by Peter David
Slowly Hopper shook his head. “We have one.”
“One what?”
As the RHIBs came into the harbor, Hopper pointed straight ahead. “We have a battleship.”
Nagata still looked confused. “What? You mean behind the Missouri?” It took him a few more moments to realize what Hopper meant, and when he did, all of his usual reserve dissipated. “Are you crazy? That’s …” He gestured toward the ancient vessel that was permanently moored in Pearl Harbor. “That’s a museum!”
“Not today,” said Hopper.
Minutes later Hopper and his command crew were striding across the deck of the antiquated battleship. The rest of the survivors from the John Paul Jones—the ones who weren’t in immediate need of medical attention—were spreading out, looking around the vessel with the same sense of wonder that one might have seen from wide-eyed tour groups. They’d seen it all before, of course, but never with the notion of it being sent into combat.
“This ship is seventy years old,” Beast was saying. “It’s completely outdated.” He started ticking off the problems on his fingers. “The firing systems are all analog. The engines probably haven’t been started in a decade, which would be fine, but they’re steam, which I have no idea how to fire up. And even if you did have a user’s manual and gave me six weeks to go through it all, we still don’t have enough crew to physically run the damn thing!”
“I already thought of that,” said Hopper. “Stone brought me here to visit once, back when I first enlisted. I’ve stopped by every so often, talked with them. Great guys. There’re experienced hands ready to serve; more than enough to fill our needs.”
“What are you talking ab—?”
But Hopper had stopped walking, and was now pointing ahead of them. Beast, Raikes, Ord and several others stared where he was indicating, and it was all they could do not to laugh. Then, faced with the seriousness of their situation, not laughing suddenly became quite easy.
An assortment of old salts—Navy men who were actually more ancient than the ship whose deck they were striding across—were approaching them. They were grizzled, and they weren’t moving particularly quickly. But they walked with their heads held high, distinct pride and—of all things—an attitude of certainty that, now that they’d been called in, everything was going to work out just fine.
There was one who seemed to be the natural leader. Tall, angular, with a square jaw and quiet blue eyes, he strode up to Hopper and straightened his back. “Captain,” he said, and saluted. “Saw you fight those bastards. Hell of a thing. Sorry about your boat.”
Hopper nodded. “Schmidt, isn’t it?”
The old salt nodded. “Lieutenant J. G. Schmidt, yes sir. That was a long time ago, though. ‘Andy’ will do for an old man.”
“Well, Andy, everything old is new again.” His gaze took in all the elderly sailors who were waiting to hear what he had to say. “You men have given so much for your country over the years. No one has the right to ask any more of you. But I am asking.”
“When we saw what was happening,” Andy said slowly, in a rough voice, “we said ‘not again.’ Not in our lifetimes.” His eyes were haunted; he seemed to be looking inward to images that he had witnessed decades earlier, on that terrible day in 1941, images seared into his mind that could never be erased. Then his eyes hardened to steel. “What do you need, sir?”
“I need to make this ship ready for war.”
Andy grinned. “War we can do.”
Hopper’s crew moved with renewed energy, prepping the Missouri for action. Some of them were muttering about how ridiculous this whole venture was, but invariably they’d wind up saying it within range of one of the old salts, whose collective hearing was apparently still pretty sharp. As a consequence the reluctant sailors would be on the receiving end of a sound thwap to the head and a growled, “Show some respect, sonny,” from whichever of the elderly sailors happened to be within earshot.
