Ghost Fleet

by P. W. Singer, August Cole

  Ali braked the Cascade hard and then turned inside an airplane hangar. The doors shut behind it. It was almost pitch-black inside; only a soft blue glow lit the corners of the hangar.

  “Here we are, sir,” said Hernandez.

  They stepped out and Cavendish ordered into the air, “Lights!,” confident that someone somewhere would follow his command. The lights came on, and thousands of beams of bright rays reflected back at them. A mischievous smile lit up Cavendish’s face, while Hernandez just stared with a squint.

  “Well, what do you think of it?” said Cavendish. It was a question that Hernandez couldn’t even begin to answer.

  USS Zumwalt, Mare Island Naval Shipyard

  He was too damned old, and now he knew it.

  Mike could feel the fatigue in his chest. For the first few days it had felt like a bug, and he’d just worked through it, finding that shouting orders had eased the fatigue’s grip. But this morning, it had been like waking up bound to the bed. He would never say it aloud, but Mike was sure he had never been this tired before. It was pure old-man exhaustion crossed with the profound fatigue that only those in the military and a few other professions know, the type of weariness you feel when your responsibility for other people’s lives far exceeds your physical and mental reserves. This was the kind of tired that no amount of stims or coffee would help.

  He swayed and steadied himself near the entrance to the bridge.

  “Chief, you okay?” said Horatio Cortez, the XO. “You look like shit. You take the younger generation out barhopping last night? Teach ’em how you did it back in the day?”

  “Wishful thinking, sir,” said Mike. “They couldn’t even begin to keep up with us.”

  Cortez wasn’t fooled by Mike’s banter. He could see the fatigue in the old chief’s Tabasco-red eyes and he quickly excused himself and went back to the bridge.

  Mike knew he could find one of the better nooks to sleep in aboard the ship down near the magazine for the rail gun. A sailor taking a power nap in a cool, dark spot was an honored Navy tradition, but it could also be a warning that something was not right with that sailor. As Mike lay back against the cool bulkhead, he wondered which it was in his case, wondered if he had what it took anymore. Then he drifted off.

  It was the smell that woke him.

  Fresh soap and violets.

  Dr. Li.

  He opened his eyes and saw her curled up on the other side of the bulkhead. Their legs crossed each other’s in the middle; her feet looked so tiny compared to his. Jesus, if anybody saw this, Mike thought. He expected to wake up with the ship under attack more than he expected to wake up and see her next to him. How she’d found him, he did not know.

  She stirred and arched her back like a cat, then sat up. She spoke as if she knew what he’d been thinking.

  “I finally had time to grab a shower and then I saw you head down here to your hiding spot” — she smiled — “and I thought, He knows what he’s doing, he’s just taking care of the equipment, as he so kindly calls the crew. So I decided to follow the old man’s lead.”

  “Who are you calling an old man? You look just as tired as me, Dr. Li.”

  “You got me there. I’ve got nothing left,” she said, rubbing her eyes. “And it’s Vern. If we’re going to sleep together, you can start using my first name.”

  Mike felt the Zumwalt lurch and lifted his head slightly, like a hunting dog. They must be drilling the engine restart again, he thought.

  “Listen, I’m sorry about the captain last night. He knows this ship is no damned good,” he said.

  “It’s okay,” Vern responded. “He was right, and he had the right to let go like that. Captain’s prerogative that they keep talking about.”

  “No, he doesn’t have the right take his anger out on someone else. It took me too long to learn that lesson, so I couldn’t pass it on to him,” said Mike.

  He avoided her eyes and stared at the bulkhead.

  “You know, nobody ever told me what I’m supposed to do if things start burning again,” she said, consciously changing the subject to one that might put him back in his comfort zone.

  “The damage-control drills? You don’t remember any of that?” he asked.

  “If the ship’s fate hangs on my ability to play firefighter,” she said, “then we’re all doomed.”

  Mike noticed that although she’d sat up, she’d done it in a way that kept her legs intertwined with his.

