Strands of Sorrow (eARC)

by John Ringo

  Table of Contents

  Acknowledgements

  Prologue

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  Epilogue

  Strands of Sorrow – eARC

  John Ringo

  Advanced Reader Copy

  Unproofed

  Baen

  BAEN BOOKS by JOHN RINGO

  BLACK TIDE RISING:

  Under a Graveyard Sky • To Sail a Darkling Sea •

  Islands of Rage and Hope • Strands of Sorrow

  TROY RISING:

  Live Free or Die • Citadel • The Hot Gate

  LEGACY OF THE ALDENATA:

  A Hymn Before Battle • Gust Front • When the Devil Dances • Hell’s Faire • The Hero (with Michael Z. Williamson) • Cally’s War (with Julie Cochrane) • Watch on the Rhine (with Tom Kratman) • Sister Time (with Julie Cochrane) • Yellow Eyes (with Tom Kratman) • Honor of the Clan (with Julie Cochrane) • Eye of the Storm

  COUNCIL WARS:

  There Will Be Dragons • Emerald Sea •

  Against the Tide • East of the Sun, West of the Moon

  INTO THE LOOKING GLASS:

  Into the Looking Glass • Vorpal Blade (with Travis S. Taylor) • Manxome Foe (with Travis S. Taylor) • Claws that Catch (with Travis S. Taylor)

  EMPIRE OF MAN:

  March Upcountry (with David Weber) • March to the Sea (with David Weber) • March to the Stars (with David Weber) • We Few (with David Weber)

  SPECIAL CIRCUMSTANCES:

  Princess of Wands • Queen of Wands

  PALADIN OF SHADOWS:

  Ghost • Kildar • Choosers of the Slain • Unto the Breach •

  A Deeper Blue • Tiger by the Tail (with Ryan Sear)

  STANDALONE TITLES:

  The Last Centurion

  Citizens (ed. with Brian M. Thomsen)

  Strands of Sorrow

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  Copyright ©2015 by John Ringo

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

  A Baen Books Original

  Baen Publishing Enterprises

  P.O. Box 1403

  Riverdale, NY 10471

  www.baen.com

  ISBN: 978-1-4767-3695-2

  Cover art by Kurt Miller

  First Baen printing, January 2015

  Distributed by Simon & Schuster

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Pages by Joy Freeman (www.pagesbyjoy.com)

  Printed in the United States of America

  Electronic Version by Baen Books

  www.baen.com

  As always

  For Captain Tamara Long, USAF

  Born: May 12, 1979

  Died: March 23, 2003, Afghanistan

  You fly with the angels now.

  Acknowledgements

  The first major acknowledgement is that I didn’t mean to write this book. But like the rest it just said “write me.” I’d really hoped I was finished with the main story of the Black Tide universe with book three: Islands of Rage and Hope. As the book said at the end, “The Beginning.” I really did not and do not see it as the ending of Alas Babylon: “And they stared into the thousand year night.” Better words were from the chorus of “Last Ride of the Day”: “This moment the dawn of humanity.”

  However, after finishing book three I couldn’t stop pacing. Finally my wife Miriam more or less forced me to sit down and write this one. It’s all her fault.

  The second acknowledgement is to a group of “friends” on Facebook. When I started thinking about how to proceed on the east coast, I asked on FB about coastal facilities. I’ve never been in the Navy or Marines, just Army, which is why I occasionally “glitch” on Navy and Marine stuff. The Black Tide first readers, many Navy, Coast Guard or Marine, have been invaluable in finding those glitches and correcting them. But Captain Steven “Wolf” Smith would have his people as well as the Hole to draw upon to figure out where to go now that there is some hope for the future. So I, as well, had to draw upon support from friends to figure out where to go. Blount Island had been nowhere on my radar screen until the invaluable Jon De Pinet (former USMC embarkation specialist) pointed out that just about anything you could want was there and it was entirely clearable.

  Byron Audler, resident of Mayport, for directing me to info on HELMARSTRIKERON 40 with the very appropriate name “Air Wolves.” That is probably what kicked this over the edge. Sigh.

  Last but oh so certainly not least, Captain Kacey Ezell, USAF. (Who has no resemblance whatsoever to Captain Kacey Bathlick USMC, AKA Dragon, in the Keldara books. None. Really.) Kacey has been my regular technical consultant on helo ops over the years. My writing in this novel on the subject simply proved that an occasional ride in the cargo compartment of a Huey or Blackhawk many year…err…decades ago does not an expert make. When it became apparent that I couldn’t write helo scenes in detail to save my butt, Kacey graciously (and rapidly) stepped forward and thoroughly rewrote them. For which I am eternally grateful.

  Kacey has also already submitted her short story for the upcoming Black Tide anthology. Yes, that was a plug.

  Prologue

  “This is so wrong,” Lieutenant Lyons said. “I’m trying to count the ways this is wrong.”

