Time's Up, Power's Back

You would expect his letters home to be the scary ones. He was the one who had been sailing to all extremities of the compass for two years. He was the one working missions for the government that were all kinds of grey. He was the one that didn’t have a friend on board 90% of the time to back him up in a fight. And yet, it turned out that the one thing that made him most afraid was receiving a letter from home.

Dearest Durie,

We miss you already. I didn’t anticipate how lonely I would feel with you gone, but I’m finding the biggest problem is that there is no one to make me tea in the morning! I hope you are making friends wherever you are right now, and that you’re making them tea in bed in my honour.

I didn’t intend to send this letter so soon. I wanted you to get settled first, but I needed to tell you something. It’s not good news, I’m afraid.

When I told Eevie and Alexander that you would not be coming back to us for such a long time… I said a year, but I do hope you will be able to visit us. <3 Alexander didn’t take it well. You know him. He’s so fiercely emotional… like you… and I love it in both of you, but he can be irrational and do things like run away and get hit by a car.

Don’t worry, darling. He’s okay. He just has to learn to walk with crutches for approximately the next five months, as the car hit his leg and snapped his fibula. The doctor said that it will heal okay over time but until then I have to live with a big crab sitting on our best arm chair demanding icecream and cold packs. On further reflection, you might be lucky you aren’t here!

From your ever loving wife,

Sarah

—

Dearest Durie,

Please forgive me for not trying to lift your spirits with this note. I feel incapable of doing so at the moment.

We lost the baby.

Whatever anyone says, I believe it is my fault. When I saw the doctor at half term, he told me I needed to take better care of myself but I was so busy that I didn’t take his advice and little Amery was not strong enough when she was born to fight off an infection she contracted and it killed her.

You can add your own tear marks to this paper if you would like.

Stay safe,

Sarah

—

Dearest Durie,

I wish you could write back to me. All I receive that relates to you are address updates if I request them, and only sometimes even then, and the regular check they send.

I don’t want to start my letters with a qualm each time, but that seems to be how life is progressing since you left.

This time, it’s a lack of funds. I am doing everything I can to keep things even, but nothing helps. We’ve been through all our savings with doctors bills and the like, and I have been out of work for three months. I know you won’t like this, but Alexander has found work sweeping shopfronts. He may be only twelve but he us a willing worker and you should be proud of him. Eevie has been helping me immensely for such a little girl and I do love them both so dearly, but we all wish with all of our hearts that you were here.

All our love,

Sarah

PS. The limit on the length and amount of letters I am allowed to send you is one of the most frustrating things I have ever had to deal with. I love you so much that one short letter a trimester is nothing.

Each piece of bad news he received felt like a barb of wire in his heart. And each day away from his family made Durie more determined that the people who pulled him from them were going to find out just how bad of an idea that was.

_____

From the deck of the Marylanda, everyone who wasn’t crew watched as the grey lump in the water that they knew could spell their deaths slid under the waves. Couples held each other’s hands, breathless, glancing at each other with helpless looks. Old people prayed, young children looked up at the faces frozen in horror all around them and stayed quiet, not understanding but feeling the gravity and fear on the ship.

Down in the crew rooms, “dot dot dot, line line line, dot dot dot” was repeated over and over as distress messages were being sent off frantically, calling for some aircraft or ship to come fend of the attack before it was too late. But they had already knew that there was no help close enough to save them.

The sea was calm and the silence on the deck of the ship was so profound that the whirling of the water around the submarine five hundred meters away could be heard distinctly as the ship began to dive. The metal slid from sight leaving just the water to shimmer in the midday sun and everyone on board waited, hopeful to the last that death and destruction wouldn’t come to them that day.

Maybe it was really the prayers of the old people, or maybe it was the existence of the children on board the ship that made Durie’s mind up, but to him, it was something else. Something from a long time ago. It was his time to pay back someone, and that someone was represented in the unforgiving captain of the ship and every other slouched-moral member of the crew.

It was time to stop the vehicle of unfeeling government in it’s tracks. Or at least the part of it that was responsible for taking Durie away from his family and destroying his life.

He didn’t think as he put his hand on the lever. If he thought, he would hesitate, but right now there was a cruiser waiting for destruction and he couldn’t think of a better time to do what he had been planning for almost a year.

He yanked the heavy, painted lever downwards and walked swiftly down the walkway. After glancing around, he opened a hidden panel in a storage cupboard and looked over its contents. There was no light in the cupboard and he could barely see, but he had been over the control board there about a hundred times before and memorised everything. His hand found a single electric wire and his other hand pulled a pair of wire cutters from an oversized pocket on his uniform.

Wasting no time, Durie cut through the wire, shut the door, and moved on down the small hall. He kept walking without a reaction when another officer passed him at one point, but was relieved when the man turned off into a bunk room.

It felt like an awesome amount of time passed before Durie reached what he was heading for. He was tense, knowing what sort of possibly lethal mess he would be in if he was discovered doing what he was doing. But there were no second thoughts now. Only memories.

He placed a small, hand-made device on each side of a large metal box welded to the floor of the submarine, took a deep breath and pulled a small piece of plastic from one of them. Instantly, a blue electrical charge sparked on both sides of the box and a crackling sound began to hiss inside it. A few seconds later a loud ‘pop’ sounded down the walkway and all the lights on the ship turned out at once, leaving the interior of the submarine in pitch blackness.

He knew he didn’t have long. He had messed things up well enough that it would eventually be fatal to the ship. This part of the process was only the finishing touch. He had been breaking less obvious things all over the ship for days so that the job would be complete. He was aiming for overthrowal, not a gentle ribbing.

Durie walked down the hall to the control room. Officers were frantically messing with controls trying to reinstall power to the ship. Durie located the captain.

“Captain, you have to surface!” he commanded with urgency.

The captain looked over his shoulder. “What?” His voice was stretched, the pressure getting to him.

“You have to surface her or she'll be our coffin. The propellor-” He demonstrated with his hand for the captain to listen, and amidst the scurry and craziness around them in the control room, they heard the stillness of the water encasing the ship.

The captain still looked dubious, but he knew the urgency of the situation. He raised the nose of the submarine and set it heading back up to the surface, slowly chugging along on the minimal energy available.

On board the Marylanda those looking on were confused and hopeful when they observed - instead of a torpedo heading towards their ship’s bow - the top of the submarine surfacing once again. They didn’t understand what had happened until much later, but when they observed an armed seaplane arrive an hour or two later and collect their enemies, there was a ferocious roar of celebration that didn’t completely cease until many days later.