by Evan Currie
*****
Ben shifted after firing off the burst, dropping to one knee as he checked his charge state and steadied for another shot. It felt like something had changed, but he wasn’t certain quite what.
The sound.
Yes. That was it.
The environmental sounds had begun again, the sound of animals in the forest. He’d missed it originally because of the gunshots and yelling, but he could hear it clearly now that he was paying attention.
“Watch out,” He called. “They’re converging on us!”
The Marines were a good squad, he noted. They knew the job, and were moving into position to cover one another effectively, but they were outnumbered and, while not outgunned exactly, facing what he would certainly call superior enemy forces.
Well, larger enemy forces at least.
They might not be Realms’ Marines, but they were still Marines.
That automatically put them on a different level.
Too bad it won’t be enough this time, Ben thought as he fired off another pair of shots, taking down a shadowed figure that was darting tree to tree in his range.
The forest was crawling, far more than he’d expected the thing would have had a chance to coopt in the time it had. He felt his emotions bleed away, the nerves and fear that had been a low order part of his reactions fading almost to nothing as the world retreated and it just became him and his sidearm, almost as though he were at the range.
I’ve never shot this well at the range, though, Ben thought with distant amusement.
The magnetically contained plasma pulses the pistol flung out would burn through the quantum distortion of the affected, flash boiling their bodily fluids in fractions of a second.
The resulting spray of dark red gore was anything but pleasant to look at, but was certainly preferable to what they’d do to him in turn, so Ben kept firing at the enemy closed in.
Vaguely, in the back of his mind, he could hear the Marines firing in turn, Kirth shouting orders, and the steady report of Sandra’s old lever action punctuated by the sound of the action working in between.
All of these sounds registered as friendly and were almost entirely edited out of his brain as he sunk more and more into the zone. It was an odd feeling, one he was only vaguely familiar with.
The Realm’s Marines had done studies into the phenomenon, how the human brain could filter the senses. Recognizing and simply ignoring known non-threats when in the right mind-set, while focusing on everything else to an augmented level.
He could hear the snapping of a twig, a hundred yards out, even over all the shooting. Ben twisted in that direction, firing automatically, the plasma bolt popping the head of one of the rushing creatures with precision violence.
The world was just narrowing down to only the threats and his sidearm.
Which was what caused all the more shock when he heard an unknown voice call out.
“Corporal! Resupply inbound, Heads up!”
Ben didn’t even think about it as his finger slipped off the trigger of his weapon, the muzzle already starting to sink as he turned toward the motion in the corner of his eye.
The bag was already in mid-flight as he holstered his weapon, eyes locked on the ballistic trajectory even as his peripheral vision recognized the uniform just beyond it.
He caught the bag easily, dropping to one knee as he unzipped the Marine issue duffel with practiced motion.
A Corps Pulse rifle screamed into action as he drew out a matching Carbine from the bag, cleared the action and slapped the system closed even as the weapon was moving to his shoulder.
“Clear the zone, Corporal! Scorch the earth!”
“Yes, Ma’am, Colonel!”
His weapon screamed in a pair with the Colonel’s as he opened fire.
*****
It flinched back, the horror of suddenly losing dozens of itself was like a physical pain. The sudden shift in the battle was unexpected, as was the addition of more, and more lethal, firepower of the sort it had marked as a threat.
The entity examined the situation, gathering its forces with intent. After a few moments it decided that the situation was containable and thus marshalled the entirety of its force.
It would wipe this threw out here and now.
*****
Colonel Jan Manow kept her rifle to her shoulder as she walked into the fight, unsurprised that the Corporal she’d been tracking had managed to get himself into a mess this deep.
I swear to the heavens, my beloved Corps goes out of its way to recruit the biggest trouble magnets in the omniverse.
The idea made sense, in a twisted sort of way. Why bother sending your Marines out to find trouble when you could just recruit people who brought the trouble to them?
Much more efficient.
Jan rolled her eyes between shots, noting with some irritation that the threat was certainly one of the Scourge entities that had survived the destruction of the Eagle and the infected ship.
That presented an issue.
Infected could, depending on the classification, tear through an unprotected environment like a pre-contact Earth in a matter of weeks at the outside. The one here wasn’t a particularly high threat, but it could devastate the region, requiring the disposition of strategic weapons if not taken care of quickly.
There were still multiple other, yet unaccounted for, threats remaining however and those could easily be higher threat.
She kept up a volume of fire as the enemy began to amass again, a beeping sound from her wrist causing some concern.
She glanced at the indicator there.
“Corporal!” Jan called out.
“Yes, Colonel?”
“We have more company coming. Time to fall back to a defensible location.”
The Corporal looked around, nodding to one of the locals that were with him.
“Sergeant,” He said. “The Colonel wishes a defensible position.”
Jan looked to the man in question, eyes picking out the rank insignia and burning it to her mind. She wasn’t familiar with pre-contact Earth insignia, but she would remember that mark belonged to a Sergeant.
