RED SUN ROGUE

by Taylor Zajonc

  “When I play Koppun in Flower Girl, I know every line! By heart!”

  Jonah let himself smile. “You ready for your first assignment?”

  “Yes!”

  “Good. We’re headed back towards the Japanese fleet. I want them to hear us coming clearly from a long, long distance out so they don’t think we’re sneaking up on ’em. I figure the best way we can do that is play some loud music over the PA system.”

  “I know much music,” said Sun-Hi before pausing and glancing around conspiratorially. “I know much forbidden music.”

  “Prove it. Pick something that’ll piss ’em off.”

  Jonah didn’t have to say another word before Sun-Hi dove into the crew’s music library. The captain stole one last sip of the tea before leaving her to the search. Within moments, the upbeat synth and guitar strains of The Vapor’s Turning Japanese blared over the internal public address system of the submarine. He grinned—she’d picked well. The song was the exact right amount of fuck you he was going for.

  Sun-Hi turned to him and grinned. “I think you good captain,” she said. “I do not think you get us all killed like Vitaly say.”

  It figured the Russian would say that—shoot someone in the chest a couple of times and they never let you live it down. “You do well on this and I’ll teach you to drive the boat so I can finally throw Vitaly overboard.”

  “Really?”

  “No. And don’t tell him I said that.”

  Jonah let the crew sleep for one final hour, only summoning them to the command compartment as the Scorpion made its final approach to the Japanese fleet. Alexis frowned as she leaned over Sun-Hi’s shoulder, examining the communications console with weary, experienced eyes.

  “No telemetry. Radio isn’t so much as ticking over. Is our antenna working?”

  Vitaly shrugged his shoulders in puzzled resignation. “Diagnostics say no problem. Low-frequency OK, too.”

  “We should be in visual range at this point,” said Jonah.

  “Vitaly—bring us up to periscope depth. Our new friends could be observing a radio blackout, given how pissed off the North Koreans are right now. Probably don’t want to be implicated by proxy.”

  Vitaly grunted his aye as the submarine gently tilted, raising a long optic stalk above the waves. Jonah swiveled the periscope, his view simulcast to several video monitors around the command compartment.

  A gasp went up around the compartment as the first image flashed upon the screen. An amphibious assault ship burned stem to stern in a massive pillar of flames. A thick column of acrid smoke rose from the gutted hulk into the sky above. Jonah panned the periscope slowly to starboard, halting the movement as the viewer fell upon the helicopter carrier. The flat-topped naval vessel listed hard, half her red-painted belly, propellers, and rudders stuck above water. The port edge of her tilting, empty flight deck dipped into the cold ocean with each tossing wave. Every helicopter had snapped from its lashings and slid into the sea, leaving behind thick black rubber skid marks and long, gouged scratches.

  “What the fuck?” muttered Jonah, trying, but failing to keep his shock in check.

  “My god—I haven’t seen anything like this since—” began Hassan.

  “Since the Battle of Anconia Island,” said Dalmar, finishing his sentence. “Where we won the day at great cost.”

  “Where are all the lifeboats? All the sailors?” said Alexis. “There should be an ocean of survivors around us.”

  “Maybe they rescued already?” said Sun-Hi hopefully. “Or they’re all dead,” growled Dalmar. Jonah shot the pirate a look to silence him—Sun-Hi’s fellow refugees could still be aboard the stricken carrier.

  Jonah stared at the remains of the destroyed fleet before him. The scene bore an uncanny resemblance to pictures he’d seen of the Battle of Bubiyan, when twenty-one fleeing Iraqi vessels were destroyed in a last-ditch attempt to reach Iran and save themselves. It was a classic Gulf War turkey shoot, lightly armed surface vessels against high-speed British attack helicopters—the fleeing Iraqi sailors never had a chance.

  “We should get the fuck out of here,” said Alexis. “Like, yesterday.”

  “Belay that,” said Jonah, narrowing his eyes in concentration. “Surface and make for the fleet at half speed. Vitaly, give me a full radar sweep as soon as you’re able—I need to know if there’s anybody else in the neighborhood.”

