Children Of Fiends - Part 1 Winter Is Passing: An Of Sudden Origin Novella

by C. Chase Harwood

  When the big tall ship was within half a mile a signal lantern flashed on the Eagle’s foredeck. Palmer observed the pattern and said, “They want us to heave to, sir.”

  “I’m not feeling they’re friendly,” said Dean. He turned to the helmsman. “Mister Burrows, come five degrees left. I want to put that iceberg between us.”

  “Aye aye, Cap.”

  The Eagle adjusted her course to stay on an intercept. Suddenly a short burst of 30mm cannon fire came from the Eagle’s foredeck. Tracer rounds crossed the Ginger Girl’s bow. “Battle Stations!” yelled Dean. The crew scrambled to preset posts. Some, including MacAfee’s team of soldiers, racked and readied their arms.

  “They are continuing to signal for us to heave to, sir,” said Palmer as he took an offered 12-guage shotgun under his arm.

  “Maintain your course, Mr. Burrows,” said Dean with steel in his voice. “I want that iceberg between us. When we pass it, angle for that next one.

  The Eagle was nearly twice their size and under full sail, and the tall ship seemed to tower over the Ginger Girl as it approached to starboard. Armed men stood at her rail with weapons pointed. 30mm canons were aimed menacingly from her fore and aft decks. More worrisome looking were the two mat black machines that clung like spiders to the rigging, their six legs spread amongst the stays and the ratlines. Their torsos and heads were extravagantly sculpted like Roman centurions, while a belt-fed Atchison assault shotgun hung independently below two human-like arms.

  “What do they have in the rigging, George?” asked Dean.

  MacAfee accepted an M4 from KK while his astonished eyes took in the spiderlike machines. He yelled to Dean, “Those are drones, Captain. Bad ass drones.”

  With perfect unison, the crew of the Eagle reduced and angled their sails to slow the big ship down and allow her to maneuver around the iceberg. Six men could be seen spinning her multi-wheeled helm.

  Dean barked out, “Mr. Kile, put your weapon on their helm. Don’t fire unless fired upon.”

  Jamesbonds Boonmee had climbed down from the crow’s nest and grabbed one of his harpoons. He stood in awe of the big ship. He had only seen pictures of such things as a child and had almost forgotten what a big ship with spars and square sails looked like. The bow had a golden eagle affixed to it that appeared to be soaring off the frigid water. Looking around him, he spotted an emergency ax, a tool that stood-by in the event of a dismasting and the resultant mess that would be the rigging on the deck. He grabbed it and stood with determination, doing his best to stare down the men on the approaching vessel.

  The captain of the Eagle stood on the forecastle and lifted an old fashioned hailer to his mouth and called out to the group on the Ginger Girl’s poop. With a distinctive Mid-Atlantic accent that almost sounded 18th Century British he called out, “No point in a fuss Captain. You’ll not outrun or outshoot us. Please, if you will, heave to so that you may be boarded.”

  Dean turned to Burrows. “Keep the bergs between us if you can.” He took his own hailer from where it was hooked and called back. “This is the U.S. ship Ginger Girl under commission of the United States government. By what authority do you command such actions?”

  “By the authority vested in us by the nation of The Shore. You are in our national waters and you will be boarded.”

  Dean turned to MacAfee, “The Shore? What the hell’s he talking about?”

  Ensign Palmer jumped in, “The peninsula that’s part Delaware, Maryland and Virginia.”

  “Pretty much an island,” said MacAfee. “But there’s no record of survivors there, not that I know of.”

  Dean lifted the hailer again and called out, “Do you mean to say that there are people on the Delmarva Penninsula?”

  The captain of the Eagle lifted his hailer. “I’ll not ask again. You will heave to. If I don’t see you drop sails in ten-seconds you will be boarded by force.”

  “Stay on course, Mr. Burrows.” Dean called down below the stern rail where the second gunner sat at the trigger of his Bushmaster chain gun. “Mr. Kneedham, how are you doing down there?”

  “Fine, sir. I can shred that steel hull.” He made a sour face. “Afraid, they’ve made the turn on us.”

