The Shipkiller by Justin Scott

Author:Justin Scott
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Pegasus Books
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

The chief electrical officer felt his jaw drop. “All of them?”

“Every last one.”

“When?” Schematics and circuit plans raced through his head. Where Ogilvy saw the steel plates and members that formed the ship’s hull, tanks, and decks, he saw miles and miles of copper wire and coaxial cable connecting the thousands of components of the electronic and electrical systems without which the ship would be a drifting hulk.

Ogilvy chuckled. “No need to look so upset, Sparks. It’s not really that important.”

“Not important?” he asked incredulously. “Without those sensors, how can you possibly know the effect of the seas on the bow? It’s five hundred yards from the bridge.”

Ogilvy stopped smiling abruptly. “I’ve been at sea fifty years, sir. Long before they cooked up radar, much less bow-pressure indicators. I know the effect of the seas on my bows, thank you.”

“I’ll have it repaired immediately.”

“I also know better than to depend upon electrical wizardry in salt air. This isn’t a laboratory, it’s an ocean.”

The electrical chief had heard that litany time and time again in the past fifteen years. He offered his own in return. “Electronics is merely a way of making the ocean smaller.”

“A bigger ship is the only way to make the ocean smaller,” retorted Ogilvy.

The chief electrical officer hurried into the bridge house and took the elevator fifteen levels down to the control room. It was soundproofed and air-conditioned, but the floor trembled from the engines. His seconds and thirds were huddled around the computerized failure-trace system, eyeing the electronic wave patterns that cantered across the test-instrument oscilloscopes.

“Why wasn’t I called?” he demanded, swiftly scanning the computer-generated formulas on the CRT screen.

“We couldn’t find you, sir. We’ve got it under control.”

He bit back an angry retort. LEVIATHAN’s crew were a clannish lot and they’d made it clear that they put little trust in an outsider. He asked what had happened.

“It looks as if the telemetry system isn’t functioning.”

“Bloody hell,” said the chief.

The pressure sensors measured sea forces on certain key bow plates. The information was fed up a coaxial cable from the bottom of the ship to a microwave transmitter on the forward deck that relayed it back to the tower. It was a one-in-a-million breakdown. The fact that the transmitter was working despite the data-signal loss meant that the failure was probably in the jumble of cables and connectors where the pressure sensors’ signals joined in a sealed junction box a hundred feet below deck, deep at the bottom of a crude-oil tank.

“We’ve already got volunteers to go down.”

“I’ll go myself,” said the chief. “Have the forward tanks deinerted. I want an oxygen mask and a radiophone link to the deck.”

He donned a boiler suit and a slicker and rubber hat. Then, accompanied by his subordinates, he went on deck, climbed onto the fire-station catwalk, and began walking toward the spray-sheathed bow.

Secretly, he wished he had let one of the younger men who had volunteered do the work, but he didn’t know them and he wanted the repair done right.

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