  “Is there a hole in your screen door?” Alexis pointed to the burning ships on the monitors. “Half the Japanese Navy just got shot to shit! We should fucking go, right goddamn now!”

  “She is correct,” Dalmar boomed. “We are too late for this battle.”

  “My orders aren’t up for debate,” snapped Jonah as he pointed to the monitor. “Vitaly—how close are we?”

  “Five minute out,” said Vitaly. “We come alongside carrier soon unless we change course. Radar sweep complete—no other surface ship within sixty mile. Does not mean we are alone. Could always be airplane, hiding submarine …”

  “A few planes and a sub couldn’t have done this much damage,” said Marissa. “Whoever hit them must be long gone by now. Christ, what a goddamn mess.”

  “Do you think …?” began Sun-Hi, her voice warbling as she attempted to control her worry.

  Marissa didn’t let her finish. “I’m sure all of your friends were transferred to Japan as soon as we left. Right, Jonah?”

  “No way they were still on that ship,” agreed Jonah with a grimace. “They’re all safe and sound. I’m sure of it.” Marissa was right about the damage—it looked as though World War III had started and they’d missed their invite.

  “Could the attackers be coming back?” asked Alexis.

  Marissa interjected her theory, almost before Alexis could even finish speaking. “It has to be the Chinese. There’s no other explanation—who else could mount an attack of this scale?”

  “Mother Russia maybe responsible,” added Vitaly. “We cause international incident when we try to escape, no?”

  Jonah shook his head, unconvinced. “I don’t buy it. No way an entire fleet gets taken out over a hundred-meter territorial dispute. Surface the Scorpion. I’m popping my head topside to take a look.”

  “Perhaps we have underestimated North Korea,” said Dalmar. “I think they are not as weak as they appear.” But Jonah let the theory fall to silence.

  “Talk to me, Jonah—why aren’t we running?” asked Hassan as the submarine rose the last few meters to crest the waves. Jonah ignored the doctor as well, fixated on the screen as calculations churned through his racing mind. He reached over to the storage cabinet and silently retrieved a hand radio and a pair of powerful binoculars, slinging both around his neck as he grabbed onto the lower rungs of the command compartment ladder.

  The crew stared at him as he began to ascend the conning tower.

  “Thanks for filling us in on your plan as per usual,” Marissa shouted at Jonah’s heels as he climbed upwards. He couldn’t fault her. She wasn’t angry, not really. She was just hungry and exhausted and scared like the rest of them, including him.

  Jonah glanced back to the command compartment just long enough to see Hassan place a comforting hand on Marissa’s shoulder, telling her the argument wasn’t worth it. Removing his hand, the doctor yanked a wool cap over his tousled black hair and scrambled up the ladder after Jonah.

  The conning tower hatch popped with a hiss, stale interior air mixing with the winter cold. Jonah shivered, bracing his feet against the rungs as he muscled the half-open hatch with his shoulder, fighting frozen hydraulic mechanisms. The conning tower exterior was already covered with a growing sheen of thin ice, the ocean spray freezing against the subzero steel of the Scorpion’s hull. The biting air felt good, though, snapping him out of his hungry lethargy.

  Hassan emerged next to Jonah, clutching his arms around his chest in the sudden chill. Jonah ignored him, drawing the binoculars to his eyes as he scanned the sea. There it was, dead ahead—the close
st of the orange life rafts, dozens more now visible as they drifted in clusters around the burning assault ship and sinking carrier. Alexis’ ocean of stranded sailors had finally materialized before them.

  “It goes against my every instinct as a doctor to say this, but we’re in no position to take on survivors,” said Hassan with a shiver. “We have no food—our medical supplies are all but gone—and you and I both know this crew is hanging on by a thread.”

  Jonah lowered the binoculars from his eyes. “Those aren’t survivors,” he intoned, his voice low and gravelly as he handed the binoculars to the doctor.

