"I feel like we're not moving fast enough." Archer paced his office at the naval base. The pilots were giving regular updates, and the more they radioed in, the worse shape the ship was in. The bow of the ship was settling faster than he wanted. He couldn't figure out why the ship was sinking so fast, and he finally asked the man with him why he believed that there appeared to be so little time. Because the ship was sinking by her side, Archer drew the obvious comparison of the Andrea Doria.

The man replied, "It's an entirely different situation. Yes, the Andrea Doria sustained major damage from the her collision, but it only did minor damage below the waterline. It was the eventual weight of the water that pulled her other sealed bulkheads below and finally made the ship go under rapidly. The Ocean Princess is in an entirely different position. They're not taking on water in a key point below the waterline, they're taking on water from drains, sinks, and toilets in locations all over the ship, and so she's taking on much more water than the Andrea Doria did, and that was from the very moment her hull was breached. Instead of death from one major artery being nicked, it's death from a thousand cuts."

The man in the office with him who had just spoken was a professor by the name of Malcolm who was going his best to accurately give a timeline of when the Ocean Princess would take her final plunge. There were deck plans of the ship that bore markings from Malcolm, indicating the angle of list, the locations of the water, and where Malcolm estimated the heavier portions of the flooding were occurring. At the top of all his scrawls he'd written 'two and a half hours.' That was a half an hour ago. "I still think she'll make it, sir. According to the reports from the pilots there's still much of the ship above water."

Archer sighed. "I hope so. Probably too late to send any of our own ships for an additional sea rescue. I received a radio message from the Norwegian Star. The captain and his officers have been collected and they'll be taken first to Puerto Cortes before they are brought here to be held in the stockade. The son of a bitch actually asked the Norwegian Star's captain to take him back to the ship to "coordinate" rescue operations. What a damn joke. He fled that ship to save his ass and if it wasn't for the luck of the passengers and the crew having enough sense to figure things out, they might have sunk before we could do what we did. I'm not sure what he can be tried for, I mean, abandoning ship before passengers isn't against any official law, but that ship is full of Americans who were abandoned to die, and if that isn't attempted manslaughter, I don't know what is."

He hadn't asked before, as he was too busy going over the facts and figures and trying to assure Archer that their best efforts would still be good enough. Hearing about the captain's abandonment of the ship finally stuck in his head and he became curious to know what was going on with that situation. "With the captain no longer present on the ship...Who's leading the rescue operations there? They are definitely doing one heck of a job based on the situation at hand. There have been no hang-ups. Once a door has been closed, the next has immediately been opened."

"Evacuation efforts, according to what we've heard from the evacuated passengers, is a guy named Brian Shaw. He's the ship's shore excursion manager but he's been doing it long enough to have some sea experience and before he was in hospitality he serve on a ship as a junior officer, so we're pretty damn lucky he knows about ships. He knew what to do when a call needed to be made to evacuate, and he correctly hurried because he knew the lifeboat situation on the ship was going to quickly become untenable. After he took over loading the lifeboats, once they were cut off, he shifted gears and now he's overseeing the air rescue from the ship. Got a few passengers helping. Guy named Rogo and a married couple, the Parks. Apparently the wife was the one who made the initial distress call and got ahold of the Norwegian Star, who in turn got ahold of us."

He paused. "They're going to examine this and talk about this for a long time. I mean, if the ship didn't have a Shaw aboard, who knows when the evacuation call would have been made? The passengers and remaining crew would have figured it out eventually, but having someone on there who knew what to look for and make the call has been a godsend. Same with the woman. If she hadn't made the distress call when she did, and the Norwegian Star hadn't been there to hear her, who knows when we would have been notified, or if we'd have even been notified at all. "

Malcolm was nodding. "People talk about the Titanic. How if one circumstance had been changed in everything that contributed to her sinking, it might have prevented the ship from sinking, or at the very least, kept the ship afloat long enough to save everyone. You're right, it's the exact opposite here. Since the hull was breeched, they've been doing everything right, so the researchers and the scientists, including yours truly," He shot Archer a grin, "Will be looking at the circumstances and speculating what might have happened of they'd made a decision that was wrong. But I'm confident in saying this: I believe the ship will remain afloat long enough that there's enough time to save everyone. And when it comes to shipwrecks, being able to rescue everyone is a remarkable feat."

