Sedulity (Book One) Impact by David Forsyth Read Free Book Online Page A

continued to sound. Then the Captain’s
voice came over the loudspeakers, warning of continued fire danger and another
unnamed but impending threat. At least he hadn’t given the order to abandon
ship yet.
    “It’s okay, Emily,” Amanda told her five year old daughter.
“Daddy will be here soon.”
    “I’m scared, Momma,” the child said with tears running down
her cheeks. “What’s happening?”
    “Don’t be scared, baby. Daddy says we’ll be safe here,”
Amanda said as she brushed Emily’s blonde hair out of her green eyes and hugged
her tightly. “We just have to wait here a little longer. Daddy is coming soon,
you’ll see.”
    Amanda prayed that saying those words would make it so, but
inside she was terrified. The impact, the heat, the smoke, and now a warning of
more to come were almost too much. She might have broken into hysterics, if not
for the instinctual need to comfort and protect her daughter. She did trust
Kevin implicitly, and would wait for him until the last moment, but her inner
doubts couldn’t help arguing that it might soon be time to take Emily down to
the lifeboats.
    ****
    Lieutenant Reiner pulled himself up from behind the slot
machine where he had been thrown by the impact of the blast wave. The ship’s
casino was one of the muster stations that thankfully did not have windows. It
and the people sheltering within it had been spared the worst of the heat and
blast. That is not to say they were unscathed. Far from it. Reiner could see
quite a few passengers sprawled unmoving on the floor. Others were moaning.
Some were screaming. Nevertheless, the majority seemed to at least be alive.
    He was alarmed to see clouds of smoke billowing into the
casino from the direction of the Martini Bar and it sounded like most of the
screams were coming from that direction. He gathered himself and rushed across
the room, issuing empty reassurance to anyone who could hear him. This was
worse than any of the catastrophic events the crew prepared for. But where
there was smoke there was fire, and that was one threat that all the crew were
trained to combat. Lieutenant Reiner gathered four crewmembers he saw in the
casino and ordered them to join him as he headed into the smoke.
    Automatic fire suppression sprinklers were spraying water
everywhere in the Martini Bar. Even sprinklers that were not directly above a
fire had been triggered by the heat that accompanied the blast wave when
windows imploded. Fortunately only a few windows were broken here. Unlike the
Sky Lounge, whose windows overlooked the bow, the windows near the muster
stations faced out along the side of the ship. For the most part the blast wave
had swept along these windows, instead of hitting them head-on.  Yet the few
windows that had broken, and the doors to the deck that had been blown off
their hinges, were more than enough to admit hellfire and wreak havoc on the
room and its occupants. 
    Not much in the Martini Bar was flammable, aside from
alcohol, decorations and seat cushions. Sadly, the other flammable things were
clothing. Human torches rolled and writhed on the deck amidst the sickly sweet
smell of burning flesh. Other burning lumps had already stopped moving and
screaming. Reiner was frozen for just a second by the sight, before heading for
a firefighting cabinet and passing out extinguishers to the crew that followed
him.
    By unspoken agreement they focused first on putting out the
fires engulfing those who were obviously still alive. Then they shifted to the
unmoving bodies of crispy corpses, before turning to deal with the flames
rippling along the walls and furniture. The automated sprinklers helped, but
nothing could detract from the horror of the overall scene. Close to a hundred
passengers had been clustered at this must station. Ten or twenty of them might
walk away from it in one piece. The rest were either dead, seriously injured or
too badly burned to move under their own power.
    Lt. Reiner was horrified to