The warm sea wind swept across the harbor from Victoria Island toward Canton proper and carried with it the pungent smoke of endless, uncontrolled rioting and burning of a culture reversing 5,000 years of civilization to primitive chaos in a single, hellish evening. The stinking breeze curled the edge of Legend’s hair and rippled the loose end of his ever present Hawaiian print shirt. He could see the buildings on both sides of the harbor consumed in a pall of smoke and ringed with the red hue of fire all about. The famous Hong Kong skyline was now powerless and black except for the ruddy glow of anarchy seeping outward from her flaming ruins.
“Sam, is everyone onboard?” Legend asked without disguising the alarm in his voice, his eyes sweeping the wall of desperate humanity pressing his perimeter and his limits.
“Yes, Boss, and I suggest we join them!” she shouted above the din. With these words, the crack of individual small arms fire was elevated by the clatter of automatic weapons.
Wordlessly, Legend gritted his teeth, gripped Sam’s lithe arm and shoved her running toward the cherry-picker that would place them atop his platform. By design, there was no ladder or no way to board from the ground level. As his eyes swept the track that would release the black behemoth into the water, he could see the fences along the harbor had failed and a line of people were descending on the tracks.
“Sam, call up to the tower and have those people removed from the tracks at once!” he cried in total horror.
“It’s too late for that, Boss!” she responded over her shoulder as he picked her up and dropped her into the cherry-picker basket. Then he followed with a single, powerful leap as the basket lifted skyward without pause.
“They’ll all be crushed like insects!” he screamed.
“It’s too late, Boss, it’s too late!”
As the basket paused some nine stories above the boatyard, Striker lifted Sam and tossed her unceremoniously onto the deck of his vessel, then followed her just as the basket fell backward and away into the darkness below. He lay on his stomach and peered over the edge of the black steel deck and squinted into the darkness. From this height and from the fires of Kowloon , he could see the people streaming into the boatyard below and beginning to mass across the tracks.
“Striker, give me the order to launch!” cried a voice that hovered over him. It was his brother, Baker.
“We’ll kill every one of those people who are on the tracks!” Striker responded in abject horror, his eyes sweeping the mounting humanity building below him.
“Give me the order, Striker! We have to launch right now, and every second you wait, even more will die!”
It was perfect logic, and Striker knew it.
”Baker, launch us now!” Legend commanded hoarsely, knowing that the gigantic, massive steel structure would roll down to the water’s edge no matter what stood in its way, and that the insignificance of mere flesh would not even begin to slow it down.
Baker barked his orders through a small plastic handset he clutched in his left hand. Two seconds later six sharp cracks pierced the black, pungent air as the explosive hold-down bolts sheared and the huge structure began its short roll into the harbor.
Striker inched away from the platform’s edge as it began its slow motion toward the water’s edge. He could not bear to watch as the masses below struggled to get away from the black monster whose relentless momentum only God could stop now. His ears wanted to shield out the sounds from below, waiting for the screams of the crushed and dying beneath its tracks. But the screams never came. All he could make out from his high perch was a dull, cacophonous roar as thousands of voices lifted up their cry as the great beast slid toward the sea. He could not quite tell whether it was a cry of terror, or euphoria or just of sheer horror at the realization that like the sun, this great machine would not stop for man, for circumstance or for unrequited dreams of human survival.
The nightmarish scene was one outlined in cold black frames silhouetted with the red glow of civilization ablaze and muted with the pungent smoke from her countless fires. The enormous beast had settled into Hong Kong Harbor now, its immense momentum carrying it slowly away from the maddening crowd left behind to die without hope beneath a star gone wild. Striker had risen to his feet and faced out toward the harbor and the narrow channel through which they would make their way out to the open sea. In their path lay a few junks and two Chinese escort frigates. The junks would not pose a problem. The frigates were to Striker but a momentary nuisance, but one of enough significance to cause him to pause and think several more moves ahead in his complex but fluid strategy.
The sea wind toyed with his unruly hair and he wrinkled his nose involuntarily with the assault of the bitter air. The acrid stench seemed to encompass the platform ever deeper with every passing second.
“Baker, give the order to engage the harbor engines, full speed ahead and let’s get out of here!” Legend ordered, speaking of the small diesel engines that would drive them into the open sea.
“Not necessary, Striker,” Baker responded. “The good Dr. Lurch has already taken care of that.”
Dr. Lurch was the name they had all insolently hung onto Dr. Kim Lou Adams.
“Lurch has command of the harbor engines?” Legend asked incredulously.
“I’m afraid so,” Sam replied, her tiny frame inching up to Legend. “Let me kill him, Boss,” she pleaded.
“See those frigates over there?” Legend asked both Sam and his brother, pointing to the dark shadows inching closer. “They’re Dr. Lurch’s insurance. One word, or lack of word, from our guest and we won’t even make it out of the harbor. And if you think those guys are impressive, wait ‘til you see what they’ve got waitin’ just outside in the open sea.”
“Like what?” Baker asked.
