Earth Yell: Book 5 in the Earth Song Series

by Nick Cook

  Suddenly, a soldier that had been invisible in the darkness became clearly visible in my HUD. Not that I would have needed any help seeing him a moment later, because he let rip with his machine gun, lighting him up as he fired towards the doorway leading into the bridge.

  There was a momentary lull and then I saw Mike lean out and let loose with a PPK, firing straight down at the assailant. Bullets pinged off the metalwork around the enemy soldier, who threw himself flat. Then a larger calibre round smashed into the doorframe just above Mike’s head, forcing him to duck back inside.

  I looked for the source of what had to be a sniper shot and then spotted the guy behind a lifeboat, resting the barrel stand of a high-powered sniper rifle on it.

  Luckily for me, with his eye to his weapon’s scope, all of his attention was on the bridge. But to be sure of a kill shot I was going to have to close the distance.

  I kept low and to the shadows as the storm roared around us. Spray peppered my visor, which was now running with water. Despite the helmet’s sophisticated vision electronics, I was as good as useless with these storm conditions obscuring the target behind sheets of rain. I pivoted up the HUD panel to give me the view that I needed.

  I crept forward and got ready to take a shot. But then the ship rolled beneath me as a large wave hit, and the man’s head, which I’d just centred within the MP5’s sight, swung out of view.

  I cursed silently and cut the distance down to twenty metres. Suddenly, the clatter of the other soldier’s machine gun roared again from the stairs directly above. In that same instant the sniper glanced up from his sight. It was at that moment our eyes locked.

  Before I could even think, I aimed, fired, and a perfect hole appeared just beneath the lip of the sniper’s helmet. He slumped onto his rifle.

  Now for the second soldier.

  I was moving, running on the balls of my feet, when the clatter of the machine gun suddenly stopped. I rounded the base of the stairs to the bridge to see the soldier crouched on the steps in a firing position, already loading a fresh magazine. But some sort of sixth sense must have kicked in, because his back stiffened and he spun round, a pistol already in his hand.

  I dropped to my knees as his bullet whizzed over my head, then I fired a short burst from my MP5, which slammed into his body armour.

  Knocked back onto the steps, the guy raised his pistol to fire again. But then a shadow loomed from behind him...Mike fired his PPK straight into the man’s skull, killing the soldier instantly.

  I stared at the man I thought I knew, who’d once insisted he’d have nothing to do with guns. The same man now staring down at his victim with eyes of flint. Then those same hard eyes were raised back to me and they instantly softened.

  ‘Lauren! Thank God you’re okay,’ he said.

  ‘You too, Mike. What’s the situation on the ground here?’

  ‘We have two other soldiers on the far side of the bridge; Jack is doing his best to hold them off. But the bad news is that Tom’s been hit.’

  My mouth went dry, but Mike must have spotted my expression because he held up his hands. ‘Don’t panic, just a flesh wound to the chest. Jack says he’ll be fine.’

  I nodded, relief surging through me as I unclipped a flashbang from my webbing belt and handed it over the corpse to Mike. ‘Give this to Jack. I’m going to make my way to the other side of the deck. Then we’ll really bring the fight to those bastards.’

  ‘Got it,’ Mike said. He turned and disappeared up the steps.

  I headed back down the stairs towards a door that stood swinging open in the storm. Beyond it appeared to be an empty corridor. I entered it, senses electric as I crept along, my MP5 aimed towards a closed door at the far end. And with every step the sound of gunfire grew louder as I closed in.

  I reached the door and opened it a fraction to see a soldier silhouetted by the muzzle flashes of his machine gun, which was aimed up towards the bridge. But this guy seemed a lot more disciplined than the guy Mike had just taken out. He actually seemed to be aiming, rather than randomly spraying bullets.

  The door on the bridge opened and a grenade came arcing out of it. It bounced down the stairs towards the soldier.

  I ducked back into the corridor as the sound bomb detonated with a satisfying bang and a flash of light that cast bright shadows through the portholes. I yanked the door just as Jack leant round the corner, firing his Glock twice into the soldier now groaning on the floor.