  “You’ll figure it out. Just follow an old man’s lead, as you say.”

  She smiled again.

  “Well, we’d better get back to work,” he said. “I’m pretty sure the Z will be leaving port soon, most likely for Australia.”

  “What makes you say that?” she asked.

  “I’m guessing from what Brooks, that tech with the stupid Mohawk, told me about some of the software mods to ATHENA. Weapons load-out is full, which we wouldn’t be doing for another test.”

  “Australia’s dangerous?” said Vern.

  “It’s the Navy — what isn’t?” said Mike. “But it means we’ll be escorting reinforcement ships. You’re less likely to be shot at when you’re looking for the easiest way to get to friendly territory than when you’re out looking for trouble. There are no guarantees, though.”

  The Zumwalt shuddered again and Mike sat up. Then he reached out his hand to help Vern to her feet. She noticed the rough feel of the skin.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll be at your side when it counts.”

  USS Zumwalt, Mare Island Naval Shipyard

  “Status report!” said Captain Jamie Simmons into the intercom. “What’s going on up there?”

  The system was dead; there was not even static in reply. From his stateroom, he peered out into the dark beyond the hatch. Nothing. No klaxon. No shouting.

  It was almost pitch-black dark, the only light the yellow emergency reflective tape along the corridor floor. Shaking the sleep from his head, he started to make his way along the passageway toward the bridge. He knew the route well enough.

  A sharp jab at his forehead made him curse in pain. He ducked, too late, and dropped to one knee until the specks of pain-driven light faded. He reached for the bulkhead to carefully stand back up and felt something warm. Soft. Hair.

  “Who’s there?” he asked.

  “Seaman Oster Couch . . . sir,” said a timid voice. The fear evident in the hesitant pronunciation of the word sir made Simmons’s head ache anew. He felt his cheeks get hot and his stomach knot in rage.

  “This is Captain Simmons, what are you doing here?” he said, fighting to hold back his anger.

  “I was coming back from the head and heard a big bang, and then the lights went out,” said Couch. “So I waited. But they didn’t come back on.”

  “You belong at your station, Seaman Couch. Up!”

  “I don’t know where it is, sir,” said Couch. “In the dark, sir.”

  “Find it if you have to crawl on your hands and knees,” said Jamie. “I’m heading to the bridge and if I find you here again in the dark, you’ll learn there are far scarier places the Navy can send you.”

  “On my way, sir,” said Couch.

  Simmons had almost gotten to the bridge when the Zumwalt shuddered and all the lights came back on.

  “Cortez! What is going on with this ship?” said Simmons.

  “Power surge, sir,” said Cortez. “It’s rail-gun related, and we’re trying to figure out why it took the entire ship offline.”

  “Everything? ATHENA too?” said Simmons.

  “Yes, sir, everything,” said Cortez. “But there’re no fires, and Dr. Li is down working on it now. We’ll be okay.”

  “XO, when you have the bridge, this ship is yours,” said Simmons. The anger at Seaman Couch welled o
ver, and he spat his words out at Cortez. “Treat it that way. There is nothing okay about this. You know what’s going to happen when we get a surge like this out there?” He pointed west, toward the ocean. “Do you? We’re nothing more than a target for the Directorate. First we blow the last part of the test with the Admiral and SecDef onboard, and now we can’t even get the goddamn gun turned on without it killing us? What kind of a ship do we have here? This is on you, Cortez. Get Dr. Li and fix it!”

  The captain spun around to see his father entering the bridge. The old chief had that look of only slightly veiled disappointment he knew too well. He brushed past his father without acknowledging him.

  “I’m going to be in my stateroom,” said Jamie. He started to leave, then stopped. “Belay that. I’m going down to speak to Dr. Li about her fix. Cortez, you have the bridge.”

  He heard footsteps behind him as he stormed down the ladder wells.

  “Captain, I’ll accompany you,” said Mike.

