ARISEN
Hope Never Dies.
First published 2015 by Complete & Total Asskicking Books
London, UK
Copyright © Michael Stephen Fuchs
The right of Michael Stephen Fuchs to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any other means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the author. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
About the Author
MICHAEL STEPHEN FUCHS, in addition to co-authoring the first eight books of the bestselling ARISEN series with Glynn James, wrote the bestselling prequels ARISEN : GENESIS and ARISEN : NEMESIS (an Amazon #1 bestseller in Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction and #1 in Dystopian), as well as Book Nine (#1 bestseller in War, #1 in Military Science Fiction) and Book Ten. The series as a whole has sold nearly a quarter-million copies. He is also author of the D-BOYS series of high-tech special-operations military adventure novels, which include D-BOYS, COUNTER-ASSAULT, and CLOSE QUARTERS BATTLE (coming in 2016); as well as the acclaimed existential cyberthrillers THE MANUSCRIPT and PANDORA’S SISTERS, both published worldwide by Macmillan in hardback, paperback and all e-book formats (and in translation). He lives in London and at www.michaelstephenfuchs.com, and blogs at www.michaelfuchs.org/razorsedge. You can follow him on Facebook, Twitter (@michaelstephenf), or by e-mail.
ARISEN
BOOK TEN
THE FLOOD
MICHAEL STEPHEN FUCHS
For all the ARISEN readers who have served
“Raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame; wandering stars, to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness for ever.”
– Jude 1:13
“There is in every heart a chamber dedicated to the impossible.”
– Havelock Ellis
Devil On His Shoulder
Somalia - On the Coast Road to Berbera
The MRAP, a hulking and gigantic MaxPro International XL, sat motionless in the middle of the sand-strewn road, with the eleven operators of Alpha and MARSOC standing, sitting, or kneeling in a wide circle around it. On the seaward side, a low rocky crest led down to a red-sand beach. On the landward side was more scrubby sand, almost desert really, dotted with small groves of spindly trees. There were no structures in sight, only a handful of abandoned vehicles on the road in the distance – and zero dead.
The sun beat down, but a breeze from offshore made it tolerable.
The operators were waiting for an ammo top-up by helicopter, staged off the carrier. This was an excellent spot for it. They could practically see the JFK out on the Gulf of Aden, which lay spread out before them. There was plenty of open space here for the Seahawk to touch and go. The area was equidistant between population centers on the Somalia coast road – and pretty damned distant from both of them. They’d also held out for a spot that was free of those abandoned and crazily parked cars, doors thrown open, that dotted the world’s highways now.
So no cars nearby, and zero dead visible. But that was only with the unaided eye. Ali was on her stomach on top of the very high roof of the MRAP, getting her snipe on. Every minute or so, her suppressed Mk12 special purpose rifle would chug quietly, signaling the end of the afterlife of another stumbling corpse somewhere way out on the road in one direction or the other.
With her taking care of security, the others were free to spread out in a loose circle and attend to pre- and post-combat tasks. Getting some water down, getting sand and dust out of weapons or boots, redistributing mags and other combat load. Wrapping up minor wounds, tightening existing bandages. Debriefing on the fight in a casual hot wash, or just shooting the shit.
They were only planning to be here for a few minutes.
“Dude, that sucked,” Reyes said. He actually had his pants and boots off, wearing only skivvies and socks below the waist, and was sitting on a rock while tightly wrapping gauze over the bandages on his thigh. The wounds he’d taken on Beaver Island had started to seep through with blood again in the struggle to keep the gate to Thunderdome closed in the debacle back at Camp Lemonnier. He obviously wanted to complete this procedure before the helo flared in. Nobody liked being in public without pants.
Graybeard, standing over him, asked, “Which part?”
“All of it. All of it sucked. But mainly that assclown sergeant major, and his brigade of Big Army dead guys stored in that oversized circus tent.” He looked toward the MRAP. Handon had left CSM Zorn inside, presumably to let him sweat.
Graybeard looked unmoved. “Hey, the ref’s part of the court,” he said.
Reyes looked up. “What the hell does that mean?”
“It’s from basketball. If the referee gets in your way, if your pass hits him in the back, too bad. The ref is understood to be part of the court.”
Reyes got it. Obstructions were part of the mission.
You just worked the hell around them.
* * *
“Henno, mate.”
Henno looked up from where he sat on a rock cleaning his weapon to see Noise, the ebullient Sikh warrior, standing above him. He’d had to go out of his way to get there, as Henno was sitting some distance from the group. Maybe he was keeping his mind on the job. Maybe he was externalizing his alienation from the team, making it visible and literal. Maybe both.
“All right, Noise?” Henno said, curtly.
“Very well.” He took a knee. “I saw you during the battle, from the guard tower.”
Henno didn’t look up but carried on with what he was doing.
