The Tide_Ghost Fleet

by Anthony J Melchiorri

  “Another victory, but it still doesn’t feel right,” Dom said, propping himself up on his elbows. The sheet slipped down his exposed chest, revealing a set of abs every bit as beaten up as the rest of him. “I can’t shake the feeling that we’re just playing catch up with Spitkovsky.”

  Meredith sat upright in the berth and sighed. “You know, I was having such a nice evening, and then you had to go and ruin it by talking about work.” She gave his ear a playful flick.

  “You going to tell me you weren’t thinking the same thing?”

  Meredith didn’t reward him with a response. Their minds were in sync after serving in the CIA for so long, albeit through different mechanisms. Before they’d become romantically involved, they’d been partners for decades.

  Dom pulled her close to him. “I feel like all we’re doing is scrambling around the field running interference without a chance to score a touchdown of our own.”

  “You want a turn to play offense.”

  “I do.”

  “I get it.” Meredith rested a finger on one of the scars on Dom’s shoulder. “Even though we are taking out these freighters left and right, we’re still playing defense. And as long as we’re playing defense, Spitkovsky and the FGL are out there making their moves.”

  “Right,” Dom said. “We know they’re working on new variants of the Oni Agent, but we have no idea when they’ll be released. We’re just trying to recover from the last round. Fort Detrick is operational again, as is the National Institutes of Health, and a few pharmaceutical plants outside DC are cranking out the Phoenix Compound.”

  “And that’s all great. But it’s reactive, not proactive,” Meredith finished for him. “Your whole career—my whole career—has been spent tackling threats before anyone in the US even knew they should be scared. This is a new thing for us.”

  “I want to be back on the attack.”

  Meredith knew that look well. There was a flame fanning to life in Dom’s eyes.

  “This isn’t the first time you’ve talked about this today, is it?” she asked.

  “No, I spoke with Kinsey before you distracted me.”

  “That’s all I am? A distraction?” Meredith feigned hurt.

  “The very best distraction.” Dom’s good humor faded. “The good news is that Divya and Navid helped them tremendously in getting the initial production runs of the Phoenix Compound up and running. Truth be told, I’m glad Kinsey didn’t need them for that long.”

  “I know it makes you feel better to have a full medical and scientific complement aboard the ship.”

  “It does,” Dom said. “But that’s beside the point. From what I gathered, Kinsey is lacking intel on Spitkovsky and the FGL. He doesn’t have much more beyond what we gave them. We might be the only real link the US has to the FGL right now.”

  “That’s pretty damn frightening.”

  “It is,” Dom said. “I talked to him again about a mission to Baghdad. It seems like the joint comm center there between Iraq, Iran, and Russia was a major node in the FGL’s operations.”

  The flames in Dom’s eyes grew brighter.

  “It’d be foolish of us to charge in there alone,” Meredith said. “The Congo labs were bad. Tangier wasn’t much better. Whatever the hell Spitkovsky has going on in Baghdad’s got to be worse. Going in there alone, with no intel? That’s suicide.”

  “That’s what Kinsey said.”

  “Figured.” Meredith’s stomach rumbled. “Time to eat.”

  Dom drew her in for one more kiss before letting her go. She stood and stretched then rummaged around for her clothes.

  “I hope he’s at least taking our intel seriously,” Meredith said as she shrugged on a shirt.

  “He seems to be. At least, that’s what he said. But you know how much credit I give anything that man says. He might be doing what he thinks is best for the country, but he still took my ship from me.”

  “Won’t argue that point.”

  Meredith looked around the floor of the cabin, searching for her shoe. She spotted it under the desk and dove for it. Dom climbed out of the berth and started putting on his clothes. Meredith watched him for a moment, appreciating the view, before sitting down and putting on her boots.

  “The general promises they’re doing something about Baghdad,” Dom said. “They’re reestablishing forward operating bases in the Middle East. Or at least, they’re planning to. He recognizes the threat, but I think the Skulls on American soil are still giving him more problems than he can handle. He’s having trouble mustering the forces and resources for any kind of offensive action.”

