Turning Point (Book 3): A Time To Live

by Wandrey, Mark

  After ten minutes, the senior captain finally got impatient enough to bend one of Michael’s instructions. He slowed to a stop and rose to just below the surface. The sub’s periscope broke through the water, and the commander examined his quarry from extreme range.

  The commander stared at the screen for a long moment, shaking his head, then rubbing his eyes. It had been a long, few weeks since the plague arrived, but should he be seeing things?

  “Tell me if I’m seeing flying ships,” he told his XO.

  “You’re seeing flying ships,” the woman replied.

  The captain scanned the tableau and spotted what he was looking for. “The carrier isn’t flying. Tell the other Hunter to fire on it with us. At least it will be gone.” He continued to observe as the weapons officer programmed the supercavitating torpedo.

  * * *

  The port Sea-Wiz fired a medium length burst. Brrrrrr! Captain Gilchrist glanced at the air defense screen that showed the ammunition status for the Ford’s remaining three Sea-Wizes. It was clear the skulking enemy drones were testing for a weakness. Damnit, this was not a winnable scenario. He never thought he’d die in such a way.

  When one of the subs sank the last frigate, he knew the endgame was underway. He kept hoping Rose would succeed in his crazy assault. There was a chance, if the general succeeded, he could lift the siege on the Flotilla as well.

  Tobias moved away at the summons of someone from communications, returning a moment later with a strange look on his face.

  “What’s wrong now, James?” he asked his XO.

  “That crazy nerd, Watts, is on the radio from OOE. He says he wants to get us in the air again to avoid the sub.”

  “Oh, for the love of God,” Gilchrist said. “Why is anyone listening to that miscreant?”

  “He has a point,” Tobias said. Gilchrist could see it pained the man to admit it. He was pointing to one of the many camera monitors around the carrier’s CIC. This one showed the second most ludicrous scene Gilchrist had seen in his years as a naval officer, the first had been when he looked out from his carrier’s bridge into space. At least six ships were floating off the water, like they were suspended from a child’s mobile. The monitor wasn’t high-resolution, but it appeared they were loosely connected with ropes or cables.

  “Do it,” he ordered.

  “We have our own device here,” Tobias whispered to him.

  “After the last time, I’d rather not mess with it.” He gestured to the screen. “Floating a little bit above the water is fine. I can live with that.” He shook his head. In the long run, he didn’t know if it would help. Between the sub and the drones, it only temporarily took care of one problem. He didn’t think it altered the endgame.

  “It’s going to take some time to get us close enough to pull a cable,” Tobias told Gilchrist after a minute.

  The captain nodded. Supercarriers weren’t designed to maneuver gently. You needed tugs and lots of patience to bump around a hundred-thousand tons of steel. The smaller ships in close proximity made it a disaster waiting for a wave. Luckily, the seas were nearly dead calm.

  “Radar reports contact with the subs again,” Tobias said.

  “Relay the info to the Russell, but I fear he’s wasting ASROCs.” Earlier, they’d expended nine torpedoes in one attack and gotten squat. The Russell only had three left at last count.

  “Captain!” the radioman called. “I have Admiral Kent on the Bataan!”

  “Belay the order to the Russell and stand by.” He pointed at the radio operator, then at the speaker above his chair. The radioman gave him a thumbs up. “Admiral Kent, good to hear from you!”

  “You too, Captain Gilchrist. We’ve been trying to reach you through MILSATCOM, but it’s still pretty FUBAR.”

  “We’ve managed to restore some functionality, though it isn’t reliable. We’re engaged with aggressors who may be responsible for that problem.”

  “I’ve been monitoring your comms. You’ve got aggressor aircraft and two subs of unknown capabilities? Can you give me the coordinates on those skunks?”

  “They’ve submerged,” Tobias whispered to him. “The Viking is bingo fuel, but the enemy craft have ignored him, so he’s been circling the Flotilla at 25,000 feet. He says he has good positioning on the subs; they’re sticking together for some reason.”

