Relics, Wrecks and Ruins

The Wreck of the Tartarus ^{By Lee Murray}

October 2033

Strapped in her seat, Captain Kennedy R. Jones clutched the console as the submarine rolled on the Atlantic seabed. Seaman McNaught wasn’t so lucky; flung across the control room, his skull smashed against the interior wall. The young man’s face registered an instant of surprise before it slackened and collapsed. Then Kennedy lost sight of him, the submarine still toppling, rocks and debris from the volcano battering the Tartarus’s graphene laminate exterior. The sub groaned, and Kennedy caught a whiff of burning rubber—electrical circuits—tasted blood, fear.

Orange warning lights flickered.

The hull shrieked, grinding, sliding on rock.

Behind Kennedy, someone screamed.

The vessel spun 180 degrees to starboard. Kennedy gasped. Her grip broke. She snatched at the arms of her chair as the sub twisted, tumbled, then tumbled again. The pride of the US Navy tossed like litter scattered carelessly on the wind.

Would it never stop? And would the Tartarus survive? Kennedy prayed the ship’s designers knew their business.

For a moment, she thought of Cole and their girls, Carlotta and Marie, at home. Right now, it was fall in Wisconsin. At Devil’s Lake State Park, the trees would be glorious, all gold and red and green; nature’s fireworks reflected and amplified on the water’s surface. Kennedy swallowed as the vessel jolted again. Why had she forsaken that majestic landscape for the darkest vaults of the ocean?

Her head whiplashed, a stab jolting her spine. Was the roll slowing? She clung on. The wait was excruciating, interminable.

Eventually, the sub ground to a stop. Upright, thank God. There were only a handful of her crew members in the control room, yet Kennedy could swear she heard a collective exhale. Then, just as they dared to breathe, there was a tearing, followed by an inexorable thrumming on the hull. Once more, they waited.

Minutes passed.

At last, everything fell quiet.

Kennedy unsnapped her seat belt, ignoring the nausea that welled in her throat, and took two steps to portside to check on McNaught. She touched her fingers to his neck, but he was dead—poor man. Hardly surprising, given that the back of his skull was dented cruelly inwards. Had he lived, his seafaring days would likely have been over; his right knee was shattered, the lower limb twisted unnaturally back on itself. Kennedy winced. He’d been spared that pain at least.

Fighting dizziness, she reached for a handhold, instead her fingers touched her executive officer, Cohen, slumped against the wall. Glassy eyes stared up at her. His mouth agape in a silent scream, his still-warm skin already leaching color. Kennedy’s heart clenched. The Tartarus assignment was their first together, so she hadn’t known him well, but he’d impressed her as competent and dependable. Solid. The son of a single mother, he wasn’t—hadn’t been—ruffled by a female commanding officer, rare even in these progressive times. She closed Cohen’s eyes with her fingertips.

Where was everyone? Kennedy’s pulse thrummed. Her scalp tightened. Was she the only one still alive? She stifled panic, an odd pang of loneliness already stealing over her. No, she mustn’t panic. There were fifty crew members on the Tartarus, and she was responsible for them all. She needed to get her head together, assess the damage, see to the wounded, and make a plan to get back on course.

Steadying herself against the wall, Kennedy got to her feet.

“Captain Jones.”

She started at the voice close behind. It was Chief Petty Officer Masterton. A quietly spoken man out of Ohio, he was a meat-and-potatoes sort. The type you’d expect to find behind the counter of a hardware store. A large bruise was blooming on the man’s cheekbone. His eyes drifted to the side.

“Executive Officer Cohen?” he asked, squinting.

“Deceased. McNaught, too.”

“Shit.” Masterton shook his head. “Begging your pardon, ma’am. What do you need me to do?”

A console burst into flame on the wall behind McNaught.

The fire siren wailed.

Fuck! Extinguisher. Where is it? It’d come adrift from its bracket. Rolled somewhere. Where? Kennedy whirled, caught the flash of red, lunged for it. God, that’s heavy. Pulling the pin as she clambered over McNaught, she aimed the nozzle at the base of the flame, pressed the trigger, and let the foam fly.

Speckles of foam landed on McNaught; Kennedy kept spraying. The fire sputtered; she didn’t stop until the foam slid in clumps down the wall.