  Commodore Carmen J. Montana, nee Lieutenant General Montana, nee “Mr. Walker” nee so many other AKAs even his redoubtable memory couldn’t remember them all, Commander in Chief Pacific Forces, had decades before come to the philosophical conclusion that anyone who said “I have never failed a mission” rarely got the sort of missions that were his forte.

  The first mission of his career in special operations was called “Operation Eagle Claw” and was a spectacular and very public failure. He wasn’t in charge or anything, but it was still a failed mission. It was also where he had earned his first award for heroism while pulling air-crew out of a burning chopper. Operation Urgent Fury, a cake-walk for most, had been for his team another high-body-count failure which resulted in his first DSC. Mogadishu: another spectacular, and public, failure had earned him his second DSC. He had, personally, failed to stop Osama Bin Laden from escaping from Tora Bora. But let anyone guess which of two thousand, mined, trails the bastard was going to use. Trying to get that Soviet physicist out of the middle of Siberia, those two days in Shanghai, that thing in Berlin…And, oh God, if he never saw Beirut again it would be too soon…

  But Navy Base San Diego was starting to get right up there in his personal best of utterly fucked up missions.

  There were various military bases scattered all over the San Diego valley. Miramar, playground of the Airedales. Pendleton up the road, playground of the Hollywood Marines. NAVSEA based deep in the heart of Dago. Then there were the three main attractions: Point Loma, North Island and Navy Base San Diego.

  NBSD was out
of the question. It was on the city side of San Diego Bay. You might as well try to clear New York City. Given enough time, Subedey bots and helos… Well, they’d do it eventually. Heck, even Trixie might have a chance. But it was never on the original game plan.

  Point Loma, home to most of the submarines, was equally out of the question. It was peninsula that was backed by a sprawl of sub-urbs and really didn’t have much of interest.

  North Island, on the other hand… Had looked doable. Bad points. It was attached to the mainland by both a bridge and a narrow causeway. It had a vast sprawl of housing. Good points. It was only attached to the mainland by the bridge and a narrow causeway. And the causeway was both long and went to a, relatively, uninhabited area. Relatively because this was, after all, southern California and nowhere was exactly “uninhabited.” There was limited water. By all that was holy, they should have only had to deal with the infected that were the survivors of the base personnel. Those that hadn’t already died of thirst. Couple, few, thousand. Close the bridges and the causeway, get some of the survivors oriented, get some of the landing craft up and going, go clear Pendleton and he’d be CINCPAC in more than name.

  Should have. Probably. If only.

  They’d been informed there was “a light.” Satellites had detected “heavy infected density.” He’d noted the same thing before he’d left from the Atlantic. But… Sigh.

  It was worse than Mog. Every freaking street was packed. It looked like naked Mardi Gras. Half the population of San Diego and Tijuana seemed to have moved to North Island. Because, well, there was “a light.”

  Specifically, the Seawolf Class Submarine, USS Jimmy Carter, SSN-23, was alongside North Island. And under power. And shining a very powerful spotlight almost straight to the heavens.

  Which light had drawn every freaking infected in the San Diego region.

  “As I recall, all the Seawolfs are supposed to be based in Bangor,” Montana said, looking over at Lieutenant Commander Halvorson.

  “Yes, sir,” the commander of the Michigan said. “That is where it should be.”

  In the Nineties, with the nation facing “multi-access threats” that often required more finesse than destroying cities with nuclear weapons and new strategic arms agreements limiting the number of nukes subs could carry, four of the older Ohio Class ballistic missile submarines, notably and hilariously, the Ohio, Michigan, Florida and Georgia, were reclassed and repurposed for “littoral insertion” of special operations and “cruise missile” support by converting some of their missile space into housing for SEAL teams, with special lock-out arrangements, and modifying the rest to hold an absolute slew of Tomahawk cruise missiles on rotating launchers.

  The admiral in charge of the program, rather clueless on modern acronyms, initially dubbed this the “O-M-F-G Program” for “Ohio-Michigan-Florida-Georgia” until it was pointed out that the initials were probably not the best choice and the program name was changed. Nobody, however, could remember the new program name: The acronym stuck. Given they could fire up to 154 Tomahawk Cruise Missiles in less than five minutes, it was entirely appropriate. The absolute barrage of cruise missiles that broke the back of the Libyan Army’s response to the “pro-democracy” uprising came from one OMFG.

  “So that’s one thing,” Montana said. “And isn’t the sub base at Point Loma?”

  “Yes, sir,” Lieutenant Lyons said. “So I would suppose the next question is why is it snuggled up to the Ronald Reagan?”

  “Those two never got along I’ll tell you that,” Montana said with a snort. “In fact, if there was any rationale to the universe either the Gipper would have crushed the Jimmy by now or they’d be forced apart by mutual loathing.”

  The conversation was taking place on the sail of the guided missile class submarine. So the commodore had to look up, then look up again, to see the open hangar deck of the Ronald Reagan and the flight deck above. Both of which were packed tight with infected. Occasionally one would slip over the side from the crowding. Looking down it was apparent that the sharks were enjoying a regular bounty. Not only sharks.

