ARISEN, Book Eleven - Deathmatch

by Michael Stephen Fuchs

  He turned to face in again.

  * * *

  Nelson crested the top of the ladder and stepped onto the fantail deck, which was like a giant porch recessed in the flat vertical stern of the ship. It was also currently very dark, with the outside lights blacked out as a matter of operational security, and very little ambient light yet from the rising sun.

  Nelson got his flashlight out and panned it around to first the port and then the starboard side of the deck. He could see cabinets with gear stacked on top of them, piles of crated supplies, a big coil of nylon rope – all of it casting deep shadows behind his light. And there were a lot of dark corners.

  He stepped forward carefully and quietly, trying to get his light into each cranny as he rounded on it, while also trying to keep his rifle pointed in the same direction. In a minute, he had cleared all the way to the starboard side, and immediately spun in place while raising his rifle – already laughing at himself for being irrationally frightened of what was in the dark behind him.

  There was nothing there, of course.

  In another minute, he had cleared all the way to the port side. He then turned and walked back to the top of the port-side ladder, already saying, “Oh, man, we’re just hearing things…” But as he stepped to the railing and looked down, his voice trailed off.

  Because O’Malley wasn’t there.

  There was just enough ambient daylight for that to be totally obvious. The dock wasn’t small, but the whole expanse of it was laid out and visible beneath him. And unless he swam away, there simply wasn’t anywhere for O’Malley to go – nowhere except up one of the two ladders. He must have snuck up there on one side while Nelson had his back turned clearing the other.

  Lowering his rifle, he shined his light ahead again as he walked back toward the starboard side. “Dude, not funny,” he said. But when he reached the end… still no O’Malley.

  Brow wrinkling with concern, breath going shallow with adrenaline, Nelson turned and descended the stairs – fast. When he hit the dock, he spun around in a full 360, panning his light and rifle in all directions. But when he completed his circle and faced out again toward the ocean, something drew his eye downward.

  Squatting down and peering into the surface of the sea, he imagined the water was disturbed – by more than just the regular lapping that had been putting them to sleep. And that disturbance seemed to be increasing. Nelson leaned out farther, shining his light straight down into the dark and bottomless ocean.

  But its beam just reflected back in his face.

  Faith Burning Bright

  JFK – Officer’s Quarters

  [Today]

  In the small but private cabin she shared with Handon, Sarah Cameron finished making up the bunk. She folded down the blanket under the two under-stuffed pillows – one indented from her own head, the other still fluffed, or as fluffed as it ever got. Then she dressed out in leggings and a long-sleeve top. The gym on the Kennedy’s gallery deck was always cold, even well into the morning watch.

  She was up early for a workout because she needed to get it in before Dr. Park started work. There was now an armed NSF guard permanently posted to the hospital, and another outside Park’s cabin, who went on duty as soon as Sarah tucked him in for the night. But she still didn’t like leaving him alone during the day. After watching Park nearly die on their zombie-filled misadventure belowdecks, four words constantly echoed in her head:

  You had ONE job!

  No one, certainly not Handon, had ever said them to her. They were her own admonition to herself. Because she knew that job was keeping the most important man on the planet safe – which made all her past policing and protective duties fade to insignificance. Even protecting the PM, and the Queen, both of which she had helped with once or twice during big public events in Toronto, now seemed trivial in comparison.

  Sarah stole a quick look at her scuffed-up Mini-14 rifle propped in the corner. It was a pretty unimpressive piece of hardware, certainly compared to the beautiful SCAR-L assault rifle Marine Sergeant Lovell had hooked her up with. A strong case could be made that Lovell’s breaking of the rules was the only reason she, or any of her team, had survived the immolation and flooding of Jizan in Saudi Arabia.

  But she’d had to ditch the beautiful weapon, trading it for a chance at surviving the flood that Wesley unleashed – which in turn had been the only prayer any of them stood of getting out of there. She still hadn’t told Lovell she’d lost the weapon, and wasn’t looking forward to that conversation.

