Battleship

USS JOHN PAUL JONES

Hopper looked across the faces of the assembled officers and crewmen as they sat in the CIC. Nagata, Raikes, Ord, Beast, and the rest of the CIC crew. They were waiting for him to say something, to tell them what to do.

He had no blessed clue.

But he had no time to wait until he did.

Hopper drew in a breath and let it out slowly. “Okay. What do we know? And what does it mean?”

“We know they’re not here on some goodwill mission to feed the children,” said Ord.

It was his typical lame attempt at humor. Surprisingly, of all people, Nagata picked up on it and went with it. “Not our children.”

There was a faint chuckle, shared by people who didn’t actually think anything about the situation was remotely funny. The laughter of people sitting on death row, trading morbid jokes while hoping that a pardon from the governor would be forthcoming.

Hopper ran his fingers through his hair. “Those throat tubes were full of salt water. Maybe… maybe that’s what they’re here for. Maybe salt water is something they need for survival, just like we need desalinated water to survive. And maybe their supply on their home-world is running low, or there was climate change, or it was polluted. So they sent—”

“Three ships,” Ord interrupted him. “They sent three freaking ships. How much could they possibly transport?” Then he added quickly, when he saw the annoyed look from Hopper, “Sir.”

“Not just three,” Raikes reminded them. “Those three mobile combat ships, plus that transport thing, plus who knows what else.”

Nagata leaned forward, his eyes thoughtful. “Three, four ships, only the beginning. Water is only the beginning.”

“You think this is an advance party that they’re setting up for a land invasion?” said Hopper. He could scarcely conceive of it, the magnitude of the undertaking. “But there are seven billion people on this world. Millions of miles of territory, hundreds of different governments. And you’re trying to tell me—?”

“They want the whole damned place,” said Beast.

“More coming for certain,” said Nagata, nodding.

They exchanged looks. Hopper realized the enormity of what they were discussing. More than that, he considered the distinct possibility that they might be alone in this realization. They had no idea what was happening elsewhere or what others might have figured out. If the aliens were raining down destruction worldwide, launching ships and attack vehicles, then the secret was pretty much out.

But that didn’t seem to match with their method of operation. They were coming across to Hopper as being extremely methodical. Testing, probing, seeing what the humans were capable of doing, while preserving their own resources. It seemed far more likely that they would be concentrating minimal forces here, trying to determine what it was that humans were capable of mounting offensively, so they would know how much of their ships and personnel they’d need to commit. Only then would they send for reinforcements, enough to take whatever they needed and lay waste to whatever they didn’t.

“Not if we can help it,” said Hopper, as much to his inner concerns as to anyone there. He turned to Beast and said briskly, “Damage report.”

“Starboard engine is down. Whatever that thing was, it tore through the drive shaft.”

“Fixable?” said Hopper.

Beast shook his head. “Negative.”

“Port engine?” Hopper was nervous to hear the response. “We’re sitting ducks without it.”

“It tore into the turbines pretty good, but we can fix it.”

Hopper sighed in relief upon hearing that. At least he had some small fragment of good news to which he could cling.

Abruptly Nagata called out something in Japanese. It certainly sounded like an order. In response to it, a short Japanese man with a round face and glasses entered and looked to his commanding officer expectantly. Nagata gestured toward the new arrival and told Hopper, “Lieutenant Commander Hiroki is my chief engineer. He is quite excellent and can help you.”

“Thanks, but I don’t need any help,” said Beast. Clearly as far as he was concerned, that was the end of the discussion. He stood up, stooping in order to keep his head clear of the low ceiling, and started for the door, barely giving Hiroki a glance.

He was brought up short, however, when Hopper said sharply, “Beast.” He turned questioningly toward Hopper, who continued in a tone that was gentle but also firm, with a hint of warning that there were bigger things than Beast’s ego at stake. “We are under attack from what appears to be a force from another world.”

“Yes, sir.”

“We have lost two destroyers.”

“Yes, sir.”

“We are effectively dead in the water. Sitting ducks, until you get our engines back online.”

