Omega Days (Book 4): Crossbones

by John L. Campbell

  “Mr. Vargas,” the captain’s voice said into his headset, “why have you stopped firing?”

  He cursed again. “The fire control system is acting up, Captain. I’m trying to reboot it now.”

  “I want that gun up and firing, mister.”

  No shit. “Yes, ma’am. I’m working on it.” The infrared video feed on his left still showed the carrier, drifting west. He’d been able to put a nice cluster of shells together at its forward port waterline, and the ship was tilting harder than it had been. Of course that might just be wishful thinking, he conceded. It was difficult to tell at this distance, and harder still with such a big target.

  “Operate the gun manually,” the captain’s voice ordered.

  Yes, I know. What the fuck do you think I’m trying to do? “Yes, ma’am. A few more minutes and I should have it.” Maybe.

  “Snap to it, mister.”

  The screen in front of him jumped, and the image slaved from the exterior camera appeared, Nimitz at the center. There was no targeting square or crosshairs. Vargas checked his board and saw that the gun’s radome and gyro-stabilizers both glowed red, signaling that they were offline. He pounded the console again, but that only made the video image jump back to a field of white-and-green static.

  Vargas took a deep breath. Stop hitting the electronics. He powered down again. If he could get the video feed to come back, then he might be able to switch from the automated fire control to manual, operating the deck gun with a joystick. It would lack the precision accuracy he’d enjoyed before—it would be real shooting, aiming a pip on screen and judging range in his head—but at least he’d be able to fire.

  The magazine counter read thirteen fifty-seven-millimeter shells remaining.

  Vargas let out a long breath and forced himself to wait while the system rebooted once more.

  • • •

  Amy Liggett reached the captain’s cabin without encountering another crewman. Where was everyone? The cutter shuddered from what could only be the deck gun firing. She didn’t have to speculate about the target, and that caused a renewed anger to boil inside her.

  The cabin was empty as she’d expected, except for Blackbeard, who meowed loudly from his perch on the captain’s bunk.

  “I’m sorry your mommy is such a bitch,” Amy told the cat, crossing the room as another shot boomed from the deck gun.

  Blackbeard watched her, then licked at a front paw.

  Since it sometimes contained codes and classified orders, the combination for the captain’s wall safe was shared with the executive officer. Amy was betting Kidd hadn’t changed it since locking her former XO in a maintenance closet.

  The handle clicked and the safe door opened.

  The deck gun boomed again.

  FORTY

  Nimitz

  Charlie went through the hatch to the firefighting gear room more carefully than the last, pausing to listen, then entering with his rifle barrel leading. He was still seeing double, still nauseated, and blood from his head wound was saturating the right side of his sweater.

  The other man’s blood trail was easy to follow.

  Lockers, shelves, and long racks of gear extended out into the compartment, row upon row of firefighting coats and pants, lines of boots and yellow helmets, oxygen tanks and hand tools. He leaned against a steel locker and aimed his rifle down the aisles, searching for movement. The blood trail led up the center aisle.

  A bang came from off to the left, something heavy falling against hollow metal. Charlie swung the M14 in that direction and fired off a burst, bullets tearing through fire-resistant coats, punching holes in helmets and sparking off steel.

  Time’s up, Father.

  • • •

  A bullet punched into the sheet metal of an equipment locker six inches over his head, and Xavier jerked left, away from it, stumbling down an aisle where brass hose fittings and nozzles hung from pegs in ordered rows. Tanks of foam with handheld spray hoses were lined up on the opposite side. It was still painful to breathe, and his chest was filled with a burning sensation, but he was starting to pull in more air with every gasp. It made him wheeze, and he tried to suppress the noise.

  Xavier’s vision was still gray at the edges, and the deck behind him was streaked with a staggering blood trail and red boot prints.

  He stumbled over a bench and crashed against a rack of silver hazmat suits, falling to the floor, making the gear swing. Another burst of rifle fire tore blindly through the compartment, tearing up several of the hazmat suits behind where he’d been standing a moment before.