  But then she thought: Too much ruminating, not enough lifting.

  She grabbed Handon’s MP3 player and earbuds from the tiny bunkside table – then stared for a few seconds at the satphone he also left her, and considered bringing that as well. But with the telecoms satellites falling out of the sky in real time, the phone was basically useless, just an inert brick in her pocket. She hadn’t yet tried to put a call through, and presumed neither had he – the commander of the shore mission had a lot more important shit to do than patching things up with his girlfriend. Anyway, every time she’d looked at it, fighting the temptation to call, it hadn’t shown even a single bar of signal.

  Finally she stood, exited, and got moving down the dim passageway. As she walked, she got the earbuds in and the music pumping. She’d been warned more than once that wearing earbuds wasn’t allowed on ship, due to the risk of missing announcements on the tannoy. But with the world gone to hell all around them, complying with that kind of nitpicking rule seemed pointless. And Sarah really liked Handon’s workout playlist – it was hard, heavy, and powerful, rather like the man himself. Which was perhaps why she liked it. Entering the gym, she found no one else there yet, and got right into it with muscle-ups, no warm-up.

  As she stared to sweat, she couldn’t keep from thinking about how much she missed Handon, and how troubled she felt that he had left with things so messed up between them. But she knew, she was resolved, that things would be different when he got back. She herself was very different after surviving the flood – she had been not only baptized, but born again. And she was going to use that gift by making herself a better person. And making sure everything was better.

  It would be another chance for them.

  * * *

  Abrams stepped out from his bridge onto the observation deck outside. He wanted some air, and he wanted to watch the sun climb up over the Indian Ocean, out beyond the stern of the mammoth ship. Also, he was trying to distract himself from the worrying fact that they hadn’t heard from Team Cadaver in a little too long.

  But they were probably just too far away, or in bush too thick, to make commo with their portable radios. In the planning phases, Abrams had tried to force a bigger and more powerful pack radio on them. But Handon had been pretty clear that he was focused on completing the mission – the prospects of which wouldn’t be improved by a bunch of extra weight – rather than keeping command apprised of their progress.

  And it was Handon’s show to run as he saw fit.

  Thinking of this, Abrams twisted at the waist and looked up into the sprawling communications array that towered fifty feet over the top of the island – huge antennas, bulbous radar domes, flat rotating dishes… And now for some reason he remembered how his predecessor, Drake, used to climb up there sometimes, just to hide out for a while, to get a few minutes away from his duties – and the burden of command.

  Having experienced that burden himself now, good and hard, Abrams could no longer judge Drake for it. As he looked up there, he thought maybe he should try it himself. But as he scanned the complex network of catwalks, trying to work out how the hell you even got up there, he spotted two tiny figures moving around.

  Wait, who are those jackasses? he thought.

  He turned and went back into the bridge, intending to find out if there was scheduled maintenance up there. But before he could figure out who to ask, he was preempted by a crisp announcement from one of his bridge officers.

  �
�Commander, CIC has Cadaver on the horn.”

  Abrams nodded, then turned on his heel and darted down the inside ladder to CIC – arriving just in time to hear one side of Campbell’s conversation with their shore team, presumably the ground commander. But Campbell didn’t even acknowledge his presence, instead turning to a subordinate and saying:

  “Get me the NSF Ops Room – or find me LT Wesley, wherever the hell he is.”

  Abrams stood patiently off to the side – waiting to see if Campbell was going to read him in, for once.

  * * *

  Wesley looked up from the piles of paperwork on his desk as soon as he realized someone was standing in the open hatch. It was a burly-looking seaman with his arm in a cast – and also some serious bruises and contusions across his face and neck.