The siren ceased its blaring.

“It’s okay; it’s out,” Masterton said.

Panting, Kennedy nodded. She lowered the extinguisher. Blew out hard. “Right, well I’d better assess the damage to the Tartarus,” Kennedy said. “You check with the medic.”

Masterton lifted his chin. “Yes, ma’am.”

Several others were on their feet now, looking dazed and disoriented. Faces blanched when they spied the dead men.

“Masterton—before you do that, see about covering Cohen and McNaught.” Kennedy clicked the extinguisher back into its bracket. “Let’s give them a little privacy.”

“Ma’am.”

Kennedy took her chair at the console and checked the screens. Breathed in relief. At first glance, the Tartarus’s double-hull structure appeared intact. With thousands of feet of water above the vessel, it was a comfort to know they weren’t in any immediate peril. Kennedy illuminated the outer hull, set the built-in eyes to scan, then checked the screens.

Her heart fluttered. Please, no.

There was no denying the truth: the ship’s stern, including the propellers and the outflow for the internal motion turbines, lay buried under an avalanche of rubble. Even now, rocks still clattered against the hull. The propellers would likely be impacted with rock. To make matters worse, the Tartarus had toppled into a trench and was now pinned on a ledge.

Kennedy switched screens, her heart in her throat. She gave a squeak of joy; the aft escape hatches were still clear. Her excitement was short lived. They were how many feet down? Ten thousand? More? Even if the distress buoy had managed to make it to the surface amidst the rubble of the eruption, the Tartarus could be a mile away from the volcano by now. Searching the ocean would be like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack. And if the US Navy teams did manage to locate them, navigating the trench would be treacherous. Few vessels could withstand the pressures at the Tartarus’s crush depth. What if they were beyond reach?

No. Stop this. There’s time. The graphene hull is intact. The organic liquid-flow batteries are fully charged. This isn’t the Kurst, and the US isn’t Russia. The Tartarus isn’t going to vanish without trace like the USS Cyclops or the ARA San Juan.

Not on my watch.

“Hurst?” she called. “Do we still have comms?”

The ensign scrambled to her feet after retrieving her headset from the floor. She checked her screens. “We’ve lost the cable for the two-way ELF, but if we send up the reserve array, then, yes, ma’am, we should have comms.”

Kennedy forced herself to breathe slowly, in and out, mimicking the ebb and flow of ripples on the beach. Her anxiety dampened. Everything would be fine. The sub was teched to the nines. They would extend the reserve array to reestablish the low frequency radio and she would let her superiors know what had happened. Rescue teams would be dispatched. Cohen and McNaught may be lost, but Kennedy and the rest of the crew could still be plucked from the jaws of hell and delivered to safety.

When that happened, Kennedy would bury her face in her children’s hair and drink in the scent of apple shampoo and the Wisconsin outdoors. She would sob ugly tears into Cole’s chest, and let him rock her like a baby. Until then, she would be the unflappable captain of this ship.

Until then, they would stay calm and sit tight.

When the bodies of the dead had been stowed, the Tartarus’s medic and its chief engineer joined Kennedy in the control room.

Pale and drawn, the medic cleared his throat before giving his report. Kennedy’s throat was raw, too. By now the fire-retardant foam had dried; it was still like breathing acid.

“There are four dead, including Cohen and McNaught,” the medic said. There was a smear of blood on the cuff of his uniform.

Kennedy nodded. She’d already had the numbers from Masterton.

“On top of that, we have five wounded, not counting those with minor bruises and bumps—which is practically everyone.”

Kennedy couldn’t help lifting her hand to her neck, still aching from the whiplash. All around her, the control room hummed with the bleep of systems checks and the murmur of status reports.

“And the five wounded?” she asked. “How are they faring?”

“Two have concussion—I’ll keep an eye on them in case they deteriorate. One dislocated shoulder—I’ve already reset it—and one of the cooks has extensive scalding. All survivable. It’s Ensign Rafferty who worries me most. His pelvis is shattered; it’s likely he has some internal injuries. Without hospital care, he might not make it to Sunday’s ice cream social.”

Kennedy grimaced. “The navy is working on getting us to the surface as soon as possible, but it’s going to take time.”

“How long?” Scotty said, the engineer as brusque as his Trekkie namesake.