Malcolm looked at the schematics and deck plans that were in front of him and said, "There's another factor that has helped them in the situation, and who knows, it may lead to some changes when it comes to cruise ship design in the near future. We definitely wouldn't be in the shape we're in now without this factor being the case." Archer looked at him. "Thankfully the cruise line adopted a classic style to their cruise ships. The ship's hull design being based on the liners of old has helped trap air in it. If it was a boxy design like most all other cruise ships, full of open spaces...She might already be at the bottom. I mean you've been in them. The water would have free reign to flow all over the upper decks. Having a stern and no wide open central spaces is helping keep the water at bay, and is resulting in the ship sinking slower. It seems fast to us, but I had a deck plan of a ship from Royal Caribbean that I toyed with on the way over. I calculated the water into the space on that ship, and I estimated that it would have sunk completely in two hours."

"Well, at this point I'll take any good news I can get." He flopped at his desk. "I hate having to sit here and wait." Malcolm nodded. But...There was nothing else they could do.

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In the 40 minutes that had passed between Amanda's return and the arrival of the next wave of helicopters, the air evacuation crew/passenger team had offloaded another 105 passengers in total. Shaw's pep talk to the Ocean Princess seemed to have given the old girl some additional resolve. The metal hull creaked and groaned from the awkward list, but it had not settled strongly enough to shake the ship under their feet. It was looking more and more to everyone like the Ocean Princess was going shake and protest, but she was going to hold her head above water long enough for all of them to leave for safety.

Shaw pressed the headset to his ear as the pilot of the last helicopter spoke to him before moving out of range and smiled grimly. He relayed the message he'd received from the passenger-laden final helicopter. "The Captain has been collected by the Norwegian Star. He is being taken to Puerto Cortes, and then later he'll be transported to Honduras to be put in the stockade temporarily while this nightmare is investigated. There are some small ships being sent out from Puerto Cortes to aid the Norwegian Star as they collect the passengers in the lifeboats but they're going to be too small to aid in the evacuation."

Jake spat, "I dunno. I don't think any of us is really feeling choosy at this point. If the ship starts looking particularly bad, I think all of us might settle for a door, like Rose did. But hey...Glad the captain is going to be okay. I was REALLY worried about him. Out there all alone, in that little lifeboat, I mean, it would have been a shame if he'd been missed and floated to the south pole or somewhere."

Shaw grinned darkly and said, "We're all feeling that way a bit. I know I am. But it's better this way. He'll be stripped of his position, publicly humiliated, and I'm sure he'll end up facing some jail time, due to the fact that the manifest held so many Americans. I imagine your justice department will become involved in the case. I'm sure there will be an inquiry. Probably a committee hearing in your United States Senate where some of us will be called to testify about the sinking and what we observed. Make sure to dress nicely, we all may be on the television. Those findings will be compiled and submitted to the proper authorities for submission of charges. Attempted manslaughter at this point, unless things turn for the worst."

After he spoke, the passengers on deck felt the ship shake under them. The starboard number two bulkhead in the ship's bow caved to the pressure and ruptured, and the Ocean Princess lost one of her air pockets. As the bulkhead was filled with water completely, the bow slipped further into the water, and the lightly-moving waves lapped against the top edge of the hull on the starboard side, inches from pouring across the deck The five feet of bow Amanda had noted remained above water was gone in an instant.

"A turn for the worst...Something like that." Shaw couldn't help himself and his words had been filled with nervous irritation. Amanda noted for the first time that his expression looked suddenly nervous, and matched the tone of his voice that she'd just heard. She glanced forward. It was a long hike, but she knew now to get to deck eight immediately, which would be faster, and she had no desire to make any unscheduled stops, not even to collect her cell phone. She could be quick. Amanda asked him, "Do you need another update?"