Everything that smacked of either tourism or the ship being a museum piece was quickly scuttled or tossed overboard. Down came the large banner that read, “USS Mighty Mo Museum,” accompanied by a loud ripping noise that garnered some cheering from the old sailors. Hopper spotted, with amusement, one old sailor sweeping his arm across a shelf full of merchandise, knocking it all to the deck and then kicking it off the edge of the ship. A particularly joyous moment was when Beast, Ord and several of the old salts combined their efforts to heft a six-hundred-pound “Mold-a-Rama” wax machine, a particularly cheesy device that—for a buck—would produce a small wax replica of the Missouri while you waited. Kids loved it, and the old salts hated it particularly with a passion. For some reason it struck them as the ultimate trivialization of a once proud fighting vessel. Andy seemed especially enthusiastic about lending a shoulder to the endeavor. Slowly they hoisted it up over the deck. They grunted and shoved and for a few moments it seemed as if the machine was going to win the battle and thud back onto the ship. But then the momentum shifted to them and seconds later the wax machine tumbled down, crashed into the dock and shattered.
“Wax on, wax off!” shouted Beast as the old salts and he high-fived one another.
Andy started chanting, “Way to go, Mighty Mo! Way to go, Mighty Mo!” The rhythmic cheer caught on and soon all the elderly sailors were saying it, too.
Beast turned to Ord, chucked a thumb at Andy, and said, “Check it out. The rhyme of the Ancient Mariners!”
Ord stared at him. “The what now?”
Beast closed his eyes in annoyance. “Just get your ass up to the control room, okay?”
“Fine. Uh …” He glanced around. “Never actually been on a battleship, much less one this old. Where—?”
Overhearing the exchange, Andy called, “Segar! Bring the young man up to the control center!”
“Right this way, young feller.”
Ord turned and saw what appeared to him to be the oldest man on the planet. Segar’s eyes were set in what seemed a permanent squint, and his face was all jowl and bristle, with his head thrust forward defiantly on a thin neck. He was wearing white ducks and a short-sleeved blue shirt that had the Missouri’s name emblazoned above the right breast. His forearms were incredibly well muscled, given his age.
“You’re a sailor?” said an astounded Ord.
“D’ja think I’m a cowboy?” said Segar. He gestured for Ord to follow him and then moved with surprising speed. He didn’t walk so much as he waddled with long strides. Ord hustled after him.
Segar brought him straightaway to the control room, which was blocked off by cordons meant to keep tourists out. Without hesitation Ord picked up the wooden barriers and chucked them aside. Then he entered the room, Segar right behind him, and stopped dead in his tracks.
Where there ordinarily would have been a computer array, Ord was faced with what seemed to be ten thousand analog dials.
He stared at them, not knowing where to begin. Then he said hopefully, “Is there, like, a mouse or something?”
“Nope,” said Segar, shaking his head. “Used to be, but we got cats on board, so that ain’t a problem. Which is good ’cause sometimes the little buggers could get up inside there and start buildin’ nests. Screws up all the readings.”
Ord stared at him. “Riiiiight.”
Meanwhile another old salt, named Grumby—rotund and with a hearty laugh—had accompanied Beast down to the engine room. Beast stopped in awe, having much the same reaction as Ord had up in command. Massive boilers loomed over him like iron sentinels. He didn’t even know where to start, and looked to Grumby in bewilderment.
The old man laughed. “Step aside, son.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a book of matches. He lit one and then held it up in Beast’s face as if he were about to perform a magic trick. Then he tossed it to one side. It sailed through the air like a tiny shooting star and landed inside one of the boiler’s pilot burners. “Here there be dragons,” he said solemnly.
An instant later Beast unders
tood what he meant as, with a massive roar of flame—as if indeed belched up from the mouth of one of those mythic reptiles—the oil that was deep within the bowels of the boiler ignited. “Best hold your ears,” Grumby advised him. Beast clapped his hands over his ears, although he noticed that Grumby was not doing likewise. Instead the old man was manipulating a complex array of dials, firing up the engine, which gave off a hellacious roar that was quite simply the loudest thing Beast had ever heard. Yet Grumby wasn’t flinching from the racket, which led Beast to conclude that years spent down in this cacophony had probably made the old man partly, if not mostly, deaf.
Grumby shouted over the noise, “Like a kitten!”
And Beast thought, Right, purring like a kitten. A thousand-pound kitten.
