Ring of fire cascadia a.., p.3
Ring of Fire Cascadia: A Disaster Thriller, page 3
“Still here,” she replied, keeping her voice neutral. Her eyes remained on the viewport, though it revealed only darkness. “Passing twenty-two hundred meters. Approaching the trench walls.”
“Copy that. Just a reminder. Axial Seamount’s summit is at fourteen hundred. You’re nearly a kilometer beneath it now. Keep an eye on terrain contours.”
“Noted,” she replied with a slight smile before adding, “Sir.” Technically, Dr. Taggart was her superior on the mission although neither looked at one another that way.
Her hand reached for the lateral thrusters, easing the submersible into a slow drift to starboard. The Alvin obeyed with a muted hiss, gyros adjusting for the current. The motion reminded her of flying through smoke, each subtle adjustment carving through an invisible medium.
Then, suddenly, as if biblical in nature, there was light. What seemed like millions of tiny organisms, disturbed by the sub’s approach, exploded around her. Alive with living threads of luminescence that spiraled in patterns before fading. Jellyfish, translucent and ghostly, pulsed like distant stars. An eel slithered past, its body skeletal and serpentine, before vanishing into the void.
The Alvin was surrounded by incredible bioluminescence. It was a phenomenon created by a chemical reaction when deep-sea organisms convert chemical energy into light energy. In a way, it was nature’s quiet rebellion against oblivion.
And darkness.
Capt. Bauer leaned closer to the viewport, captivated. Even after a decade of deep-sea missions, the sight struck her as miraculous. But the wonder faded quickly. The lights retreated, swallowed once again by the dark. By something unexpected.
The first jolt was subtle. A minor vibration, barely more than a whisper through the DSV’s reinforced frame. The crew of three simultaneously stiffened, their fingers freezing momentarily to grip their restraints. The instability could have been caused by any number of things. A minor seabed shift, deep-current turbulence, or even the DSV’s sensors responding uncharacteristically to the external stimuli.
But Capt. Bauer’s instincts screamed otherwise.
She waited.
Twelve seconds later, it happened again. This time it was unmistakable. A low, resonant frequency rumbled through the hull like the deep strumming of a cello. It came from below, and it lingered, a demonic tone woven into the structure of the ocean itself.
The control panel flared with activity. Data readings scrolled rapidly. Pressure fluctuations, evidence of heat pockets forming, and a sudden spike in seismic activity portended trouble.
“Marc, you getting this?” Her voice was calm, too calm. Her passengers noticed.
A burst of static preceded the response. “Affirmative. Our drones along the Juan de Fuca are lighting us up across the board with data. Cascadia’s moving, and the hydrothermal vent fields are opening.”
Her stomach tightened. Cascadia. The geological monster hadn’t unleashed its full fury since 1700. Certainly not in living memory.
“Until now,” she muttered. “Please, God. Not now.”
Her voice was barely above a whisper, but the frightened scientists who’d hoped to observe rarely seen sea life had not anticipated being thrust into the middle of a seismic event of this nature.
Outside the viewport of the DSV, something shifted. At first, Capt. Bauer thought it was an optical illusion. The ocean’s silt-laden stillness often played tricks. But then she saw it. Terrain that had seemed static now tilted slightly, and a faint line raced across the seafloor like a crack spidering through glass.
A new fracture. Long and deep.
She adjusted her cameras, eyes locked on the growing rupture. She ignored the questions the scientists bombarded upon her shoulders. Moments later, the vent field around the submersible exploded along with the ocean floor. From the ridge nearby, a chunk the size of a building tumbled past the Alvin into darkness. A plume of silt and rock exploded upward, swallowing visibility.
The scientists screamed, a primal, guttural announcement of their desire to be back on the ocean’s surface.
Capt. Bauer tried to focus. An alarm chimed. The DSV lurched sideways. She corrected instinctively, hands tight on the control yoke.
“External stress thresholds approaching critical,” the onboard AI intoned with calm indifference, its female, monotone voice designed to instill calm in its pilot.
Amber lights blinked across the dash. One turned to flashing red. A seismic proximity warning.
