Battleship (Movie Tie-in Edition) (16 page)

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.

The President could scarcely credit what he was seeing. If he’d been informed about it secondhand, he would have questioned the reliability—if not the sanity—of the source. Looking at it now, though, he almost started to wonder about his own sanity.

What he was staring at, being played back to him on a screen in the Situation Room, was nothing less than a barrier constructed of the very Pacific Ocean itself. He
certainly had experience with what nature was capable of accomplishing in Hawaii. Storms, typhoons, the best and worst that God, in His acts, had to offer. But what he was witnessing now was beyond anything he had ever seen. It seemed instead like something out of a fantasy movie, cooked up by a wizard as a weapon against another wizard.

Arthur C. Clarke’s oft-quoted statement ran through his head.
“Any sufficiently advanced form of technology will seem like magic.”
Still, it was so beyond anything he’d ever experienced that he had to remind himself that no, this wasn’t magic; just technology.
Extremely advanced. Science against which no Earth technology had any counter. We are so screwed …

The film had been taken from a distance by a naval vessel and forwarded through channels—not only to him, but to heads of state from every country being represented in the war games, which were—at the moment—suspended. Apparently a real war had overtaken the games, fought against an enemy that was outside the experience of everyone involved.

Mountains of water, impassable, impenetrable, were arrayed around Oahu. From the latest intel on the President’s desk, there were three ships—two Americans, one Japanese—within the perimeter. Everyone else was stuck outside, cut off as a localized storm kept them at bay. Sheets of lightning rippled up and down the water barrier.

The Joint Chiefs sat around the table, waiting for the President to absorb what he was seeing. Meanwhile on another screen, CNN was on, muted, but the closed captioning was activated:

“Little is known beyond the fact that all communication with the island state went down at 12:20 Eastern Standard Time. Extreme weather is now cutting off Hawaii from the outside world. A probable connection to events in Hong Kong is being investigated.”

The President leaned back in his chair, studying the other screens, each depicting a site around the world that had also been damaged.

“Best guess?” said the President finally.

One of the Joint Chiefs sat forward, resting his forearms on the large table around which they were all grouped. “We don’t have a best guess, Mr. President. Every single country that could possibly be behind this got hit themselves. No one was spared.”

“Which only means,” said another general, “it was no single country. Terrorists. It has to be terrorists …”

The chief of staff looked skeptical. “You’re telling me that the people who couldn’t even blow up a pair of sneakers coordinated something like this?”

“I’m saying the people who knocked down the Twin Towers coordinated something like this …”

The President shook his head. “No. No, I’m not buying it. Even on 9/11, they used standard Earth technology, Earth airplanes …”

“Mr. President,” the vice-president put up a hand as if he were in second grade. “You keep saying ‘Earth.’ Are you implying …?”

“I’m not implying anything. I’m saying it outright. I’m saying what Sherlock Holmes always said. That whenever you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains—however improbable—is the truth. Someone here want to try to sell me on the notion that that,” he pointed at the wall of water, “is within the realm of possibility, based on what we know current science can produce? Because I’m looking at that giant water wall, with lightning flashing all around it, and I’m telling you this is either the result of extraterrestrial science, or somewhere right now Zeus is instructing that the Kraken be released.”

“Sir,” the vice-president started again, “you’re talking about alien invasion. That’s … that’s the kind of thing you see in disaster movies. Not in real life.”

“Perhaps. Except how many New York landmarks have we seen blown up in those same disaster movies? Plus there was an episode of a television series,
The Lone Gunmen
, that centered around a plot to fly airplanes into the World Trade Center. Life imitates art, gentlemen. How many of you,” and he took in the entire table in a glance, “didn’t watch the Twin Towers collapsing a decade ago and feel as if, just for a moment at least, the world had turned into a Michael Bay movie?”

There were silent, reluctant nods from several of them. As far as the President was concerned, those who didn’t nod simply didn’t want to cop to it. Then the chief of staff said slowly, “Sir … if what you’re saying is true … we need to get you on Marine One and to a secure location. And we need to do it immediately.”

