[The Fear Saga 01] - Fear the Sky (2014) (13 page)

James was instantly on the defensive against this seemingly preposterous thought, “Wouldn’t they have
landed
on
land
, then, Neal?” he said.

“Well, no, James, they wouldn’t, not if they didn’t want us to know they had come.” said Neal, Madeline still flinching each time anyone said ‘they.’

Neal carried on, “If they wanted to arrive covertly, they would have planned to impact on water, but near to land. And they would have planned to leave what little evidence there was of their arrival in the most hard to reach place possible.”

They could all see the same image in their minds: while they had been working on the probe back in Florida, Neal had posted a giant world map on the coffee room wall. On it he had marked with red pins the locations of each of the impact sites. It seemed so clear to them all now, so perfect how they had all landed in the deepest and most inhospitable waters in their given part of the globe. They had joked about it at the time: couldn’t make it easy for us, could they.

Dr. West and Neal Danielson had noticed it way back in late October when they were analyzing the entry data. Neither of them had really discussed its implications, but it had been a natural extension of the conversation about how improbable it was for all of them to survive entry that they should comment on how improbable it was that they should all end up in deep waters.

But it was James who placed the final piece of the puzzle. His voice entered the silence after Neal’s last comment, “It is clear we may have found something that is more important than any of us had expected. There is one more thing, though, that may be important here, and I am … sad to say it may also support your final theory, Neal. As I think about the meteors’ locations, I think I can see an additional pattern on top of their landing in oceanic trenches.”

Madeline was starting to freak out a bit and she was unsure if she could take much more of this. But Neal and Laurie were intrigued; where was the naval captain going that neither of them had already gone?

“Think about what land masses they actually landed near.” James continued, and they all recalled the image in their minds again, “Scotland, France, the Eastern Mediterranean, China, Russia, Pakistan, the US, and, of course, here, near India.”

They did not follow him, but his military training led him to an instant connection between the nations in question. “Let me put it this way,” he rephrased as he waited for them to make the jump, “Scotland is part of the UK, and one of the most powerful countries in the Eastern Mediterranean is, I think you’ll agree, Israel. So what do China, Russia, India, Pakistan, Israel, the UK, France, and America have in common?”

“Oh God.” came Laurie’s voice through the speaker, a moment before Neal figured it out. His eyes went slowly wide and his mouth began to drop open as realization came to him.

“WHAT IS IT!” shouted Madeline in frustration, half-crazy with fear and incredulity.

Her outburst shocked Neal out of his stunned state and he looked at her with eyes glazed with the implications of it all. In a quiet, measured tone, he told her what irrepressible fact James had led them to, “The nations James just named make the membership list of the most dangerous and exclusive club in the world.” he said to her, “The capsules landed next to each of the eight countries with stockpiled nuclear weapons.”

* * *

Though the four of them doubted they would sleep at all, they had eventually closed the connection and made the show of going to bed. They had concluded that the implications of what they had seen were too fundamental to be handled that night, or over the radio, no matter how secure the connection might be. They would bring the
King’s Transom
back into harbor tomorrow and formulate a plan.

In light of the situation, James’ navy instincts had told him to follow some old, battle ready habits. In the days of the Napoleonic wars, captains had been under strict orders to keep important documents in a weighted bag on their person, ready to throw overboard if they were captured.

While the need to throw documents overboard to protect them from falling into enemy hands had long since passed, a primal fear in James now made him do quite the opposite. For half an hour after the call ended, he had carefully loaded an orange dry bag with copies of their findings: including photos, a printed account of the mission, in cipher, and an encrypted DVD of all the files. He finished it with a personal note addressed to Madeline which he hoped would see the package to the right hands, then stood and left his cabin.

On board a deep-sea vessel such as this one, all life vests were equipped with an Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon, or EPIRB. The vests were designed to aid the recovery of anyone unfortunate to be washed overboard in the extreme seas the
King’s Transom
was designed to face. Grabbing one of the vests from one of many racks around the boat, James attached the now sealed dry bag to it, knotting its straps securely through the bag’s handle.

He then walked forward to the bow of the ship, where the ship’s two anchors were stored safely in their deep lockers. At sea there was little reason to come to the wet, wind-swept bow of the ship, so James was alone when he laid the vest and its ward on the deck. He then laid a nearby, coiled rope on top of it, making sure the vest remained in no way actually attached to the deck, and returned to his cabin.

Lieutenant Commander Richard Moore had not known any more of the details of this mission than the many previous covert missions he had been assigned to. Admittedly though, the location of this one had proven much nicer, and, frankly, so had the company.

After he had received his typically uninformative orders from Admiral Packenham he had read them with his usual haste. They never contained any important information anyway. He just hoped he picked up something more concrete on the base’s grapevine. But the grapevine had been disturbingly quiet on this one, so he and his crew had gone to sea even blinder than usual.

They had taken command of the
King’s Transom
from its usual crew after it had stopped in Diego Garcia Air and Naval Base for ‘maintenance.’ From there they had motored north in strictly civilian dress, as per their orders, to rendezvous with their soon-to-be captain and further orders in southern India.

Four days later they had made it to Kodikkarai where Captain Hawkson had joined them along with the civilian who had also been mentioned in the lieutenant’s classified orders. Both the captain and his civilian cohort had been travelling with partners, and the captain had informed the lieutenant that these were part of their cover, and asked him not to note them in his report.

Ironically, it was precisely because he did not believe that they were part of the cover story that the lieutenant decided not to include them. These were clearly more than just cover stories (though what the attractive older lady saw in the shaggy, younger man she had brought with her was beyond him), but the lieutenant understood how hard it was for people in their line of work to maintain relationships and he had decided he would let this go unmentioned.