  Meredith smoothed what was left of her red hair and paused before opening the hatch. “I know you’re itching to go to Baghdad, but as much as I hate to say it, Kinsey is probably right to take this slow.” She held up a hand to silence Dom before he could protest. “You want to find Spitkovsky while he’s still got his pants down, but the worst thing we could do is rush in and find ourselves in a hole too deep to climb out of. We’ve been flying by the seat of our pants this whole time, and eventually that’s going to come back to bite us.”

  “Any more clichés or metaphors you want to throw in there?”

  Meredith raised a brow. “But you get my point?”

  “It’s abundantly clear. I’ll be as cautious as Kinsey... for now. Every time we’ve boarded those freighters, we’ve tried to find some new data—maps, computer files, anything—and we’ve come away with more questions. Eventually, that’ll change. And when it does, when we finally get a solid lead on what Spitkovsky is up to or where he is, I’m not waiting for Kinsey to give me the go-ahead.”

  That worried Meredith. They’d worked their asses off to get back on Kinsey’s—and by association, the United States’—good side. Acting on a unilateral basis was sure to rankle the old general. And it might just get them killed.

  ***

  Lauren welcomed the sterile smell of the Huntress’s medical bay. There was a time when she associated the odor with hospitals and the big labs of the CDC. All of that was a former life. Now, even with the best air scrubbers and filtration systems, there was something different about the lab and medical bay aboard the ship. The space was much smaller than her old lab. And even though the equipment was cutting edge, it was limited. She didn’t have the full-scale medical imaging suite that was standard at most decent hospitals, nor did she have the massive cell culture and multistage fermentation systems that a serious pharmaceutical manufacturing facility did.

  But at least they had a hell of a team to make up for what they lacked in infrastructure. Divya Karnak and Sean McConnelly were bent over lab samples under a cell culture hood. Peter Mikos, chief surgeon, inventoried the fresh supplies Divya had brought back along with Navid Ghasemi, the newest and youngest scientist on the team. After Divya and Navid’s brief stint in the United States, the reestablished US Joint Forces Command under General Kinsey had authorized the resupply of the Huntress.

  Fortunately, the patient beds in the bay were empty. Only one of the Hunters was still seriously injured and in need of care. During an attack on the Huntress, Terrence O’Connor had lost both legs. One of the downsides to the technical limitations of the ship’s med bay was that they couldn’t provide the prosthetics and physical rehabilitation Terrence needed to quite literally get back on his feet. He’d been pissed to be left behind Stateside, begging her to let him join the fight again, but without prosthetics he’d be stuck in the bay with nothing to do. Colonel Jacob Shepherd, a close ally of Dom’s at Fort Detrick, had insisted Terrence stay with him and offered the man a job defending the base against Skulls—even if he had to do it from a wheelchair. Terrence had gratefully accepted the role.

  Now the only patient Lauren had to deal with on a regular basis was, to put it nicely, unconventional. The hatch to the bay opened, and there stood a man who looked like an advanced victim of the Oni Agent. His bone plates rattled as he slumped onto one of the patient beds. Between the bone plates, vess
els bulged and coursed. The only difference was that his flesh appeared more on the peach side than the pallid gray of the Skulls.

  “Ready for my checkup, Doc,” O’Neil said.

  “How are you feeling?” Lauren asked, taking his pulse.

  “Like the graveyard took a shit, and I’m what came out.”

  Lauren merely nodded. She still wasn’t sure how to deal with O’Neil’s morbid sense of humor. It went against every instinct to be this close to something with claws and a face like his. But her call to duty was stronger. She prepared a cocktail of painkillers in a syringe.

  “Let’s make that a little easier, shall we?” She slid the needle between two of his arm-plates. It bit into one of those bulging vessels, and she depressed the plunger.

  O’Neil’s harsh expression visibly softened as the drugs coursed through his veins. His eyes closed, and he took a deep breath. “Goddamn, I can see how people get addicted to this shit.”

  “Exactly why we need to keep a close eye on things.”

  “Keep as close an eye as you want as long as you keep me drugged up like that.” O’Neil locked his gaze with hers. “I can still feel my bones churning under my skin. It’s like they’re constantly growing and pushing out new plates and spurs.”