  I stepped out onto the deck, relief surging through me at seeing him unhurt.

  ‘Lauren, look out!’ Ruby shouted through my helmet’s speakers.

  Shit! The other soldier that Mike had warned me about… Too slowly I spun round with my MP5, but the soldier already had his machine gun trained on me and was squeezing the trigger.

  But in that same split-second, a shape came barrelling towards the ship from out over the ocean and slammed straight into the soldier, sending him and his weapon flying. Before I’d even registered what had hit him, I fired into the guy’s head. He twitched and then stilled as his blood dripped down the white cabin wall behind him. Buried into his chest was the broken WASP that had crashed into him.

  ‘You’re welcome,’ Ruby said over my helmet’s speakers.

  I drew in a long gasp, not quite believing I was still alive. ‘I thought you said it was too windy to fly?’

  ‘Not for an accurate shot maybe, but for a kamikaze run like that I just about had enough control. Besides, I couldn’t just sit on my hands and watch you get taken out. Anyway, using that same trick…’

  I saw two other WASPs come blurring in at high speed on the waves, then they disappeared from view towards the rear deck. That was followed a moment later by a loud scream and a clatter of a gunfire, which abruptly died.

  ‘And then there were none,’ Ruby said. ‘The two remaining soldiers literally didn’t know what had hit them. They’re shark snacks now.’

  ‘Bloody hell, Ruby! I owe you big time.’

  ‘So what’s new?’ she replied. I could absolutely hear the grin in her tone.

  I turned to Jack as he stepped over the dead soldier on the stairs and headed for me.

  ‘You certainly know how to make an entrance,’ he said, shaking his head.

  ‘Well you did dial up the cavalry riding to the rescue emergency service, didn’t you?’ I said, smiling at him.

  He laughed and grabbed hold of me, swinging me around as we hugged each other hard.

  Chapter Fifteen

  With Leon and Carlos safely back on board after Neptune had been retrieved from the sea, Venus was now sailing towards Havana at maximum possible speed, with Ruby escorting us in the X103. Tom had advised Leon that it would be the safest place to go to avoid any reprisal from the group responsible for the hijack. Naturally, he didn’t mention the Overseers by name.

  The sea had grown considerably calmer now that the hurricane had thankfully blown through. We sat in Leon’s quarters, which we had borrowed for our debriefing with Ruby and Lucy via Sky Wire, whilst the captain checked on his crew following their ordeal.

  ‘Thank Christ you turned up when you did, Lauren,’ Jack said as he applied a bandage over Tom’s stitched wound. ‘You definitely helped to tip the battle in our favour.’

  ‘You guys looked like you were pretty much holding your own,’ I replied.

  ‘I’m not sure we could have held out for much longer before your timely intervention,’ Tom said, wincing as he pulled his shirt back on.

  ‘My only regret is the way I was forced to take those three soldiers down,’ Ruby said via Tom’s Sky Wire. ‘For somebody who prides themselves on their sniping skills it was a bit of an embarrassing way to end a hijack.’

  ‘It got the job done, which is the thing that mattered,’ I said.

  ‘I just wish I’d been there to help,’ Lucy said. ‘Tom, I couldn’t by any chance get you to reconsider letting me join in with the mission, after all this?’

  ‘It’s still no. You
know why,’ he replied.

  She sighed. ‘Yes I do.’

  ‘You know I have more than a little sympathy for your situation,’ Tom said. But this is the right call. You’re just too valuable to expose to any danger more than we absolutely have to.’

  ‘Okay, okay. God, you humans are just so damned stubborn.’

  Everyone smiled at her mild tirade with the exception of Mike, who’d been uncharacteristically subdued throughout our debriefing and was currently peering out of the porthole. I could hazard a guess as to why he was so being so quiet.

  ‘Was that really you that I saw going all Rambo in that shoot-out, Mike?’ I asked.

  He looked at me. ‘I just did what needed to be done,’ he said, his voice strained.