Hopper arrived at the helm, Nagata right behind him. A sailor named Driscoll was there waiting for them. Driscoll had narrow, canny eyes beneath bushy white eyebrows, and carried with him an air of adventure, as if he were a sailor on a quest to hunt down some great, legendary monster.
There was a sense of majesty in the room. Heroes in a great war had tread here, and—in a sense of ironic turnaround—had done so in battling the very people from whom the man at Hopper’s side had descended. Funny how enemies can become friends, Hopper thought, and wondered briefly if that meant someday the aliens now trying to annihilate them would eventually be allies.
Then he remembered the explosive death of his brother and hoped he wouldn’t be alive to see it. He didn’t want to live in a world where he had to be best pals with the monsters that had killed Stone. If that made him some sort of racist, if that was shortsighted of him … fine. He was really okay with that.
“How we looking on fuel?” he asked Driscoll.
“Six hundred tons, sir. Just enough for maintenance runs.”
“Ordnance?”
“Scraped what we could from storage. It ain’t much.”
He nodded and then said, “Cast us off, sailor. Set course for Saddle Ridge.”
Driscoll ran off to carry out the orders. As the combined crew of young men and old salts made final preparations for the ship to depart, Hopper—as he walked around the helm, running his fingertips along it with reverence—said, “You got kids, Nagata?”
“Children, yes. Three. I have three girls.”
“Three girls.” Hopper whistled softly.
“I am hoping to try for a boy, but my wife … she only makes girls.” There was something in his voice that sounded like a trace of humor, although with him, it wasn’t easy to be sure.
“Girls aren’t so bad.”
“They are my angels,” he said softly. “Do you have children, Mr. Hopper?”
It seemed to Hopper that the time for formality was long gone. “Alex. Please … call me Alex.”
“Children?”
“Not yet. But I’m going to. And I’ll tell you something, Captain Nagata.”
“Tell me what?”
“I can’t wait to put my arms around that little guy and give him the biggest hug that he’s ever gonna have in his life. Don’t think I’ll ever let go.” He sighed, his expression changing, and then patted the bulkhead. “Let’s just see how mighty she is.”
Minutes later, everyone on the ship was at their stations aboard the vessel that had the unenviable task of being the last, best hope of the human race. Hopper, standing up on the flying bridge, picked up the PA and clicked it on.
“I’m not good with words,” he said, his voice echoing throughout the entirety of the ship. “So let me just give you a fact. World War II ended on this ship. The Japanese Instrument of Surrender was signed on the very deck you stand on.” He paused, glancing at Nagata, who was standing next to him. No offense, he mouthed to Nagata. None taken, Nagata mouthed back.
Hopper continued: “I don’t think that’s a coincidence. This old girl ended one war. We do our jobs today, and she’ll see to it we end another … and just maybe save the world in the bargain. My …” He hesitated, trying not to choke up. “My brother always said the same words to his men before a mission. Since he’s not here, I’m saying them to you: Be safe out there. Look out for one another. And let’s keep chargin’.
“Mr. Ord … take us out.”
“Aye, Captain.”
There was a slight lurch, and a groan, and for a second Hopper was worried that someone had forgotten to clear the last of the moorings and the ship was going to rip out the dock in its departure. But then the Mighty Mo eased from its resting place like a coma patient waking after a decades-long slumber. She slid into the water, the propellers picking up power and speed, and a raucous series of cheers went up from all over the deck. Hopper even fancied that he could hear the cheering from deep within the bowels of the ship.
Nagata cleared his throat to get Hopper’s attention. Hopper turned to him, his face a question. With his customary calm, Nagata reached toward a switch, the purpose of which Hopper didn’t know, and flipped it once.
The song “Anchors Aweigh” blared through the speakers, not only setting off a rousing cheer, but also prompting many of the men to start singing along.
“Nice touch,” said Hopper. Nagata bowed slightly. Then Hopper noticed that a number of Nagata’s men were also singing the song, but in their native tongue.
“Man, you have got to teach me how to sing it in Japanese.”
