Chapter 28 - The Knock on the Hull
Inside the submarine, the sudden halt must have felt like an earthquake.
I stood on the forward casing, my suit’s battery power hovering at a critical eight percent, the oxygen scrubber alarm beeping with rhythmic, hypnotic insistence.
**O2 REMAINING: 14 MINUTES.**
I walked to the forward rescue hatch—the escape trunk designed for deep-submergence rescue vehicles.
I raised the heavy titanium manipulator arm of my suit and brought the steel claw down against the hatch cover.
*Clang. Clang. Clang.*
Three hits. The universal signal: *I am here. The ship is secure.*
For five agonizing seconds, there was nothing but the hum of my dying life-support system.
Then, from the other side of the three-inch steel hatch, came the response:
*Clang. Clang. Clang. Clang.*
Four hits. The Navy response code: *Understood. Emergency auxiliary power restored.*
Beneath my boots, the submarine roared back to life.
A deep, low-frequency hum vibrated through the hull as the emergency backup batteries in the forward compartment finally kicked in. Compressed air from internal emergency reserves—clean, uncompromised lines—began to force the remaining water from the midship ballast tanks.
The *Viper* began to rise under her own power.
She wasn't sinking anymore. She was floating up, buoyant and alive, rising off the basalt ledge, dragging the anchor cable with her toward the surface.
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I collapsed onto the non-skid deck of the submarine, my suit’s thrusters completely exhausted, the power levels reading zero. I was a passenger now, riding the back of the leviathan as she ascended through the black water from twelve hundred feet, eight hundred feet, four hundred feet...
The darkness outside my quartz dome began to fade into the pale, cold blue of the Arctic surface.