  Tom gave me the briefest head shake and I immediately knew not to pursue the matter. For Mike – someone who’d previously relied on dart guns during combat missions – killing someone had to have been a difficult line for him to cross… just as it had been for me. When we had time after this mission was all over, I’d have a proper heart-to-heart with him to see how he was really doing, because I could already hazard a guess that it was very badly.

  Tom propped his elbows on the table as he leant in towards the Sky Wire. ‘Ruby, have you any ideas about where that helicopter came from?’

  ‘Because it was flying so close to the ocean and was blocked from the X103’s sensor by Venus until the last moment, all I can tell you is that it flew in from a westerly direction,’ Ruby replied.

  ‘Could it have come from that Russian spy boat?’ Jack asked.

  Lucy’s voice piped up. ‘Actually, no. I’ve checked over the military satellite footage and was able to backtrack its flightpath. It first appeared from an area of the ocean off the western tip of Cuba, and that Russian spy boat was nowhere near there at the time.’

  ‘You’re saying you don’t have satellite footage from before that point?’ I asked.

  ‘No, I’m saying that it literally appeared out of nowhere,’ said Lucy.

  ‘But that’s not possible. Helicopters don’t simply materialise out of thin air,’ Jack said.

  ‘They might if they were covered in some sort of adaptive electronic skin like our Chameleon cloaking system,’ Tom suggested.

  ‘That was my first thought,’ Lucy replied. ‘That was until I looked more carefully. I’m loading the original satellite video of the area down to your Sky Wire now so you can look at it for yourselves.’

  A video of an empty area of ocean appeared on the satellite phone. We all watched as the helicopter’s nose appeared first and then, as though an invisible tarpaulin was being pulled back, the rest of its body was revealed.

  ‘Is that the cloaking device being turned off?’ Jack asked, peering at the screen.

  ‘That’s certainly what it looked like until I ran some frame by frame analysis, looking for the slightest differences between them,’ Lucy replied. ‘I’m downloading the processed video to you now so you can see what’s really going on.’

  Presented in false colours, a thermal image had been overlaid. I stared at the screen and saw that a large angular boat with sloping sides was now dwarfing the helicopter. It soon became clear that the helicopter was emerging from some sort of rear hangar onto a landing pad.

  ‘You’re telling me the Overseers are using bloody invisible ships now?’ Mike asked, shaking his head in disbelief.

  ‘Absolutely and looking at its shape I’d say that it’s an adapted USS Zumwalt class destroyer,’ Lucy said. ‘Those ships aren’t normally fitted with stealth systems, so it’s probably been adapted with some top secret tech.’

  Tom nodded. ‘I believe the Zumwalt programme itself was cancelled, apparently because of significant budget overruns.’

  ‘Well, somebody has deep pockets,’ Ruby said.

  ‘Exactly,’ Tom replied. ‘This sounds suspiciously like a US black budget project and we all know who really controls that.’

  I blew my cheeks out. ‘Okay, if we’re saying the Overseers are prepared to commit a top secret ship like that to a mission, you can pretty much guarantee that there is something very significant in the area.’

  ‘A Guardian drone, plus you setting off a significant underwater quake when you activated that rune, is already more than confirmation that there has to be a micro mind in that area,’ Lucy said.

  ‘In that case it’s just become even more urgent that we track both the micro mind and the Angelus facility down.’ I turned to Mike. ‘About that quake…please tell me your seismic sensors picked it up?’

  He managed a faint smile and nodded. ‘They did. I’ve looked at the data they managed to record as the monowave hit Cuba. The epicentre appears to be at a location that’s a couple of thousand feet down, on the seabed to the west of Cuba.’

  ‘The same area where that stealth battleship is situated?’ Tom asked.

  ‘Based on my own analysis, almost exactly the same to within a couple of miles, to be precise,’ Lucy interjected. ‘And Jack, you need to tell Lauren the punchline that I ran past you before this meeting started, when I told you the position of those coordinates.’

  My gaze swivelled towards Jack, who was looking distinctly guilty. ‘Look, I want to say straight off that I didn’t really consider it to be a viable option, as some have even called it an outright hoax. And here I am now kicking myself for writing it off too quickly.’

