Right now, he was trying to reposition his people further from the lip of the hole, so they couldn’t so easily be dragged over the edge by the leaping ones. This meant they could only engage Zulus that were already climbing into the ship. But the pile was back up to their level anyway, so it was a distinction without a difference. The ones coming in were basically just walking across a bridge of their destroyed buddies.
It was a meat avalanche, rolling implacably at them.
And it was the numbers of his dwindling force that Raible was agonizing over when, suddenly, out of thin air, he got reinforcements – whole new guys falling down on their heads, like militia from heaven. This rain of living people was slightly preceded by a cascade of white foam.
Raible recognized the fire-suppression foam instantly; but had no idea why it was coming down on them. And when the first sailor from up top went sliding over the edge, arms and legs wheeling, a pair of Raible’s people leapt away as she windmilled into the deck right between them. She’d only fallen ten feet and was unhurt, if slightly stunned.
It was much the same with the next ten or twelve who came down, seemingly from the Gods, to reinforce their dwindling ranks. Already back on their heels fighting the dead, a significant chunk of the force up top had basically succumbed to the suddenly foam-slick deck, and gone sliding over the edge.
But Raible would take them.
Improvising, seizing the initiative, he got the new fighters back on their feet and slotted in to the defense. He’d only just managed this, when he noted with extreme pleasure that the foam still pouring down was now washing off their bit of deck, and flowing out into the Zulu mountain. And he smiled out loud, realizing the slickness made it harder for them to get onto the ship, or at least to do so while still on their feet.
And that was when the entire city-sized warship lurched all around them – heaving like a sonofabitch, knocking him off his own feet.
Raible was thrown half over the top of his cover, then tumbled over on his side. As he pulled himself back upright, fighting to get back the wind that had been knocked out of him, he could see several things at once. The first was that another militiaman up top had gone over the edge – but this time had some airspeed, and flew right over their position and out into the hill of the dead. He screamed all the way down – and for a bit longer, as he was devoured. There was nothing Raible could do for him, nor for the second man who followed him.
Closer to home, most of his people had gone down to the deck from the lurch, some of them hard – and two had been knocked out to the edge, where they now kicked hysterically at the grasping arms that clawed at them, like Quint kicking at the shark after it flopped up on his boat.
Except that Raible wasn’t planning to let his people get eaten alive. He raced toward them, firing as he ran. He got there at the same time as others from the rear, half grabbing on to the two on their back and pulling, the others firing down into the giant mouth that was trying to consume them.
Raible could see both the terror and the resolve shining in the eyes of his people as they tried to keep one another alive through this. They were brand new to combat, but they had instantly, intuitively grasped its first rule: you fight for the man on either side of you, first and last.
And there was no question that having some of his few remaining fighters get knocked over the edge into the horde was a hellish turn of events. But to Corporal Raible, whose mind was running at full speed and ranging actively ahead, it also portended the possibility of salvation.
Because the ship was moving.
* * *
“Captain!”
Abrams swivelled to face the Murphy’s bridge radar operator. He would have happily given either love or money to be outside and to have eyes on the carrier as it came loose – or, as things stood, failed to come loose. But his place was on the bridge. And with most of the action behind them, his view on the state of play was all virtual.
The radar operator shouted out the news. “Surface contact, bearing zero-seven-nine, unidentified!” Drake just watched and waited for it. He knew more details would be coming, probably in seconds. “Signature is of an attack submarine breaching… Virginia class… It’s the Washington, sir.”
“Location?”
“Right where Commander Drake called it.”
“Kick-ass.” Abrams said that out loud, as he rose and fast-walked out of his bridge, grabbing a pair of binoculars as he did. This he needed to see for himself. Out on deck, he circled the gangway until he spotted Firehawk One hovering over the telltale silhouette of a surfaced sub, then raised the binocs and dialed in.
Drake, you son of a bitch, he thought. He could now see human figures on the Washington’s deck – including three who were not wearing Navy uniforms. Two of those looked like civilians.