He hid the uncertainty in his face and shook his head. "It's a long walk and if she does suddenly go into her final plunge, it might be better for you if you remain here. I know Jake would probably prefer it at this point. If she does end up falling over or beginning to take her final plunge, We may need to act fast and dive over. If she goes under while you're on that side, there's no way you'll be able to escape the suction as she goes down. Or you might end up trapped inside the bridge. At any rate, you'll be right in the eye of the storm...Besides...I still think there's enough time."

Suddenly there was a roar like a dozen out-of-control freight trains and the T.V. station helicopter swiftly flew to the starboard side to film what was happening.

The remaining passengers saw water cascading down the starboard side of the ship. The list had finally tilted the swimming pool on deck nine past its point of no return and the chlorinated water was thrown up through the windows and outside access doors by the ship into the sea, carrying anything that wasn't nailed down right along with it. Some of the pool's water ended up mixing with the seawater that was flooding the ship below her waterline, a twisted, murderous form of seawater recycling. A handful of the chairs from beside the pool were hung up in the jagged glass of the broken windows, as if the Ocean Princess had something in her teeth.

The four of them watched it from their position at the stern's railing. There was a pause. "Well shit, I was really fucking looking forward to a relaxing swim in an hour or so. Thanks a fucking lot, gravity," Amanda said sarcastically, breaking the silence first.

"Well, that'll make us a little lighter up top, so there is that," Jake said. "The less water we have on board, the more space is created that the seawater has to once again fill in order to sink us."

He was being a cheerleader, and while she appreciated it, she also felt like she had to rag his fucking ass about it. Amanda stuck her tongue out at him and said, "Always the fucking optimist."

Jake returned the tongue and then looked over the railing behind him. He met her gaze and held his arm out expansively towards the open sea. "You can still swim. Just untie the rope and dive right in. If you get over far enough, you might catch some of the chlorinated water before the sea dilutes it into saltwater completely. But be mindful of the suction."

Amanda went wide-eyed. "No...Nope. I thought about that when I was going to the bow. The ball in my stomach knowing the only thing keeping me from the water was the railing. I'm not swimming in anything that doesn't have a bottom more than 18 feet under me and a lifeguard. And I don't need a reminder, I'm very familiar with the concept of sucking, and suction."

Rogo, always entertained by Amanda's quick wit, busted out laughing at her blunt dig. Jake's face reddened. She was really really becoming the master of get the goat, and he didn't think he had what it took to develop her level of expertise.

Amanda had forgotten the levity and was looking out behind her, over the railing, at the sea that appeared empty and endless. Maybe if she'd had a lifejacket on that bow jaunt wouldn't have been as scary. Her eyes suddenly widened as she realized that in all the excitement, she and the three men with her did not have on lifejackets of their own. Not even Shaw had thought of it. Oh well, it was too fucking late now.

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In a way, Amanda's fears of the distance underneath her were well founded, though she had no idea of it at the time.

The path the Ocean Princess had taken, between the land masses of Cuba, Belize, and currently, off the coast of Honduras, put the Ocean Princess in the Caribbean Sea. Captain Catalano's decision to make for the coast of Honduras, near the coastline of Puerto Cortes, put the stricken ship specifically in the Gulf of Honduras.

Why did that matter? To put it in scientific terms, The tectonic plate boundary between North and South American lithospheric plates is marked by the Cayman Trench, which bisects the Gulf from northeast to southwest and stretches landward into the Motagua watershed at the Guatemala-Honduras border.

So why was that important? Again, in scientific terms, water depths exceeding 2,000 meters, or roughly 6,561 feet extended deeply into the Gulf of Honduras. Captain Catalano would have had to have put the ship roughly on landfall in order to beach her. The current depth of the water was actually only around 5,900 feet, but it was still well beyond Amanda's preference of an 18 foot depth in a pool.

