Battleship

circled it, feinting, punching, trying to get into or at least near the part of the faceplate that would give him access to the creature’s face. The armor could certainly withstand anything that he landed, but if he could get at the exposed area, he had confidence that his right jab would be able to do some serious damage. Maybe even take the bastard down.

The alien watched him carefully and, whenever Hopper tried to land a blow, the alien brushed aside his attempts, as if Hopper were a first grader challenging a high school senior. But that didn’t deter Hopper as he dodged and weaved, staying just out of reach of the alien’s return punches. “Yeah! Yeah, not so easy? Not so easy one-on-one! Not like when you’re using your popguns to kill my brother,” Hopper’s voice was going up in pitch, his building anger beginning to blind him, make him faster, make him sloppy. “All you had to do was talk to us, man! We would’ve welcomed you! We were thrilled to see you! But no, you had to be a bunch of murdering alien douche bags—!”

An armored fist suddenly struck him square in the chest, knocking the breath out of him. He swung wildly, missed, and before he could recover, the alien punched him in the face, knocking him backwards and nearly tearing his head off.

Nagata had apparently recovered enough to shout, “Get the hell out of there!”

Hopper, dazed, reached back for the deck rail, swung a leg over. The alien stopped where it was, cocking its head, clearly puzzled by the move. It probably thought that Hopper was willing to commit suicide rather than continue what was clearly a hopeless fight.

Slowly Hopper raised the walkie-talkie to his face. He could feel his lip starting to swell, which irritated the hell out of him since it had only just recovered from getting punched by Nagata. “I sure hope you’re there, Raikes,” he muttered.

Raikes’s voice came over the speaker, “Always am, sir. Fast as she goes, on manual.”

The alien slowly advanced on Hopper, who continued to lean against the rail. Below him the ocean was surging against the ship. In the distance the sun was drifting down toward the horizon line. It was probably going to be the longest night that anyone on the John Paul Jones had suffered through. He wondered briefly if he would be alive to take part in it.

With a slow, steady tread, as if waiting for some last-second offensive move, the alien came toward him, ready for anything.

The human flips over the railing and is gone.

He is startled. It seems that the human has gone to a good deal of work, displayed a sizable amount of bravado, only to throw itself to certain doom.

Perhaps it is some sort of human ritual for a person of rank to commit suicide in front of its enemy, thus acknowledging that it is supremely overmatched. There is still much to be learned about human culture before it is wiped out. Every little bit helps.

Or… is it possible that humans are capable of surviving in water? Perhaps some of the higher- ranking ones are partly aquatic? It is certainly something that needs to be discerned.

He walks over to the rail to make sure. He bends over it and looks down.

There, in the murk, is the human. It is not in the water. Instead it is hanging about forty feet above the water, clutching on to some sort of metal projection from the ship’s hull.

No point in leaving it dangling there.

He brings his second phase blaster online, but just as it snaps out into position and starts to power up, he hears something behind him clicking into place.

He turns.

Not fast enough.

* * *

Raikes, in the CIC, watched in satisfaction as she lined up the crosshairs of the bow deck’s 5-inch gun squarely on the back of the alien’s head. Since the dumb-ass monster had been generous enough to stand still so she could draw a bead on it, she felt that thanking it for doing so would be only polite, even though it couldn’t hear her.

“Mahalo, motherfucker.”

She fired.

The alien was just starting to turn in the direction of the gun when the projectile punched through its head, in through the already cracked faceplate and out through the back. The now headless alien actually continued to stand there for a moment, its arms out to either side. Then it slumped backward and tumbled over the railing.

“Just in the Nearly Headless Nick of time,” said Raikes, whose deepest, darkest secret was that she was a fan of Harry Potter.

Nagata had lowered a rope down to Hopper and now he was climbing it hand by hand, back up to the bow deck. He made it all the way up to the railing, but then almost lost his hold on the rope. Nagata reached over and gripped him by the wrist, hauling him to the deck with an impressive display of strength. Hopper had a huge bruise on the side of his head where the alien had struck him. “You all right?” asked Nagata.

Hopper managed a nod and then looked at Nagata levelly. “Thank you,” he said.

Nagata shrugged as if it were no big deal.

Suddenly bright light illuminated them both. Oh God, what now? Hopper looked up and saw that another of those weird alien airships had risen up and was now shining light upon him. Or maybe it was the same one as before; there was no way for him to genuinely be sure.

It’s going to blow us to hell and gone. After all that.

The ship instead did nothing. It just hung there, seeming to…

“It’s studying us,” Nagata said softly. “And I don’t think it’s done yet.”

As if it had heard him, the ship pivoted in midair, and then hurtled away through the skies, heading toward the setting sun.

Darkness fell upon the John Paul Jones.

SADDLE RIDGE

It had taken long minutes for the three of them to get the Jeep that was on its side down onto all four wheels. Sam, Mick, and Cal had to rock it back and forth repeatedly until they finally succeeded in tipping it over. Unfortunately it had fallen straight toward Sam, and she had nearly wound up getting herself pinned under it. Luckily she had thrown herself backwards and the Jeep thudded to the ground, bouncing a few times before settling down. Sam had then clambered into the driver’s seat, Mick riding shotgun—literally—and Cal crouched in the backseat, looking around nervously as if sure that something was going to leap out at him any minute.

Sam was driving as carefully as possible, given that it was night, the road was uncertain, and she was worried that attackers might be hiding anywhere in the darkness around them. And the nature of the potential attackers? Unwilling to accept what her common sense was telling her—because it just seemed too nonsensical to be “common” sense—or what Cal had just “explained,” Sam asked softly, “Are they Chinese? Hopper always said if we go to war, it’s going to be with the Chinese.”

Cal Zapata stared at her as if she had lost her mind. “They’re not Chinese.”

“What are they?” she screamed. When both Cal and Mick lunged toward her frantically, desperate to get her to shut up, not to mention that in her franticness she could crash the Jeep, she put up one hand to indicate that she had regained her composure. Very quietly, she repeated, “What are they?”

Sounding both portentous and pretentious, Cal said, “I think it’s safe to say we have successfully made contact with a life form from another world.”

“Yeah. Some success.” Mick looked at him with disdain. “I hope you guys threw yourselves a big end-of-the- world party.”

The Jeep jostled Sam as she fought to compose herself. Dad would have no patience with me freaking out. He’d be disappointed in me. He’d tell me to assess the situation, keep a cool head, try to understand