He darted back to the bridge and stepped up to the radio station, grabbing the radioman by the shoulders. “Can you confirm they got them?”
A short delay. “Aye, sir. The Washington confirms the Mortem Two objective is aboard. They’ve got the scientist.”
Abrams hesitated not one more second. “Engines ahead full!”
“Aye aye, sir.”
The trembling of the ship around them redoubled. It was like being on a vibrating hotel bed – or, in this case, an entire, large, floating vibrating hotel. With the screws spun up to nearly their full speed, the destroyer still sat in place, like a race car with both its accelerator and it brake pedal jammed into the floor, its enormous power constrained.
Abrams stonily gave his next order. “All ahead flank one.”
Commander Jones leaned in close to Abrams, but didn’t particularly keep his voice down. He had to speak over the noise of a large warship trying to rip itself to pieces. “Jim… we’re going to tear the guts right out of her. For God’s sake.”
Abrams shook his head slowly. “It doesn’t matter now.”
And it didn’t. Because Abrams knew that there was a third vessel in play. Whatever happened to the Michael Murphy, whatever happened to the John F. Kennedy… there was now another boat, the USS Washington, to ferry their objective back across the ocean – and to complete their mission. And so now both Abrams and the Murphy were free. Free to do their job.
Which was to protect the flat-top – at all costs.
“Flank two!” Abrams said. “Do it! Pull for all we’re worth!”
The superstructure of the ship was already emitting terrible groans. Jones was thinking he should seriously get out there and see what was happening to their wildcat – and, moreover, see what was happening to the sections of hull around it. He also figured he’d better bring a damage-control party. But as he rose to leave, the Captain spoke again.
Abrams cast his eyes over his bridge – perhaps for the last time.
“Flank three,” he said calmly. This was the limit – full power for their dual engines. It was like firing the main booster rockets on a moonshot. Except the rocket was chained to something eight times as heavy as itself on the launchpad.
Abrams calmly stepped out the hatch onto the gangway and circled around to the stern, the whole ship bucking and shrieking around him. He had given his final order.
And he damned well wanted to see what was going to happen next.
* * *
“Commander Drake!”
“Yeah.”
“Leonidas Two reports an improved tactical situation in the hole. They think they can hold a little longer.”
“Got it.” Drake eyeballed the flight deck out through the screens. In the last minute, it had looked like half the survivors of Leonidas One, the up-top half of the reserve, had fallen right off the ship – or at least fallen into the giant hole they were meant to be defending. However, now their position was being reinforced by the unbidden and half-assed firefighting detail.
Who incidentally were pretty much taking back the whole flight deck.
Drake didn’t understand it for a second. But he did have to admit they were kicking major a
ss. The large group of sailors, identities and actual assignments unknown, were sweeping the deck clear of dead with enormous gouts of high-pressure water, and with rocketing heavy machinery – and they were doing so with authority. They looked unstoppable. And that was damned well a first for the living in this fucked-up, never-ending battle.
And Drake could still see that white-bearded old bastard down there directing them, raging around out in the fray, out at the front in fact, totally fearless. Drake muttered, mainly to himself, “Who’s running this fucking battle? Oh, yeah – nobody…”
“Commander!”
“Yeah.”
“The Washington has breached! She’s two thousand meters off our stern, bearing one-seven-five.”
“Got it.” So the cavalry was actually arriving on time after all. Maybe the Kennedy wasn’t going to be the Alamo. Maybe some of them would walk away. Or maybe they’d steam the whole fort right the fuck out of Texas. The Mexicans could have it.
A voice sounded behind him, repeating her line from earlier. “Drake, you son of a bitch. I knew it.”
He turned around to see LT Campbell striding onto the Flag Bridge, a tablet computer in one hand and her pistol in the other. Were things getting that bad? Or had she been below decks – or even out on the flight deck? Drake just mentally shrugged.
