Battleship

AROUND THE WORLD IN EIGHTY SECONDS

They know they are being tracked. They do not care. The arrival is simply the opening salvo and the creatures that crawl around on the dirt below have no concept of it.

The crew of a fishing boat were the first ones to lay eyes upon it, although they didn’t know what they were seeing.

The high-speed projectile descended with unimaginable force and velocity from on high, blazing red, the air exploding around it, giving off a deafening crack like thunder. It slammed into the water miles away, and yet did so with such force that seconds later the water was surging around the fishing boat, threatening to swamp it. It was all the crew could do to keep the boat righted and they watched in astonishment as a massive blast of steam roared up from the entry point, as if a volcano had detonated deep below the surface.

“What the hell was that?” screamed one of the younger sailors.

The boat’s captain, a grizzled veteran of many a storm, had been chewing tobacco when the object had struck. He spat some out while holding firmly on to the wheel and said, “Y’ask me… looks like God just hocked a loogie.”

Kowloon City in Hong Kong had a population of nearly half a million. It was overlooked by Lion Rock, a hill named for the rock formations that resembled a crouched lion prepared to leap upon its prey.

At the base of Lion Rock, a small group of worshippers had gathered at the temple to engage in daily prayers. A statue of Buddha sat on a wide pedestal at the far end, looking both protective and benevolent. People were just beginning to gather when the sky above Lion Rock lit up as if sheet lightning had erupted from behind the clouds. It caught everyone flat-footed, since there had been no sign of any sort of inclement weather.

Then something hit on the far side of the hill, and the concussion ripped through the temple. The Buddha was toppled from its perch, knocked off as if it weighed nothing, and shattered. The temple itself was blown apart, the very air ripping it asunder. The people themselves were blown backwards, the ferocity of the impact shattering their bones, causing cerebral hemorrhages, or just stopping their hearts outright. Men, women and children lay entangled with one another, nothing more than meat sacks where there had once been humble worshippers coming to express devotion to their god.

The concussive force didn’t stop there. Seconds later, Kowloon City was feeling its impact. Shock waves rippled down over the city, blowing out windows from its skyscrapers, shaking buildings that weren’t designed to withstand that degree of force. Most managed to hold on; some did not. Their foundations crumbled and people both within and without screamed as the buildings toppled over, brick, mortar and glass falling everywhere. People on the ground ran, stampeding one another to get clear. Many of them, looking over their shoulders and seeing the falling buildings bearing down on them, had just enough time to spot people inside the buildings, tumbling out of the now glassless windows or hanging on in desperation, praying for some last-second miracle that might spare their lives.

The miracles were not forthcoming.

In the Scots highlands, four youths slowly approached the smoking remains of something that had come spiraling down from the skies and had annihilated an entire swath of trees. They exchanged confused looks as they drew closer, not sure what it was they were seeing.

It looked like some sort of large, metal container. Or perhaps even some sort of coffin. But they had no idea what it could possibly contain.

“Should we get some help?” one of them, an older boy named Tom, asked.

“We dinna need help,” said another boy, Sean.

Tom didn’t respond, save to turn his back and run.

This drew disdainful sneers and shouts from the others. They then descended into the crater that the container had created and proceeded to smash away at it with sticks, trying to pound it open. All they managed to do was shatter every progressively larger branch that they brought, leaving the container unscathed.

“Try this.”

Tom had returned and he was wielding a car jack proudly. “Muh dad’ll kill me if he knows, so let’s put it t’good use.”

The others grinned as Sean, the largest of them, put his hand out. Tom tossed it to him and Sean, catching it effortlessly, wedged it into the lip of the large container and started working on levering it open.

Since they were more or less in the middle of nowhere, and the only thing that had been damaged was a grove of trees, there were no TV cameras around to record the landing.

There were, however, plenty of cameras elsewhere.

In the Beacon research center in Oahu, Calvin Zapata and his assistant, Royce, watched the chaos unfolding and being reported on via CNN. The destruction in Kowloon City in Hong Kong was being played and replayed from dozens of angles; apparently enough survivors had been recording the horror on their cell phones and were posting it on the Internet. The view wasn’t getting any better no matter which way it was being watched.

