Extreme low-pressure weather systems, whether they’re called hurricanes, or typhoons, or cyclones, are memorable events for those caught up in them; so memorable, they’re often given names whenever they cross paths with civilization. In the deep, circumpolar belt of ocean between fifty and sixty degrees south, however, dozens of giant storm cells are generated every year without being named, because there’s nobody to witness them in the vast, empty swathes of the Southern Ocean.

Very little landmass occupies that belt of water. With almost nothing to impede them, the great storms can pile up incredible amounts of water at their leading edge. The surges gather power as they travel around the world. Sailors who have witnessed such things say that nothing bears comparison with them: fast-moving, hundred-foot-high walls of black water. Even larger rogue waves can be caused by a combination of factors—a storm surge, a pressure convergence line, a subsurface feature such as the edge of a continental shelf, or the meshing of two or three single waves into one behemoth. Such monster waves rarely survive for long, and are even more rarely reported.

Almost nobody who encounters them lives to tell the tale.

So it was with the air-warfare destroyer USS Garrett. Thanks to the unstable, anomalous field generated by Pope’s experiment, she emerged a great distance from the originating event.

The crew of the Garrett was only 120 strong. None awoke immediately from the temporary coma of Transition Sickness. A small number, however, did perish quickly. Nine men and four women, who had been on deck when the wormhole inflated, were swept away by the enormous seas into which they emerged. A few more broke their necks and backs as their limp bodies were flung about belowdecks. Many suffered broken limbs and concussion.

Eventually, after three hours, a handful of sailors did regain consciousness, but they were in no condition to control the ship. One, a petty officer, managed to crawl into the bridge, hoping to cede autonomy to the CI. But an eighteen-meter wave had smashed the blast windows and poured in, shorting out the equipment. Before she could exit the ruined post, the destroyer slipped over the ridge of a colossal wave and speared down the reverse side. The wave behind it rolled over the vessel. Thousands of liters of freezing seawater poured in and sucked the screaming woman back out again.

The Garrett succumbed at 0435 hours when she ran headfirst into one of those massive, unstable, mountain ranges of water that stalk the wastes of the Southern Ocean. The warship climbed gamely up the face of the cliff, but it was simply too big to surmount. In her final moments she slewed around on the nearly vertical surface and rolled.

The flickering echo of a distress call from her CI, which bounced off the troposphere and spattered weakly against the Nemesis arrays of the Siranui a few minutes later, was the last anyone heard of her.