First Fate (EBOOK)

Chapter one
Gunner McCrae scowled at the satellite image of the category-three storm cell that had been chasing them since Rose of the Sea left Hawaii yesterday morning. If the hurricane continued to intensify like it was, the captain would need to rethink the cruise ship’s course ASAP.
His monitor blinked out. As did the nav system. And the radar. “What the hell?” Gunner jolted back, scanning the bridge. Every screen was dead. The lights were also out.
The captain drove his hands through his thick hair. “Shit!”
Captain Nelson rarely swore. Never in front of women.
Gunner spun to his captain, seeking clarification. Nelson’s eyes were wide, darting from one screen to the next. “Sir?”
“The whole bridge is down.” The captain’s gaze shot along blank consoles. “Everything has died.” He spoke with his usual composure, but his expression was that of trapped horror. “We’re dead in the water!”
“What?” Gunner held the utmost respect for Captain Nelson. He was the father he’d never had. A pillar of strength. A man in control.
He didn’t look it now. For the first time since Gunner had known him, Nelson was lacking in action. Gunner stood and strode alongside the center console, jabbing buttons, desperate for a flicker of life. Nothing. “But how?”
First Officer Cameron Sykes slapped the Electronic Chart Display joystick and shook his head. “I got nothing.”
“No. No. No! This can’t be happening.” Nelson darted his gaze from Gunner to the dead equipment and back again. His expression was loaded with fear.
Gunner’s neck hairs shot to attention.
Second Officer Pauline Gennaro spun to the captain, yanking off her headset. “Comms are down. I can’t get the engine room online.”
“It’s an electromagnetic pulse.” Nelson’s voice quivered, lacerated with anguish. “An EMP. It has to be.”
“All the security monitors are down too.” Deck Cadet Reynolds pushed back on his chair.
Sweat beaded Safety Officer Robert Hastings’ forehead as he stared at the closed-circuit televisions. The monitors should display key aspects of the ship in rotation, providing multiple visuals of each deck. All of them were blank.
Even the exit sign over the door was out.
Darkness seeped into the bridge. It wasn’t designed for blackouts. Day or night, Gunner could see every inch of that room. The banks of computers should be lit up like the party deck at the rear of the ship. But with the sun hanging low on the western horizon, Gunner could barely see the length of the bridge.
Gunner turned to his captain. Nelson’s eyes were wide, his lips pale. “Are you sure it’s an EMP, sir? It could be—”
“Look around.” Nelson smacked his lips together as if wrestling with his words. “The electronics are dead.” His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down and he cleared his throat. “Not just the computers. Satnav. Lights. Comms.” He sucked in a shaky breath. “They’re all on different circuits, yet they all died in the same instant. If it was just one, maybe even two circuits, we could attribute it to mechanical or system failure. But the whole bridge . . .” Shaking his head, he glanced at his wrist. “Even my watch is dead. Yours?”
Gunner stared at the watch his wife had given him last month for their tenth wedding anniversary. The screen was blank. He tapped the glass. Nothing. Dread crawled up his back.
“It was an EMP. And it’s happened exactly as they said it would when I was in the navy. Everything fried in an instant.” Nelson leaned his palms on the blank GPS console. “It’s the only explanation.”
Scraping his thoughts together, Gunner glared at Nelson. The air in the bridge seemed to crackle, loaded with static. “But how can that be? The hull’s solid metal. We’re protected.”
“Below decks maybe. But up here on the bridge . . .” Glancing to his left, Nelson’s eyes bulged. “And look.” He pointed at the exit. “The door was open!”
Sheryl, the middle-aged woman who’d been cleaning Rose of the Sea’s bridge since its maiden voyage twenty-five years ago, was humming to herself and gliding a squeegee over the glass like it was the most important job on the cruise ship. The squeak of rubber was like nails scraping up Gunner’s back.
Nelson’s face washed with a gray tinge. “We can’t even sound an alarm.” He jabbed the ship’s horn button. The blast that usually blared from the loudspeakers could wake an entire island. Not this time. “If . . .” Nelson sucked a breath through clenched teeth. “If I’m right, the whole world is—” He clutched his chest. His eyes flared.
“Sir!” Gunner ran to his aid.
Nelson didn’t just fall. He keeled sideways, smacked his head on a chair and hit the floor without so much as a hand to halt his impact.
