Кейт Кристенсен - The Last Cruise

“Yes, they will,” said Natalya, the Russian bartender. “Otherwise, good luck to them, finding replacements on short notice in Hawaii for the rest of the cruise. We’ll have leverage.”

“You won’t,” said Mick. “This is really stupid. You’re screwing everybody. Yourselves, and the rest of the crew, and the passengers most of all.”

“Cabaret went too far this time,” said a guy Mick didn’t recognize. “We are reacting the only way we can. It’s their own fault.”

“You won’t get anywhere with Cabaret,” said Mick. “And the rest of us will have to pick up your slack for the rest of the cruise, and no one else will hire you. It’s not like you have a union to fight for you.”

“We do now,” said Consuelo. “This is our union.”

“Oh man,” said Mick, shaking his head. He could feel how useless it was to try to reason with these people. They were excited to do this, even if it was just to screw Cabaret. Walking out was their main objective; vindictive payback. How was he supposed to argue with a room full of defiant, righteous, angry workers who had nothing left to lose? And besides, they weren’t wrong.

Without saying another word, he turned and walked out of the crew lounge, stood for a moment in the hallway, trying to decide what to do. He badly wanted a beer, but the crew lounge would probably enforce a “no management” service policy now. He vaguely contemplated going to the restaurant to get a beer from the bar refrigerator. Or he could go to the small break room where upper management theoretically congregated. Mick had never been in there, and despite everything going on, he still didn’t consider himself management. The crew lounge was where he felt at home, and now that the lines had been drawn, he had nowhere else to go.

He became aware of a chemical, noxious smell. It was coming from one of the vents. He inhaled hard through his nose a few times: smoke. It was unmistakable. Then all at once, the fans stopped, the lights went out, and the hallway was black and silent.

“Where is our waiter?” Valerie said, craning her neck to look around. She got up and went to the bar, leaving Christine alone at the table. Miriam and Sasha had gone off somewhere, probably to neck on the promenade. Christine barely noticed. From the first notes of the piano piece, she had been caught up in its drama, swept away by restless torrents, made dreamy by peaceful interludes. And the girl who was playing was young but masterful. With a start of surprise, Christine recognized the teenager she’d espied just before they’d sailed away from Long Beach, the sullen, gimlet-eyed girl who’d been reading her brochure in a nearby deck chair while Christine had been reading hers.

And here she was again, pouring her soul into the piano. Just as she was pounding out the dizzying final passages of the piece, the stage lights went out. The air-conditioning died, and the lounge became instantly hot, dark, and stuffy. The music stopped. A murmur filled the silence. Christine looked around at confused faces, shrouded in the half light. The votive candles on the tables flickered, jewelry glinted, tips of cigarettes winked throughout the room. Kimmi, confused, tapped the dead mike on the darkened stage.

“Okay, everyone!” she called. Her voice sounded small and weak without the mike. “Everyone, as you can see, the power just went out. I’m not sure what’s going on, but I’ll let you know as soon as I know anything.”

Valerie slid back into the chair next to Christine and handed her a glass. Her face was sallow in the greenish emergency lighting that had just come on overhead. “The bartenders are gone,” she said. “I made it myself. I hope this isn’t serious.”

Christine took a gulp. It was straight vodka over ice.

The PA system crackled to life, and the captain’s voice came through, calm and commanding. “Hello, folks, this is Captain Jack. You’ve probably noticed that the power went out. You might have smelled a little smoke, too. There was a small fire, but it’s under control, and we’re working on getting the power back up and running. It’s nothing to worry about, this is temporary, so please try to relax and enjoy your evening and I’ll be back soon with an update.”

“Oh my God,” said Valerie. “Holy shit.”

A few people coughed. Others headed for the exits, propping open the doors to the lounge on their way out.

“Let’s get some fresh air,” said Christine, picking up her drink. As they left the lounge, Christine realized that the constant vibration of the engines underfoot had stopped, along with everything else.

“What happens now?” she heard a woman’s voice ask.

“They’ll get the power back on again,” said her male companion. “They always do. We just have to wait.”

Miriam and Sasha stopped on the stairs leading up to the bridge. Loud voices echoed down below.

“The power went out,” she said. She heard the astonishment in her own voice. A fine, spitting rain had begun to fall, and the air was dark and heavy, with no wind. In the dim light from the sky, Miriam could make out a thin layer of acrid smoke wrapped around the ship, blanketing it.

“Was it the fire?” she said.

“Probably,” Sasha replied. “Let’s go to the bridge.”

Their feet clanged on the metal staircase as they made their way to the top. They hovered together in the open doorway to the bridge. Under a curved wall of enormous front-facing windows, the long control panel was dark. Dim overhead lights, which must have been battery-powered, illuminated the cavernous room with pale greenish light.

Miriam heard Larry before she saw him.

“This is a bad situation,” he said, his loud voice cutting through all the others. “We’re dead in the water.”

As Miriam’s eyes adjusted, she saw him at the back of the room, sitting at a long table next to the captain. They were both speaking at once into handsets. The captain’s voice was low and even, so Miriam couldn’t make out what he was saying over Larry’s sharp projection, but she could hear speakers crackling all over the ship, so she guessed he was making an official announcement. Three young bridge officers had clustered around the conked-out control panel beneath the windows. They were speaking in low voices. Miriam edged in their direction, her ear cocked like an antenna to pick up whatever she could.

“Was it an oil leak, or electrical?”

“I don’t know. But the sprinklers didn’t even come on. They had to go in and turn them on manually. I heard a couple of the engine room crew passed out from the smoke and had to go to the infirmary.”

“I was working on the Sea Star three years ago when that engine fire happened. We waited three days for a tow. Three days! And that was in the Gulf of Mexico.”

“God. What were they thinking, sending us to Hawaii in this piece of shit?”

Miriam stepped closer to Sasha and took his hand as two more young men in uniform tumbled in through an open door, brandishing flashlights. “What happened?” one of them said. In the greenish light from above, he looked half asleep, shocked out of a stupor. It occurred to Miriam that these kids had probably been sleeping and had come upstairs to begin the night shift.

“Engine fire,” said one of the other officers.

“How did it start?”

“We don’t know yet.”

“Is it out?”

“It’s contained, but they’re still fighting it.”

“Where’s the power? What about the backup generator?”

“All we have are basic communications and emergency lights.”

“Seriously?”

The other officer jerked his head in the direction of Larry Weiss, who was on his feet now, pacing about the room, shouting into his satellite phone handset.