“I spoke with the commodore an hour ago. They’re working on a plan now.”

She pursed her lips remembering the terse conversation with her commander. To be fair, the navy was never going to be happy about the situation. The Tartarus was the outcome of billions of dollars of research effort, its recharging technology a closely guarded military secret.

“So, the vessel is lost,” the commodore had said.

“I believe so, sir. There’s an outside chance the propellers could clear the rocks without jamming, but in the event we don’t succeed, it would leave the Tartarus without power.”

Under normal conditions, the Tartarus recharged its liquid-flow battery by tethering to the seabed and allowing the ocean currents to spin the internal turbines like water over gills. The Tartarus’s inflow vents were intact, but with the water outflow buried, there were no currents to speak of. No recharging meant no power and no oxygen. Eventually, the Tartarus was going to flicker out, and its crew with it.

“We could certainly attempt to break out,” she added, when the commodore didn’t speak. “And as the ship’s captain, I’d be willing to volunteer myself for the task—but only after my crew are safely away.”

The commodore remained silent. A glitch in the line, or just a minute of reflection? To Kennedy, the moment felt heavy with accusation, as if she ought to have predicted the eruption and steered the Tartarus out of danger.

“Let me speak to Cohen,” he said eventually.

“Cohen is among the dead, sir.”

“Ah.” Another pause. “Shame.”

Kennedy’s eyes narrowed. Why ask to speak to Cohen? The Tartarus was her command. “Sir? Is there something I should know?”

“No, no. Cohen and I go way back, is all. Don’t worry, Captain. We’re going to get you and your crew out of there. But it’s going to take us a while to get things underway, so you’ll need to be patient.”

“At present, we’re at 89 percent charge. The Tartarus has oxygen tanks for two days, and we can also create oxygen through electrolysis. But splitting water will mean drawing heavily on the available charge,” Kennedy said. She was wasting air; the commodore knew all this.

“I’m fully aware of the ramifications, Captain,” the commodore had said tersely. “I’ll update you as soon as I have some information.” He had cut the connection.

The medic cleared his throat again, bringing Kennedy back to the crew briefing. “In the meantime,” he said, “we’re going to need to reduce our energy consumption.”

“We can cut some lights, turn down the heating. Keep everyone in their bunks. That’ll allow us to eke out charge,” Scotty said.

Kennedy nodded. “I’ll announce the measures on the 1MC and come back and chat to the wounded a little later.”

When the men had returned to their respective stations, leaving only the control room crew, Ensign Hurst turned to her. “Are we going to be shark shit, Captain?” she asked.

The other crew members looked to Kennedy. It was a fair question.

Another deluge of rock hammered the Tartarus, boulder-sized hail, louder than artillery fire, rattling her bones. Grunts and cries echoed through the ship. Everyone snatched for a handhold. Kennedy planted her feet. Held her breath. There was nothing to do but hold on and hope.

When at last the rocks clattered to a stop, the crew looked again to Kennedy.

“No, Hurst, we are not,” she replied. “Not if I can help it.”

A day passed. And another. In the watery limbo, an endless night hovering between life and death, Kennedy didn’t sleep. Even the wounded slumbered fitfully. If these were to be their last hours, no one wanted to waste them sleeping. Instead, they read, told stories, passed photos, sketched. One man played a blues harp.

In the control room, Kennedy wrote letters to Cohen’s wife and sister, to McNaught’s mother, and the families of the other deceased. She thought of her own babies, Carlotta and Marie, of the letter she might want to receive, and took her time perfecting her prose, using words like service, and honor, and courage.

That done, she had Hurst contact HQ again. “I’d appreciate an update,” she told her commander.

“We’re still working on it,” the commodore said.

Kennedy wanted to scream, but he was their lifeline, the man in charge of getting them off this ridge so, for the sake of her crew, she kept her voice even. “Ensign Rafferty’s condition has deteriorated.”

“Look, Captain, the US Navy is doing everything it can. We think we’ve located you, but there are issues on the surface—a storm is hampering our rescue efforts. You need to trust me, as soon as we get a break in the weather, we’ll get your people out of there.” His voice was overly cheery. Putting a positive spin on things to keep up morale.

