We pulled the hatch to the monitoring room shut, as well as the one that led to the corridor where we had entered the reactor section. “Hit the LOCKDOWN button, Irena,” I snapped. “Johnny, get ready!”
The hatches simultaneously clunked as the security latches slid into place. Lights on the hatch panels burned red.
The PA kept blaring; it was a rapid-fire stream of yelling.
Irena muttered, “They just called security to this section.”
“It’s time,” I said in a grave voice. “Raise the control rods.”
She nodded, grabbed a handle on the control console, and pushed it up. On the display before her, the diagram of the reactor showed the rods rising slowly. The nuclear pile of uranium fuel was pulsating with a yellow glow. As the rods withdrew, the color began to darken.
The temperature of the core was increasing.
“They’ll try to cut power here,” she said. “It’ll trip the rods down into place.”
And that would cause a SCRAM. It was a failsafe of fission plants. Electromagnets lifted and held the rods in place. No power meant no magnets, and they would fall into the core where they would absorb neutrons. The analogy Irena had made earlier was that inserting the control rods into the core was like sucking the oxygen out of a fire.
We had to damage them so they wouldn’t go back into their slots and descend into the core.
Like Chernobyl.
I glanced down at the containment vessel. Above the structure, a mechanism was moving upwards, pulling long cylinders from the core.
The control rods.
I pointed. “Lau, put a grenade under those rods! Just a small one—we don’t want to crack the vessel.”
He looked where I pointed. “Got it.” He was nearly done; the bombs were strapped to multiple pipes labeled with blue throughout the chamber. “I’m ready to turn off the valves.”
“Do it.”
On the control before Irena, warnings began to flash. “Temperature is increasing rapidly! It’s happening!”
In the nuclear core of the dreadnought Drakon, neutrons were colliding with uranium atoms and splitting more neutrons outward. These found more uranium, generating even more neutrons. And since we had added more U-233 to the core, there were now more neutron collisions occurring.
The uranium in the fuel rods and the ingots would begin to glow red soon, and the entire structure would melt into a molten mass of burning metal that would liquify anything it touched.
Someone began pounding at the hatch to the corridor.
—••—
“You have to damage the control rods!” Irena yelled. “Before they cut power!”
I turned back to the reactor room. “Lau! Hurry!”
He was moving from valve to valve, twisting them closed. Each one took thirty seconds. He was sweating and moving quickly. “Working on it,” he muttered. “Never sabotaged a fission reactor before. There are a lot of pipes.”
Alarms were beginning to blare in the control room. Lights were flashing, and combined with the red emergency backups, the effect was surreal. The banging continued at the hatch to the corridor. I glanced at a monitor that showed the hatch. Sparks had started from the top of its frame, lancing inward toward us.
Lau’s head appeared over the shattered viewport’s edge as he hauled himself into the control room. “Ready,” he gasped. Then he fell to his knees and held a control unit before him.
He glanced at me and I nodded. “Do it.”
He pressed the button.
One by one the grenades detonated. Each tore a coolant pipe to shrapnel, which flew through the containment chamber and ricocheted off the ceiling and fell back to the deck in twisted shards of smoking steel. Pieces flew into the control room and we hurled ourselves away from the shattered viewport and fell heavily to the deck. I threw my arms over my head to shield my face, but I realized dimly that I was wearing the radiation suit and helmet.
Pieces of hot metal rained down on us. I pushed myself to my feet and lurched to the ledge to peer into the reaction chamber.
The coolant pipes were gone. Loose tubes and conduits hung from the ceiling and drooped from the bulkheads. Lau had turned all the valves off though, so there was no water leaking into the area.
I turned my gaze to the control rods. They were bent and twisted but still suspended over the containment structure. There were some broken pieces littering the deck nearby.
The power went out.
With the electromagnets no longer holding them in place, the broken rods fell. It startled me and I jumped backward from the crash. They hit the containment unit and shattered, pieces skittering across the deck, rolling amongst the other debris.
They were highly radioactive.
I turned to Irena and found her sprawled on the deck. I pulled her up and checked her over.
“I’m okay,” she whispered. She pushed the hair from her face. She looked at the consoles, which were dark. “They know what we’re trying.”
“The rods are broken.”
She offered me a grin. “Then the chain reaction has started.”
“And the graphite fire?”
