Ke had been working for ten minutes on the shrapnel wounds; her hands were sticky with blood. She was grateful the special operations warrior was unconscious; the work she had started to do would have been excruciating for him to be awake for. The grenade had probably gone off between the SEAL’s feet, both ankles were shattered and numerous tiny cuts and gashes trailed all the way to his belly. She had given up trying to stem the bleeds at the broken ankles, opting instead to fasten a pair of streamlined tourniquets high against his thighs. Twisting down the nylon binds had been effective in limiting how much blood spilled onto the deck but the red that seemed to well up from the belly and groin was too much and too worrying. Doc had set up an intravenous drip to help keep the blood pressure of the wounded man from dipping too dangerously but there were just too many wounds to think about anymore. There was always too much to think about in multi-system trauma. The bottom line danger would remain that once a human ran out of enough blood, oxygen no longer adequately feeds the organs. Once the organs aren’t fed, they die, and once organs die, organisms follow soon after. IV fluid, for all the good and help it provided, was never going to be blood; it would only give the vessels enough volume for the heart to keep beating without tripping over the logistics of having less blood to work with. However, there was always that nagging issue that IV fluid wasn’t blood and couldn’t carry oxygen to feed the tissues of the organs which kept the organism alive and…
Ke reached out and thumbed the wheel of the IV line tight, reducing the steady stream in the drip chamber to a cautiously slow dribble. Doc looked up to the chamber and then to her, his eyes tired from working endlessly on the mounting wounded. “What’s up?”
“I’m turning down the flow rate, I think we’re overloading his vessels and blowing out any chance he has to clot.” Ke responded and began fastening heavy dressings over the numerous pock-marked abdominal wounds. The tape she used was difficult, it had remained bound up and hidden away in a backpack for so long that the sticky material had spread around, tackily attaching to her gloves and mucking up how quickly she could tear away strips. The fingertips of her nitrile gloves came away in clean sections with the tape as she tried to work with it and in a fury she tore longer and longer sections. Doc’s calm hand entered her vision and he tore a section quietly, leaving it dangling on his fingertip for her to take.
Her training had always been on mannequins, never having had to deal with bodies that still bled or viciously real trauma cases, it had always been endless training matched with lifeless rubber bodies that didn’t ooze so much blood and sound. For the first time in a long time she was struggling to keep her mind focused and not give into the easy chaos of panic and stress that always loomed in the background like a crowd in the throes of disarray. Doc leaned forward into her field of vision and felt for a pulse on her shredded patient, he turned back and nodded.
“If he loses his radial we’ll have to sort him out.” He said, remarking like a mechanic walking away from barely operational farm equipment. Ke understood his meaning, knowing that once her patient lost enough blood pressure to give off a pulse at his wrist it would be over for him.
Time was working against the wounded, and the wounded were quickly outnumbering the able. The last remaining SEAL of the Helm team looked up from the chaos of the aid station and spoke up to Doc.
“I’m gonna head up to the helm with Kess.” The voice was looking for permission.
Doc looked around at the established array of bodies and mentally took note of the loss of an able set of helping hands, nodding to the capable warrior, “Let em’ know you’re coming. He’s liable to be a bit jumpy.”
The SEAL nodded and turned about, padding down the hall in his dive-armor and battle gear. Ke looked up as he departed and spied the name-tape sewn on the drag strap of his equipment: “Taylor”. Her eyes fell back down to Perry and she reassessed his vital signs and reviewed all the interventions they had fastened to his body to interrupt the process of dying.
As Taylor neared the hatch to the helm he called out on the radio, “One Striker, coming in the bridge!”
Kessler didn’t bother to look up from the maps and the faded, aged radar screen. The Brunhilde had been one of the first and only ships in the entire German Navy to have been fitted with the radar system to track incoming aircraft and the technology worked poorly underwater unless a thoroughly trained man sat at the console. There was always an impressive amount of ‘noise’ and feedback in the readouts, but occasionally the radio waves would rebound off of major surfaces like the seabed or submerged mountains. The sonar worked similarly, but only through sound and only through specific noises. Kessler had never endured the rigorous training of sound recognition and had always been thoroughly jealous of the men who were trusted with the safety and success of an entire ship based solely on their ears. As the SEAL entered the room Kessler pointed off to the side, gesturing to the sonar console and stool.
“Take your helm off, sit there and let me know if you hear the Pennsylvania pinging.”
