“Those are military drones,” Kurt said, recalling a briefing he’d attended months ago in Washington. “They’re called penetrators. They’re designed to puncture a ship’s hull without an explosion. The Chinese use them to attack ships crossing their so-called nine-dash line. Then claim the sinking vessels ran aground on rocks and reefs that don’t exist.”
The captain snapped his fingers at the helmsman, who pushed the wheel over to the right while moving the engine handle to full forward.
The ship began to throb as its powerful gas turbine engine revved and the propellers churned the sea. It had only just begun to turn when a slight impact reverberated through the ship and up through the bridge.
Alarms went off almost instantaneously. Lights flashed on the damage-control panel.
One of the crewmen scanned the screen in front of him tensely. “We’re detecting water in compartments three and four,” he announced. Those compartments were almost directly under the bridge.
Another thud followed. Duller and farther back. And then a third that was barely detectable. By now half the control panel was flashing red and yellow lights.
“Flooding in compartment ten,” the crewman added. His voice was noticeably more tense. “Additional flooding in the engine room.”
Klaxons sounded throughout the ship. The captain rushed to the damage-control station. He looked stricken at what he saw.
“How bad is it?” Kurt asked.
“We’ve got flooding in four compartments, all on the port side. Including the engine room, which is a large space.” The captain’s eyes darted back and forth as he scanned the data and came to a conclusion, then looked up. “If we don’t stop it quickly, the ship will roll.”
Chapter 19
Kurt and Joe stood by as the captain and the executive officer huddled with a damage-control specialist in front of a computer screen. A couple taps of the keyboard brought up a 3D model of the ship, showing the compartments, passageways, and bulkheads. Sensors spread throughout the ship revealed the current conditions in each area.
The damage was extensive. Four compartments on the waterline were flashing blue, which indicated flooding. A fifth compartment was blinking yellow, indicating water had been detected but only in smaller quantities. The power was out in the forward section of the ship and one of the watertight doors appeared to be stuck in a partially open position. Numbers on the side of each compartment showed the rate at which the ship was taking on water. A list could already be felt taking hold.
“Run a simulation,” the captain ordered. “I need to know how much time we have.”
The damage-control specialist tapped a few keys. A small clock in the upper right-hand corner began to spin rapidly, making a complete revolution every two seconds. In accelerated time, the damagedcompartments turned dark blue. The ship’s lights went out as the engine room filled and the list increased until it became unstable. The simulation ended when theLyracapsized. Only eighteen imaginary minutes had passed.
Joe glanced over at Kurt with a grim look on his face. Things did not look good. The flooding was too widespread, and the ship’s odd profile was working against it. The bulbous X-shaped bow and the piled-up superstructure made her top-heavy to begin with, which would cause her to flip over rapidly when the lean passed thirty-five degrees.
“Run it again, with ballast taken on the starboard side,” the captain said. “Keep us upright.”
An age-old defense against capsizing was to flood compartments on the opposite side of the ship. But that approach had limits, too. Take on too much and all you’d managed to do was sink the ship in a more controlled manner.
The specialist ran the test, but with only moderate ballast. The ship still capsized, though it took an additional ten minutes to do so.
“Max it out,” the captain ordered. “I need to know if we can stay up or not.”
With full ballast added, the on-screen version of theLyrasettled on a more even keel. But she settled too far and was soon swamped and foundering. With the seas running six to eight feet, that would never do. “We either sink upright, or we sink inverted,” the captain groused.
He was moving closer to giving the order no officer ever wanted to give: abandon ship. His dilemma was a particularly cruel one. He didn’t want to issue the command at all, and certainly not if there was any other legitimate option, but if he was going to give thatorder, the sooner the better. Even for a highly trained crew like theLyra’s, getting off a sinking ship at night, in bad weather, would be dangerous. It was unwise to leave such a task to the last possible minute.
From Kurt’s perspective the die had been cast. A steel-hulled ship filling with so much water simply could not remain afloat. Not by any normal means, at least. But Kurt had spent half his life bringing ships and other objects that had lost their battles with the sea back to the surface. Viewed as a salvage operation, Kurt was convinced they could keep theLyraon the surface.
“I think we can keep her afloat,” Kurt said.
“How?”
“By doing some things you can’t simulate on this computer.”
The captain stared at Kurt long and hard. “What do you have in mind?”
“Flood the starboard compartments slowly,” Kurt said. “Allow as much list as the ship can safely handle. Believe it or not that’ll slow down the flooding by trapping some air. It might even keep the compartments from flooding to the top. In the meantime, Joe and I will take the salvage gear we brought to lift the EAGL and wrap it around the ship like a giant life preserver.”
“That gear is designed to lift about five hundred tons,” the captain said. “We’ll take on three times that weight in seawater.”
“We don’t have to counteract every drop,” Kurt said. “Just enough to keep the deck above the waves until we can do some repairs.”
