Omega Days (Book 4): Crossbones

by John L. Campbell

  They wouldn’t last long without food and water, Liz thought. It would have to be a priority. “Systems readiness?”

  The ensign turned a page on her clipboard. “The bunkers for the diesels and gas turbine are full, and we’re topped off with JP-5. Diesel and turbine engines, as well as the propulsion system, are functioning at one hundred percent. Surface search radar is also performing at one hundred percent.” Amy swallowed, knowing this was the end of the good news.

  Liz saw the look on her officer’s face. “Continue.”

  “Air search radar, fire control, and electronic warfare systems are not fully functional, and the antimissile countermeasures are not functioning at all.” Amy went on to list another dozen systems that were not yet working: air conditioning units, warning systems, IT and medical equipment, galley appliances. All of it was to have come online through the natural course of the acceptance trials.

  “Weapons systems?” the captain asked.

  Amy shook her head. “The Bofors fifty-seven-millimeter gun is capable of firing, but there is no ammunition on board. The twenty-millimeter close-in weapon system is reported as functioning and was on the testing schedule for this cruise. Ten thousand rounds are aboard.”

  “Air operations?” Liz said, her frown deepening.

  “Nothing, ma’am,” said the other woman. “We have zero out of two Dolphin helicopters, no pilots or rescue swimmers, no crew aboard with aviation-related ratings. We have two MQ-1 Predator drones.” One was intended as a disposable unit upon which they would test the twenty-millimeter close-in weapon system, the CIWS. There were no technicians aboard qualified for launch and operation.

  Seated at the small table beside Elizabeth, Coseboom simply tapped a pencil slowly against the surface.

  “Light arms?” asked Liz.

  Amy answered without hesitation. “Four M2 heavy machine guns, approximately eighteen hundred rounds. One M16 assault rifle, one hundred twenty rounds. Five Sig Sauer P229s; three from the armory, two brought aboard during the action at the pier, along with whatever firearm the captain brought aboard. Approximately one hundred rounds.”

  Elizabeth looked at her watch. She would need to return to the bridge soon. “Tell me about Klondike’s survivors.”

  It was Boomer who spoke. “We pulled seven out of the water. Three were injured, and Amy took them to sick bay. The other four were whole, and we put them to work.” He gave their ranks. None were officers.

  “And where do we stand on crew?” Liz directed this at the ensign.

  Amy turned another page. “Five civilians: two plumbers, two electricians, and one IT tech. For enlisted personnel we have two engineers, a machinery tech and the main propulsion assistant, three bosun’s mates, two food service specialists, one electrician’s mate, and one electronics tech.” She rubbed at her tired eyes. “We have a quartermaster, a damage controlman, a helmsman and Petty Officer Vargas as our operations specialist.” She cleared her throat. “Chief Newman is ranking . . . except for the senior chief who came aboard with you.” Amy didn’t look at her captain as she said this, but Boomer fixed her with a stare.

  Elizabeth turned to meet the man’s gaze. “Very well,” she said, “Lieutenant Commander Coseboom is now executive officer and will assume all the responsibilities of the gunner’s mates, as well as his own law enforcement and boarding party duties. Petty Officer Vargas will stand in as electronic warfare department head. Amy, you now run not only propulsion, but all of engineering.” She pointed. “I want those contractors working to get everything online as soon as possible, do you understand?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Liz stood. “Everyone is going to have to wear many hats to take up the slack for absent crew.”

  “And our guest, Captain?” Boomer said, standing as well.

  “Senior Chief Kidd will become acting department head for the deck division,” Liz said. “His rate also makes him chief of the boat.”

  Amy nodded, but Boomer just stared.

  “That will be all,” Liz said, and Amy scooted out of the office.

  “Liz,” said Coseboom, catching the woman’s arm before she could go. “I need a word.”

  The captain closed the door and faced her new XO.

  • • •

  Amy Liggett returned to the bridge and gave out the assignments as she had been directed, then spoke to the quartermaster. “Where are we, Mr. Waite, and where are we going?”

