by Anthology
I couldn't decipher the expression on her face. Was she feeling some misplaced maternal pity for me? Or did she have another agenda?
After a moment, I decided I really didn't care.
"Thanks for the advice, ma'am," I said, "but we both have to survive the fucking war first."
The floating fire winked out. "Dismissed."
I couldn't get out of there fast enough.
***
I did my best to avoid Lieutenant Markey for the next several days. It wasn't easy, since we were both stuck on the same three-hundred-foot, sixty-person submarine. And it wasn't that I didn't respect her. She clearly had major pull in OP-20-G to rate a teleport halfway around the planet. But she was calling as much attention to me as she was to herself, and I didn't need that kind of exposure.
Fortunately, she spent most of her time in the control room or the conning tower, doing whatever she did to track down the mythical kraken, and I was assigned to the aft torpedo compartment. The captain had decided we would fire the fish from there once we were ready to wake the beast—we'd be facing away and ready to run like hell.
Markey had brought aboard divining bolts to replace the magnetic detonators in our Mark 14s. The magnets were supposed to explode a torpedo right underneath a ship's hull, causing more damage than a broadside impact, but the damn things had never worked right. Markey's instructions were to replace the magnets with D-bolts, which would make our fish detect monsters instead of metal.
The plan was to find the kraken, poke it with a couple of torpedoes, then skedaddle before it was fully aware of its surroundings. The kraken's reported location was close enough to populated areas that it should—should—hear the noise from those cities and move toward Japan instead of anywhere else.
Working on the torpedoes occupied me for most of the time, but Markey's questions kept bugging me. What was I going to do after the war ended?
Maybe I wouldn't survive. Maybe that would be the best outcome for everyone: if I died in the line of duty, and my family didn't find out until later what had happened to their daughter—that she'd given her life for her country.
Maybe they'd be proud of me. And maybe the good ol' U-S-of-A would stop questioning our loyalty then.
I hadn't thought about my future in a while—not since I first enlisted. It had always angered me to know how limited my options were, and now I was angry at Markey for reminding me, for making me worry about things I couldn't change. That's what I was thinking about that day, when the COB pulled Roseler and me out of the torpedo bay for another special assignment.
***
"We're submerged in hostile waters, less than a hundred miles from enemy shore," the captain said as I climbed into the conning tower. "We can't surface, and we can't outrun anything that swims. Anything goes wrong here and we are fucked."
He was talking to Lieutenant Markey. Roseler was already crowded into the tight space around the periscope. I handed him the Bowfin's codex, which I had retrieved from the control room. He gave me a clipboard and a frantic look as I wedged myself into a corner next to the captain and the COB. It didn't seem like all five of us needed to be here, but I wasn't going to debate that.
"This will be a one-way tunnel," Markey said. She might actually have looked better in trousers than a skirt. I tried my best not to feel jealous and failed. "There's no danger of us being detected."
"But why does Rosebud have to do the spell?" the COB asked. "Aren't you the professional, Lieutenant?"
"Seaman Roseler is doing the easy part," Markey said. "We don't have a focus object, so I'll need to guide the far end of the tunnel."
The COB did a double take. "You're going to be his crystal ball?"
Markey sighed and looked at the captain. "We can spend all day discussing the finer points of scrying procedure, Captain, or we can get this done."
"Carry on, Lieutenant," the captain said.
I made as little eye contact with Markey as possible while she read off map coordinates for me to inscribe. I joined our target location and Bowfin's mantic signature into the spell, combining sonants and inflects from the codex reference tables and triple-checking each finished sequence. In principle, writing up the scry tunnel was simpler than describing a teleport path, but I did not want to be on the hook if this thing went sideways.
A few minutes later, Roseler and Markey were holding hands, their eyes closed as Roseler recited the full incantation.
Next to me, the captain muttered, "I'll be glad when we're done with all this black magic bullshit."
"Yes, sir," I said.
