by Peter David
“It’s like it just collapsed, sir!” Chavez said. “Like whatever was creating it was shut off—”
“Or destroyed,” said Shane, as hope swelled within him. Even as he ordered the communications officer to raise the Pentagon, he thought that maybe, just maybe, a Navy vessel had managed to rally and get the job done. And he was reasonably sure he knew who was responsible for it. “Good going, Stone,” he said under his breath, not realizing that he was addressing the wrong Hopper.
“Pentagon, sir!” called the communications officer. “Got Fitzroy on the horn.”
The vice admiral. Good. Shane was in no mood to talk to the Secretary of Defense. Shane grabbed the phone and said, “Sir, the jamming array has been terminated. I repeat—terminated.” When the communications officer gave him a quick thumbs-up, he added, “Comms are up, the signal is down. I’m getting our birds in the air and radioing the other carriers. With any luck, we’re turning this thing around.”
They were bold words, he knew, but there was just one problem: the Reagan was a super-carrier, not exactly built for speed. The ship topped out at about 30 knots, which meant it would still take them a while to get to the scene of the action. And if there was one thing Shane had learned in his time, it was that in combat situations, things could turn around very, very quickly.
SADDLE RIDGE
The air was thick with the smell of smoke, which was in turn fighting for dominance with the aroma of ionization rising from the disrupted power cells.
In the Jeep, the airbags had deployed at the moment that Sam, at the wheel, had driven it headlong into the antennae array. Both driver and passenger sides, fortunately, were equipped, but nevertheless Sam and Mick were somewhat dazed from the impact. Sam looked up and made a face when she saw that there was a dead alien a few feet in front of her, pinned against the upright remains of the array by the front of the car.
Suddenly Sam picked up movement out the corner of her eye and saw that another of the wide-shouldered warrior aliens was coming toward her fast. She tried to climb free of the Jeep and get the hell out of its way, but the wreckage of the tower had fallen across her. None of its weight was upon her—the structure of the Jeep, including the front windshield, was supporting it—but it was blocking her ability to clamber free. “I’d really like to get out now,” she said with growing urgency as the alien drew nearer.
Suddenly she shrieked as something grabbed at her from the other direction. She turned and saw, to her relief, it was Mick. He’d obviously regained consciousness, and was lucky enough to be unencumbered by any manner of obstruction. An army-issue fighting knife in his hand, Mick quickly cut apart the seat belt around her waist. He then tried to lift away the crossbar, but it wouldn’t budge.
The alien warrior was practically on top of them, and that was when Mick distracted it while calling out, “Hang tough, Sam. This one is mine.”
He rocketed out of his door and stepped between the alien and Sam just before it reached her, chambering a round into his shotgun.
The warrior stopped, looking momentarily confused, as if it wasn’t sure what Mick’s intentions were. Mick made it abundantly clear as he fired a round from the shotgun at point-blank range.
The assault rocked the creature back on its heels, but otherwise it was unhurt. Its hand speared forward before Mick could make a countermove and it knocked the shotgun effortlessly out of his hands. Automatically Mick tried to go in the direction of the fallen shotgun, but the warrior didn’t allow it. Instead, with a casual sweep of its right hand, it knocked Mick to the ground, his steel legs going out from under him.
Grabbing the edge of the Jeep, Mick immediately hauled himself back to his feet. “Come and get it,” Mick said defiantly, saying and doing anything to distract the thing from Sam.
The alien was all too happy to oblige him. It came in fast and proceeded to dismantle Mick with an array of blows to the head and chest. Sam watched, helpless and frustrated, as Mick waged a war of futility against his far stronger opponent. Whenever Mick did manage to land a blow, it was against the creature’s armor, which barely seemed to register any of the impact. Indeed, the warrior appeared to be enjoying Mick’s ineffectiveness.