Pulling her jacket around her shoulders, Kennedy checked the battery power: 38 percent. They were running out of time.

She wrote to Carlotta and Marie. Handwritten notes. So young, Marie, would likely forget her if she didn’t come home, her face blurring in her daughter’s memory, but Carlotta was older and would remember. Kennedy labored over the paragraphs, yet the words were insufficient and lackluster. Nothing could capture her feelings for them, the ache their loss would cause her.

In the end, she quoted Apollinaire:

“Vienne la nuit sonne l’heure / Les jours s’en vont je demeure.”

“Let night come, toll the hour. The days pass by, I remain.”

If they ever saw the letters, Cole would explain. Perhaps he would take them to Paris, so they could watch the gray water of the Seine pass beneath the bridge.

Of course, they might never get her letters. The US Navy was good at keeping secrets. The SSBN James Madison had clipped a Soviet sub in 1974 during the Cold War, and nothing was known of it for forty-three years. In forty-three years, her girls would be in their fifties—older than she was now.

The sub creaked under another tumble of debris.

Or, the Tartarus might just be one more in a litany of ships lost to the stygian depths. Kennedy folded the notes and left them on her desk.

On the third day, Rafferty passed away.

Kennedy wrote another letter, then put in another call. “Sir, you do realize that very soon my crew is going to be sucking rubber.” Already, the air in the sub was dangerously thin. Kennedy struggled to concentrate, her head fuggy with headaches—although that might also be sleep deprivation.

“I’m sorry, Captain.”

“The weather’s still too dangerous?”

“Yes.” His tone was guarded.

“We’re talking hours, not days.”

“I understand.”

Kennedy’s skin prickled. This was ridiculous. “Sir, exactly how far away is the rescue ship? Assuming the weather abates, how long before you can get a submersible down here? Because ten minutes or two hours too late, the result for us is going to be the same.”

The commodore said nothing.

Her heart skipped. The reality was as blinding as the ocean was dark. “There is no rescue attempt,” she whispered.

The commodore sighed. “Captain Jones, I’m so sorry. The Tartarus is state-of-the-art, the culmination of decades of investment in submarine tech. My people said the only way to get the Tartarus up fast enough was to hire outside help. Imagine if a tech company like MobyCorp, or Poseidon Industries were to get hold of the blueprint. They’d reengineer it and sell it on to the foreign power with the deepest pockets. The White House can’t allow it. There’s too much at stake.”

Kennedy shivered. So, there it was. After days of fobbing her off, here was the truth at last. “You’re sacrificing my crew.”

“For the safety of the American people, yes.”

“What of the forty-six American people on the Tartarus? What about them? What about us?” Her voice was shrill.

The commander clucked his tongue. “When we bring Tartarus up later—when we can do it in-house, quietly—your crew and your families will be… looked after.”

“Cold comfort, sir.”

“Executive Officer Cohen would have understood. He knew his orders…”

This time Kennedy cut the connection, blood thundering in her veins. Cohen! Dependable, solid Cohen, her executive officer, had been planted to countermand her orders in the event the little lady stepped out of line. Kennedy clenched her teeth so hard she risked cracking the enamel. What would his single mother have made of that?

But her anger wasn’t going to help things. She needed to think. Again, she focused her mind on the ebb of the tide, breathing in slow waves, dampening her fear. “Masterton—John—would you ask Scotty to join us, please?”

“Fuck!” Scotty cursed when he heard the news. “Fuckity-fuck-fuck!”

Masterton closed his eyes, his lips quivering. When he opened them, he said, “What about other countries? The Russians. The Chinese. South Korea. They all have subs. There might be someone out there. We could send out an SOS.”

“Fat chance,” Scotty said.

He wasn’t wrong. The Atlantic Ocean was massive. Depending on where their rescuers were, getting to them could take days.

Scotty shrugged. “But I’m not against giving it a go. I wouldn’t mind seeing Central Park again.”

“Ensign Hurst.” Kennedy turned to her comms officer.

Hurst lifted her earphones off one ear. “Yes, ma’am?”

“If there are any other subs within shouting distance, I want you to raise them, please. Anyone at all.”

Hurst’s eyes widened, but she bent her head and fiddled with her dials.