However, that indiscretion would be the only thing he would not note. Part of his instructions from the Admiralty had included specific orders to keep Admiral Hamilton abreast of the results of the probe’s analysis. So each day Richard had supplied his daily report at 6pm, uneventful though it was.

A couple of hours after he had already sent today’s report, he had noticed the captain and Dr. West talking animatedly before retiring to the captain’s cabin.

Several hours later still, they finally went to their separate cabins, and Richard decided it would be a good idea to see if he could see what had gotten them so agitated. While the two of them were safely in their cabins he checked the probe’s results from the past few hours. He was not sure what the significance was of what he was seeing, though it was clear his two auspicious guests were extremely interested in it, and it did look rather unusual.

As he studied the imagery, it looked to him like they had found the remains of some kind of missile. This certainly fell under the auspices of information the admiral would wish to be informed of.

Logging into the secure VPN account, Richard opened a new message from the in-box of the Admiralty e-mail account he had been assigned for the mission and began typing. He would attach the latest photos of the object, describe the way the captain had reacted, and send the addendum to Admiral Hamilton tonight.

Ensign Weber was glancing at the autopilot on the bridge when he noticed a spark out of the corner of his eye. He was one of two ratings on the bridge as the rest of the ship slept. Lieutenant Moore, the officer of the watch, had gone below for a moment.

Looking forwards to where he had seen the captain walk past not an hour beforehand, the ensign was confused to see a bright orange circle appearing on the slowly rolling foredeck. Above the circle, a hazy, almost invisible line shot straight up, moving as the deck rolled, as though a small spotlight were shining on the deck from the stars above.

As he watched, his confusion turned to alarm as the circle started to glow bright orange, and its center started to melt, the half-inch thick steel of the deck apparently turning to liquid.

Instinctively, his hand reached for the red alarm button on the helm station and he flipped its cover open and punched it. As the siren wailed throughout the ship, he executed a textbook turn into the ocean’s chop causing water to break briefly over the foredeck and hopefully quell the apparent small fire starting on the decking.

But the splashes of water seemed to vaporize as they hit the beam that was lancing down from above and the line seemed to track the boat’s movements, keeping itself glued to the orange circle as it melted through to the deck below.

As the alarm rang through the ship Captain James Hawkson, like the rest of his crew, was leaping from his bunk and pulling on his clothes. In another part of the ship, a confused ensign stared upward from his bunk as a glowing hole appeared in the decking that formed the roof of his cabin. His three roommates were moving slowly away from it and from the ominous glow that was appearing on the deck below it.

As the frightened crewman edged around the small cabin’s walls to join his friends at its door, a lurch of the boat sent him stumbling into the strange light that seemed to be shining through the hole. The others stared in horror as his entire body flared bright red and burst into searing flame.

“Terry!” mouthed one of his friends, stunned into silence as he watched the unfortunate man’s body rapidly disintegrate, falling to join the smoldering orange circle that was now rapidly eating through the floor of their cabin.

“What the hell!?” shouted another of the stunned men, their internal alarms flaring in tune with the ship’s wailing sirens. The heat in the cabin was becoming overwhelming and something inside them snapped and they started to run for fire extinguishers. But it was already far too late. As they ran from the cabin, the beam opened a second hole below the first down into the ship’s hold under their cabin and the laser started to eat through to the very hull of the ship.

Lieutenant Moore ran from the main salon where he had been sat at the computer. He had only just finished sending his report a few seconds before the alarm had sounded. Running toward his post on the bridge he could hear screams and shouts from forward, and he went to investigate. As he walked forward along the deck he came to the incongruous hole in the thick steel deck of his ship, its edges now glowing white hot, and went to look at it. He approached carefully, leaning over to look down through the hole, imagining its source was below-decks.

The laser burnt cleanly through the back of his skull before his brain registered it was under attack. A moment beforehand, Captain James had arrived on the bridge and was about to ask for a status update when he saw the lieutenant through the window. He watched as his lieutenant’s head evaporated, his body flopping forward and bursting into flame as it fell across the beam. The flesh provided only a moment’s resistance before it was also obliterated, the relentless laser continuing its attack on the thick steel of the ship’s hull two decks down as the lieutenant’s lifeless, disembodied legs slumped to the deck.

Laurie West was not a dramatic person, she was not given to flights of fancy, but it was that very pragmatism that had led her to be so afraid of the potential implications of their discovery. Now, as she heard the screams of the ship’s crew, something in her told her that their worst fears had been true.

She felt a calm come over her as she walked from her cabin, pulling her robe on over her pajamas as she went. Suddenly the boat lurched and seemed to settle. An almost subconscious sense in her told her that the floor she was standing on was starting lean forward, and she hastened her pace on deck. The boat was sinking.

James’ instincts also told him the instant the hull gave way, and he was about to shout the order to abandon ship when a jet of steam erupted from the hole in his deck. Fresh screams from the few crewmembers not already on deck told him that the boat was filling with superheated steam from where the laser and superheated steel of the ship’s hull had met the water as it rushed into the ship.

“Abandon ship!” he bellowed at the top of his lungs, hearing the call echoed by his crew as he grabbed a life jacket and ran for the gangway. As he ran onto the bridge’s port gantry, he scanned the deck, assessing the number of crew he had left. The
Transom
was sinking fast, and they needed to get off now to avoid being dragged down with it.

Seeing the doctor in the small crowd on deck, his eyes locked with hers once again, just as they had when they had sailed from Kodikkarai harbor not long ago, and a sadness filled him. They nodded, knowing they had brought this hell down on the crew of the boat. He had no idea how the information of their discovery had leaked out, but it didn’t matter now. He must try and save as many as possible.