulk lying on its port side.
Ethan leaned forward and saw that the davits along the wreck’s starboard side had clearly been extended and the safety lines had been released. “The lifeboats are all gone, so there’s a good chance that some of the crew did escape.”
Chloe remained both guarded and skeptical. “So how come we didn’t spot any of them from the air using our drones or get their locator signals? Why didn’t we get any maydays on the radio?”
“Well, you know Morgenstern Oceanic,” Ethan said. “Maybe they were all picked up and told not to say anything afterwards.”
Chloe didn’t want to argue with him, and so instead concentrated on her piloting. Using the control stick and her foot pedals, she once again maneuvered the Sedna, this time bringing the submersible in line with the lower part of the wreck’s exposed underside. When their searchlights illuminated the Aurora’s keel, they both gasped out loud in surprise.
Huge, jagged holes perforated the underside of the Skandi Aurora’s hull. Several of the breaches were big enough to drive a car through. Chloe could only stare in amazement at the jagged cracks along the sides of the holes.
Ethan talked like he was out of breath. “Jesus H Christ. What the hell happened to her?”
Chloe had investigated several shipwrecks before, but looking at this latest one left her baffled. “It looks like the entire ship just ran over a bunch of sharp boulders that shredded her hull.”
Ethan leaned forward and pointed towards one of the larger hull breaches in front of them. “That’s impossible. If she ran aground then why is that hole made there by itself? That would only be possible if she landed on top of a pointy rock and then was somehow lifted up and punctured again. The whole keel of the ship would have continuous jagged cuts, not multiple holes like it was made of Swiss cheese.”
“You’re right. And there aren’t any shallow areas nearby. This whole region is in the deep sea.”
Blain’s voice came over their radio once again. “I’ve positioned my baby on the other side of the wreck so I can communicate with you guys. There’s plenty of debris that’s sunk towards the bottom. Seems I’ve found one of Izzy’s ROVs.”
Ethan switched one of his monitors to the channel which showed the video feed of Blain’s ROV. The screen showed a grainy live recording of an inoperative construction ROV lying on its side along the bottom of the seafloor.
“Request permission to try and retrieve the internal hard drive of that thing,” Blain said over the radio.
“Go ahead,” Ethan said.
“I would also like to request permission to retrieve the Skandi Aurora’s VDR.”
Ethan tilted his head up in confusion. “What’s a VDR?”
“Voyage Data Recorder,” Blain explained. “It’s like an aircraft’s black box, but for boats. Pretty much all modern commercial ships have them.”
“Fine, no problem,” Ethan said over the radio before looking over his shoulder and making eye contact with Chloe. “We can have Blain do the forensics work on this wreck. My suggestion is we focus on trying to find any survivors.”
Chloe nodded. “I’m open to suggestions on how to do that.”
“Okay, well I doubt we’ll find any down here so—”
Their conversation was interrupted when Captain Owens’s voice came over the radio. “Guys, the Wanderer’s MAD found something. It’s less than a hundred feet deep and not that far from you. I’ll relay the coordinates to your submersible’s computer, Chloe. Over and out.”
Chloe adjusted the joystick the moment the new navigation point flashed on her console. The Sedna immediately tilted nose up and made her way above the wreck before turning to port and heading out at close to full speed.
Ethan gripped his armrests. “Whoa, easy there, Chloe. You’ll drain the batteries in no time if you keep going at full throttle like this.”
Chloe kept her focus on the controls as the Sedna quickly attained a shallower depth in order to achieve less drag. “I already attached an extra battery pod before we put her in the water, so we’ve got enough juice for an extended run.”
Ethan couldn’t rebut her preparedness, so he just kept quiet instead.
The next several minutes passed uneventfully, as the submersible raced through the shallower waters towards the onboard computer’s designated target area. The sunlight coming down from the surface cast a myriad of moving columns of illumination as they continued onwards. Chloe’s concern for the fate of her brother was kept in check by her concentration on piloting the submersible as she continued to diligently monitor the Sedna’s onboard systems.
Ethan narrowed his eyes as he spotted a large shadow up ahead, floating a few meters beneath the swells. “What’s that?”
Chloe’s teeth began to chatter as the object loomed closer and its shape became evident. “It’s a diving bell. It m-must be from t-the Aurora.”
They both became silent as Chloe eased up on the throttle the moment their submersible closed to within five meters of the stricken capsule. The dangling cables and hoses at the top of the bell had clearly been sheared away, and the lines that would have held the missing clump weight were in tatters.
Chloe let out a pained moan as she maneuvered the Sedna in a slow orbit below the submerged diving bell and saw that the bottom hatch had been left open. A long black umbilical hose jutted out from the opening and snaked lazily along the depths until it ended with a torn line several dozen meters below.
Ethan adjusted one of the Sedna’s external lights and aimed it towards the bell’s open hatch. “It looks half flooded in there. Can you get us in closer?”
Chloe’s chin began to tremble, but she kept her panic in check as she adjusted the controls and the Sedna’s nose inched closer towards the opening.
Using the controller in front of him, Ethan extended one of the submersible’s mechanical arms which had a night vision camera attached to it, edging it closer until he could get a live video feed of the diving bell’s darkened interior.
Chloe threw her right hand over her mouth, stifling a shriek of horror as the green tinged video feed revealed a corpse floating inside the half-flooded chamber of the diving bell. The dead man still wore a hot water suit, but not a diving helmet. A number of small scavenger fish had managed to swim inside the capsule and had eaten the eyes out from their sockets.
Ethan let out a deep breath. He knew Gordon personally, and the body that lay inside of the bell clearly wasn’t him. “A standby diver. It looks like he might have banged his head against the walls and gotten knocked out before he could put his hat on. I think he might have drowned when the inside got flooded.”