  “Excellent,” Gilchrist said, then turned back to the radio. “Admiral, we have them positioned with an old Viking we had aboard, though it won’t be able to hold the lock for much longer; it’s bingo fuel. How far out are you?”

  “We’re 190 miles south of your location.”

  “Sir, with all due respect, unless you have some Hornets…”

  “All we have are Harriers. None of the Nimitz-class were in port when the shit hit the fan.”

  “Then I don’t know what I can do.”

  “If I told you, you would either think I’m nuts or a traitor.”

  Gilchrist blinked at the speaker. He’d known Kent, met him several times at the Puzzle Palace. He would have never accused the admiral of either. “Tobias, have the Viking relay to Admiral Kent moment-by-moment positioning on the enemy skunks.”

  He watched as his XO relayed the orders. He had no idea what the admiral had in mind. He was about to ask for an update on how long it would take to get the stupid flying ship thing moving when the torpedo hit.

  * * *

  Classified Genesis Facility

  San Nicolas Island

  The painkillers had worn off, and hell had returned in full force. Grange crawled for a time on her hands and knees, leaving bloody trails as she went. Then she moved through a tiny hatchway, which opened at her approach, to a higher level. Her hands and knees were in unspeakable agony, so she started crawling on her belly. It felt like a year or fifty had passed. Maybe it was a century.

  “I’m done,” she croaked. “I’m done.” She lay her head on the cool, metallic floor and tried to keep breathing. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, wondering if First Scout could still hear her with his psy-lock trick. She closed her eyes.

  After some time, she opened her eyes. She saw a wall of the same light gray, semi-pliable, plastic material she’d seen when she entered the alien ship. The halls were more like tunnels, ovoid in shape, about 3 feet tall by 5 feet wide. There seemed to be no top or bottom in their design. Hatches like the one she’d entered through were spaced irregularly along the corridor. Every few feet, light sources were embedded in the widest points. The illumination was subtle—enough for her to see most detail, yet somehow lacking the intensity she’d need to read. It just felt…wrong.

  The air tasted rich, like a forest. Memories of trips to the woods bounced around her mind. There were unidentified smells of living things and water. The humidity seemed high, and the temperature was slightly below what she considered normal, at least from what she could tell from the small areas of her skin that still possessed nerve endings.

  Grange lifted her head a little and looked down. She’d taken off the medical helmet, so her face had been resting on the ‘floor’. Some of her burned skin, along with blood and mucus, were matted there. She was in one of those eddies of pain she’d been feeling. Short times when the pain overwhelmed her nervous system, and she wasn’t conscious of it. She knew the agony would return, sooner or later. If she just lay there, it might not be sooner.

  I want to live, she thought. Others want to live too, though. What had First Scout said when she had asked him what would happen? “Something wonderful.” He hadn’t said she’d be healed, or even survive. I’d still like to live. Somehow, she found the energy to move, despite the pain she knew would follow.

  Yet another hatchway presented itself. This one didn’t open automatically. She touched the center of the hatch in an intricate pattern, and it slid aside. With the last of her energy and resolve, she pulled herself inside. She knew she had to close the hatch behind her which she did with a simple touch.

  She was in a room shaped like
a flattened sphere. In the center was a cylinder running from the floor to the ceiling. The only light was coming from the cylinder which seemed to be full of swirling liquid. Grange sagged onto her side and stared at the strange display. “Reminds me of a lava lamp,” she rattled.

  “Touch this pattern on the Pandora control,” echoed in her mind.

  “Pandora?” she wheezed. Everything was beginning to look ethereal, and she didn’t think it was due to the alien lava lamp. With a feeling like a dream, she reached out with her hand. The side of the Pandora chamber was icy cold, even through her burned fingers. She started pressing a pattern. Then she reached the end. Her hand moved downward, still vainly typing, but the patterns didn’t translate through her fading consciousness. Her hand hit the floor. This time, she was done.

