Battleship

“This thing can go faster!” Hopper bellowed. “What are you dragging your heels for, for the love of Christ! They killed my brother and every sailor on his ship! Are you on their side or—?”

A hand clamped on his shoulder like a vise of iron, sending pain jolting through him, commanding Hopper’s attention by its presence. He turned and looked up at Beast, confused, having to remind himself that the huge engineer was standing there, focusing on the sentence that Beast slowly repeated, stopping every few words to drive home the emphasis. “There are sailors. In the water. Sir.”

Finally the words sank into Hopper’s mind like a bucket of ice thrown in his face. There was the smell of smoke wafting in the air, blowing through the shattered windows of the bridge, and he saw Nagata’s ship, the once-proud Myoko, ablaze in the water. The explosions had turned the vessel into an inferno, and as the fire devoured it, men were indeed leaping into the ocean. Boats were being lowered where they could be, but it was all happening too quickly. Many of the men were simply jumping from the ship. They were wearing life jackets, but they wouldn’t last long out there. A few had managed to get their hands on life rafts and they were quickly inflating them in the water. The men who had been severely injured were being given first priority, shoved into the boats, while those who were in better shape were clinging to the sides.

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.