Taylor nodded and sat down without question, unstrapping and unlatching his helmet and donning a pair of Russian headphones. Kessler peered over his shoulder a moment, eyeing over the cyrilic letters and insignia of the gigantic ear pieces before looking into the eyes of the SEAL who wore them. Taylor looked off into space blankly, his expression oblivious to the bodies still strewn around the room and then looked to Kessler with a shake of the head and a thumbs down. Kessler nodded and spoke into his microphone again. “Busy?”
There was a pause and the deck continued to vibrate under the bridge and Hochberg’s voice came back, paired with the deafening din of the machinegun in the background, “Slight snag in ‘za plans, captain. May need an’azah option!”
Kessler looked over to the various dials and readouts on the ancient control panels and bit in the inside of his cheek in thought. He reached out a hand and leaned on the helm console, a dry smirk slashing over his face, “I’ve got an idea.”
Hochberg replied quickly, “All ears, Herr Kaptain.”
Doc pipped up over the net, “If we could tone down the Nazi-speak while I’m working that’d be swell, gentlemen.”
Wells interjected in the moment, “If I could stop getting shot at by Hitlers goddamn buzzsaw that’d be fuck’n great!” The sound of the MG42 burrowed into everyone’s ears.
Kessler rolled his eyes a moment and gently pulled up on the helm, guiding the ship toward the surface gracefully and slowly. He would bring the boat up carefully, unthreatening and with plenty of time to receive a challenge from the Pennsylvania and numerous Sea Hawks carrying ship-killer torpedoes. It was a slight gamble, but then again, war always was. The old captain could feel his battered heart thump against his ribs and ache under the stress he endured, but he didn’t dare show any of his concerns. He turned to look back at Taylor and made a motion to put his helmet back on so they could talk. The SEAL followed the instructions and looked up to the captain expectantly.
“On the upper right of the console is a large green button. That’s the sonar ping. When we get to about 100 meters push that button once and listen for a response. It should be the Pennsylvania. If you don’t hear anything back, throw something at me so I know about it.”
Taylor nodded once and responded instantly, “Aye sir.” He twisted away his helmet and donned the Russian headphones, leaning around the corner from the console and spying the depth guage as the needle slowly climbed. Kessler went back to leaning on the periscope well, suddenly aware that he was in the exact statue that Sajer had been, so many years ago.
For the briefest of moments Kessler recalled how Sajer had always looked at the helm. The old captain blinked and for a split second he could remember what the ship looked like on the inside 80 years ago.
Sajer always wore that stupid white cap. It was the common mark of the ships leader the fabled white crusher cap, but it always grew to be a dirty piss color as the cotton oxidized or sweat saturated the fabric. Sajer had always been deeply interested in the inner workings of his own ship and as a result little pairs of greasy black fingerprints dotted around the edge of the cap, soiling its sheen. However, the purpose of the cap was to look elite and, eventually, quite distinguished and to that end the middle-aged Frenchman wore the cap with a dashing air when he paired it with his underway turtleneck, and he always wore that damn wool turtleneck. Kessler would stand behind; leaning over the navigation desk as Sajer would stand beside the periscope well, leaned against it like a farmer over his plough. With the rest of the crew alert and capable at their stations the U-boat was a venerable stand-alone planet, a gift trusted to men on the high seas, a transportation and war vessel that could alter a thousand lives with each torpedo launched. Every member of the crew knew the value of each ship they sunk and they likewise understood the risks implied each time they slipped beneath the waves from port. There was always a sort of nihilistic joy the men shared with one another after being without sunlight for weeks at end.
Hochberg’s voice rattled Kessler from his memories, “What’s you’re plan, Captain?”
Kessler looked down at the console marked Gyroscope and smirked again, resuming his comfortable lean against the periscope well. “Take your lads to the Gyro, see if we can’t nullify the Kettle that way.”
Hochberg paused a moment, the floor still rattling and vibrating from the sustained weapons fire below. There seemed to be a sudden and abrupt end ot the commotion and the old chief barked over the comms, “Aye sir, we’re moving toward ‘za Gyro station now. Let’s go boys!”
For the slightest moment, Kessler could swear he heard Taylor behind him mutter, “Fuck’n Iceberg, man.” But he ignored it, looking back to the slowly rising depth needle. It wouldn’t be long now until they were at the surface and there wouldn’t be much time to offload the wounded, let alone get in touch with the other ships awaiting them. It was a risky gamble or assured doom, the sort of game that Kessler had grown used to playing. It didn’t mean that he liked it any better, as he grew falsely older.