Battleship (Movie Tie-in Edition) (18 page)

The stinger had them at their mercy and proceeded to …

… do nothing. Nothing save pull back and return to its first position, guarding the structure in the water.

What the hell are they waiting for?

And do I really want to find out?

He put aside his concerns and second-guessing as he said briskly, “Hard port. All engines. Get us over to what’s left of the
Myoko
. We’re going to save everyone we can.”

The
John Paul Jones
quickly made her way toward the scene of the
Myoko
’s death throes. The Japanese sailors weren’t even looking at the men coming to rescue them. Instead they were focused on the remains of their vessel as it slowly began to collapse in on itself.

Beast never took his eyes off the stinger. “Why do you think they aren’t attacking?”

“Maybe they’re scared,” said Ord.

Hopper and Beast looked at him.

“They are not scared,” said Hopper.

Then a sound like screeching metal suddenly ripped through the air.

Everyone on the bridge jumped slightly, bracing themselves, certain another attack was imminent. They looked toward the alien tower and realized that the noise was being produced by two massive doors opening on the far end of the structure.

“What are
those
?” said Hopper, looking to Beast, hoping that the engineer might be able to provide some sort of answer. Beast shook his head. He had nothing to offer.

What they were seeing were two metallic spheres rising into the air. They were identical, glinting in the sun, each about the size of a large beach ball. There seemed to be no visible means of propulsion. They just rose in the air and hovered for a moment, as if gravity was of no consequence to them. Then they angled around and Hopper braced himself for the things to come straight at them. Instead they soared away, moving—in Hopper’s estimate—at a speed somewhere around 85 knots. And he realized what direction they were heading.

“Direct course for Pearl.”

Beast’s eyes widened and Hopper knew exactly why. The engineer’s wife and children were there. It was one thing to have his own life at risk, but the notion of his family being threatened clearly shook the big man to his core. “We’ve got to radio for anti-aircraft,” said Beast.

“The only radio we have available to us is ship to ship, and barely that,” said Hopper. “We don’t have ship to shore.”

“Dammit,” said Beast.

Minutes later, Hopper watched the survivors from
Myoko
disembark from the lifeboats that the
John Paul
Jones
had dispatched. Ord, standing near him, stared at the alien vessels. “Sir … what are they doing?”

His voice flat, his mind far away with his dead brother, Hopper said, “Whatever they damn well please.”

“No, I mean … why didn’t they finish us?”

Hopper had no clue. “Maybe they figured we weren’t worth their time anymore. Or they wanted to rub our noses in our helplessness. Or …” Then, faced with a question that had no real satisfactory answer, he started to look for a more practical one. “When did the targeting alarms stop?”

“When our weapons went off-line. So … when we weren’t able to attack … maybe they stopped looking at us as any kind of threat.”

Slowly Hopper nodded.

Ord was clearly astonished at the concept. “God, that’s incredibly binary thinking. Fire when fired upon. We hail them with our horn, they blow out our eardrums. We fire a warning shot, they sink our ship.” He paused. “You think they’re machines? You know: totally automated.”

“I know they’re not. Those ships have viewports.” He glared toward the stinger sitting out there; if a ship could look smug, he was sure the stinger had that look. “Some
thing
is looking out at us right now.”

“So if they don’t care about us … what
do
they care about?”

“That’s what we have to figure out.” He gestured toward the alien ships. “As soon as the last of the men are out of the water, get us away from the stingers, Ord.”

“The what, sir?”

“Those ships. I call them stingers.”

“Aye aye, sir. Good name, sir. You should trademark that.” When he saw the look Hopper gave him, Ord quickly headed off to the bridge.

The last one to climb over the
John Paul Jones
’s rail was Nagata. His face and uniform were blackened from smoke, and there was also blood on his jacket. It didn’t appear to be his own, though.
He was trying to save someone. Someone bled to death in his arms. Oh God …

Hopper went to Nagata and stopped short a couple of feet from him. Nagata stared at Hopper—stiff-backed, stiff-lipped, shoulders squared—waiting for him to say something.

