A tower of water suddenly jumped out of the sea on the starboard side, the roar of an explosion shattering the pilothouse windows, spraying glass in their faces, and the ship rocked hard to port.
Iman reached out to Syamri, pulling him from the wheel. “Abandon ship! Abandon ship!”
He never heard the second shell, the one that landed squarely on the forward deck.
Without warning, he found himself flying through the air, the world spinning around him, and plunging into the water hard enough to knock the breath out of him. He fought, kicking and thrashing his arms wildly, struggling to reach the surface.
Which he did, popping out into the open air. For several seconds, he found he still couldn’t take air into his lungs, he had been hit so hard. It was a fight for his life, staying above the waves, sucking in air and desperately trying to regain some measure of control.
“Iman!” screamed a voice close by. “Iman!”
He spun as he continued to thrash in the water. There, only a few yards away, he could see Khalid, one arm flung over a large plank. His other arm was working to hold up Syamri, who was either dead or unconscious.
“Swim to me!” yelled Khalid. “I need help with Syamri! Swim!”
Iman was not a very good swimmer but he managed to kick his shoes off and make his way through the waves to Khalid’s side. Once he had a hold on the wood, he grabbed Syamri’s other arm. Together, he and Khalid managed to flip Syamri over and keep the man’s mouth and nose above water. Well, most of the time.
A few yards away, Iman could also see the stern of his boat as it tilted to a vertical position, the entire bow and midships either gone or under water. As he watched, horrified, the stern slid downward, plunging beneath the waves.
His ship, gone. Despair gripped his soul, squeezing him tightly. He knew not what would be worse, surviving this day without his ship? Or just letting go of the wood and ending it all here and now.
Ω
The two jets, one slightly below and behind the other, bolted through the clear blue sky at just under the speed of sound, vectoring south southeast at a true altitude of 10,000 feet. Ahead and above them at 35,000 feet was the contrail of an airliner, Singapore Airlines Flight 910, on its regularly scheduled run from Singapore to Manilla. The single-seater fighter jets were military, Chinese J-11B’s, powered by twin-engine Shenyang WS-10 turbofans, both capable of 59,400 pounds thrust in full afterburner.
The fighter jets banked left and pulled up, now on a curved intercept with the civilian aircraft, approaching it from behind and below. They accelerated slightly in order to close the distance with their intended and unsuspecting target.
The pilot in the lead J-11B activated his radio. In Mandarin Chinese, he said, “Target acquired.”
His controller, stationed back at the Yongxing Island airstrip on “Woody Island” in the Paracels, responded very promptly, also in Mandarin. “You are authorized to proceed against the intruder.”
The pilot gulped, knowing that his next action would cost the lives of hundreds of innocent people. Nevertheless, he had his orders and would not shirk from them.
Switching his fire control radar from search to track mode, he noted the closure rate and distance to the airliner. When the range had decreased to five miles, he activated the Russian made Vympel R-27R missile on the inner starboard weapons pylon, locking the missile to the target. As the J-11B closed to four miles, within the optimal target range of the medium range missile, he closed his eyes and pressed the firing button on the control stick.
The plane shuddered, the missile dropping away from the wing. With a practiced jerk of the control stick, the pilot brought the plane level again. The R-27R, a radar guided air-to-air missile, dropped only thirty feet before the solid fueled engine fully ignited. Thereafter, it accelerated rapidly, up to Mach 4.5, racing straight ahead.
At this range, it was no contest at all. In five seconds, the missile covered the four miles between the planes, smashing the airliner’s main starboard wing just inboard of its engine. The result was almost instantaneous, with the starboard wing shearing from the aircraft, the fuselage spinning down and to the left. In seconds, the wind shear tore the rest of the plane to shreds, spewing fragments of it in all directions.
And then his J-11B was thundering past the wreckage, where the Chinese fighter pilot could no longer see it. Banking sharply left and trusting on his wingman to keep up, he craned his neck in that direction and reacquired visual contact.