  ‘Come on, put me out of my misery and just tell us already,’ Mike said.

  ‘Okay, but first a bit of back story for you all. In 2001, a Canadian company was on an oceanic survey mission, working with the Cuban government. They were using an underwater drone with sonar to map out the seabed at a considerable depth when they saw something incredible in the images that they captured. Their initial analysis revealed what appeared to be various pyramid and circular structures made from large stone blocks that could have been constructed from hewn granite.’

  ‘Seriously, you’re trying to tell us there are pyramids on the seabed off the coast of Cuba, and you’re only just mentioning this now?’ I said. ‘Shouldn’t we have started the search there, Jack?’

  If possible he looked even more uncomfortable. ‘Look, it was one of those stories that briefly appeared in the news then vanished again. And for a while they even called it the lost sunken city of Cuba, some putting it forward as a candidate site for Atlantis, but as we now know, that’s nowhere near the real site. Also, when it became clear that the site was over two thousand feet down – even allowing for the possible collapse of a geological land bridge to the American continent over five thousand years ago that it might have been built on – the site was still way too deep to have been accessed by people at any point in history. Because of that, and in my defence, along with nearly every other archaeologist I know, I’d just written it off as a misinterpretation of data. I felt certain that it had to be some sort of natural rock formation on the seabed because there was no way that a human structure could have naturally gotten down to that sort of depth.’

  I leant forward. ‘Maybe not a human one, but how about an alien one?’

  ‘Exactly. That’s why I could kick myself now for not challenging my own assumptions.’

  ’Please stop being so hard on yourself, Jack,’ Lucy said. ‘The rune, and Raúl and Maricela’s disappearance, happened in a completely different location. Besides, even I didn’t think it was relevant because the distance was so great. There was certainly no way it could have been linked to the two until I saw the data from Mike’s seismic probes.’

  Mike nodded. ‘Yes, based on that data, it appears the scale is at least ten times that of the rune formation we discovered around Lucy back at Skara Brae.’

  ‘The main thing that matters is that we know about it now,’ I said, giving Jack a gentle look. He slowly nodded back at me. Then I returned my attention to the others. ‘So taking into account its highly inaccessible location, it again supports the idea of a very significant installation, one that the A
ngelus didn’t want our species inadvertently discovering.’

  ‘But what could be that important?’ Ruby asked.

  ‘Unfortunately, thanks to that damned Kimprak virus there are no intact records of anything at that location,’ Lucy said.

  ‘The one thing I know for certain is that we need to find that location and fast,’ I said. ‘But there is certainly no way I’m going to ask Leon to sail us there after what happened.’

  ‘I agree. Also, as impressive as Venus is, she will be no match for the state-of-the-art Zumwalt destroyer, especially when it’s invisible,’ Tom said.

  ‘Aha, I have good news there,’ Lucy said. ‘You know what a miracle worker Jodie is. Well, she has only managed to get the underwater retrofit on Ariel completed several days ahead of schedule. The Forge has even managed to fit out that second underwater-capable X103, which will be escorting her out to hand Ariel over to you.’

  I stared at the phone. ‘So what are waiting for, Lucy? Get her to send it here ASAP. Then we can find out exactly what’s at the centre of that quake site without putting anyone else in danger.’

  ‘I agree,’ Tom said. ‘However, I think we are far past the point of this just being a reconnaissance mission. We need to go in ready for combat. We should definitely deploy a Pangolin, maybe with Niki onboard to form a squadron with us.’

  Jack nodded. ‘If it made sense before, it’s even more necessary now to head in with the big guns. It won’t take the Overseers long to realise that one of their helicopters is missing; they’ll be on high alert by the time we get there.’

  I gave a low whistle. ‘It sounds like we may be heading into something that will rapidly become a combat zone.’ I glanced at Tom. ‘Rather than trust our lives to Delphi’s flying skills – even if they are based on Troy’s incredible abilities – I’d like you to fly Ariel. Something tells me that we’re going to need your experience. You might not have planned to become a mission pilot, but as you more than proved back at Area 51, you can certainly handle yourself in the air.’