“Then you should stay here. I haven’t done it that much. I’ll go forward and shift control. Wear the phones, but don’t wait for an order. As soon as you hear control shift, pull in, start driving us up. I’ll get back here as soon as I can.”
“You sure?”
Lehane nodded and pulled an EAB out of a locker at their feet.
“Don’t unplug that thing,” said Baer.
“Don’t worry about that,” he said.
Lehane pulled the mask over his head and sucked in before he plugged it in, pulling the mask against his face, verifying it was airtight. He plugged in and with a hiss the ship’s compressed air banks began supplying him air.
“You ready?”
Lehane nodded. “This will be the fastest trip forward ever,” he said, his voice distorted through the plastic voice box of the mask. “I bet I can do it in one breath.”
“Go,” said Baer. “And good luck.”
Lehane was terrified at a deep level as he walked briskly forward: the silence of the ship weighed on him, and he felt the eyes of the dead upon him as he moved. But his fear was tempered by a strength he felt as he walked forward; the EAB would save him. That slightly pressurized, slightly oily-smelling supply of air from ship’s pressurized air banks would protect him from whatever had befallen his shipmates.
He made it all the way to the engine room hatch before he had to stop and take a breath. He was in the “tunnel” the shielded passageway that led from the forward part of the ship, through the reactor compartment, and into the engine room. You weren’t supposed to loiter in the reactor compartment because even with its shielding it was still one of the higher radiation areas of the boat. But, thought Lehane as he caught his breath: that’s the least of my worries now. He took one more deep breath, unplugged, and moved forward.
He stepped over a man in the forward compartment; his face was down so Lehane couldn’t see who it was. Crew’s Mess was filled with men, and he couldn’t avoid looking into their dead eyes. None of them wore EAB’s which, in a strange way, gave Lehane hope. Maybe they hadn’t had time in the forward compartment, where the poison, whatever it was, was strongest. And maybe the EAB would save him.
He made it almost to the control room before he had to stop again, he was seeing stars from needing air so badly. The final few steps into control were blocked by the dead body of the XO. That was bad; the XO was the officer on the boat he trusted the most, and he wished the man would have made it to control.
He plugged in and exhaled, and then sucked in a deep breath as fast as the EAB would supply it to him. He coughed a little then. It occurred to him as he breathed the compressed air that it was just that: compressed air. The same air that surrounded him was jammed into the ship’s air banks by the High Pressure Air Compressors, or “Hipacs,” and redistributed to them throughout the ship by the EAB system of manifolds. If the hipacs took in the ship’s damaged air, then he was breathing that same air now. It all depended on which bank was online and when the air had been compressed. But he remembered the unmistakable sound of those hipacs running in the engine room. He inhaled deeply again, and was interrupted by a cough.
Well shit, he thought. But he was just feet away from control now. He took a final deep breath, slowly, trying to control the coughing welling up inside him. Then he unplugged and dashed into control.
The diving officer had fallen over in his chair, and was hanging across his seat belt. The COW was sprawled on the floor. Both planesmen were dead. Their controls had been usurped by the autopilot. And now it would be usurped again, as he shifted control to shaft alley and Baer to drive them to the surface. Lehane was wracked by a violent cough, but as it let up briefly, he lunged for the space between the two planesmen where he could activate the hydraulic valve that would give Baer control. They were just 150 feet beneath the surface. With the stern planes all the way up, they would be on the surface in seconds.
He had his hands on the valve handle when he got slammed in the head. He fell to the ground, struck hard. Barely conscious, he instinctively rolled away, trying to evade his attacker, but the EAB hose constrained him.
Fuck it, he thought, I’m sick anyway. He stripped the mask from his head. As he rolled away from it, his attacker struck again, bringing a heavy book down upon his now empty mask, crushing it.
Jumping to his feet, his ears still ringing from the blow, he could see it was Lieutenant Dwyer, the Officer of the Deck, who had attacked him. He was wearing an EAB that did not obscure the deranged look in his eyes.
“Sir, we need to shift control to shaft alley!”
“Not without the Captain’s order.” He was brandishing a heavy binder of procedures as if it was holy scripture.
“Fuck that,” said Lehane. He lunged again for the valve and the OOD came at him again with the binder. Lehane dodged it and it crashed into the console.