  “Lieutenant Lyons,” the commodore said. “I have a very extensive, most people would describe it as exhaustive, knowledge of just about, well, anything.”

  “I’ve played you at Trivial Pursuit, sir,” Lyons said.

  “But you are from this area and used to occasionally play in these waters.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “So what the fuck are those?” Montana said, pointing at the boiling water’s surface where large, hooked, tentacles occasionally flailed.

  “That is something you don’t usually see in San Diego harbor, General,” Lyons said. “Those are Humboldt squid. I didn’t think they could or would come in here. Generally they’re only found in deep pelagic areas. Deep. They normally only come up to the last couple of hundred feet at night. About ten feet long including tentacles and nasty as they come. Frankly, I’d rather fight a shark.”

  “If you used to swim within a thousand miles of those things you are a braver man than I,” Montana said. “And that’s saying something. Commander Halvorson. Refresh my memory again. If that light has been burning for better than nine months, the boat has got to be under power. Correct?”

  “Yes, sir,” Halvorson said.

  “And the Topeka already went active trying to wake up the reactor watch.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Which means no reactor watch.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Is there any reliable data on how long a reactor can continue to run, safely, without someone at the controls?” Montana asked.

  “I think the answer is ‘somewhere around nine or less months or possibly more depending on when the reactor watch died and when this reactor finally goes critical,’ sir,” Halvorson said. “In other words…”

  “This is the test case,” Montana said. “This is probably as long as any reactor has ever gone without someone manning it.”

  “Yes, sir. And the generators, sir. Rather… amazing, sir. I’d have said impossible for more than a few hours. And terrifying. ‘Active reactor’ and ‘no reactor watch’ are two phrases no one in their right mind wants to hear.”

  “Duly noted,” Montana said. “Go Navy. A real credit to your nuclear reactor designs and SOPs. But unfortunately it has made North Island a bit of a pickle. Right. Let’s find a good spot to open fire and have Leuschen rig The Beast. We certainly have enough targets.”

  “Aye, aye, Commodore.”

  “Frankly, I’d say just hammer it with your payload but even with this swarm there might be survivors,” Montana said. “And we need the personnel, gear and materials. Not to mention a full reload on one of these boats is a major Congressional Line Item. Eventually we shall have a Congress again and I do not want to explain firing off four hundred million dollars worth of cruise missiles. So… Rig The Beast!”

  “COB,” the skipper said over the 1MC. “Tell Leuschen to rig The Beast.”

  * * *

  The Beast was the sort of weapon you’d only get in a zombie apocalypse.

  It looked a bit like a large machine gun. A bit. Or possibly a large paint-ball gun, which was closer to its actual form and function. There was a long, fairly flimsy looking, barrel that had obviously been hand-machined from some sort of tube. There was a breach. There was a butterfly trigger. There was even a bit of a sight. So far so good. Pintle mount that hooked into a lock on the deck. Even the most modern submarines in the U.S. fleet retained provisions for a deck gun which in this case was to the good.

  Then there were the odd bits. Instead of a belt feed, there was a large vaguely conical hopper on top. There was an air hose running from a fitting on the deck to a similar fitting on the breach.

  There was the seaman first class pouring two-inch steel ball bearings into the hopper.

  “Loaded, sir!” Petty Officer Second Class Leuschen said, beaming for all he was worth. As inventor, designer and creator of The Beast, it was uni
versally judged that he should have first crack. There were others onboard crazy enough to try it out but they mostly spent their time these days trying to chew through the straps. “Permission to open fire?”

  “Commodore?” Commander Halvorson asked.

  “Oh, why not?” Montana said. “Fire at will, Commander.”

  “Open fire!”

  The chosen target area was the northeast corner of Quay Drive on North Island. Maneuvering the Michigan in close quarters, without tugs, was no picnic but the XO had managed to get it right in position. And The Beast had plenty of customers. The infected were as dense there as they were everywhere on the God forsaken island. And shore side. And Point Loma. Normal humans would have mostly succumbed to dehydration and starvation at this point. But not the infected. Oh, no, not the infected.

  At least some were about to succumb to The Beast.

  The sound was surprisingly muted. Accustomed as he was to gunfire, Commodore Montana was unsure at first if it was even firing. The sound was an odd whip, whip, whip…

  But then the ball bearings reached their targets.

  The concept of The Beast was simple. It was, at heart, nothing but an oversized, insanely overpowered, paint-ball gun. As Leuschen had pointed out, the one thing a nuclear submarine has in near infinite supply is compressed air. Replace paintballs with steel ball bearings and what you got was a brutal and extremely efficient slaughter-machine.

  The infected were moving more or less randomly on Quay Drive. Generally the densities they were looking at would only have occurred with a true alpha swarm. They weren’t shoulder to shoulder but they were often bumping each other. Which occasionally erupted into fights and even small riots; infected did not get along with each other much better than the rest of the world.