  Maybe he’ll run out of bullets. Xavier crawled on his hands and knees to keep low. From behind him in the compartment came the clatter of an empty magazine hitting the floor, the click and snap of a fresh one being loaded into a rifle. Too much to hope for.

  Xavier tried to crawl faster, looking for a way out, and came to the bulkhead running along the back of the compartment.

  There was no hatch.

  • • •

  The dead were closing on Rosa from both sides of the catwalk, the horde of crewmen that had come up from the pit on her left, a half-dozen more in rotting uniforms moving through the hatch ahead of her, all of them surging toward their meal. She aimed the flashlight and shot the closest one in the head, and the crumpling body was immediately pushed aside by the others.

  One bullet left. That one’s for me.

  • • •

  The Hobgoblin’s brain flared with red light at the pistol shot, violent urges driving it into a frenzy. It scrambled hand-over-hand up a pipe, then jumped across open space to another, hands catching hold of a valve wheel and bare feet planting against smooth steel, ending up where the pipe forest edged closest to the catwalk.

  The scent of prey was overpowering, and it looked down through its red-and-black world to see the bright glow of the thing it needed to destroy. To both sides were others that were like him, yet different, and they wanted the same thing. The Hobgoblin would not be denied its prize.

  Michael’s muscles tensed, and then he let out an ungodly shriek and leaped.

  • • •

  Rosa made a move for the ladder that climbed to a hatch above, dropping her flashlight as she gripped a rung. It rolled to the edge of the catwalk and stopped, throwing its beam on a crowd of shuffling bodies coming in from the right. Snarls rose behind her, and she knew she was seconds away from being torn apart.

  Then the thing in the pipe forest shrieked. Rosa looked up to see a dark mass dropping toward her, arms outstretched and roaring with mad lust.

  She screamed and fell to the catwalk, shoving her pistol upward and pulling the trigger.

  Then the Hobgoblin was on her.

  FORTY-ONE

  Nimitz

  The crippled aircraft carrier moved west on a ten-knot current, the port side hull shredded by armor-piercing and high-explosive rounds. The firing fell off for a while, but the damaged section had now slipped below the surface and was taking on water at an alarming rate.

  Nimitz drifted along the land mass on the north side of the bay, an area where Sausalito had crumbled into ruins. Ahead was the remaining support tower of the Golden Gate Bridge, its red steel climbing into the night sky, the approaching roadway still intact and leading up to the support, then dropping away into space in a gnarl of broken asphalt, bent red steel, and twisted cables.

  Water churned about the tower’s base, and on its present course, the current would carry the flattop straight into it. High above, the roadway approach was packed with the dead, crowding together right up to the drop-off. Several noticed the approaching carrier and tried to walk toward it, stepping off the side and tumbling down into the sea.

  The rest simply stood in a shifting crowd, staring at and thinking about nothing, while the wide, flat deck of the ship drew closer.

  • • •

  Rosa was flat on her back, the creature’s weight atop her, the maroon face staring into hers with its mouth open in a sna
rl. Michael’s expression was frozen in a rictus of fury, but the waxy eyes saw nothing. A neat bullet hole was punched through the center of his forehead.

  The groans of the dead came at her from both sides, and Rosa shoved the body off, scrambling to her feet. A sailor galloped at her from the left, and she threw her empty pistol at it, leaping for the ladder that climbed one wall of the tubelike room.

  Hands caught at her backpack and she shrugged out of it, climbing in bare feet. Each time her bullet-damaged foot pushed off a rung, she let out a scream of pain. More hands tore at her legs, nails ripping through the fabric of her oversized pants. Another hand caught the bloody bandage trailing from her right foot, pulling her back down. Rosa screamed again and tore it free, still climbing.

  Then she was above them, a crowd of reeking drifters pressing at the base of the ladder, reaching upward. She looked down, out of reach now, seeing the mass of agitated shadows in the glow of the flashlight still on the catwalk. Wincing and crying out from the pain in her foot, she reached the tiny platform at the top of the ladder, a single, closed hatch waiting in the wall beyond.

