The Tide_Dead Ashore

by Anthony J Melchiorri

  White light pierced her retinas. A loud blast slammed against her eardrums. Her balance shifted as if the ship itself were being tossed about in a hurricane. No matter how much she blinked, her vision didn’t return. She heard a distant rattle then louder popping. The attackers were firing on them while their senses were muddled, and blinded and half-deaf, the Hunters couldn’t risk shooting back for fear of hitting their comrades. Unless Andris’s team was having better luck, she feared the battle had already been won.

  ***

  Andris hoisted the Stinger over his back as gunfire erupted in the cargo hold below.

  “They’re in!” Miguel called over the comms. “Bravo, we need backup now!”

  “We are on it,” Andris said.

  He could not allow himself to fail. To fail would be to condemn his comrades. Worse, it would mean Spitkovsky and his Russians won. Andris came from Latvia, a country that had once been under the iron rule of the Soviet Union.

  The Russians had taken everything from him. His family. His dreams. He wouldn’t let them take the Huntress or its crew.

  His boots slammed against the ladder as he bounded up toward the deck. Andris, Jenna, and Terrence reached the promenade deck around the superstructure. Just beyond the closed hatch, the choppers’ engines roared. There would be no room for errors once they exited that hatch. If they were lucky, they would have a few seconds before the enemy fired. The chopper had been able to avoid their SAMs before. But not now. It was too close to dodge a missile from the Stinger.

  “You know this is overkill, right?” Andris asked, turning back to Terrence and Jenna. He jammed a battery coolant unit into the Stinger’s handguard. “That bird is close enough for me to pitch a grenade into it.”

  “They play baseball in Latvia?” Jenna asked.

  “It is not as popular as football.”

  “The kicking kind, not the tackling kind,” Terrence clarified.

  “There is no other kind,” Andris spat, unfolding the sighting reticule of the missile launcher.

  “Did you play it?” Jenna asked.

  “Football?”

  “No,” Jenna said, pressing an ear against the hatch, then looked back at him. “Baseball.”

  “Of course not. I was too busy starving while the Russians worked my parents to death in their factories.”

  “Then I don’t want to rely on your pitching arm.” She gripped the handle of the hatch. “I like the Stingers better.”

  “Fine,” Andris said. “As long as it makes a boom, I will be quite happy.”

  “Ready?” Terrence said, shouldering his rifle.

  “Ready,” Andris responded.

  He situated the Stinger’s weight over his shoulder. It was heavy but no more of a burden than the responsibility for saving his comrades.

  Jenna pushed open the door. Blinding light poured in. It took Andris’s eyes a moment to adjust. Terrence exited first, his rifle playing across the decks.

  “Clear!” he said.

  Andris charged out next, followed by Jenna. The thrum of blades pounding the air swallowed all other sounds. He searched the graying skies for the offending choppers.

  “Where are those Soviet assholes?” Andris asked.

  “There!” Jenna pointed to one of the choppers hovering high against the bright sky. It had retreated from the ship after dropping off its load.

  Andris raised the Stinger, and the tonal lock bleated into his ear. But he did not fire. The transport chopper wasn’t their priority. He felt like a lamb under a wolf’s gaze, awaiting the creature’s pounce. Where was the attack chopper?

  “The other one!” Andris said. “Where is it?”

  Jenna swiveled on her heel. Leaning around the corner of the superstructure, she called back to them. “The other one is—”

  Her voice drowned in a chainsaw-like roar. Rounds ripped past her, ricocheting off the deck and railing.

  “It’s coming around this way!” she yelled, struggling to be heard over the din.

  The machine-gun fire continued punching into the deck where Jenna had been moments ago. Andris and Terrence retreated to shelter. All the while, Andris maintained the Stinger’s aim where he expected the chopper to appear. It didn’t take long for the helicopter to make its way around the superstructure. Both machine guns under its stub wings spewed fire.

  Andris waited for the tonal buzz of the Stinger to let him know that it had locked onto the chopper. Rounds crashed and sparked against the deck. The bullets slammed toward him, and he was forced to lower the Stinger, jumping back.

