“I’m not settled with this,” said Keita. “We haven’t done human trials.”
Desiree lowered her goggles. “She has.” She nodded at Megu.
“Dr. Evil has,” Megu confirmed. “It mostly worked.”
“I’m not sending a guinea pig through and having it come out a kaiju right before my family gets home,” said Desiree. “Prefer a bit of quality time, thank you.” She gave the faces in the room a flash inspection. “Everybody set?” She hooked a finger at the Hellbilly. “Let’s do this.”
The Bilomatic Entrance was wide enough for two to cross its threshold side by side. The Hellbilly stood next to her. Thinking about what he was doing hadn’t gotten him to his luxury position in life; intuition had. He didn’t sense anything harmful in what loomed, even though in his mind he used the word loomed, nothing outside the potential of squaring off against an armada for no particular reason, but, hey, if nothing else, he’d be back in Atlantis.
If he never saw California or Florida again, he’d be all right.
He popped his own goggles in place.
He and Desiree entered, immediately felt as if their eternal souls dropped from the highest rollercoaster imaginable, one faster than the speed of thought; their consciousnesses stretched across multiple timelines, slammed back into themselves like neutron-star musket balls, then stepped foot onto grass that stretched hundreds of meters on either side.
Success.
She’d wanted an exit site with lots of leeway. The field near her build site did the trick. A quick run to the house for the rover saw them soon speeding toward the Atlantidean capitol, filling Shig in on the way.
He, in turn, filled her in: Atlantis didn’t have much of a military presence.
This, in turn, surprised Desiree. Briefly. She’d always assumed they had superweapons tucked away. Had never come up in conversation, actually.
“Our fleet’s ten ships.”
“Armed?”
“Sparingly.”
“You’re outmanned and outgunned. I’m twenty minutes away from you.”
“We have time to intercept them before they cross the Blank. Barely.”
“No. Let them through, but get me a ship, biggest and fastest you got, minimal crew. And a submersible rover. Armed. I know you’ve got one of those ’cause I saw the plans Milo had Keita draw up last year.”
“We’ve got six.”
“Get the other five in the water but have them hold back in complete stealth mode. My guess is the incoming fleet isn’t gonna pay particular attention to the finer points.”
“How can you be sure?”
“’Cause they’re angry Americans.”
Aileen’s fleet of twenty ships blasted out of the Blank, bristling, clawed, and unpleasant, to ocean. Stretches upon stretches of blue ocean. A dragoon even did a flip way to the left and plipped back into the ocean as the ships took the measure of their intimidation.
Nobody in sight as far as a fuck given could see.
This had been planned out by her Paper Pushers, the elite corps of tacticians whom she interacted with solely through handwritten, coded notes and responded to in kind. She wasn’t leaving anything about this endeavor to chance, interception, leaks or miscommunication.
The water was flat calm.
She’d imagined more Helm’s Deep than Carnival Cruise.
She gave the order to advance.
Thirty minutes later, Desiree knew her borrowed ship would have been pinged by now. The ship was a good one, no Linda Ann, but then, what was? But it was large and moving fast, straight for an armada. Twenty pairs of eyes should have reported her presence. In a few moments, they’d report target within range.
Which was what she wanted.
But no reason not to sweeten the pot. She hit her comm and broadcast on wide spectrum: “Approaching ships: you are in violation of sovereign waters. Stand down and reverse course.” She set it to repeat to annoy the hell out of them, certain that now that they were aware of her, they’d have ceased jamming communications.
“Do you have to be in visual range to work your mojo?” she asked the Hellbilly beside her.
“Helps me focus.”
“All right. As soon as you get a feel for it, do your thing, but stay out of sight.”
“This is wild,” he murmured, “this is fucking wild.”
“This is where you get tired of being the problem and decide to be part of the solution, right?” she said, eyes dead on him.
“Right.”
“Do your shit.”
