The Seventh Angel

by Jeff Edwards

  A voice broke over the speaker. “TAO—EW, I’ve got multiple X-band seekers, centered on bearing zero-three-five. We’ve got Vipers, ma’am. I count three … make that four. I say again, EW has four inbound missiles, bearing zero-three-five!”

  The woman’s voice came back instantly. “TAO, aye! Launch chaff, now! Break. All Stations—TAO, we have inbound Vipers! I say again, we have missiles inbound! RCO, go active on SPY. Break. Weapons Control—TAO, shift to Aegis ready-auto. Set CIWS to auto-engage.”

  Ann’s stomach contracted into a knot. “They’re shooting at us?”

  “Yeah,” Chief McPherson said. “We’ve got missiles coming towards us, and our radar’s not up yet.”

  She gave Ann’s shoulder a quick squeeze. “I’ve got to get to my station. Put on your seatbelt and keep your head down. And hang on to that laptop if you don’t want to lose it. The ride is about to get bumpy.”

  She wheeled around, and trotted away before Ann could respond.

  Ann heard a quick succession of muffled thumps. “TAO—EW, launching chaff. Six away.”

  The reports kept coming through the overhead speaker. “TAO—RCO. SPY is active. Transmitting data to fire control.”

  “TAO—Weapons Control. Aegis is at ready-auto. CIWS is set to auto-engage.”

  Ann fumbled at the sides of the chair until she located the seat belt. She belted herself in, and then grabbed her laptop computer, hugging the black plastic rectangle to her chest like a sheet of armor plate.

  Mouse would be coming to the end of his run, now. The robot might already be out from under the ice pack, bobbing on the surface, waiting for retrieval. Ann knew without asking that no one would care.

  “TAO—EW, inbound Vipers are showing staggered monopulse radar signatures. I think we’re looking at AS-23 Kronos missiles, ma’am. Recommend we avoid jamming. Some of the Kronos variants have home-on-jam capability.”

  The Tactical Action Officer’s voice came back a second later. “EW—TAO, my memory might be failing me, but I don’t think the MiG-31 can carry the AS-23 missile.”

  “TAO—EW. I don’t know what they can carry, ma’am. I’m just telling you what’s on my slick.”

  Ann listened to the chatter and wondered what in the hell they were talking about.

  Without warning, the ship gave a violent series of tremors, accompanied by a sequence of tumultuous rumbles that seemed to shake the teeth in Ann’s head. She cried out, but her voice was nearly swallowed up in the cacophony of sound.

  In the ear-ringing silence that followed, another report came over the speaker. “TAO—Weapons Control. Twelve birds away, no apparent casualties. Targeted two each on the inbound Vipers, and one each on the Bogies.”

  The giant display screens at the far end of the room flickered with cryptic symbols. Their meaning was as foreign to Ann as the unintelligible reports tumbling out of the speakers, but she knew enough to realize that her future was being spelled out in that intricate dance of shapes and lines.

  Somewhere out there in the darkness of the pre-dawn Siberian morning, engines of death were screaming towards each other at fantastic speeds. And it came to Ann that guided missiles were complex and intricate machines. They were robots, like her Mouse, but a thousand times faster and more single-minded of purpose. Mouse could do many things. But these robots could only destroy.

  The realization that she might be minutes—or even seconds—away from death, crashed over Ann like a freezing wave. She was suddenly glad that she didn’t have a job to do, because her muscles were locked in place. She couldn’t swallow. She couldn’t breathe.

  She wanted to leap out of the chair and run away from this craziness. But where would she go? Even if her paralyzed body would agree to take instructions from her brain, which she very much doubted, there was nowhere to go. Nowhere but a freezing and alien ocean, and this ship—which had suddenly become a target.

  On the big screens, a cluster of blue symbols rushed toward a cluster of red symbols. With a quick series of flashes, about half of the red and blue symbols vanished from the screen.

  “TAO—Air, splash two Vipers.”

  Another voice followed without pause. “Weapons Control concurs. The remaining two Vipers are now inside our minimum missile range. We cannot reengage with missiles.”

