There was a knock at the door.

“Max, good morning, how are you?”

“Good, very good. It’s been a productive morning.”

He walked in and slapped down a sheet of paper on the map table. Jake picked it up and scanned it quickly.

“Ah, I take it this is your new security force?”

“Right. I talked to those ex-army guys and told them the plan and they were up for it before I finished explaining. I had more interest than I needed, so I got to pick the best of the bunch.”

“Woah woah woah!” Melvin came over, clearly annoyed. “What security force? What plan? You’ve been plotting behind my back! This isn’t what we agreed!”

“Calm down son,” Max said. “You disappeared off this bridge last night, it’s not our fault that you didn't stay around to hear what I had to say.”

Melvin was turning purple with rage. “You waited for me to leave! The meeting was over. Anything like this should be been discussed openly. You obviously didn’t want me involved. Well guess what? I am involved. If you’re putting together a security team then you need passenger involvement.”

“Now listen here young man,” Max started.

“Don’t ‘young man’ me, you patronising old tosser.”

“Gentlemen, please!” Jake held up his hands, stepped between the two men, who were getting dangerously close. “Let’s keep this civil. Max, you probably should have brought this up at the meeting, but I understand your reasons for preferring not to. Melvin, you did leave before Max, you took the chance that something would happen without you being here. So let’s all calm down here, okay?”

“I’ll calm down when I get passengers as part of the security team,” Melvin banged his fist on the table.

“The problem with that idea is Pelagios Line is liable for this ship and its passengers. Having employees take responsibility for security is one thing, we have insurance if anything goes wrong. We can’t start handing out that kind of responsibility to passengers, especially with no training.”

“Come on Mr Noah, you know as well as I do that your insurance means shit now. And as for training, your crew aren’t trained security agents.”

“Actually the sailors joining my team are all ex-army or navy. They’ve all got a level of expertise in dealing with difficult situations,” Max said, folding his arms across his chest.

“Well there you go then. I know at least one passenger who’s ex-army. He’ll be as well trained as any of your lot.”

Jake said nothing for a moment, lost in thought.

“Jake, you can’t seriously be considering this?” Max looked shocked.

“We’ve already got a non-crew member on the bridge,” Jake said, and began pacing around the table. “There is a certain logic to including non-crew in your team. Arguably it’s more important than having Melvin up here. Passengers in the security team would be more visible. It would show we’re being inclusive.”

“Passengers? How many are we talking here?” Max asked.

“I want one per deck, minimum,” Melvin said.

“No way!” Max shouted. “We only have one sailor per deck.”

“Perfect, so that will even things out nicely.” Melvin grinned triumphantly.

“No,” Jake said. “You can have one passenger on the security team. You nominate someone and Max interviews them.”

Melvin started to protest, but Jake cut him off.

“It’s Max’s team, he decides. That’s final.”

“And when we strike land and see that the company is finished, that you’re not employed by anyone? That we’re no longer crew and passengers, we’re all just survivors?”

“Then we can take another look at the situation,” Jake said.

Melvin considered the offer. He walked over to the main console, picked up the handset and pressed the PA button.

“Stacey Martel to the bridge.”

Jake and Max looked at each other, surprised.

“You’re nominating Stacey for the job?” Jake asked.

“Don’t be ridiculous. Stacey’s a nice girl, but you’ve seen the size of her, the only way she could keep the peace is if she sat on someone. I called her up here to keep an eye on you two while I go and find my guy. Make sure you don’t plot anything else without me knowing.”

“Hey, listen,” Jake said suddenly. “You hear that?”

“What?” Max jumped, looked around on high alert, terrified that there was some kind of threat and he had missed it.

“Exactly! It’s gone quiet. The engines…the engines are running smoothly.”

• • • • •

Lucya stepped back from the bench and admired her handy work. She was in a store room down in the bowels of the ship, not far from the engine room. Three of the four walls were lined with metal shelving, the sort often found in warehouses. Every shelf was filled with grey plastic crates bearing the Pelagios Line logo. They were labelled with descriptions such as “flares” and “life jackets”. There were several holes where crates should have been. These missing boxes were laying open on the bench in the middle of the room, next to Lucya’s creation. Their labels read “beacon spares”, “TX equipment”, “batteries”, and “silicone”.

The vibrations from the huge engines starting up had made this delicate operation much more difficult than it should have been. Lucya would have preferred to wait for things to settle down, but she would be missed on the bridge, and she didn’t want to bother Jake with what she was doing. There was no point getting his hopes up, it was probably never going to be useful anyway.

She closed up all but one of the crates and put them back on the shelves, then cleared away a soldering iron, solder, and various lengths of wire and some unused connectors. All that remained was a bright orange buoy, a little larger than a football. A flap had been cut into the side. She peered through it and looked at the modified search and rescue transmitter now installed inside. A flashing green LED told her it was working. She put her hand in her pocket and pulled out a piece of folded paper that had been sealed inside a plastic bag, and placed it inside the buoy with the electronics. Finally she closed the flap, took the silicone gun and squeezed the trigger, forcing out a long thin trail of sticky substance with which she sealed the plastic.

Lucya put the silicone gun back in its crate, and then lowered the crate under the bench. She slid it into place alongside the four other buoys she had already prepared but not yet sealed.

A speaker in the corridor outside crackled into life.

“All bridge officers report to the bridge, all bridge officers to the bridge.”

“Perfect timing,” Lucya said to herself in Russian. She grabbed the ring at the top of now closed buoy, lifted it from the table, and left the room.

Thirty

“STACEY, THIS IS Dave Whitehall, he’s our navigation officer. He reports to Lucya, and will be helping make sure we stay on course. And over there is Pedro Sol. He’s our lookout and, because we have a reduced bridge crew, is also our helmsman. He steers the boat and makes sure we don’t hit anything. Today I’ll be getting us underway and then Pedro will take over.” Jake said.

“It doesn’t seem like a lot of people to drive such a big ship. Why is the bridge so large if there are so few people?”

“That’s mainly because it has to span the width of the vessel so that we have a good visual lookout all around. Nowadays the computers do the driving as you call it. We’re really just here to make sure nothing goes wrong.”

Stacey nodded. “So Pedro won’t be driving for long, the computer will take over? Like an autopilot on a plane?”

“Actually, no, not today. The computers use GPS, but it seems from our readings that the asteroid took out some of the GPS satellites. If it had hit just a few we’d be okay, but we’re not able to get a proper fix on our position so we can’t risk it except for the most basic stuff. We’ll get underway manually, and once we’re on the right heading, the computer will keep us pointing in the right direction. When it comes to knowing when to change heading, and by how much, we’re going to do this the old fashioned way. Dead reckoning, some celestial navigation, and once we get closer to land, we can use the radar to help out. That is if Lucya and Dave can remember how to use that antique equipment they’ve got out over there.” He pointed to the map table upon which were sat charts, compasses, a sextant, and a pile of navigation books. “