The ship’s complement consisted of four weapons officers (two fore, two aft), two engineers plus assorted drones to patch things up, and two pilots ready to assist when Desiree gave up the con. The submersible rovers attached to the hull underneath put a tremendous strain on the ship, but the beastie held, which was all her temporary captain required of her. Desiree even patted a console tenderly.
Hold yourself together, sweetheart. We’ll get you home.
It was a lie, but not everything needed to know everything all the time.
Desiree looked to the horizon and maintained full speed ahead.
“One ship is telling us to go away?” said Aileen to the face on her screen.
“Yes, ma’am. It’s…stopped.”
“Stopped communication?”
“No, ma’am. Stopped. It’s…” he thought of the right word “…waiting for us.”
“On screen.” The plebe’s face disappeared; a large, sleek, imposing ship appeared. Definitely Atlantidean, definitely armed. And utterly alone.
That was troubling.
“Underwater? Subs?” she asked.
“No, ma’am,” the teeny voice said from his minimized screen. “Just that ship.”
“Send a ship to meet it.”
“Which one?”
“We know it won’t be the one I’m on, correct?” she said.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Then does it matter?”
“No, ma’am.” Being a contract grunt to this ignorant-ass organization suuucked.
“Let me know when it’s there,” said Aileen. “I’ll do all the talking.”
“You see they’re all in a line, right?” said Desiree to the Hellbilly’s chin, his face obscured by high-tech binoculars. “Classic intimidation stance. As shit progresses, one ship’s gonna drop back a smidge. You keep your eyes out for that one.”
The Hellbilly lowered the sights to focus on the face of, ostensibly, a crazy person. His eyes hadn’t deceived him. Twenty ships against one wasn’t a code. “All that? Seriously going against all that?”
“They’ve already lost,” said Desiree. “They just haven’t figured out how to save themselves a few steps getting there.”
“So, that means we’ve won.”
“That means we’re going to fight our asses off getting there.” She hit the all-hands comm. “Stations, everybody. We’re about to have a show.”
The phalanx came to a stop, save one ship near the center. No slowing, no hesitation, sucker barreled right along like a bull. It didn’t cleave the water like a skater’s blade; it shoved it to the side, disrespectfully, quite brutish, weapons forward in the manner of tusked, horned beasts. Damn near huffed spray when it stopped midway between the line of expectant brutes behind it and the solitary peacemaker facing it down.
Desiree hit the kill switch on her repeating message.
Both ships waited several moments, allowing the water to determine their immediate attitudes. Desiree’s seafoam-green Atlantidean vessel bobbed in sharp contrast to the bullet grey of the Nonrich vessel’s clenched asscheeks defying all movement.
Desiree decided to be the icebreaker. “Can we help you?”
The other ship purposely held off from answering immediately, then: “Identify yourself.”
“I’m not important. What’s important is you’re obviously misinformed if you think you’re farting your way in here with twenty ships; I’d like to disabuse you of such. Don’t b
other asking for the manager.”
The other’s strident voice came through annoyed AF. “I open fire in thirty seconds—”
Desiree muted her end of the comm. “She’s going to open fire in fifteen. Everybody power-drop.” She unmuted.
Beneath her, five stealthy subrovers detached from the hull and went into immediate full throttle.
“—or you turn around and provide escort to the capitol port, relaying ahead that any force will be met with a ridiculously disproportionate response.”
“Mark,” Desiree said.
“What?”
“My name is Mark.” She cut communications just as she heard the other responding with “Whatthefuck!” to frantic information about incoming.
Two subrovers blasted two holes in the grey beast’s underside, while a third sub fired enough projectiles to mangle the ship’s oversized rudder. The other three subs sped past, split up, and closed the distance to the aggressors, lacing the hulls of the ships on the ends of the phalanx with enough mines to mimic a year’s worth of barnacles. The smaller, eminently maneuverable subs easily dodged the hurried and clumsy incoming fire of torpedoes and surface ordnance. Desiree had taken the full measure of Sharon Deetz and Truman Compoté; there was something to be said for fighting against people motivated primarily by paychecks. Henchmen, as in I’m clearly merely a tool to be used by you, hence my no fucks given, by and large weren’t cut out to fight wars…
…especially when their shit was getting fucked up. Like any bully, a bloody nose deflated all sorts of peen magic.