But there was only a scattering of aluminum pieces in the air, all of them falling slowly toward the surface of the South China Sea far below.
Hundreds of defenseless people now dead. At his hand too. Gritting his teeth, the pilot angled his plane back to the northwest and keyed his mike.
“Intruder destroyed,” he reported tensely. “Returning to base.”
Ω
Day 124
Later in the day, Paul noticed how quiet Capie was. She was in the nursery, softly talking to Eve (the 2008 film, WALL-E) in baby talk as the AI slept on a nearby table.
Paul had known her long enough to know that something was wrong. He motioned for her to step out of the nursery so that he could talk to her.
“What’s wrong?” he asked her, when they were out in the corridor.
For several seconds she didn’t respond, only frowned and looked away. Paul waited patiently.
“It’s just that she is so cute!” Capie finally blurted out. “And you are planning to turn her into a soldier. A killing machine! It just seems wrong.”
Paul waited a bit longer, to see if there was more she wanted to say. Then he grimaced and shook his head.
“Dear,” Paul said slowly, trying to tread carefully through the perceived field of landmines. “I thought you wanted the wizards to receive capital punishment.”
She refused to meet his look. And for a long several moments, she didn’t say anything either.
“I do think they should be dealt with harshly, for all the millions of people that they’ve killed,” she finally softly muttered as she stared down at Eve. “But not by these innocent babies. It wouldn’t be right.”
For a few moments, Paul didn’t respond. Secretly, in his heart, he was vastly relieved. Capie was continuing to make progress with her emotional trauma involving the death of her father. This reluctance on her part to let the AIs kill her enemies surely was a sign of her improvement.
“So,” Paul finally said, again careful on what words to use. “You think the wizards should die, right up to the point where it comes time to pick the executioners. Is that about right?”
This time, she did look up at him. And with a grim scowl on her face as well.
“I hate it when people use logic against me!” she softly snapped back before sighing. “Okay, you have a point. But don’t change the subject. I don’t want to turn Eve into a killing machine, okay? Nor any of the other Scotties either.”
“That’s not what I want as well,” Paul responded, challenging her assertion. “Although I won’t lie to you. It might be necessary for them to kill, in the same way that I needed to kill McDougall. But the Scotties won’t be involved in the same type of fighting that say, the US Rangers or Seals perform on mission ops or that the Marines perform when storming a beach or the US Army performed on D-Day. They won’t be involved in that kind of fighting.”
She adopted a suspicious glare at him. “I guess I don’t understand. What are you saying exactly?”
It was his turn to think for a few seconds.
“There was a science-fiction short story I read once, a long time ago. I don’t remember the author or the name of the story but I do remember what one of the characters, an alien I believe, had to say about World War II. He said that it was a colossal waste of resources and lives. That it would have been far more efficient and effective if an appropriate degree of power had been applied to one man, Adolf Hitler, say in the form of a single note played endlessly over and over again in his ear. Ima
gine how quickly the man would have been distracted and driven insane and how much faster the war would have ended, how many lives would have been saved.”
“I must have missed that story,” Capie admitted with a small shrug. “But it doesn’t seem practical, to have actually done that.”
Paul smiled knowingly. “No, not using the technology they had back then or lacking the power of magic that we have now.”
She jerked a little in surprise. “Are you saying…?”
“Exactly. The type of soldiers that I want the Scotties to be will use their magical powers to fight in unconventional ways. They will look for efficient, non-lethal methods—the quickest way, the least degree of power needed, ways that will save lives. So, in the conventional sense, they won’t be soldiers and this won’t be an army, but there really aren’t words in the English language to describe what sort of role they will actually serve. A team, yes but far more than that as well.”
She paused. “But there will be a war, of sorts, won’t there? When we go back to Earth and you confront Errabêlu. They won’t just lay down their arms, will they? Even when confronted by your army of Scotties.”
