Battleship

A single cylinder landed on the deck not ten feet in front of the starboard observation deck. Brownley and Mullenaro were both there, and they stared down at it in utter bewilderment.

The narrow white cylinder, which had landed surprisingly noiselessly on the deck, was still quivering slightly from the impact. Rather than at an angle, as one would have expected from the trajectory, it was upright. It looked to Brownley to be about four feet tall and less than a foot in diameter. Other than presenting a threat that someone might trip over it, the cylinder appeared utterly harmless. It might well have been made of plastic.

Mullenaro was no less confused, but he was also more outwardly irritated. “What kind of jack wagon crap—is this somebody’s idea of a game?”

Suddenly the cylinder transformed, within an eye-blink, from white to red.

Then it detonated. In an explosive flash, Brownley, Mullenaro and the entire starboard observation deck vaporized.

USS SAMPSON

The stinger turned its attentions to the Sampson. This time, though, they were firing the cylinders much faster, but one at a time instead of a barrage, as if whoever was shooting them at the destroyer was testing his marksmanship.

The Sampson’s Gatling guns roared to life, but the speed of the cylinders made targeting them more problematic. Several were picked off in midair, but one landed on the foredeck, transformed from white to red, and detonated. The explosion ripped through the ship. The windows on the bridge, made from reinforced glass that should have held together, blew apart. It was specially treated so as to shatter into dull pieces should breakage occur, and it performed as it had been designed to do. As a result, no one had to worry about getting shards of glass in their eyes. Still, the officers dropped to the floor to avoid the large chunks that were flying every which way.

“We’re hit!” shouted Sinclair.

“Signal all ships!” Stone shouted over the wailing klaxon. “Full reverse! We need battle space!”

The engine room responded immediately. The Sampson started to pull back. It wasn’t much; a ship as large as the Sampson wasn’t designed for quick maneuvers. But it was just barely enough to allow another cylinder to go screaming past them and land harmlessly in the water.

“Miss!” Sinclair called out.

The running narrative was beginning to annoy the crap out of Stone. “Save the play-by-play. Are we targeting this thing or not? Sling some MK 41s their way!”

His executive officer, Lieutenant Commander Leong, looked up from her instruments. “Sir, comm’s down again,” said the XO. “That thing that hit us… it scrambled everything that we had just gotten back online. Computers are down, radar’s down. All we’ve got are the close-in weapon systems.”

“All this hardware and we’re down to throwing rocks?” said Stone. He grit his teeth, seeing that the John Paul Jones was still under assault. “We’ve got to get in there. They need cover.”

“Five-inch was knocked off-line, but now is moments away,” said the XO.

“We’re not waiting,” said Stone. “Rudder hard right, engines full. We’ve got to get in there and give them some shade. Don’t tell me the gun’s not up.” Through his binoculars, he stared at the launcher on the opposing ship that had been firing those strange white cylinders at them. It had paused in its assault. They were probably reloading. He had no intention of sitting around waiting for them to finish the process. “Take that launcher out.”

With that order, the Sampson reversed course and hurtled forward, straight into the teeth of the enemy.

PACIFIC OCEAN, IMPACT POINT

In the crippled RHIB, Hopper watched with growing horror as he saw the Sampson angling straight toward the stinger.

“Screw this helpless crap,” he said, suddenly full of resolve. He shouted to Raikes as he pointed, “Where we saw that… that creature standing before! Shoot there! Maybe it’s their bridge or whatever!”

Raikes needed no further urging. She swung the .50 cal around and opened fire.

At first the bullets didn’t penetrate. Instead Hopper saw lights flashing in response to where the bullets would have been impacting. There was some sort of field there, invisible, impenetrable. Well, sure, because they’re freaking aliens, so naturally they have invisible shields and crap like that.

And then, all of a sudden, areas of the shield weren’t flaring back into invisibility as they had been before. Instead patches seemed to be hanging there randomly, black pieces of light as opposed to the other, unseen sections of the field. Spiderweb cracks spread through them, and Hopper immediately realized that—unlike the movies—the alien force fields weren’t limitless in their resistance. They might be pure energy, but they were no more invulnerable than “bulletproof” glass. Give it enough of a pounding, and it would eventually shatter and break.

“Pour it on, Raikes!”

He moved behind the .50, helping Raikes to pinpoint her assault, which she did with malicious glee. As that happened, though, something moving on the forward section of the stinger grabbed Hopper’s attention. He recognized it as the launch array that had fired off whatever the hell those weapons were that had impacted on the destroyers. It was rotating. Worse, it was rotating in their direction.

“We’ve got to move,” he said nervously.

“Want me to get out and push?” Raikes offered.

The engine abruptly roared to life. They looked around in delighted surprise. Beast was crouched over the engine, holding two wires that he had twisted together. He hurriedly wrapped them in electrical tape to keep the connection solid.

Hopper leaped over to the helm. He brought the RHIB around, but the cylinder launcher was swiveling to acquire him. There was no way he was going to be able to get enough distance between himself and the stinger before it unloaded its lethal charge upon him.

Then he heard the distant sound of a 5-inch gun being deployed. Seconds later, the ordnance from the Sampson, fired with pinpoint accuracy, obliterated the launcher before it could fire at Hopper and the RHIB.

Hopper exhaled in relief, but that breath caught in his throat as the stinger, with the faint sound of something within it powering up, launched itself once more, much farther than it had before. It sailed through the air and landed no more than a hundred feet aft of the Sampson, practically right on top of them.

Oh God, thought Hopper.

USS SAMPSON

Oh God, thought Stone, realizing that he was seeing technology that simply did not exist anywhere on Earth, not that he knew of. It’s true. We’re in the middle of an alien invasion.

A young helmsman stumbled back from his post, eyes wide with terror. On some level, Stone couldn’t blame him. These were the best and the brightest that the Navy had to offer, and they believed themselves to have been trained to handle anything that was thrown at them. But how the hell do you handle something that is completely