From The Fall, Chapter One
The Houston
USS Houston, Nuclear Missle Submarine
Mid Atlantic, Exact Location **Classified**
“Captain, we have an incoming transmission from the Pentagon, channel nine,” Radioman Derris Washington spoke quickly.
“Alright, on me,” Captain Rodger Briggs replied, picking up his private phone sitting next to his chair on the bridge. He tapped the ‘9′ button on the receiver.
A woman’s voice began, “Please authenticate.”
“This is Captain Rodger Briggs, USS Houston. Authentication is bravo, echo, gamma, echo. Confirm.”
“Authentication is confirmed, please hold for Admiral West.”
Shit, Briggs thought to himself, the hell does West want?
“Captain!” West started as soon as the phone call had been connected, “we have a situation. I’ve got NASA screaming in one ear and I’ve got every captain in the Atlantic on the other. Not sure what to make of the situation yet, but be on ale—” The phone went silent, followed by the monotonous chime of the open line.
Briggs looked back at his radioman. “Mr. Washington, where’d my comm go?” He asked curtly. Washington was as good a radioman as he’d ever had.
“Not sure sir. Connection is open on our end, must’ve been dropped on their side. I’m trying to re-connect. One moment, sir.”
What the hell does NASA have to do with my sub? Briggs wondered.
“Sir,” Washington spoke after just a few seconds, “something is wrong here. I can’t connect to any of our sats in the air.” Sats was a reference to the communications satellites that connected every ship in the Navy to one another, and to the higher-ups in Washington. They never went down, and even if they did, there were four or five alternates for each one.
Briggs stood up and walked to the back of the bridge to look over Washington’s shoulder. He started briefly at the screens; indeed it looked like Washington had done everything right so far. “Are we getting any channels? What’s our closest neighbor, see if you can get them directly.”
The second the word “directly” came from Briggs’ mouth, Lieutenant Marshall Miller spoke up from his navigation console. “Captain!” Briggs turned around, and Miller announced, “Sir, I’ve lost GPS.”
No radio and no GPS. “Mr. Young,” Briggs started to his second in command, “prepare battle stations. Navigation and communications are offline. Assume total communications blackout, and require triple authentication from all inbound messages. Someone’s keeping us in the dark.”
“Aye, Captain,” was quickly replied by Terrance “Terry” Young, the second in command on the boat. He was an excellent officer, and probably six-months from getting a ride of his own. “Suggest we hold current position until we restore navigation.”
“Do it.”
Young set in motion a dizzying array of commands, stopping the submarine at it’s location, setting the ship to a depth of 300 meters, and demanding reports from around the vessel as to it’s battle readiness. It was supposed to be a leisurely tour of the Atlantic for the next couple months, but every man and woman on the submarine knew they could be required to pull the trigger on some of the most potent nuclear weapons imaginable at any moment. They were professionals, and they were working quickly.
Seconds passed like hours as Captain Briggs tried to evaluate the situation. There were another dozen subs out there in the Atlantic, and he had to contact them to size up the entire situation. Before he had a chance to issue new orders, an ensign spoke up from a sonar console from across the bridge, directed to first officer Young. “Sir, I’ve got something on the seismics that can’t be right.”
Young rushed over to the display, and looked for a moment. “Have you verified this?” He asked, referring to the second seismic recorder located at the nose of the ship. The Navy was good about redundancy.
“Aye, sir. This is real, but it can’t be.”
Briggs looked at Young. “Mr. Young?”
“Sir,” Young replied, stepping back from the display and turning, “seismics are showing a seismic incident to the North East that is overloading the sensors.”
“What are we rated for?” Briggs asked. He knew damned near everything about the sub, but seismic reading ability was hardly as relevant as how many stoves were in the galley.
“We can pick up anything to a ten-even,” Young replied, referring to the Richter scale. A ten was a leveler, and in the ocean would result in tidal waves of immense proportions. Anything beyond a ten was a monster.
“Sir!” the young ensign at the sonar console yelped, “I’m showing an incoming pressure wave!” The panic was palpable in his voice. Something out there was scaring the hell out of him. Young twisted around, and stared at the screen. A long green line was flying across the screen, with the line surface spanning from the top to the right. It was traveling towards the submarine at hundreds of miles an hour; and with enough pressure to show up on the sonars, it could likely crush the ship.
Young didn’t hesitate for confirmation or to discuss options with the Captain. For the first time in his life, he was openly insubordinate for the sake of getting the job done. Briggs had been good with him and had always encouraged him to take action when necessary. Young yelled to the pilot, “All stations, prepare for collision! Chief of the boat, sound the collision alarm! Pilot, make your vector four-eight and hold that course no matter what!”
Briggs stared at Young for half a second, nodded, and sat down to watch his men (and women) to their jobs. He’d selected his crew to be brave and independent thinkers. This was their time to shine.
Young jumped back to the ensign at the sonar station, “How long until impact?” The collision alarm sounded, and a yellow light began flickering across the bridge.
The ensign was already punching numbers in to his calculator, trying to reconcile the ship’s motion with the motion of this ominous “pressure wave”. He tapped another button, and replied, “Eighteen seconds, sir. This baby’s moving fast.”
“Keep the count coming,” he nodded and stood, flying across the bridge at a break-neck speed to reach his tactical command chair. “All hands,” he spoke in to the microphone that he pulled from above his chair, “brace for impact! Fifteen seconds. Secure all doors! This is not a drill!”
The sonar ensign spoke out loud, “Fifteen… Fourteen… Thirteen…”
The ship came about slowly, the pilots manning their rudder controllers. The bridge had been set for battle and collision, and was now a dark red-and-yellow space flickering with electronic readouts. Metallic thumps and clangs could be heard from all corners of the submarine as compartments were being sealed.
“Nine… Eight… Seven…”
Briggs looked at Young who looked back at him. Sweat ran down Young’s tanned brow, and he stared intently at the Captain, as though to ask for one last moment of recognition that he’d done everything by the book. Briggs’ knuckles whitened as he held his chair’s armrests, and he turned his eyes from his second in command to the displays above him, now showing an enormous arcing line stretching from the top-left of the screen to the bottom-right of it. At the center of the image was the small dot that signified the USS Houston.
“Three… Two…”
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