The Titanic was located more than double the distance from the surface, at roughly 12,500 feet...But still, when the Ocean Princess finally dipped below the water for the final time, she would be well out of range of even the deepest of deep sea divers, who could only dive to a maximum of 1,000 feet. It would be two weeks after the sinking of the Ocean Princess before a deep sea submersible could be commissioned in a joint venture between the Starlight Cruise Line and billionaire Jackson Park.

While the only known bodies on the ship were those of Jake and Amanda Park, They did so anyway. Video footage of the couple, who were obviously deeply in love, and who behaved heroically in the face of danger only to pay the ultimate price, stirred public outcry. It was only deepened after Brian Shaw would be asked to describe his experiences in the final hours of the ship, and his eyes would become wet as he described the VIP couple.

They may have had the fanciest stateroom on the ship, he would say, but they were the two most down to earth passengers he'd ever had the pleasure of meeting, Shaw would tell the interviewers warmly. They had so many opportunities to simply turn their backs and leave, and they'd have been well within their rights to do so, Shaw would further say, but from the moment the ship had first been stricken to their final moments alive, they'd thought of everyone but themselves.

"I'm proud of what I did. But I'm more proud of what they did. Even though I was hospitality crew, mostly I was doing what I felt was my duty, as I was still a part of the ship's crew. Dr. Bricker and Julie McCoy did the same. The ship needed members of the crew to step up and be leaders, and we simply did it. But the Parks, and Mike Rogo, had no obligations. They did what they felt was right all the way to the end. In a way, I feel the three of them deserve even more praise than we have received."

With all that in the news, the public virtually demanded that the couple be brought to the sunlight again, to be buried on land. When Jackson Park approached the Starlight Cruise Line CEO with a wish to collect the bodies of his son and his son's wife, the cruise magnate was only too happy to agree to the partnership. Not only would it appease the public, but it would do much to improve the cruise line's standing in public perception, and heal the black eye it received over the fact that it had hired a captain that had essentially saved himself and let the couple die.

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The Teleceiba helicopter once again moved to hover near the stern after making another circuit around the bow of the sinking ship. She smiled maliciously to herself. If they needed her signature on a release form to use portions of the footage, she would probably refuse to sign it just to fuck with them.

Another approaching roar in the sky told them the U.S. Navy helicopters had returned. In another 50 minutes, they were all full and the deck was looking decidedly less crowded.

"Hey!" Jake hollered down. "Can we get a head count?"

Roughly five minutes later one of the crew hollered up that there were 227 people among the group. "And we make 231. So about an hour and a half. Two more loads of 105 and then a seventh helicopter for the rest of us. Amanda, Jake, Rogo, you're going before me. I imagine you and Amanda will wish to leave together, so that will leave Mr. Rogo and myself for the very last."

Rogo grinned. "I'm always sucking hind tit, but yeah, sounds like a plan. I'm really hoping the old lady keeps her head above water long enough for us to get out of here without our feet gettin' wet. Makes sense she goes before me, I'm carrying all the weight over here. She's trying but she just ain't got the arm strength to hold people up like I can." He grinned, then said, "Oh! And she's VIP." He grinned again.

Jake looked over at him. The mischievous grin was very similar to the one that Amanda had gotten so good at giving when she was with Jake. For a brief moment, Jake could have almost believed he was her dad, and that's where she got it from.

"I'm here to make sure the harness on this side is secure. You're here for the heavy lifting. I'm not cut out for all this manly work, I'm just a 'lil girl." Amanda flashed him her tongue.

"Hope the securing you do on da harness is stronger than ya arms. What you don't have in size, you definitely make up for in ya vocabulary!" Rogo laughed good-naturedly.

"Children, am I going to have to separate you?" Shaw joined in the laughter, as did Jake and Amanda. Here they were, potentially moments from death, and they were cracking jokes as if they were all sitting on the couch swapping stories.

