"A lot of little details are slipping people's minds. Makes me feel like not everyone's been truthful.”
"It was three hours prior,” she repeated with emphasis. “I've been nothing but truthful with you.” Her face scrunched as she thought for a moment, reconsidering it. “I don’t know. It’s easy to get disoriented. Lose track of time. Maybe it wasn’t quite three hours. I don’t know. It’s kind of a blur.”
She was backtracking.
Another tremor rumbled, and a wave jolted the mini-sub. The bulkheads rattled, and power cut out. Propulsion stopped, and the vessel drifted forward, slowly sinking in the darkness. We’d been hovering a few feet off the sea floor. We didn't have far to sink. These mini-subs had a negative buoyancy in case of such power failure. Usually, smaller submersibles had positive buoyancy and returned to the surface in case of emergency. But a return to the surfaceunder these conditions would mean death without adequate decompression.
The backup auxiliary power kicked on. It was enough to supply minimal lighting, the CO2 scrubbers, and some instrumentation. Not enough to power the thrusters.
We were dead in the water.
28
Sweat sprouted on Elana’s brow. Her eyes widened with panic. She looked like she’d guzzled a pot of coffee.
“So much for control,” I muttered.
“That’s not funny!”
“Slow, deep breaths. Everything’s going to be okay.”
She nodded, closed her eyes, and filled her lungs.
“Is this what you mean by battery issues?”
“More of an issue with recharge,” she said. “But nobody’s experienced anything like this yet.”
“Do we get extra points for being the first?” I teased.
“No, but maybe we’ll get points for surviving if we get out of this mess.” She radioed the habitat. “Mayday, mayday, mayday. Oceanus, this is Neptune. We’ve lost propulsion. Do you copy?”
There was no reply.
“Where’s the electrical panel?” I asked.
Elana pointed amidships.
I climbed out of my seat, clicked on my flashlight, and moved to the panel. I pulled it open, and my beam raked across the wiring.
Elana kept trying to contact the habitat, but there was no response. “Mayday, mayday, mayday.”
She unzipped her jumpsuit a little, her skin slick with sweat.
I checked all the connections and made sure they were secure. One had wiggled loose. I reconnected the DC bus to the main power inverter. The lights came on, and the system rebooted.
Elana breathed easier when I returned to the helm. “What did you do?”
"It's not uncommon for connections to shake loose, especially in high-vibration environments. There's been a lot of tremors lately.”
She put her hand to her chest and let out a sigh. "I may have been just a tad concerned there for a second."
"Just a tad," I teased.
"Hey, I like to think I'm improving.”
The thrusters lifted us from the sea floor, and we continued on our mission to visually inspect the anchor points.
"How did this all start?” I asked.