“Yes, sir,” said Beast. He obviously knew where the conversation was going, but was content to let Hopper take it all the way there.

“We’d be appreciative of Captain Nagata’s offer to assist us and would welcome Lieutenant Commander Hiroki’s assistance in our engine room.”

Beast and Hiroki exchanged looks, this towering American and a diminutive Japanese officer. They looked like a comedy duo.

“Sir,” Beast rumbled, “if the lieutenant commander would follow me, I’m sure we have plenty of work for him.”

Nagata nodded to Hiroki, who saluted his captain. Then he stared up at Beast, looking as if he didn’t care in the least that the American had been resistant to working with him. A silent understanding seemed to occur between the two of them and they actually nodded in unison. Beast walked out first and Hiroki followed him from the CIC.

Hopper looked with certainty at Nagata and forced a smile. “They’re gonna get on great.”

Nagata harrumphed.

“So…” Hopper settled into the captain’s chair, feeling awkward in doing so, but knowing it was expected. He stared up at the big screens on the wall that displayed the Hawaiian theater. Using the controls in front of him, Hopper moved an icon to articulate his point. “So, we’re here,” he said, sliding a small boat-shaped image onto the screen. Then he tapped a spot on the map and an arrow appeared. “Pearl Harbor is here. They—whatever ‘they’ are—are here in the middle,” and he created a circle in the general area of the aliens. “We have plenty of conjecture, but ultimately we don’t know for sure their true objective. And at night, without radar, we can’t see them.”

“Correct, but I don’t think they can see us either,” said Nagata.

That possibility had not occurred to Hopper. “Why’s that?”

“Because we’re still floating,” said Nagata.

“Good point. So the radar jamming works both ways,” said Hopper. Then he added reluctantly, “Of course, they could have blown us to hell before the sun set. Why didn’t they?”

“Conserving resources. Maybe they used up their firepower. Maybe they have to recharge or reload their missiles.”

“Which they’ve probably had enough time to do by now. And that brings us back to the theory about their being as blind as us.”

He stared up at his screen, an empty battlefield. Nagata stared at it as well. But where there was just a sense of hopelessness on Hopper’s face, a frustration over the challenge he was facing with no real answer presenting itself, the wheels that were turning in Nagata’s head were practically visible. “There is a way,” he said after a time.

“A way?” said Hopper.

“A way of seeing them, without seeing them.”

Hopper had had a brief surge of hope, but when Nagata said that, it was like the air going out of a balloon. “Is this going to be some kind of Art of War reference? Fight the enemy where they aren’t? ‘Move like the water’…? ’Cause I have to be honest, I’ve read that book and it didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me.”

“The book is Chinese.” There was mild annoyance in Nagata’s voice.

Hopper couldn’t have given a damn at that moment.

“Yeah, well, I don’t understand the damned thing. Not a word of it.”

“My way is much more simple,” said Nagata.

“And what would that be?”

“We’ve been doing it to America for twenty years.”

Now Hopper’s attention was firmly engaged. He leaned forward in his chair, his eyes narrowing. “How?” he said so slowly it became a three-syllable word.

“Water,” said Nagata. He said it with a touch of pride, as if quite pleased with himself that he was having the opportunity to inform some dumb-ass American about something the Japanese had pulled over on them.

“Water?” said Hopper slowly. It didn’t make any sense to him.

“Water displacement. We can tell where your ships are by the amount of water displacement.”

Hopper felt as if he were being left further and further behind. “How do you trace water displacement?”

“Tsunami buoys.”

“Tsunami buoys?” That actually sounded vaguely familiar to Hopper, but he couldn’t quite place where he’d heard it.

“You have them surrounding your islands,” said Nagata. “Transmitting displacement data. We hack into their transmission. Form a grid and identify military ships based on displacement signature.”

Hopper stared at him. He felt a degree of grudging admiration. “You sneaky bastards.”

“We would practice it as a contingency plan should we lose fire control radar.”

Hopper waggled a scolding finger at him, as if chastising a child. “Sneaky, tricky, dirty playing.”

Nagata didn’t seem the least bit chagrined. “Rough world,” he said indifferently.