  “I will help you,” Lauren said. “That’s my promise.”

  O’Neil rolled his shoulders and flexed his claws as if that helped to spread the painkillers through his inflamed tissues. “That all you got for me today?”

  Lauren was about to say yes, but she had something else on her mind. O’Neil might’ve been an experimental version of a Hybrid, but he still possessed many of the biological traits of the Hybrids the FGL employed.

  Since the beginning of the outbreak, there was one thing constantly on Lauren’s mind: how to protect the Hunters from the Oni Agent. Her team had developed some preventative measures that eventually led them to a more concrete cure in the Phoenix Compound. But even if she could prevent them from becoming infected, that didn’t stop a Skull’s claw from gutting them. Skulls went wild at any kind of stimuli, especially the scent of blood. So far the only way the Hunters could deal with Skulls was to avoid them or shoot them.

  But Hybrids had unbelievable abilities. Besides the enhanced agility and strength provided by their altered physiology, they also produced a mix of aerosolized biochemicals that seemed to affect Skulls. O’Neil and his experimental Hybrid comrades had been able to calm or rile up the Skulls back in Morocco. If Lauren could find some way to harness those capabilities, the field teams might be able to quell the tide of Skulls.

  “Is something wrong?” O’Neil asked at Lauren’s silence.

  “No. I mean, nothing outside the obvious. It’s just...” She paused to collect her thoughts. “We made a promise that we wouldn’t experiment on you. We wouldn’t subject you to any tests like the FGL did, and we wouldn’t give you up to the US government to poke and prod. I meant it when I said that.”

  “I don’t think I like where this is going.”

  “I don’t want to force you to do anything. Especially not anything painful,” Lauren continued. “But understanding how your body controls Skulls would be tremendously beneficial to us and everyone else fighting them.”

  “So you want me to volunteer my body up for your inspection, huh?”

  Lauren swallowed hard. “I do.”

  O’Neil’s eyes burned brighter, redder—a dangerous heat that was quickly spreading through O’Neil’s features.

  Lauren held up her hands and continued. “I get it. I really do. You’ve gone through enough, but if I could just get a couple small biopsies—very quick, easy procedures—we could do so much with that.”

  “My answer has and always will be no.” O’Neil pointed a clawed hand toward the hatch. “I’ll serve in the field until I die, but I’ll never serve on the operating table again.”

  “It’s—”

  “No!” O’Neil roared. “I want painkillers and nothing else.” He stormed out of the med bay.

  Peter looked up from a box of syringes. “Your bedside manner is getting a little rusty, Dr. Winters.”

  “Can it,” Lauren said.

  “I agree with you,” Peter said. “A sample of his adrenal or apocrine glands would be an enormous boon to our work. It’s like we’re sitting on a goldmine, but we don’t have the license to mine it.”

  “Except that this gold could change the course of this war as we know it,” Lauren said. “Sometimes I hate that we have a code of ethics.”

  “Didn’t expect to hear you say that.”

  Lauren sighed. “I don’t really mean it. I wouldn’t do something without a patient’s consent, and I certainly wouldn’t turn someone into a lab experiment. We’re better than Matsumoto and his Unit 731. We’re better than the FGL. But damn it all if being better doesn’t hold us back.”

  Peter paused and then said, “O’Neil may warrant bending our ethics.”

  “No,” Lauren said. “We can’t do that. We can’t start making excuses for our actions until we end up developing our own Hybrids and Skulls.”

  “Then you’re going to leave O’Neil alone?”

  “Of course not.” Lauren couldn’t leave a scientific mystery like that untapped. Especially if it could help save the lives of all those around her. “I will convince him. I’ll do this the right way. And, mark my words, we will use science to stop the FGL.”

  -4-

  Dublin, Ireland

  Under a gray sky that threatened icy rain, Dom strode down the gangplank to the pier. Meredith walked beside him. All around, ferries that had once transported people from Dublin to elsewhere around Europe were alive with activity. But it wasn’t the same activity that had kept the port busy before the rise of the Oni Agent. Irish Defense Forces were marching onto ships and boats, loading them with cargo. Orders and shouts blasted between dockworkers, and guards peered over barbed-wire-lined walls toward the rest of the Skull-infested city of Dublin.

