Devil's Gate (NUMA Files 9)

Dismissing the tanker from his mind, Nordegrun glanced through the windows ahead of him. The open water and the calm night made for good sailing.

“Bring us to twelve knots,” he said.

The helmsman, a Filipino man named Isagani Talan, answered. “Aye, sir.”

Such was the state of the world’s merchant marine that Nordegrun, a Norwegian citizen, captained a Bahamian-registered vessel, built in South Korea, owned by a Japanese company, and crewed mostly by Filipino sailors. To round out the worldly status of their voyage, they carried an African cargo of minerals bound for a factory in China.

An outsider might have thought it madness, but the only thing that mattered was that the players knew their jobs. Nordegrun had sailed with Talan for two years and trusted him implicitly.

The vibration in the ship changed as the engines answered the call. Nordegrun switched from the radarscope to a monitor that lay before him. It sat flat, resting on top of a block like the chart tables of old, but it was a modern high-definition touch screen. It currently displayed the waters around them and his ship’s position, course, and speed.

All seemed well from a distance, but by tapping on the screen Nordegrun was able to zoom in and see that a southerly current had pushed them five hundred yards off course.

Nothing to worry about, Nordegrun thought, but if perfection was possible, why not reach for it?

“Two degrees to port,” he said.

Talan was positioned ahead of Nordegrun on the bridge at the ship’s control panel. It also looked nothing like the setup of a classic ship. Gone was the big wheel and the image of a man whirling it to one side or the other to change course. Gone was the telegraph, the heavy brass lever that signaled the engine room to change speed.

Instead Talan sat in a high, pedestal-like chair with a computer screen in front of him. The wheel was now a small steel hub, the throttle was a lever the size of a car’s gearshift.

As Talan made his adjustments, electronic signals went to the rudder-control units and the engines in the stern of the ship. The course change was so slight that it couldn’t be felt or noticed visually, but the captain could see it on the screen. It took several minutes, but the big ship swung back onto course and settled in on its new speed.

Satisfied, Nordegrun looked up.

“Keep us on that line,” he said. “Since they’ve given us all this nice equipment, we might as well use it.”

“Yes, sir,” Talan said.

With the ship back on course, Nordegrun checked the chronometer. It was after ten p.m. local, the third watch was in place. Confident that the ship was in good hands, he glanced at the officer of the deck.

“She’s all yours,” he said.

Nordegrun turned to head below, checking the position of the tanker trailing them one last time. It had matched the Kinjara Maru’s course change and, oddly enough, had accelerated to 12 knots as well.

“Monkey see, monkey do,” he mumbled as he walked for the door.

Stepping out through the door and heading aft, Nordegrun squinted into the gloom. He could make out the lights on the ship following them. A strange hue, he thought. They were a bluish white, like the high-intensity headlights on modern luxury sedans.

He’d never seen that on a ship before, even from a distance. All he could ever recall was the standard yellowish or plain white light that incandescent and fluorescent bulbs gave off. Then again, years back, no one thought they’d see a ship that was guided by a computer.

He stepped into the stairwell and shut the hatch. Clambering down the stairs toward his quarters, Nordegrun felt a spring in his step. Unlike earlier generations, he and his officers were allowed to bring family aboard. Nordegrun’s wife of two years waited below, joining him for the first time at sea. She would go with him as far as Cairo, disembarking and flying home as the Kinjara Maru moved through the Suez Canal.

It would be a good week, he thought, a vacation without taking one. If he hurried, he had time to join her at the ship’s mess.

As he reached the lower deck, the lights in the stairwell dimmed. He glanced up. The filaments in the incandescent bulb above the door looked like embers on the verge of going out. Higher up, the fluorescent tubes began flickering at an odd rate.

They returned to normal for a second, but there was no doubt in Nordegrun’s mind that they had some type of generator issue. Aggravated, he turned to climb back up the stairs.

The lights dimmed again, then brightened until they were blazing white. The fluorescent tubes made a strange noise and then shattered simultaneously, raining glass down on him. On the wall, the incandescent bulb blew out in a loud pop, flashing the stairwell in electric blue and then plunging it into darkness.

Nordegrun held the rail, shocked and surprised. He’d never seen anything like it. He felt the ship begin to heel over as if she were turning hard. With no idea what was going on, he raced up the darkened stairway and ran forward. Lights were blowing all over the ship.

Nordegrun felt a spike of pain in his neck and jaw. Stress, he thought, the fight-or-flight reaction, as something went wrong with his vessel.

He burst into the bridge. “What the devil is happening?” he shouted.

Neither Talan nor the officer of the deck responded. Talan was busy shouting into the ship’s intercom. The OOD was wrestling with the computer, de