“Rarely have I seen such bravery or badassery as what you did back there.” He was referring to Henno’s one-man holding action against the undead garrison of the base, including a precision-shooting masterclass, and then coming out of the whole thing with a bagged-up Zulu for their virus sample – which was later vindictively destroyed by Zorn.
Henno just shrugged. “It needed doing.”
“You fought like a warrior saint. Like Baba Deep Singh, who said, ‘Once you step onto this path, you may as well give up your head rather than the cause.’”
Henno looked up. “Who was that, then?”
“Singh was a mighty warrior. He put the smack down on the Afghans in the sixteenth century. According to legend, he kept fighting with his head half-severed – until he had retaken the Golden Temple of God in the holy city of Amritsar.”
Henno grunted. “Then he got what he deserved. Nobody but the daft or the dim fights in Afghanistan, that mountainous death trap. And that usually includes the British Army. Getting our arses kicked there since 1839.”
Noise laughed. “And more recently. Which includes both of us, I gather.”
Henno nodded. He’d done his time in Helmand Province, like everyone else.
Noise squinted. “I’ve seen Homer with his children. And I’ve felt the strength of his faith. So I understand why he fights so fiercely. What about you?”
Henno considered telling Noise about Captain Ainsley’s two boys, Aiden and Luke. But it wasn’t really his business. Instead, he said, “Homer bores me with the God-bothering shite. Nobody with half a brain believes it. Just look around you.”
Noise did. “I see the same world as you. I draw different con
clusions.”
“You and me are different, you got that much right.”
“And yet it’s all the same. Guru Gobind Singh says, ‘The temple and the mosque are the same; all men are the same; it is only through error they appear different.’”
Henno actually agreed with that, as far as it went – all the God people sure as hell looked the same to him. He slightly wanted to tell Noise that it was only the resolute actions of those who saw the world for what it was that ever made things better. But he was, as he said, bored with it all. Plus he was done cleaning his rifle.
He snapped the upper and lower receivers back together, pushed the rear takedown pin into place, charged the weapon, stood, and left.
* * *
“Quick word,” Fick said. “On me.”
“Aye, skipper,” Reyes said, betraying the Marines’ nautical roots. He’d just finished getting his pants back on and now quickly tied his bootlaces.
The two of them found Brady in front of the MRAP – still trying like hell to get the windshield cleaned. Just reaching up to it was one problem. Another was that it was covered with infective black gunk that could kill him. Fick took them both thirty paces off the nose of the truck, out of hearing of the others. The look on his face was unfamiliar to them.
“I’m thinking of sending you two back,” he said. “On the Seahawk.”
“What!?” Brady said.
“That’s loco talk,” Reyes added.
Fick squinted more deeply, then gestured at Reyes’s leg and Brady’s arm. “Look at you. You two are more fucked up than a one-legged cat trying to bury shit in a frozen pond.” Both of them opened their mouths to protest. Fick didn’t give them time. “You told me you were mission-capable for this. And as a result the whole team almost went down back there. That shit at Thunderdome.”
Brady and Reyes closed their mouths. This shut them up – and shamed them.
“I can’t afford to lose either of you. But I will put both of your asses on the bench, or leave you on the side of the road to die, before I endanger this mission again.”
This was about the most deathly serious either of these two had ever seen Fick. It sobered them in their response.
Brady said, “Okay. We were lied to and tricked by Zorn about Thunderdome. Maybe that could have happened to anyone – but, yeah, it happened to us. So that’s on us.”
Reyes nodded, also contrite. “Agreed. We screwed up. And our injuries were part of that. But my leg’s already better than it was. Moreover…” and with this he looked Fick square in the eye, “I swear I will not endanger the team or the mission again. I’ll put a bullet in my own head before I let that happen.”
Fick paused to consider this – for exactly one second. He still had to trust his people. Even when they’d strained his trust. Maybe especially then. He nodded, spat in the sand, and spoke: “Okay. No more of this shit, then. If you aren’t combat effective, you don’t tell me you are. And you don’t fucking tell me you’re up to an assignment when you’re not.”
“Check.”
“Roger that.”
“Because if you do… I’mma skull fuck botha ya’ll. And then you’re both gonna have to swim back to the flat-top. With no eyes. Because you’ve been skull-fucked.”
Fick didn’t smile when he said this, but Brady and Reyes sure did when they heard it. It meant they were still on the team.
And it meant Fick was still the same irrepressible son of a bitch they knew and loved.
* * *
Noise was still on the rock Henno had abandoned, admiring the stark scenery around them, when Homer came by. He’d clocked their earlier conversation mainly through body language. “Don’t let Henno get to you,” Homer said. “He’s all right really. And you did a good job on the fifty back there. You didn’t hesitate.”
Noise shrugged. “The dead must die. As for Henno…” He exhaled, then stood up. “I don’t think he likes your faith very much. Or mine.”
Homer shrugged. “He’s entitled. But my faith is all I’ve got. That and my children. Those get me through. God protects me, and I protect them.”
