Arisen: Death of Empires

by Glynn James

  In fact, this was the first time Abrams had stepped away from that station for more than three minutes in a row. He’d just gone out on the observation deck to check out what appeared to be a lone Alpha dude, inexplicably pacing the edge of their flight deck, reminding Abrams of the Ancient Mariner, shoulders sagging under his albatross…

  But the instant he realized who was calling him, he hauled ass back inside.

  “What? Report!”

  “Sir, the Admiral Nakhimov is under way!”

  “You are fucking kidding me. Of all the shit timing.” He meant that they had only just launched their shore mission, thirty minutes ago. “Heading and speed.”

  “Heading zero-one-five… speed approx fifteen knots… coming through two-zero… two-five…” Abrams got it. In fact, he could see it himself. The Russians were heading straight back toward them, right up the coast. And accelerating – fast. Abrams knew that by the time he’d even thought through all this, they’d already be at their top speed.

  He straightened up, grabbed a phone, and buzzed CIC.

  Drake himself picked up. “Yeah, we see it. I’m on my way.” He hung up before Abrams could respond.

  Abrams dropped the phone and hunched over the station again, staring daggers at the drone video and radar feed. The Nakhimov was moving with authority. It was hunting them down. Abrams could feel it.

  “Fuck fuck fuck,” he said. “How much time?

  “Sir?”

  “Dammit, how soon until we’re within range of their Shipwreck missiles again?”

  The ensign ran calculations while Abrams stewed. “If we maintain current position, approximately one half-hour. Call it thirty-five minutes.”

  Abrams clenched his jaw – he didn’t want to call it anything, he wanted to fucking know – but then he looked up to see Drake rolling into the room on a wave of urgency. Reaching his station, Drake sat, looked up, and pinned the XO with his eye. “We’ve got to get out of here.”

  “Commander,” Abrams responded carefully, “that would mean abandoning the shore party – to the tender mercies of the Russians.”

  Drake hadn’t thought of that. He wasn’t sure anyone had – and if no one had anticipated this, or done contingency planning to deal with it, then it was a major fucking lapse in strategic planning.

  Which, ultimately, was on him.

  “Helm,” Drake said. “Bring main power online. All ahead, dead slow.”

  Abrams knew what Drake was doing – making sure they were ready to run. Because the time was fast approaching when they would have no choice. It would be run or die.

  And they both knew what their only other option was: air power. It would be their sword and their shield, their alpha and omega – and, God willing, it would be the goddamned Russians’ Scylla and Charybdis, their Salamis and Waterloo.

  Drake already had his phone in his hand. “PriFly, Bridge, gimme the B—”

  But he stopped mid-syllable as the Air Boss himself came crashing into the room, descending like Zeus from above. He stalked up to Drake, as if assaulting him. “Wanna discuss that air-attack mission profile now?”

  Drake clenched his teeth. He looked over to Abrams. “How long have we got?”

  “Thirty minutes. Give or take.”

  “Briefing room,” Drake said, hopping up again. “Get the LT up here.” He could see Abrams about to object that she was quarterbacking the scavenging mission on shore. “She’s just fucking well going to have to multitask.”

  Sixty seconds later, the four of them were leaning over thick mission-profile binders splayed open on the table, the little room buzzing with energy.

  Basically, they were going to have to give themselves a very fast refresher in offensive air operations against a heavily armed enemy ship of the line.

  Really what we’re were doing, Drake thought to himself, is getting around a table and plotting a murder – of an entire gigantic warship full of Russian sailors.

  It was going to be brutal, and it was going to have to be quick.

  And it had damned well better work.

  * * *

  Outside and down below the island, Homer was all alone as he paced the perimeter of the flight deck. Periodically he would stop and peer over the edge with squinted eyes, gazing down at the water through the thin morning light.