Right behind her came a hurtling Captain Martin, who had dashed down to CIC to retrieve his crap. He had his laptop and a thick sheaf of papers – and, as became clear when he plopped down at a station nearby, he had piped their UAV video feed up to this console.
“Any revolutionary new ideas?” Drake asked, looking down as Martin got plugged in, seeming somehow both manic, as they all were, but also unflappable in that particular British way. “Because we’ve been reprieved. For another minute or two.”
Martin propped up his laptop, flipped through some windows, and then started running the video of his last, biggest simulation – right alongside a monitor showing the real-time drone video of the storm raging at the prow, just outside. The similarity of the two moving images, one imagined and mocked up, the other all too real and happening in real time, was eerie. Drake was thinking Martin had actually nailed it. But Martin was thinking the opposite.
“Okay,” he said, scraping his hand across his forehead. “Why aren’t we coming loose? What’s changed?” Drake didn’t answer. It seemed like a rhetorical question. “When reality doesn’t match the model, that means either the assumptions were wrong – or else something has changed along the way. We’re out of time to revisit the assumptions. So, like the drunk looking for his keys under the streetlight, we’ve got to figure out what’s changed. Maybe it’s something we can still fix.”
Drake didn’t know Martin well. But he could tell the British officer and engineer was in the cognitive fight of his life. As if the Kennedy would stand or fall based on what happened in his brain in the next few seconds. Steam was practically coming off his forehead.
“What’s changed?” he repeated. “Between when I designed the model and now?”
That one wasn’t rhetorical. Drake answered. “One aircraft didn’t make it back. An F-35.”
Martin checked the weight manifest. “Fifty thousand pounds. But I had that as neutral, roughly amidships.”
“We can’t get it back, anyway.”
“What else?” Martin belatedly clocked the firefighting parties battling out on deck. “Where do those hoses draw water from? We emptied the ballast tanks already, right?”
“Yeah. They draw directly from the ocean.”
“From the front?”
“For those hose stations, yes.”
“Fuck, fuck,” Martin cursed. “That means they’re sucking water out from in front of the ship. But is it enough to matter? What’s the flow rate? God, I need to update the sims. But there’s no time. I’ve got to eyeball it.” And with that he leaned over a yellow legal pad and started frantically scribbling longhand equations.
It reminded Drake of when Martin had been trying to restart the reactor, and had gone to the whiteboard, squeaking out mysterious symbols with his marker pen. For some reason, Drake was taken by a feeling of nostalgia, and inexplicable calm. Like it was out of his hands now. He felt guilty, because the Brit was obviously wringing the last ounce of effort from his tortured brain, trying to save Drake’s ship for him.
The carrier lurched around them again, more violently now, sending everyone on the Flag Bridge grabbing at something to stay upright.
Martin straightened back up, and he and Drake locked eyes. They both glanced down to the monitor displaying the UAV video feed. It was still locked on the mountain of dead piling up against the prow. And in this moment, it looked bigger and thicker than it ever had before. Were they seeing it right?
And Drake realized with a start that something had changed – for the better. With the thick fire-retardant foam, plus all the water from the hose teams, streaming over the prow… suddenly, the dead couldn’t climb up and over the lip. They couldn’t gain any purchase. Instead, they were piling up in front of the carrier into a higher and wider mass than at any time before.
The ship lurched again, more violently.
Martin’s and Drake’s eyes stayed glued to the aerial video feed.
* * *
At three thousand feet above the battle, the world was strangely peaceful. Distance was like that – it smoothed rough edges, made danger and drama more abstract, granted perspective. Maybe the crew of a gigantic warship would all die down there today.
But an eon hence, would the Earth care? Would the universe?
The UAV itself certainly didn’t care. It had a relatively advanced silicon brain, in the form of multiple onboard processors. But it was still a long way from anything like sentience. Ultimately, it was controlled by human operators down on the carrier. But right now, for the moment, it flew itself in a preprogrammed pattern, tirelessly maintaining its lazy, wide, elliptical orbit way up above the chaos that reigned below, its unblinking eye serenely and tirelessly sweeping the scene, the focus of its gaze locked on to the front of the beleaguered warship.