  “Damn them to hell!” Andris cursed. “They will eat my missile, and they will like it!”

  Leaning around the corner, he prepared to lift the Stinger again. Fingers wrapped around his shoulder and pulled him back.

  “Don’t,” Terrence said. “It’ll rip you to shreds.”

  “We got to find another way!” Jenna said.

  Spurts of machine-gun fire pushed them back again. A hot vein of frustration exploded through Andris. He wanted so badly to see that chopper become a shroud of twisted metal. Explosives were his thing. Whether it was to gain entry through a locked door or bring down a Titan, a loud bang and a ball of fire was the way to do it.

  “We must split up,” Andris said.

  “Right,” Terrence said. “I’ll distract it. You fire when they’re looking at me.”

  “You will be risking very much,” Andris said. “Are you sure? We can retreat and—”

  “And what?” Jenna asked. “They already tore up the stern. The attackers are swarming the cargo bay. It’s got to be now.”

  “Let me do this,” Terrence said.

  “Fine,” Andris said. “Do it!”

  Terrence turned, shouldered his rifle, and took shelter, pressing himself into an alcove. “Go!”

  Andris ran. His muscles burned. He raced faster than he ever had in his life. What Terrence was doing was foolish. It was crazy. But it was also necessary.

  Andris understood this. They had no other choice. At least that was what he told himself. In his heart, he knew Terrence was sacrificing himself for the good of the others. He had done so in order for Andris to take his shot—a chance he could not waste.

  The throaty blast of machine-gun fire rent the air once more. Terrence’s rifle answered with a shrill report. Once again, Andris raised the Stinger. Before he could catch the chopper in his sight, rockets jetted from it again.

  “Terrence!” Andris called over the comms.

  Fire plumed over the other side of the superstructure, and smoke filled the air. There was no response over the comm link. And before Andris could adjust his aim, before he could swivel to get a lock on the chopper, it twisted away from the wreckage. Andris never got another chance to call for Terrence. The bird responded first.

  Machine-gun rounds tore into the deck and superstructure near him. Shrapnel slashed at his body and face, slicing at him like so many tiny daggers, tearing and cutting. Pain burned through his flesh as the chopper chased him and Jenna. He knew his life was in jeopardy. So were the lives of the rest of the crew and the innocents belowdecks. He could not fail. If Terrence was already dead because Andris had been too slow, something more terrifying than death would haunt him: the knowledge that Dom had trusted him to do this, and yet he had failed.

  He stopped, even as gunfire chewed the deck around him.

  The chopper had to be taken down. There were no other choices.

  “Andris!” Jenna yelled when she saw what he was doing.

  “I must do this.” He shouldered the Stinger and leveled the targeting reticule at the chopper. The helicopter came at him. But he did not back away. Bullets plunged into metal as the chopper adjusted its aim. This time, he kept the Stinger aimed until the tone buzzed, indicating a lock.

  He fired.

  There was barely time for him to exhale. A wave of heat blasted over him, and a concussive force lifted him from his feet, tossing him backward into the railing. His ears rang, and ho
t debris pelted him. He tried to recover and steady himself, reaching for the Stinger in case the chopper was still somehow airborne. But he had dropped the weapon. He blinked and peered past the acrid clouds of oily smoke. The Stinger had fallen to the deck below, precariously teetering over the gunwale.

  The helicopter was nothing but a crippled beast. Its wreckage careened toward the superstructure, spinning out of control. It slammed into the metal plating. Rotor blades fractured and tore, whirling like deadly dervishes through the air. Andris threw himself to the deck and crawled toward where Jenna had taken shelter. Metal shrapnel pounded all around him. Finally, the whine of the chopper’s engines was replaced by the victorious crackle of flames.

  “Andris, you okay?” Jenna asked.

  “I am quite peachy,” he said. Sweat trickled across his forehead, and he wiped it away from his eyes. “What about Terrence?”

  Jenna’s face went pale.

  -5-

  The sounds of battle set Lauren’s nerves on fire. She counted the seconds after each explosion and barrage of gunfire, waiting for those fateful words over the comm link. Casualty! We need medical assistance. Divya stood next to her, her eyes constantly sweeping the hatch and bulkhead as if at any moment the walls might be breached.