“I like it. Can you do that? Here? Now?”

“Possibly.”

Without any hesitation, Hopper got up and gestured sweepingly toward the captain’s chair. “Captain Nagata, my CIC is your CIC.”

The rest of the crew could not have been more stunned if Hopper had peeled off his face to reveal he was one of the aliens. The words “Who are you and what did you do with Alex Hopper?” certainly occurred to more than a few of them. Here he was turning his baby over to a stranger—no, not even a stranger, a guy he’d had a major punch-out with that might well have wound up scuttling his career.

Right now, though, his long-term career plans could not have been further from Hopper’s mind. All he cared about was finding the best man for whatever tasks were necessary to get his people out of this situation alive. As far as he was concerned, if that meant Nagata in the captain’s chair while they took on the aliens, so be it. He had neither the time for, nor the luxury of, pampering his ego.

Even Nagata was astounded, although his was not the reaction of wide eyes and gaping jaws as was seen from the rest of the sailors in the CIC. He merely arched a single eyebrow as he stared at Hopper. The unspoken question was easily discerned: Are you sure about this?

Hopper replied even though the question hadn’t been voiced. “It’s what my brother would have done,” he said with a small shrug, as if it was so obvious, it didn’t need to be spelled out.

Nagata’s arms were stiff at his sides as he bowed crisply from the hip, and he kept his eyes fixed on Hopper’s. Hopper bowed in response.

The Japanese officer wasted no more time as he sat down in the captain’s chair and began working on the John Paul Jones computer system. As he did so, he said softly, “Your brother was a good man.”

“Yes.”

“I heard his younger brother was an idiot.”

Hopper froze, scowling. Was this all some sort of joke to Nagata? Was he going to take the grand gesture that Hopper had just made, trusting his ship to him, simply so he could make a few more snide remarks at Hopper’s expense?

Then Nagata looked up. “But it appears I was misinformed. I will be sure to remember that in the future.” With that pronouncement, he went back to work.

Hopper smiled for the first time since the death of his brother.

He hoped he would have further opportunities.

It took Nagata about half an hour to thoroughly master the differences between the John Paul Jones’s computer system and that of his late, lamented vessel. There was tense silence during that time, only broken when Nagata had a question, which would quickly be answered by Hopper or one of his crew. While Nagata worked, everyone was braced for the possibility that maybe the aliens could, in fact, perceive them, and that any moment they might be fired upon.

Nothing happened, though, lending further credence to the notion that they were as invisible to the aliens as the aliens were to them. But after thirty minutes of working on the problem, Nagata had gone a long way to remove that differential.

The main computer screen was now alight with a massive grid that presented the locations of all the buoys floating in the ocean within miles of the area. It was more than they required, but there was no point in doing this in half measures. Besides, if more ships landed anywhere nearby, or even not that nearby, they wanted to be able to know immediately.

Hopper leaned in near Nagata, staring at the complex grid system of hundreds of buoys, all of them transmitting water displacement. “Now what?” he asked.

“We’re looking for patterns of water displacement,” said Nagata.

Hopper studied the grid for another few seconds. A buoy had been activated. He pointed and said with satisfaction, “There.”

“Maybe,” said Nagata noncommittally.

Another buoy grid two hundred yards south was activated. “It’s moving,” said Hopper.

“Maybe.”

A third buoy was activated. “That’s a ship,” Hopper said with growing excitement. A trajectory line was being established. That meant if they could determine a heading, then they could line up a shot and be one step ahead of the enemy.

“Looks that way.” Nagata didn’t sound especially enthusiastic, but he was obviously one to play things close to the vest. Plus he’d gotten his ship shot out from under him, so it was understandable he wouldn’t be too quick to celebrate.

“Good job.”

“Bad news is that it’s heading toward us,” said Nagata.

Hopper did a double take and he was pretty sure the blood was draining from his face. “Fantastic,” he muttered.

Beast and Hiroki, with the aid of some additional men, were busy tearing apart the starboard engine when the call came down from CIC.