“Sir! Captain!” Gunner dropped to his knees and rolled Nelson over.
Nelson’s blue eyes were open. His mouth too. His tongue was motionless.
Gunner pressed his finger to the clammy skin beneath Nelson’s neck, praying for a pulse . . . nothing.
“Shit! Someone get the doctor.” Gunner tilted the captain’s head back, opening his airway, but the crew failed to move. “Now!” He hadn’t meant to yell, but the fury behind it must’ve shocked Miguel into action, because the ship’s quartermaster raced out the bridge like he’d been torpedoed from the room.
Gunner began chest compressions. “One, two, three.” He’d only ever performed CPR on medical dummies. They’d never felt like this. This was too confronting. Too real. The captain was a friend. They’d done their rookie cruise together nineteen years ago, and they’d kept in touch ever since.
“Is he breathing?” Without pausing his compressions, Gunner stared at the captain’s lips, expecting them to move. They didn’t. “Someone check. Quick. Thirteen. Fourteen. Fifteen.”
Third Officer Jae-Ellen Rochford fell to her knees and leaned her ear to the captain’s lips. Easing back, she shook her head. Tears flooded her eyes.
Twenty-four. Twenty-five.
The bridge became silent. Like a funeral parlor. Gunner jolted. Something else had stopped.
The engines.
This can’t be happening!
Gunner paused compressions and Jae-Ellen gave two breaths into Nelson’s mouth. The three remaining staff stared at him; their eyes wide, their mouths open. Shock or dismay or disbelief had them rooted to the floor.
But there was something else.
Realization slammed into Gunner like a wrecking ball. With the Captain out of action, he was in charge of the ship.
Him . . . Gunner McCrae . . . Captain.
One. Two. Three.
He wasn’t prepared. Far from it. This was his maiden voyage on Rose of the Sea.
I’ve only just been promoted to Staff Captain, for Christ’s sake.
He worked damn hard. But it wasn’t to rise up the ranks.
No. He worked hard to keep his mind off his guilt.
Sixteen. Seventeen.
He was not worthy of this captaincy. Of any captaincy.
It should be someone else. Someone smarter. Braver. Someone more trustworthy.
It should be Captain Nelson.
“Check again,” he barked at Jae-Ellen.
She pushed her fingers under Nelson’s chin and shook her head. “No, sir. Still no pulse.”
“Where the hell’s the doctor?”
“I’ll go check.” Safety Officer Hastings bolted past Sheryl, who stood with her squeegee in one hand, and her bulging eyes glued to Captain Nelson.
A vise clamped around Gunner’s chest at the sinking sun behind her. If an EMP strike had fried every electrical component on the ship, in less than one hour, they’d be in a total blackout.
Twenty-four. Twenty-five.
“Pauline, get the flashlights ready,” he ordered.
She spun on her heel and raced to the rear of the bridge. Sykes returned his attention to the computers. Reynolds did too.
Jae-Ellen gave Nelson two more breaths and as Gunner restarted compressions, he glanced at the consoles. Every one was blank, as if a giant harpoon had been shot through the entire bank of computers, obliterating their central cores. Sykes shifted from one to the next, flicking switches, bashing the keyboards. The Global Maritime Distress and Safety System was dead. All the navigational instruments were dead. Even the switchboard was dead.
We’re at the mercy of the ocean!
Sykes grunted, snapped up the binoculars, and scanned the darkening sea.
Jae-Ellen checked the captain’s pulse again and shook her head.
“Come on, Stewart.” Gunner spoke through clenched teeth. “Don’t do this. Hang in there. We need you. I need you.”
“Shit! Sir, the flashlights are dead.” Pauline banged one on a table and, shaking her head, she tossed it aside and grabbed another.
Pressing harder, Gunner restarted his compression count. “One. Two. Three.” But with each push on the captain’s lifeless body, his brain shunted between the fact that he was actually trying to keep his good friend alive, and critical aspects of his years of disaster-management training.
Captain Nelson wasn’t the only one who needed help. There were 922 passengers and 215 crew members aboard Rose of the Sea. His first responsibility was to the passengers, then the crew. Then himself.
He returned his gaze to Nelson’s unblinking eyes. Twenty-one. Twenty-two.
Without the Captain, they were in trouble.