  “Reminds me of growing up in San Diego,” Lauren said.

  Divya cocked her head. “Grew up in a bad neighborhood?”

  “No, I’m talking about the earthquakes. There’s a feeling you get when you first sense the ground is shaking. Like a heavy truck rolling by on the street. Only it gets worse. And you keep waiting to see if your home is going to collapse, if this is the big one everyone’s been talking about. Your nerves just get more and more frayed until you feel about ready to scream. The tension is almost worse than the quake.”

  “I know what you mean,” Divya said. “Like waiting for test results. I used to have patients who were in misery. No doctors could help them. And then when I told them their diagnosis, even if it was chronic—or worse, fatal—they would look almost relieved. As if I had provided them salvation.”

  “Sometimes not knowing what’s waiting in the dark is worse than the actual monster you have to face,” Lauren said.

  Divya merely nodded, chewing her bottom lip. More gunfire boomed through the belly of the ship. It sounded as if the battle was drawing closer, and the Hunters were losing ground.

  But nothing compared to the blast that came next. Frantic voices chattered over the comms.

  “Med team, this is Bravo,” Andris shouted through the comms. “We have a casualty. Terrence...he needs help now!”

  “Copy, Bravo.” Lauren signaled Divya to get their emergency medical kits ready. Peter already had the OR prepped. “Are you bringing him down?”

  “Negative, med team,” Andris said. “Terrence cannot be moved by us. He is bleeding out. Mangled limbs. We will need at least three of you.”

  The deep pit in Lauren’s stomach threatened to swallow her. Sean had been listening in on the comms from his position near the OR. “Sean, Divya, let’s go,” she said.

  The trio burst out of the med bay’s hatch, carrying a stretcher. The sound of a skirmish echoed through the corridor. They surged up the ladders toward the superstructure. An empty corridor led to the hatch where Bravo team had made their stand.

  Her entire career had been spent in labs and clinics up until Dom recruited her. Even then, she had spent most of her time on the ship, rarely leaving it for the field except in the direst of situations. But even when she had helped rescue civilians on a boat taken over by Skulls, she had never actually been this close to combat.

  Divya, on the other hand, had served in Doctors Without Borders. Now Lauren looked to the younger woman for reassurance. But even Divya’s nut-brown eyes were wide, and her fingers trembled. Sean, an epidemiologist more at home in the lab than anywhere else in the Huntress, looked positively terrified.

  “Bravo,” Lauren called over her comm link. “We’re at the hatch. Is it clear?”

  “Negative,” Jenna called back. “The Mi-8 is still pestering us. They got a couple of gunners posted now.”

  “Then we’ve got to move Terrence,” Lauren said.

  “One moment,” Andris replied.

  “Just tell us when,” Lauren replied.

  For several seconds, she waited, ready to dart through the hatch and retrieve Terrence.

  “Go!” Andris said.

  Lauren and Divya leapt through the hatch and dashed around the corner. She stopped. A heavy weight spread through Lauren’s limbs, making her movements sluggish. She understood now why Andris and Jenna hadn’t been able to drag Terrence to the hatch. The man lay in a pile of twisted metal splattered in red and black. There was no path to drag Terrence through the wreckage. Lauren was forced to leave the stretcher.

  “Here!” Jenna said, throwing her rifle over her back. Sean leapt over to her. Divya hurdled over the warped bits of rail and deck, with Lauren coming in last.

  Terrence was a mess. There was no other possible way to describe him. Lauren pressed two fingers to his neck, feeling a quickly fading pulse. Blood pooled around his mangled legs.

  “Sean, Divya, tourniquets now,” Lauren commanded.

  She checked Terrence over for any other critical wounds. Thankfully, his torso was in better shape than his lower limbs. The duo slowed the bleeding as much as possible. Normally, Lauren would work with the utmost care to lift someone injured like this. Shifting them too roughly might leave them with permanent paralysis, if they survived the move at all. But time was a luxury they did not have.