The chief engineer knew Hopper as well as anybody and probably better than most. So he was able to tell from Hopper’s tone of voice that they were in deep trouble. Not that Hopper would be sharing that information over the radio. It wasn’t his style. He would focus on the problem at hand and leave everyone else to deal with their specific tasks.

“Beast,” Hopper’s voice filtered through the radio, “we need some power.” He said it casually, as if he’d suddenly realized they’d run out of booze and was asking Beast to make a beer run down to the local 7-Eleven.

Beast didn’t bother to ask why there was a sudden need for propulsion. He suspected that the answer wouldn’t be anything good. “Working on it,” he said into the radio.

“Work faster,” the admonition came back.

“Roger, working faster.” He clicked off the radio, returned to work, and looked at Hiroki. “Your boss like that? Always want it faster, quicker? Done yesterday?”

Hiroki stared at him, peering owlishly over the tops of his round glasses. It was fairly clear that he had no clue what Beast was talking about. Beast actually knew he was wasting his time. Thus far he’d communicated with the Japanese engineer entirely through emphatic pointing and gestures; clearly the smaller man spoke no English. Beast was talking to himself as much as he was talking to Hiroki. Instead, as he did his best to stitch his beleaguered engine back together, Beast kept a running commentary going. “It’s never fast enough. No matter how quick you turn it around, it’s always ‘Fix it faster. Faster faster faster.’” He snorted. “Like to see them fix up their gear after a two-fifty-pound Hippo Robot goes full berserk in their department.”

Beast looked up in surprise as, out of nowhere, Hiroki asked, “Your mother named you ‘Beast’?”

Everything stopped, the other sailors pausing in their endeavors and looking with barely restrained amusement at the way Beast was staring at the smaller man.

“Don’t worry about my mother,” Beast said curtly, and got back to work.

Nagata had been absolutely correct. There was a clear track on the monitor of one of the alien vessels—a stinger, most likely—heading straight at them.

Raikes, observing their approach from her station, said, “So they can outgun us, outmaneuver us, and more or less fly… and the one thing we have in our favor is that they don’t know we know they’re coming.” Hopper nodded. Raikes forced a smile and said heartily, “I love this plan. I’m thrilled to be a part of it.”

“That means a lot, Raikes.” He spoke into his walkie-talkie. “Spotters on deck?”

“Spotters ready, sir,” Ord’s voice crackled over the walkie-talkie. Ord would be at the port observation deck, since the other one had been blown to hell by the aliens. Other young men were scattered around the deck, armed with binoculars.

Are they terrified? A bunch of kids, many fresh out of the Academy, keeping a lookout for alien vessels that can come out of nowhere and annihilate us with weapons the like of which we’ve never seen before? Yeah, well… it’s not as if I’m not outside my own comfort zone right now…

Nagata was completely focused on the monitors in front of him, calibrating the speed and course of the stinger. “I thought they couldn’t see us,” Raikes said.

“It’s entirely possible they can’t,” said Hopper, hoping he was right. “They could just be heading in this direction by coincidence, and they’d stumble over us purely by accident.”

“Would that be any better than if they were heading toward us by design?”

“Not really, no.”

Raikes stared at him. “Great.”

Hopper couldn’t bring himself to come down on Raikes. He knew that she was wound up. Her trigger finger was visibly twitching, indicative of the mounting tension she was feeling from having a potential target and not being allowed to shoot at it yet. That tension was reflected in the faces of everyone else in the CIC.

“Hold it together, Raikes,” Hopper said sharply. “All of you.”

Raikes nodded in acknowledgment, but she was clearly not winding down anytime soon. The bottom line was that Hopper had every confidence that—when the moment arrived—Raikes would be all business and hyper-efficient. It was the waiting that could get to her. That could get to all of them.

“Can we hit this thing, please?” Raikes said to Nagata.

Nagata was the only one on the CIC who seemed immune to any sort of pressure. The man must have ice water in his veins. “We need to be sure of its speed,” said Nagata calmly. “Are we ready to fire missiles?”

“Raikes, do we have some Harpoons for the captain?” said Hopper.

Raikes smiled. Discussion of an impending opportunity to shoot at something always brightened her day. “Yes, sir, I’ve got some beauties.”