Not that any aggressors who were there because they loved brutality wouldn’t up their brutality game. Desiree knew it couldn’t be that easy. There’d be lots of deaths…unless she got her ass into a subrover and dealt her Plan Phase Two card.
She ran, dropped into her cockpit, helmeted up, and powered full forward, glad she’d shaved ten seconds off the forty she’d allotted to do all that. Getting ready had always been one of her strong suits. Her subrover feinted, spiraled, twisted, and dipped, getting closer and closer to the phalanx amidst the underwater chaos her forces loosed on the ships. As she came fast on the center ship, she reached out when within point-blank range to hit a switch.
“This is Captain Desiree Quicho,” she said slowly and clearly, the subrover zipping under the center ship, then out to open sea behind it. “Stand down or go down.”
There was only one thing that would happen now: salivation upon realizing that they might be the ones to blow the legendary Desiree Quicho out of the water…then take Atlantis.
Aboard the flagship, which did not participate in pursuit after giving the order to get that sub, multiple hurried orders were screeched. Three ships came hard about and burned rubber on water. Seven ships continued battle against the aquatic tsetse flies plaguing them. Eight ships were given the go-ahead to advance on Atlantis.
The one leftover ship, the one dead in the water with plumes of smoke seeping from various wounds, remained in place, full of people wishing they’d applied themselves more in their youth.
On a tight frequency meant for Desiree only, the Hellbilly’s voice spoke in her ear. “Spotted ’em.”
“Do you.”
The Hellbilly thought of what would really fuck up an invading leader’s Sunday, although today was Tuesday, and sent his infecting vibe through connective tissues of reality he—on his best days—might intuit but never fathom.
Didn’t matter. Ennui seized Aileen Stone, a slow, creeping soul molasses that surprised her with the memories it brought up and the last real sadness she’d ever felt. After a few minutes, orders faltered, then trickled, then stopped. She felt utterly pointless. The battles hadn’t stopped, but for now they were working off momentum only.
When he saw that he’d actually done something with who and what he was that could lead to actual good in the world, the Hellbilly felt real for the first time in his life, rather than trying to be something for someone else, or an irritant, or perpetually horny. He wasn’t sure what he wanted to do with that knowledge, but it felt good, and he was damn sure he wanted that feeling to continue.
Maybe even there.
If mean captain let him.
He hoped she was okay.
The instant Desiree had dropped, the Atlantidean ship’s reserve pilot hauled ass per Desiree’s order, toward Atlantis at maximum speed. The pursuing ships lobbed volleys at it before realizing there’d be no resupplying, so maybe not waste too much on one retreating ship? They were there to fucking take Atlantis, an unspoken hoo-ra of fortitude spurring each ship’s complement. Plus, the fleeing vessel’s sensors and pilot were straight from hell; the thing ran evasive as if its third eye was wide open, and its speed, for its size, bordered on unnatural.
Time, as it often does in battle, dilated. Minutes dragged by. Sound issued from beneath a tower of pillows.
Underwater, a crisscrossing ballet: for every guided missile fired at a subrover, another sub jumped over to target it, blowing the missile to component bits for crabs and cuttlefish to fight about.
Nonrich, having realized their rudders and maneuvering jets were desired targets, tried their best at defensive posturing but wound up with a misshapen oval, a raggedy square, and the saddest snowflake ever, eight dancing ships in search of a melody or surcease, finding none.
Underwater pew-pew dictated the actions of frightened, huge ships.
By the time the invaders scrambled their own underwater crafts, the subrovers were positioned to pick them off one by one.
There were too many bodies being added to the ocean floor.
The Nonrich subs stopped coming.