  He’d seen death before, even inflicted it himself. But not like this—the closest life raft was half sunk, orange rubber shredded. There were a handful of lifeless bodies onboard, maybe six or eight, less than a quarter of the raft’s capacity. Piled on top of each other, the corpses moved in an eerie, serpentine facsimile of life, animated by the choppy waves. It was impossible to tell where the remains of one sailor ended and another began. They’d been all but torn apart by a merciless onslaught of high-caliber bullets, arms and legs separated from sockets, heads and torsos burst and leaking. A school of a thousand flitting silverfish danced in seeping blood and viscera, feeding, as the gruesome wash flowed from the raft and into the cold ocean.

  “This is a massacre, a war crime,” Hassan hissed as the inflatable raft gently knocked against the hull of the Scorpion, the bloody tableau left to swirl in their slow wake. “Who would machine-gun unarmed men as they fled to the sea?”

  Jonah chewed down the lump in his throat, taking the binoculars back to slowly scan one life raft after another. He confirmed they’d seen but a fraction of the butchery. Every other raft in sight bore the same shredded, bloody, half-flooded hallmarks of a deliberate, systemic execution.

  “There could still be survivors inside,” said Jonah, pointing to the looming carrier. “So long as she’s floating, there’s a chance. No turning back now.”

  “We have a satellite phone,” said Hassan. “Can’t we call someone with the resources to actually make a difference?”

  “You’re welcome to try and navigate the Japanese Navy telephone directory at two bucks a minute. Maybe we’ll get lucky and they’ll have a menu option for this—you know, press five if you’ve just witnessed the largest naval atrocity in Japanese history.”

  “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do, Jonah,” snapped Hassan. “What difference can we possibly make?”

  Jonah pointed across the waters towards the tilting Japanese helicopter carrier. “We can save that ship.”

  The interior of the command compartment was dead silent. The crew watched as Jonah stooped over Vitaly’s console and initiated a marine architecture subroutine. He glanced between the images on the periscope monitor and the computer program. Within moments he had sketched out a rough pixilated outline of the disabled carrier, digitally reproducing the sixty-degree angle, and estimating interior flooding. Finished, he flipped the monitor feed onto the command compartment viewers, showing everyone the ad hoc 3D model of the Japanese flagship.

  “She’s at a sixty-degree list, and on fire in multiple compartments,” said Jonah. “Power is likely off-line, as are network systems and all primary and auxiliary pumping stations. She’s bad off, but I think we can right her.”

  Exclamations of disbelief erupted from every corner of the command compartment. “Give him a moment to explain!” said Hassan, trying in vain to silence the crew.

  “I may not be an expert, but that carrier looks properly fucked,” interrupted Alexis, pointing at the screen.

  “No—he might be onto something,” said Marissa as she furrowed her brow. “What’s the salvage value? I bet we could get a hundred million dollars if we keep her from sinking. Double that if we can somehow tow her to a Japanese port. But even if we don’t get paid, it still might get us off the Japanese government’s shit list.”

  “What is shit list?” asked Sun-Hi, cocking her head.

  “Ask Jonah,” said Marissa. “He’s on all of ’em. Especially mine.”

  “Nobody ever try this with military ship,” warned Vitaly. “Survivors may view boarding party as pirates.”

  “This isn’t a cash grab,” said Jonah. “If there are survivors, they’re hunkered down; they’re not going to start shooting at someone willing to help. The way I see it, we don’t have to save the whole ship. If we can get control of the central systems and get a single generator back online, we can re-start the pumps, roll her back upright. Maybe even get some of the fires under control. It’d give the Japanese time to mobilize their own salvage teams. In the meantime, keeping that ship afloat may be the only chance any survivors have.”

  Alexis sputtered. “But the scale! She has to be a hundred times the size of the Scorpion!”

  “You’re going to have to trust me, Alexis. This . . . is what I do.”

  “What you used to do,” pointed out Marissa. “Back when you were working for my dad. And that was a long time ago, Jonah.”

  Vitaly slowed the Scorpion to a shuddering halt as she approached the tilting deck of the Japanese carrier. Ash fell from the sky like snow, drifting from the billowing columns of smoke and fire enveloping the burning assault ship to their stern. Jonah and his crew slowly took in the destruction through the periscope feed. The submarine jolted as it first knocked against the side of the steep flight deck, the tilting control tower above looming over them like a cliff. Marissa took the periscope from Jonah, aiming the optic down the vast length of the carrier.