“Very well. Prepare to target; everyone in position.” Nagata checked the screen, although Hopper suspected it was purely pro forma. He probably had the image and position embedded in his mind. The stinger was definitely getting closer. Whether that meant that their own danger level was being ratcheted upward or that the aliens were presenting themselves as a better target pretty much stemmed from one’s worldview.

“Target ECHO 11,” said Nagata.

Raikes immediately threw herself into her work, entering the coordinates into the computer that controlled the ship’s store of RGM-84 Harpoon anti-ship missiles. It took her only seconds and then she announced, “Coordinates loaded, target impact twenty-one seconds. On your clock, Captain.” She paused and then added in a tone of forced casualness, “By the way, you know it’s not going to matter if they’re heading in this direction by accident or not. When we fire, they’ll know where we’re at.”

Hopper had known that. Still, Raikes saying it aloud brought it to stark reality. All eyes were upon him, including Nagata’s. It was his call. There was always the option that they could just sit tight, hope that the stinger cruised past them without being aware of their presence…

Then, in his mind’s eye, he saw the look on Stone’s face right before he was blown to hell. It was impossible to know which ship was the one coming near them, but it could well be that the same bastards that had murdered his brother were now within striking distance.

“Hit that son of a bitch,” said Hopper.

Raikes grinned wolfishly, although her voice was all business. “Roger that.”

From the foredeck missile battery, a huge plume of flame erupted from the missile tube. Raikes’s perfectly targeted Harpoon launched from the ship, arcing into the darkness in a blaze of light. A second followed a heartbeat later. Everyone in the CIC looked at the grid on the board, waiting to see the likelihood of their surviving the night.

On the port observation deck, Ord watched through binoculars with mounting concern as the John Paul Jones’s two missiles tore across the sky. He hadn’t had to hear Raikes’s comment down in the CIC; he knew perfectly well they were going all-in based upon readings from a series of buoys. “Like this will ever work,” he said under his breath. “Why don’t we just close our eyes and throw the missiles at them?”

He kept his eyes open, though, and watched carefully, counting down, listening to the roar of the missiles as they hurtled into the distance, a tiny light receding further and further.

Then he heard it.

A distant, hollow splash, followed by a second.

Oh, crap.

Hopper’s voice crackled over the walkie-talkie. “Ord, anything?”

Keep it together. Keep it together. Be all business.

“Negative. It’s a miss.”

Then he saw the last thing he wanted to see under the circumstances: lights, glaring pale green in the distance, coming toward them. “Contact bearing 340. They’re following us…” Suddenly plumes of flame erupted in the night. “I think we’ve got a launch. Yeah… we’ve got incoming.”

We’re dead. We are so dead. D-E-A-D. God, Raikes is so hot. Dead dead dead.

“Twenty degrees hard starboard! All hands, brace for impact!” said Hopper.

As if they weren’t under attack, Nagata was focused on the board, studying the buoy transmissions. But none of that would matter if the enemy missiles struck home. Their only prayer now was that it really had all been happenstance that the stinger was heading in their direction. That the aliens didn’t really have any clue as to the location of the John Paul Jones. That they were likewise firing blind, and that their luck would be as poor as Nagata’s.

Might be seeing you again sooner than either of us would’ve liked, Stone…

They heard the whistle of the incoming missiles. Hopper closed his eyes, braced himself. Everyone else in the CIC did the same, save for Nagata, whose calm gaze never left the monitor.

Then the ship rocked violently, but there hadn’t been any impact. It was being caused by geysers of water blasting upward from the starboard side. Hopper’s eyes snapped open wide, astonished. Crackling over the walkie-talkie came Ord’s ecstatic voice: “That’s a miss! I love when they miss!” Then his tone changed back to its typical sense of impending doom. “Sir, they’re, uh… they’re getting closer. Close enough that we should, uh… are we planning on firing something, sir?”

Nagata studied the grid, thinking, seemingly impervious to the prospect of impending doom. “FOXTROT 24,” he said at last.

Raikes dialed up the coordinates. “FOXTROT 24,” she confirmed.