  What if someone wedged this one closed from the other side, just like the hatch below? If that was the case, she was finished. The dead would keep her trapped up here on this platform until she died of thirst or decided she could no longer take it and flung herself out into the three-deck shaft of vertical pipes. Either way, she would join their ranks.

  Her hand touched the handle. It’s locked.

  But then the handle moved on its own, the steel oval swinging away from her. She cried out as a hand shot out to grab her arm.

  “Oh my God, Doc!”

  Tommy stood on the other side holding a flashlight, his assault rifle hung around his neck on a sling. He pulled her through the hatch. “I heard the shots! I’ve been looking for you, are you okay?”

  Rosa sobbed and fell against him, her body trembling.

  The orderly held her close. “Michael?” he asked.

  The medic shook her head, face buried in his chest.

  Tommy put an arm around her waist. “Let’s get you out of here.”

  • • •

  Charlie Kidd stalked up an aisle between firefighting suits, rifle to his shoulder, following the blood trail. His vision continued to sway into double images and back again, and he still felt like throwing up but forced down the urge. He was leaving his own trail now, losing blood from the head wound. Soon he would pass out and drop, he knew, and there would be no one to give him medical attention. Death was close.

  So be it. You first, Father.

  The aisle ended at a wall with another aisle crossing right to left, the rear of the compartment. On the deck before him, boot prints and bloody smears went in both directions. Right or left? His finger tensed on the trigger and he leaped out, swinging right, squeezing a long burst from the M14.

  The bar was iron, six feet long and capable of prying open cockpits and helicopter doors. Xavier gripped it in two hands and let out a primitive cry, thrusting it like a spear and driving it into the man’s back.

  Charlie grunted as three feet of bloody iron erupted from the center of his chest. He dropped the rifle, eyes blinking and mouth moving wordlessly. Then there was only darkness.

  Xavier let the impaled man fall, the bar running him through clattering on the deck. “You should have gone left,” the priest whispered. Then he stripped the dead man of his spare magazines and picked up his rifle. Xavier looked at the figure on the floor, trying not to hate him for all he had done, struggling to muster feelings of forgiveness and mercy.

  Xavier shot Charlie Kidd in the head. It was all the mercy he could summon.

  FORTY-TWO

  Adventure Galley

  Twenty-five minutes! The twitchy fire control system had Vargas in fits, blinking on for a moment before crackling back into a wash of static. Console lights flickered green and then glowed red once more. The captain’s strident demands in his ears had finally caused him to rip off the headset and throw it across the combat center.

  He had it now, though. The video image was steady on both the camera feed and the gun screen. Auto-targeting and gyro-stabilization were both offline, but the operations specialist had managed to bring up the manual controls for the deck gun. A white circle was centered on-screen, rising above and then falling below the image of the aircraft carrier as the cutter rode the seas approaching the mouth of the Pacific. He used a joystick to keep the pip on target, able to use only one hand and forced to release the stick so he could press the fire button.

  The deck gun boomed, and on-screen a splash plumed from the water a hundred yards short of the carrier. Vargas adjusted the pip and fired again, then once more, starting to walk the splashes into the target.

  The magazine counter read ten shells remaining.

  He twitched the joystick, fired the deck gun, and then laughed out loud when a white bloom appeared on the green-and-black screen, right at the carrier’s waterline.

  “All mine now,” he said to the empty combat center, timing his next shot with the rise and fall of the ship. He fired again. Another hit.

  • • •

  Elizabeth Kidd stood at the starboard bridge windows with her binoculars, watching the impacts, relieved that Vargas was firing once more and had found his range. She was keeping track of the rounds in her head, deducting each shot from the count she knew they had on board. Now that Vargas was on target, there would be enough shells to send the carrier to the bottom.

  Her back was turned to the ladderway leading up to the bridge, and she didn’t see a haggard-looking Amy Liggett creep up through the opening with Special Agent Ramsey’s Sig Sauer in her hand. The sound of the floor hatch being dropped and dogged shut made her turn.

