Chapter 1

IF A TREE FALLS


Three months earlier.


The iceberg had calved off the Arctic ice pack two years earlier. After wallowing for a while in the ocean off the coast it had been picked up by the Transpolar Current and then flung into the Beaufort Gyre, a swirling maelstrom of hurdy gurdy waters that circulated between the East Siberian Sea and the Beaufort Sea off Alaska. Like a small child thrown off a playground carousel that was spinning too fast, it was dumped into the mouth of the Bering Strait, slowing but moving inexorably south at a stately two to three knots.

The violence of its birth and the impact of wind and tides had seen its original tabular shape worn away until it was just a thin sliver of a dome remained above the water. Below the water, 200 tons of ice and trapped rock served as both ballast and rudder, driving the berg forward. At 800 feet long, it was at least twice the size of the iceberg that sank the Titanic.

And it was headed straight toward the Russian container vessel Ozempic Tsar.
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The bridge of the Ozempic Tsar was empty. Under a panel of windows with a 360 degree view of the sparkling sea around her, a bank of screens and instruments flashed and blinked, with no one to look at them. Two doors, one to port, and one to starboard, let out to watch stations on which no one stood.
The Tsar was outfitted with the latest in subsea sonar and high frequency radar for detecting both shipping and subsurface objects, and as it bore down on the iceberg at a combined closing speed of 16 knots, the sonar was the first to react. A collision warning alarm began to sound throughout the ship, but there was no panicked shouting, no thud of feet running on steel decks. There was no one to hear.

The AI controlling the X-band 10Ghz radar directed the beam toward the suspected location of the iceberg, but saw nothing. Indecision might have paralysed a human Captain, but the Ozempic Tsar had no such problems. Confirming that the sea lane to starboard was clear of other traffic, the massive container ship feathered its starboard screw, punched in portside bow impellers, dialled its speed back to 10 knots and began a grindingly slow, skidding turn to starboard. It was helped by the fact it was carrying a bulky but lightweight cargo for this journey, but without perfect information about the speed and bearing of the iceberg, its computers calculated a ten percent chance that the ship would not clear the object ahead of it in time.

A new alarm began to sound throughout the ship, warning the crew to get to emergency stations and brace for impact. There was still no movement either above, or below decks.

Slowly, the bows of the supertanker swung around and the ship’s radar was able to pick up a return from the dome of ice that was riding above sea level. Now the AI could use two inputs, the radar and sonar, to calculate the position, speed and bearing of the iceberg and it revised its estimate of the likelihood of collision to zero. Immediately it began replotting a track to get itself back on course once the iceberg was passed. As the iceberg slid along the Tsar’s port side, a comfortable two miles away, the ship sent a warning message about the berg to both the Russian and US Coast Guard channels, giving its position, speed and likely heading given prevailing currents. And then cancelled the blare of klaxons ringing out over its empty decks.


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The Ozempic Tsar was proof that the future of merchant shipping was autonomous. The fourth of its kind in the Ozempic Imperial Line it was first to make the polar voyage from Arkengelsk to Hokkaido completely unmanned. As its name implied, the Tsar was very much a king of the seas.

It had a capacity 400,000 deadweight tons and had sailed with a consignment of powdered lithium from the dialysis plant in Anadyr. It was 300 feet long and four stories high, steered not by a shore based human pilot like its sister ships, but by a Norwegian GNV SL AI core that managed both navigation and systems overwatch. All mechanical systems on the ship, from the 90,000hp 14 cylinder hydrogen powered Rolls Royce engines to computing platforms were triple redundant, even down to the three heavy impellers which kept it moving through the ice cold waters of the northern Bering Strait. Should every GPS satellite around the globe suddenly drop out of orbit, its AI could switch to inertial navigation to stay on course and should that system fail the AI could also chart a course by compass or even the stars if they were visible. Security protocols protecting the core AI platform meant that while it had autonomy over local course decisions, more significant course alterations could only be made via shore based encrypted communications - there was no way to pilot the ship or alter its course if the ship was boarded at sea, and the engine room and fuel supply was completely sealed against intruders. Not that pirates were a big problem in the Arctic seas yet, but a fully laden supertanker with no crew to guard it could be a tempting prize if extreme precautions hadn’t been taken - and publicized.

The Ozempic Tsar was a 250 million dollar miracle of progress in the field of self piloted freighters and proof that the Russian oil oligarchs who built her had shown amazing foresight in realizing that global warming could be an upside business opportunity if it meant a permanent polar freight route could be opened up as the Arctic ice cap melted. They had a dream that they could take Anadyr from a small local container port to the biggest port in the Russian Far East in coming years, shipping the riches of the Chukotka gold and lithium mining region to markets on the East Coast of America, whose demand for the raw materials for batteries to supplement its renewable energy obsession was insatiable. A Japanese scientist had shown the way, identifying a scalable method for mining lithium from seawater using a dialysis cell with a membrane consisting of a superconductor material, and a Russian oligarch with a view to diversifying out of a dying oil industry had funded its commercialization.

The Tsar held the world record for the Anadyr - New York transit, completing the 3,000 km trip in 16 days, requiring as it did no time in port for crew rest or replenishment, and taking its fuel from the sea as it sailed, using solar and wind powered catalytic converters to turn the seawater into hydrogen for its engines. Taking the northern sea route also shaved nearly two weeks off the trip from the container terminal at Anadyr, which otherwise would have had to go via the Panama canal.

You could be forgiven, watching it slice through the slight swell of a brisk, sunlit early summer in the Strait, for thinking nothing in the world could stop it.

That is, until two AGM-158C PIKE long range anti-ship missiles buried themselves deep in its guts and detonated their 1,000lb blast-fragmentation warheads.

After which the Ozempic Tsar set the world record for the fastest trip to the bottom of the Bering Strait by an autonomous pilotless freighter.

(c) 2018 Fred 'Heinkill' Williams. To be continued...



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