Favourite Christmas present amongst the members of my family is a selection of high quality nuts. Oddly enough, this also accurately describes the members of my family.
8 Exploring
The scruffy young girl rose quietly in the morning, so as not to disturb her father, and made her way to the bridge (as if Emerson's snoring couldn't wake the dead). What was left of the moon shone brightly in the western sky and was only obscured by the occasional wisp of light cloud. She stepped outside and gazed along the port side of the ships outer hull to where the Star Runner bobbed gently up and down still tied to the support leg. Just seeing it floating there made her feel a little more secure in this odd place. Her heart jumped a little when she heard footsteps on the metal floor a few meters behind her, but she soon realised it could only be her father; she would have to kick Emerson hard in the butt to get him up this early in the morning.
"Beautiful isn't it?" she noted as he stepped out onto the balcony.
"Yes... you are" the proud father replied.
"Dad, stop it" she grinned and turned a little red "I haven't had a wash in days and I look like a wreck."
"You look just like your mother did when we'd go camping back before we were married" Maynard reminisced "and she looked great then too."
"I miss her already" Calla sighed "and it hasn't even been a week since we left Darwin."
"Yeah I was pondering about what to do last night and I think we'll check out the inlet at Sibolga. The large protected bay there should be the best place to moor the fleet but if it's not, we'll send them to Padang."
"Can we wait there for them" Calla grinned excitedly before suspicion covered her face "or are you planning to keep going."
"I'm sorry Calla" Maynard sighed "but I don't want to waste time sailing back to Padang, but if Sibolga looks good, then we can prepare for their arrival."
"YES!" Calla declared loudly.
"But you realise we can only stay till the ships arrive; then you're going to have to decide if you want to come on the next leg with me, or stay with your mother."
"Oh I've got days to think about that" Calla dismissed her father's concerns "besides; surely we could spend a few hours with them."
Maynard did not mean to ignore his daughter, but something had distracted him. In the predawn light he could see more of the gigantic ship as it stretched out before them. It truly was the biggest ship Maynard had ever seen and he wondered if anything bigger had ever been built before or since.
Although it had been difficult to get an idea of its dimensions from the yacht, now that he stood high above the port side, he found it hard to believe what he was looking at. The previous evening Maynard had assumed the ship must be resting on an outer reef, deep enough for the Star Runner but not for a behemoth like this; he had turned out to be very wrong indeed. The ship must have been over half a mile long and it appeared to have been driven straight up onto the beach. It's truly unique design consisted of five of the triangular support frames running along each side of the ship's hull.
The frames each stood on massive shafts almost ten meters across and forty meters high that protruded straight up from the deck near the gunwales. All the support frames appeared to have been folded back along the hull until they were needed. When deployed, the frames turn the vessel from a ship, into a semi-permanent structure. At the bow stood two huge gantry cranes of the type normally confined to wharfs for the loading and unloading shipping containers.
"Dad, is this what I think it is?" Calla held out a tarnished metal tube she had just picked up.
"It's a bullet casing Calla; a big one too."
Maynard looked down and saw there were several on the floor by his feet but there were many more around a nearby a metal stand that stood over a meter high.
"There's something very weird about all of this; it's clearly a cargo vessel of some kind but it looks like it was heavily armed. It also looks like it only ever took one voyage."
"And it never even managed to achieve that" Calla huffed.
"What do you mean?" Maynard asked his daughter; she was very sharp for her age but sometimes could miss the very obvious.
"Well it's out here... in the middle of nowhere, on the coast of Borneo..."
"West Sumatra; we're nowhere near Borneo."
"Okay, Sumatra then; but there's no port, no city, no mining operation, nothing; it's clearly a shipwreck."
"But Calla, if it was destined to go to a port, why does it have its own on board cranes... and why was it built with all those support legs?" Maynard pointed out "I think this was its precise destination."
"But who would send a ship like this on a one way voyage out here?"
"I can only assume it was someone who wanted a ship full of P.A.M's and E.S.S. Modules."
"Not to mention a Rapid Pulse Plasma Borer or two" Calla added.
"It's getting lighter" Maynard noted "I think I'll wake up your brother and then we can all go exploring."
"Oh please" Calla grinned "let me wake him?"
"Power flow nominal."
"Capacitors at 60% and climbing."
"What's the state of L-41?"
"Good chance it will overload before it gets to ten thousand watts Professor."