Once more it knocked Mick to the ground. Lying there, the world swimming around him, Mick’s hand fell upon a sizable rock with a pointed end. Even as he wrapped his fingers around it, he tried to wave the creature off, going so far as to plead in what sounded like a whining voice, “Please, no … don’t hurt me anymore! Don’t—!”
Apparently the alien enjoyed brutalizing helpless foes. It reached down toward Mick, yanking him to his artificial feet, and that was the moment that Mick swung the rock around, aiming for the junction point of where the creature’s helmet was joined with its armor.
It staggered from the impact and Mick pounded away furiously. The noise was echoing within its helmet, and apparently the loud ringing it must have been causing wasn’t something that the alien could easily endure. It had lost its hold on Mick when he first struck it, and now it flailed at him, trying to get its hands back on him. Mick sidestepped the alien and jammed the rock forward as hard as he could.
He heard a crunch and the sound of something breaking within the armor. The helmet came flying off its head, revealing a butt-ugly face, which Mick promptly made even uglier as he slammed the rock into it. There appeared to be some manner of tubes visible in the top of the armor, and Mick’s assault broke some of them, causing what appeared to be salt water to pour all over the place.
“Kill it!” shouted Sam, even as she continued to try to push against the girder and free herself. “Hurry—!”
Her phone rang.
It was on the seat next to her, but she couldn’t see it. She shoved her hand down to her side blindly and was relieved when her hand found it. She managed to extract her arm and shoved the phone against her ear. “Not the best time!” she said.
“Sam!” Hopper’s voice crackled over the connection. “The comm’s working! Can you hear me!”
“Hopper, is that you? You’re alive!” Suddenly she felt a jolt in the Jeep and she turned to see that the pinned alien against the array wasn’t as dead as it could have been. “Hopper, we took out the array—!”
“No you didn’t! I see it!”
She looked up and her heart sank. He was right. Like a flower being restored to life, it—like the alien that was still trapped against the Jeep—was throbbing with renewed energy. The power had been at least partly restored and now the array was tilting upward, aiming itself at the satellite that would serve as the summoning beacon to the rest of the invading race.
“We’re ready to fire on this end!” he said. “Where are you in relation to the dish! Did you get clear of it after you tried to take it down?”
Sam’s eyes were on the power cells, fully glowing again, and the dishes, which were ninety percent fully restored and growing stronger with every passing moment. These things aren’t mechanical. They’re bio-organic somehow. And if Hopper doesn’t blast them to hell and gone …
She checked her watch, saw that the deadline was drawing near, and forced a smile into her voice. “I’m on the other side of the island. I’m clear. Do it.”
The pinned warrior was starting to shake the car violently in its endeavors to free itself. From behind her she heard grunts of struggling, Mick against his own opponent, but she didn’t have time to do anything about it even if she could. There was a gun in the well of the passenger seat and she tried to reach for it with what limited mobility she had. The tips of her desperate fingers came three inches short.
“Where are you?” Hopper didn’t sound convinced.
The trapped alien was pushing against the Jeep. She realized the ignition was still on, the car still running. She shoved the accelerator to the floor, trying to push the car forward. The creature grunted under the additional pressure and pushed the Jeep back, trying to free itself. She put it in drive and kept the alien pinned. Hopper was calling her name over
the phone and then she saw what looked like some sort of ray blaster snap into existence on the creature’s shoulder. Oh, shit, she thought, but then instead of anything lethal coming out of the business end, some energy crackled around it harmlessly before dissipating. She breathed a sigh of relief. She must have damaged the armor’s offensive capabilities when she’d hit it with the car.
But then the warrior managed to free a hand and thrust it forward. A vicious curved blade extended from it and drove through the windshield. She yanked her head to one side and the blade sliced into the headrest.
“Sam!” Hopper was still working on getting her attention.
“I’m safe,” she said, fighting to keep her voice calm. “No problems here.”
“Sam, you sound terrified!”
So much for trying to keep her cool. “Yeah, I am. Terrified you’re going to miss your chance. Listen to me, Hopper. The satellite will be in range in minutes. You can’t let them get their message out. Hit it with everything you’ve got. I love you.”