The Sergeant looked up, eyes wide, “Colonel? What Col… uh…”
“Corporal, here,” Jan said, handing off her more powerful rifle and accepting the Carbine in turn. She kept the muzzle down as the Corporal went back to fighting, eyes now focused on the Sergeant. “It’s time to fall back, Sergeant. Make it happen.”
“Uh… Yes… Ma’am?” He hesitated, but only slightly before she saw training take over. “Driscoll!”
“Sergeant?”
“Pass the word, we’re falling back.”
“You’ve got it, Sergeant!”
Jan nodded curtly before eying the roiling forests beyond their position with a gimlet eye.
“I hope you’re ready for a fight, Sergeant,” She said. “We have our work cut out for us.”
“Semper Fi, Ma’am.”
*****
Chapter 17
Situation Room, Washington
“Uh, Sirs?”
The assembled men and women turned to look at the young officer who was interrupting their observation of what was going on in the Pacific.
“Well, what is it?” Strand demanded, somewhat irritably.
Normally he tried to be more cordial with the men and women who worked around him, but he’d just watched a Destroyer go down with all hands as best he could tell. He wasn’t in the mood.
“We have a video feed from Florida you might want to see,” The nervous young man said. “It’s from a drone on station over the incident area.”
Strand closed his eyes. He just knew he wasn’t going to like this. He just knew it.
“Put it up.”
They sat in silence as the imagery showed the team of Marines in the swamp, obviously being surrounded by what appeared to be unusually mobile and quick moving animals.
“That isn’t normal response,” the Secretary of Defen
se said quietly. “I’ve been in the field most of my life, and never seen anything like that happen.”
Murmurs of agreement rippled through the room, but Strand was barely paying any attention as he focused on the screen. He hoped they weren’t about to watch a squad of Marines get taken apart the way they’d just watched the Peralta go down.
They all flinched when the Marine was taken.
On the screen it happened so fast that Strand had it stopped and played back. They could see the man’s heat rapidly cool as he was swept off into the trees, and knew he’d been killed almost instantly. Likely just by the force of the impact it would have taken to move a man that fast in the first place.
Then came the converging assault, the moment Strand had been dreading, and the surprising outcome.
“I want those weapons for my men.”
Strand looked sideways at his Secretary of Defense, unsurprised by the statement. Whatever the newcomer had, it was making for one hell of a shift in the power balance in the area.
The video continued, but with no more immediate action, they shifted to debating what had just happened.
“I want to talk to them,” Strand said, shutting everyone up.
“Sir?” The Secretary of Defense asked, surprised. “We can arrange a proper debrief…”
“No, get them some proper comm gear and put them on the line to me, ASAP,” Strand ordered. “They know something. First that one from earlier, and now whoever it is with the field artillery. They’re not ours, but they belong to someone, and they’re in the know. I want to talk to them.”
“Yes sir.”
“In the meantime,” Strand growled. “We have the situation in the Pacific to worry about.”
*****
Doris Miller
Admiral Morrow’s office was swamped.
The Peralta had gone down, hard, but they’d got out a warning that set the rest of the task group on a knife’s edge.
Supercavitating.
It was a term right out of the cold war, something normally only applied to experimental torpedoes. By surrounding the hull of a vehicle with a layer of cavitation bubbles, the friction of the ocean could be reduced, and thus speed increased incredibly for the same level of power.
If the enemy was capable of that, then all of the standard proximity protocols were right in the trash. He was on the horn across the entire task group, issuing full action orders, basically taking all but the very last strategic restrictions off the Task Group’s Captains.
He wasn’t letting them deploy nukes willy nilly, but anything short of that was officially off the table and on the racks ready to deploy.
Every ASW asset in the group was in the air, or the water, hunting the bandit with prejudice.
Sitting in the center of the task force, the Dory was a sitting duck set out as bait for the enemy, not a role any Aircraft Carrier should ever be set in, but those were the die that had been cast.
Morrow listened to the radio chatter in silence, his aides all quiet at his side.
Go get him boys.
*****
SH-60 Seahawk, Blackjack Three
“Deploying buoys.”
The heavy helicopter hovered low, moving slow over the heaving surface of the ocean below as a string of sonobuoys splashed into a pattern below them.
“ASW Operations underway, all systems showing clear checks,” Commander Jasper Lowell said as he worked the pedals to keep the chopper steady, the nose dipped just enough to keep them moving along as the deployment speed. “We’ve got nothing here. Bandit has gone cold.”
“Roger that, Blackjack Three. Continue operations.”
“Roger, Dory, Blackjack Three continuing operations.”
Jasper closed the signal and looked over to his co-pilot, “How is the search and rescue looking?”
Jessie March glanced back, a grim look on her face before she just shook her head slightly.
“Shit.”
The Peralta had gone down shockingly fast, vanishing from their screens and right in the middle of a transmission that the entire task group had been listening to. For the first time, he’d regretted being part of the SAW warfare group because he wanted to take his 60 out there and fish someone… anyone… out of the drink.
They had their orders and their duty, however.
