“Max took care of it. He cleaned up, didn’t want anyone stumbling across it and asking questions.”

“What about Johnny?”

“He and Grau took both the bodies down below. They’ve set up a makeshift morgue in one of the store rooms, one of those ones that are always cold because they’re below the water line and the heating never seems to work properly.”

“How did they get them down there without being seen?”

“I don’t think they worried about it Jake. There are hundreds of people dead. The captain and Johnny were just another couple of anonymous bodies wrapped in sheets and carried down below.”

They walked in silence, reached the stairs, and began to climb.

Seventeen

MAX GREETED THEM at the door, let them inside, closed and locked it behind them. Silvia had already returned with Martin, who nodded once at Jake. Everyone assembled around the map table. Jake felt all eyes were on him.

“Right, so, erm,”

“Jake, we’re your friends, we have every confidence in you,” Silvia said kindly.

“Yes, yes of course, thank you Silvia. Okay, first things first, what is the state of this ship, Martin?”

“I’ve got a couple of guys in the funnel, they’re clearing out the ash. It’s a slow job, they’re having to scoop it out with their bare hands, we don’t have the equipment to get in there and do it any quicker, our machines are just too big to get into that sort of space.”

Silvia perked up. “Would a couple of vacuum cleaners from housekeeping help?” Her face fell again. “Oh, but there’s no electricity.”

“No, you’re right, that’s not a bad idea Silvia. We have a few portable generators knocking around in the engine room, we could run them off those. What sort of size are we talking about? It’a a pretty tiny space.”

“They’re about so big,” Silvia indicated the dimensions with her hands.

“Perfect! They can get those down there, that will really save some time.”

“Okay, so with the cleaners, how long before we can get the generator working?” Jake asked.

“Maybe four hours? But it would make sense to clean out the exhaust for the main engine at the same time. If we start the main generator the guys are going to have to work around the hot exhaust for that, it will make the job ten times harder.”

“So how long to clean them both?”

“Well,” Martin pondered the question, drumming his fingers on the steel table top. “At a push we could do it in six hours, seven tops.”

“Alright, push as hard as you can, we have to get power back as a priority. Once we do, how long can we keep the generator going?”

“If we don’t start the main engines, and depending on which services we keep running, we’re okay for at least ten days.”

“Right, services.” Jake paused and thought. “We need light, the passengers are really unhappy about that.”

Silvia and Max nodded in agreement.

“We’re going to need heat too,” Lucya said. “I’m not the only one who noticed how cold it’s getting on board, right?”

“Yes, heat. But the minimum, Keep the temperature at sixteen degrees at the most. We’ll tell people to wear more clothes if they’re cold.”

“Fifteen,” Max interjected. “Fifteen degrees. That’s more than enough.”

“Okay, fifteen. But no hot water. I just took a cold shower and I feel better for it. Hot water is a luxury we can do without.”

“Water is a whole other question,” Martin said. He was met with questioning looks from around the table. “Desalination? You all know we get our water from the sea, don’t you?”

It was clear that this was news to everyone except Jake.

“I thought it came out of the tanks?” Silvia asked. “We fill up tanks at every port, don’t we?”

“Sure, but that’s really a backup supply. We use it when docked because water in the ports tends to be full of diesel and other crap,” Martin explained. “As soon as we’re a couple of miles out, we switch to water from the desalination plant. The tanks would never be enough to supply a ship this size.”

“And the plant runs of electricity from the generator,” Jake added.

“Right. And so does waste water treatment. So we have to ask ourselves, how much water do we really need?” Martin looked around the table.

“There has to be basic sanitation,” Silvia said. “People need to wash, to flush toilets, or we could end up spreading germs and disease.”

“Silvia, you do understand we could be stranded for who knows how long?” Max didn’t look impressed. “Toilets I’ll grant you, but come on, back in the army you were lucky if you got a cold shower every couple of weeks on some tours. I say we switch off water to all the showers in the cabins, just leave one block running in the gym. If people have to queue, they won’t bother.”

“I wish we could,” Martin said. “But there’s no way to do that apart from visiting every cabin individually and cutting the supply, one by one. It would take days.”

“Okay, so we introduce a ration system,” Jake said. “Martin, I assume you can shut off the water to the whole ship from the desalination plant?”

“Of course.”

“So we let people know that the water will be on for one hour in the morning. Outside those hours they’ll have to make do.”

“The passengers aren’t going to like this. They’re not going to like it one little bit,” Lucya said, rubbing her neck.

“If we tell them it’s that or we switch the lights and heat off, they’ll understand,” Max said.

Everyone nodded, the matter seemed settled. Jake opened one of the draws under the table and moved around the contents until he found what he was looking for. He extracted a large blue crayon-like pencil. They were designed for plotting courses on laminated maps, but he had other ideas in mind. He started writing directly on the shiny table surface: “Water” Underneath, he wrote “Rationed, 09:00 − 10:00”

“Okay,” he said. “Anything else on water, while we’re at it?”

“What about the pools?” Silvia asked. “Five swimming pools and a few hot tubs, there’s a lot of water in those. Can we use any of it?”

“The pools drain through the waste water plant,” Martin said. “We could disconnect them and reconnect them to the fresh water tanks, drain them into those. That buys us a bit of extra fuel as we can use that water instead of the desalinated stuff.”

“Speaking of waste water,” Jake was stroking his chin, deep in thought, “you said that it gets treated by another machine?”

“Yes. Water from showers, sinks, the kitchens and bars, all that stuff gets filtered then goes overboard. Anything from the toilets goes through a shredder then dumped at sea. It’s the shredder that needs the power, that and the pumps. I know what you’re thinking, but it’s not a good idea.”

“Why not?” Jake asked. “Can’t we bypass the shredder and dump everything as it is? Nobody is going to complain!”

“Because within twenty four hours this ship is going to be floating in a lake of its own shit,” Martin said. “And sucking that same shit up into the desalination plant to use as fresh water.”

Silvia screwed up her face. “Won’t the sea carry it away, on the currents?” she asked

“I doubt the currents up here are strong enough to have much of an effect,” Lucya said. “We could move to a better location, we’d need a few hours sailing time. Are you willing to burn that much fuel Captain?”

All eyes turned to Jake, waiting for his response, but he remained silent. He looked around the table, didn’t understand why nobody had answered.

“Captain Noah?” Max said.

“Oh, right, that’s me. Sorry, this captain thing is going to take some getting used to. Lucya, work out a course to take us somewhere where the water problem wont be an issue, but make sure we’re headed towards land. If we’re going to burn fuel, we should at the very least get closer to land. We all know we can’t survive at sea indefinitely, even with rationing. Our objective has to be to try and find land, and land that hasn’t been destroyed by the asteroid.”