NATO Frigate FFG-77
Eastern Atlantic Ocean
Commander Sara Sinclair groaned as her alarm clock's familiar sound tore her from her dreams. She fumbled around for its off button as she slipped out of her tiny bed in her tiny cabin in almost complete darkness, uttering a satisfied grunt, when she finally found her target and shut off the jarring sound. She just managed to make out the time on its small illuminated display through still sleepy eyes, as she grabbed a towel to slip into the shower: 0545 on-board time. Shortly before the start of her watch.
After a quick shower followed by a mediocre breakfast, she straightened her uniform as she walked towards the warship's bridge. She really had to bring up the quality of the food at the next department heads' meeting. It seemed unlikely to her that any of the others were actually enjoying chow in the officers’ mess, and she didn’t even dare speculate what chow in the regular crew mess was like.
When she climbed the steep stairs to the bridge, she saw Lieutenant Commander Ferringham through the open door to the frigates modern bridge. As one of the newest ships in the fleet, she was equipped with almost anything a sailor could want. Although the old navy tradition of having great food still left something to be desired. At least the coffee in the bridge’s coffee urn was usually quite good. Just what she needed after that botched breakfast, she thought to herself, as she made a beeline for the urn filled with her favorite beverage.
“Morning, Commander.” Ferringham greeted her, while she quickly slipped past him, not allowing unnecessary pleasantries to delay her morning dose of caffeine.
“Good Morning, Tom.” She replied with a smile as she quickly took an empty cup with the ship's emblem on it from the small shelf above the coffee urn and filled it with the steaming hot beverage. “You had a quiet night watch, I hope?” She asked as she turned towards him.
“I did actually. The log is up to date. Nothing unusual as far as I am concerned. An engineering rating fell down the ladder to the engine room around midnight, but aside from that, nothing interesting.”
She perked up at that. “Hastings?” Ferringham grimaced as he nodded. “He really should talk with Doc McArthur, don’t you think?” She replied. “It really isn’t normal to have two left hands AND two left feet.” Tom chuckled at her jab and gave her a mock salute as he turned to leave the bridge. “You can tell him that when you meet him. I’m just going to grab a small breakfast and catch up on some sleep.”
“Steer clear of the eggs, Tom!” She yelled after him, but he only shook his head in amusement as he started out of the room.
“Right,” she said, more to herself than to Tom as she looked at his retreating back and turned to the rest of the bridge. As usual, during her morning watch, the bridge was manned by three crew members, aside from her, of course. One Chief Petty Officer Clark was at the rudder, a burly middle-aged man with receding black hair and a raspy voice that sounded like he smoked three packs of cigarettes every day. Even though he insisted he had never even so much as touched a cigarette in his life. A bored Petty Officer Serrano at the comms station and Seaman Saunders, who was busy staring off into the distance with his binoculars.
Sinclair gave a low and satisfied groan as she sat at the watch officer’s station on the right side of the bridge and took a small sip from her cup. At least the coffee is great. She really couldn’t understand how someone could fuck up scrambled eggs and bacon, yet still be capable of producing delicious coffee.
She had just placed her cup on the small holder next to her station and was about to pull up the nav charts and get an overview of their current position when she was interrupted by the radar system’s alarm going off. She almost wiped her cup off her station as she jumped up. Before she could make it over to the radar screen, Saunders gave out a yelp.
“What the hell! Where did that come from?” He was staring through his binoculars at something almost directly in front of the ship. Meanwhile, Sinclair had made it to the radar station as she felt her heart speed up, adrenaline surging through her body. It was showing a giant object about 9 nautical miles in front of the ship. “What are you seeing, Saunders?” She asked, while she grabbed her own binocular from her station and ran up to him. “And where are you seeing it?” She added as she put her own binocular to her eyes to find the giant object.
“Ten degrees starboard, about 8 something nautical miles out. If I wouldn’t know any better, I would say that is an island.” Sara strained to spot it through her bins, but she needn’t have strained. There literally was a giant landmass in front of them, at coordinates where nothing except the cold, blue Atlantic Ocean should be.
Without taking her eyes from the new island, she ordered Saunders to find the captain and bring him to the bridge. He nodded as he slipped out the door and down the stairs behind it into the bowels of the warship.
She was still watching the blue sheen, like a giant bubble around the island, slowly disappear. She thought it looked a lot like a shield or some other science fiction-y stuff that might have hidden or protected the island, dropping away. Although some people could probably say that it might just have been a reflection of the sun rising behind the ship. Though these people probably hadn’t ever seen an island just emerge out of the Atlantic Ocean right in front of them.
“Clark?” She asked, without turning around.
“Yes, Sir?”
“Lets turn to starboard 45. We wouldn’t want to get too close to whatever that is.”
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“Absolutely, Sir. Immediately.” He answered, obviously relieved at having something to do.
“And Serrano?”
“Yes, Sir?”
“Inform MARCOM of this and call the ship to general quarters.”
“Aye, Sir! UHM, what reason should I give for general quarters, Commander?”
Sara Sinclair slowly turned away from the island to look at Serrano. “I do not have the slightest clue. Just don’t give any.”
“Aye, Sir!”