  The Irish Defense Forces had reestablished a safe zone at the port. The IDF was also launching rescue missions around the Emerald Isle and to surrounding countries within their reach. It would be a damn shame to lose a group like this. It was rare enough to find an organized, government-supported military unit that had gained a foothold in the increasingly danger-steeped world. But this was where Kinsey had warned Dom the FGL would attack next. According to the communications the general’s team had intercepted, a strike group of four container ships filled to the brim with Skulls, Goliaths, and Droolers was on the way.

  Dom wasn’t certain he and his crew could eliminate them all in time to save Dublin. They needed to work with the Irish.

  At the end of the gangplank stood a man in an olive-green coat flanked by a cadre of men with rifles.

  “Damn fine weather to roll into harbor,” the colonel said with a grin. “Welcome to a sunny day in Ireland.”

  “Any day the first person to greet me isn’t a Skull counts as a damn fine day in my book.” Dom extended a hand. “Captain Dominic Holland.”

  “Lieutenant Colonel John Buckley. At least, that’s what I was before this mess started. It’s anybody’s guess where I’ll end up in the official records. Suffice to say, most of my predecessors have succumbed to our bloody skeletal friends, and somehow I’m the one left in charge.”

  “I hear you, brother,” Dom said. “This is Meredith Webb. Former intelligence officer now working with me on the Huntress.”

  “Kinsey warned me about you,” Buckley said with narrowed eyes. Dom must’ve let his worry bleed into his expression because Buckley chuckled. “It’d be a bloody shame if I believed every word coming out of every American’s mouth I ever met. You’re a serious lot, but you can be more paranoid than my Auntie Margaret. She ran off and joined a convent. The old lady always harped about the coming apocalypse. Suppose she was right in the end.”

  Meredith traded a look with Dom. “I can assure you that whatever you’ve heard—” she began.


  The lieutenant colonel waved his hand dismissively at her assurances. “Don’t be worrying about it. Kinsey told me not to let down my guard around you two, but I’m also not the type to turn down help when it’s needed and offered. Any crew brave enough to sail around the world fighting those monsters deserves the benefit of the doubt in my book.”

  “And that’s all we’re here to do,” Dom said.

  “Then we have no time to waste,” Buckley said. “Shall we?”

  “One more person will be joining us,” Meredith said. “But I’m warning you, he’s not your average foot soldier.”

  “No such thing as an average foot soldier,” Buckley said.

  “O’Neil looks like a Skull, but he’s not dangerous,” Dom said. “He’s on our side.”

  Buckley blinked several times before regaining his jovial good humor. “Get him down here, and we’ll be on our way.”

  Dom called O’Neil down over the comm link. As the Hybrid marched down the ramp, a few of Buckley’s guards stepped in front of him. Their fingers tightened around their rifles, and one began to aim at O’Neil before Buckley put his hand up. Dom understood their reaction. O’Neil’s mask of bone and his scything claws still made him uneasy, and he’d had time to get used to the Hybrid.

  “Rifles down, boys,” Buckley said. “You heard the captain. This one’s on our side.” Buckley moved past his men to peer at the Hybrid. “O’Neil, huh? You’ve got a bit of Irish blood in you?”

  “Great-grandparents, sir.”

  The lieutenant colonel slapped him on the back. “Welcome home, my boy.”

  Buckley ushered them into a Mowag Piranha armored personnel carrier. The APC joined a convoy that wound from the pier onto the barren streets. There were no bodies, and all the civilian vehicles had been pushed aside to clear a route through the city. They passed storefronts with shattered windows and pubs and restaurants with tables strewn about inside. The Ionic columns outside the parliament house rose to greet them before they entered a militarized checkpoint leading to Trinity College. The once-picturesque place of higher learning had been turned into a military base. Huge tents stood across Parliament Square and over the lawns. Military personnel filed between buildings.