ARISEN, Book Eleven - Deathmatch

by Michael Stephen Fuchs

  Walker stood up to her full height and stepped forward. “What’s your business with him?”

  The man tried on a smile. “Lieutenant Harte sent me to check on him.”

  Walker smiled in response. “Okay, no problem. Go on in.”

  The man nodded, turned, and took a few steps toward the hatch – before he realized something was wrong. When he stopped and turned around again, he found Walker pointing her side arm at his face.

  “Move real slow and tell me who you are,” she said. When he hesitated and cocked his head, obviously sizing her up, she hauled back the hammer of her M9. “Harte died in the mutiny. You don’t even know who your own CO is.”

  The man smiled again and raised his hands, palms out, and started walking slowly toward her, closing the distance. When he read in her expression that he was going to get about one more step before getting shot, he tensed – then moved laterally, and fast, while bringing his shotgun up.

  He never got close.

  Campbell’s first round caught him in the side of the head, spinning him around and dropping him to the deck, his limbs tangling up with the shotgun.

  Walker stepped forward, fast and smooth, her weapon trained on the man’s head, and kicked the shotgun away from him with the side of her foot. Then she switched the pistol to her left hand, and moved laterally herself.

  Straight to the phone on the bulkhead.

  * * *

  Blinking rapidly, his breathing weak and shallow, Captain Martin reached down and felt wetness around his waist. He had been hit low in the stomach. He also quickly discovered he couldn’t move or even feel his legs. That wasn’t good. It was very bad, in fact.

  Steeling himself, maintaining his shaky grip on his weapon, he managed to drag himself around the edge of the station… and down there with him on the deck he saw not one body, but three. The man he’d just shot it out with was dead, lifeless eyes open and staring, with a neat bullet hole high in his right cheek.

  But behind him, Martin could see Safo and Jakobs – or rather their naked bodies, which had both been stashed under the row of stations at the back of the control room. Oh, God, Martin thought, moaning audibly, his stomach turning, either despite or perhaps because of the gunshot wound in his abdomen.

  Not five minutes ago, he’d been sitting five feet from both of his slain crewmen. That coppery smell he’d noticed was blood.

  Martin dragged himself closer to the rear of the compartment and looked up at the wall phone on the bulkhead. He battled like hell, but couldn’t drag himself up far enough to reach it. His legs simply wouldn’t obey, and his arms were weak, trembling, and slightly numb, probably from shock and blood loss.

  He looked hopelessly down to his belt, where he already knew there was no radio.

  Finally, he pulled himself up into a sitting position, his back against the rearsmost station, where he had an unobstructed view of the hatch – which he realized with another rush of horror he had left open. No one was coming through it in response to the gunfire – either to help, or to shoot him some more. This deck was generally pretty deserted at this hour, this far down in the bowels of the ship.

  Looking around him, he gathered weapons and ammo – most of which were on the belt of the man he’d shot. Relieving him of the spare mags he wouldn’t be needing, Martin looked into his glassy dead eyes.

  Who the hell ARE you?

  A more interesting question, actually, was whether this guy had friends nearby. Martin definitely couldn’t assume he didn’t. He reloaded his own weapon, and placed the intruder’s pistol and magazines in his lap where he could get to them. This was his post. And he intended to defend it – until his last breath, if that’s what it came down to.

  Glancing up again in frustration at the phone, he considered shouting for help. But making noise, never mind announcing his helplessness, seemed imprudent. Right now, whatever the nature of this violent incursion into the USS John F. Kennedy… it was conceivable that Martin was fighting it completely on his own.

  Trying to keep his breathing steady, and his panic controlled, he belatedly noticed there was steam venting into the room from somewhere above and behind him. Shit. Unplanned vented steam in a nuclear reactor was rarely a good thing.