“I’d rather not.”
“Why?”
“Because at some point in the future, you’ll attempt to sing it in front of one of my superiors. He will demand to know who is responsible for your butchering our language, and I will be obliged to commit ritual suicide.”
Hopper stared at him. “You’re kidding.”
“Do you want to take that chance?” he said solemnly.
After considering it, Hopper shook his head. “Wouldn’t be fair to your unborn son.”
“Hai,” said Nagata gravely.
Driscoll was on the flying bridge with them, and he said, “If you don’t mind my asking, Skipper … what’s the plan?”
“Here’s the deal, Driscoll: the enemy doesn’t seem to register us as a threat so long as we don’t do anything threatening. With me so far?”
“Yessir.”
“Okay. So for all any of them knows, we’re just going on a nice little pleasure cruise to Saddle Ridge, which my …”
Girlfriend? That’s gonna sound good.
“… my away team has informed me is Ground Zero for the aliens’ transmission tower. We blow it to hell and that way they won’t be able to get word to what we believe is the rest of their invasion party, waiting for the ‘go’ order.”
“I see. Got it.” Driscoll moved his chin around as if he were chewing on something, and then said, “And just out of curiosity, once we show we’re not just a heavily armed cruise ship out for a jaunt, what happens then?”
“Very likely all hell breaks loose. But we’ll have bought our planet valuable time. These creatures aren’t invulnerable, Driscoll. They can be hurt, they can be killed and they can be blown the shit out of. I’m not sure what the hell is keeping the rest of our fleet at bay, but once the aliens are facing the combined armed might of Earth, nothing,” and Hopper, repeating it with pride, “nothing can stand in our way.”
“Captain, there’s something standing in our way.”
At first Hopper thought Ord was just trying to be funny, but then he saw where the sailor was pointing.
The alien structure that the stingers had been guarding was now blocking their path, as if it had anticipated what direction they were going. It looked the same as it did before: a strange, central body, jagged angles and industrial panels, weird shapes of unknown composition.
Hopper fought to keep his voice casual, as if he were observing some minor weather event that hadn’t been in the morning report. “I didn’t know that one moved.”
Ord said apprehensively, “I got a super-duper bad feeling about this.”
So did Hopper.
The Sea Commande
r activates the morphing circuits through the command ship. It begins to charge with energy, its surface pulsing, its five segments extending to reveal their full fierceness.
Now the humans will experience the consequences of their actions. Now they will see the full power and potency of the Regents.
And it will be the last thing they ever see.
Everyone watched in shock as what was now clearly a vessel—probably the flagship of the alien fleet—began to rise upward, water cascading off ragged metal, splashing white as it poured out of armored sheathing, revealing itself in sections: teethed and buck-knifed with jagged segments that slowly unfolded into five identical pieces of malevolent construction: twelve hundred feet of gritty, industrial danger.
There was deathly silence throughout the Missouri.
It was Ord who broke it as, in a very soft voice filled with barely controlled panic, he said, “We’re gonna need a bigger boat.”
SADDLE RIDGE
The Land Commander is satisfied with the way in which matters are proceeding, even as he fights his frustration over the manner in which he must work.
He surveys the readiness of the power cells, all of which appear to be running at full capacity. He nods in approval as he appraises the various displays and vertical satellites, the human technology that they have cannibalized for their own purposes. He supposes that there is a certain irony to utilizing the very equipment that summoned them in their campaign against the current residents of this ball of dirt and water.
Yet it appalls him that it should be necessary.
He cannot help but dwell on his meeting with the World Commander. That smug bastard, looking down at him with such arrogance, making decisions about how they were to proceed based upon his understanding of how such matters were supposed to proceed. All of it theoretical, none of it taken from actual firsthand experience. The World Commander, sitting there safe and sound in his so-called “strategic center” back home, sent in troops as if Regents’ lives mean nothing to him. Let’s see him at the helm of a combat vessel being dispatched into a war zone and see how he likes it.