Kennedy looked at Scotty and Masterton. “For the record, this is on me,” she said firmly. Masterton opened his mouth, but Kennedy held up her hand. “No. If we come through this, my report will say you did your best to dissuade me, but I refused to listen.”

Her shipmates nodded. What they were suggesting was treason; if they succeeded, there would be hell to pay. Still, rescue, even by a foreign power, was better than being dead. Kennedy prayed there was someone out there.

At last, Hurst turned to her. “Someone’s scrambling our communications, ma’am. Flooding the frequency,” she said. “If there is a sub in the vicinity, they’re not going to hear us over the noise.”

Masterton’s shoulders slumped.

“Fuck,” Scotty said again. “They’re killing us.”

Kennedy glanced at her screen. “We’ve still got 12 percent. We could have a go at powering up and seeing if we can blast ourselves off this ledge. There’s a small chance we could get clear of the rock, make it to the surface.”

“And we throw open a window when we get there,” Scotty said glibly.

“We’ve got to try something,” said Masterton.

“Tell the crew to strap in,” Kennedy said.

“Ma’am,” Hurst interrupted, before they’d had a chance to move. “I’m getting something. It sounds like… like a craft.”

“Another sub?” The commodore had made it clear there was no help coming, still Kennedy’s hope flared.

Hurst frowned. “Maybe. Except… so strange… and it’s as if it’s coming from below us.”

That wasn’t possible; it must be some kind of echo caused by their position in the trench. Either that or Hurst and Kennedy were suffering from the same debilitating headaches.

Still, Kennedy rushed to her screens, punching buttons to illuminate built-in eyes on the Tartarus’s hull. She almost knocked skulls with Masterton as they searched the screens for their rescuers.

Something was definitely out there. Just nothing Kennedy had ever seen before.

Above them, near the escape hatch, hovered a lozenge-shaped object which looked to be about half the length of the Tartarus. Running along either side of the creature were a pair of frilled appendages that rippled in unison.

Kennedy squeezed her eyes shut, then opened them again.

“What is that? A kraken?” Masterton breathed.

So, it wasn’t just the effects of sleep deprivation and hypoxia; Masterton could see the floating centipede, too.

“That’s mechanical, not organic,” Scotty said excitedly. He poked the screen with a finger. “See the Greek lettering on the side? That says Phaedra.”

Kennedy squinted for a better look. At this eleventh hour, the news seemed too good to be true—like a mirage, or a hallucination. A submersible like no other, and from such an unlikely source. “Last I heard, all the Greek Navy still operates is a couple of archaic diesel electrics,” Kennedy said. “How do they have something this advanced? And what is the Greek Navy doing in the Atlantic?”

“Rescuing us, I hope,” Masterton said. “Maybe they intercepted some intelligence about us and came to see for themselves. Who cares so long as they’re here?”

He had a point. Kennedy glanced at the battery readout: 11.8 percent.

“Look!” Masterton said.

Outside, in the gloomy depths of the ocean, a hatch opened on the hovering craft, and two shadowy figures emerged.

“What? They have suits to withstand pressures this deep? That’s not… that’s not…” Masterton trailed off.

He was right. It simply wasn’t possible. At these depths, the tremendous pressure of the ocean would crush a diver in seconds.

“What are they? Gods?”

“Fairy godmothers more like,” Scotty said. “Let’s get to the escape hatch.”

“Hurst. You’d better come,” Kennedy told her communications officer. “And bring your translator. My Greek is a little rusty.”

They hurried to the base of the ladder. “Let them in, Scotty.”

After three days of waiting, the three minutes it took for the hatch to drain seemed an eternity. Kennedy smoothed her hair, tugged at her grimy uniform. Finally, the hatch opened and two men wearing slick body suits descended. The first, a huge swarthy-faced man, was forced to bend his body in half to fit the submarine’s headspace.

“Hello!” Their other guest flipped back his head gear. Slim, with a seaman’s short-back-and-sides, he held out his hand.

Kennedy stepped forward and clasped it.

“Gordon DeWees of the USS Cyclops at your service, ma’am, and this is my colleague, Knoso of Mycenae.”

Kennedy snatched her hand back. “What? That’s not… you can’t…”

“Wait. Did you say the Cyclops?” Masterston said, stepping closer to Kennedy. “The cargo ship? But… that vessel disappeared in—”

“Nineteen eighteen. Yes.” DeWees’s eyes twinkled.