And what it saw now, though it didn’t have the smarts or even the interest to evaluate the image, was a mass of what in reality was nearly 400,000 dead bodies, and which represented more than 40 million pounds of dead weight, all of it pressing up against the front of the 220-million-pound warship. The exact force this represented, arrayed in opposition to the friction of the sandbar, as well as the weight of the ship pressing down – and also combining with the force of the destroyer pulling on its length of chain – was something Captain Martin had calculated down to the Nth decimal place.
This unmanned aerial vehicle had a brother on the other side of the ocean surface – an unmanned underwater vehicle. This UUV had fallen in the line of duty, and was now buried beneath an aquatic avalanche of writhing dead, its mobility gone, its camera view occluded. But if the living people on the carrier, or the UAV circling above, could have seen what the UUV beneath the waves did: they would have seen many thousands of dead hands clawing at the ship’s hull from beneath the water.
Moreover, they would see these half-crushed masses of dead digging down into the sandbar, trying to find a way in, just as the ones above the water tried to climb their way up. And they would see them reducing, and partially destabilizing, the sandbar that held the Kennedy locked to the ocean floor, as the dead tried to follow any avenue that might get them closer to the living people inside.
And this destabilization, reflected in the sandbar’s falling friction coefficient, was something that Martin had also calculated with exacting precision.
And he had, as events were about to prove, calculated exactly right after all.
And these two mindless, uncomplaining, easygoing drones, one way up in the sky, the other at the very bottom of the sea, would be the first witnesses to the vindication of Captain Martin of the Royal Engineers – and first to witness the momentous transformations that happened when
reality matched simulation. They got to see the all-consuming storm of the dead, with its enormous weight and mass and force pressed hard up against the prow, helping to push the carrier off the sandbar and back out to sea.
They were there to see the Kennedy’s doom become its salvation – as the horde of dead that wanted to devour them instead helped to refloat them.
Quo Fas et Gloria Ducunt. That was the motto of the Royal Corps of Engineers.
Where Duty and Glory Lead.
In this case: they led the hell out of there.
* * *
Ali accepted a hand up onto the deck of the Washington, which was still sloughing off water after surfacing. She only paused long enough to get her feet firmly beneath her, before turning back to haul Park and Emily up out of the water from behind her – both at the same time, one with each hand.
She had come a long way, suffered and sacrificed an unspeakable amount, and performed a variety of near-miracles, to lead these two to safety – particularly the scientist. So she was damn well going to see them all the way home. And as the two of them finally stood dripping on deck, and coughed into their hands, and got blankets wrapped around their shoulders by stalwart sailors, Ali laughed out loud.
“Mission complete,” she said, to nobody but herself.
“I’d say you are mission complete. And a good job of it.” She turned to find herself facing a middle-aged but youthful naval officer wearing a ballcap emblazoned with “SSN-787” – the hull number of the Washington. From his rank and insignia, Ali knew that she was facing the captain of the boat. She took his outstretched hand and shook it firmly.
Sailors of various ranks and ratings were running across the deck now, and shouting to one another over the roar of the Seahawk, which was coming into a hover directly over the stern, and pausing in its descent barely a foot off the deck.
The sub captain caught Ali’s wistful look in that direction. “Believe me – the safest place for you right now is here on this boat.”
Ali nodded. “But they’re going to the Kennedy?”
“Affirmative.”
Ali eyeballed the guys now running toward the helo, and then getting handed up into it by the crew chief. She could see from the rating insignia on their shoulders that they were all either machinist mates or electronics technicians. And Ali would have bet a perfectly good life jacket that they were nuclear-trained MMs and ETs. These were the nuclear operators from a Virginia-class nuclear sub. And Ali knew that if anyone – other than the JFK’s original nuclear guys – would know how to restart the carrier’s reactors, it was very definitely these people.
Arisen, Book Five - EXODUS Page 34
