Up in hangar bay 1, Tom led them to a small opening set into the deck. “This one’s for the flares the pilots use to decoy heat-seeking missiles.” He pried open the little circular hatch, stepped down through the deck, looked up at Finn, and grinned. “Here we go.”
Finn waited until Tom’s head had disappeared before following him down into the narrow trunk line. The two descended, vertical handhold by handhold, Tom narrating as they went.
“There’s thirty-four different magazines on the ship. Everything is stowed separate, according to type. You got your primary magazines, universal magazines, missile magazines, magazines for the little stuff—small arms and ammo, smoke guns, flares, distress signals, things like that…”
Despite their physical proximity, the vertical tunnel’s acoustics made the ordie’s voice oddly distant.
“We’re passing deck two now. Most of our magazines are located down here below the waterline so they can flood them in an emergency, like a fire on board…”
Speaking of fire, it felt really hot in there to Finn. As if they were climbing down through the Earth’s mantle.
Tom didn’t seem to notice. “No bomb components in here per se, but there’s still a ton of explosive material. If something bad happened here we’d just flood it. Every magazine is equipped with its own sprinkler system. In an emergency you could top this one up with seawater inside ninety seconds.”
They got down inside, stepped off the ladder, and looked around. There was barely room for the two of them.
Finn stopped, stood still. Cocked his head for a moment. Looked at Tom. “What’s that?”
Tom looked puzzled. “Chief?”
“That sound.” It was a faint, high hum. Growing.
Tom frowned. Slowly shook his head. “Not hearing it,” he whispered.
Finn cocked his head the other way, then back the first way. Slowly worked his jaw, the way he would if he were popping his ears on a plane on takeoff. The sound began to diminish.
It was in his head. His ears were ringing. That was all.
He looked back at Tom. “So people are pretty upset about Biker.”
“Oh, yeah,” said Tom. “Everyone liked her. She was a good boss. Intense lady.”
“Intense how?”
“Man, dedicated. She was down here, in and out of all these spaces, every single day, for hours. More than the O himself. Never missed a day…” He went silent again.
Finn could practically hear the sentence finish itself: until she did.
“How did she seem that morning?”
Tom rubbed his nose. “Just normal, pretty much. She was kind of distracted that morning. Wound up.” His face fell. “Maybe she was depressed or something.” Upset with himself for not having noticed.
“Wound up, what, like jacked up on coffee?”
“Oh no, Chief Finn, not a chance. Biker didn’t touch the stuff.”
“Not a coffee drinker? Not at all?” Interesting. Gauging by the long lines at Jittery Abe’s, Finn had thought he must be the only one on the boat who didn’t load on the almighty bean.
“Matter of fact, there’s quite a few guys work down here who watch their caffeine intake. With her, though, it was like a religion. She said she was born wired, an’ if she drank coffee like we did she’d probably blow up the magazine.”
Tom’s young face lit up as he laughed, but it lasted only a second or two, and in the silence his face fell once more.
“Sucks,” said Finn.
“Got that right, Chief. Sucks the big one.”
“Hey, Tom!”
A voice calling down from above.
“Yo!”
“Got a message up here for yer guest.”
Tom nodded to Finn. Time to go. “Yo!” he called up again. “Right up!” He gestured at the vertical ladder. You first.
Finn slapped one hand up onto an eye-level rung, then the other onto the next, and pulled to hoist himself up—
And to his astonishment both hands slipped off the rungs, sending him crashing to the deck.
“Whoa!” Tom cried out. He jumped back a step, then quickly bent down to help Finn to his feet. “Man, you okay?”
Finn sat on the deck for a moment. Looked at his hands, working them both, making and unmaking fists.
He couldn’t feel his fingers.
Completely numb.
It was as if they weren’t there.
“You okay, Chief?” Tom repeated, worried now.
Finn was on his feet, shaking his hands, trying to wring circulation back into them. He turned to Tom. “No problem. Hands fell asleep.”
“Okay. Wow.” Tom looked uncertain. “You sure? You good to climb?”
“No problem,” Finn repeated. He put a Tom-Sawyer-the-ordie grin on his own face to show that everything was right as rain.
Everything was not right as rain.
“Okay,” said Tom again, clearly not knowing what to do.
Finn grabbed a handhold to recommence the climb. Ignoring the painful sensation of pins and needles as his fingers started coming back to life, he willed his hands to keep enough of a grip that they would at least partially stabilize his position as he propelled his body upward with his feet. It was like doing rope climbs using only his hands, something he’d done thousands of times—only in this case using only his feet. Basically impossible. Still, he made it up the first six or seven rungs, and by then he’d got enough feeling back into his hands that they could take over their share of the effort.
When Finn finally emerged, like a tunnel rat in a prison escape movie, he found a red-shirted colleague of Tom’s standing over him.
“You’re Chief Finn?” the guy said.
Finn nodded.
“Master Chief Jackson would like to speak with you.”
Finn got to his feet, Tom coming up next to him. “Hey, thanks,” he said to Tom.
“No problem,” Tom replied. His face was still etched with suppressed alarm. Finn could see it was a struggle not to ask again, You okay?
“No problem,” Finn echoed back to the boy.
The ordie nodded, looking the opposite of reassured.