  The QM2 pointed to a spot on a digital chart table and said, “I’ve turned us due west, with Seattle to our stern, and we are making flank speed along the approximate route of the Bainbridge Island Ferry.” He gestured out the bridge windows. “It’s getting pretty crowded out here.”

  Amy looked at the surface navigation scope to see that it was clustered with shapes. A glimpse out the windows showed that the sound was rapidly filling with vessels of all sizes, from behemoth Japanese car carriers and oil tankers to freighters, tugs, container ships, and hundreds of smaller craft, both charter and private. Most were heading away from the city, and many were turning north. There were plenty of low-flying aircraft as well, mostly police and news helicopters, but small civilian planes as well. An orange-and-white Coast Guard C-130 buzzed low over the sound, flying north to south.

  As she watched, a local news helicopter appeared from the rear and paced the cutter less than fifty yards out, a cameraman sticking his lens out through an open side door. Amy had a frightening moment as she imagined the bird being cut apart by fifty-caliber gunfire, but no weapons went off, and after a minute the news chopper banked away in search of something more interesting.

  “My intention is to close on Bainbridge Island, then come north,” the quartermaster said. “The captain wanted to stay clear of that destroyer on Seattle’s waterfront.”

  Amy looked at the man for a moment, but he added no speculation as to his commanding officer’s order or meaning.

  On the overhead speakers, the military-only Guard channel was choked with traffic, units talking over one another, giving situation reports, commanders giving orders and calling for immediate support. The Navy destroyer from Everett reported that it had moved slightly north and was now just off the Port of Seattle, its guns providing cover fire as civilian evacuees streamed in, trying to get aboard anything that could float. A National Guard unit on shore providing security for that evacuation first called for medevacs, then began demanding an airstrike, and finally went off the air. There were no transmissions directed at Joshua James.

  “Keep that destroyer on your scope, Mr. Waite,” Amy said, “and report immediately if it changes position.” She hadn’t allowed herself to think much about what the captain had been accused of, and she tried very hard to block out the thought of a DEA helicopter and its crew being destroyed. The way she knew how to do that was to immerse herself in her work, and follow orders.

  But it was impossible to completely still the worries and questions racing through her mind. Disobeying orders from Base Seattle and killing federal officers was criminal, there was no getting around it. But they were a warship now, and wasn’t a captain’s first priority keeping that vessel and crew safe until it could be properly deployed? That was what she had learned in New London. Permitting hostile boarders from any nation didn’t fit well with that responsibility. She imagined what would happen if a U.S. Navy ship tried to board an American nuclear submarine without permission. The sub commander would slam a torpedo into it and send it to the bottom, regardless of what colors it was flying, because his first mission was to keep his boat secure.

  The captain’s actions had been justified. Of course they had. As for keeping away from the destroyer? Hell, that was just common sense. Right now there was a hot-shit warship commander out there, already weapons-free, raging with adrenaline and testosterone and just itching for a little surface combat. Joshua James wouldn’t last thirty seconds against a destroyer and wouldn’t have time to make its case. No, the captain knew what she was doing, and Amy wo
uld follow her as a good officer should. That decision made the young woman feel better.

  “Plotted and tracking, ma’am,” Waite said, pointing to a contact indicated in red on his screen. “It’s USS Momsen, a guided missile destroyer.” He scowled for a moment, looked out the bridge windows, and called to the helmsman. “Come left twenty degrees.”

  The helm acknowledged and the ship leaned slightly left. Amy looked out to where the quartermaster was pointing. Ahead and to their right, less than a mile off, was the Wenatchee: four decks high and 460 feet long, a Jumbo Mark II class ferryboat a full forty feet longer than Joshua James. The white monster was capable of carrying 2,500 passengers and over two hundred automobiles as it made its thirty-five-minute trips back and forth between Bainbridge Island and downtown Seattle each day.

  Wenatchee was off course, still steaming at full power and leaving a wide wake, but deviating from its regular, decades-long route at a sharp angle. As Amy lifted a pair of binoculars, she saw why.