  That last breath might come sooner than predicted…

  General Quarters

  JFK – Bridge

  Commander Abrams stood wide-eyed at the port-side screens and stared at the thin clouds over Africa to the south – the ones Thunderchild had just disappeared into. He was still in shock to have lost both his last F-35 and his last fighter jock. Since taking command, he’d learned his input wasn’t particularly required for air ops. But he hadn’t thought pilots could just launch their own damned missions on a whim.

  According to both PriFly and CIC, Thunderchild was acknowledging radio hails. She just wasn’t complying with their increasingly shrill orders to RTB, and do it RFN.

  Abrams shook his head in resignation, if not quite surrender, and turned back around to reclaim the captain’s chair. He saw everyone else was sitting at their stations like on any other day – all except the one random blond sailor, who was still by the outside hatch, just inside the bridge, looking dodgy. And Abrams remembered what he’d been doing – finding out who this jackass actually was. He felt slightly annoyed that no one else had challenged him, and he had to do it himself.

  He caught the eye of the NSF guard now posted permanently to the bridge, and nodded toward the mystery sailor. The NSF guy turned toward him, slightly raising his M4. And Abrams took two steps toward the man.

  But he was stopped in his tracks by the same ops officer, who had his phone to his ear again. But this time his manner was not so much crisp as seriously alarmed. He flipped a switch, putting the call on the overhead speakers.

  It was a woman’s voice – serious and all-business.

  “—peat, Bridge – there are boarders on the ship. Sound general quarters NOW. One infiltrator killed at this station. Hospital is secure at this time…”

  Eyes going even wider, Abrams swiveled his head to lock eyes with the mystery sailor – who smiled, shrugged, and drew his side arm, then pivoted and shot the NSF guy twice in the head before he could raise his weapon. As Abrams willed his right arm to work, the man pivoted back…

  And he shot Abrams twice in the chest before he could react.

  Screams and gunfire filled the bridge.

  * * *

  Sergeant Lovell, acting commander of the remaining MARSOC force aboard, twisted his body around, then kicked the blanket off his feet, which were getting too damned hot in the enclosed bunk again. Despite having just been up most of the night on standby, as leader of the QRF, then continuing to work for a few hours even when he wasn’t, he still somehow couldn’t sleep.

  He was just on the verge of giving up and taking himself back to the Team Room when the ship-wide tannoy went off.

  “This is the commander.”

  Lovell could recognize Abrams’s voice – but for some reason it sounded thin and raspy, like he couldn’t get his breath. There was also some vague but desperate-sounding tumult going on in the background.

  Wait – was that gunfire?

  “General quarters. All hands to duty stations. All hands prepare to repel boarders. Repeat, the ship has be—”

  He was cut off mid-syllable by a single gunshot.

  Yeah – that was gunfire.

  Lovell leapt from his bed in his skivvies, his body surging with adrenaline, and reached for his weapon – and his pants.

  * * *

  Emily was coming to the end of her morning’s work, already thinking about returning to Homer’s cabin and the kids, and letting the backup babysitter get back to her regular duties. With the crew so degraded from the recent battles, no one was getting time off – and many, like her and Emily, were working extra jobs.

  She put her fingers on the lid of the laptop and pressed it closed. She pushed her chair back and stood up.

 
; The general quarters announcement came over the tannoy.

  Emily listened to it in full, standing stock still, face impassive. When it ended, or rather just stopped, she moved quickly but calmly to the outside hatch, made sure it was closed, and dogged it securely. Now no one could get in without a properly keyed access card. That pretty much meant the Marines, and her.

  Nonetheless, some instinct she was hardly aware she had told her that, since it was only her in the Team Room…

  This station was hers to defend. That was her job now.

  Her first thought was to arm herself, and she cast around the compartment for weapons. While there were some crates of rockets stacked against the wall, there were no rifles or pistols. When the QRF was in here, they kept them on their persons at all times. And any not in use were carefully manifested and stored in the MARSOC weapons and stores room, one deck down and a few frames aft.

  Then she spotted those three flashbang grenades, otherwise known as Brady’s juggling balls. She put one in each pocket, and clutched another in her hand. She made sure she knew where the pin was, and that her fingers were wrapped tightly around the spoon.

