Hunton Deep Silence

When the World Burns, the Last Hope of Humanity Lies beneath the Waves
1. Auflage 2026
ISBN: 979-8-99580408-6
Verlag: PublishDrive
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 264 Seiten

The USS Pennsylvania, a ballistic missile submarine, departs Pearl Harbor on a routine patrol, led by Captain Josh Turnbuckle. As they submerge, nuclear war erupts on the surface. China initiates the conflict, with North Korea and Russia joining, leaving cities in ruins and civilization collapsing. Unaware of the apocalypse, the crew continues operations, believing communication failures are technical glitches, not realizing they have missed their orders to launch a counterstrike. 

For 37 days, they remain isolated, grappling with personal fears and maintaining discipline. When they finally surface for communication, they are met with silence, prompting Turnbuckle to head back to Pearl Harbor for answers.

Upon arriva on day 61l, the crew finds Pearl Harbor obliterated, homes destroyed, and families gone. Rodriguez, desperate to find his family, escapes onto land, only to confirm the worst. Collecting supplies, the crew faces the grim truth that they are alone without command. 

Turnbuckle decides to sail toward Kitsap Washington, hoping for survivors. Along the way, they discover more devastation and that organized gangs have taken over. After intense combat, they suffer casualties, realizing they face new threats beyond isolation. 

Autoren/Hrsg.

Hunton, J Thomas

Leseproben

Chapter One: Departure

Day 1, 0830

The Hawaiian sun beat down on the black hull of the USS Pennsylvania with an intensity that made the air shimmer above the submarine's deck. Captain Josh Turnbuckle stood on the bridge, one hand resting on the warm metal of the sail, watching his crew complete the final preparations for departure. Below him, the massive Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine sat low in the water at Naval Station Pearl Harbor, 560 feet of American nuclear deterrence, preparing to slip beneath the Pacific and disappear.

"Captain, all departments report ready for sea." Lieutenant Commander Sarah Chen, his Executive Officer, stood at his elbow with a tablet in hand; her dark hair pulled back in a regulation bun that was already beginning to wilt in the humidity. 

"Engineering has the reactor online and stable. We're green across the board."

Captain Turnbuckle nodded, his eyes tracking the movement of the deck crew as they prepared to cast off the mooring lines. Twenty-three years in the submarine service had taught him to read the rhythm of departure like a familiar song—the choreographed dance of sailors and lines, the subtle vibrations through the deck plates as the reactor hummed to life, the particular quality of light that seemed to change once you knew you were about to leave the world behind.

"Very well, XO. What's our weather window looking like?"

Chen consulted her tablet. "Clear skies for the next forty-eight hours. Seas running two to three feet. We couldn't ask for better conditions for the transit to our patrol box."

"Let's hope it stays that way." Turnbuckle glanced at his watch: 0847 hours. Thirteen minutes ahead of schedule. He liked that. Punctuality was a virtue in the submarine service, where every evolution was timed, every procedure measured against the clock. "Have the navigator lay in our course. Standard departure route, then we'll make our dive point at the usual coordinates."

"Aye, sir. "

As Chen descended the ladder to relay his orders, Turnbuckle took a moment to survey the harbor. Pearl Harbor on a Tuesday morning in October—the water a deep blue-green, the mountains of Oahu rising in the distance, their peaks softened by morning haze. Somewhere out there, beyond the harbor entrance, the Pacific waited. Seventy days of patrol. Seventy days submerged in the South Pacific, running silent, running deep, carrying enough nuclear firepower to end civilization but hoping—always hoping—that the orders to launch would never come.

It was his fourth patrol as commanding officer of the Pennsylvania, and the weight of command had never quite settled comfortably on his shoulders. Turnbuckle was forty-two years old, a graduate of the Naval Academy class of 2013, and he had spent more than half of his adult life underwater. He understood the mathematics of nuclear deterrence, the strategic calculus that kept the peace through the threat of mutually assured destruction. But understanding something intellectually and living with it were two different things.

"Captain, request permission to cast off all lines." The voice crackled through his headset—Lieutenant Marcus Webb, the deck officer, standing forward near the bow.

"Permission granted. Cast off all lines."

"Casting off all lines, aye."

The mooring lines splashed into the water, retrieved quickly by the deck crew on the pier. The Pennsylvania was free now, held in place only by her own inertia and the gentle pressure of the harbor current against her hull. Turnbuckle felt the subtle shift beneath his feet—that moment when a submarine transitions from being a stationary object to a vessel in motion, however slight.

"Helm, all back one-third."

"All back one-third, aye, sir." The response came from below, from the control room where Petty Officer Second Class Rodriguez sat at the helm station, his hands on the controls that would guide 18,750 tons of submarine away from the pier.