“I’m … sorry about your men,” said Hopper slowly. “And for the, you know … the thing about your honor.”

Nagata did not deign to respond. Instead he turned his back pointedly and went to attend to his wounded men.

There was a swirl of activity around Hopper, and there wasn’t a damned thing he could do to contribute. Medics and the quartermaster were attending to everything. All he was doing was taking up space, standing there and trying to stay out of the way.

He headed back to his quarters, and with every step he took, he felt rage building within him. He ran, faster and faster, unable to control it, sprinting in the same way that someone who feels his dinner coming up hustles to the nearest toilet so he’ll have something to vomit into.

The second he reached his room, he slammed the door behind him, just as his rage boiled over. He yelled, and it was a deep and primal sound. When he turned and saw his own image in the mirror, he drew back a fist and punched it. The tempered glass held together and he hit it again and again, figuratively battering his own face, causing cracks to ripple through it, distorting his image.

He turned his fury on the rest of the room, knocking over anything he could get his hands on. Books flew,
plaques, newspaper clippings, old photographs, reports that he was supposed to go through. Everything was tossed, pieces of his life tumbling around him with nothing to hold them together.

For long seconds this went on, this cyclone of devastation with Hopper in the middle of it. And finally, when he had expended the last of his energy, he dropped onto the edge of his bunk—the only stick of furniture that hadn’t been thrown—and his head sank into his hands.

He still kept expecting Stone to walk through the door. To look around at the mess and say “What the hell—?” and scold Hopper for his lack of control. And then Stone would make it all better, because that’s what Stone always did. He made things better, and he always came through.

Stay out of trouble while I’m gone
.

Hopper sobbed in the privacy of his quarters, and hated his brother for abandoning him.

The humans seek to help the others, plucking the survivors out of the water. Let them gather themselves together so they are a single target. That will allow the most efficient means of utilizing resources. The object is not to overwhelm them. The object is to prolong this engagement in order to fully determine what they are capable of doing when presented with various opportunities. Dead, they are of no use. Alive, they make interesting … experiments
.

The jamming array continues to function within acceptable parameters
.

The spheres have been dispatched
.

Soon the transport vessel will be launched. It will depart underwater and only surface once it is beyond range of the human vessels
.

All is well
.

Vera Lynch exited Interstate H-1 and guided her minivan onto Route 92, also known as the Nimitz Highway. She’d rather not have left her parents alone while they were watching all the news reports about the worldwide insanity, but she really didn’t have a choice. She had a PTA meeting that evening and, what with being the recording secretary, there was simply no way she could not be there.

The PTA. People around the globe are being hammered by debris from some shattered space station or whatever the hell they think it is, and we’re busy getting worked up about bake sales
.

Still, the simple fact was that life goes on in all its massive trivialities, even if people a continent away are dying.

Her twin boys were in the back, buckled into their booster seats. Emmett, the older by ten minutes, was pushing against the restraining straps. Walsh, the younger, had fallen soundly asleep, which was something of a relief. It was always easier to handle the twins when one of them was unconscious. She was grateful for the fact that her father never tired of playing with the boys and he’d managed to wear Walsh out completely. Emmett, by contrast, seemed to be an endless fount of energy.
I wish I had that much
.

They drove past the Pearl Harbor shipyards. From where she was, she could see that the harbor was empty of vessels save for the docked
Missouri
and some utility boats. It made her wonder briefly how Walter’s ship was doing during the war games. Putting some of her random thoughts together, she suddenly worried that a piece of space debris might have fallen on the
John Paul Jones
. As quickly as she could, she dismissed the notion. If anyone was in a position to elude damage as a result of debris, it would be Walter.
(Why
do
they call him “Beast” anyway? Stupid nickname. The sweetest man in the world.)

Certainly the
John Paul Jones
’s radar would detect any incoming objects long before they got there, and Walter’s engines would immediately steer the vessel to safety. The most they’d have to deal with would be a big splash when it came down.