“Jesus,” Capt. Bauer whispered. “What the hell?”
“Rachel.” Taggart’s voice returned, sharper now. All pretense of rank and decorum cast aside. “Abort the dive. You need to ascend. Without delay!” His directive was emphatic, mixed with dread and concern.
Now the ocean was tearing itself apart around them. Another jolt. Sharper this time, like the Earth had taken a breath and screamed. Hydrothermal vents opened up all around them, elevating the surrounding water temperature. The turbulence created tossed the Alvin sideways. The crew’s safety harnesses caught. A cascade of warning tones flared. Capt. Bauer struggled to maintain control and begin the ascent.
However, the Alvin didn’t surface. It was in a death grip created by the turbulent waters heaving upward and sucking downward. Like a living, breathing beast had taken hold. Hungry for anything within reach of its massive jaws.
The Alvin’s bow turned downward. Deeper. Unfazed by Capt. Bauer’s commands to return to the mighty Pacific Ocean’s surface. Calling them down like a Siren’s song luring sailors to their death.
For a brief moment, inexplicably, visibility improved. The opening rift loomed like a wound in the world. Black, gaping, and raw. It spread across the seafloor in jagged curves, freshly carved by the violence of a looming megathrust quake. Sediment still swirled around its mouth, a chaotic blizzard of crushed basalt and detritus, choking visibility and distorting sonar.
Through it all, at the end, the scientists got more than they paid for. The orangish-red glow of magma began to reveal itself. The terrain was unrecognizable. Spires of fractured rock jutted at odd angles like bones in a broken skeleton. Whole ridges had collapsed. Vents that had once been catalogued on NOAA charts now spewed jets of superheated brine.
The seafloor was covered with fresh basalt, revealing a hydrothermal ecosystem full of giant tubeworms, mussels, crabs, and fish. What was once barren was now very much alive. The external lights, hampered by the Alvin’s chaotic motion, revealed the lava flows. They were surrounded by dead tubeworm clusters and, much to the crew’s chagrin and surprise, flashes of molten lava hardening in the near-freezing seawater.
Until it was apparently over.
Capt. Bauer struggled to process what was happening. The hydrothermal vents had opened, and now they were gone. The molten lava had been growing in size along the cracks of the adjacent ridge, seemingly causing the rocky surface to melt.
“Alvin, system status?” she asked the onboard artificial intelligence, trying to remain calm. Her eyes darted across the readouts.
“Operational. Hull integrity within limits. Magnetic interference increasing. Geologic formations unstable,” the AI responded coolly, as if it was unafraid to die.
She thought it was over.
Her instruments suddenly stuttered. Then they glitched and recovered. Static laced her audio feed, crackling like dry leaves underfoot. The compass spun, searching for a north that no longer existed.
Taggart’s voice came through again, angry this time. “Rachel, this is madness. You have—” His voice became consumed by static.
Capt. Rachel Bauer was unable to respond. She couldn’t. Because she was no longer just navigating a geological anomaly.
She was inside it.
The turmoil surrounding them had revealed itself. The ridge appeared above them at impossible angles. Broken. Cascading downward. Impossible to avoid.
Seconds later, burying them at the bottom of the Cascadia Trench before settling in as if the earth had never been disturbed.
PART ONE
The fault lines of the world are not just beneath our feet, but within us.
One
April 5
1200 Hours
Home of Duke and Betsy Mercer
Washougal, Washington, USA
DUKE MERCER HUNCHED OVER his desk; the Columbia River’s silver glint flashed through cedar-framed windows, its ripples catching the fading sun like scattered diamonds. The air hung heavy with the cedar’s resinous tang and the bitter bite of old coffee, steam curling from a chipped mug.
At sixty-five, Duke’s grizzled face, etched like weathered basalt, burned with a volcanologist’s fire, but his hands trembled slightly as he traced his daughter’s progress along the treacherous terrain of the Axial Seamount.