  If you’re so worried about this, Homer mentally replayed Drake’s words – when he had tried to warn him about the threat of Spetsnaz divers and mini-subs – you’re going to have to address it with your own people…

  Guess I’m my own people, Homer thought, with a mental shrug. But if he had to do it himself, he did it himself. That was the spec-ops mindset, anyway: just get it done. Also, the solitude suited his mood, which was morose. But, then again, he had much bigger concerns right now than his personal crisis – the death of his relationship.

  He had to stay focused on the job.

  It’s too far to make out, he thought, still trying to peer down into the water below, then continuing his quick-walk around the perimeter of the five-acre deck. He was heading aft now on the port side, right along the edge of the angle deck – and approaching the stern, where he could see the two F-35s poised, ready to rock and roll.

  And I’m way too high up, he added, his brow knitting with frustration at the nearly hundred feet between him and the water. On the one hand, being all the way up here allowed him to survey a lot of ocean fast. On the other, it was hard to make out anything beneath the waves. Whatever else, he knew there wouldn’t be any bubbles. There probably wouldn’t be much of a visible sign, if any, on the surface. He needed to get down closer to the water.

  And that meant the dock, beneath the fantail deck.

  He was already moving to redeploy himself when a scrambling knot of flight deck crew flooded out into view, fifty yards away at the stern – right where the two F-35s sat. The whole rear of the deck turned into a bustle of frantic activity, and Homer could see the Aircraft Director already going into his launch pantomime.

  Then, unexpectedly, just as he was getting the feeling he really shouldn’t be standing there, a green-clad catapult crewman spotted him – and sprinted toward him. As he got within hailing range, he shouted a single syllable: “DUDE!” When Homer didn’t instantly respond, he added: “The FUCK?!”

  Homer got it. He turned and took off toward the starboard side, and off the runway, at a fast jog. As he did, he could hear those jet engines blasting up to an unholy volume, and he knew it wouldn’t be long before the F-35s went roaring down the deck, accelerating like composite-epoxy bats out of hell.

  Something had changed in their tactical situation.

  Homer tried to calculate the quickest route from where he was now down to the fantail deck, not least so he could get out of these guys’ way. The flight deck of a supercarrier was not a safe place to be during air ops. That rear dock was sounding better every minute.

  Then again, he thought, if I’m getting that close to the water… I may as well get on the right side of it.

  For a SEAL, that meant: under the surface.

  He headed below again via the nearest ladder and made a beeline for the Alpha team room. He needed two things right now. One, his diving gear.

  And, two, his teammates. Because he himself was not the full extent of his own people. He had others, and he knew he could depend on them. An operator was never alone.

  Even when operating alone.

  * * *

  Handon crashed into the briefing room two minutes after Drake, Abrams, the Air Boss, and Campbell. He’d obviously gotten the memo – that the Russians were on the move again.

  Drake looked up from his hunch over the table, and the two men exchanged looks, but no words. Drake knew why Handon was here: the same reason he’d come last time – to keep tabs on how long this ship was likely to remain afloat.

  For his part, Handon knew what these four were doing, or could guess – and so he promptly got the hell out of their way, pressing his back up against a wa
ll.

  “The Daggers and Wasps are non-issues,” Campbell was saying. They were now into the critical business of reviewing the air defense capabilities of the Admiral Nakhimov. The weapons Campbell referred to were only two of the battlecruiser’s three surface-to-air missile (SAM) systems – all of which were capable of shooting down either enemy aircraft, or incoming anti-ship missiles.

  Those two SAM systems alone might have as many as 168 warheads in their launchers – but they were short-range missiles, only effective out to 20–25 kilometers, which was why Campbell dismissed them. She knew the commanders had absolutely no intention of letting the Kennedy’s planes get that close. The F-35’s long-range anti-ship missiles were specifically designed to be used from stand-off range – and to defeat the Nakhimov’s defenses on the way in.

  The Air Boss frowned and said, “The Kashtans are more of a concern. In theory, we should be able to overwhelm them with a tactical spread.”