  The man didn’t speak, so neither did Wesley – instead he looked over to the next desk at Derwin, with whom he was manning the NSF Ops Room, and arched his eyebrows. When Derwin started giggling, Wesley reached up to his forehead – and remembered he no longer had eyebrows. They’d been burned off when he ran through the inferno of that immolating power plant in Jizan.

  Wesley made a Very fucking funny face, then turned back to the hatch. “Hello, mate,” he said. “What do you need?”

  The sailor finally entered, revealing a slight limp, his expression surly. “I’m here for my replacement ship’s ID card.”

  Derwin nodded, turned to his right, opened a narrow drawer, and started flipping through stacked cards and dividers. As he flipped, he asked, “How’d you manage to lose yours, numbnuts?” But before the sailor could answer, Derwin pulled out a plastic ID, regarded it, then looked back up at the dinged-up sailor. “More to the point, why’d you take so long to pick it up? I had this printed and keyed for you eight hours ago – during which time you couldn’t even take a dump on this ship.”

  The sailor stepped forward to snatch the card from Derwin’s hand. “I had a bedpan, Chief. Thanks for asking.” And he turned and stomped out again.

  As he disappeared, Derwin’s desk phone rang. “NSF, Ops Room… Yeah. Roger that.” Hanging up, he looked across at Wesley. “LT Campbell needs you in CIC – right now.”

  Wesley squinted. “Did she say what it’s about?”

  “Yeah,” Derwin said. “She explained to me every detail of her operational requirements for LT Wesley. Later, we’re going to brush each other’s hair and gab about American Idol.”

  “Smart arse,” Wesley said, rising.

  “Yeah,” Derwin said, looking back to his laptop. “But my God do I love that movie…”

  * * *

  One deck down, in the MARSOC Team Room, Emily – the eighteen-year-old civilian girl rescued by Alpha from the pirates on Lake Michigan – sat and worked alone at the single desk and chair, tapping away at the laptop formerly belonging to Master Gunnery Sergeant Fick. It was now basically hers, due to Fick having pawned off all of the Marines’ admin and record-keeping onto her.

  Not that she minded in the least. She was grateful for the opportunity to make herself useful, to be part of something – and to feel like she belonged. The Team Room had become something of a second home for her – and the Marines her family, so much better than the one she had lost.

  Working for MARSOC was actually her second job, and she had to juggle it with her first one, which was as au pair for Homer’s kids, Benjamin and Isabel. She’d tried bringing them along to the Team Room once – but had turned around to find Izzie, the three-year-old, playing with a flashbang grenade.

  Emily paused her typing, and turned around to regard the compartment. It was cluttered with supplies and equipment. But she was currently the only human occupant. Fick was off on the shore mission, with Brady and Reyes. The on-call QRF was drilling on the hangar deck. And the remaining four Marines, not on call, were sleeping, or trying to.

  And that was all that was left. The ZA had taken a heavy toll on MARSOC. They’d suffered greater losses, percentage-wise, than any other department on the ship – from an original strength of thirty Marines, they were now down to just eleven. And three of those were off on the shore mission.

  Emily’s gaze had gone long as she thought about that, but now she focused back on the room – and she could see three flashbang grenades sitting on a crate. They’d been left there by Brady, the big and handsome Marine Staff Sergeant, who always made Emily laugh – sometimes by juggling ordnance.

  And it was more of a mental effort than Emily could muster not to worry about Brady, and Reyes, and especially Fick – and where they were now, what they were having to endure, the life-or-death battles they might be facing. She thought of the parting hot chocolate she had shared with Fick, just before he stepped off. And she wondered if she would ever see any of them again.

  But she knew she had to keep the flame of her faith alive and burning bright – her faith that all of them would return safely.

  And that everyone still left alive would make it.

  * * *

  Captain Martin, late of the British Corps of Royal Engineers, threaded through the dark and deserted lower decks toward his duty station – the highly secure nuclear reactor control room. Buried in this dangerous and high-tech cave was how he spent the majority of his waking hours these days. Lately it felt like he left only to sleep and to shower – and that not often enough.