Sloan, his oldest and only daughter, was truly Duke’s mini-me. From the beginning, when other young girls her age were engaged in what modern-day teenagers do, Sloan had shadowed Duke as he studied the volcanic systems of the Cascadia subduction zone, or CSZ. Her college studies and degrees even matched his, although more intense and useful thanks to the wonders of modern science.
And now, a mere week away from retirement, Duke watched the data stream in and monitored her communications with a sense of melancholy. His days were numbered as the scientist-in-charge at the Cascades Volcano Observatory, or CVO. Not by choice. Not his, anyway. It was one of those mandatory, arbitrary age-driven retirements that don’t take into account anything like capabilities and desire. It was the way government operated. Besides, as he was told, he was lucky to have extended it beyond age sixty-two, which was the mandatory retirement age for USGS employees.
It had taken an act of Congress, literally, courtesy of the congresswoman for Washington’s 3rd District. Slipped into a funding bill, Duke had been rewarded for his service with another three years as the lead scientist at the CVO. Now, only five working days away, the date loomed large. There’d be a party at the office. A pat on the back. No gold watch. And a passing of the torch to the woman who’d vexed him since that four-year period when Mount St. Helens had threatened to erupt.
Duke leaned toward his laptop screen and repositioned his glasses to study the data. Sloan’s Neptune II control panel was mirrored to his computer. He muttered the findings aloud.
“Two hundred parts per billion xenon, ten microtesla magnetic drop, ten megahertz core pulse.” His voice trailed off. “Dammit, Sloan. It’s a seismic hymn of doom.”
At his feet, Winston, a two-year-old male English bulldog trying to break out of puppyhood, sprawled near his feet, snoring with a wet murmur. His drool pooled on the oak floor, glinting like spilled mercury. Duke managed a smile, thinking about one of the best aspects of retirement, spending more time with the lovable bulldog.
A forty-five-year USGS veteran with a Stanford PhD, Duke’s maverick streak, including his focus on mentoring Sloan and chasing so-called fringe theories, had resulted in many battles against the government bureaucracy’s iron grip. His career was marred by miscalculations and the desire to engage in out-of-the-box thinking. For years, since he’d first published his theories in an extensive 2007 research paper, he yearned to prove the sun’s grand solar minimum (GSM) could have a profound effect on seismic and volcanic activity.
Upon Sloan’s graduation from Stanford and entry into the USGS offices in Vancouver, Washington, she dove into the research with her father. He tried to insulate her from the naysayers who quietly shook their heads when Duke espoused his theories. He knew there were whispers. Discussions of stunting his growth within the agency because of the theoretical relationship between lower sunspot activity and the geologic impact on Earth.
Nonetheless, he believed his research, and the historic record, to be accurate. If true, the Sun’s GSM, which began in 2030 and would last for a decade, would produce a core surge capable of unleashing a magnitude 9.0 earthquake within the CSZ, followed by a one-hundred-cubic-kilometer VEI 6 eruption at the nearby Axial Seamount. Eruptions were measured by the volcanic explosivity index, or VEI. To put the impact in perspective, the only VEI 6 eruption in recent times was Pinatubo in 1991 in the Philippines.
Pinatubo was Duke’s crucible. The CVO had been called upon to assist the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology in monitoring the potentially deadly volcanic system. Duke had led the team responsible for studying the data and liaising with the Philippines. The signs had been there, but he hadn’t wanted to unduly set off a panic on the tiny island. Eight hundred forty-seven people had died, and the island had been crushed by the volcanic ash mixed with the heavy rainfall from a typhoon that had occurred simultaneously.
His silence to avoid panic was a wound that bled still. He felt the mountain’s tremors as if he were there. Eyes closed, he could see its bulging flanks. However, uneasy over the prospect of tourism’s collapse and being blamed for an unnecessary costly evacuation, he’d muzzled himself.
Duke tried to block the memories of that day forty years ago. One that clouded his career. But one that strengthened his resolve to protect his fellow man from future death and destruction at the hands of massive volcanoes.
And on the verge of retiring from a career he’d expended sweat, blood, and tears for, something nagged at his gut.