  As Ann watched, one of the red symbols veered to the side and disappeared.

  “TAO—EW, splash Viper number three. One taker on chaff!”

  Ann wasn’t quite sure what the exchange of words meant, but it seemed that three of the incoming missiles had been destroyed. One of the red symbols tracked toward the center of the screen without pausing.

  Two more red symbols flashed and vanished. “TAO—Air, splash two Bogies.”

  The remaining red image kept coming.

  Ann began to tremble. She didn’t know how to read the catalog of symbols sprayed across the screens. She didn’t know the color codes, or the significance of the shapes, or the meanings of the blocks of letters and numbers that followed close on each symbol like the tail on a kite. She knew none of these things. But something in her instinctively knew that when the inverted red V shape reached the middle of the screen, she would die.

  Another red symbol flashed and disappeared. “TAO—Air, splash Bogie number three. Bogie four is bugging out.”

  “TAO, aye.”

  The red inverted V continued without pausing. It had nearly reached the center of the screen, and no one seemed to be doing anything about it.

  Ann clamped her mouth shut, willing herself not to scream when the moment came.

  A throaty metallic rumble split the air, like the roar of an unmuffled lawnmower engine. The sound was followed by the muted boom of an explosion. Not far away, but not on the ship either.

  There was perhaps three seconds of near silence, broken only by the hum of electronic cooling fans, and then a cheer went up around Combat Information Center. Some unseen person shouted, “Go CIWS!” followed by a wolf whistle.

  The overhead speaker crackled again. “TAO—Weapons Control. Splash Viper number four.”

  Ann took a breath for the first time in nearly a minute. The cool air felt strangely unfamiliar as it rushed into her lungs. She felt her muscles begin to relax.

  She wasn’t dead.

  She gradually became conscious of the laptop computer still clutched against her ribs. She unfolded her arms and opened the computer. Her movements were jerky, as her muscles were still flushed with unneeded adrenaline. That must be why she was feeling slightly giddy.

  She smiled weakly to herself, and looked at her computer. Mouse’s friendly green triangle symbol stared back at her from the screen. Her child had reached the bus stop safely. He was ready for his mother to take him home for milk and cookies.

  Ann was fine. She was alive. Mouse was fine. And now they’d pick him up and bring him home for cookies.

  Ann giggled at the thought. Her laughter was shrill, and oddly modulated. It dragged on long after real humor would have failed, but she couldn’t seem to make herself stop.

  People were beginning to stare at her now, but her mind had become a disconnected jumble of missiles, and cookies, and exploding airplanes, and milk-drinking robots. Out there somewhere in the pre-dawn darkness, the mangled bodies of the jet pilots would be sinking through the waves … settling to the bottom of the sea.

  The laughter died as suddenly as if someone had flipped a switch. Ann felt slightly dizzy. She took a deep breath to clear her head. She let it out slowly, deciding as she did so that it seemed to be working; her thoughts were becoming a little less manic.

  And then she vomited all over the floor of Combat Information Center.

  CHAPTER 46

  OPERATIONS COMMAND POST #2

  OUTSIDE PETROPAVLOVSK-KAMCHATSKI, RUSSIA

  WEDNESDAY; 06 MARCH

  0832 hours (8:32 AM)

  TIME ZONE +12 ‘MIKE’

  Sergiei Mikhailovich Zhukov hurled the clipboard toward the lieutenant wh
o had just handed it to him, not ten seconds earlier. The clipboard sailed past the young officer’s head, missing his left cheek by less than a centimeter. It was a tribute to the man’s training that he neither ducked nor flinched.

  “They did what?” Zhukov screamed.

  The officer continued to stand at attention. “Comrade President, they have shot down three of our fighter planes. MiG-31s, flying out of Yelizovo. The fourth plane was fired upon, but not damaged. It escaped and returned to base.”

  “Who?” Zhukov yelled. “Who fired upon my planes?”

  “We do not know, Comrade President,” the lieutenant said. “The planes were patrolling the southern edge of the ice pack, in accordance with your standing defense plan, sir. They encountered a surface vessel of some kind, operating without lights and without radar near the ice. The vessel was within the exclusion area, and it was not one of ours, so the planes attacked it with missiles, per your orders.”