“Fire,” said Nagata.

Two more Harpoons exploded from their tubes. Raikes quickly loaded two more in anticipation of having to use them.

Seconds passed, and Hopper was certain that during that time not a single person exhaled.

Suddenly there was the distant sound of explosion, and if they had been up on deck, they would have seen an abrupt and brilliant burst of light upon the horizon. Ord’s voice came screaming over the walkie-talkie, “Holy shit! Hit! Big hit!” But the celebration was short-lived as, seconds later, Ord shouted, “Sir, they’re coming from both directions!!”

“All engines, full stop! Countermeasures!” Hopper immediately ordered.

Instantly the CWIS was employed, and again it was a waiting game to see if the anti-missile system did what it was supposed to do.

It did, but, again, only partly.

The ship rocked, and this time there was no mistaking it was as a result of impact. But Hopper knew immediately that they had averted catastrophe. The CWIS had managed to intercept at least some of the missiles, but apparently not all. They had sustained some damage; now it was a matter of determining just how much. He grabbed the 1MC—the shipboard public address system—and called out, “Damage report!”

It was Beast who responded first. “Sealing the aft magazine. We’ll stay afloat.” Seconds later other sections of the ship were reporting in, stating that there was no damage.

Okay. That’s a relief.

“Captain Nagata, we seem to have multiple targets. Care to do something about that?”

“Hai.”

“I take that as a ‘yes.’”

Nagata nodded. A moment of mutual respect passed between them. Then it was back to business. Nagata carefully tracked the second stinger. “Target… INDIA 37,” said Nagata.

“INDIA 37,” Raikes repeated. “One more time.”

Ord watched with growing enthusiasm and blossoming hope as another Harpoon missile leaped into the night sky, an avenging angel carrying considerable firepower. It streaked through the air, zeroing in on the alien.

The stinger tried to leap out of the way, but the missile caught the port pontoon, ripping through it and sending the ship tumbling back onto the water. It landed with a hellacious splash. The stinger listed in the water, and Ord could hear the engines misfiring, sputtering. It attempted to bound to the right but landed heavily, like a crippled bird.

“That’s a hit,” he said. “She’s dead in the water, about fifty yards to the right of where you hit her.”

Seconds later another missile launched from the deck of the John Paul Jones. The stinger apparently saw it coming, because it tried to launch one of its own missiles directly at it, hoping to counter it. It failed to do so. The white cylinder tumbled out of the launcher rather than being propelled, and slid into the water. The firing mechanism had obviously been damaged and the stinger was a dead duck.

Except it wasn’t. There was a surge of the waves, as if the ocean itself had a bet on the aliens and was trying to prolong the action, that pushed the stinger to one side. An instant later the Harpoon hit the water and sank uselessly beneath the waves.

“Miss. That’s a miss. You’re 10 degrees right,” said Ord.

In the CIC, Hopper nodded at the new information, making his own adjustments to the trajectory. “Second coordinates, ROMEO 36.” He nodded toward Raikes and said, “Have a nice day.”

Raikes, with a missile ready to go, fired.

Ord watched the third missile track launch. He followed its trajectory, murmuring, “Please, please, come on, please,” the entire time as the missile streaked through the air.

This time when it hit the stinger, there was no doubt. The alien vessel erupted in flame, blown apart by the power of the Harpoon. Even more, the second vessel got caught up in the backlash of the inferno and went up as well. Flames blasted upward like a volcano eruption, and cheers rang from all over the deck. “Hit! Sink! Big hit! Big sink!” Ord shouted into the walkie-talkie, doing an exuberant dance that would have gotten him roundly lampooned by anyone else in the crew under ordinary circumstances. But these were far from ordinary, and all that resulted was several others joined him in his terpsichorean celebration. Through the still-open walkie-talkie, he could hear the sounds of jubilation coming from the CIC as well.

Then he glanced at his watch and he was filled with considerably less joy. The night had fled and the sun would soon be rising. Once there was full visibility, the playing field would be level once more.

And he wasn’t convinced, when that happened, they’d be around to see another sunset.