She clicked off the phone just as the alien—having retracted the blade—lifted the Jeep with its powerful arms. It raised it high and then dropped it, breaking the axle. That killed all forward thrust on the Jeep, and it was enough for the warrior to shove it clear and start heading around toward the driver’s side.
Sam banged on the door. It didn’t give way, compressed as it was by the initial impact and the further damage it had sustained from the creature just now. The warrior came at her with the blade on its arm and Sam threw herself back, prone on the seat. The girder that had kept her pinned was now her only salvation as it prevented the alien from getting a clear angle at her. The closest it managed to get was the upper part of the seat, which it shredded. Sam screamed and dodged as best she could.
She heard Mick straining, grunting in his battle against the other alien, and wasn’t sure how much longer he could hold his own. Then again, it wasn’t going to matter, because her luck was about to run out.
And suddenly there was an explosive roar of gunfire and Sam was covered with blood—except it wasn’t hers. The creature’s head had been blown clear off and she heard a defiant Calvin Zapata bellow, “Smoke that!”
The headless alien slumped over and Cal shoved it to get it the hell out of the way. He was clutching a smoking shotgun in his hand, the one that Mick had dropped when the alien had attacked him. Cal then whirled in response to a shout of “A little help here!” and fired again. There was a heavy thud and Sam didn’t have to see it to know what had happened: the fearsome fury of Calvin Zapata had struck again, decapitating the warrior that Mick had been fighting.
Cal turned back to Sam and looked chagrined. “I don’t have a clever quip for killing the second one,” he said. “I know I should say something …”
“Don’t worry about it! Just get me out of here!”
Calvin started working the door frantically and Mick joined him. As they did so, Mick said to Cal, “Actually, I had the thing on the ropes. Just wanted to make you feel good about yourself.”
“Well, it worked.” Cal grunted as he pulled. “How about you?”
“Better than I have in a long time. And if Sam’s fiancé doesn’t get un-semied, I’m so hitting on her once all this is done.”
Sam didn’t bother to tell them that there was a very good chance they were going to be blown to bits by said fiancé. She didn’t see where additional pressure was going to be of much use.
USS MISSOURI
I’m going to hell for this. This is it. This is my moment of damnation. And it’s not the kind of hell that you wind up in after you’re dead. It’s the kind of hell where you’re living it and you wish you were dead.
As Hopper stood there on the bridge he was sure—absolutely sure—that Sam had been lying to him. It wasn’t just the tension in her voice; it was the deliberate attempts at lightness, at making it seem as if everything was going to be just ducky. That, more than anything, told him that the love of his life wasn’t in the clear. Yet he knew what she wanted him to do … what he had to do.
Assuming Admiral Shane had made it through all this, and assuming they themselves survived—neither of which was a sure thing—he hoped that when he told Shane what he’d done, the admiral would simply pull out a gun and shoot him in the head. With Hopper’s luck, however, Shane would never do that. It would be too merciful.
Maybe she’s telling the truth … maybe she’s telling the truth …
With that infinitesimal shred of hope to cling to, Hopper said hollowly, “Fire forward guns. Whatever we’ve got left.” And God, if you’re listening—which I doubt, but if you are—if she’s still too close, find a way to make sure she has time to get clear.
The front battery of the Missouri revolved, elevated. Hopper braced himself, aware that the next sound he would hear might be the one that announced the impending death of his girlfriend.
The gun shook, coughed, sputtered … but did not fire.
“Uhm … where’s the kaboom?” asked Ord. “There’s supposed to be an Earth-shattering kaboom.”
The alarmed voice of the gunnery mate crackled over the 1MC. “She misfired, sir. Damned twenty-year-old hydraulic hose … can’t close the breach. That was our last round. We are fully Winchester, sir.”