  Jamie kept walking, mindful of any new overhanging fixtures and cabling that might strike his already aching head. He put two fingers to the spot he’d hit, certain it was bleeding. It was. What a sight that must have been on the bridge.

  “A word, if I may, Captain,” said Mike.

  “As we walk,” said Jamie.

  “Sir, you need to get some rest,” said Mike. “I’ll say it because nobody else will.”

  “How can I? I’d say this port time is making us dull, but we’re so far from sharp that it’s not even worth bringing up,” said Jamie.

  “Still have to rest, Captain,” said Mike. “The job demands it even if you don’t think so.”

  “This job?” said Jamie, stopping abruptly and standing close to his father. “You don’t understand this job. I’m the senior officer and it’s my ship. You can’t understand that.”

  “I can’t?” said Mike. His face began to redden and that all too familiar angry blood vessel that snaked down his forehead began to pulse. “I can’t?”

  “No. I’m an officer,” said Jamie, no longer afraid of that pulsing. “I have actual responsibility.”

  Mike leaned forward with the intent look that signaled to anyone, even an officer, that he or she was a single step away from receiving a heavy blow from one of his massive hands.

  “The hell with you, Jamie,” said Mike. “I don’t care if you embarrass yourself in front of me, but you ought to think twice before you embarrass yourself in front of the crew again.”

  Mike turned around and stomped off, each angry footfall muffled by the non-skid rubber in the passageway.

  Nautilus Restaurant, Palo Alto, California

  Daniel Aboye couldn’t help but stare. Before the war, this had been a regular haunt of his investors, the types who had net worths so big they’d stopped counting their money. He’d come here tonight with a new sense of awe, mostly at how wrong the place felt on so many levels.

  He watched a tuna as long as his motorcycle swim steadily around the restaurant’s tank in the ceiling. The readout on his glasses showed how many other diners had bid on it. Seven. He decided he would be the eighth and end the auction. The other bidders would likely interpret it as his showing off the depth of his wallet, but it was more an indication of the depth of his annoyance that they were all still carrying on this way in the midst of a war.

  When he looked down, there she was.

  “When you asked to meet for dinner,” said Aboye, “this was certainly not the place I expected you would choose.”

  “I like the fresh fish,” said Cory Silkins with mock innocence. “It’s at least something that isn’t rotting around here.”

  Aboye took in the woman across from him. She was always smiling ironically. Back at Stanford, they’d been first-year hall mates. It had taken him a while to get used to her sarcasm, but he quickly came to appreciate the fact that she didn’t put him on a pedestal like the other students did once they knew his backstory. Instead, she treated him like she treated everyone else: as a target.

  They’d even become friends of a sort after Cory realized his gentle nature truly was genuine, and he realized that her acidity meant that she couldn’t help but tug and trick. She soon found bigger and better targets than the gangly but confident Aboye. Besides writing code, Cory’s main passion on campus had been pranking assholes. Faculty or student, it didn’t matter; she’d outed the members of a secret fraternity after they tried to cover up a date rape that occurred at their initiation ceremony, and she’d posed as a former U.S. president, using his hacked e-mail account to carry on a three-month-long online conversation with the old provost.

  Of course, Cory had grown up and “sold out like the rest of them,” as she joked at the sale of her software-encryption company, a deal brokered by Aboye. When he asked what she was going to do next, she told him that she was off on a quest for a glass of the most remarkable red wine in the world. He’d thought it was another joke, but she’d spent the past year chronicling it all in real-time for her online followers. Before this, he hadn’t heard from her since the post about a Malbec in Argentina.

  “So what brings you back?” asked Aboye now.

  “I heard you went to Washington,” Cory said. “I thought they might have drafted you, so I had to come back and rescue you.”

  “They wanted nothing to do with me,” he said. “That, I must say, hurt deeply.”

  “Morons . . . You know, I’ve gotten a few quiet offers to leave. Finland. Brazil. Argentina,” she said. “I wish France, but I think I am still on some blacklist there.”

