Battleship

PACIFIC OCEAN, IMPACT POINT

“Gun it! Gun it!” Hopper shouted to himself for encouragement as he opened up the throttle

The RHIB hurtled through the water as fast as Beast could make it go, eating up the distance between them and the immediate field of battle. He continued to nurse the engine, though, making sure his patchwork job held together. Hopper steered straight toward the stinger, keeping on a steady path, praying he would get there in time.

The stinger withstood the pounding that the Sampson was unleashing upon it. It was as if the strange vessel was sending a silent message: Go ahead. Take your best shot. Is that all you can do? Because we can do so much more.

From his angle Hopper could see the second weapons launcher rising from the side of the stinger. Raikes opened fire on it without even having to be told. It made no difference. This time the bullets pinged away without having the slightest impact.

Hopper didn’t hesitate. He brought the RHIB around in an arc, determined to place himself between the stinger and the Sampson. His hope was to distract it, provide an immediate nuisance, pull its attention away from the destroyer. Maybe even hurt it if he was close up to it. All he knew was that he had to protect the Sampson. He had to protect his brother. With one hand he had binoculars to his eyes, and he could actually make out Stone in the bridge, shouting orders, pointing, never losing control, never losing hope…

Then he heard a series of whooshing noises that he’d already come to recognize. It was those damned white cylinders. They were hurtling straight toward the Sampson, and Hopper could only watch in frustration and fury. He saw Stone monitoring them, calling out orders that Hopper couldn’t hear, no doubt ordering the deployment of the Phalanx CIWS. Hopper swung his binoculars toward the ship’s Gatling guns and, sure enough, they were blasting the incoming missiles away. But not enough of them.

Not remotely enough.

No less than ten hit their target, landing straight down all along the deck of the Sampson, from stem to stern. Ten white cylinders, in a row, and suddenly they transformed to red.

Hopper had just enough time to turn his binoculars back toward his brother. Stone wasn’t looking at the cylinders. He wasn’t even looking at the other men on the bridge. Instead he was staring straight toward Hopper, as if he could see him, as if he knew that Hopper had binoculars trained on him.

Stone had just enough time to mouth words that Hopper was actually able to make out. And they were: Stay out of trouble while I’m gone.

A massive explosion ripped through the Sampson. Hopper heard someone screaming. It was he himself. Something jolted him and he realized belatedly that he’d actually been trying to throw himself off the RHIB, as if he could leap through the air in a single bound, like Superman, and land at his brother’s side.

Except there was no brother for him to fly to. Not anymore.

The Sampson blew apart, flame ripping it from one end to the other. The ship shuddered, and metal screeched like a dying whale. He saw what looked like lightning bugs tumbling from the ship and realized it was sailors burning alive, their arms pinwheeling, falling into the water. Seconds later the ship’s spine cracked in two. It rolled, pitched, and then sank beneath the waves.

Its job apparently done, the stinger vaulted away, landing securely back in front of the towering metal array, a dutiful sentinel returned to its post.

The RHIB had ceased all forward motion. It bobbed in the water, the engine reduced to a gentle idling. Beast was keeping Hopper steady, on his feet. Hopper leaned against the controls, stunned, staring at where the mighty destroyer had once been.

“Hopper,” Beast said softly, “what do you…?”

There was a sudden thud behind them, and before Hopper and Beast could turn to see what it was, Raikes screamed, “Down!”

Without the slightest hesitation, Beast yanked Hopper to the deck. Machine-gun fire chattered in the air. Standing only a few feet away from Hopper was the creature he’d spotted up on the stinger. It was wearing its helmet, was fully armored, and it held some sort of knife in its hand. The blade was curved and serrated. Despite all the high-tech armament, clearly these things sometimes liked to get up close and personal.

But it wasn’t going to be getting close enough this time. Raikes unleashed the .50 cal on it, her fury over the fate of the Sampson causing her body to convulse—but doing nothing to deter her aim. “Die, you son of a bitch, die!” she shrieked. Bullets thudded all over its armor, and the alien trembled and shook. Hopper saw dark streaks of what he assumed to be the creature’s blood seeping down sections of its armor where the bullets penetrated. Riddled, the alien staggered to the side, its arms outstretched as if it had been crucified, and then it tumbled over the side of the RHIB. Water fountained from where it went in and then there was no sound, no movement.

“Hah! How do you like that? You dumb sack of shit!” Raikes was gasping for air, and then she stepped back from the machine gun, her hands trembling, her eyes wide. She forced herself to steady her breath, to calm down, and then slowly she composed herself and looked levelly at Hopper. She was still bristling with fury, but she had no place to put it, and it looked as if it was beginning to crash in on her. “What… what do we do now?” she asked, her voice shaking.

Never in his adult life had Hopper so felt like just curling up in a ball. Just going completely fetal, shutting the rest of the world out and maybe even going to sleep in the hope that—upon waking—he would discover matters had changed for the better.

Instead he thrust all of those feelings—all those emotions, all the grief and agony that threatened to crush him—down where they could be of no impediment to what he had to do now.

“Beast,” he said, stepping away from the throttle, “get us to the John Paul Jones.”

Without a word, Beast took over the throttle and gunned it. The small craft moved away from the scene, heading toward the illusion of security that the John Paul Jones seemed to provide. But Hopper knew there would never be anyplace safe in the world, ever again.