The Pennsylvania began to move, backing slowly into the harbor, her massive bulk responding with surprising grace to the commands from the control room. 

Turnbuckle watched the pier slide past, watched the faces of the families gathered there to see them off. He could pick out individual figures—a woman holding a toddler, a teenage boy waving, an elderly couple standing close together. The families of his crew. The people they were leaving behind.

His own wife, Jennifer, wasn't among them. She'd said her goodbyes at home that morning, over coffee in their kitchen in the base housing complex. Twenty years of Navy marriage had taught her that pier-side farewells were harder than they needed to be. "I'll be here when you get back," she'd said, kissing him at the door. "I'm always here when you get back."

Their daughter, Emily, had been less stoic. Sixteen years old and increasingly aware of what her father's job actually meant, she'd hugged him hard enough to crack ribs. "Be safe, Dad. Please be safe."

"Always am, sweetheart. Always am."

But safe was a relative term when you commanded a ballistic missile submarine. Safe meant maintaining the deterrent, staying hidden, never being detected. Safe meant running a tight ship, maintaining discipline, keeping 155 crew members focused and professional for seventy days in a steel tube beneath the ocean. Safe meant hoping that the world above remained stable enough that his missiles stayed in their tubes.

"Captain, we're clear of the pier." Chen's voice pulled him back to the present. "Ready to come to course zero-nine-zero."

"Very well. Helm, all stop. Come to course zero-nine-zero, all ahead one-third."

The submarine's motion changed, the backward drift ceasing as the propeller stopped, then the subtle surge forward as power was applied again. The Pennsylvania began her turn, her bow swinging toward the harbor entrance and the open ocean beyond.

Turnbuckle descended the ladder into the control room, leaving the bridge watch to Lieutenant Webb. Down here, in the heart of the submarine, the atmosphere was different—cooler, dimmer, filled with the soft glow of instrument panels and the quiet murmur of professional communication. The control room was the brain of the Pennsylvania, a space roughly the size of a large living room packed with navigation stations, fire control systems, and the helm and dive controls that actually drove the submarine.

Lieutenant Commander Chen stood near the navigation table, conferring with Lieutenant Junior Grade Kowalski, the navigator. Kowalski was young—twenty-six, fresh from his department head training—but he had a gift for the complex mathematics of underwater navigation. When you couldn't see where you were going, when GPS was unavailable at depth, you needed someone who could dead-reckon your position using gyroscopes, speed logs, and occasional sonar fixes. Kowalski was that someone.

"Captain on deck," someone announced, though Turnbuckle waved off the formality.

"As you were. Navigator, show me our track."

Kowalski brought up the chart on the navigation display—a digital representation of the waters around Oahu, with their planned course marked in green. "Sir, we'll exit the harbor on course zero-nine-zero, then come to course two-two-zero once we're clear of the shipping lanes. Our dive point is here"—he indicated a position about twenty miles south of Oahu—"in approximately 2,000 fathoms of water. From there, we'll proceed submerged to our patrol box in the South Pacific."

"Time to dive point?"

"Approximately three hours at current speed, sir."

Three hours. Three hours of running on the surface, the last sunlight they'd see for seventy days. Turnbuckle nodded. "Very well. XO, set the watch for sea detail. I want all departments to report readiness status before we reach the dive point."

"Aye, sir."

The control room settled into the familiar rhythm of underway operations. Turnbuckle moved to the periscope stand, a raised platform in the center of the space that gave him a commanding view of all the watch stations. From here, he could see everything—the helmsman and planesman at their controls, the fire control technicians at their consoles, the sonar operators in their separate compartment visible through an open door, headphones clamped over their ears as they listened to the acoustic signature of the ocean.

The Pennsylvania cleared the harbor entrance, passing between the channel markers and into the open Pacific. Through the periscope, Turnbuckle could see the swells beginning to build, the submarine's bow rising and falling with the rhythm of the sea. On the surface, an Ohio-class submarine was an ungainly creature, designed for underwater operations rather than surface transit. But she was moving smoothly, her reactor providing more than enough power to push her through the moderate seas.

"Captain, communications." The voice came from Lieutenant Daniel Reeves, the communications officer, a thin man with wire-rimmed glasses and a perpetual expression of mild concern. Reeves was standing at the communications station, one hand holding a headset to his ear. "Sir, I'm having some trouble with the ELF receiver. I'm getting intermittent signal strength."

Turnbuckle frowned. The ELF—Extremely Low Frequency—system was their primary means of receiving messages while submerged. The system used incredibly long wavelengths that could penetrate seawater, allowing shore stations to send brief coded messages to submarines at depth. The messages were short—usually just a three-letter code that meant "come to periscope depth for further orders"—but they were vital. Without ELF, a submerged submarine was truly cut off from...