  He was referring to the battlecruiser’s 30mm rotary cannons, which were a close equivalent of the Kennedy’s CIWS guns – although, amazingly, they had a higher rate of fire and even bigger bullets. They basically looked like the big-ass robot from Robo-Cop, just bolted down to the deck. They were also extremely good at shooting down aircraft, incoming anti-ship missiles – anything that flew. The Kashtan had two radar systems: one that tracked targets, the other that tracked its own outgoing bullets. It simply adjusted its aim until the two overlapped.

  It could hardly miss.

  The other difference was that the Russian ship had eight of these evil sons of bitches. If somehow their F-35s flew within range of them, they’d be sliced into steel and pilot-meat confetti, in fractions of a second.

  Handon monitored the discussion. He didn’t actually know how their own anti-ship missiles were going to get past the Russians’ close-in defenses, but he presumed the naval officers knew what the hell they were doing. He tried to relax. The Russians were tough. But there was a reason no one in the jungle fucked with a U.S. carrier strike group.

  Drake waved this off. “The Kashtans don’t matter either. The whole ballgame is their S-300s. As long as our fliers stay outside their 200km max engagement range, we’re good to go.”

  Handon knew the Russian S-300 was a long-range surface-to-air missile – and that it had been regarded as one of the most potent anti-aircraft systems ever fielded. But none of the others sounded worried – until now, when Handon caught sight of Campbell’s face.

  Frowning, she said, “It is worth remembering that those S-300s are sealed rounds. Meaning they require no maintenance over their entire lifetime.”

  The others got the message – they might have been miraculously saved by the Russians’ defective anti-ship missiles. But these SAMs were damn well going to go bang, if anyone flew close enough to get hit with one.

  Campbell looked to Drake and said, “Sir, what I really want to do before we launch this thing is retask the Pre—” but she was cut off by a loud knock at the hatch, followed by an ensign sticking his head in. “Commander, we’ve got updated telemetry and analysis on the enemy vessel.”

  “Go.”

  “Assuming we maintain current position, we’ll be within range of their Shipwrecks in twenty-two minutes. And PriFly says both our birds are pre-flight complete and launch-ready.”

  Drake rose. “Everyone back on station. We’re out of time.”

  Whatever Campbell was going to suggest, she’d have to do it from down in CIC.

  And Drake had already forgotten about it anyway.

  Victim Operated

  SAS Saldanha - Main Warehouse

  Juice clicked on his weapon-mounted Surefire tactical light as the door of the last and biggest warehouse closed behind them. He and the six Marines immediately found themselves at one end of a long windowless hallway, and the banishment of the light from the doorway left them in blackness. Now his light punched narrow holes in the dark.

  He wasn’t too bothered about drawing any dead that were in this building. He needed to destroy them anyway. Hence the light.

  Though the living would be a whole other issue.

  They hadn’t found any of either so far. But Juice had too much combat experience to assume conditions wouldn’t change.

  So he still directed the team using hand signals rather than spoken commands. He padded smoothly forward down the long hallway, silently pushing his Marines into the blacked-out rooms that opened up every few meters to their right. Hearing no sounds of contact, either radio reports or suppressed rifle shots, he mentally checked off those rooms as clear and continued to push forward.

  After forty meters the corridor ended in another door, also closed. Juice waited for the last Marines to emerge from the side rooms, then stacked them up behind him. In the cone of glare of his weapon light, the door looked like an internal one, which meant it would have a flimsy lock, if any, so he didn’t call for a breacher.

  Trying the handle, he found it locked, so he clicked off his light, lowered his rifle on its sling, smoothly drew a 5.11 MultiPry breaching tool over his shoulder from his assault pack, and popped the door in one go with minimal noise. The air that hit his face told him there was a bigger open space behind it.

  As point man, he moved smoothly inside the blackness and quickly sidestepped to the right, getting his silhouette out of the “fatal funnel” of the doorway, and taking up a position halfway down the inside wall. Only when he sensed that the second, third, and fourth men had moved in and taken up their supporting fields of fire did he click on the light again.