He glanced over as if noticing me for the first time. "Your family have talent, Seaman?"
I thought of my grandmother. She had introduced me to the occult, sneaking some mystical instruction into my language lessons every week. We never told my parents. They would have disapproved, to say the least.
I said, "Not that I'm aware of, sir."
"Thank fucking God," the COB said, on my other side. "Give me science and engineering any day of the week. I don't trust anything I can't take apart and see how it works—"
Roseler started screaming. It came suddenly, without even an intake of breath, and the sound was inhuman. He shrieked like an animal caught in a trap. I dropped the clipboard and covered my ears with both hands.
"Get the doc!" Markey shouted. "We need a tranquilizer!" Roseler's body began convulsing. She wrestled him to the deck. "Hatcher! Help me hold him down!"
The captain leaned down the ladder and yelled for the corpsman. I jumped over him and grabbed Roseler's shoulders. His eyes had rolled back into his head. He was still screaming, and his legs kicked around despite Markey's iron grip.
"What the hell's wrong with him?" the COB asked.
"He made contact!" Markey said. "Dammit, COB, you didn't tell me he was a sensitive!"
"How the fuck were we supposed to know?" the COB said.
My stomach knotted. Not because I was concerned for Roseler, but because I was afraid if he died, Markey would order me to incant her spells.
"As you were, both of you!" the captain said over the screaming. I could swear Roseler hadn't taken a breath in more than a minute. "Doc's on his way. Now how do we—"
Roseler stopped screaming. His mouth closed, then opened again, and he said a word which was not a word.
My head exploded with pain. No, pain's not the right thing to call it. It wasn't just that I hurt. When that not-word entered my brain, suddenly nothing in the world seemed right. What I saw, what I heard, what I felt—from the dinner I was still digesting to gravity itself—everything was wrong, and my body wanted it to stop.
I saw the captain fall to his knees, clutching for a handhold. A dark stain spread across the front of his trousers. Behind him, the COB vomited all over one wall of the compartment. Markey doubled over, blood dripping from her nose.
Roseler's lips parted again. I slapped both hands over the bottom half of his face before he could make another sound. He kept shaking, and the only thing I could think was: I'll kill him if I have to. How do I kill him? What's the fastest way to kill him?
"Good," Markey grunted, pressing her hands over mine. She turned her head and spat out a mouthful of thick, dark blood. "Keep him quiet until we can sedate him."
"What the fuck just happened?" I asked.
"Our intel was wrong," Markey said. "They're not kraken."
Some small part of me was happy that she'd screwed up. Most of me wanted to shit my pants. Then my brain finished processing Markey's words.
"Wait, 'they'?" The urge to empty my bowels increased. "There's more than one?"
***
By the time the corpsman had chloroformed Roseler and tied him down to the bunk in Markey's quarters—she ordered him gagged and isolated; nobody argued—I had finished collecting all our gear out of the conning tower and cleaning it off. The captain and the COB had changed into fresh uniforms and regrouped in the control room. They argued with the XO in low tones as I stowed the codex
above the weapons station, locked the safebox, and returned the key to the captain.
I was just about to leave the control room when Lieutenant Markey came in, blocking my exit. Her face and uniform were still smeared with blood. Most of the officers and crew looked away. I backed myself into a corner and did my best to seem small.
"Two knots, Captain," the helmsman whispered. We had been running silent since we made contact with the monsters.
"Very well," the captain said. He turned to Markey. "Lieutenant, what are these torpedoes going to do to the kraken?"
"I'm aborting the mission, Captain," Markey said.
The captain frowned. "Come again?"
"We cannot disturb those Things," Markey said, lowering her voice. "We need to get the hell out of here."
"Oh, we're moving," the captain said. "But we did not come all the way into the goddamn lion's den just to have a look-see. We are going to do some fucking damage before we leave."
"Aft tubes loaded, Captain," the weapons officer said behind me.