If they couldn’t save the crew of the Peralta, they’d damn well avenge them.
He looked over his shoulder to the crew, “How are we doing?”
“This constellation is almost deployed. Ready to move to point Delta in the next few seconds!”
“Alright,” Jasper replied, “Keep an eye on the system and on the water, anyone sees anything, and I mean anything!... call it out! This fucker is fast and sneaky, and that’s a bad combination.”
He got a thumbs up from everyone on board as the last of the buoys in the constellation left the SH-60. Pumping the pedal, he tipped the nose down more and pushed the throttle all the way forward, sending the Seahawk hurtling through the skies toward the next drop point.
*****
Argo Lead
Elise bombed the deck low over the wreckage of the Samuel Peralta, eyes wide as she looked for whatever she could that might be left of the Destroyer.
There wasn’t much.
“No Joy, Dory, No joy.” She said grimly.
“Roger No Joy, Argo Lead. Records show you light on fuel, come on back to the barn.”
Elise glanced at her fuel, running a few calculations in her head. “Hold one, Dory.”
She flipped the channel over, getting on the line with the squadron.
“Fuel check,” She ordered simply. “Anyone in trouble?”
The numbers came back by rote, everyone light but no one in real trouble. Elise considered the numbers, then weighed them against her desire to stay out and find the bastard who’d just done all this damage.
Ultimately, she couldn’t justify it, however and switched back.
“Dory, Argo Lead.”
“Go for Dory.”
“Get us a spot on the deck, we’re coming home for bullets and gas,” Elise said in clipped tones. “Request crews stand ready to re-arm Argonauts for ASW.”
“Roger, Argo Lead. Request forwarded. Come on home.”
She sighed, “Roger Dory.”
With a push on the stick, Elise put the nose of the fighter up and climbed for the sky as she called in her squadron. It was time to get back in the barn.
She just hoped they let her and hers out again, because the Argonauts had some hunting to do yet.
*****
SSN-788 Colorado
“Supercavitating. Huh.”
Woods was almost tasting the concept as he rolled it around his head. It made a lot of sense now that the idea was spoken aloud, making the sounds they’d been tracking fall into a story that made sense.
The issue was, he didn’t quite know what to do with it.
Tracking a supercavitating target was easy enough. They’d done all that work back in the 80s, when the Soviets put super cavitating torpedoes into the game. You could hear and track the damn things for dozens of miles, if not hundreds, but they moved so freaking fast it was all but impossible to outmaneuver them.
“Alright, you heard the man!” He called, eyes sweeping the cramped confines of the submarine’s command deck. “Rig for flank maneuvering, if they’re moving that fast, there’s no way we’ll tag them without bringing everything we’ve got to the table.”
He could see his crew tense. They knew as well as he did that by cavitating themselves they would lose their best defense. Any hint of stealth was out the window once they cranked their props that hard.
Woods didn’t care.
“We’re still between this bastard and the Dory,” He told his crew firmly. “They ain’t getting into us for a Carrier, not on our watch. Everyone get that?”
That stiffened some spines.
The Colorado was there to make sure the Doris Miller could fulfill its mission,
and that meant putting themselves smack between any threat to the Boat, end of argument.
“Good. Weps, get me another intercept course, and make our fish hot and ready,” He ordered. “Con, get us to launch depth, ASAP.”
“Aye, aye,” The weapons control officer responded automatically.
“Aye Skipper. Ahead all flank?”
“All Flank,” Woods confirmed.
“Ahead, all flank, half degree up bubble.”
Woods got a grip on the console in front of him as he felt the deck shift under his feet. The vibration could be felt more than heard, and the acceleration pressed softly against him as they started moving.
“I want firing solutions,” He said a moment later, looking over to the SONAR operator. “Feed them to Weps, give me everything. Fish and birds.”
“Aye skipper. You’ve got it.”
The Colorado whirred through the pacific waters as she went to war.
*****
Blackjack Three
“Approaching point delta,” Jessie said from behind him as Jasper did a final check before ordering deployment of the next constellation.
“Roger that,” He said, flipping a couple switches, then looking back over his shoulder, “Alright guys, get them in the…”
“Hey! Check that out!”
Jasper frowned at being cut off, but he twisted enough to see the man pointing, then turned back to look out the glass of the cockpit. His eyes widened in surprise as he saw what was being pointed out, and his annoyance was forgotten.
“Dory, Blackjack Three.”
“Go for Dory, Three.”
“I’ve got a sighting…” He rattled off the location and heading, eyes never leaving the odd turbulence in the water off to their port side. It was like something was bubbling under the water, deep but not enough to be hidden.
He’d never quite seen anything like it. Normally it was much harder to spot submerged targets as they were normally dark shadows against a darker sea. This was practically the opposite.
“Cancel the drop,” He called absently, pumping the pedals to bring the nose around as he hit the throttle. “Blackjack Three in pursuit. Holding position… three… four hundred meters behind the target.”
“Roger Three. We’re diverting more ASW assets to your position. The Colorado is moving to intercept already.”