A reporter from the Hong Kong bureau was on-site. Zapata could see bodies lying everywhere, some covered with blankets, most not. Arms and legs were visible from beneath piles of rubble that had, shortly before, been buildings. There was a child wandering around aimlessly in the background, screaming something that Zapata very much suspected was Chinese for “mother” and “father.” The reporter—whose name, Bernard Chen, was superimposed on the screen—looked like it was taking all he had to keep himself together. The devastation had been too massive and unexpected for him to treat with journalistic detachment.

“…as casualty reports come in, it’s still unclear exactly what it was that hit,” he was saying. “Some say earthquake. Others report seeing something come from the sky. A meteor? Skylab? At this point we still don’t know. Whatever it was, the death toll is in the millions and a massive worldwide relief effort will be needed to…”

Zapata killed the volume as he shifted his attention back to Nogrady, who was still on the communications screen. Nogrady looked ashen. There was a dead silence between them, neither able to form words that summarized the horror of what they had witnessed.

Finally Zapata managed to speak. His thoughts were racing so fast that he couldn’t even finish one sentence before another would overtake him. His voice hoarse, he said, “This could get even worse. Those little splinters that split off… by my calculations, a point zero-zero-two course variation over that distance… these things could end up all over the hemisphere…”

Images were now hurtling across the television flat screen fast and furious. It was as if CNN didn’t know where to look first. An entire section of a Kansas cornfield had been flattened, and a vast plume of smoke was rising from the impact point. In Paris, the Arc de Triomphe was lying in shattered ruins. There appeared to be some unit of… something protruding from it. Zapata leaned forward, studying it. The words “Fallen Space Satellite?” were emblazoned on the TV screen, but Zapata was staring at what he could make out of the debris from outer space (Debris from outer space? Had he just thought that?) and it wasn’t looking like anything to him that NASA would have produced.

“You seeing that wreckage, Cal?” said Nogrady over the viewscreen. “The one that annihilated the Arc?”

“Yeah, I am.” Zapata was studying it carefully. “I think it resembles a solar panel or satellite face. How about you?”

Nogrady didn’t answer immediately. He was stroking his chin thoughtfully. “I think it looks like a massive communications tower.”

“Who? To communicate? Who to communicate what to whom?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know, Cal.” Nogrady had been looking inward, as if scrutinizing his soul, and then he stared bleakly at Zapata. “I’ve been waiting for this moment my entire life, Cal. Since before you were born. And all I can think of is the old saying—”

“Be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it?”

Slowly Nogrady nodded. “You read my mind, Cal.”

No. Actually it’s what I was worried about when we first started this project. My mind was way ahead of you. I just couldn’t get anyone to listen to me.

Cal Zapata typically took great pride in being right about everything. There had never been an occasion such as this, where he desperately wished he’d been wrong.

Hopper walked briskly onto the bridge of the John Paul Jones, summoned there by Commander Brownley. Minutes earlier, he would have assumed that Brownley wanted to talk to him about the court-martial. Perhaps lecture him on how badly he’d screwed up. Maybe ask him how the get-together with his brother had gone… and then ream him out.

But he’d heard, as had the rest of the ship, about the space debris that was falling all over the damned globe. In the grand scheme of things, the court-martial of a single officer was meaningless. There was no way that Brownley—whatever the differences he might have had with Hopper during the time the younger man had served under him—was going to be harping about it when the whole world was in a state of emergency.

Brownley took one look at him and it was clear from his grim expression that Hopper didn’t even have to ask about the subject of the impromptu meeting. “Hong Kong got hit hard,” said Brownley, getting right to it. “Total devastation, massive civilian casualties.”

“What was it?”

Brownley shook his head. “No one knows for sure. Best guess: meteor shower or fallen satellites. And they’ve hit more than just Hong Kong. At least a dozen locations known, with reports of more strikes coming in every minute.”

“Let me guess. One near us?”

“Yeah. We’ve got new orders. Hawkeyes report there’s debris near our position. We’ve been commanded to check it out with Sampson and Myoko. Coordinates being fed into the navigation computers right now. I want your department on full alert.”

This confused Hopper somewhat. “Are we expecting that some busted space debris is going to open fire on us?”

“I am expecting nothing, lieutenant commander. I am, however, anticipating everything. I expect you to do no less.”

“Aye, sir.” Hopper saluted stiffly and headed out of the bridge. As he did so, he heard Brownley call out, “Set material condition zebra. Right full rudder. Flank speed.”

Moments later, the three vessels dispatched to inspect the crash area had peeled off from the rest of the fleet, the war games forgotten, wholly unaware of just what exactly was lurking under the water, waiting for them.