The Triton — Day 32

Genre: Action

Premise: It is the near future. Hannah Remus is the captain of the Triton, the world's newest and most incredible luxury cruise liner on its maiden voyage. One morning, as the Triton is passing through the South Pacific, it is attacked by a Chinese submarine. With the attack upon the Triton, World War III has begun. Within minutes the American mainland is targeted in a series of crippling surprise attacks by the Chinese and their allies. The United States is down for the count.

The Triton billows smoke and begins to list. The Chinese submarine captain, certain the Triton is finished, surfaces his boat, to let his crew go on deck and watch the death of the American age and the dawn of a new Chinese era with their own eyes. But on board the Triton, Captain Remus has sprung into action. Prior to her entry into the civilian cruise industry, she was a captain of a Destroyer in the U.S. Navy—a sub-hunter by training and instinct. As she galvanizes the Triton's crew and civilian passengers to shore up the damage below decks and put out the fires, she does the unthinkable and presses her majestic ocean liner into the role of attack vessel. She has the engine room give full speed and turns the Triton directly towards the surfaced Chinese sub.

Flabbergasted and in disbelief, the Chinese captain sounds the alarm to dive, but with most of his crew out on the deck, his boat has neither time nor maneuverability to escape, and the giant Triton slams into the sub head on, it's prow punching a seam directly down the middle of the submarine. In less than a minute's time, the sub sinks below the water and breaks apart.

With many Chinese sailors bobbing in the waves, Captain Remus and her crew must make a difficult decision. Do they save their aggressors, and rescue as many souls as they can, or leave them to their fate? Remus takes stock of their situation: alone in the south seas, with little to no expectation of help from the U.S. Navy, no weapons on board to guard any Chinese prisoners that they might take on, and the very real threat that the Triton herself may yet sink. Remus makes the hard call and, puts the lives of her civilian crew first. The Chinese sailors who tried to sink the Triton are left to their fate.

The damage to the Triton is extensive, and it is taking on water. The ship is too far from mainland U.S. or Hawaii to make it back. Their only hope is to press on and try to find refuge in Australia, or if they can not make it that far, to run aground near some South Pacific island that will give the passengers a fighting chance at survival.

Along the way, captain Remus must dodge Chinese military patrols using every trick in her book, chart a safe course, conduct ad hoc repairs to keep the Triton from slipping below the waves, and transform her civilian crew and passengers into a battle-hardened team, capable of delivering their own salvation.