"Hold at five thousand and push L-42 through L-47 to eleven thousand. That should make up for the loss in velocity."
"We're at T minus one minute sir."
"Open all external vents."
"OWW!" Maynard exclaimed as he rubbed the back of his head.
Returning to the Star Runner to get a tool belt and some hiking gear was a wise and necessary move, but the yacht was quite cramped below deck and Maynard had quickly become accustomed to standing up straight again. He found his work gear close to the keel and was soon on his way back up the ladder to the deck of the ship. Just as he reached the top, Maynard started to feel an unexpected vibration through the metal rungs of the ladder.
"Dad... do you feel that?" Calla asked nervously from the deck.
The water in the bay had been quiet and still but looking down from the top of the support frame, Maynard could see the surface of the sea rippling from the vibrations; like the tip of a tuning fork dipped into a glass of water.
"I think you'd better get over here" Emerson offered sound advice.
Hurrying across the frame, Maynard stepped onto the deck but being back on the ship did not make him feel any safer. Calla wrapped her arms around her father's waist and held on tightly as the vibrations grew more intense with every passing second.
"WHAT THE HELL IS IT?" Emerson shouted.
At that moment a loud hiss caught everyones attention and they all spun towards what had made the sudden noise. About a kilometre away, off the port bow of the ship, a large cloud of dust erupted fifty metres into the air, not far inland from the beach. In less than a second, another cloud shot up further in the distance followed by a third and a fourth. As the line of small eruptions disappeared into the jungle, Maynard finally noticed that the vibrations were slowly dying away.
The astounded trio started to breathe again as they stared at each other, when the surprising events of the morning were punctuated by a distant and most unique sound any of them had ever heard. Maynard would later describe it as being like the thunderous sound multiple lightning strikes hitting the ground in less than one second, but he was wrong. The sound was more like a short burst from a Gatling gun, constructed from the cannons of a World War II battleship (but such a device was a physical impossibility).
"Did you hear that Dad?" Calla asked her father in a wavering voice.
"Oh come on Calla" Emerson shook his head "How could he have missed a noise like that?"
"Aww did someone get up on the wrong side of the world this morning" she teased her older brother.
"I heard it alright sweetie" Maynard declared but was pointing his finger up into the sky "but the real question is, what is that?"
Maynard's children turned to see what their father was pointing at; a dark cloud of grey dust was growing on the horizon and from its centre, an almost vertical white contrail rose up and curved over slightly in the sky the higher it went.
"Okay" Emerson exclaimed "Anyone wanna have a guess?"
Before anyone could answer, the distant and barely visible object suddenly lit up like a star as it continued on its accent."
"Don't know what it is, but I think it just exploded" his father offered.
"A bomb?" Calla gasped.
"I don't think so but..." Maynard found it hard to explain the ideas in his head.
"I think we should check it out before we risk bringing the fleet anywhere near here?" Emerson noted.
"Right then; let's go!" Calla tried to sound brave, but her voice was still a little wobbly. Huge unexpected explosions on the horizon can do that to a young person."
"No not yet" Maynard answered "Give it some time just in case something else decides to go ka-boom. We'll look over the ship first."
The small group just stood and stared at the slowly dissipating cloud for a short time before they began their long walk to the ship's bow. Maynard could not help but wonder about the gantry cranes up ahead, not to mention the strange items listed on the manifest. Over fifty people back in Darwin were relying on him to make the right decisions; their lives depended on him but right here and right now, he needed to consider the safety of his kids.
Safety; what did that word even mean anymore? Every year there were fewer and fewer people left in the world who could remember what life was like before the first arrival of Sholf-4 meteorites. When Maynard was a young boy, he would be fascinated by the stories adults would tell of a world full of cities where electrical power was provided straight to a person's home. Fresh water was piped all over the country and no one had to catch or grow their own food. People would simply throw any leftovers in the garbage when they had eaten their fill.
It seemed to Maynard anyone who had been alive back then, could not stop themselves from going on and on about the things they could buy from stores or order on line. These were the people who had the hardest time coping with the new world and the never ending fear of the next disaster, but for those born post Sholf-4 it was just life. Everyone knew they would enjoy a time of relative calm that could last for two years, five years or even more. No one knew for sure how long it would be, but eventually the orbits of Earth and the Slolf-4 Cloud would cross at the wrong time and death would return.