“No, I don’t suppose that they will. So yes, there will be a battle of sorts. Perhaps several battles. But, as I have said, our Scotties will fight with unusual tactics, employing magic, avoiding death and destruction whenever and however possible.” Paul paused. “And, as I said before, none of this is cast in concrete yet. Those are my plans, but if you can come up with a better approach, I am all ears. I will happily consider anything that has a decent chance of success. I know my plan sounds bizarre. You said so yourself. But it does have a decent chance of success, if we can continue to build the Scotties. I think this plan limits the number of bodies that will be left strewn in its path.”
Capie bit her lower lip, glancing back at Eve. “Speaking of bodies. What happens if one of our children gets…you know…killed?”
It was Paul’s turn to look uneasy, turning his head to one side and visibly swallowing hard. “That thought has occurred to me. I’ve discussed it with Daneel 1. We plan to build portable data storage units, sort of like USB hard drives, with 1.5 petabytes of space. Before they go into battle, each of the Scotties will copy their memories as backup. If necessary, we can build a whole new unit and then restore their memory.”
Nodding, she snorted in laughter. “I keep forgetting. They are computers. Too bad we can’t do that for ourselves as well.”
“Yeah. Too bad,” Paul agreed, with a sad smile.
Ω
Captain Barry Ottey slowly turned the page of the personnel evaluation questionnaire and continued filling out the form’s blanks with the ballpoint pen in his right hand, quietly uttering a small sigh as he did so. At his right elbow sat a keyboard and computer monitor, with the PC nestled in a secure bracket bolted to the right side of his desk. The evaluations would have been decidedly easier to do on the computer where, at the very least, he could have used copy and paste shortcuts. Someday, he mused thoughtfully, the promise of a truly paperless society would really come true and paper forms such as the ones he was filling out now would permanently disappear. How often had he heard that said over the last thirty years?
Ottey’s command was the Al Dafna, one of fourteen of the largest LNG super-tankers in the world, plying the world’s oceans from ports in the Middle East to harbors world-wide. Their current voyage was taking them through the South China Sea, their location roughly thirty miles northwest of Vanguard Bank, and 290 miles southeast of Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.
Glancing over the stack of paper, he estimated another hour or so here before he could reasonably quit for the evening and retire to his cabin. Thankfully, it had been another moderately uneventful day at sea, both the weather and the sea-state calm and cooperative. At this rate, in a few more days, his ship would dock in Busan, Korea. With the successful delivery of his cargo, he would then be free to turn over the unloading operations to his first officer, and command of the ship to a new captain, once that party reported aboard.
Ottey sadly smiled at the thought. The crew was planning to give him a farewell dinner tomorrow evening, the last time he would be with most of them again. He would miss serving with them. He would miss ship life too. And most of all, he would miss the Al Dafana!
After the change in command, he was to report to the corporate office in London, to accept a promotion as an operations director. He already had his set of orders in his cabin. Not only did it mean better pay but it would also be a shore job, which should—hopefully—make his wife April a bit happier. He had spent far too many years at sea and April had been very patient with him and the demands of his chosen occupation. With the promotion and new job, he could be home in time for dinner every evening. True, they would have to move from their home in Harwich where they had lived for twenty years and raised their children. But the pay raise with the promotion would allow better housing (even taking into consideration the cost of housing in London) of which his wife had strongly approved.
Such were his idle thoughts as he filled out the routine paperwork abstractedly…right up to the point where a shudder went through the compartment, rattling the computer monitor and the coffee cup sitting on the left side of the desk.
“What the…?” he muttered springing to his feet, paperwork forgotten. He was barely around the corner of the desk when the general alarm bell began to ring.
As Ottey rushed through the office doorway and onto the rear of the bridge, he spied Third Mate Stein Jenssen, current officer of the watch, shouting into his VHF/DSC portable radio and racing between computer displays along the lengthy bridge console.