Noise nodded. “God protects all of us. And I can see that your children are why you fight.” His expression grew even more serious than usual. “But I tell you now, Homer. If God should call you home, if you should fall… I will care for your children. If you allow it, I will be their guardian, for whatever hours I have.”
“That sounds like a pretty good offer. What are your qualifications?”
“I have eight nieces and nephews.”
“They still alive?”
“Every one. Back in London. I fight for them, and for their future.”
Homer put out his hand. “Then I see why you fight, as well. Deal.”
In Noise, Homer was starting to see someone like himself. At peace. Because he knew it was all happening for a reason, just as it was meant to.
And they were instruments of that divine intent.
* * *
Handon stood off to the seaward side of the vehicle and away from the team – entirely alone.
Which was precisely how he was feeling at the moment.
The first stage of the mission had nearly resulted in total disaster – yet again. Admittedly, it had been due to a confluence of unlikely factors. But unlikely factors always shaped the battlespace, and it was their job to succeed anyway.
His guys had once again demonstrated the skills and resourcefulness, the resilience and resolve, to fight their way out of the shit, and come out on top. They always did. But, then again, if they kept pushing this envelope, over and over again, the law of large numbers was eventually going to catch up with them. The operators had to be lucky every time. The ZA only had to be lucky once.
And nobody could be lucky forever.
Moreover, they simply weren’t getting the damned job done. Which was unacceptable.
And Handon knew he had better get it together – and bring all this to a conclusion, ideally damned quickly. But between humanity and any kind of happy ending still lay Hargeisa – the exact ground zero of the fall of man. Handon didn’t know what would be waiting for them there, and he didn’t like to think about it.
But they’d all be finding out soon enough.
And along the way, he still had personnel issues dogging him. Namely, Henno.
It occurred to Handon now to wonder if, when ordering the team not to go back for Henno when he was covering their retreat from Thunderdome… maybe he’d actually been trying to get the Brit killed. Of course, he’d told himself it was all about safeguarding the mission, and about force protection – because completing the mission required somebody left alive to accomplish it. He’d had to keep all of them from getting killed back there.
But there was also no denying that if Henno happened to fall, that would eliminate a major problem for him. Even crazier and more shameful… it might eliminate a rival – both for control of the team, and for a certain woman back on the carrier. Handon shook his head. Of course those things couldn’t be true. But he didn’t even know for sure himself at this point.
His head was all over the place.
Henno certainly hadn’t questioned Handon’s decision to leave him behind. His whole position was that anything that needed to be sacrificed for the mission got sacrificed. And that obviously, and emphatically, included him.
Henno was still Captain Ainsley’s man – in the best possible way. A man of duty. Henno had loved and respected Ainsley, and still did, not because of his captain’s stars – but because of what Ainsley did, what he was prepared to do, and what his actions represented. Henno was all about actions, not words. And he was prepared to take any action necessary to make the mission succeed.
But he seemed to believe Handon didn’t have that willingness.
Technically, of course, Handon outranked him. But the two of them came from, not just different units or even service branches – but whole different nation’s militaries. Different worlds. And spec-ops guy
s were never impressed with rank anyway – Henno even less so than the average.
Handon looked up now as he heard a faint buzzing from over the water, and he could just make out the Seahawk blasting toward them at high speed. It was a speck, but swelling quickly.
He had also overheard Fick threatening to send Brady and Reyes back on that bird. And it occurred to him, in a musing way, to try the same thing with Henno. Try to send him back. But he could already hear the Brit’s answer: No way am I leaving you to fuck this up. The LAST thing I’m doing is going back.
Surprisingly fast, the big Seahawk was flaring in to land on the road, its big rotors thrumming through the ground, and through the bodies of the operators as they moved to set security. Handon just observed and let them handle it.
Deep down, he still felt he was making the right decisions for the right reasons. But he couldn’t deny that if Henno had gotten killed back there, part of him would have been relieved. Henno was a huge problem, and making Handon’s command, and his mission, a lot more complicated and difficult than it needed to be.
Or then again… maybe this tension between them, between Henno’s total viciousness and pragmatism, and Handon’s more measured concern for ethics and right action, was actually what was needed. Maybe Henno was simply that ruthless part of Handon’s own soul he didn’t like very much, and had somehow externalized. And maybe it was exactly that ruthless part he desperately needed to do his job now. To get this done.
Maybe Henno was the devil perched on Handon’s shoulder.
And maybe it was only the whisperings of that demon which would help him to get anyone at all out of this living hell they’d all found themselves in.
They’d find out soon enough.
Asshole of the Universe
Somalia - Berbera City Limits
Within four minutes, the ammo and other supplies had been parceled out or trans-shipped to the MRAP, the team had saddled up, and the helo was lifting off again. And Handon got them all moving down the coast road. Zorn had earlier told them the inland road to Hargeisa went through town after town – Jidhi, Harirad, Gebilay… while the coast road pretty much just went through Berbera. That had been a big population center. But they’d had to pick their poison.
The Flood Page 1