Sometimes there would be a massive collision bringing huge waves or even wipe out an entire community, but mostly the strikes were numerous and small (if you could call a crater over a hundred meters across small). After a few weeks the bombardment would cease and the rebuilding and preparation would begin anew. That's the way it was for Maynard and that's the way it would be for his children.
Calla's curiosity was defiantly getting the better of her. She had been so anticipating the chance to uncover the secrets of the mysterious ship, but now she felt like the unexplained explosions were calling to her. The Linwood family had been at sea, on and off for many months, so spending some extended time on land made for a pleasant change of pace. Particularly considering how far they still had to travel to reach their destination 55 degrees north of the equator. Calla's first hope was that the ship would provide her father with a legitimate reason to stay for a short time, but now there were the other strange happenings. In the end, if there turned out to be nothing to find, she knew they would soon be back on the Star Runner to continue the journey north.
"Hey Dad!" Emerson brought his father's attention to a stairwell near the spine of the ship.
"I know you wanted to head up to the bow, but it wouldn't hurt to have a look" Calla suggested.
Maynard looked back and forth between the stairwell and the distant bow. Calla was right and if there was nothing to find up forward, they would only have to walk back again.
"Everyone make sure that your lights are charged up" he ordered.
Calla always seemed to end up in the middle at times like this. Her father tended to take the lead while Emerson always kept an eye out behind them.
The condition of the steel stairs only managed to deepen the mystery surrounding the ship. The tanker had clearly been stranded on this shore for many years, but it still appeared to be in quite a reasonable condition. There was a small amount of corrosion showing on the painted metal surfaces, as one would expect to find on a vessel that had not been properly maintained, but Maynard was more accustomed to finding beached ships that were literally falling apart. The more he saw, the more he was convinced that this had been a new ship at the time it had sailed to Indonesia. At the bottom of the stairs, less than twenty feet below the deck, was a walkway that stretched out to the sides of the ship. Calla swept the light from her torch forward and saw nothing more than the huge flat top of a sealed tank.
"So this is where the oil was stored?" she asked.
"Hmm... yes" Maynard replied "I can only assume that they're empty though."
"Let's see then" Emerson decided "Can I borrow your hammer Dad?"
Maynard removed the claw hammer from his belt and offered its handle to his son; Calla put her hands over her ears as Emerson drew back his arm before swinging the hammer underarm at about knee height, into the side of the tank. A loud dull thud echoed around them but it did not sound as loud or sharp as they had expected.
"Doesn't sound empty" the young man declared.
"No... it didn't" Maynard agreed "but something this big is bound to be multi layered... and probably baffled as well."
"Baffled; are you saying this tank is confused?" Calla asked dubiously.
"Well... no" her father grinned "I mean that it has massive metal plates welded to its inner surfaces to stop any liquid inside from sloshing about and making the ship unstable. I'm guessing that baffle plates may dull the reverberation, making the tank sound full."
"Okay... so why don't we take a look inside ?" Emerson suggested.
He climbed back up a few steps and looked over the top of the tank; the beam of his light came to rest on a sealed access hatch not far from the walkway. It only took them a few minutes to clamber up on top of the tank and crawl over to the hatch, but getting it open took a little ingenuity. The locking wheel was quite stuck and refused to open in the usual manner; a little friendly persuasion was definitely required. With much rolling, pushing, grunting and complaining, Maynard and Emerson eventually managed to position themselves on opposite sides of the wheel; the two men lay on their backs with one foot each on the wheel spoke and a length of rope wrapped around their right forearms.
"Okay, put a little pressure on it" Maynard said as he started to pull on the rope while pushing with his foot.
As Emerson copied his father on the other side, they soon had a firm anticlockwise pressure being put on the wheel while Calla crawled in closer. Hammer in hand, she began to make a series of firm taps on the centre hub.
"A little harder Honey" Maynard strained against the wheel.
Emerson could feel the pressure building and his arm beginning to burn when finally, with a sharp crack, the wheel gave way.
"its water!" the young man exclaimed as the hatch was opened.
There was no doubt about it; the inside of the hatch was covered with condensation, there was virtually no smell and the torchlight reflected off of the surface in a very familiar way.
"Is it just me" Emerson asked "or does everyone else think there is something very wrong here?"
To quote the late great Ogden Nash, the plot thickens.
Life for me has just gotten a little more fun; Adelaide's first Cat Cafe has just opened. Coffee, cake and Kitties; what a great combination.