Daring the Pacific 

The waters of the Pacific ocean were as treacherous as the men that sailed it. If the proverb held true in World War Two then not even a hundred years would change it. 

Commander Elliot Pike stood on the bow of the resupply frigate, the Endeavor. After the so much of the world had tried to focus on the third World War in the European theater, the real war was once again in the Pacific. This time it was China not Japan fighting over the high seas. Most of the US nuclear submarines disappeared within the first few hours of the war. They either released their payloads and tried to retreat or were caught up in the bacteria wave that swept from the coast of China and into the bays of Anchorage, San Francisco, Portland and all of the west coast ports, completely obliterating all of the Pacific military and civilian fleets. 

Leptospirillum ferriphilum was the name of the super-bacteria, the metal eater. The bacteria stayed near the surface and ate and sank thousands of ships and sent the wrecks back down to the depths of the ocean, never to be seen by man again. This was the super weapon that made the waters of the Pacific unavailable for five years by any ship made out of iron, steel, or tungsten. Aircraft carriers, destroyers, frigates, submarines, shippers, and smaller craft became unavailable until the disease had done its work. Not only craft but any metallic objects in the ocean, buoys, cables, and piers. Anything metallic was disintegrated and the Pacific Ocean was left unused for years. The Pacific Islands’ only means of communication was with satellites or airplanes. No one was without communication but many had to learn how to lived off their land and had very little support from giant transports that used to roam the seas.

But as time passed, so did the bacteria. After five years, America re-entered the Pacific with a surface boat. A small destroyer that entered from Cape Horn, the Pacific side of the Panama Canal was devastated until it was. The obsolete ship was the perfect gopher for the risky maneuver. Crewed with twenty men, to maintain a smooth operation, the destroyer made its way around the southernmost tip of South America and into the unknown waters of the evacuated Pacific. 

The boat’s trial was a success. It made it all the way to Hawaii without a major incident. Satellites tracked its progress and maintained communication all the way. Though the men were bored they rarely rested and the boat made steam all the way to the wooden docks of Pearl Harbor