  She lay on the floor, fingers just touching the cylinder. She blinked and tried to breath, but she couldn’t. She closed her eyes. Something fluid flowed across her hand, and a feeling like electricity shot up her arm. Grange opened her eyes and instinctively tried to pull away from the jolting sensation. A glowing, pulsating, fluid mass was affixed to her hand.

  The pain of her failing body forgotten, she turned and tried to pull her hand away. She didn’t know where the sudden energy had come from. Was I just dead? The wall of the Pandora chamber was gone, and the mass was floating in space, levitating, except for the pseudopod-like mass attached to her hand. It stretched thin and pulled back.

  “No!” she croaked. It crawled up her arm as if it were eating her. It reached her elbow and a section of unburned skin, and her entire body arced as if she’d been hit by a live wire. “Aaaaah!” she screamed. Grange thought she’d plumbed the dark extremes of mortal pain. She’d been wrong. Horribly, dreadfully, hideously wrong. The pain grew with every square inch of skin that was subsumed by the glowing matter.

  The worst part was that the pain knew no limits. It ratcheted higher and higher. The part of her mind that was still able to form coherent thoughts begged for death, screamed to whatever god, goddess, demon, or devil was listening. She thrashed like a fish on a lure as the stuff reached her shoulder and moved onward. She screamed until her lunges ached, and blood sprayed from her lips. Then it moved up her neck to her face.

  The stuff entered her mouth, and the pain ended. So did her consciousness.

  Pearl Grange ceased to exist. Something else was born.

  * * *

  “Michael?”

  “Go ahead, Colonel.”

  “Dr. Breda is gone.”

  Michael paused from loading gear. “What did you say?”

  He heard a slight pause on the other end of the line. “The security team I sent down to get her found her cell empty. A top-level code was used to open the cell.”

  “Find Chamuel.”

  “She’s not in her suite of offices.”

  Michael struggled with his rage for a long time, so long that Colonel Baker had to clear his throat to let Michael know he was still there. “There’s more, or you wouldn’t still be waiting.”

  “None of the Heptagon are in their quarters. The bunker entrance has been sealed from the inside.”

  “Traitors,” he growled.

  “What are your orders?”

  “Order a combined attack of the Wasps and Hunters. All out. Destroy them at any cost.”

  “We’ll lose assets, sir.”

  “They’ll lose more.”

  “Understood.”

  * * *

  The Flotilla

  165 Nautical Miles West of San Diego, CA

  “Damage control reports the flooding is under control,” Tobias said.

  “Very good,” Gilchrist acknowledged. They’d been hit three times, but the Ford was still afloat and still under power. He smacked the arm of his chair. Goddamn, what a ship!

  How a modern supercarrier could handle being torpedoed was somewhat of a mystery. Except for an exercise where the USS America, CVN-66, was sunk in a weeks-long exercise, no US supercarrier had ever been sunk in combat. They’d lost the Reagan the day before, but that appeared to have been from internal explosions related to infected, not enemy action. The fact was, Gilchrist’s ship was built to be nearly unsinkable.

  Of course, “unsinkable ship” was a term that hadn’t been used in maritime architecture since a little incident with a ship named the Titanic. The Ford possessed redundant watertight zones and advanced damage control which made her extremely difficult to sink. The biggest risk was a magazine or fuel explosion. Luckily, she didn’t have much of either. All they had to do was keep her from taking on too much water or losing both reactors.

  “Viking is breaking off,” Tobias announced.

  “I guess Kent couldn’t swing whatever he wanted to do,” Gilchrist said. He looked at the various computer monitors. Every ship except the Ford was floating in the air like a strange puppet show. Even the Russell, yet it was still able to fire weapons. Good show, Paine, good show.

  “Ford, this is Admiral Kent, be aware you have incoming ordnance. Serious incoming ordnance.”

  “I wonder what he means?” Tobias asked.

  “Missile inbound from the south-east.”

  “Do not engage with the Sea-Wiz!” Gilchrist barked. He could see the direction of the new attack was from the heading of Kent’s task force. “Inform the Russell to do the same.”