“Did you add the oxygen?” I nodded and she continued, “Then it’ll start soon. When the coolant that’s left in the reactor has boiled away, the temperature will skyrocket.” She hesitated and looked at me with fear in her eyes. “There’s no stopping it now, Mac. It’s going to melt out of containment.”
“How long? You said thirty minutes . . .”
“Once all the coolant is gone, that’s right. I’ve drained what I could from the vessel, but there’s still some in there. It’ll take a while for it to boil away. Say . . . fifteen minutes for that, give or take.”
So, we had just under an hour to capsize the ship, otherwise the corium would melt downward, pierce three decks, and then drop out of the hull at the bottom of the sub. The lower three decks in this section only would flood, but it wouldn’t be enough to sink the dreadnought.
But if the ship was inverted, the corium would penetrate twenty-seven decks and drop out of the top of the warsub, flooding a much larger portion of the vessel.
“Okay, time to go.” At the hatch, the sparks were still shooting inward and the cut was now at the bottom, near the deck. I pulled my helmet off and threw it into the reactor room. “Grab your bags, load your weapons.”
“Which way?” Johnny asked, his eyes on the sparks.
I pointed and they followed my finger with their eyes.
Into the power distribution room.
It was the only exit now.
—••—
We exited en masse into the adjoining chamber and pulled the hatch shut behind us. There was another one leading out, and we followed it. There were several cabins off it, with rows of radiation suits hanging from hooks. It was a changing area for reactor maintenance crews. I stared at the suits for a moment, then glanced back at my people.
I smiled.
—••—
We pulled the Russian radiation suits over our uniforms. We still had to carry our bags—they held weapons, ammo and our wetsuits—and we followed the corridor out of the reactor area. We were breathing heavily and moving quickly. Every second mattered.
The hatches locked behind us, and when the Russians finally arrived on the scene, it would only take them a few moments to realize what had happened. The coolant pipes were gone. The grenade had shattered the control rods and they would not be going back into the core. The uranium reaction was accelerating and nothing could stop it. A graphite fire had started in the containment vessel and would be raging out of control, preventing repair crews from getting near. The heat would crack the structure, and radio-active smoke and steam would fill the chamber.
There was a chance they could get some coolant to this area by rigging up a new piping system, or dumping a ‘poison’ on the core to soak up neutrons, but Irena felt that it was too late. Security had to get through two locked hatches still, and by then the reactor would have already melted down.
The corium would have begun moving.
And we needed to be out of there.
We reached a hatch that led to a corridor; there was a stream of sparks shooting inward from it as well.
—••—
I grabbed Irena and thrust my mouth to her ears. I hissed instructions to her and she looked at me in shock. “Do it now!” I rasped.
She nodded and stepped up to the door, avoiding the sparks. She turned her head to the side and shielded her eyes. She slammed her palms against the door again and again.
The sparks immediately ceased.
“Pomogi nam!” she cried. “Vypustit nas!”
“Pomogi nam!” I repeated.
Help us! Let us out!
There was a chatter of voices outside and the sound of something grinding across the deck. I turned to the others and mouthed, “Here we go.”
I punched the open button.
The hatch slid aside.
We stumbled into the corridor hacking and coughing. Irena fell to her knees muttering something in Russian and I slumped against the bulkhead, pretending that my lungs were heaving.
There were eight security officers there and two crewmen operating the welder. The lights were dim in the corridor—a ghastly red glow hung over us—and there were blinking alarms strobing up and down the level. I pointed through the hatch and toward the reactor chamber as I continued to cough. Their eyes followed my fingers and they nodded, yelling something unintelligible.
They pushed past us and entered the section we’d just come from. The two crew with the welder followed the security team, lugging the tanks with them.
They disappeared, and the hatch closed behind them. The others’ eyes were wide as they realized what I’d just done.
Time to run.
“This way,” I muttered as I pointed toward the bow of the ship. We needed to go as far as we could before we hit a watertight security hatch. Then we’d decide what to do.
We had to move on to the next stage in the plan, and to do that, we needed to get to a control system to maneuver the ship.
Using torpedoes to flood one side and force the dreadnought to invert had not worked. Time for a new strategy.
One that was far more dangerous.
The six of us ran through the dim corridor, wearing Russian radiation suits and carrying duffle bags, and plunging deeper into the warsub.
—••—
Cliff and I led the way. Lau and Johnny were in the rear. As we rounded a corner, we stumbled into another security team. They were poking their heads in each hatch they passed, yelling something within, before moving to the next.
