A Nasty Rumor [FICTOID]

The most difficult salvage job in human history is underway beneath the Antarctic ice cap.

An American sub, the USS McConnel, lays in scattered wreckage on the ocean floor, imploded as it plunged past crush depth on its final / fateful / fatal dive.

Deep sea submersible from various nations around the world patrol the area, scanning for radiation.

The sub’s reactor split open on implosion, and not only the sub’s nuclear warheads need to be retrieved, but its still active white hot reactor core as well.

If they didn’t recover or at least contain the reactor, it would poison all sea life under the ice cap.

Finding the reactor proved easy:  Just trace the stream of superheated radioactive steam bubbling up from the bottom.

Recovering it would be a far more difficult proposition.

Captain Ferrell munched on a candy bar, his third that morning and a poor substitute for the whiskey he craved to calm his jittery nerves.  He ate with his left hand, his right still in a bandage from the accident that removed him from command of the USS McConnel, putting his executive officer in charge.

“What have we got?” he asked the technicians operating the deep dive remotes.

“The reactor split open like a beer bottle,” one said.  “We can’t see the core through all the steam.  If our remotes can pull it apart into sub-critical masses, we can stop the reaction and figure out how to recover it.”

Ferrell nodded; the actual recovery would be auctioned off to private salvage companies.  His primary task was to supervise the effort to stop the reaction.  That priority was the commonality that banded all nations together.

“Sir?” asked another technician.  “Do we know why they went below crush depth?”

Ferrell felt a twinge of sympathy for his now dead executive officer.  He knew his exec was seeing a minister about personal problems; already rumors were circulating he deliberately sank his sub and crew with suicidal intent.

He dismissed the thought.  “No,” he said.

© Buzz Dixon