Two
April 5
1230 Hours
Home of Duke and Betsy Mercer
Washougal, Washington, USA
“DUKE, LUNCH IS SIMMERING. I made Furnas stew!” Betsy, his wife, shouted cheerily, her voice as warm as the traditional Portuguese stew’s steam wafting from the kitchen.
Otherwise known as volcano stew, cozido das Furnas was a mixture of meat, vegetables, and sausage that, in Portugal, was buried in the ground near hot springs or geothermal vents for several hours to cook. Duke and Betsy had discovered the recipe while visiting the island of La Palma in the Canary Islands off the coast of Spain. Cumbre Vieja was an active volcanic ridge on the island and had drawn Duke’s attention for the potential collapse of its walls resulting in a massive tsunami.
Impatient, Betsy hollered for him again. “Retirement’s calling, not that laptop. And tell Winston it’s time for his luncha-muncha.”
Unlike Duke, Winston didn’t need to be told twice to come eat. Duke chuckled as the burly bulldog pushed himself off the floor, struggling slightly to overcome the drool slick under his paws. Duke had visited the Pacific Northwest Bulldog Rescue southwest of Portland on a whim. He’d told Betsy every retiree should have a pup, and he’d always wanted an English bulldog. She’d enthusiastically agreed, so they settled on finding a rescue bulldog in need. Winston became a beloved member of the family after his prior owner had dumped him off at the rescue when he was just a few months old.
As Duke entered the kitchen, with Winston leading the way, he explained why he was so engrossed in his office. “Sloan’s data, Bets,” he said, voice rough as gravel. “Axial’s core is stirring. Cosmic rays seemed to have caused a deep stress, kinda like a fever, in the earth. If it continues, it could shake the coast to rubble.”
Forefront on his mind was the moment the calendar had rolled over to New Year’s Day 2030, which solar weather forecasters identified as the year the sun would take a break from generating sunspots. The solar phenomenon was known as a grand solar minimum, or GSM. Duke had begun GSM watch much like people became convinced the world was going to come to an end because the Mayan calendar supposedly ended on December 21, 2012.
Betsy leaned in, cumin dusting her apron, her gaze catching the Columbia River’s glint like sparkling flashes of light. “Whadya mean? How are you monitoring Sloan’s data?”
Duke gulped. He didn’t like keeping secrets from the love of his life. Besides, he always got called on it eventually. He took a deep breath to prepare for her response to his explanation and to soak in the aroma of the Furnas stew. He tried to avoid the details of the mechanics behind his knowledge of Sloan’s submersible dive.
“Sloan took the Neptune II to the base of Axial. I was just following her progress and studying the data being sent back to the CVO.”
Betsy froze, staring out the window at the river that flowed along their backyard. She sighed and turned to her husband. “Were you on the phone? I didn’t hear you speaking to anyone.” She could be relentless.
Duke broke off a hunk from the French bread loaf and stuffed it in his mouth, hoping that would get him off the hook. At sixty-five, he still remembered the rule about not speaking with his mouth full. He kinda shrugged, which drew a scowl from Betsy.
“Dr. Duke Mercer,” she began, using that tone every husband should learn to fully respect, “you were on your computer. How were you monitoring Sloan? Spill.”
“Um, well, here’s the thing. The USGS came up with a newer version of the software they first developed during the pandemic back in 2020. It’s far more robust and gives me the ability to study real-time data streams and communications with scientists in the field.” He continued to munch on his bread. When he reached for another hunk, Betsy casually pulled the breadbasket out of his reach.
“Okay, first of all, it’s Saturday. Why is she conducting research at Axial, and the more important question is why did you install this kind of software on your computer when you’re retiring on Friday?” She set her jaw, thrust her hands on her hips, and raised her eyebrows.
Duke actually shuddered. Shit. I’m so busted.
“Listen, they said it was okay. You know, nobody wants me to retire.”
“I want you to retire.”
“I know, Bets. I know you do, and I am. On Friday. There’s a party and everything.”
He motioned for her to sit at the table with him, but her posture was one of defiance. “If you’re retiring, why would you download the software? It sounds to me like you wanna keep one foot in the door.”