  Amy stood with the pistol pointed at her captain. “Cease fire. Now,” she said.

  “Ensign,” Liz started, “you don’t—”

  “Now!” Amy pointed the pistol at Liz’s face. “They did nothing to you, nothing to deserve this.”

  Liz shook her head slowly. “You haven’t seen—”

  Amy cut her off again. “I’ve seen plenty. You’re a monster, and this stops right now.”

  Over at the navigation station, Mr. Waite moved toward her suddenly. Amy pivoted and shot him in the chest. The young helmsman charged her too, but he hesitated, and Amy spun back, firing again, hitting the boy and sending him to the deck.

  Liz’s sidearm was in her hand then, and she blasted six rounds into the young woman across the compartment. Amy fell, the pistol dropping from lifeless fingers. Liz strode through the bridge and fired three more shots, one for the head of each corpse lying on the deck. She wasn’t about to let them get up and prevent her from finishing what she’d started.

  The deck gun boomed again, but she was away from the bridge windows now, unable to tell whether the shell had connected. She took the helm, keeping the cutter on course.

  Let’s complete the mission.

  FORTY-THREE

  San Francisco Bay

  Salt spray and wind stung Calvin’s cheeks as he raced the gray RIB boat across the bay, moonlight illuminating the black shape of the warship ahead of him. The gun on the vessel’s bow fired, blooming red in the night, and a shell streaked through the air overhead, hitting the carrier behind him.

  Calvin gripped the craft’s wheel tightly as it pounded over the waves, slowed by its cargo but still closing the distance rapidly with the throttle thrown all the way forward. He knew that he would be spotted at any moment—either on radar or by a lookout—and that the gun would turn on him. Calvin didn’t hesitate. The deck gun roared again, trying to kill his family, his friends.

  He would protect them.

  Strapped to both sides of the launch and protruding forward past the rubberized bow were MK-54 torpedoes, armed for contact detonation by Chief Liebs just before he and Stone lowered the boat into the water. Each of the two 608-pound weapons was eight feet long, and their 97-pound warheads carried
a combined equivalent of 476 pounds of TNT.

  The deck gun did not turn on the small launch, and the cutter held its course.

  The warship’s shape grew before him, and in the moonlight Calvin could see the vessel’s mast, an American flag snapping in the wind.

  Calvin’s last thought was of his children as he drove the RIB boat into the cutter’s side at over forty knots.

  • • •

  The blast was a spectacular white flash as both warheads connected with the vessel right at amidships.

  Returning from the RIB boat launch bay to the flight deck, Chief Liebs and Stone had watched the launch’s wake as it crossed the water, ducking each time a shell from the deck gun slammed into the carrier’s side, but refusing to take their eyes off their friend.

  Ship-killing was exactly what the MK-54s had been designed to do, and the blast shattered the side of the other vessel, breaking its keel. The cutter’s bow and stern leaped skyward in a V as the center folded.

  In seconds, both ends of the broken warship slid beneath the waves.

  FORTY-FOUR

  Adventure Galley

  The bow, bridge, and broken remains of the cutter’s radar mast—everything forward of the torpedo blast—spiraled down through the black waters in a plume of oil, bubbles, and debris. It went down backward, the sleek bow pointed toward the surface for a bit, eventually pushed over by the current until it turned upside down. When it impacted with the bottom of the bay, the ship sent up a cloud of silt and steel fragments. Pieces of deck rail, black hull panels, and a splintered radar dish bloomed around it before sinking slowly to the sea floor. The bodies of the rescue swimmer, Mr. Vargas, and Leary the contractor billowed out as well, then joined the sinking debris.

  Radar masts crumpled as the forward half of the ship settled, kicking up more silt, and the broken cutter came to rest completely inverted. A quarter mile away, the severed stern ended up on its side, bursts of air exploding from ruptured compartments and open hatches churning the silt cloud around it.