  Then, racking her brain for what else needed to be done, she looked back to her own station, the desk. On it sat the laptop – though it was asleep, and needed a password to wake again. But beside it sat a thick white binder, lying open, which Emily knew contained the entire mission plan for Op Primum Cadavere, the shore mission to recover Patient Zero. And lying beside that was a keycard – one that would unlock the weapons and stores room. Emily knew this because she had to go in there occasionally, and that’s how she did it – and also because it had “weapons room” written on it in black Sharpie.

  She immediately realized she needed to secure all of this. Because, still on her own, everything in this station was her responsibility. But before she could move, she heard noises outside. Not voices. But something else. A loud sizzling sound. And then thick showers of sparks started spraying inside.

  Emily got under cover – fast.

  * * *

  The four Marines of the on-call QRF had no need to leap to their feet at the sound of the general quarters alarm, because they were already on them. They were using the dojo Handon had set up in the hangar deck, sparring with knives and bare hands while wearing full battle rattle – which they had to stay in while on call, when the QRF could be spun up at any time. But of course they also loved the physical challenge of working out fully loaded.

  Abrams hadn’t gotten five words into his announcement before the four of them were off the mat, weapons in hand, running flat out for the hatch.

  By the time he got to “repel boarders”…

  The Marines were already gone.

  * * *

  Also on the hangar deck, but way over on the opposite end, past the organic farm in the section still devoted to maintenance of aircraft, Chief Davis and his trusty sidekick Pete had just finished packing up their tools and supplies into two big blue-and-gray camo backpacks. They turned to face Wesley, and behind him Burns and Jenson, all of whom were watching and waiting.

  The five men froze as the tannoy went, standing in a loose but tense knot as they listened to the announcement. Both Pete and Wesley jumped at the concluding gunshot. The only two whose faces didn’t show any real distress were Davis and Burns. Both of those men had seen it all.

  “Okay,” Davis said, as the silence returned. “Are we still going?”

  Wesley opened his mouth but didn’t speak, while grabbing at his radio. He knew exactly whose advice he needed right now. “Derwin, come in. Derwin, what’s your status?”

  Nothing came back.

  Wesley didn’t know if it was because they were buried belowdecks – there were supposed to be repeaters all over the ship for the radios NSF used – he only knew he didn’t like it. And he knew that Derwin would know exactly what to do.

  Because Wesley sure as hell didn’t.

  All the cells of his body told him to get back to the NSF Ops Room, to take charge of his team, and to lead them in what was always their very first job: to defend the ship. But he’d just been given a critical tasking by the man who was in command of their shore team, and thus the mission to save the world.

  Turning and looking behind him, he saw both Burns and Jenson looking at him expectantly – and also wide-eyed and adrenalized, in the case of the younger man. And this experience was starting to become familiar. It turned out that leadership, particularly combat leadership, began at the exact spot where the clear path ended. Where confusion reigned. Where critical priorities clashed in irreconcilable conflict. And where the stakes were enormous, and lives could be lost or saved in fractions of seconds.

  As NSF commander, Wesley’s first duty was to the ship, and to his men. Or was it? Was that eclipsed now, by his duty to humanity, and the shore team battling to save it?

  “Come on,” he said, his voice steady, his eyes meeting in turn those that looked to him. “We’re going up top.”

  * * *

  When the tannoy went, Captain Martin was still sitting propped up on the floor of the reactor control room, which he still held – though the pool of dark-red arterial blood around him on the floor was wider now. He was just making another soul-scraping effort to drag himself up far enough to reach the wall phone, when he heard the general quarters alarm, and gratefully slumped back down into a bloody pile of British officer, weapons, and magazines.

  “Thank fuck for that.”

  Now help would be coming. And he wouldn’t have to defend the ship singlehandedly. But, mainly, he could leave off trying to reach that cursed phone. And maybe try to get his wound wrapped up.