“I’m guessin’ at least two more destroyers, two submarines and a heavy cruiser.”
“They’re sending along an entire battle group just to shadow us? Why?” Baker asked, surprised.
“Well, remember, I’m just guessin’ in all of this. But the Chinese navy, and most of their government bosses, are about to become unemployed and mostly dead, so they’re pinning one of their many survival
STRIKER LEGEND’S PHOENIX
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OTEC PROPULSION CAPABLE
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strategies on this American wildcard designed and built right under their noses. Keep in mind that the Communist psyche – particularly of the Chicom variety - is totally incapable of independent thought or any significant level of creativity, by design and by definition. So they’ve been historically relegated to seizure and thievery of true genius to survive. In some part, we’ve become one of their survival strategies. Let’s cal it by the name they’ve made famous: ‘reverse engineering’.” Then he looked at his brother’s concerned face and added, “That’s why I had you build our little secret army of robots.”
“May I kill him, Boss? Please, let me be the one,” Sam pleaded, clinging to Legend’s muscular arm.
“Sam, have patience, please,” Legend gently reasoned with his tiny female assistant. “Let’s see how it all develops. You know you’re my number one.” He could feel the six mighty diesels spring to life as the deck began to rumble beneath his feet. In minutes they would begin to pick up speed and head toward the uncertainty of the open sea.
“When are you gonna open her up?” Baker asked.
“When we’re safely into blue water,” Legend responded, referring to the design of the craft. The machine was built and launched in a compact configuration that allowed her to slide into just 35 feet of water and safely navigate the Victoria harbor channel into the open sea. But once there, Legend designed the lower sections of the craft to telescope down until it would finally resemble a flat black, complex metallic hydra whose lowest levels projected some 125 feet under the water’s surface.
“Boss, I’m sorry you didn’t get your launching ceremony,” Sam said with a sigh. “I know you had your h
eart set on a more orderly departure.”
“It was just so much vanity, Sam,” he replied. “The whole world’s goin’ to hell right after the next commercial. I had no right to expect a ceremony of any kind.”
Baker walked up to his brother and slipped his arm around his broad but sagging shoulders. “Hey, what’s this, Bro? Melancholy’s never been your style. Besides, you’ve held out on us long enough. Now we all wanna know your deepest held secret. Right, Sam?” Then he reached into a small backpack he held over his shoulder and produced a bottle of unopened Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin LaGrande Dame Champagne, handing it over to Legend.
“Yes, Boss. Now tell us,” Sam pleaded. “What have you christened her? It’s the question everyone’s been dying to know!”
“This is a job for a woman,” Legend replied with a smile, handing the bottle over to Sam.
“It will be my supreme honor” she answered, receiving the bottle neck first and bowing ceremoniously. “Where?”
“At this point, I don’t think it really matters,” Legend replied. “It only matters that it’s the three of us that’s doin’ the job.”
“Very good, boss,” Sam responded, stepping to the nearest bulkhead rising off the deck. “So tell me, what shall I christen her?”
Legend smiled broadly. “Christen her, the Phoenix .”
“I hereby christen you, the Phoenix ,” Sam announced. Then, without any hesitation, she raised the bottle, swung widely and smashed it onto the black wall. White foam erupted and spilled all over the deck as Legend and Baker applauded together.
“Good job, Sam,” Baker said with a laughing smile.
From the darkness emerged the sound of a single pair of hands slowly clapping. “Yes indeed; good job, Sam,” said the thin voice which they immediately recognized as Kim Lou Adams, aka Dr. Lurch, the resident Chicom boss. As his diminutive form emerged from the darkness, Legend, Sam and Baker instinctively closed ranks together.
“I think the Phoenix is a name I would have expected from you Americans,” Adams said, dropping his phony applause and drawing deeply on his ever present cigarette. “Naming this vessel after the mythological bird rising from the ashes, snatching victory out of the jaws of certain defeat. It is just like you perpetually confident capitalists to think that time and circumstance are always on your side. It is a true pity that you have wasted such good champagne, as it just so happens that this time you are wrong twice.”
“And it is just like you, Dr. Adams, to rely on cheap, didactic riddles to move along what could easily have been a regular conversation,” Legend replied testily, nearly choking on the all but irresistible impulse to sick Sam on him right there and take his chances with the Chinese hardware floating so close aboard. “I sympathize with your culture’s inability to communicate without injecting its fatally flawed ethos into every spoken word – as though it’ll ever make any difference. Nonetheless, tell us what we’re so eagerly waiting to hear. Just why are we wrong twice?”
Adams paused and inhaled deeply, drawing a bright orange bead on the tip of his cigarette. Legend could make out his eyes narrowing even in the darkness.
“Because, in the first instance, I have already christened this vessel ARA52, and from now on, any reference to this craft will be by that name and that name only, do you understand? And while you or anyone else is onboard the ARA52, any other reference will be considered gross insubordination and will be dealt with most harshly. Do you understand?”