  This was another long room, perpendicular to the hallway they’d just cleared, but wider, perhaps thirty feet deep. Along the far wall was a row of what looked like large storage containers. That was promising. In the far right corner was another closed door. Juice ignored that for now.

  He left the rear-most three Marines out in the corridor, made a hold signal for the three in there with him, and moved to the first container. He did a visual inspection, and considered checking for EM signals, but decided that was overkill. He did at least duck, though, as he put a gloved hand on its lid and slowly lifted.

  Nothing blew up.

  He got his light down inside. Bone dry. Nothing.

  He moved to the second container and did the same routine. Also empty. As was the third.

  Last one. Juice queried his internal vibrations for any feelings of dodginess, but didn’t find any. Or nothing dodgier than usual. He eased the lid up.

  He saw the thin, colorless filament too late.

  He heard the spoon pop.

  Uh oh, he thought. Looks like Ivan was here.

  Rather than immediately diving for it, he took the extra half-second to stick his head inside, and get some sense of how much time they might be looking at, and how big a boom. He was glad he did.

  It wasn’t a grenade after all, but a molded shape-charge, packed with ball bearings, and topped with, of all things, a timed detonator. An illuminated red display read “00:00:56”. It was ticking down from there. Almost a minute left.

  Juice inspected the device.

  I can disarm that, he thought.

  He twirled his left index finger over his head, making the “rally point” signal. This would send the team straight back out the way they came, racing for objective rally point one, which was just outside. When he took a quick look over his shoulder, he saw the last man, Sergeant Lovell, hesitating at the doorway – looking disinclined to leave him alone. Juice just stared him down until he cleared out.

  Then he stuck his head back in the container.

  Forty-two seconds.

  Yeah, I can disarm that… assuming it doesn’t have too clever an anti-handling device.

  What used to be known simply as booby-traps were now usually called VOIEDs. He supposed they didn’t call them victim-operated for nothing.

  He sighed out loud, feeling slightly stupid.

  Unexpectedly, a wave of tiredness flooded over him.

  And
Juice slumped down to the ground and sat in the dark with his back up against the container.

  Just catch my breath for a minute, he thought.

  * * *

  He only had to sit there for a second, the bomb ticking away inches behind his head, to begin to wonder exactly what the hell he was doing. This wasn’t immediately obvious, and didn’t actually make any goddamned sense. Juice took a look into his soul, suddenly very curious about what was going on in there.

  Maybe… I’ve just had enough.

  No, it couldn’t be only that.

  Maybe… if I get killed now, then I can finally stop being afraid. Afraid of dying. Of failing. Being afraid of every damned thing.

  That was a little closer. Maybe it was the fear he really resented, that he had grown to hate. The lack of control over it. And the gnawing worry, the shame, that he was the only one in Alpha who felt it.

  Which would mean he wasn’t strong enough.

  Maybe somebody left this thing here, just for me, he thought. Maybe this was what everything had been leading up to, and what he’d been feeling in his bones, all this time. And maybe it was better to just go with it. Get the inevitable over with. Instead of constantly fighting the universe, knowing that, ultimately, it could only end one way.

  Maybe he was meant to die right here, right now.

  And maybe that was okay.

  Something made a creaking noise. Juice snapped his light up to his left. The sound had been the other door, the one in the far corner, swinging open. Either it hadn’t been closed properly, or the latch was broken, because it turned out it had simply been pushed open.

  By a dead guy.

  And behind the Zulu, around and to either side, out in the fading penumbra of his tactical light, Juice could see a cavernous space open up beyond the doorway. This was the main area of the warehouse.

  And he could also see, even from his spot slumped on the floor, hundreds of plastic-wrapped pallets, towering up to the high ceiling, rising out of sight, and stretching out into the darkness all the way to the edges of vision.

  Supplies.

  One big ole shit-ton of supplies.