Without engines and satnav and depth gauges and collision warnings, they could hit a reef and there was absolutely nothing they could do about it. They weren’t just in trouble; this was a critical emergency.
But he had no means to communicate with the passengers or crew, let alone the mainland.
He couldn’t even contact his wife and daughter.
Twenty-six. Twenty-seven.
Acid churned in his gut as he pictured Adelle and his beautiful seven-year-old daughter, Bella. Gunner’s home in the seaside town of Rugged Shores was wedged between Los Angeles and Santa Barbara. If this EMP strike was an act of terrorism, then either of those major cities could’ve been prime maximum-casualty targets. His throat went bone dry. His heart banged in his chest.
An EMP detonation anywhere over the United States would decimate the entire country.
Are Adelle and Bella safe?
Are they together?
And my mother . . . is she okay?
Each thought sliced him like a switchblade, inflicting another slash of dread.
He had no answers. Based on the blank equipment around him, it would be a very long time before he did.
A sense of uselessness oozed into his brain like black ink, staining his sanity. Sweat dribbled down his back and without air-con, it was going to get hotter.
He paused for Jae-Ellen to breathe into Nelson, then continued compressions again.
The eyes of the crew were heat-seeking missiles burning into him. Every soul aboard Rose of the Sea was counting on him to keep them safe. They were relying on him to know what the hell he was doing. In the space of a heartbeat, his easy cruising life, where he hid his disgrace with a good day’s work and fake laughter, had become a violent tempest with the potential to kill everyone on board. He needed to keep up his ruse, for everyone’s sake.
For a long, agonizing moment, he was crippled with indecision.
A painful pulse thumped behind his eyes.
A high-pitched squeal resonated in his ears.
The compressions he was performing on Nelson’s lifeless body were his only constant. He’d lost count. He’d lost track of time. The crew glared at him, placing him on a stage with a million-watt light, demanding he perform. That was what he’d been doing since he was thirteen—performing. Pretending. Acting like he was one of the good guys.
“Sir? What should we do?”
The fear lacing Jae-Ellen’s words was the prick he needed to burst his panic bubble. It was time to get his A-game on. “Pauline. Your turn on CPR.”
“Yes, Sir.” Pauline pulled back her dark hair, tugged a band from her wrist to secure it, then fell to her knees at Nelson’s chest.
Gunner removed his hands.
Pauline started compressions. “One. Two. Three.”
Gunner stood facing his First Officer. “Officer Sykes.”
Sykes stepped his polished boots forward. “Yes, Captain.”
Gunner did a double take. A lump of anxiety dropped in his stomach like a released anchor. He was the Captain of Rose of the Sea. A title he was not worthy of receiving. But every soul onboard needed him to act like one, so that was exactly what he had to do. “Record in the logbook our last known location, heading and speed before we lost power. Then get those binoculars going. We’re blind out here without sonar. Every five minutes, send out a mayday call. I know it’s not working, but maybe someone will hear it, somehow.”
“Yes, sir.” Sykes saluted and shifted away.
“Officer Reynolds.”
The deck cadet jumped at his name and shuffled forward. “Sir?”
“Grab one of those two-ways.” He eyeballed the row of handsets lined up on the shelf. “Run down to the engine room. I need a full status of what’s going on down there.”
“Yes, sir.” As Reynolds picked out a two-way, Gunner stared at Nelson’s unblinking eyes. What would Nelson have done next if their situations were switched?
“Ummm, Captain?” Reynolds’ words wobbled off his tongue. “Sir, these are all dead, sir.”
Gunner blinked at the dozen two-way radios lined up on the rack. Of course, they weren’t working. One electromagnetic pulse had reduced them to nothing but paperweights. “Shit.” The bolt of reality stung like a Band-Aid being ripped off an open wound.
Gunner’s brain was under attack as he tried to predict possible scenarios.
Drifting at sea without engines.
Unable to contact home.
None were good.
He stared at Nelson’s unblinking eyes and his mind slammed to the last time he’d seen eyes like that. It had been twenty-five years ago. He’d just turned thirteen, yet he could still recall his relief at witnessing the life slip out of those frosty blue irises.
This time was the exact opposite. Seeing Nelson’s lifeless body had a lump swelling in Gunner’s throat.
“Mayday. Mayday. Mayday. This is First Officer Cameron Sykes of Rose of the Sea. Mayday. Mayday. We seek immediate help.”
