Helper
Chip clicked the cuffs shut around Nelson's wrists and once again wished the Admiral luck. He tried to imagine what Lee was about to feel when the Admiral walked in. Lee must be just about sick with apprehension; Chip knew he would be in that situation. He would have no compassion for someone who had tried to kill him in cold blood and he couldn't expect Lee to have any for Nelson. He couldn't expect it but he hoped for it. Prayed for it. In a way he felt that in hoping for it he was being disloyal to his best friend. But both men in that room were best friends, to him and to each other. So who was being disloyal to whom?
As he stood outside the door in the passageway with a sick feeling in his stomach he remembered. Remembered what Nelson, with luck, was telling Lee right now.
He was working at the plot table, just an ordinary task with protractors and rulers but feeling frustrated and deeply dissatisfied. He hadn't found out why the power in the sub had shut down, why they had lost trim and sunk to the bottom. He had no reasons to report to the Captain.
He hadn't discovered why the air had felt so wrong. Normally when air revitalization shut down it was just stuffy and uncomfortably close until they got it functioning. This time the air somehow thickened so inhaling was like trying to suck gelatine into ones lungs and breathing out seemed like exhaling transparent pudding. The breathing thing and gravity working triple time to keep all of them pinned captive to the deck was more than disconcerting. It was unnatural. Supernatural. It effectively incapacitated all of them leaving them completely helpless and hopeless. Then inexplicably it stopped.
They were just finally calming down from that troubling and puzzling episode when Admiral Nelson walked down the spiral stairs, paused, and without so much as a word in warning shot Captain Crane.
Chip was left in command of the boat with the Captain critically wounded and the Admiral under arrest for attempted murder. He was never so alone in his responsibility. He knew his strengths and felt he was a great Executive Officer and more than competent to keep Seaview and her crew running along in good shape but this was something else entirely. He was now balancing the wellbeing of the crew with that of a seriously wounded best friend and an apparently mentally compromised and murderous Admiral. An Admiral who on top of everything else was also the employer of all involved. All of them needed his help, all needed his protection and all of their lives, whether they knew it or not, depended on his decisions and actions. To top it all off, there was no communication with the outside world. He was on his own.
He listened to Nelson. On the whole during the following couple of days he wished he hadn't. Nelson convinced him to trust him. Chip knew that was a dangerous thing to do. It was indefensible to trust and act upon the suggestions of a man buckled into a straight jacket.
Nelson convinced him he had shot Crane to save all their lives. Convinced him to let him out of sick bay to study charts to figure out where Krueger, the evil spirit in Lee's body, might have gone.
Not being able to communicate with the outside world left Chip feeling isolated and burdened. Everyone aboard depended on him and he was walking a tightrope of indecision, fear and grief. On the plus side he sure was not looking forward to the reports he would ultimately need to write for all of this. At least he could wait to do that. He was afraid they would all end up in straight jackets as soon as anyone ashore got wind of them talking to and chasing phantoms.