"The intel was bad," Markey said. "Those are not kraken out there. They are Elder Things. Two of them."
"Older than what?" the XO asked.
"Elder," Markey repeated. "Not 'older'. Elder Things."
I didn't recognize the name, but ‘elder’ usually refers to something supernatural that's had centuries to develop its powers. And that's always bad news.
"That's not real descriptive," the XO said.
"They are unlike any other life form in Creation," Markey said. "We don't know what to call them, except…Things."
"I don't care what fucking kind of sea monsters they are," the captain said. "I just want to know what's going to happen when we wake them up. The Mark 14s have a nine-thousand-yard range—"
Markey stepped closer and glared at the captain. "I don't know what will happen if we disturb those Things, Captain. But it's going to be at least a thousand times worse than what happened to Seaman Roseler."
"I don't care," the captain said, "as long as it happens to the Japs and not us. Now how far away do we need to be when we shoot off these fish?"
"No," Markey said, her voice tight. "Elder Things are not just monsters. They are the worst monsters ever. They are beyond imagination. You saw—you felt what a single word in their language did to us."
I shivered at the thought of what might have happened if we hadn't silenced Roseler. The sounds and symbols we use for magic aren't human—they're ancient, prehistoric—and we don't even understand how most of them work.
"Cults have worshipped Elder Things as deities—Old Gods," Markey continued. "Do you understand? The mere sight of one can cause madness. If these two Things wake up, it could mean the end of the world."
The XO grunted. "You just said you didn't know what would happen. Now you're saying it's Arma-fucking-geddon. Which is it, Lieutenant?"
Markey replied without breaking off her staring contest with the captain. "We don't know exactly how bad it would get. But I am not authorized to take that chance. And neither are you, Captain."
"Then you get authorization," the captain said. "Use a comm spell to contact your superiors."
"I can't," Markey said. "We're too deep. Too much water, too much iron." She touched a pipe above her head. Both of those substances restricted the range of any enchantment. It was tough enough for me to maintain my glamour in this steel tube; there was no way she could send a message through several hundred feet of seawater.
"Eighty-five hundred yards, Captain," the helmsman said.
"Eighty-five hundred, aye," the captain repeated. "Weapons, flood aft torpedo tubes."
"Aye, sir, flooding aft tubes," the weapons officer said.
My stomach fluttered, but it wasn't fear. It took me a moment to understand that I was actually excited. I wanted the captain to go through with this.
"Captain," Markey said. She clenched both her hands into fists. Was she actually thinking about throwing a punch? "Listen to me, please."
"Master Chief, get our latest orders and bring them in here," the captain said.
"Aye, sir." The COB turned and maneuvered his way forward.
"Lieutenant, in seven minutes we're out of range and we don't get another shot at this." The captain spoke softly but firmly. "So we're both going to look at those orders and see precisely what the fuck we're authorized to do."
"Listen to me, Captain," Markey said with an unnatural calm. "You cannot do this. You cannot unleash those Things upon the world."
Why not? I thought. The Japs brought the war to us. The least we can do is return the favor.
"Aft tubes flooded, sir," the weapons officer reported.
"Open outer doors," the captain said.
"Opening outer doors, aye."
Yes. Hell yes. I wanted us to shoot off those fish. I wanted those monsters to wake up and destroy our enemies. So what if we got caught in the crossfire? This was war. One little submarine for untold devastation on their shores was more than a fair trade.
And if I died out here, I would never have to worry about going home. I would never again need to worry about fitting in, either with or without a disguise.
The sea would take me, and the sea didn't care about my race, sex, or skin color.
The COB shoved his way back into the control room. "Our orders, Captain."
The captain took the folded paper. "Thank you, Master Chief."
"Eighty-eight hundred yards, Captain," the helmsman said.
"Very well." The captain unfolded the orders. His eyes scanned across the page once, twice, three times. How many times was he going to read it?