  Zhukov nodded curtly. “And?”

  “A missile battle ensued, Comrade President. Three of our planes were shot down. The pilot of the fourth plane believes that the unidentified vessel may have been a missile boat. He reports that the radar signature was much too small for a major combatant ship. The pilot is unable to identify the country of origin.”

  “I see,” Zhukov said. His voice was deathly quiet now. “And where is this pilot?”

  “In his quarters at Yelizovo air station,” the lieutenant said. “Having a vodka, I imagine. His comrades were killed in front of his eyes. I understand that he is quite shaken.”

  “I’m sure he is,” Zhukov said. He ran a hand through his hair and cleared his throat. “Send a message to the commander of the air station at Yelizovo. I want the pilot taken out in the snow and shot, within the hour.”

  The lieutenant cocked his head “Sir?”

  “We are facing the enemies who brought down the Soviet Empire,” Zhukov said. “We cannot defeat them with incompetence and cowardice. The fool should have pressed the attack, not run away like a frightened child.”

  He glared into the lieutenant’s eyes. “Have the pilot shot. Do it now.”

  The young lieutenant swallowed and snapped out a salute. “Right away, Comrade President.” He made an abrupt about-face, and marched from the room.

  CHAPTER 47

  USS TOWERS (DDG-103)

  WESTERN PACIFIC OCEAN

  WEDNESDAY; 06 MARCH

  1929 hours (7:29 PM)

  TIME ZONE +11 ‘LIMA’

  “More coffee, ma’am?” The wardroom mess attendant held out a silver pot and tipped it slightly forward, indicating that he was ready to pour. It was the young Sailor who had escorted Ann and Sheldon from the flight deck to the wardroom on their return to the ship.

  Ann looked at her watch and shook her head. It was time, maybe a couple of minutes past time. The Navy guys would already be out there on the boat deck, standing around in the cold and the dark, wondering what was keeping that crazy civilian woman.

  Ann knew the answer to that question, but she didn’t want to admit it. Not even to herself. She was afraid.

  The ship had been sailing north at high speed since an hour before sundown. Now they were back up near the ice pack again, not far from the area where they’d been attacked at the end of Mouse’s last run. Those fighter jets—or others like them—were still out there somewhere, and now they were alerted to the presence of U.S. warships in the area. Last time, the planes had stumbled across the ship by blind chance. This time, they would know exactly what they were looking for. They would be waiting.

  Ann discovered that she was waiting too. Her ears were waiting for the distant growl of jet engines and the shuddering roar of launching missiles. Her muscles were waiting—preparing themselves to re-experience the paralysis that had been her body’s fear response to the aircraft attack. Her stomach was waiting to void itself of the breakfast and coffee that she’d foolishly allowed herself to consume. And her soul was waiting for that liminal moment—the critical threshold at which her fellow voyagers would either kill, or be killed, or both.

  She looked at her watch again. She was definitely late, now. It was time to go out there and do her job. She decided to stand up and get it over with, but was surprised to find herself still sitting in the wardroom chair. Her body seemed to be on strike.

  She frowned, and grabbed the arms of her chair, ready to push herself to a standing position. And found herself still seated.

  She was still puzzling over this when the young Sailor spoke.

  He set the coffee pot on the table. “Ma’am, can I ask you a question?”

  Ann nodded.

  “Are you…” the Sailor halted in mid-question. He swallowed, and spoke again. “How did you end up working on robots?”

  Ann had almost no skill for reading people, but she knew instantly that this was not what the kid really wanted to ask. He had changed his mind at the last second, shied away from his real question—whatever that was.

  She decided to answer him anyway.

  “When I was about ten years old, I saw this movie called ‘Silent Running.’ Have you ever seen it?”

  “I don’t think so,” the Sailor said. “Is that one of those old submarine flicks? Like ‘The Enemy Below,’ or something like that?”

  “No,” Ann said. “It’s science fiction. It’s about the future, when the Earth is so polluted that the atmosphere can’t support trees or plants any more.”

