Nineteen

CHIEF ENGINEER MARTIN Oakley, unaware of the impending doom, had just finished his preliminary survey of the Lance. He was impressed. She had a powerful engine, and good fuel reserves. The ship had been very well maintained and, battered radio mast and radar aside, was in excellent condition. There was no doubt in his mind that she would make an excellent and very welcome addition to their little fleet should the crew decide to remain with the Arcadia, and he saw no reason why they wouldn’t.

Since the cruiser’s lifeboats had all burned, and its two tenders had been destroyed, flimsy inflatable life rafts had been their only means of getting to and from land. The four ports they had visited so far had been too badly damaged to bring their giant ship in close. Debris in the water made such manoeuvres too treacherous, as Lucya had discovered to everyone’s cost when she had punctured the hull on a chunk of concrete pier hidden in the freezing waters of a Svalbard fjord.

The Lance on the other hand, was tiny in comparison. With the agility offered by her bow thrusters, her reinforced hull, and her relative size, she would make the perfect runabout to ferry landing parties ashore as they continued to explore further and further south.

That wasn’t all she had to offer. As there hadn’t been any pressing reason to return to the engine room of the Arcadia after checking out the Lance’s own motor, he’d taken the time to explore the rest of the ship. The laboratories appeared to his untrained eye to be very well equipped. He suspected that Surgeon Lieutenant Russell Vardy would be overjoyed with what he would find there. The Lance also had an impressive stash of food supplies. For such a small crew, they really were very well stocked.

But perhaps the best features of the research vessel were her winches, nets and baskets. She even had an old harpoon launcher up near the bows. Her heritage as a converted fishing boat was plain to see. They may have lost an excellent and well-liked fisherman in Stieg, but they had gained a terrific tool for catching more food. Stieg’s homemade nets and Martin’s cobbled-together winch system had served them well thus far, but there was no doubting that the efficacy of the Lance would far outweigh their current methods.

All in all, Martin thought to himself as he crossed the walkway between the Lance and the Spirit of Arcadia, the day had gone very well. Things were looking up.

It was as that thought played out in his mind that there was a massive explosion.

It came from the other side of the Arcadia, out of sight. The noise was one Martin would never forget. It sounded like a dozen volcanos erupting at once.

Beyond the bows of the cruiser, a tsunami wall of water rose up, spreading out in all directions. It hit the front of the ship within a second of the deafening sound, sending her rearing up and then over to the starboard side.

The ropes securing the Lance tightened as they were stretched to their fullest extent, pulling her towards the hull of the Arcadia. The walkway buckled and folded in two. Had Martin been a metre further ahead, he would have been eaten up by the closing jaws of twisted wood and metal. As it was, he was thrown into the air, where he executed an unbalanced somersault, and came crashing down into the sea headfirst, just as the tsunami reached the Lance.

Martin was lucky. He had time to draw a breath before hitting the water, so was already under as the tidal wave rolled over him. He kicked and pulled at the bubbling, swirling sea, disoriented, struggling to find the surface. When the wave, as high as a house, passed over, he was sucked back to the top in its wake. His head broke through into the air just in time for him to see the sky-blue hull of the Lance tumbling down the back of the wave towards him.

He had seconds remaining before he would be crushed between the two ships.

• • •

The North Koreans who had taken the Lance had exchanged their position of power for a deck-one dungeon, not unlike that into which they had thrown their captives. Like the room that had held the Lance’s true captain, their new home was in the very bowels of the ship, well below the waterline. The old store room was similar to the one used as a temporary morgue, but much smaller. It had previously housed stocks of alcohol for the ship’s numerous bars. These had long since been moved. Too many people who worked on the Arcadia knew where the booze was stored, and as alcohol was not part of the rationing system and was therefore effectively banned, it was deemed too risky to leave it where it could be found, even if the room was secure. Instead, the hundreds of cases of drink had been relocated, along with thousands of cigarettes, cigars, and other luxury products, into a store in which mechanical spares were supposed to be kept. In fact there were very few spares, and a lot of space. It made it the ideal hiding place for substances that would undoubtedly lead to temptation, and thus possibly to crime.

The room smelt of alcohol. Over the years, many a bottle had been dropped and broken in there, and the smell was hard to get rid of. Its whitewashed metal walls were entirely featureless, as was the metal floor, and ceiling. Fluorescent tubes protected by metal cages provided the illumination. The switch for these was situated outside, next to the heavy door. So when the lights went out, the North Korean prisoners naturally assumed that their guard was punishing them, or toying with them in some sadistic way.

On the other side of the door, security officer Rupert Bembridge, assigned to watch the new brig, was far less certain as to the reasons for the sudden plunge into darkness. His first thought was that his charges inside had somehow cut through a power cable in a bid to make their escape, or at least to make his life difficult.

His orders from Max had been perfectly clear: “You watch the door. If any of the bastards try and get out, shoot them. If anything else happens, you call me.”

He had thought Max had been joking about the shooting part, but then he’d been handed a gun. He had to sign for it in the arms register, and then Max had left him to it. Suddenly the job, which he had seen as a significant step down from patrolling the restaurant, had taken on a whole new level of importance.

Although Rupert had never been part of SCO19, the armed response unit of the Metropolitan Police, and therefore did not carry a weapon in his day job, he had undergone a firearms training course when he had been promoted to sergeant. The training had given him an enormous respect for the power of a gun. He really didn’t want to shoot anyone at all, even a North Korean who had, he’d been told, done terrible things to fellow survivors. The trouble was, when he tried to contact Max via the radio, he found the device wasn’t working. The Spirit of Arcadia, being built from steel, aluminium, and other metals, made radio communication difficult at the best of times. The superstructure acted as a giant Farrier cage, blocking transmissions. For the security radios to work, relays were installed throughout the vessel, part of a spider’s web of communications infrastructure. Without power, those relays were little more than decoration. Unfortunately, the technicalities were lost on Bembridge. He simply saw a radio that didn’t work, and no way to contact his boss.

However, there was another, more pressing problem. The lock on the brig door was not manually operated. Instead, it used a magnetic card reader which was linked to a series of electromagnetically operated bolts. Under normal circumstances it was a highly secure system. Bar staff were issued with key cards, and a computer logged all access in and out of the store. Any time a crew member was reassigned, or left the ship’s company, their card was deactivated. With no lost keys, or stray copies floating around, it meant there was almost no problem with theft of the stock, as every movement could be accounted for. But when the Ambush dived, cutting the power connection to the cruise ship, the door went into emergency mode. Using a capacitive charge, it immediately disengaged the four hefty bolts that secured it shut. This was a safety override, designed to ensure nobody was locked inside the room in the event of power failure or other catastrophe.