The Tide_Ghost Fleet

by Anthony J Melchiorri

  The boom of the Huntress’s fifty-seven-millimeter cannon burned through the air. Rounds punched through the container ships as they neared Dublin. The Seahawk landed on the Huntress by the time two of the ships had been damaged enough to stall their progress. The third continued. It rammed into the pier. Inertia carried it slicing through smaller vessels until it screeched to a stop.

  As the Hunters carried O’Neil into the Huntress, Dom held his binos to his eyes. The Irish Defense Forces rushed around it to quell any invaders. But the ship didn’t release hordes of Skulls like they had thought it would.

  “Thomas,” Dom called over the comm link. “Tell Buckley to get his men out of there! Now!”

  The message didn’t reach him in time. Dom watched in horror as the ship erupted into a ball of shrapnel and fire, enveloping the pier and all the men around it. Debris launched into the sky and then came back down across the port, slamming into buildings and vehicles and people. Simmering wreckage was strewn over the makeshift defensive barriers the Irish had constructed.

  “Son of a bitch,” Dom muttered.

  Spitkovsky had played them all.

  ***

  Alarms blared all around Kent Island. Rachel bolted upright in bed. She heard the surprised yelps and confused calls of her fellow midshipmen. A chill swept up her legs when her feet hit the cold concrete floor. She knew what she needed to do.

  Grab my rifle. Get to the church.

  The routine was simple enough, ingrained in her from hours of practice.

  But this time, it wasn’t practice. She rushed through the mass of enlisted men and women, as well as civilian volunteers, surging to their stations. The air outside nipped at her skin. She regretted not grabbing her jacket. But the momentum of the crowd carried her forward like a wave pushing her to shore.

  “Rachel!” a voice called above the din. Rory caught up to her. Dark bags hung under his eyes, and his hair stood in all directions, but he looked alert enough.

  Together they ran toward their station. Already civilians were pouring down the street and sidewalks, winding between buildings. Children sobbed. Parents did their best to comfort them while wearing expressions filled with worry.

  “Keep moving!” Rachel called.

  “What’s going on?” An elderly woman paused, causing a buildup in the crowd near the church entrance.

  “Please, keep moving,” Rachel said. “We’ll let you know as soon as we can.”

  “But I—”

  “Ma’am,” Rory said in the sternest voice Rachel had ever heard him use, “you heard her. Move along!” Then Rory turned to Rachel. “You think they spotted Skulls at the bridge?”

  “I don’t hear gunfire,” Rachel said.

  “Makes me nervous.”

  At slightly under five minutes, the last of their assigned civilians had made it into the church basement. Rachel checked to make sure the reinforced doors were secure before they rushed toward the barricades at the bridge. Her body tensed. She kept waiting for the bark of rifles or the roar of one of the mini-guns.

  But she heard nothing abnormal. Gulls called into the dark of the night. Water lapped at the shore. The quaint houses and buildings lining the town’s streets looked every bit as peaceful as they must have before the Oni Agent outbreak.

  The duo caught up to a few of the local policemen. “Sheriff Cooper,” Rachel called.

  “Midshipmen Kaufman?” he replied.

  “Do you know what’s going on?”

  Cooper patted his radio. “Activity near the bridge.”

  “I haven’t heard gunshots, though.” Her stomach sank. “Did they already get overwhelmed?”

  “No, not yet,” Cooper said. “They said they saw something big. I think a ship was headed this way.”

  “Oh, shit,” Rory muttered. “One of those container ships we were warned about?”

  Cooper nodded as they jogged onward. “That’s what it sounds like. Big asshole of a ship, too.”

  This was exactly the situation they had trained for. Ever since Captain Holland had discovered the FGL’s plans to launch a ground invasion using his Skulls and Hybrids, they’d been wondering if one of those ships would make it through the bay.

  “Heard these ships are cropping up around the coast,” Cooper said. “Maybe it’s just a rumor, but it sounds like one might be in DC, too.”