  The mess attendant waited for her to continue.

  “There are these giant spaceships in orbit,” Ann said. “They carry all that’s left of the world’s forests in these enormous geodesic domes. And on one of those ships is this guy named Freeman Lowell. He’s sort of a botanist and ecologist. He takes care of the forests.”

  Ann stopped. Why was she doing this? She didn’t talk about her private life to anyone. Why was she spilling her guts to this kid? Was she looking for an excuse to stall, because she was too freaking scared to go do her job?

  “Lowell doesn’t get along with the other people on his ship,” she said. “The others all care about different things than he does. He doesn’t think the same way they do, or value the same things. He doesn’t really understand other people, and he doesn’t like them very much.”

  The Sailor was staring now, but Ann forged ahead.

  “Lowell likes the trees, and the bushes,” she said. “Because he understands them. He also likes the robots that take care of the ship, for the same reason. He appreciates the clean logic of their thinking. They make sense to him. He doesn’t have to be witty, or charming, and he doesn’t have to try to fit in. The plants and the machines accept him for who he is. They don’t ask him to be anything else.”

  “I’ve watched that movie about a thousand times,” Ann said. “The robots weren’t real; they were human actors in little robot costumes. But they looked real. And I knew from the first second I saw them that I wanted to work with robots.”

  She shrugged. “I guess I’m cut from the same cloth as Freeman Lowell. Machines make sense to me. Robots make sense. It’s people I can’t figure out.”

  The Sailor gave her a judicious nod. “Robotics is a big field,” he said. “What made you decide to specialize in the underwater stuff?”

  Again, Ann felt certain that this wasn’t the question the kid really wanted to ask.

  “Three-quarters of this planet is water,” she said. “If I’m going to do anything worth doing, the ocean seems like a good place to start.”

  The mess attendant paused for several seconds, as if unsure about how to phrase whatever was on his mind. He cleared his throat. “Ma’am, are you … scared?”

  Ann felt the heat rise to her face. “What?”

  “Scared,” the Sailor said. “You know … afraid?”

  Ann wanted to slap the little bastard. Was that was this was about? Popeye the Sailor Man getting her to open up, so he could laugh in her freaking face?

  His Sailor buddies must have
been talking up a storm, all about the crazy civilian woman who had yakked all over Combat Information Center. They’d probably laughed their asses off about that.

  But the kid wasn’t smiling, and there was nothing critical in his voice.

  “I’m scared,” he said quietly. “I’ve been to the head twice, and I still feel like I’m going to piss my pants.”

  The kid paused, and Ann realized that he wasn’t jerking her around. He really was scared. Maybe even as frightened as she was.

  “I told my Senior Chief,” he said. “I figured there’s no point in hiding it if I’m not tough enough for combat. You know what Senior Chief said?”

  Ann shook her head. “What did he say?”

  “He told me everybody is scared shitless in combat. Everybody except maybe crazy people, and complete idiots. He told me that’s natural. Fear is an instinctive reaction to danger. Somebody’s trying to kill you, you’re gonna get scared. Senior Chief says you have to learn to work through the fear—get past it, so you can do your job, even if you’re scared half to death.”

  The Sailor picked up the coffee pot and used a white dish towel to wipe the spot where it had been. “You think that’s true, ma’am? You think it’s okay to be scared, as long as you do your job?”

  “I don’t know,” Ann said. “I’m probably not the best person to ask. I mean, it sounds true. Maybe it is true.”

  “Are you scared?” the Sailor asked again.

  “I’m terrified,” Ann said.

  The kid turned away and carried the silver pot back to the coffee maker. “Me too,” he said. “It’s not so bad right now. I’m on mess attendant duties. I clean, I serve meals, and I clean some more. There aren’t exactly lives hanging on my every action. If I screw up, the coffee gets cold, or breakfast is late. Nobody dies.”

  He shook his head. “But this is only temporary duty for me. When I go back to my division, I’ll be a Fire Control Technician again. If I get scared then, I mean really scared—too scared to do my job—people are going to get killed. You know what I mean?”