  “I am returning,” Andris said. “I can no longer keep the chopper back.”

  Machine-gun fire ripped through the air amid the thunder of the chopper blades.

  “Go!” Lauren said. They lifted Terrence over the wreckage and through the hatch then placed him on the stretcher.

  “Keep the door open!” Andris yelled over the comms. Moments later, the crash of gunfire chased him through the doorway. He slammed the hatch shut behind him as bullets punched into the metal. “Thank you.”

  Down the ladders they plunged, back into the depths of the Huntress. Lauren’s mind whirred, making a mental checklist of all the steps that would come next. Peter would begin staunching the bleeding and tying off vessels. They’d administer anesthesia to ensure Terrence stayed unconscious as they catalogued his wounds and cleaned up what they could.

  But one thing already seemed apparent from her cursory examination. If Terrence survived this, it wouldn’t be with working legs.

  Keeping Terrence alive would take the focus of all four med team members, and as they began to work on him, Lauren counted herself lucky to have such talented team members. But if there was another casualty, another injury even half as bad as Terrence’s, the team would be stretched too thin.

  Andris and Jenna ran back out into the battle to help the others.

  ***

  Meredith fired at the next bastard that dared show his head in the cargo bay. She and the others had been pushed back, and the cargo bay was completely taken over by the attackers. They had fought for every inch the attackers took, but their defenses had been shattered by the stun grenade.

  She cursed herself for falling prey to such a simple trick.

  It had been too long since she’d been out in the field. Too long since she’d faced humans and not dumb Skulls. Even in the Congo, they had held all the advantages when they took the FGL facility by surprise. Being on the defensive like this was not something she enjoyed.

  Another soldier charged their position. Meredith fired, but he slid into cover too soon. Once the attackers had figured out where Meredith, Miguel, Glenn, and Spencer had been, they had operated with utter professionalism, sweeping the room and covering one another with marked precision.

  It felt to Meredith as if Alpha were trying to hold back the ocean tide from crashing on the beach.

  And bit by bit, they were being forced back, continuously on their hee
ls to recover from being flanked. Every time Meredith had to retreat, it physically pained her. She hated ceding ground to those bastards.

  “Alpha, Bravo,” Andris called over the comm link. “How are you holding out?”

  “We’re through the hatch,” Miguel said. “Get your lazy asses down here!”

  “We will do the best we can,” Andris said. “There is another helicopter to take out.”

  Then another voice boomed over the comms.

  “Bravo, you just worry about helping Alpha,” Dom said. There was an edge to his voice that Meredith doubted anyone else would notice. But they didn’t know him as well as she did. He no doubt wanted to be where his people were, delving into the fray beside them. But his injury was holding him back. He’d be little more than a limping target. Even Dom knew his limits. “Thomas and I will take the remaining bird ourselves.”

  Well, I take that back, Meredith thought. Maybe he doesn’t know his limits.

  “Copy,” Andris responded.

  “Alpha, just hold out a little longer down there,” Dom said.

  “We’re doing the best we can, Chief,” Miguel said, his voice sounding strained.

  Meredith fired at another advancing soldier. She thought she caught him in the leg. But the man still fired back. These people were like robots. If they hadn’t managed a successful ambush on the first squad, she might’ve even believed these people weren’t actually human.

  Then shouts echoed throughout the chamber. A sudden burst of gunfire exploded from the positions she had been tracking.

  She had thought the attackers were pressing them before. She was wrong.

  Incoming salvos tore through the air. Over and over, Meredith tried to fire back. But each time she attempted any kind of defense, she was beaten by return fire. Something had made the attackers restless. Maybe even desperate. She wondered if it was the fact that two of their choppers had already gone down. Whatever the reason, it didn’t matter right now. What mattered was surviving—and keeping the rest of the crew safe.

  The attackers continued their onslaught, gaining on Alpha team. Soon, Meredith was posted up in an alcove leading off from the main corridor. Behind her were the med bay and the electronics workshop. Miguel was sheltered across from her, his face wrought in determination, the same as she felt. They could give no more ground. If they gave anything defending these last few feet, it would be their lives.