Sykes’ mayday call lobbed another distressing thought grenade into Gunner’s brain. Anyone could be listening. Pirates were real. And they would love to attack a crippled ship. Especially a cruise ship. Other than a few handguns in the safe, they had no way to protect themselves. The safe! Everything inside it was protected from the EMP.
“Reynolds. The safe . . . there’s a sat phone in the safe.”
The cadet raced to the back wall of the bridge. After a pause, Reynolds cleared his throat. “Sir, it’s locked, sir.”
“Shit!” Gunner’s blood drained. The safe had two combinations. Gunner had one. Nelson had the other. “Who else has the captain’s safe combo? Sykes, is it you?”
Sykes lowered the binoculars. “No, sir, I have the same as you. It was Hastings, sir. He’s gone to find the doc.”
Gunner mentally tallied what else was in that safe. Along with the satellite phone, there were more two-ways, all the passengers’ passports, six handguns and a supply of ammunition. The sat phone was their only way to contact the mainland. And without the guns, they couldn’t defend themselves. Christ! We need to get into that safe.
“Sir.” Reynolds was back in view, awaiting instruction.
Gunner considered instructing Pauline to stop CPR. But he couldn’t do it. Nelson was everything he wasn’t. Charismatic. Courageous. Honorable. He couldn’t stop. Not yet. “Come on, Captain. You fight this. Fight it with all you’ve got. You hear me?”
The deck cadet’s polished boots shifted into view. He was waiting for the captain’s instructions. His instructions. “Reynolds, run down to the engine room and bring me back a status report. Better yet, get the chief engineer and tell Hastings to get his ass back here, too.”
“Yes, sir.” Reynolds sprinted out the open door.
Sheryl was gone. The squeegee was upended in her bucket.
“What shall I do, sir?” Pauline glanced at him without stopping compressions.
Despite her bloodshot eyes, she held it together. She had a tiny frame, like his mother. Though, unlike his mother, Pauline’s clenched jaw and fiery eyes portrayed both drive and determination. His mother had lost both of those when she’d been sentenced to twenty-five years in jail.
He knelt at the captain’s chest again. “I’ll take over.” Pauline eased back and Gunner began compressions. One. Two.
“Captain. What shall I do?” Pauline’s eyes drilled into him.
Nine. Ten. Eleven. The hard sheen in her eyes displayed her turmoil, making it nearly impossible to reply. But he had to. Everyone was counting on him to keep his shit together. “I need the crew to know comms are down. Have them muster in the main meeting room. I’ll make an announcement there as soon as I can. This is top priority, and I need them assembled ASAP.”
“Yes, sir.” Pauline scrambled to her feet. “What shall I tell the passengers?”
Twenty-eight. Twenty-nine. Thirty.
He stopped for Jae-Ellen to breathe into Nelson again. “Tell them it’s a routine test. Nothing else. Not yet. Not until we know exactly what’s going on and how long it could last. We don’t want to create panic.”
“Are we going to abandon ship, sir?”
Pauline’s question was a bolt of horror he hadn’t considered. Abandoning ship was a drastic measure, only undertaken when all else was lost. They were not at that point. Not yet, at least. “No, Pauline. We’re not. Now go!”
“Yes, sir.” Pauline sprinted out the door.
“Mayday. Mayday. Mayday. This is First Officer Cameron Sykes from Rose of the Sea. Mayday. Mayday. Mayday.”
Gunner admired Sykes’ professionalism. Never in all his years of training did Gunner think he’d be involved in a major emergency. With more than three hundred cruise ships carrying more than half a million passengers on the water nearly every day of the year, cruising was considered one of the safest vacations available.
Gunner had a disaster on his hands that could blow that statistic out of the water.
Outside the large bank of windows, the sky was an equal mix of orange from the setting sun and the blackness of night. Any minute now, they were going to be in absolute darkness. Gunner wiped sweat from his brow. “Any pulse?”
Jae-Ellen felt Captain Nelson’s neck. “No, sir.”
Gunner adjusted his position on his knees and checked his watch. Damn it. He couldn’t breathe, let alone think straight. Forcing his brain to focus, he glanced at Jae-Ellen. “Is your watch working?”
She flicked her wrist. “No, sir.”
“My watch still works.” Sykes’ voice cut through the silence. “It’s seventeen fifty, sir.”
