Battleship

PACIFIC OCEAN, IMPACT POINT

In the crippled RHIB, Hopper watched with growing horror as he saw the Sampson angling straight toward the stinger.

“Screw this helpless crap,” he said, suddenly full of resolve. He shouted to Raikes as he pointed, “Where we saw that… that creature standing before! Shoot there! Maybe it’s their bridge or whatever!”

Raikes needed no further urging. She swung the .50 cal around and opened fire.

At first the bullets didn’t penetrate. Instead Hopper saw lights flashing in response to where the bullets would have been impacting. There was some sort of field there, invisible, impenetrable. Well, sure, because they’re freaking aliens, so naturally they have invisible shields and crap like that.

And then, all of a sudden, areas of the shield weren’t flaring back into invisibility as they had been before. Instead patches seemed to be hanging there randomly, black pieces of light as opposed to the other, unseen sections of the field. Spiderweb cracks spread through them, and Hopper immediately realized that—unlike the movies—the alien force fields weren’t limitless in their resistance. They might be pure energy, but they were no more invulnerable than “bulletproof” glass. Give it enough of a pounding, and it would eventually shatter and break.

“Pour it on, Raikes!”

He moved behind the .50, helping Raikes to pinpoint her assault, which she did with malicious glee. As that happened, though, something moving on the forward section of the stinger grabbed Hopper’s attention. He recognized it as the launch array that had fired off whatever the hell those weapons were that had impacted on the destroyers. It was rotating. Worse, it was rotating in their direction.

“We’ve got to move,” he said nervously.

“Want me to get out and push?” Raikes offered.

The engine abruptly roared to life. They looked around in delighted surprise. Beast was crouched over the engine, holding two wires that he had twisted together. He hurriedly wrapped them in electrical tape to keep the connection solid.

Hopper leaped over to the helm. He brought the RHIB around, but the cylinder launcher was swiveling to acquire him. There was no way he was going to be able to get enough distance between himself and the stinger before it unloaded its lethal charge upon him.

Then he heard the distant sound of a 5-inch gun being deployed. Seconds later, the ordnance from the Sampson, fired with pinpoint accuracy, obliterated the launcher before it could fire at Hopper and the RHIB.

Hopper exhaled in relief, but that breath caught in his throat as the stinger, with the faint sound of something within it powering up, launched itself once more, much farther than it had before. It sailed through the air and landed no more than a hundred feet aft of the Sampson, practically right on top of them.

Oh God, thought Hopper.