The ship's early morning silence was ripped apart by the general quarters alarm going off and Serrano’s calm voice reverberating through the ship “General Quarters, General Quarters. All hands man your battle stations. The route of travel is forward and up to starboard, down and aft to port. Set material condition ‘Zebra’ throughout the ship.”
All throughout, the ship crew jumped out of their beds and into their uniforms, and a well-coordinated chaos enveloped the frigate as the almost 200 crew members raced to their stations. Only seconds after the general quarters alarm was given, Captain Taylor burst through the doors at the back of the bridge. He took in the situation on the bridge and called out to Sinclair,
“Sitrep, Commander. What the hell is going on?” The second part of that order being not exactly to regulations.
“Yes, Skipper. About four minutes ago, first our sea level radar system and then the duty crew visually spotted a large object approximately 9 nautical miles from the ship.” She hesitated for a moment and then continued. “It looks like an island, Sir.”
Taylor stared at her for a moment before he visually shook himself. “You are telling me a fricking island appeared out of thin air?” When she showed not even the slightest inclination to tell him that this was all one intricate prank, he stepped up to the front of the bridge and took one of the binoculars hanging from the railing in front of the large windows.
“Show m…” Before he could finish his sentence, he already saw the giant landmass, now only a few nautical miles away and slowly moving to port, as the ship turned away onto a safer course. From his ship’s position, it looked absolutely huge, covering many miles of the horizon. He estimated the coastline he could see to be easily 20 miles long.
“I’ll be damned.”
“Sinclair? Where the hell did that come from?” He asked, knowing that he wouldn’t get a satisfactory answer.
“Uh. It was just… there. Sir.” Sara Sinclair answered, uncharacteristically uncertain.
“Not the answer I hoped for, but the one I expected.” Captain Taylor answered. “Any recommendations for our next steps, Sinclair?” As she was his Executive Officer and therefore his second in command he expected her to have already built a plan on how to proceed. Even though Sinclair was relatively young and, he thought, sometimes a bit abrasive. She hadn’t made Commander and been assigned as his XO, because she had connections, like some other officers in the fleet. He expected her to have a workable plan and he intended to utilize her four minute headstart.
She visibly straightened as she began to lay out her plan.
“Of course, Sir. I already orderer MARCOM informed about the situation. So I expect to see some reinforcements soon. There is one German frigate about 140 nautical miles north of our position. They should arrive in the area within the next hours. Meanwhile, I propose to use our advantageous position to launch our Firescout for a close range flyover of the land mass and our Seahawk to navigate around the coastline and find out how large this thing is.”
After a few seconds of pondering her plan, Taylor replied. “Sounds good. As the Firescout is unmanned, we won’t be unduly endangering any crew and the Seahawk will stay at least 2 nautical miles out from the island and be relatively safe.” He nodded at her once more. “Get down to the CIC and get started. I’m putting you in charge of the scouting operation. I have a few calls to make.”
She nodded and rushed out of the bridge towards the combat information center, located deep inside the ship to keep it moderately safe from enemy attack.
Twenty minutes later, Sara watched the Firescout take off on the wall-sized screen at the front of the darkened CIC. The Seahawk had already launched five minutes earlier and was now flying up the coastline in a northern direction. Multiple screens in the CIC were showing infrared and regular views from the helicopter and the unmanned drone as they neared the island.
The suspense in the cramped room was almost unbearable as everyone stared at the live streams from the two aircraft. For a few seconds she wondered if the CIC’s air-conditioning had somehow failed, because the air seemed sticky and warm. But she concluded that she was just imagining things as she was waiting for new pictures to come in from their scout craft.
The coastline didn’t look very different from any other island she had seen. Cliffs and beaches in some places, surrounded by palm trees and other exotic vegetation. Coral blue rivers cut the lowland area behind the coastline into smaller meadows, which apparently sprung from the giant mountains further inland. To her, it looked very much like a recreation of a biblical paradise.
The readings on the data they got told her that the island had to be quite large, as the mountains were almost 10 miles aways from the coastline. Considering the typical formation of islands in the area, which were often volcanic, that meant that the island could be easily 25 miles across and more than double that in length, considering that none of her aircraft had found an end to it yet.
Suddenly, the operator on the station in front of her raised her right arm. “Commander, you got to see this.”
“Put it on the main screen.” Sara ordered, the suspense in the room suddenly turning into curiosity and excitement.
The screen flickered for a moment as the infrared view from the Firescout was replaced by the livestream from the Seahawk, which had by now flown almost 20 miles up the coastline. It showed several buildings on the coast and along a mid-sized natural bay cut into the coastline. Before the sudden whispering and murmuring in the room could get out of hand, she ordered the helicopter higher up and closer.
“That will bring us under the two-mile limit, Sir.” The operator remarked.
“I know. We won’t be going closer than 1.5 miles, but I feel like this is important.”
“Aye, Sir.”
When the heli pulled up and closer to the bay and the buildings in it, they realized they hadn’t just found some building but an entire city. While the buildings at the waterfront looked relatively small, only 3-4 storeys high, the ones further back and up the gentle slope of the surrounding land looked to be almost three times as high and a cross between classical Mediterranean and modern architecture. But the entire city seemed dead. Not entirely dead, of course. Plants and animals had reclaimed part of it. But some buildings were visibly damaged, and it didn’t look like anyone had lived here for a while. A very long while.
“This is getting better and better.” Sara whispered to herself.