  “Weapon is hypersonic!”

  The fire control officer was examining the radar data, and he suddenly looked up in shock. “Captain, weapon matches the profile of a Kalibr missile. Russian, sir!”

  “Oh, shit,” Tobias said.

  Gilchrist nodded. It was too late to order anti-missile fire. The weapon reached them in seconds and passed over. He breathed a sigh of relief and watched the radar track.

  “It’s heading for our two skunks.”

  “What can a single, anti-submarine, cruise missile do against them?” Tobias wondered.

  Gilchrist didn’t comment; he thought he knew the answer.

  When the missile reached its destination, the engine cut out, and it fell below mach. Shortly thereafter, it split and released a torpedo, which parachuted into the sea. On impact, a rocket engine ignited.

  “It’s supercavitating!” their sonarman said, pumping his fist in the air. “Let’s see how you like it!” He jabbed a finger at the sonar track. “They’re trying to run. Impact in five seconds.”

  “They’ll only get one.”

  Gilchrist shook his head. “Sonar, safe your board.” The man looked at him. “Now, son!”

  The man removed his headset and pressed a safety button, protecting his gear. Four seconds later, the supercavitating VA-111 Shkval torpedo’s radar showed it was within a kilometer of a submersed target and detonated its warhead.

  On the monitor facing the engagement, there was a brilliant flash of light below the water. Immediately, the surface was turned into a titanic blast of water which spread, and climbed, and climbed, and climbed! Alarms went off on the bridge.

  “Nuclear explosion!”

  “That would be what Kent meant by treason,” he said, laughing and shaking his head. “Mr. Tobias, it would appear that, for the first time since WWII, the Russians are fighting on our side.” On the screen, a small mushroom cloud was forming. “How far away was the blast?”

  “Twenty-three miles,” a radarman reported, staring at the screen with huge eyes.

  “We’re fine. Helm, steer course 299 to minimize the swell effect. I don’t believe the subs will be a factor anymore. However, be prepared for the fighters. Whoever sent this attack will not be happy.”

  * * *

  Classified Genesis Facility

  San Nicolas Island

  “The subs are both off the scope,” Colonel Baker told Michael. “The telemetry from the Wasps indicates it was a nuclear sub-surface explosion. One of the subs had just reported the Flotilla ships were using alien tech to hover out of the water, then that it was under attack by a single cruise missile-launched torpedo. The c
hatter scrambled, then they were gone.”

  Michael wasn’t mad anymore. He was glad he’d settled on his current plan when he did. He’d salvage what he could and put the pieces back together later.

  “Order the Wasps to destroy the rest of the ships, civilian ones first. Fire everything they’ve got. Get in close to reduce the chance of intercept. If they can overwhelm us with a dozen cruise missiles, we can do it with 20 Maverick missiles. And yes, I know, we’ll probably lose the Wasps.”

  “Acknowledged, sir.”

  * * *

  Baker shut off the radio and turned to the UAV pilots. “You heard Michael, clean them up. Reserve one weapon each, and we’ll use them on the carrier after the civilians and the Arleigh Burke is gone.”

  The five remaining pilots nodded. The sixth, his UAV shot down, was assisting the others. Baker watched them coming around at high speed before coming in low and fast. They were using their afterburners for the first time. Michael was right, even if they survived the assault, one or more might not have enough fuel to make it back.

  He glanced at the door and settled his pistol in its holster. It felt like everything was going sideways. He didn’t know where Michael was. The military leader of Project Genesis had said he was getting his combat gear. It shouldn’t have taken him half an hour.

  Baker walked over to the armored glass which afforded the tower a 360-degree view of the airstrip and surrounding buildings. Their forces on the hill had given ground, but they were still pinning the men down. The fighting by the dockside buildings was less defined. As long as it wasn’t organized, they weren’t in any real danger.

  Down on the airfield, a small Cessna Citation, in nondescript black paint, was parked. It was fueled and ready, and Baker had his multi-engine jet rating. Maybe it was time to consider a career change.