"Alright fellas, get ready, stand at attention or whatever, I'm usually pretty good at making Jake stand at attention," Amanda said, gesturing to the approaching helicopters.

Classic Amanda. "Ahhh, there it is, I was wondering when your libido would kick in and overwhelm your fear of drowning," Jake laughed.

'Well, if you gotta go, that's not the worst way to do it. As long as you both cum first. No fun dying halfway to orgasm." Rogo and Shaw both stared at her wide-eyed. Even they remained somewhat surprised at how frank and blunt Amanda could be, especially when it came to dirty talking. Jake just shook his head. The woman was incorrigible, and he loved it.

When the first helicopter was in position, Shaw had a thought. "Can you have one of the pilots fly by the bow and see how things are looking up there? We can't really see from here, and I don't want to send my observer out there and take the risk. It doesn't appear that the news helicopter is going to do anything but hover and gawk!" Shaw shouted into the headset.

The pilot shouted an affirmative and one of the Chinooks broke away and flew towards the front of the ship. After they had loaded half of the remaining passengers into the first helicopter, it returned, and the pilot called down to Shaw, "Starboard side of the bow is dipping under."

He shouted the message to the other three. Amanda said, "So what does that mean?"

"Time is becoming of the essence!" Shaw shouted back to her. They rushed as quickly as possible through the loading, filling the first and second helicopters with survivors. Amanda noted that three of them were her poker competitors, gray suit, blue suit, and among the last, Stetson. She gave Stetson a wink before he was pulled up into the second Chinook. Stetson gave her a grin in spite of himself.

Still working quickly, the third and final helicopter was loaded and departed, with a request from Shaw to pass along to the returning helicopters that they observe the starboard side of the bow before assuming their hovering position at the stern and give an update.

Jake did the math again. There were 126 people still aboard the stricken ship. But as it was, he was wrong.

There was a commotion among the remaining passengers after the door to the Sunset Bar flew open and a man staggered out in his pajamas. "WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?!"

The remaining passengers swarmed him, getting him up to speed. Julie McCoy listened to him speak and then hollered up the rope to them that the new guy had a few too many at the bar last night and had gone to sleep with earplugs in and somehow hadn't heard the alarm.

"Bloody Hell. That would have been a nightmare of a wake-up call if he'd been asleep until the water came into his cabin," Shaw said, looking anxious.

"Do you think there are more?" Amanda was staring at him and her heart beat in her chest. They'd just assumed everyone had come on deck when the alarms went off. What if there were other people like him who were still sawing logs?

"I really don't know, Amanda. We're rapidly running out of time to check the cabins. Bloody Hell I should have immediately ordered a sweep of the ship long before this. I was so focused on the lifeboats, and so trusting that the alarms would bring everyone to the deck that I never even thought about it. It was helpful we weren't sailing at our full capacity of 2,170."

Amanda made up her mind. "I'll do it. I'll do a once over. Not the whole ship, but a few decks down, just to try to set our minds at bit more as ease."

Shaw shook his head. "You're not crew. I'm in charge. It was my oversight. If anyone should go it should be me. Jake, I told the pilot someone else may take over if I was called away. This is that time." He started to release his harness.

"No, Rogo is right, the strong guys need to be up here. I'm only really securing the harness...Rogo can slide over and do both." She hadn't tied the knot as tightly as before and had been working it loose as Shaw spoke.

She looked down, saw a boxy structure below her, and before Shaw could stop her she finished untying the knot and simply dropped. Shaw screamed as she fell nearly one-story from the upturned railing to land on her feet on top of the box. It should have shattered both of Amanda's legs, but the leftover realm abilities protected her in the fall as if she'd jumped off the top level of the iron works building.

"How in the bloody Hell did she...?" Shaw looked at Jake who merely shrugged. Amanda made her way across the tilting deck and disappeared into the Sunset Bar, and Shaw could dwell on it no further as the thunder of the helicopters in the distance announced their arrival.