  “What are we doing?” whispered Hassan, too quiet for anyone to hear but Jonah.

  “The right thing—I hope,” whispered Jonah. But he didn’t know who he was trying to convince, the doctor or himself. He cleared his throat, stepping up to address the crew. “Alexis and Vitaly—you’re with me. Hassan will take command of the Scorpion. We’re boarding the carrier in ten minutes.”

  Jonah wanted the doctor by his side—hell, he needed him. But he knew Hassan wouldn’t be able to pass a stricken sailor without stopping to try and save a life. There wouldn’t be time on this mission. His crew would be up against fire and steel and the ocean itself. A place with no room for mercy if they were to have any hope of succeeding.

  CHAPTER 12

  Vitaly was last to arrive in the forward armory. The Russian helmsmen had insisted on fussing over the Scorpion’s trim and ballast to his own exacting specifications before reluctantly relinquishing the post to Dalmar. Not that Dalmar could do much more than punch the button that opened the main hatch—the pirate’s experience at the helm was nonexistent, due equally to his impatient temperament and generalized disinterest. Vitaly might be able to talk Dalmar through the simple stuff on the radio in case of emergency, but that would be about the limit of what they could expect. As much as Jonah would have preferred to leave Vitaly at the helm, there wasn’t any other choice— he’d need his best crew member on hand to have any shot in hell at saving the carrier.

  “Touch nothing!” yelled Vitaly down the main corridor. He waved his arms to punctuate his demand as he entered the forward armory. Both Dalmar and Hassan shouted back in unison, pointing out that they’d heard him clearly the first six times.

  “Gear up,” said Jonah as he shoved a slim inflatable life vest into Vitaly’s arms. “Make sure your loadout includes survival suits, flotation, helmets, climbing gear, harnesses, and any computer tech you’ll need on the inside.”

  “We use scuba gear?” asked Vitaly.

  “Pony bottles only,” said Jonah. “Keep it on your person, not in your mouth. If you get stuck underwater you’re probably fucking dead anyway.”

  “How about first aid?” suggested Alexis, pointing to a red-crossed sling pack hanging from a hook on the nearest bulkhead.

  Jonah shook his head. “We can’t get bogged down with wounded—not even for an initial triage. We’d never make it to the bridge or engineering in time to accomplish anything.”

  Alexis scowled a
s she pulled her neoprene survival suit over her boots, wiggling the thick orange waist up and over her hips. “I’m just going to point out that anybody who knows a good goddamn about operating the Scorpion is heading out the hatch with you.”

  “Noted.”

  Sun-Hi and Marissa approached from the corridor, the pair holding one marine radio for each of the salvage team.

  “You’d better not disappear on me again,” said Marissa, shoving one of the radios into Jonah’s hands. “No turning up in three years on the other side of the goddamn world.”

  “Or else what? You’ll get engaged to an accountant without doing me the courtesy of breaking it off first?”

  “Or I’ll kick your fucking ass, that’s what,” retorted Marissa. “And he’s not an accountant; he’s an equity trader at the largest hedge fund in Seattle, you dick.”

  “Sounds an awful lot like an accountant to me,” said Jonah as he grabbed a length of rope from the wall and slung it over one shoulder.

  “Some of us work jobs that require more than a sledgehammer and two brain cells to knock together,” shouted Marissa, starting to lose control of her temper as she jabbed an outstretched finger towards Jonah. Sun-Hi stepped between them before Marissa could launch any further verbal onslaught, handing Alexis and Vitaly the two remaining radios.

  “The radio maybe not work inside Japan ship,” she said hesitatingly. “Very much interference.”

  “Makes sense,” whispered Alexis with a shiver. “I figured we’d be on our own the moment we stepped onto that carrier.”

  Jonah wasn’t prepared for the heat. The tilting helicopter carrier belched a fresh slick of flaming aviation fuel with every swell, swirling against the hull of the Scorpion like a halo of fire. He swam towards the sinking ship, trying to ignore the taste of diesel in his mouth, the burning chemicals against his skin. The control tower was on the high side of the flight deck, looming over them at an impossible angle, as though it could snap off and tumble into the sea at any moment.