Part of the British Royal Navy and equipped with
a nuclear reactor, the HMS Nereid left England
and arrived on station in Antarctica sometime in
February 1982. That proved to be a tragic case
of good fortune for two months later a horrific
manufactured plague called MM88 wiped out nearly
the entire world and prevented the craft from returning
home. In September 1982, the crew of the sub received
the activation signal for the Automatic Reaction
System (ARS) from Washington DC despite the fact
that the crew believed that no one was alive in
the US capital.
Nereid remained on station in the area and fortunately
stumbled upon the Soviet submarine T232 as its
infected crew attempted to make landfall near the
United States Palmer Station where the last survivors
and hope of humanity resided. At first, Nereid's
Captain MacCloud attempted to warn off the Soviet
submarine but had to resort to drastic action as
the captain of the infected Soviet submarine ignored
his warning. The British submarine went to actions
stations and within seconds blew away the T232
with a missile called a sub-rocket.
With Antarctica and its last batch of humanity
safe, the crew resigned themselves to the inevitable,
which Captain MacCloud summed up in the fact that
the Nereid would act as the legendary “Flying
Dutch Horseman”. However grateful to the
sub's assistance and after getting confirmation
that her crew was completely unaffected, the leaders
of the human survivors in Antarctica unanimously
agreed to allow the Nereid and her crew to enter
the sanctuary.
Later the Nereid sailed back out under the order
of the new “Federal Council of Antarctica”
to find that anyone else might have survived the
catastrophe; unfortunately, their efforts did
not produce any survivors. On a stop in Tokyo
Bay, the nuclear submarine collected an air sample
of the virus on the recommendation of one of the
scientists who went out on the mission. The scientist
hoped that a vaccine could be developed form such
a sample. After the last stop in Tokyo, the British
submarine returned to Antarctica for a somber
Christmas celebration in 1983.
However, when the survivors found out that an
earthquake near Washington DC would trigger the
American ARS, which would then lead to a chain
reaction of a horrific automatic nuclear war with
one of the missiles from the Soviet Union aimed
at Antarctica. With this knowledge intact, the
Nereid set sail on a desperate mission to Washington
DC. Among it were two volunteers, protected by
an experimental vaccine for MM88, who would attempt
to shut down the American ARS. Despite their most
heroic efforts, the volunteers were too late as
the earthquake set off the ARS and the nuclear
missiles began to fly towards their targets. More
than likely the Nereid perished in the blast for
the craft was very close to Washington DC when
she deposited the two volunteers into the city
and waited offshore.
