Chapter 19
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 damaged compartments 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 the Lyra capsized.
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 the Lyra settled 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 that order, the sooner the better.
Even for a highly trained crew like the Lyra’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 the Lyra on 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.”
The icy stare returned. If it had been anyone else making the suggestion, he would have thrown the man off the bridge.
But the captain knew Kurt’s reputation and had even worked with him once before when Kurt had managed to rig up a water jet to blast his way through a sandbar and free a tanker that was stuck in the Bahamas.
It would cut into their time to safely evacuate, but there was no point hedging their bets now.
He looked Kurt straight in the eye, effectively turning the ship’s fate over to him.
“Whatever you’re going to do, do it quickly. ”