Before Ottey could say a word, a brilliant flash of light suddenly appeared through the bridge windows, momentarily blinding him. An instant later, two of the windows on the port end of the bridge shattered, spewing forth glass fragments while the ship shook again, much harder this time. Grabbing on to an equipment rack, Ottey staggered but remained upright as the loud roar of an explosion burst through the bridge’s open port hatch, drowning out the sound of the general alarm bell. Blinking rapidly to clear his vision, the captain swung back to the windows in time to see a geyser of water slowly descend along the port side of the ship, fifty feet forward of the bridge.
“Captain!” frantically shouted Jenssen as he climbed back to his feet. “Meijer in the CCR reports rupture alarms in port side CT-2!”
Ottey dashed toward the port side door, across the shattered glass on the deck, ducking through the bridge’s side hatch and out onto the bridge wing.
Where he screeched to a sudden halt, gripping the hand rail. From here, he could see most of the ship’s hull along the port side. There were two gaping holes visible, one roughly located at CT-2, the other much closer at CT-5. Both were gushing cold vaporous liquid out past the jagged metal edges of the hull, out into the sea. At the forward gash, a small but rapidly growing fire was building, a light column of smoke streaming skyward.
For a second as he stared at the destruction, Ottey struggled to make sense of the calamity.
And then, in a sudden moment of instant clarity, he did understand. His ship was being attacked! Furthermore, the damage inflicted so far was more than enough to seal the fate of the Al Dafna and its cargo, despite her huge size. There was nothing he could do to stop the rapidly growing blaze with the two ruptured containment tanks. When the fire reached its full potential, the ship would be totally consumed in a colossal inferno the size of a small city. Worse, the other three LNG tanks would likely rupture too, adding to the conflagration.
As he dashed back onto the bridge, Jenssen was screaming at him.
“CT-5 is ruptured too, Captain! Meijer reports—”
But Ottey ignored him, reaching the control console and slapping his hand down on the alarm switch, turning it off. Snatching his radio from his belt, he fumbled with the buttons on the unit for a moment, trying to initiate a ship wide broadcast.
Finally,
the display on the unit acknowledged his inputs and he clutched it tightly up to his mouth.
“All hands, this is the Captain! We’ve been attacked!” he shouted into the unit. “Meijer! Trigger the CO2 dump for all spaces around CT’s 2 and 5. All hands prepare to abandon ship! I repeat, follow the drills and prepare to abandon ship!”
Ottey lowered the radio, then turned to Jenssen, who was staring back at the captain, his eyes wide open, his jaw dropped.
“That includes you, Mr. Jenssen!” the captain snapped. “Lifeboat station, if you please!”
“Aye, aye, sir!” Jenssen replied, as he spun and raced for the ladder.
Ottey followed but at a slower pace, raising his radio again and issuing more commands, this time to the ship’s engineer down in the engine room. Finished with that task, he paused and considered his next action. There were things in his cabin he really wished he had time to collect but in reality not a single one of them was worth his life. Instead, he momentarily ducked back into his office to retrieve the backup hardcopy of the ship’s log book, then rushed down the ladder to D Deck.
The Al Dafna carried two orange enclosed fiberglass lifeboats, one port side aft, the other on the starboard side. Both were designed to carry the entire crew if necessary.
Ottey chose the starboard side craft, judging it to be the furthest from the fire and therefore the safest. He raced down the D Deck passageway and out onto the open deck. Most of the crew were already there, wearing lifejackets and lowering themselves through the open hatch into the rear of the lifeboat. Ottey took a moment and unsnapped a bright yellow EPIRB (Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon) from its rack on a nearby bulkhead and pushed the activation switch, turning the unit on. Then he laid the device on the deck. When the ship went down, the unit would float, transmitting a distress radio signal.
“Hurry, sir!” shouted Seaman Meijer, a lover of Bond films, from the open hatch of the lifeboat. “Blofeld’s secret base is about to blow up!”
Ottey took one quick moment to glance back toward the bow of the ship, noting the heat waves radiating above amidships, from the port side. It must be very unhealthy on that side of the ship.
The Genie and the Engineer 3: Ravages of War Page 11