Kennedy’s knees weakened and she grasped a rung of the ladder. She must be dreaming—the deluded wishes of a mind addled by hypoxia. DeWees had to be over a century old, yet he looked barely out of his twenties.

Scotty must be bamboozled too because he spluttered, “This is crazy. Are we already dead?”

“Only God and the sea know what happened to the great ship,” Masterton murmured, echoing President Wilson’s comment about the Cyclops.

Except they were all seeing the same thing. And Kennedy had shaken DeWees’s hand; he was as solid as she was.

The giant spoke, his voice deep and gravelly, although Kennedy couldn’t comprehend a word.

“My friend reminds me that we haven’t got much time,” DeWees said. “We’ve come to invite you to join us. We don’t have the power to pull your ship free, but we can save your people.”

Kennedy turned to Hurst to check the translation, the woman nodding.

“Join you where exactly?” Scotty demanded.

“On Knoso’s island of Mycenae,” DeWees said. “You might call it Atlantis.”

Scotty grunted. He shook his head as if a bubble of water had collected in his eardrum.

“Atlantis is a myth,” said Hurst. “A utopian dream.”

And DeWees should be dead.

DeWees chuckled. “Actually, Atlantis does exist; I live there. Plato was correct, at least his dates were, but he was a bit off with the location. The island resides beneath the seafloor, its upper flank close to the Bermuda Triangle.” DeWees dropped his eyes. “As for it being a utopia, Atlantis is a sanctuary, that’s true. The island is beautiful, and its people are welcoming. But there is no utopia without the people you love. If you decide to join us, you can never go back. Your families will never know what happened to you.”

“I—” Kennedy paused. The Tartarus still had 10 percent power. Would that be enough to break free of the rock pinning them to the ledge? If they got to the surface under their own steam, the commodore would surely move heaven and earth to rescue the submarine. They might bob on the ocean for a few days, but the crew would get to go home. Kennedy could hold her girls in her arms again.

Or, she could use the remaining 10 percent to power the Tartarus’s life support systems while the crew evacuated to an alien submersible that would carry off them to an imaginary destination.

Kennedy almost laughed. She was literally stuck between a rock and a hard place.

“Captain,” DeWees said softly. “If we’re here, it’s because no one is coming to rescue you.”

Hurst touched Kennedy on the arm. “Ma’am? For what it’s worth, if Atlantis exists, I’d like to see it.”

Kennedy hesitated, her heart physically aching for her girls. For Cole’s breath on her cheek. For home. Kennedy straightened her back. Cole would look after their girls, but the men and women of the Tartarus were her responsibility.

She swallowed hard. “Assemble the crew, please, John. Tell them to leave everything behind.”

“And the dead? Cohen and McNaught? Rafferty?”

“Leave them.”

There was a clunk as the centipede submersible locked onto the hull of the submarine. While the crew evacuated the Tartarus in groups of four, Kennedy deleted the ship’s logs and powered down the screens. She glanced at her letters to Cole and the girls and considered adding a postscript—a private note to let them know she’d be okay—but what might her superiors do if they knew? They’d already sacrificed fifty-one lives to safeguard the technology on the Tartarus. How many more would they forfeit to uncover the fabled utopia? And what of the citizens already there?

No. Let the US Navy wonder where the crew had gone—if they ever bothered looking. She smiled bitterly and turned away.

Just 0.4 percent battery life remained when she entered the escape trunk, the last to leave the Tartarus. Scotty gave her a hand up, pulling her up the final rungs into the Mycenaean submersible.

“It’s modelled on the ancient triremes,” he said. “Those legs are flexible oars!” His eyes were bright, the blue tinge of hypoxia already fading.

Kennedy glanced back at the wreckage.

She turned to DeWees. “The US Navy may come looking for her. They’ll have questions. Do you… is there any way we could let her rest?”

The sailor arched a brow. “I’ll see what we can do.” He pushed some buttons and the Phaedra rang with the sound of ordinance fired.

Taking a seat next to Hurst, Kennedy strapped herself in. As the submersible pulled away, the lights of the Tartarus winked out.

Moments later, the cliff collapsed, burying the sub and all her secrets.