  Now Rachel felt sick. They’d hung on to Kent through sheer force of will and vigilance. She had seen what Maryland and Virginia looked like on her long journey back to the island. General Kinsey’s forces had only just reclaimed a few large Washington, DC, neighborhoods like Georgetown and the Navy Yard from the Skulls. But with an army led by Hybrids marching into the nation’s capital, all those lives spent, all that effort expended, might be wasted.

  If DC went, then Kent would be on its own, once again cut off from the rest of the world.

  Rachel shook those dour thoughts from her mind. It wouldn’t matter if Kent was alone or not if they didn’t survive tonight. Other soldiers and volunteers ran with them toward the barricade. As they neared the bridge, voices called into the night. People jogged all along the wall, distributing weapons and ammunition.

  The defenses were constructed in layers, allowing the soldiers room to fall back should Skulls overwhelm the first line. Rachel and Rory wound their way through the crowd toward the front. There they took positions next to a squad of Army National Reservists.

  “How long do we have?” Rachel asked one of the men.

  “Not long.” He pointed southward.

  Rachel followed his finger. A dark shape loomed in the bay, glimmering slightly in the pale moonlight.

  “That ship is huge,” Rory said.

  “Shit,” was all Rachel could say.

  The ship was enormous, stretching wider and rising taller than she could have imagined. But its deck contained only a few stacks of containers, jutting up like fat skyscrapers.

  “Is it just me, or did they not fill that ship up?” Rory asked.

  Rachel squinted. “You wish there were more containers full of Skulls?”

  “Not complaining,” Rory said. “It just looks different than the images Captain Holland described in Morocco.”

  “Well, they aren’t the same ships.”

  “Obviously,” Rory said, sounding annoyed. “Something doesn’t feel right about this.”

  A tingle shivered down Rachel’s spine. He wasn’t wrong. She had been expecting a ship like this to hit their shore. But in her imagination, it had been filled to the brim with shrieking Skulls and Goliaths roaring like erupting volcanoes.

  The ship came at them with only a slight groan as it maneuvered through the bay.

  “Can I borrow your binoculars?” Rachel asked one of the reservists.

  He handed it to her, and she surveyed the ship. At the very least, she expected to see a couple Hybrids roaming over the deck or preparing the containers for when they hit shore. There was nothing moving. The bridge was completely dark.

  “It’s like a ghost ship,” Rachel muttered, handing the binoculars back to the man.

  The men and women defending Kent Island had been resupplied time and time again by the resurgent US armed forces moving throughout the region. They’d been outfitted with weapons to beat back the Skulls, Droolers, and even Goliaths that dared to cross the bridge toward Kent. But they weren’t prepared to take out a freighter on a collision course with the bridge. That bridge was their sole link to the land. Sure, boats and aircraft could cross the bay. But so many refugees arrived on foot, chased by the Skulls, and the bridge was the best way to ensure they made it safely across the bay. Not to mention the fuel supply on Kent was only sporadically replenished, and foot traffic was more reliable when even the winds wouldn’t cooperate enough to support the sailing craft docked around island. If they lost that bridge, their ability to provide relief to people fleeing the Skulls would be greatly diminished.

  Spotlights exploded to life as the ship neared. Still, nothing mov
ed except for a few gulls swooping around the vessel. The ship swung toward the shore, headed straight for the barricade. Calls of alarm echoed around the defensive barriers as others yelled for people to hold their positions.

  “Holy shit,” Rory said. He trembled as he aimed his rifle.

  “We’ve got this,” Rachel said to encourage herself as much as him.

  The ship hit the shallows, carving the earth below. Heavy as it was, momentum pushed it toward the shore. It seemed like it might just cut straight through the island.

  “Hold your positions!” voices rang out.

  Metal screeched as the massive container ship pulverized rock into gravel. It at last slowed, but not enough to stop the ship from driving up onto the island and scraping along the shore. Rachel held her breath as she waited for Skulls to come bounding over the gunwales and pour through town.

  Nothing leapt from the rust-pocked ship.