  The Eagle had turned with tremendous momentum. Burrows was doing his best to keep an iceberg the size of a four-bedroom house between them, but already, the maneuver seemed hopeless. He headed for the next one that was perhaps three hundred yards away, but this put them back into open water. Within minutes, the Eagle was bearing down on and then sliding up to their port side. “Prepare to be boarded,” hailed her captain.

  Just then, the black machines in the rigging came alive as grappling hooks shot out, trailing thin black cables from their chests. The hooks arced across the one hundred foot space between the two vessels, the first landing in the rigging of the Ginger Girl’s main mast, the second skittering amidships where it was quickly retracted until it clawed into the port rail. The machines let go of their own rigging and were suddenly launched off their perches by the self-reeling cable pulls and dropped into the ocean. The tension on the cables listed the Ginger Girl to port while simultaneously slowing her down.

  “Fire!” barked Dean.

  Both Mr. Kneedham and Mr. Kile let lose with their guns, strafing the railings and rigging of the Eagle. The rest of the armed crew joined in. The Eagle did not return fire, the sailors on her taking cover instead. Then one of the black machines appeared at the side of the Ginger Girl’s port rear quarter. Like a mythical sea monster, it began to climb the stern.

  Jamesbonds stood at the rail where the other hook had imbedded itself and watched in disbelief as the top of the second machine broke through the water. Like some kind of mythological creature, the black-eyed thing had a head with a Trojan helmet looking affectation sitting on top of an armored humanoid torso. Six steel spider legs sprouted from beneath that, each leg working independently of the other. Without even thinking, Jamesbonds hacked down on the cable with his ax, denting it, but not cutting it. The machine slammed up against the hull with a loud thud. He hacked again, this time fraying the steel. Six spider legs with miniature hands at their ends snapped their finger tips together into single points and dug themselves into the Ginger Girl’s wooden freeboard, then it began to climb, its auto shotgun trained on the man with the ax. Jamesbonds hacked again with everything he had and the cable broke. The machine didn’t fall, instead grabbing the railing with one of its human-like hands. The Roman head had black eyes that looked directly into Jamesbonds’. He was mesmerized for just a moment, before he dropped the ax and instead rammed the chest of the machine with his harpoon. A single shot from the Eagle rang out and a bullet pierced Jamesbonds’ shoulder. The determined man hardly seemed to notice as he pushed the harpoon with everything he had. The robot (if that’s what it was) lost its handhold. For a moment the thing seemed to be able to hold on with the sharp tipped legs burrowing themselves into the wood of the hull, but Jamesbonds gave it one more shove and it plunged into the water.

  The transfixed crew of the Ginger Girl let out a cheer, which was immediately extinguished by the second black machine coming over the rail with its shotgun on full auto. On its way up, it had taken a moment to decimate Mr. Kneedham and his chain gun with a handful of explosive rounds. Now it landed on the deck sending a shudder through everyone’s feet. It grabbed Mr. Burrows from the helm and heaved him screaming into the frigid sea. Dean, MacAfee, Wen, Dez and Eliza dove for the deck as the vicious looking thing trained its weapon on Corporal Gomez. The soldier was fearlessly, efficiently, shooting it with extreme accuracy, but her bullets were ricocheting off thick armor. Gomez kept firing with confidence. She knew she was good at her job. Though she’d never actually killed anyone (or thing) she’d done plenty of Terminus border recon. She’d killed uncounted infected in Virtusims and she had more than proven herself a steady and accurate shot. She could feel her poise, noting her rising but stable heartbeat, taking pride in her c
ontrolled breathing as she focused her aim at the spider-like machine’s human shaped head, imagining that its eyes were its most vulnerable spot. In another second the machine’s AA-12 automatic shotgun dismantled her into bloody red chunks and splattered them across the base of the mizzenmast.

  Anyone with a gun was firing at the thing as it marched forward on heavily thumping yet clickety legs that alternately drove themselves into the decking or grabbed onto the rigging. The head whipped back and forth, tracking while explosive rounds poured from the shotgun. The remainder of MacAfee’s special-forces team was particularly heavily armed, with Chief Hernandez firing grenades while screaming like a berserker. All for naught. It was quickly evident that they lacked the firepower to halt the things advance. The crew on the Eagle continued to hold their fire, instead taking pleasure watching their huge black arachnid lay waste to the opposing deck.

