But Dankleff was out cold. Pacino shone the light on the panels, all of them dark. He found the old manual bourdon tube pressure gauge off to the port side of the wrap-around displays, the U-boat era gauge not needing electricity or computers to provide its indication. Pacino squinted at the gauge. The needle pointed to 600 and was rotating toward 650.
The bottom, as Pacino remembered it, was about 700 feet, well above crush depth, but the bottom wasn’t safe. If the ship were sinking, with the reactor shut down and no power, they’d need to surface and get to open water. Otherwise they’d die down here. They’d been directly below a polynya of open water formed by the first Gigantskiy detonation when the second one had exploded. Assuming the boat hadn’t been moved away by the explosion, the open water should still be overhead.
By now, the deck was tilted downward by 35 degrees. Pacino shone his light on the bubble-type inclinometer, another relic of World War II submarining, and it showed the deck going to a 40 degree down angle.
Pacino took a deep breath. “Let’s hope this works,” he muttered to himself. He found the big stainless steel levers of the emergency ballast tank blow system outboard of the copilot’s seat. The one on the right was the forward system. He pulled down the interlock device and rotated the large lever from straight down to straight up.
Immediately a roaring, blasting sound slammed Pacino’s eardrums, and the room filled with thick fog, the condensation from the super-cold emergency blow manifold. He shined the light back up to the inclinometer, which was now showing a twenty-five-degree dive, easing to fifteen. Pacino operated the aft main ballast tank emergency blow lever, and the fog in the room got denser and the blasting noise louder, if that were possible. He checked the depth gauge — now showing 400 feet and trending upward.
Soon the roaring noise got quieter and the fog cleared. Pacino rotated both blow levers back down and watched the depth gauge, the needle climbing up past 200 to 150. Finally it stopped at thirty-five, and the deck rolled to starboard, then port, then steadied. They were on the surface. The inclinometer showed a slight up angle, by two degrees. Pacino hoped that wasn’t bad news. If they were flooding aft, the up angle would increase and the day would end early.
Pacino called out to the room. “Anyone awake? Hello?”
He shone the battle lantern light around the room, slower this time. Everyone was out cold. His light fell onto River Styxx, whose head had impacted the weapon control console, shattering the display and deeply cutting her face. He felt her neck, but there was no pulse and her flesh was cold. At the Pos Two console, Easy Eisenhart sat, his head completely turned around so that it faced backwards, a look of terror frozen on his face. His flesh was also cold, although Pacino knew it was useless to verify it.
Dammit, he cursed to himself. He had to stop worrying about the crew and hurry aft and get the battery online. The nuclear explosion must have opened every electrical breaker onboard. He carefully stepped aft, trying to avoid slipping from the blood on the deck, until he left control and was in the central passageway, then down the ladder to the middle level of the crew’s mess. There were bodies on the deck, none of them conscious. His light shone on the form of Senior Chief Corpsman Grim Thornburg. Pacino tried to shake him awake, but there was no response. He felt his neck for a pulse. The skin was warm and there was a pulse, but he was nonresponsive.
Beside Thornburg was the body of Chief McGuire, the A-gang chief, whose head was only connected to his bloody neck by a few fibers of flesh, the blood puddle surrounding him.
Pacino hurried to the dogged-shut hatch to the shielded tunnel of the reactor compartment. He held the handle of the battle lantern in his teeth while he undogged the hatch, opened it and set it on the latch, then stepped through. He jogged down the tunnel, since there was no blood and no bodies, got to the aft hatch and undogged it and latched it open, then emerged into the aft compartment’s engineroom.