  Instead the vessel shuddered to a screaming stop. The bow crashed into the bridge almost fifty yards from the barricade. The roadway shook under Rachel’s feet. She grabbed a handhold to steady herself. Cracks jutted through the concrete and asphalt, and chunks of the bridge fell away. Some of the smaller, spear-lined walls used to route the Skulls over the bridge splashed into the bay. Metal groaned as the ship settled, and the snapping and cracking of the bridge finally stopped.

  For what seemed like an eternity, there was silence.

  “Boarding teams,” one of the lieutenants called. “Advance.”

  Soldiers rushed from behind their defensive positions. The first few squads of men and women climbed over the side of the ship and started to spread out along the deck, planting explosives along the containers. Rachel expected to hear the telltale scratch of claws against steel as the presence of the humans aboard the ship stoked the monsters’ aggression.

  But all remained quiet.

  “I don’t like this,” Rachel said. “Skulls should be screaming by now.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Rory said.

  “I hope—”

  Then, with a violent blast that threw Rachel off her feet, hell exploded over the Chesapeake Bay.

  -10-

  Admiral Amin Mokri surveyed the bridge of the Karlstad with a surge of pride—and anger. Pride, because he had under his control one of the most advanced stealth ships in the world. Anger, because the ship he truly wanted remained out of his grasp.

  “Admiral,” Lieutenant Daftary said from the communications console, “we just got word on Operation Ghost Fleet from the FGL comm center.”

  “Report,” Mokri said.

  “Eighty percent of the ships have been detonated. Most of those hit their targets. Three ships hit their target without the charges going off. We’re currently investigating to see if they were sabotaged. One ship in the Dublin group was boarded before detonation. Automated communications indicated that attempted data scavenging triggered the explosives to go off early.”

  “Who was on that ship?”

  Mokri stood over Daftary’s shoulder as the lieutenant tapped a command on his console and an image appeared. “The automated cameras captured these images before the systems triggered self-destruction.”

  Mokri studied the images of the boarders. He didn’t recognize most of the men and women, pixelated as they were. But there were two that he knew instantly. The first was a man with an angular face and blue eyes that shone like lasers even through the grainy pictures. Captain Dominic Holland. The man who had haunted him like an evil spirit for as long as he’d had a career. Holland had wrecked a biological weapons research facility that Mokri had helped lead, then later sabotaged a naval vertical-launch missile weapons system capable of delivering aerosolized chemical payloads. Even with the collapse of the world’s governments, Holland still showed up exactly where Mokri didn’t want the man, first in the Congo, then in Morocco.

  He was more stubborn than herpes. Impossible to get rid of and ugly to boot.

  But the other man frightened him more. The admiral might not know his name, but Mokri knew what he was. A Hybrid fighting alongside Holland? Impossible. And yet there was no mistaking the mask of bone and the organic armor.

  “How did this happen?” Mokri asked.

  “We believe it’s one of the test subjects that Captain Holland liberated,” Daftary replied. “Most of their bodies were accounted for, but with the destruction at the Tangier facilities, it was impossible to be sure how many made it out alive.”

  “Damn,” Mokri said. “Does he just have the one?”

  “I can’t say, Admiral.”

  Mokri lifted his hat and brushed his hand through his thick hair. “This is not a welcome revelation. If they are able to reverse engineer what we have accomplished with the Hybrids...” He met the gaze of the lieutenant. “You can be sure there will be hell to pay when Spitkovsky hears of this.”

  “Yes, Admiral,” Daftary said with a slight tremor in his voice.

  Mokri ignored the frightened glances from the rest of the bridge crew. With his hands locked behind his back, he walked toward the windows and looked over the sweeping deck. A few Hybrids were inspecting the weapons systems of the Karlstad. One was toying with a few surviving Swedes. The Hybrid cackled as he slashed at the bloodied sailors, nearly flaying them alive.

  The Hybrids, all Russians intensely loyal to the FGL—and, most importantly, to Spitkovsky—were cruel beyond what Mokri had expected. Spitkovsky had ordered Mokri’s crew of Iranian sailors to take the Hybrids on, promising they’d be better weapons than any rifles they carried. He was right. But fighting alongside them was nearly as terrifying as fighting against them. He hoped the Hybrids could control their bloodlust.