  With Burrows lost to the frigid sea, Dean grabbed the helm while Mr. Kile wrestled with the remaining big gun; the other Bushmaster was not set up for sweeping its own deck. Eliza was hyperventilating and nearly overcome with the twin’s combination of emotional thrill and abject terror. As she lay on the deck trying to become one with the wood, she noticed that the machine’s grappling cable was just dragging on the deck, the hook dangling in the rigging. The retracting winch had been damaged by Gomez’s fire. As explosive shells sent splinters and chunks of the wood decking flying into the air, she looked at Dean who saw what she saw. Before he could yell no, she was up and running for the mizzenmast’s ratlines. She quickly climbed and grabbed the grappling hook that was still tethered to the drone. As she struggled to disentangle it, the machine, as though with eyes in the back of its head, turned and stared up at her. Faster than she could react, the machine grabbed hold of the loose cable and yanked the hook out of Eliza’s hand. She lost her balance and tumbled just as the thing opened fire, the explosive slugs passing harmlessly through the space where she had just been. She hit the deck hard, her head bouncing off the teak. Dean threw the wheel hard over, causing the Ginger Girl to peel away from the Eagle. He bolted forward, grabbed the hook as it skittered across the planks. With a screaming heave he chucked it as hard as he could. The tool flew in an arc, dragging its cable behind it, and snagged in a davit holding a lifeboat off the rear quarterdeck. The line snapped taught. One moment, the menacing machine was laying waist to the Ginger Girl and in the next it was dragged over the blubber-rendering house, smashed into the gunwale and up and over the rail into the sea. The Eagle responded: its stern 30mm canon raking the Ginger Girl, punching holes in her sails and splitting her spars. Then just as quickly the shooting stopped, the sudden silence only overcome by the creaking of the two ships as a three-foot swell moved them in gentle unison. Only a shattered spar bumped against the Ginger Girl’s foremast, keeping time like a lazy metronome. Several of the crew dared to look up and saw Hansel and Gretel holding hands at the stern rail. The pucks were looking in the direction of the Eagle as the crew of that ship suddenly stepped to the rails as one and heaved their weapons overboard. Like robots, two groups of men disconnected the 30mms and tossed them over as well.

  Without having to be told, the Ginger Girl’s crew flew into action, climbing the rigging or grabbing hold of the various sheets to set their sails for the wind. The Eagle continued to coast with her own momentum as the two sterns quickly made distance on each other. Dean scanned the enemy. The would-be pirate’s faces were stricken with terror. Several were crying. Others had soiled themselves. Dean called out to her captain, “Asshole. What did you mean by The Shore?”

  The captain had no words to reply with. Instead, he pulled a large knife from a scabbard on his belt. He made a move to cut his own throat, but was interrupted by a still dazed Eliza, who yelled, “No! Hansel. I know that’s you.”

  The puck licked his sharp teeth and smiled.

  The Eagle’s captain dropped the knife and fell to his knees in grief.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Second Guesses

  With the light failing and no hope for safe passage to a shore anchorage, Dean ordered the Ginger Girl to ease up to a vast iceberg that was little affected by the lessening but still steady breeze. They dropped anchor on a submerged portion of the great slab and set to work repairing damaged sails and cleaning blood and body parts off the deck as well as the cabin below where Kneedham had been more or less liquefied by explosive shotgun rounds. There, they discovered the ham radios that they were counting on to stay in touch with home, were destroyed.

  When the light faded to twilight, the twins let go of their grip on the stricken sailors of the Eagle, the barque still drifting on the horizon. Within minutes her sails could be seen rising and she made way in a westerly direction, with no intent to angle back toward their intended victims.

  The crew of the Ginger Girl labored while in awe of the puck’s powerful gift. Though everyone was grateful for the twin’s intervention, there was an equal measure of fear and mistrust at such power. It wasn’t just because their helmets offered night vision that they now steadfastly kept them strapped on. Only those who had spent the most time around the alien creatures remained comfortable enough to keep their helmets off.

  Except for Jamesbonds, there were remarkably no other wounded. Bishop, the ships doctor, treated his shoulder where the lead shot had gone clean through the muscle leaving a surprisingly minor wound. Corporal Kelly, whose kit included a prep for fast healing of minor flesh wounds, offered the patch while keeping well back from the spilled Halflie blood. As for Eliza, she had a knot on her forehead where it had hit the deck, but it didn’t really hurt much. Given the savagery of the assault, everyone felt extremely fortunate.