They were following the ‘repel boarders’ protocols and were sweeping the ship.
We came to an abrupt halt and they stared at us. There were four of them.
I raised my finger as if I wanted to speak to them and marched forward confidently. My weapon was in my bag and there was no time to pull it.
Instead I just walked right up to the four of them. They continued to watch with questioning eyes. Their gaze flitted over our radiation suits and their brows furrowed.
As soon as I was within striking distance I lashed out. Cliff was next to me and had taken the one nearest to him. I hoped Johnny and Lau had recognized what was happening and would grab weapons to assist. I knew Johnny would, at least. That was how we’d trained for such a situation.
The Russian I hit first staggered back from the blow. It was a right cross to his temple and his head jerked to the side, dazing him. Then I stepped forward and swept his legs out from under him with a low kick.
A gun went off and someone fell heavily to the deck. Then there was another series of shots.
It was Johnny, firing at a security officer.
Lau also had his weapon out and was squeezing rounds off. He’d reacted quickly and with a level of training that spoke to Sheng City Intelligence’s abilities.
I knelt over the man I’d leveled, preparing to knock him out, when he caught me with a palm-strike to my neck. I pulled back, gasping, and he rose to his feet. I kicked again and he blocked with a forearm. Then I swung to the side, twirling, and kicked with my other leg. He raised his arm to block—
And I lowered my leg and instead swung with a backhand.
I connected with his nose, which exploded in a shower of frothing blood.
He uttered a single, simple grunt and fell heavily to the deck.
There were shouts now, coming from the cabins the team had been checking on. It must have seemed obvious to the crew what was happening. One second a security team had stuck their heads in, asking if everyone was okay and if they’d seen any intruders, and the next there was a raging fight in the corridor directly outside, complete with machine gun fire.
Beside me, Cliff clutched his man in a sleeper hold. The Russian’s eyes were narrowed and glaring with hatred. He groaned in agony as he struggled against Cliff’s powerful grip.
After a few moments, he grew limp and slumped downward.
I flashed Cliff a tight grin. This type of work perfectly suited him.
“We have to keep going,” I said. “Hurry!”
We continued down the hall, leaving the four on the deck, all badly injured or dead.
Irena’s face was pale. She was gasping and staring around her at everything that was going on. She’d done her job in the reactor room well, but now I had to get her out. I wanted her to survive this. She was way outside her realm of expertise here.
A bright orange door blocked the way around the next turn.
Watertight hatch.
Meg slid to a stop next to me and stared at the control panel.
“Is there a way to open it?” I asked.
“Likely not,” she said, chest heaving. “It’s controlled from the security station. The bridge, probably.”
Beside the hatch was a sign with a diagram of a crewman on a steep ladder. “In here,” I gestured. I kicked it open and grabbed the railing. I was moving fast, desperate to get off that deck. They knew intruders were there, knew we’d sabotaged their fission plant, and they would shoot to kill as soon as they saw us.
I threw myself down the ladder, three flights until I hit the lowest level. The lights were dimmer there, the cables snaking across the deck, and the corridors narrower than they had been three levels up.
“Where are we going?” Meg asked.
“An airlock.”
She stared at me in shock. “We’re leaving?”
“Not yet. Not even close, Sis.” I pointed at a hatch in the deck. “There.”
She peered at it.
We were at the bottom of the ship but not at either port or starboard; we were in the middle of the dreadnought near the keel. The hull was directly below us. There was an emergency airlock hatch in the deck. It swung upward and I looked down into it.
“What’s our depth?” Johnny asked.
The lock was big enough for the six of us. The grating at my feet clanged as I landed heavily. I studied the control panel as the others peeled off their radiation suits. According to the display, the pressure outside was nine atms. Since we were already at four, it was a negligible difference. “We’re only at eighty meters,” I said. “Find some tanks. There must be an airlock changing station up there somewhere.”
In the distance, I could still hear explosions and the whine of screws as torpedoes cut through the water. The dreadnought heeled from side to side at times as it maneuvered.
Shouting reached my ears as I scrambled back up to the deck. The others were searching for scuba gear—ours was back in the airlock we’d entered, but the watertight hatches had sealed it far away from us—and I cocked my head, listening to the sounds.
They were coming from the ladderwell we’d just exited.
Another security team.
They’d followed.