  The dead were aboard, and they were slaughtering the living. Corpses galloped after fleeing people on the open-air decks, tore into crowds huddled against the barrier chain on the bow, and pulled screaming faces away from wide, scenic windows. Ensign Liggett did not hit the alarm and order rescue operations, and the quartermaster looked away from the horror without saying anything.

  “Keep us away from her,” Amy said quietly.

  “Aye-aye, ma’am,” Waite replied, giving the appropriate orders to the helm.

  The young officer watched the ferry until it passed out of sight on the starboard side, her heart racing as she saw what the dead could do and how they went about it. Then she looked forward again, to where the quartermaster had brought them back onto their original course.

  Not my call to make. Besides, attempting to rescue those people would invite nightmares aboard, and that was irresponsible. “Steady as she goes, Mr. Waite.”

  Bainbridge Island loomed before them, and the quartermaster ordered the turn that would take them up its eastern coastline.

  • • •

  What’s on your mind, Boomer?” Liz said, folding her arms and leaning against the hatch frame.

  “Your brother,” the man said at once. “The helicopter. What the DEA said before he chopped them out of the sky. Making him chief of the boat.”

  “I don’t have time for all this, and you know it.”

  “Make time . . . Captain.”

  Liz pursed her lips. “Very well, Commander. Since you’re now my executive officer, I’ll explain myself to you, this time. Don’t get used to it. As my XO, I expect and demand your support, are we clear?”

  Coseboom nodded.

  Liz ticked off a finger. “I don’t know what those things on the dock were, but they were already dead, so I didn’t kill anyone. I rescued a shipmate in peril, which I would do again for any of you.” Another finger went up. “We are a ship at war, and I will not permit it to be compromised by anyone, regardless of their claims. Were his actions extreme? Perhaps, but that will be decided by appropriate command levels at a later date.”

  “You are appropriate command levels, Captain.”

  She went on as if she hadn’t heard him, raising a third finger. “Senior Chief Kidd is the ranking enlisted man aboard, and a veteran of deck operations, something otherwise lacking aboard this ship. His assignment is more than justified.”

  Now she stepped away from the hatch frame and closer to the other officer. “We don’t know if we’re at war, facing plague, or right in the middle of the End of Days. Mr. Coseboom, you heard the reports on the ship’s condition and crew deficiencies the same as I did. We’re less than a quarter strength, and that will mean hardship: long watches with very little rest. We need every capable hand, and all the experience we can get.”

  Coseboom nodded slowly, and Liz softened her voice. “Boomer, the ship needs you and so do I. There’s no telling what this is all about, or how long it will take before things get back to normal. Until that happens, I will command this vessel in a manner I believe serves the mission.”

  “And what is that mission?”

  “Right now,” Liz said, “preserving ship and crew. We’re going to make for Port Angeles up on Ediz Point. I’m hoping we can fill out our missing stores and crew there.”

  Coseboom took a deep breath. “They’ll have heard what happened at Base Seattle. There’s bound to be trouble.”

  She nodded. “And if there is, we will deal with it. Understood, XO?” She extended a hand.

  Boomer looked at the hand, then shook it. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Very well.” She moved to the hatch and stepped into the passageway. “I want sidearms issued to all three officers, Chief Newman, and Senior Chief Kidd.”

  Coseboom started to say something, but Elizabeth left without waiting to hear what it was.

  EIGHT

  Seaman Recruit Moses Thedford sat on a metal stool in the cutter’s tiny, four-bed sick bay, twisting a damp rag nervously in latex-gloved hands. Just nineteen years old, he was not trained for boarding parties or even as a bosun’s mate, yet there he had been with a rifle in the bow of the commander’s Prosecutor, hauling aboard Klondike survivors. Neither was he a medic, yet here he sat watching over three wounded crewmen from that ship, possessing the same medical skills as everyone else aboard—or less. And why? Because he was a one-stripe nobody, ensuring that he would be shit upon by everyone with more than six months in the Coast Guard. The other reason, he knew, was that he was a cook, and therefore everyone thought he’d have nothing better to do.

  Wait till you motherfuckers want to eat, he thought, twisting the rag.