  As they were being patched up, Jamesbonds said to Eliza, “What a brave lady you are, Ma’am.”

  “You are brave yourself, sir.”

  “Oh. You can’t call me sir, Ma’am. I’m just a harpoon man.”

  “You’re a brave harpoon man, Mr. Boonmee. Please call me Eliza.”

  “I’m happy to have you on our ship, Eliza ma’am.”

  Eliza smiled and her eye caught that of Captain Dean who stood near the helm, Ensign Palmer now at the wheel. Dean raised an eyebrow at her and gave a slight shake of the head. The implication was clear; he was both impressed and perhaps disturbed by her bold move.

  Last rights were given for the dead and their remains given to the sea. Then the crew sat down to a heavy meal, craving calories after such an extended adrenaline rush. While the watch was set, the crew whispered dread among themselves; their mission was clearly doomed. Dean and Sanders ate with their guests in the bullet-riddled cabin that was the officer’s mess. As a precaution, MacAfee and Blakely ate MREs at a separate table and drank from their own canteens. At the captain’s request, Cookie poured them all a stiff belt of Nantucket moonshine and they mostly sat in silence as they sipped from their glasses or canteens. Finally Sanders said, “Crew’s shook up, Cap, but I’ll wager they’re still solid. Dealt with crazier than that. Just that… first day out and all. Rough start.”

  Everyone nodded in sober agreement. It occurred to Cookie as he topped them off, that the leadership was as shaken as the crew. He’d ask the captain about giving a ration of grog later. Try to take the edge off the shattered nerves. Dean snapped out of his own reverie and smiled at Sanders. “I hear you, George. What I’m concerned about is how many others are out there like the Eagle. What the hell is The Shore?”

  MacAfee cleared his throat. “Those drones are not the work of folks just getting by.”

  “Drones?” asked Eliza.

  “First time I’ve seen one up close, but yes, Sentinel drones. They were part of a Carnegie Mellon effort to make a drone that could take on the Fiend epidemic. I don’t think it ever got implemented. They certainly weren’t some fanciful Roman centurion thing like that, but the spider legs I wouldn’t forget. We’d built the wall by the time they might have been perfected. Pittsburgh is on the unknown side of the
Terminus now of course. Obviously someone made off with something, maybe augmented the design.”

  Wen said, “Well, after the heroics of this one here.” He pointed at Eliza. “And that little dude with the ax, and then the puck mind-fuck, pardon my French, and of course you Captain, the word will get out to avoid us.”

  Dean looked at Eliza and asked, “The pucks. Hansel and Gretel. How many people can they do that to at once?”

  “I couldn’t say. I’ve never seen them do that before. I mean with so many. I spoke to them afterwards. All they said was that they were stronger when they held hands. It’s a line of sight thing mostly, but it’s not like you can hide behind a tree, or a mast. If they have already had a glimpse of you, unless you can get out of sight and move quickly away from the area, they can do that to you. Obviously the people on that ship weren’t going anywhere.”

  When they finished their meal, MacAfee, as the overall mission commander, called it a night. The group began to file out of the room and Dean asked Eliza to stay behind a moment. She stopped and stood by the table, her hand on the back of a chair.

  Dean said, “Take a seat, if you don’t mind.” She sat crossing her legs, waiting for more. He took a long sip from his glass and scrunched his nose. “You were very brave today.”

  “So were you.”

  “It’s my job to be brave. It’s your job to look after our pucks. You’ll forgive me if I request that you not be so brave again.”

  She was surprised, not expecting condescension. In an instant she felt her heart shift. Whatever attraction she may have felt for this man simply melted away. She closed her eyes for a moment, took a breath and opened them again, startled as Dean poured two fingers into her glass, leaving the thermos open on the table. She set the cup down. “Captain…”

  “Call me Stewart when we’re not in front of the crew.”

  “Captain. Everyone on this mission is brave just to be part of it. We are all going to be repeatedly challenged with life or death decisions. If we find ourselves under dire circumstances and in a position to protect each other, none of us can be allowed to hesitate for a moment. I was in that position today. So were you.”