  As acting chief engineer, a role he’d held since most of the engineering ratings were killed in the mutiny and outbreak, his responsibilities were massive and sprawling. But preeminent among them was keeping their one working A1B nuclear reactor online. Because without the power and propulsion it provided, the Kennedy and everyone on it would be dead in the water.

  Plus dead in every other sense.

  Martin not only had a great to do, all of it critical – he also had a great deal to learn. Because a trained maritime nuclear engineer he was not. The USS Washington – their Virginia-class nuclear fast attack sub – had left two of their nuke guys on board for the time being. But, as of that moment, they were the only two people around who knew enough to safely start and run the one serviceable reactor.

  And that was just too vulnerable a failure point.

  If there was one thing the last few weeks had taught Martin, it was that anyone could go down – pretty much at any time – even tucked away inside the world’s largest surviving military vessel. So now Martin spent all the moments he could steal from other duties studying remedial nuclear engineering, and learning as much as he possibly could in his copious spare time.

  He finally reached the control room, having passed not another living soul on this deck. He’d been told the ship was currently more depopulated than at any time before. He pulled up short as he found the hatch to the compartment propped open – with a three-ring binder.

  What the hell? he thought. So much for “highly secure”…

  He put his hand on the butt of his side arm, pushed the hatch open, and stepped slowly and silently inside.

  Where the hell are Safo and Jakobs? These were the only two surviving members of the carrier’s nuclear reactor section, and the only two of Martin’s staff authorized to work in there. This was supposed to be their watch.

  Still moving quietly, perhaps because he was slightly spooked, Martin sat down at his station and logged in. There almost seemed to be some strange coppery smell that hadn’t been here before. And he had a totally irrational feeling of someone or something being behind him, so he rose, drew his weapon – and walked to the end of the compartment, where there was a small storeroom.

  Putting his thumb on the hammer of his SIG P226, he reached out with his left hand and gripped the latch.

  * * *

  Wesley had to lean in with his whole body to push open the hatch to CIC – which for some reason was twice the thickness and weight of every other hatch on the ship – then straightened up and fast-walked into the dim and high-tech space, riding on what he hoped looked like a wave of urgency.

  Leaning over a s
tation, LT Campbell – the duty officer whose domain CIC was, now and forever – straightened up and glanced up at one of the many digital clocks on the wall. “Stop for a latte?” she asked, looking expectantly at Wesley, hand on hip.

  Wesley deflated. So much for urgency.

  As he closed the distance, Campbell held his gaze and said, “Hold for LT Wesley.” Wesley finally realized she was speaking into her headset. But she picked up a desk phone and handed it to him.

  “Lieutenant Wesley here,” he said. And then he just listened, nodded, and occasionally hmm’d for the better part of two minutes. Then he covered up the mouthpiece, looked around, and said, “Um, can someone please get me a…” and he mimed writing with his free hand.

  An ensign at the next station handed him a pen and spiral notepad. “Right, go ahead,” Wesley said, and began scribbling furiously. “Got it. Got it. Yes. Roger that and… wilco. You can count on me.” While Campbell and a couple of her people watched, he hung up, ripped the top sheet off the pad – then hesitated, before ripping off the two pages underneath, presumably so no impression was left from his pen.

  “Seriously?” Campbell asked, hand on hip again.

  Wesley just shrugged and turned to leave – but Campbell grabbed his arm. Her grip was not weak. “You want to read me in on whatever the hell this is about?”

  Looking over his shoulder, and recoiling slightly from the intensity of her gaze, Wesley just said, “It’s need-to-know, I’m afraid. Sorry.” Then he managed to pull his arm free, and fast-walked out again, after another short battle with the hatch.

  Watching him go, Campbell muttered, “I need to know everything. That’s the whole point of me…”

  Very Pretty Fireball

  On Board Jesus Two One, Over Central Somalia