“I don’t see that as a necessary—”

“Sir,” the chief of staff said more forcefully, “if we’re going to operate under the assumption that what you’re saying is true … and considering that whomever or whatever it is we’re dealing with has hostile intent—which we have to believe considering they’ve made no attempt to engage us in any way other than those that have cost human lives …”

“I believe what the chief of staff is saying,” said the vice-president, “is that if we’re sticking with the whole ‘life imitates art’ theory, well … I think we all remember the poster for
Independence Day
. The big alien saucer blowing the living crap out of—”

“Yes,” said the President. “Yes, I remember it.” He drummed his fingers on the table. “I don’t like it. It seems like running away.”

“Think of it more as a strategic retreat,” said one of the Joint Chiefs. Heads around the room nodded in agreement.

“Sir,” said the chief of staff softly, “it’s worth noting that there may well come a point where the Secret Service
isn’t going to give you the option. Better to walk out on your own while things are quiet than to be dragged out while the ceiling’s caving in. Don’t you think?”

The President slowly sagged back in his chair and looked bleakly around the room.
So this is what it’s like to be the most powerful man in the world: you go to ground when danger threatens
.

“Inform Marine One and get my family together,” said the President quietly in the hushed room.

The skipper will know what to do
. The thought kept going through Hopper’s mind as he cast an apprehensive glance at the repair crew trying to deal with the wreckage from the hit they’d taken. At least the ship wasn’t listing, so obviously nothing fatally catastrophic had happened to it. Yet.

Once having returned to the ship, Beast really should have hastened to the engine room to make sure his beloved Rolls-Royce engines were continuing to function and hadn’t sustained any damage during the assault. Raikes should have returned to weapons, where she doubtless would’ve taken comfort in having all the firepower of the
John Paul Jones
at her disposal, rather than just a single .50 cal machine gun. Instead, however, they followed Hopper, who was heading straight toward the bridge, to bring his commander up to speed and to find out what the next course of action was going to be.

The skipper will know what to do. The man may be an officious jerk, and he’s never liked me, but he’s forgotten more about strategy than most naval men ever learn. He’s probably already got an entire plan in place. He’s probably already figured out a weakness that went past the rest of us. He’s got this covered; he’ll be totally on top of it
.

Hopper walked into the bridge, Beast and Raikes behind him, and glanced around, not finding the person he was most expecting to. “Where’s the skipper?” he asked.

There was dead silence. All Hopper saw was an array of young, terrified faces, looking at him … no, looking
to
him. Lieutenant J. G. Raj Patel, a young and efficient officer of Indian descent, and Ensign Anthony Rice, still so wet behind the ears he was practically dripping, looked as if they had one frayed nerve between them. Ord was also there, staring at him expectantly. Expectantly? What in the world was he expecting?

Hopper heard explosions in the distance. He turned and saw that the Japanese vessel the
Myoko
was under attack from the stinger. The stinger was firing singles of the cylinders, rather than barrages, and the weapons were falling short of the destroyer.
Warning shots. They don’t have an infinite number of the things
. The
Myoko
was backing off, taking the hint, and that seemed to satisfy the damned stinger, as it ceased fire.
Why the hell aren’t we coordinating attacks? Why are we just sitting here? Why isn’t the skipper giving—?

“Orders, sir?” said Ord.

“Why are you asking me?” Deep down, he already knew the answer. Some part of him simply couldn’t acknowledge it, though. Didn’t want to acknowledge it. When he’d first entered the bridge, his voice had been brisk, no-nonsense. Now when he spoke, repeating his previous question, it was low and level and barely above a whisper: “Where’s the skipper?”

“Dead, sir.” Ord sounded as if he were talking from
somewhere just south of the Twilight Zone. A dead man walking, emotionlessly reporting on the fate of those who had already preceded him down that road.