1 - AN UNEVENTFUL JOURNEY
13th November, 2020 11:38 Ship Time
DAWNING HORIZON – Ship Bridge
North Pacific Ocean - 3000KM from Destination Shanghai
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“It’s a beautiful sunset considering the weather we just had, huh?”
“Yeah, we’re quite a bit off course but we should still make it to Shanghai in good time. Better to ride the storm rather than go through it and risk needing a tow hundreds of miles from land”
Eric nodded in agreement. As the chief engineer it would be his responsibility if something broke, and due to them running a skeleton crew on this trip he was the only certified engineer onboard the vessel. He wiped his grease-stained hands off on his forehead, brushing his dark hair out of his eyes while he peered once again into the open compartment in front of him.
Sat inside the compartment was a circuit board that would have no doubt been the best example of its kind when it was made. In 1992. But it was 2020, and here he was trying to work out why one of the capacitors had let the magic smoke out for the third time this trip.
Eric looked up at Greg, the captain of the vessel and the other occupant of the bridge.
“Hey Greg? Do any of the lights flicker weirdly? Is there a power surge issue?”
Greg grunted and shrugged, draining his coffee cup before sitting back down on the Captain’s chair.
“It could be anything, Eric. This ship is older than you are, word on the grape vine is that this next trip will be her last. She’ll be taken up to India and scrapped, unless they can find a buyer for her, but that’s unlikely. Just do what you can to get us to port, and we can test your theories when we’re in port. A waste to see her scrapped though, we refurbed her just before you joined the crew.”
Eric sighed and closed the compartment as he reminisced, “It’ll be a shame to see her go, boss. She’s been my home for 3 years now, I’m almost fond of her”
“Almost?”
“Well she does this weird thing when you start the engine where it spits black smoke out the manifold into your face. I hate that.”
“Oh. Seems like that should be a bigger problem?”
“Nah, we fixed it by gaffer-taping round the seal and that holds enough for – “
*WHUMPF*
A shockwave rippled through the vessel, cutting Eric off. A tortured scream from the aging keel caused both engineer and captain to look at each other with worried eyes. Together they strained to look out of the bridge windows to see what had just made that shockwave but saw nothing.
Greg began looking through the navigation console hurriedly.
“Is there an underwater island here? Maybe a volcanic system? We shouldn’t have hit anything this far out. We don’t appear to be beached though? A weapon test? Who tests weapons this far out in the ocean?..”
Greg trailed off mumbling to himself as he flicked through the various topography options on the console to find the source of the mystery shockwave. Both Greg and Eric turned sharply as the door to the bridge slammed open against the wall, rattling the glass in the window frames. A tall man with dark skin rushed in, letting a black SMG lead the way into the bridge as if expecting trouble to have already arrived.
“You guys all right in here? We thought it might have been depth charges, Keith and Kru are checking the hull for damage”
“We’re fine, Kevin. Greg’s looking at the navigation console to see if there’s any unknown topography under the water.”
“That’s a relief. Do we know where everyone is, can we make a radio call?”
Greg nodded and picked up a radio from its cradle in front of him. “All of security is accounted for. We need to check that Archer is ok in Engineering and Max is ok too, though Max may still be asleep.”
Kevin strode forward and plucked the radio from Greg’s outstretched hand so he could make the announcement, “Roll Call, are all hands in good health? We just experienced a tremor which we’re currently investigating. If possible, please make your way to the bridge as soon as you can. Please respond, over.”
Almost immediately the radio began squelching as people began to report back.
“This is Archer, Engineering is reading nominal so I’ll head up to the Bridge as soon as I have finished my safety checks, over!”
“This is Kru (And Keith!), we have nearly finished our perimeter of the vessel, we’ll head straight up to the Bridge. Over.”
“This is Max. I’m awake, sadly. Nothing to report, on my way.”
Kevin nodded with satisfaction as the crew checked in one-by-one, confirming that the entire crew was in good health and still able to communicate.
