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"Get below!" Gillespie bellowed at her. "I want all nonessential crew, scientists, and passengers to stay below on the port side away from the sub."
Rebelliously, she snapped several shots of the U-boat with her camera before heading below to a safer part of the ship. Another explosion erupted, but with a different sound. The shell struck the helicopter pad on the stern and blew it into a tangled mass of smoking wreckage. Soon, another shell screamed through the frigid air and smashed into the ship's funnel with a deafening crash that ripped it like an ax striking an aluminum can. The Polar Storm shuddered, seemed to hesitate, and then, straining, resumed pounding through the ice.
"We're opening the gap," Cox called.
"We have a considerable way to go before we're out of range," said Pitt. "Even then, he can submerge and pursue us beyond the ice pack."
The sub's machine gun opened up again, and its shells stitched a pattern across the bow of the icebreaker and up the forward superstructure until they found the glass windows of the bridge and blew them into a thousand shards. The shells tore across the bridge, smashing into anything that rose more than three feet off the deck. Pitt, Gillespie, and Cox instinctively fell and flattened themselves to the deck, but Bushey was two seconds too slow. A bullet tore through his shoulder, a second creased his jaw.
The U-boat's deck gun spat again. The shell struck just aft of the bridge in the mess room, a vicious blow that smashed in the bulkhead with a blasting impact that made the Polar Storm tremble from bow to stern. The concussion smothered and reverberated all around them. Everyone on the bridge was hurled about across the deck like rag dolls. Gillespie and Cox had been thrown against the chart table. Bushey, already lying on the deck, was sent rolling under the shattered remains of the control console. Pitt wound up half in and half out of the doorway to the bridge wing.
He pulled himself erect, not bothering to count the bruises and glass cuts. Acrid smoke filled his nostrils, and his ears rang, cutting off all other sounds. He staggered over to Gillespie and knelt beside him. The explosion had smashed his chest against the chart table, breaking three, maybe four, ribs. His eardrums were bleeding. Blood also seeped from one pant leg. The captain's eyes were open but glassy.
"My ship," he moaned softly, "those scum are destroying my ship."
"Do not move," Pitt ordered him. "You might have internal injuries."
"What in hell is happening up there?" came the voice of the chief engineer over the only speaker still functioning. His voice was nearly lost in the beat and roar of the engine room.
Pitt snatched the ship's phone. "We're under attack by a submarine. Give us every bit of power you've got. We must get out of range before we're shot to scrap."
"We have damage and i
njuries down here."
"You'll have a lot worse," Pitt snapped, "if you don't keep us on Full Speed."
"Jake," groaned Gillespie. "Where's Jake?"
The first officer lay unconscious and bleeding, with Cox leaning dazedly over him. "He's down," Pitt answered simply. "Who's your next in command?"
"Joe Bascom was my second officer, but he returned to the States in Montevideo because his wife was having a baby. Get Cox."
Pitt motioned to the big third officer. "Ira, the captain wants you."
"Have we come completely around?" asked Gillespie.
Cox nodded. "Yes, sir, we're heading out of the ice floe on course zero-five-zero."
Pitt gazed at the U-boat with hypnotic captivation, waiting with unblinking eyes for the next shell from the deck gun. He didn't have to wait long. At that moment, he saw the Angel of Death streaking across the ice. Punching through the starboard lifeboat, a large launch capable of carrying sixty people, the shock wave sent the ship reeling convulsively onto her port side. The sledgehammer blast disintegrated the lifeboat before it exploded against the bulkhead separating the boat deck from the galley. There was a swirl of flame and smoke amid splinters and blasted railings and boat davits. Soon, the entire length of the starboard boat deck was afire, the flames unfolding through shredded gashes in the deck and bulkhead.
Before anyone on the bridge could recover, another projectile left the muzzle of the sub's deck gun and screeched toward the battered icebreaker like a hysterical banshee. Then it struck in a crescendo of eruptions that nearly tore off the bow, throwing the anchor chains into the air like pinwheels. Still the Polar Storm surged on.
The ship was rapidly increasing its distance from the submarine. The machine gun on the conning tower became ineffective and went quiet. But the gap was not widening nearly fast enough. When it became apparent to the U-boat crew there was a slim chance the icebreaker might escape its range, they began doubling their efforts to load and fire. The rounds were coming every fifteen seconds, but not all struck the ship. The faster pace caused several shells to miss, one flying high enough to slice off the ship's radar and radio mast.
The attack and destruction had happened so quickly that Gillespie had no time to consider surrendering the ship and saving all on board. Only Pitt knew better. The Fourth Empire was not about to allow any of them to escape. It was their intention that all would die, their bodies entombed in the icebreaker as it plunged a thousand feet to the bottom of the cold, indifferent sea.
The ice was becoming thinner the closer Polar Storm came to the open sea, and the battered ship lunged though the pack, smashing it beneath her bow, her engines throbbing and her propellers thrashing the cold waters. Pitt weighed the chances of heading toward the sub and ramming her, but the distance was too great. Not only would the research ship have to suffer a barrage of shells fired at point-blank range, but the U-boat would have easily dropped safely below the surface before the Polar Storm could reach her.
The starboard boat was little more than a pile of smoldering splinters, with the smashed remains of its bow and stern hanging from twisted davits. Smoke was billowing ominously from the jagged shell holes, but as long as the engine room remained without a mortal hit, the Polar Storm would plow forward. The bridge was a field of broken debris and shattered glass, decorated in places with gleaming red blood.
"Another quarter of a mile and we should be out of range!" Pitt shouted above the din.
"Steady as she goes," ordered Gillespie, painfully rising to a sitting position on the deck, his back against the chart table.
"The electronic controls are shot away," said Cox. "The rudder is locked in place, there is no control. I fear we're making a circle back toward that damned sub."
"Casualties?" asked Gillespie.
