The X Files: Titanix

Chapter 8

8.

'Problems, Agent Mulder?' McCallister asked.

Before Mulder could reply he felt a slight shudder run through the ship. Tensed and alert, he stood there, curious, for several seconds but nothing more seemed to happen. Titanic gave another shudder, larger this time, more profound and the thunderclap of an explosion rumbled across the water. A tall waterspout erupted close to the hull as if a depth charge had gone off, the column of water rising higher than the boat deck before it began to collapse, showering the open deck behind the starboard bridge wing with seawater.

Stunned, no one on the bridge moved. Titanic continued along her course as if nothing had happened while water from the collapsing column rained down onto the starboard deck, drenching the passengers lounging in the sun on steamer chairs. As if the seawater pattering down on the deck had broken the spell over the occupants of the bridge, they all seemed to come alive together.

'What just happened?' van Wyk, who was now on watch, asked.

'Explosives.' Mulder said quietly, thinking of his partner. Stunned, his heart sank. 'In the laundry with Scully and the Chief Engineer.'

van Wyk looked at him blankly, momentarily caught off guard. 'What?'

'All stop,' McCallister said as she rounded the console and picked up the phone to the engine control room. She waited for an answer before snapping off her first order. 'This is the bridge. Stand by damage control party. Possible explosion on deck one, laundry compartment. Can someone locate Chief Taylor?'

Mulder's apprehensive expression deepened. 'He was down in the laundry.'

Concentrating on the voice at the other end of the telephone, McCallister looked at him just as blankly as van Wyk had done. 'What did you say?'

'He was down in the laundry,' Mulder repeated, now holding the attention of everyone on the bridge. 'Chief Engineer Taylor was down in the laundry with Scully. Right before the explosion.'

'Close watertight doors, decks zero, one and two,' Kate said without hesitation. It was only later would she realise her orders had echoed eerily through history again. 'Sound the ship.'

*

Dana Scully stirred and dully wondered what had happened, gradually becoming aware that she was lying painfully on something hard and in something wet. For what seemed like hours but was probably only seconds, she lay on the deck where she had been thrown by the force of the concussion, collecting her senses, and trying to orientate herself.

Slowly, full consciousness came back to her with the water sloshing about the deck. She opened her eyes and inched her way into a sitting position, waiting for the pounding in her head to stop and the sharp discomfort in her side to fade. When she felt she was able, she stood up and stumbled as her world spun around several times in short succession. She steadied herself against the bulkhead and surveyed the unfamiliar passage around her, noting the different types of pipework lining the bulkheads, the valves, and the acrid smell of fuel oil.

Chief Taylor was a little way along the passageway, between her and the open shell door through which he had clumsily thrown the two bombs into the sea.

There was no disguising the look on his face that said he was surprised to be alive and, she wondered fuzzily as she walked unsteadily towards him, whether her face bore the same expression.

'Are you alright?' She asked.

He nodded. 'How about you?'

'My ears are ringing,' she helped him up and he leaned heavily on her until his head stopped spinning. They splashed their way over to the open shell door, the water swirling viciously about their feet as it drained back into the ocean through the opening in the side of the hull, and peered through onto the surface of the Atlantic Ocean, about a meter below them.