Gunner frowned at Sykes, unable to comprehend why his watch had been saved from the EMP.
“It’s analog, sir.” Sykes read his mind.
Gunner mentally listed everything he knew about EMP. Back when he’d taken the training, the concept of a nuclear warhead being detonated in the Earth’s magnetic field had been declared sensationalism.
But if Nelson was right, and someone had detonated a nuclear weapon twenty or so miles up, then they weren’t the only ones in trouble. In a flash, high-energy gamma rays would’ve reacted with air molecules to produce positive ions. Those ions caused a charge acceleration that radiated an instant electromagnetic pulse. That supercharged pulse would’ve fried every electronic gadget within line of sight of the blast zone.
But that was just the start.
The pulse would’ve then traveled along electronic cables and obliterated anything it came into contact with. Miles and miles of cables connected the computer monitors in the bridge to just about every other piece of equipment on the ship, meaning the electronics on the bridge wouldn’t be all that were affected. Engines, propulsion, exhausts, water, sewerage, refrigeration, waste—the list was endless.
His EMP training had been seven years ago, and back then the experts had been adamant that one nuclear explosion could take out the entire United States.
What could seven years of perfecting that bomb do? Take out two continents? Three? The whole world?
The experts had said that within the first twenty-four hours, hundreds of thousands of people would die. The elderly. Infants. The sick. Those with electronic implants had no hope.
Gunner froze.
A chill raced up his spine.
If it was an EMP, then Captain Nelson’s pacemaker would’ve taken a hit too. Even if Gunner did bring Stewart back to life, he would never stabilize.
“Any pulse, Jae-Ellen?”
She checked his neck. “No, sir.”
With a breath trapped in his throat, Gunner stopped compressions. “I’m sorry, Stewart.”
A tear spilled over Jae-Ellen’s lower eyelids and her chin dimpled.
“Time, Sykes?”
“Eighteen o six, sir.”
“I’m calling Captain Stewart Nelson’s time of death at eighteen o six. Sykes, please make a note of that in the logbook.”
“Sir.” Sykes paused. “The logbook is electronic.”
Gunner shoved his hands through his hair and groaned. “Grab paper and pen. Write it down.
Sykes nodded. “Yes, sir.”
Gunner glided the captain’s eyes closed and heaved a sigh. Gunner had always been blessed with good health. His wife, however, had lost fourteen months to breast cancer. Thankfully, she’d been in remission for eight years now and was obsessed with keeping fit and healthy.
Unlike hundreds of his passengers. The demographic of those onboard Rose of the Sea was typical of most cruise ships. More than sixty-five percent of the holiday-makers were more than sixty years old. Retirees had time and many also had money. Unfortunately, they also came with their share of health issues that required medical intervention.
His breath caught as another thought grenade lobbed in. Some passengers would’ve had pacemakers, or other forms of electronic medical devices.
Every one of them was probably dead now, too.
A wave of nausea hit him so fast he had to grip onto a chair and swallow back the bitterness in his throat.
It was a long moment before he shifted to stand, and Gunner turned his attention to the consoles lining the bridge. The three-quarter moon, low on the horizon and reflecting off the blank screens, was about to be their only light source.
He glanced at the captain, hardly able to believe what he was seeing. Captain Nelson had been an absolute stalwart. A man who commanded attention. Gunner removed his jacket and draped it over Stewart’s face and chest. There were body bags in the medical center. When the doc showed up, he’d make him retrieve one.
He dragged his eyes away from the lifeless body and studied the relatively calm ocean. Prior to the system failure, he’d been tracking a storm seven miles east of their location. Now they had no way to monitor it, or adjust their heading.
Their nightmare was just beginning.
They didn’t even have Morse code. The age-old encoding scheme had been replaced with modern technology and the equipment had been declared redundant many years ago. Yet, even if they’d had such a machine, other than SOS, he’d have no hope of communicating anything else. He hadn’t thought about it in over a decade.
“Shit! Sir!” The alarm in Sykes’ voice had Gunner spinning to the First Officer. “You better take a look at this, Captain.”
Gunner strode to the front of the bridge, and Sykes shoved the binoculars into his hand, casting his wild eyes toward the sunset. “There, sir, at your nine o’clock.”
Gunner raised the binoculars. His blood drained.
A silent scream tortured his brain. “God help us all.”

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