  He picked up his weapon again, which was slick with his own blood. And he resumed staring at the open hatch on the opposite side of the compartment.

  “Now if I could just get that damned hatch closed…”

  * * *

  Up in the Female Enlisted Quarters on 02 Deck, Seaman Alisa Armour levitated out of her bunk, hit the deck wide awake – and immediately dug into her footlocker, rooting all the way to the bottom, until she found it.

  Buried under her rolled-up socks was a standard-issue 9mm Beretta M9 pistol, with 15-round capacity, in a holster attached to a duty belt. On the other side of the belt was a dual pouch with two spare magazines. All three were fully loaded. Amour raised her lean form to its full height, and reverently strapped on the gun belt.

  Officers, and chief petty officers and above, got issued these side arms as a matter of course. Armour was only an unrated sailor. But she had been given the weapon as a member of the militia that fought in the flight deck battle. While others had been made to turn theirs in afterward, in the chaos that followed their exodus she had found it easy enough to hold on to hers in secret.

  She didn’t even know why she had done so, except it had seemed like some kind of a symbol to her – a symbol of belonging. Belonging to something greater than herself. While the Battle of the JFK, never mind their mad run to retake Ammo City, had been by far the scariest and most harrowing moments of her life…

  Nonetheless, fighting side-by-side with Parlett and Roy and the others, and especially under the command and guidance of CSM Handon, the former Delta guy and Alpha Commander, had also been the great honor of her life. Never before had she felt so completely needed and fully utilized, like fuel totally consumed by the flame. Nor had she ever felt such a sense of belonging.

  And deep down, she knew, or at least feared, that she would never feel those things to that extent again. That the great challenge of her life was now behind her. Keeping the pistol was her way of hanging on to the memory, and hanging on to hope that she would be needed once again, for some inspiring and all-consuming purpose.

  And as the portentous words of the general quarters announcement echoed in her ears, and replayed in her head, her first and only thought was:

  We’ve got to put the band back together.

  The militia. Her teammates. Parlett and R
oy, for starters.

  Pulling on the buckle of the gun belt to make sure it was tight, she dashed out into the dim passageway – where she immediately ran into Parlett, who had come here looking for her. She could tell from the bright light in his eyes that his immediate reaction had been the same as hers.

  “Where’s Roy?” she asked.

  “I think he’s at his duty station – and if not, we seriously need to get his ass to it.”

  Without hesitation, Armour took off at a run behind him. “My thinking exactly.”

  She and her teammate were on the same page.

  * * *

  Two decks up, in the Gallery Deck Gym, Sarah Cameron monitored her form in the mirror while she did deadlifts. Proper form was everything. Or maybe it was just something she could hold onto – while everything else always seemed to be spinning out of control.

  It was only when the raucous and dangerously loud song on her MP3 player came to an end that she even heard the tail end of the general quarters announcement. Her heavily loaded bar crashed to the thick rubber mat and she yanked her earbuds out and listened for four seconds.

  Okay, she thought. I get the point of that no-earbuds rule now.

  Then she headed out the hatch at a run. In two minutes she was back in her cabin. In another two, she was dressed and kitted out with her weapons and gear.

  She took a couple of deep breaths and looked at the hatch.

  And she realized she had absolutely no idea what was out there. She only knew that, whatever the hell it was, she needed to be between it and Simon Park. As she took another steadying breath and braced herself to move out, something yanked at her attention from the edge of peripheral vision. It was the satphone Handon had given her.

  She grabbed it, jammed it in a pocket – and stepped off.

  * * *

  About thirty seconds after Abrams’s final announcement, the automated general quarters alarm came on, and sounded throughout every corner of the ship. It echoed down empty passageways, and ones thick with running bodies. It soared out over the great open prairie of the flight deck, bounced off the bulkheads of the cavernous enclosed space of the hangar deck, passed through stacked bunks, and officers’ cabins, engineering stations, and all five levels of the island.