Greg fretted about, looking at various instruments and charts across the bridge. “There is no known topography in this region of the Pacific, we’re sailing hundreds of miles away from land, the depth is measured in kilometers around here. I don’t understand what we could have hit? Unexploded World War 2 Ordinance?”
It took a moment before Kevin broke the mumbling of Greg to ask his own question. “Eric? Is it just me or is the sun a weird colour…?”
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It took several minutes for the crew of the Dawning Horizon to finish their duties and make their way up the twisting staircase to the Bridge. Once all seven of the under-staffed crew were on the bridge they began to talk amongst themselves to try and discover the source of the shockwave that had rattled the ship.
“A weapons test would cause atmospheric pollution which would change the colour of the sun!”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Max. Who would test weapons in the middle of the Pacific? We’d have hit military vessels by now. It could have been a solar flare!”
“Maybe it’s some weird kind of reflection off an oil spill? Give it that weird blue glow?”
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“Why does it look bigger than before?”
“That’s what she said”
Greg stood up and smacked his hand against the console to get their attention.
“Right, quit bickering you lot. None of us know what is going on. The radio can’t get a signal and Eric is trying to find a satellite so we can communicate with the office to ask what’s going on. Until then, it’s business as usual.
Kevin, you organise security to make sure there are people keeping watch. Even if it wasn’t a weapons test, we could still become targets for pirates.
Everyone else, back to work. Max, check that cargo is secure and properly hooked up.”
The group began to disperse, nodding between themselves as they filed out of the bridge and headed back down to deck.
Eric stood up sharply from where he’d been focused on a display illuminated in black and green.
“Greg, we have a small issue… GPS is not picking up a signal. And the sat-phone can’t get a signal either.”
“Are we having our signals jammed?”
“No, I used the radio to check the GPS frequency, but they’re all empty”
“How empty?”
“There is almost no background noise on them at all. Over a 60 second period the largest spike happened when the throttle was pushed on the engine. It’s like everything electronic in the world has just gone silent”
“So, the Sun has a strange blue colour. GPS Satellites are either down or non-responsive. Commercial satellites are down too. Civilian radio is empty as well. Also considering we just sailed through a storm, the boat has been very calm in the water… Where are we? Has a nuclear war started while we were sailing? Eric, could a Solar Flare have caused this?”
“Potentially, but unlikely. I can’t imagine it would kill everything… just most things.”
Greg paced nervously across the bridge before stalking over to a cupboard in the corner and flinging the doors open. He began to tear through the contents before pulling out a large rolled chart. He unrolled the chart on top of the instrument console and scanned his finger across the faded chart until he reached a particular line. Greg turned back towards the cupboard and rummaged through a drawer before pulling out a slightly dusty brass sextant.
“Ha! Right! We just need to aim this at the horizon… adjust until the sun is on the horizon…alright, now according to the angle we have that’s our longitude…. And there’s the moon! So we can work out the latitude… according to this, we’re in Russia. That’s not right…”
“Russia? What? I think your Sextant is broken”
“I’ve done the math, we have the conversion charts here. According to the angles we’re getting here we should be in the middle of Russia. 65.8, 145.4. I don’t think the Sextant is the issue here… I think the moon has moved.”
“You believe it more likely that the moon has shifted, than your sextant is broken?”
“Yes… I clean it and calibrate it all the time.”
Eric looked at the dust on the brass sextant doubtfully, “Regardless, let’s say that you are correct. What do we do?”
“We keep sailing onwards and try to make it to land. I can’t imagine humanity has degraded totally in the last hour, there’ll still be a port we can dock at. If not, we have enough food to last us for a month or two onboard but we only loaded enough fresh water to get us to Shanghai. If things on land have truly become dire, we’re in trouble.”
“I still don’t think the moon has shifted… maybe an optical illusion caused by dust in the atmosphere? A reflection off the ocean!”
“Whatever it is, we can’t get an accurate reading and we don’t have digital tools so we’re out of luck for now.”