It was at that moment that Hopper remembered an old quote his brother had mentioned by some French writer. Something about God being a comedian playing to an audience that was too afraid to laugh. He’d been praying that something would occur that would provide Sam sufficient time to get clear. He was thinking more along the lines of someone getting in touch with him and telling him to delay fire. Not a situation that rendered them unable to do anything.
He exchanged worried looks with Ord, Nagata and Driscoll. As he did, he said into the mike, “Mounts two and three, any ordnance left?”
“Second mount tap city, sir,” said the second gunner.
“Third mount, one round high explosive remaining,” the third gunner reported in.
Hopper breathed a sigh of relief. “Right. Let her go,” he said.
“Negative, sir. We took damage, all barrels are down.”
“Okay. Tell ’em: have it ready and waiting for us. Engineering? Beast, you still with us?”
“Right here, Captain.”
“Get your ass to battery three. We’ll meet you there.”
“On my way.” Beast sounded faintly confused, but he didn’t question it.
“Are you—?” Nagata began to ask.
“No time! Everyone except Driscoll, come on! Driscoll, if someone calls, tell ’em what’s going on!”
“Okay. Uh, what would that be?” said Driscoll, but Hopper had already exited, Ord and Nagata with him.
Hopper, Ord and Nagata raced down steep ladders into the belly of the ship. As they passed any able-bodied-looking crewman, Hopper would shout, “You! You and you! Come on!” He gathered as many as he could, and as they ran down a series of passageways, he heard the ones in the back asking the ones just in front of them what was going on. None of them knew. That was fine with Hopper. There was no time to explain—only time to get it done.
They clambered down the final ladders to battery three, where the gunnery crew was waiting with the massive 16-inch shell.
Hopper remembered the first time he’d heard his father talking about big guns with their 16-inch shells. Hopper, not more than eight or nine at the time, said that although sixteen inches was kind of big for a bullet, it didn’t seem that scary as far as a missile shell was concerned. His father, laughing, had explained that a 16-inch shell was sixteen inches in diameter, stood three feet tall and weighed several hundred pounds. Unless you’ve got a few bodybuilders on hand, you’re not going to be taking one of those babies anywhere, his father had told him.
Well, they now had to move one of those shells up to where it could do some good, and aside from Beast—who met them there, as instructed—they didn’t have any bodybuilders on hand.
“Four m
inutes, sir,” said Ord, reminding him of their rapidly closing window of opportunity.
“Got it, Ord,” said Hopper.
Beast slapped his hands together, squatting like a sumo, getting a grip on the shell. He hoisted, grunted, and the others got in there with him. It took a few moments to sort it out so that they weren’t in one another’s way. Soon they all had their hands on the shell, grabbing and straining to lift it, wrestling it out of the hold.
They struggled with it through a series of passageways and ladder-like stairs, at one point losing their grip on it completely. It slid down the ladder and nearly crushed Beast, knocking the wind out of him. But he recovered quickly and got his hands back on it, aiding the others as Hopper, through clenched teeth, kept a steady stream of directions going: “Turn here, hold on, slow, together, watch your angle there.” He felt like one of those guys who directed a rowing team.
They finally made it to the immediate destination: a single, long passageway that ran the length of the ship. There was a sort of monorail there, like a zip line for moving cargo, with a series of webbing straps hanging down. “Three minutes,” said Ord.
“Not helpful, Ord,” said Hopper as they slid the shell into the webbing straps and then looped a chain through it. They made damned certain the shell was secure in it—the last thing they needed was for the weapon to slip loose. Then came the trickiest part, the men grunting and screaming with effort as they lifted the shell onto the trolley hoist hook.
“Put your shoulders into it, boys! Let’s take it down Broadway!” They proceeded to do exactly that, running like linebackers as they sprinted the length of the ship to get the shell where they needed it to go, so they could fire it where it needed to go.
Two minutes later, Hopper, Nagata and the others—drenched in sweat and exhausted—made it to the gun turret and shoved the shell into the loading elevator. As it hauled the missile upward, Hopper and the others scrambled to reach topside.