Tubes below the surfaces of the grey behemoths’ bellies belched. Drones, dozens of them from each ship, bee-lined for anything not broadcasting a corresponding transponder signal, small, quick, and agile enough that several attached to a rover that had wasted time trying to fire on them, each drone in turn exploding within a second of impact. The subrover, ripped to shreds, disappeared in pieces.
The other rovers retreated.
Desiree, being fed a constant stream of updates while trying to avoid being blown out of the water herself, said a prayer for timing.
Moments later, Neon’s voice: “Situation, Captain?”
“I’m trying to avoid being blown out of the water.”
“Do or do not; there is no try. We’ve just crossed the Blank. I’ve got you pinged. There in ten.”
“Make it five.”
“With ten you get Bobo. He’s prepping. I’m coming in blazing. Neon out.”
Desiree reversed hard and dove fast, hoping the missile locked on to her would overshoot enough for her to loop behind it and open fire, but its guidance system had obviously given a prayer to timing too, because it not only didn’t overshoot, it compensated quickly enough to chop considerable distance from between them.
Your ass wants to dance, thought Desiree. She hunkered in. Bailamos, you shitty fuck.
Only in movies, crappy ones at that, did leading a missile back to destroy its point of origin have a chance of working. Nonrich had avoidance tech, same as she did. Three Nonrich ships still tangoed with her. She angled upward hard, pushed the sub as fast as it could go, slid close to surface between two of the ships that were horizontal to each other, and performed the sole subrover underwater donut in the history of Atlantis, firing her weapons button as if sending a frantic telegram. When her craft faced open sea again, she sped off; the missile crossed between the bow of the two looming ships, straight into her fusillade. The explosion threw her out of the water—not tumbling but like a graceful dolphin, adding insult to injury to the two ships caught in the blast—and left the two ships rocking. She didn’t have time to see if they sustained decent damage. The third battleship came about to reengage pursuit.
Desiree maintained a course for the Blank.
Behind her and her pursuer, the two lumbering beasts, dazed but not out, shook their heads and rejoined.
Desiree kept
the sub just under the waterline, knowing her wake looked like a sea monster leading would-be captors on a chase. She hoped every single fucker on those ships had read Moby Dick, one, for the sheer torture of it, and two, for every seamen’s dread of going down with his ship to the deep blue sea.
18
Flash Bang
Neon sighted three ships bulldogging the wake of a sub.
“Bobo, you got this?” she said.
Bobo, in the bay in the bowels of the ship, squicked in the affirmative.
Timing was everything.
The Linda Ann blasted forward. She’d be in visual range of the attackers soon, and damned if they wouldn’t take her speed as looking exactly like a Valkyrie.
The Aerie shot through the Blank so low, it had to bank up and level to avoid entering the water. Massive spouts of spray announced the glorious ship. Yvonne brought the craft up, mapped the coordinates of all players ahead, and continued climbing so that the shuttle’s descent would be with the sun at its back. She was over Desiree in no time.
“The boats heading for the coast?” said Desiree over the Aerie’s com. “Under no circumstances do they make landfall.”
“You sound highly pissed, Captain.”
“Running all down my leg.”
“Understood.”
To Yvonne’s right: a swipe screen of weapons choices ranging from one to ten in severity and abundance. She swiped all the way the hell across.
19
Aileen Broke Out the Liquor
Aileen…broke out the liquor.
20
Rights and Privileges
Above Aileen’s boat, while Desiree made sure Nonrich’s forces remained split; while not only the Jetstreams’s beloved vessel but an entire space shuttle bore down on all the plans Aileen Stone had made; while the most curious, most personal sense of personal failure Aileen had ever experienced in her life made the leader of the largest criminally economic empire on Earth feel like an utter, pointless waste, Yvonne DeCarlo Paul made the air scream. The sleek Aerie wasn’t as agile in Earth’s atmosphere as it was in space, but compared to the dog-paddling Brahman bulls below, it was the offspring of an eagle- harpy-griffin three-way.
Afro Puffs Are The Antennae Of The Universe Page 21