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It was going dark before someone spotted something riding the horizon towards them.
Max came sprinting into the bridge, very out of breath and pulling hair out of her eyes. “Greg! Land at 11 o’clock!”
“Careful Max, you’ll pull something if you run up those stairs like that. Eric, can you pass me that telescope?” Greg held out his hand expectantly.
Eric turned and gingerly lifted the heavy brass telescope from where it lay next to the discarded sextant and the conversion charts.
“Why do you have old brass equipment? It’s not the 18th century any more. Buy something new!”
Greg looked disappointedly at Eric and shook his head
“You kids don’t understand the value of having something tried-and-tested to use. You want everything shiny and new - ”
“We want things that don’t weigh a ton. Back health is important to us.”
Greg scoffed and peered through the telescope at the landmass that was becoming larger at a considerable rate.
“I see some smoke over the land, a fire or industrial area?”
For several minutes the telescope was passed between Greg, Eric, and Max so they could all make their own comments about what they were sailing towards.
“Hey! That’s a sail ship. Why would there be a sail ship on a major shipping lane?” Eric passed the telescope back to Greg.
“Excellent, this means people! We can find out what’s happening with the world now. Maybe a solar flare knocked out our communication gear and we’re fretting over nothing! We have old junk on this old girl anyway so it wouldn’t surprise me at all.” Max argued.
“The North Pacific is not well known for the number of sail-driven vessels, and for good reason. So I guess this means we have to ask where we are, if we’re somewhere where they make use of sail-driven ships and no use of GPS satellites.”
Greg dropped the telescope from his eye and smiled widely at Eric, “What, you think we’re in Russia?”
Eric shook his head, a smile creeping at his lips. “No. I think we’re somewhere more exotic than Russia. Like… another world… or Slough.”
“God, I pray we’re in another world. Slough was a mistake. Both going there and being created. But why would you think we’re in another world? Seems like you’re jumping to conclusions. It could be a recreational vessel! You’ve been reading too many Isekai.” complained Max.
Eric immediately began to argue “It can’t be a recreational vessel! They don’t sail this far out into the shipping lanes and it’s the wrong kind of sail ship to be a luxury yacht. We need to consider the very real possibility that we have been moved via some means to somewhere where we’re not meant to be, and how we can survive in that scenario… It doesn’t make sense otherwise, the entire culmination of human development has just vanished in the last few hours… I don’t understand what could have happened. Someone would have sent a message out if a war had started… but if we are in another world what do we do? What if we can’t speak to them. I’m gonna be shivved in another world…”
The other 2 crew members looked at Eric doubtfully as he babbled about a new world. Greg sighed and dropped the telescope on the console before taking his seat, “I’m not so sure that we should be assuming we’re in another world, that’s a lofty conclusion to make, especially as early as this. But as a great man once said, when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. Until we see evidence that we’re not in our world however, I want you to be quiet before you make the rest of the crew nervous. We’ll throw down anchors here before sailing into coastal waters as we’ll need a pilot vessel to navigate. Attempt radio communication on a mayday frequency, and if we get no response then we buckle down and wait it out.”
The three of them nodded at each other before splitting apart, Eric sat at the communications console and began broadcasting a mayday message while Max headed down the stairs towards her bunk while Greg sent a radio message to the crew.
“All Hands, be alert. We are within visual of an unknown vessel, country unknown. We have lost all GPS and communications with the head office. Assume that if we are approached, it is with hostile intentions. Can the 3 K’s please keep watch, if anything happens pull the pirate alarm. Over.”
It took only a few moments before the responses came.
“This is Kevin, the other two are with me. We’ll keep an eye out.”
Greg nodded to himself, satisfied that he’d made the right choice. As he turned to head towards the stairs Eric stood from the console and shook his head at Greg. “Nothing on any frequency. Chances are, if we lost radio then so did everybody else.”
The two of them began to make their way down the stairs towards their own bunks.