  He’d heard the same from several of his other friends. From a business perspective, it made sense to him: America’s wealthy were distressed assets themselves right now. The right luminaries, along with their intellectual capital and their bank accounts, could be had cheap.

  “Are you considering it?” he asked.

  “No, I prefer the life of an itinerant bacchanal,” she said.

  “That’s for the best; you are indeed a national treasure,” he said. “Okay, what is really up, Cory, why did you ask me here?”

  A waiter wordlessly brought them their wine. Neither needed to be told what it was because the Firestone Petite Syrah’s label was already displayed on their viz glasses. She pulled her wineglass over and held the stem between her long fingers, which were adorned with a dozen slim brushed-platinum-and-diamond rings. The rings gleamed with flecks of light from the fish tank’s blue glow overhead and the red wine before them.

  “Daniel, do you know why I love wine? It’s not the taste. It’s the history. And not just the history of the grape or the terroir that defines it. I mean the history of wine itself. Wine was the very first drink of equality,” said Silkins. “The ancient Greeks would pour it into a bowl in the middle of a room and guests would gather around. They’d share it, the same bowl, and just talk. Philosophy. Rights. Democracy. Hell, maybe even sports. Anyone and everyone could take part in the conversation, from Socrates to his youngest student.”

  She laughed to herself. “Of course, it was all men, and then the Romans ruined it by conquering Greece and turning wine into a prestige item so assholes like me could run around chasing a perfect glass of it.”

  He looked at her and took a sip. Clearly Cory was building up to something.

  She swirled her glass. “That sense of equality is what made the net so great. Anyone and everyone could gather and participate. And that too is at risk of being ruined by assholes.”

  “And?” he said.

  She looked down at her glass and then directly up at Aboye. “I know what you’re up to.”

  Aboye distractedly glanced up at one of the divers gently herding a fish into a net. “What could I possibly be up to?” he asked.

  “Daniel, you’re not a good liar, so let’s not screw around,” she said. “I know what you and y
our buddies are doing in Hangar One, and I know that it’s not going well, what with all the water damage to your library.”

  Aboye pinched the bridge of his nose, pausing as if to think but mostly to cover his concern. If she knew, who else did? And was Cory going to cause problems just because she was pissed off that he hadn’t asked her to join?

  “Let’s go,” said Aboye in a whisper.

  Aboye and Silkins walked out of the restaurant, Silkins paying with her iTab bracelet at the table as she got up. They stood outside in front of the motorbike stand.

  “Okay, Cory, what is it you want? And I still don’t get why you asked me here.”

  “You needed a visual reminder. Restaurants like this? They’re for a certain kind of person, the kind you’ve been hanging out with. Nobody is angry. How far is San Francisco? The city is transforming itself into a Navy town again. Ugly, rusting gray ships being fixed all over the place. Sailors getting drunk and fighting, not out of malice but to release something, anger at not being out there or maybe just some newfound hate. Down here, it’s business as usual. Where can I get my fresh fish or my favorite pizza next?”

  She climbed aboard his yellow electric BMW C1, as usual taking things without asking.

  “You have great people in Hangar One, but they know only how to build. You also need people who know how to tear down,” she said. “You need assholes like me . . . Get on, and I’ll show you.”

  Aboye folded his body uncomfortably behind her under the C1’s canopy and they glided off silently through downtown Palo Alto.

  Light from restaurants and storefronts that were being used as sidewalk cafés after hours spilled out onto the road before them. Since the war, everyone wanted to spend more time outside, it seemed to Aboye. It made Palo Alto more festive than he had ever seen it, as if all of the town’s residents were Stanford seniors and this was commencement week.

  They soon were sitting on Silkins’s thickly carpeted living-room floor. She booted up her connection into the virtual world. Daniel watched as she put on a bright pink helmet with a matte-black visor. He thought it made her look like a cross between a teenage skateboarder and a fighter pilot.