I looked at the clock above the weapons station. Less than two minutes until we were out of torpedo range. And what if the captain decided to abort?
No. I had decided. If Captain Channing was just going to stand there with his thumb up his ass, if Markey didn't have the balls to follow through on her own goddamn orders, I would fucking do it myself.
The weapons officer on duty was Lieutenant Goldman. I didn't know him well, but I had played a trick on him in the mess hall once, making him think he was taking the last piece of cake. In fact, he had grabbed a bowl of coleslaw, and I got that delicious cake.
I had glamoured him once, and I could do it again.
I moved toward the weapons station, wriggling between other sailors and around their control stations. I had to be close for this to work. I closed my left hand into a fist to help focus my energies. My disguise might falter for a second when I bore the new glamour, but nobody here was watching me anyway.
The captain looked up from his orders.
"Captain?" Markey said quietly.
The captain handed her the paper. "Weps, close outer doors and stand down."
That's what he actually said. What Goldman heard, loud and clear, was: "Fire torpedoes."
***
I don't know how long it took for the commotion in the control room to settle down. As soon as our fish flew out the back door, the captain ordered Goldman placed under arrest, and the COB and the XO seized him. I followed them out of the control room, hoping to slip away in the chaos, but Markey grabbed me and dragged me back to her quarters. I hadn't expected her to be so strong.
"Why?" she asked after locking us inside. "Why did you do it, Hatcher?"
I stared her down and spoke slowly. "Do what, ma'am?"
She shook her head. "It's my own fault. I should have been paying more attention to you instead of the captain."
There was something about the way she said that—"Jesus fuck. You! You put a glamour on the captain."
"Nice to meet you, too, kettle," Markey said.
"You disobeyed your own orders!"
Markey's eyes flashed. "You don't know what my orders are, Seaman. I couldn't gamble on the captain making the right decision on his own."
"Yeah, neither could I."
Markey glared at me. "You know why I wanted to stop those torpedoes. Why did you want to fire them so badly?"
> I took a breath. "Like the captain said, ma'am. We came here to put some hurt on the Japs. Didn't seem right for us to leave without doing something."
"No. It's more than just that." Markey studied me for a moment. "What's your real name?"
"Carl Hatcher."
"No," Markey said. "Your real name. The one you were born with. The one that's on the books at whichever Japanese-American internment camp you escaped from."
I felt suddenly deflated. "You—you knew?"
"I saw past your glamour when you took my bobby pin. That's why I asked you all those questions. You can disguise your looks, but you can't disguise your emotions." Markey sat. "I had to make sure you weren't a spy."
I clenched my teeth. She had never really wanted to help me after all. She had only kept me close in case I turned out to be an enemy.
"My family name is Hachiya," I said. "I am a native-born American citizen, and I am loyal to my country."
"I'm not questioning your loyalty! I'm concerned about your judgment," Markey said. "Would you really rather die here, under a false identity, instead of facing life as your true self?"
An unearthly roar saved me from having to answer. The entire boat shuddered, and I imagined the ocean itself trembling.
"Guess they're awake," I said.
"You don't know what you've done," Markey said. "No matter how much you might hate them, the Japanese don't deserve what's going to happen when those Things reach shore."
"War is hell, ma'am."
She grimaced. "You know nothing about Hell, little girl."
***
Captain Channing surfaced the Bowfin as soon as we were back in international waters. Official information about what was happening in Japan remained spotty, but Markey, or rather, Roseler, had a direct line to a primary source. She was still able to connect to the now-catatonic seaman—just like she had during the scry—and report what she saw through the monsters' eyes. That lady never stopped scaring me.
The Things were faster on land than anybody had expected. Both surfaced on the western shore of Kyushu Island and crawled into the nearest population centers, causing massive damage by their sheer bulk—news reports varied, making them anywhere from fifty to two hundred feet tall, with claws, wings, tentacles, or some combination of all three.