  The unpredictability of their actions in battle set him on edge, but he could not refuse Spitkovsky’s “request” that the Hybrids join his crew. The mercurial Russian leader was not prone to forgiveness, nor did he tolerate disobedience. Mokri had seen the corpses of those who had survived the attack in the Congo only to face Spitkovsky’s wrath. They would have been better off trampled to death by a Titan instead of what had befallen them.

  If Mokri’s crew failed to execute their plan...

  He clenched his jaw. He wouldn’t fail. This mission went beyond avoiding Spitkovsky’s ire. It was more than just seeking revenge for all that Captain Holland had done to thwart the release of the Skeletnyy Zhivotnyye Nanobakterii 14, or SZN-14. The Americans had given the bioweapon the ludicrous name of “Oni Agent,” but he hadn’t minded the names the West had given to the monsters. Skulls, Droolers, and Goliaths—he hated to admit he actually liked them.

  But soon all those words would be erased, as would the Americans. The spread of SZN-14 would give the FGL the opportunity to engineer a new version of civilization. A chance to reinvent the world order, one in which the entire world didn’t bend in the direction of a superpower that had prevented his country from achieving their full economic and military might.

  “Send those images to Spitkovsky,” Mokri said, finally turning back to Daftary. “He will want to know that Captain Holland has fallen for our trap.”

  Daftary gulped. “But Holland is still alive. The operation did not kill him.”

  “That is a small delay. Nothing more. Holland is a nuisance, and we will get rid of him, but he is not our main target.”

  Holland couldn’t save the United States or Europe. The American mercenary still had no idea what Mokri had planned. The images they’d obtained from the other ships in Operation Ghost Fleet showed how the rest of the world had fallen right into the FGL’s hands. They had been primed to expect monsters; they hadn’t expected explosives.

  It had been hasty work to turn all those ships into remote bombs, and not all of them had gone off as expected, but that was no matter. The most important fireworks show was yet to come.

  “Spitkovsky is hailing you, Admiral,” Daftary said.

  Mokri took a headset and placed it over his ears. “Mokri here.”

  A deep, growling voice
answered. “Holland still plagues us.”

  “He does.”

  “That man is worse than a wart on my ass. There will be an enormous reward if you and your men bring him down.”

  Mokri knew better than to ask what that reward was. It might be promises of riches one day or a higher position in Spitkovsky’s circle of trust. It hardly mattered. Mokri wanted Holland dead for his own reasons. “Have you changed our operational priorities?”

  “No,” Spitkovsky said. “But it would make our job in Europe that much easier if you eliminated Holland first. You don’t think he’ll be a problem for you, do you?”

  “Not at all,” Mokri said. “We’ve learned how he works. When he finds out that we will bring down Washington, DC, he will have no choice but to retreat.”

  “Holland doesn’t retreat,” Spitkovsky said.

  “He doesn’t,” Mokri agreed. “At least not when he has a choice. The rest of the world will react to our threat, too. America will withdraw back into its shell, just like it did during the first wave of SZN-14. If Holland is reluctant to return, I have no doubt the generals running that mess of a country will order him back.”

  “I hope, for your sake, you are right.”

  “I am,” Mokri said. “The cargo ships made them doubt their intel and the veracity of Captain Holland’s claims. I am sure of it.”

  “Your certainty is worth nothing. I want results.”

  “That I will give you. We’re headed to France as we speak. It won’t be long before our men are on the ground there.”

  “Good,” Spitkovsky said. “I take it you’ve avoided all contact with other vessels?”

  “We have,” Mokri said. “We’re as much of a ghost as Holland’s ship.”

  “You’ve proven yourself once to me,” Spitkovsky said. “I have not forgotten what you did to get me out of Siberia. But our place in this new world is not yet decided. If Europe and America stand together, they may think they have a chance of stopping our armies. That is unacceptable.”

  Mokri balled his hand into a fist. The rocky coast of France was in sight. “We’ll send the whole European continent back to the Dark Ages. And it won’t even take us an army to do that.”