  He could just as easily have said it out loud, because no one could hear him. The three men in the sick bay beds were sleeping, one of them tossing fitfully with fever. The other two had what looked like serious wounds, one at the neck, the other at the inner thigh, and Moses along with two of his shipmates had done their best to stop the bleeding and bind the wounds. It seemed to have worked, but who the hell knew? His shipmates had run off to their stations as Joshua James completed a turn and engaged forward propulsion, leaving Moses alone with no idea of how to care for these men.

  He was tired, close to coming off third watch and thinking about his rack back in the barracks when the world went ass-up, and it looked now like this was all the crew the cutter was going to get. It meant there were no medical officers, no med techs, not even an EMT-trained rescue swimmer. It meant endless shifts ahead for everyone aboard.

  No one to watch these men but poor Moses. I should have stayed in the Bronx and taken the auto body job at Terrell’s. The Coast Guard sucks.

  Moses thought about the wounds. He wanted to believe that their flesh had been torn by protruding pieces of metal on Klondike’s railing, but he had seen what was happening up on the cutter’s decks, had seen the way those things attacked. Moses knew bites when he saw them. And it was clear to him that either ISIS or Al Qaeda had set off some kind of biological weapon, a bug of some kind that turned people into rabid maniacs. Dead people, though? What bullshit. He’d attended countless training classes concerning bio attacks, but not one about the living dead. In the Coast Guard there was a manual for everything, and if there was one about zombies, he would have seen it. No, it had to be ISIS . . . or ISIL, depending upon who you talked to. Both meant bad guys.

  One of the men, the guy with the neck wound, made a rattling sound from his bed at the other side of the room. Moses Thedford remained on his stool, gripping his rag tightly. The man wasn’t moving. What should he do now? He looked at the intercom phone on the wall. Should he call an officer? He immediately rejected the idea, knowing the conversation would go something like this:

  Sir, this is Seaman Thedford in sick bay. One of the injured men just made a noise.

  Did you check on him, Thedford?

  No, sir.

  Then unfuck yourself and go check.

  Of course an officer wouldn’t curse at him, he kn
ew, but a chief or a petty officer might, and either way Moses would come off looking like an idiot, probably drawing some shitty work detail as punishment for being stupid. Slowly, he got off the stool and moved to the side of the man’s bed. His eyes were closed and his face was turned away, but the young Coast Guardsman saw at once that the man’s pillow was drenched with blood, his neck bandage wet and sagging.

  Shit, he bled out! Moses lifted one of the man’s eyelids; cloudy and no reaction to light. When he pressed his fingers against the neck, there was no pulse. Oh, shit, it’s gonna be my fault. He turned to the man in the next bed, the one with the leg wound, and saw this one staring blankly at the ceiling, his chest unmoving. Moses ripped back the blanket to look at a thigh bandage dripping red, soaking the mattress beneath. Bled out.

  “I already fed the dog, Ma!” the third Klondike man screamed, squirming as his feverish head sought a cool spot on the pillow.

  The scream made Moses jump. “Shut up!” he yelled. Then he went for the phone, knocking over the metal stool. The feverish guardsman shouted, “It’s David’s turn!”

  Moses punched the button for the bridge. He didn’t care if he pissed off the captain herself. This was not his job, and not his fault.

  Behind him, the dead man with the neck wound sat up in his bed.

  • • •

  Liz stayed on the bridge long enough to check their position and course, see where the Navy destroyer was and that it appeared disinterested for the moment, and to wait for LCDR Coseboom, who arrived a minute after she did. Boomer sent Amy off on the task of arming key crew members per the captain’s directive, then took command of the conn as Liz left again. She told him to have Chief Kidd report to her quarters.

  Liz’s accommodations were spacious by warship standards, especially for a boat this size. There was a couch that folded down into a rack, plenty of storage, a private head, and a drop-down desk with a wall safe mounted above it. She’d stored Special Agent Ramsey’s pistol and spare magazines in there, preferring to use the smaller variant Sig employed by the Coast Guard. Her room had no porthole—this wasn’t a cruise ship—so she snapped on a light above a small table and a pair of chairs. A low meow greeted her.