None of the three responded in any way, not with a word or a nod. They just stood facing the small man, silent and motionless.
Adams stared back at them and took another full draw on his cigarette, its end glowed once more in the darkness.
“At the outermost channel marker, I will be stopping this vessel and I will be taking on a team of 14 Chinese Special Forces soldiers. They are highly trained and considered deadly instruments in their own right,” Adams said, pausing to look Sam directly in the eye. “They will be schooled in every aspect of your vessel in great enough detail that they will be able to fully operate it without any help, guidance or advice from you or your crew, if necessary. Do you fully understand and appreciate what that means?” Adams asked.
“Tell me, Doc, did you actually earn your degree from an accredited American university, or did you use a stolen credit card and purchase one off the Internet?” Legend retorted without even the hint of a smile.
“You have not asked me about the second reason why you are wrong, Mr. Legend,” Adams continued without even a hint of intimidation.
Legend just stared back at him.
“You are wrong, again, Mr. Legend because the American string of good fortune has irreversibly ended right here on the deck of your black creation. There will be no rising from the ashes, there will be no last minute victory, there will be no cosmic miracle. This is no Phoenix named after a mythological miracle. It is but a stack of metal under whose deck a small fragment of the Chinese cultural miracle will be nourished and will survive. That is why you are wrong twice, Mr. Legend.”
“Well, I actually have to hand it to you on the last count,” Legend replied to the absolute open-mouthed astonishment of Sam and Baker who both turned and looked at him with wide eyes.
Adams himself, despite his usual coolness, was also incapable of hiding a flicker of genuine surprise. “Oh?” he asked. “Have you finally seen that any hope of resistance is absolutely futile? Have you finally determined that you are going to cooperate and perhaps even live?”
“You’re correct about the whole Phoenix thing,” Legend responded. “The story of the mythological bird actually hadn’t occurred to me when I named this vessel the Phoenix .”
“Oh?” Adams queried, his face now lined with deep suspicion.
“Yeah,” Legend responded coolly. “The Phoenix I named this vessel after is my favorite tattoo, you moron,” he sneered as he rolled up his sleeve to reveal a shapely, scantily clad female with colorful wings fully spread sitting atop a Harley Electra Glide motorcycle.
28
After days of intense , nonstop training to learn the intricate details of Pacifica’s complex systems, mostly under the tutelage of Twink, Seven neared exhaustion. He sat in his apartment ensconced in his balcony chair overlooking the central dome dressed as he usually was at home – in nothing but a white towel. After his evening shower, Seven rarely returned to any clothing at all, unless, of course, he had to go outside his residence for any reason. He stared at a three ring binder reviewing the multifaceted and linked engineering schemes and their relationship to the many procedures that made everything work safely and smoothly.
“Got all that memorized yet?” Serea asked, standing behind him dressed in her own wrapped towel. She gently traced her fingers across the back of his neck, then squeezed his tense shoulders.
“I’m going to give you half an hour to stop that!” he chided, reaching up and touching her fingers.
“You’re turning me into a naturist, you know that,” she said referring to her outfit.
“Better that than a naturalist,” he responded. “Those guys are all about to be out of a job.”
“I have a surprise for you,” she said in a light, almost little girl voice.
Seven heard and interpreted the implication instantaneously and clearly. His eyes immediately focused and he looked back at her as she stood over him with a sly smile. He had only heard that clear inflection used in but a single condition in their relationship. He knew that she understood that with Aaron Seven there was simply no state of fatigue too great to meet what was to come.
“Okay, I give up. This stuff is boring as hell anyway and I need a break, like right now. So let’s get on with it!” he responded with a wicked grin, tossing the binder aside.
“Get on with what, Aaron?” Serea responded with a coy taunt.
He just stared back at her incredibly beautiful features. Not even a moment of the magic he had felt on their first meeting had been lost. She was absolutel
y, hands down, the most beautiful, intelligent, personally powerful, and alluring woman God had ever created. Seven slowly stood to take her, his face lined with the intent that the most primitive part of his brain had already laid out in elaborate detail, all in the intervening quarter second.
Serea clearly and obviously understood his motives as she extended her palm to push him away.
“Well, I guess the honeymoon’s over!” he responded in sincere surprise, frozen in his tracks.
“I’ll call that a rush to judgment and will accept your full and most humble apology later,” she responded quickly, her voice still laced with a white-hot implication that bordered on nothing less than a fully iniquitous promise.
Seven looked back at her with a strange grin, his higher cerebral functions struggling to regain control over that which his limbic core had already wholly commanded. “Lead on, fair princess,” he replied with a fractional bow and a deft shake of his head toward their bed, but his eyes never left hers.
“First you have to put your clothes on, my dear,” she said mysteriously.
His face fell in confusion. “What?” he asked in all sincerity.
“Your clothes, sir,” she responded with a depraved smile. “The community might not understand if their leader left his apartment wrapped in nothing but a towel.”
“But I thought…” he stammered.
Serea laughed loudly. “You’re just so cute when you get this way,” she said.
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