The End of the Beginning
Chapter 64: The Fire Begins

“Brah,” snorted Rescue Officer Stern, “you mean to tell me that you rather be working iceberg capture than this? Your insane.”

“Yes,” replied Rescue Officer Eaton. “This job is shit. I didn’t join UNIRO to look out a window all day and wave at ships as they go by. At least with iceberg capturing there is something to do. I mean, look at us, we’ve been on our asses all damn day.” “I love my ass so I’m okay with that,” said Stern. “It’s peaceful here. It’s the easiest job in the world.”

Both arguing men were Geo’s, assigned to ship patrol in the Bering Sea Dam’s third open passage twenty-nine miles west of St. Lawrence. They sat in a control room affixed to the passageways eastern suspension bridge tower just under its road deck’s truss. From under here they could see the entire passageway and all the shipping that came through it. Dozens of ships of all sizes made there way through, ranging all the way from small crab boats to multi-city block sized super tankers transporting oil down from Alaska’s northern most reaches.

The control room was a semicircular glass box filled with communications equipment, weather instruments, and a plethora of computer screens, more than enough for the two men to watch. The control room also had a connecting lounge, common bedroom, and bathroom for the two men who were going to live out here in three-week shifts. They were almost 200 feet above the steel towers pier; a massive hexagonal concrete anchor that held the bridge tower to the seafloor. This pier also protected the bridge towers base from icebergs and ice flows.

Their view starred out across the mile and half wide gap into the blackness of the Bering Sea. All they could see were the blinking amber lights of bridge deck directly above them and the far suspension tower. Currently, there were no ships in the passage.

“Just look out the window, Eaton,” pointed Stern. “Look at the sight of that. It’s beautiful.”

“All I see is darkness… like my future,” sulked Eaton.

“Well you better get used to it. In the winter it gets dark super early this far north. And hey, the opening ceremony was cool. You have to admi - ”

A sensor indicator started beeping. Eaton sat up quickly in his chair. “What’s that?”

Stern rolled over to the computer screen that the beeping was coming from. “It’s a proximity warning. A ship has passed into the first tower safety zone. It’s probably nothing, an accidental drift or something. I’ll hail them.” “Which tower, east or west?” asked Eaton.

“East.”

“Great. That’s our tower.”

Stern got up and grabbed a pair of binoculars. He got as close to the large windows as he could and scanned the waters around the tower. It was to dark to see anything. The few bridge lights were literally the only sources of light for tens of miles in any direction. It was the rawest of nights out here.

“I can’t see anything, Eaton,” said Stern uneasily. “You sure it’s not a glitch?”

“No,” confirmed Eaton. “It’s definitely out there. I got their transponder. Computer says it’s a supertanker; ultra large crude carrier class called the TI Arctic. It’s over twelve hundred feet long and has a 517,660-ton displacement when fully loaded.” “That’s big,” muttered Stern.

Eaton rolled over to the radio console in his chair and grabbed a flexible microphone. “This is Passageway Control hailing the TI Arctic on all frequency’s, do you copy, over?” Static was there reply. Stern tried to see the ship again with his binoculars but still he saw nothing.

“I repeat, this is Passageway Control hailing the TI Arctic on all frequency’s, do you copy, over? You have passed into the eastern bridge towers outer safety zone. Please correct your course immediately to compensate.” Static again. The lights in the control room went too red as another more urgent beeping started.

“Shit,” said Eaton. “The ship just passed into the second safety zone. It’s on a collision course with the tower if it continues on its present heading.”

Eaton hailed the ship again. While he was doing that Stern began making collision preparations. First, he closed all lanes of traffic on the bridge deck by raising barriers and sent out an emergency signal to all trains to stop service immediately. Oil and gas pipelines running under the bridge deck were closed off next. He turned on exterior emergency lighting on the two bridge towers as well as a proximity alarm that was so loud it could be heard by anyone within a four-mile radius. It sounded very much like a blasting ship horn.

With the outside lights on Stern looked with his binoculars again. Eaton still hadn’t gotten a response.

“Jesus Christ,” said Stern, lowering his binoculars. He was lowering them because he did not need them. The massive ship, longer than the Eiffel Tower is tall, emerged out of the darkness, slicing through the meager waves. Stern had never seen something so big in motion. The leviathan was very low in the water. It was fully loaded. Painted across its white bow were four red symbols, all triangles.

“Oh crap… Eaton, the ship is right there!”

A third alarm went off. It was the alarm indicating the ship had breached the third and final safety zone around the tower. It was now no more than 500 feet away moving at full speed, all 517,660 tons of it.

“TI Arctic reverse course immediately! You are on a collision course with the bridge tower!”

The static stopped. Someone had picked up. Eaton smiled with relief and waited eagerly for a response. All he got was a cold and sinister, “No.”

“We gotta go!” cried Stern over the alarms.

Eaton just let go of the microphone and calmly sat back in his chair. “It’s to late,” he said.

Down below the last line of defense lay in wait. Surrounding the towers hexagonal concrete pier were colossal extendable orange bumpers attached to each side of the pier that were specifically designed to absorb and deflect impacts from ships. They bobbed up and down in the water on pivoting steel arms.

The ship thundered into one of the bumpers, instantly breaking right through it. Its steel arms crumpled like straws. With a crunching crash the TI Arctic’s bulbous bow rammed into the concrete bridge pier, sending intense vibrations across both structures. Lights across the bridge flickered. Steel moaned and groaned over the proximity alarm. Stern and Eaton were knocked to the floor. The bulbous bow allowed the ship to ride up on top of the pier, scrapping and carving through the ships double steel hull, spilling oil.

A few feet from the bridge tower itself in the middle of the pier the ship stopped, beached and dead in the water. Oil was gushing from below the ship around the bow. Eaton and Stern got back on their feet and looked down out the windows.

“Woah!” shouted Stern. “We’re okay!”

A bomb inside the ships center holding tank detonated, igniting the ships 140,000,000 gallons of oil all at once. The initial shockwave shattered the control room’s windows and threw Stern and Eaton all the way through the back wall into their lounge. Suspension cables became dislodged from their connectors and snapped apart. The blast ripped through the bottom of the tower, completely collapsing the structure. Heat and fire reached out above the road deck. As the tower tumbled down into the fireball the deck fell into the sea like a rolling wave. Hundreds were still left on it as it did.

Seismometers on St. Lawrence registered the explosion it was so powerful. As John was readying to leave his room he heard his window rattle. He thought it was the breeze.

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