“I really have to go,” Emmett piped up suddenly. He was holding a juice box and sucked on the straw, which produced a hollow sound to indicate that it was empty. “I mean, I might go in this juice box.”

“That’s nasty,” said Vera in her brisk, “we are not amused” voice—even though secretly she kind of was. “You’ll hold it.”

He fidgeted in his seat. “I’m gonna need a second juice box once I get started.”

She saw that traffic was slowing in front of her. Probably tourists clogging up the arteries because they were heading to the
Missouri
to check it out. Freaking tourists. She decided to exit off 92 and seek an alternate route through the surface streets.

That was when she perceived a distant, humming sound. She’d never heard anything quite like it before. It wasn’t the whistling sound of a bomb being dropped, something she’d never actually experienced but had certainly heard enough times in movies. Instead it sounded more concentrated, like a swarm of angry bees. But not even quite that. It was different, and disturbing, and it was getting louder.

She glanced around to make sure the windows were rolled up. If it was some sort of insects, she sure didn’t want the damned things in the van. As she guided the car under an overpass, Emmett suddenly shrieked,
“Mom!”
and pointed. Normally when Emmett felt the need to draw her attention to something, she never looked, because it meant taking her eyes off the highway and it was invariably something fairly inane, like a billboard announcing some new television program. But there was such confusion
and fear in his voice that her head snapped around to see what he was indicating.

There were two bizarre metal spheres heading in their direction.

They were tearing down 92 right above them, smashing through the traffic as if it was nothing. They tore the tops off vans, knocked cars aside, and the air was alive with a combination of the humming of the spheres, the shrieking and wrenching of metal and the screams of the people.

One of the spheres angled downward and smashed into the overpass just as the minivan was about to drive under it. Vera screamed and slammed her foot on the gas, correctly intuiting that if she hit the brakes, the van would have skidded to a halt right under the overpass. The speed limit sign indicated that maximum speed in exiting should be twenty miles per hour. The minivan leaped to fifty, springing forward like a vaulting puma, and tore along the off-ramp just as the overpass blew apart from the impact of the sphere. Debris rained down—huge chunks of concrete—and one of them ricocheted off the rear of the van, surely creating a big dent but otherwise leaving them unscathed. The overpass collapsed and, to Vera’s horror, a Ford 4 × 4 tumbled with it. The last thing she saw was the terrified expression of the driver, an old man, visible through the windshield of his vehicle before more debris crashed down upon him and obliterated him from her sight.

Emmett was howling in fear, great wracking sobs seizing him and tears rolling down his face.
“Ma! Ma! I peed my pants! I’m sorry, I’m so sorry!”

“It’s all right, honey! It’s all right!”

“Don’t be mad!”

“I’m not mad, it’s all right!”

She kept shouting it over and over, like a mantra, as the van sped away from the site of the wreckage. For an instant she thought about jumping out, about trying to
help, but all she cared about at that moment was getting her two sons away from the scene of devastation and death.
Maybe it makes me a bad person, but at least I’m a good mother
.

The van sped away in one direction while the metal spheres went in the other, obviously unconcerned with the damage they’d already done, and clearly prepared to do more. Emmett’s mortified howling continued and Vera kept saying soothing words to make it clear to him that she really didn’t give a damn that he’d lost bladder control. Truth to tell, she’d almost done so herself. But she didn’t feel that this was the time to share that particular piece of information.

Meanwhile Walsh the imperturbable snored peacefully, dreaming about his recent visit with grandpa.

There was an old Hawaiian legend about an angry and frustrated woman who complained about the brutality of her husband, whose cruelty was—by her description—as sharp as the edge of cutting bamboo. The eventual fate of the husband and wife were unknown. Perhaps he had tossed her into a volcano; perhaps she had stabbed him to death in his sleep with a spear fashioned of bamboo. Either way, her unhappiness had achieved a sort of immortality in the naming of Kaneohe Bay, since Kaneohe (or Kane’ohe, as it was more properly spelled) meant “bamboo man.”