“Jake Noah. First officer aboard the Spirit of Arcadia, and until recently, I was acting captain of that same ship.”

He extended his newly bandaged hand, the captain shook it heartily causing Jake to wince with pain. All three men sat at a long table.

“Welcome aboard HMS Ambush, Captain Noah. Dreadful name if you ask me. A nuclear submarine fleet is an excellent deterrent against acts of war, but they gave us such an aggressive name. That’s the admiralty for you. But I digress. We followed your message in the buoy. I must say we were rather hoping we might find an entire passenger ship, not just a single raft. Not that we’re not pleased to have you aboard you understand! Delighted, yes, delighted to have you here.”

“The buoy?”

“Yes, the buoy. Very clever by the way, putting an emergency transmitter in a buoy like that. Who knows if we would have found you otherwise?”

“I’m sorry, I’m not sure I follow. What buoy are you talking about?”

“Russell, would you find Eric and get him to bring us the buoy? Good chap, thank you. Ah, excellent doctor our Mr Vardy, very experienced. Splendid bedside manner. Poor chap doesn’t get to practice much medicine here of course. A few cuts and bruises, minor things. Quite a lot of burns. Not from the engine room as you might expect though, it’s our chef. Awfully accident prone. He does make particularly good curry on Wednesday’s though, so we can forgive him for the odd saucepan of soup ending up on the floor!”

Coote roared with laughter. Jake smiled politely.

“Captain Coote, my ship, Spirit of Arcadia, it’s in real danger. This is going to sound crazy, but it’s been taken over by a madman. He’s a religious nut case. Sorry, I don’t mean to suggest all religious people are mad…” Jake flushed red, worried he had just insulted the man opposite him.

“No no, of course not. Don’t worry Jake, you can speak freely here. All views are tolerated. We have had many a debate about such matters. Passes the time when we are stuck at the bottom of the ocean! Carry on.”

“This man, Flynn he’s called. He framed me for murder, became captain, and is now sailing the ship off goodness knows where. He plans to starve most of the passengers to death. All except the women, and a few of his friends. He says he’s doing God’s work. Starting again. Building a new Eden he says.”

“I see. Yes, I can understand your choice of words in describing him as a madman. Ah, here’s the buoy!”

The doctor had returned. He handed a bright pink buoy to Coote. He had also brought a tray on which was a bowl of soup and a couple of bread rolls.

“Here we are. And something for you to eat too, excellent. Now let’s see. Yes, very clever. An emergency radio transmitter inside, and a note.”

As Jake tucked into the soup, Coote pulled open the flap that had been cut in the side of the buoy, pulled out the piece of paper and read from it.

“Spirit of Arcadia. Cruise liner. Approximately three thousand survivors. Departed from this location for Longyearbyen, second of May 2014. Then some coordinates for Longyearbyen. So you say this wasn’t you?”

“No. But I think I can guess who. May I?”

Coote handed the paper to Jake.

“Lucya. It’s the handwriting of Lucya Levin, our chief radio officer. She never told me. She must have dropped this when we left the pole. That explains how you found me. There’s one of these in the life raft. She must have stuck it in there before he took her. I had no idea there was a transmitter inside.”

“We picked it up this morning,” Coote said. “We were heading back to our base in Scotland. See if there were any survivors.”

“How much do you know about what happened?” Jake asked. “I mean, if you were submerged, do you get to see the news? I have no idea how these things work.”

“Just as well!” Coote laughed heartily. “We can’t have every Tom Dick and Harry knowing military secrets now! No offence, no offence. Well you’d be surprised. Provided we don’t dive too deeply, we can pick up a lot of communication traffic. That is a lot of what we do, intercepting communications. As soon as we started hearing reports of that damned asteroid, well we surfaced so that we could get a better picture of what was happening. We saw the television images. I expect you did too. Terrible business. Terrible. We dived again before it reached our location. Went deep, took cover you might say. Stayed down for twenty four hours, then came up very slowly. At first we thought our communications equipment was damaged, we couldn’t hear anything. So we surfaced and found that there was nothing to hear. Now we have to go to Scotland. But it sounds like your ship is in danger?”

“Captain Coote, there won’t be any survivors in Scotland. Or anywhere else. Everything is gone. We landed at Longyearbyen. Well, where Longyearbyen used to be. It’s turned to dust. But it’s worse than that. The asteroid scattered ash, thick ash. It’s toxic, dangerous. Acidic or something, I don’t know. I lost two people to that ash, it melted their skin. Trust me, there’s nothing in Scotland for you. But we can save three thousand people on that ship.”

“Tell me,” Coote said. “How did you end up in the raft?”

“I’d better tell you the whole story,” Jake said.

He recounted the events from the time the asteroid flew overhead. He explained about Melvin, Flynn, the landing party, as well as how he had been framed for murder. He told the captain about being thrown into the raft, being cast adrift.

Coote remained silent for a long time. He looked at Jake, studied him.

“It’s a heck of a story. Now don’t get me wrong old chap, but how do I know you’re not the madman and you want our help to take control of a perfectly well run ship?”

“You don’t believe me?”

“I didn’t say that. But you have to look at this from my point of view. I find you battered and bruised in a life raft. Perhaps you were thrown overboard for good reason? Perhaps you are hoping to use the force of Her Majesty’s navy to exact revenge? What I am asking is this. If we find your ship, will we also find others who can corroborate your version of events?”

“We can do better than that,” Jake said, a smile spreading across his face. “If we find the ship then I can give you absolute proof that what I have said is the truth.”

“Do you know where your mutineer plans on taking your boat?”

“No. Flynn just said he wanted to burn off the fuel. It won’t take them long. We ruptured a fuel line, there’s very little fuel left. But Lucya had been scanning the radio frequencies, and I’m certain she would have activated the emergency beacon on board. If he hasn’t found it then surely you could locate them with that?”

“Aside from your buoys, we haven’t picked up anything else I’m afraid. Did you see the ship sail out of the fjord? Did you see in which direction they went after that?”

“South. They definitely went south.”

“Then, Captain Noah, we shall do the same.”

Sixty-One

ONCE JAKE HAD finished the soup and bread, Captain Coote took him upstairs to the main deck, through the control rooms, and into his cabin. He explained that although the lower deck had bunks for every crew member, they were tightly packed and not comfortable. Jake would be able to get some decent sleep in the captain’s quarters. The cabin opened directly into a communications control room manned by six crew members, but they didn’t make much noise. Besides, Jake was exhausted, and the painkillers were kicking in too. He knew he wouldn’t have much trouble sleeping. And indeed as soon as his head hit the pillow, he was gone.

While he slept, Captain Coote gathered all his crew who weren’t taking their sleep shift into the junior rating’s mess. He relayed the information that Jake had provided earlier, telling them about the toxic ash, the fate of Longyearbyen, and the survivors on the Spirit of Arcadia. The news was difficult to deliver, and to receive. The men were used to not seeing their families for long periods of time, but that did nothing to soften the blow of having it all but confirmed that they were almost certainly dead. Coote knew that keeping up morale was key to their own survival, and he put a great deal of emphasis on the mission ahead. They were to track down the cruise ship. The passengers were threatened. Weapons were involved. This was the kind of situation they were trained to deal with in the navy. Seamen rarely saw this sort of action once they left behind the surface skimmers for life below the waves, so the plan was met with enthusiasm. A welcome distraction from thoughts of the fate of those back home. There was work to be done, and everyone knew their place and their role. Coote’s boat ran like a well oiled machine.