Battleship

vessels that can come out of nowhere and annihilate us with weapons the like of which we’ve never seen before? Yeah, well… it’s not as if I’m not outside my own comfort zone right now…

Nagata was completely focused on the monitors in front of him, calibrating the speed and course of the stinger. “I thought they couldn’t see us,” Raikes said.

“It’s entirely possible they can’t,” said Hopper, hoping he was right. “They could just be heading in this direction by coincidence, and they’d stumble over us purely by accident.”

“Would that be any better than if they were heading toward us by design?”

“Not really, no.”

Raikes stared at him. “Great.”

Hopper couldn’t bring himself to come down on Raikes. He knew that she was wound up. Her trigger finger was visibly twitching, indicative of the mounting tension she was feeling from having a potential target and not being allowed to shoot at it yet. That tension was reflected in the faces of everyone else in the CIC.

“Hold it together, Raikes,” Hopper said sharply. “All of you.”

Raikes nodded in acknowledgment, but she was clearly not winding down anytime soon. The bottom line was that Hopper had every confidence that—when the moment arrived—Raikes would be all business and hyper- efficient. It was the waiting that could get to her. That could get to all of them.

“Can we hit this thing, please?” Raikes said to Nagata.

Nagata was the only one on the CIC who seemed immune to any sort of pressure. The man must have ice water in his veins. “We need to be sure of its speed,” said Nagata calmly. “Are we ready to fire missiles?”

“Raikes, do we have some Harpoons for the captain?” said Hopper.

Raikes smiled. Discussion of an impending opportunity to shoot at something always brightened her day. “Yes, sir, I’ve got some beauties.”

“Very well. Prepare to target; everyone in position.” Nagata checked the screen, although Hopper suspected it was purely pro forma. He probably had the image and position embedded in his mind. The stinger was definitely getting closer. Whether that meant that their own danger level was being ratcheted upward or that the aliens were presenting themselves as a better target pretty much stemmed from one’s worldview.

“Target ECHO 11,” said Nagata.

Raikes immediately threw herself into her work, entering the coordinates into the computer that controlled the ship’s store of RGM-84 Harpoon anti-ship missiles. It took her only seconds and then she announced, “Coordinates loaded, target impact twenty-one seconds. On your clock, Captain.” She paused and then added in a tone of forced casualness, “By the way, you know it’s not going to matter if they’re heading in this direction by accident or not. When we fire, they’ll know where we’re at.”

Hopper had known that. Still, Raikes saying it aloud brought it to stark reality. All eyes were upon him, including Nagata’s. It was his call. There was always the option that they could just sit tight, hope that the stinger cruised past them without being aware of their presence…

Then, in his mind’s eye, he saw the look on Stone’s face right before he was blown to hell. It was impossible to know which ship was the one coming near them, but it could well be that the same bastards that had murdered his brother were now within striking distance.

“Hit that son of a bitch,” said Hopper.

Raikes grinned wolfishly, although her voice was all business. “Roger that.”

From the foredeck missile battery, a huge plume of flame erupted from the missile tube. Raikes’s perfectly targeted Harpoon launched from the ship, arcing into the darkness in a blaze of light. A second followed a heartbeat later. Everyone in the CIC looked at the grid on the board, waiting to see the likelihood of their surviving the night.

On the port observation deck, Ord watched through binoculars with mounting concern as the John Paul Jones’s two missiles tore across the sky. He hadn’t had to hear Raikes’s comment down in the CIC; he knew perfectly well they were going all-in based upon readings from a series of buoys. “Like this will ever work,” he said under his breath. “Why don’t we just close our eyes and throw the missiles at them?”

He kept his eyes open, though, and watched carefully, counting down, listening to the roar of the missiles as they hurtled into the distance, a tiny light receding further and further.

Then he heard it.

A distant, hollow splash, followed by a second.

Oh, crap.

Hopper’s voice crackled over the walkie-talkie. “Ord, anything?”

Keep it together. Keep it together. Be all business.

“Negative. It’s a miss.”

Then he saw the last thing he wanted to see under the circumstances: lights, glaring pale green in the distance, coming toward them. “Contact bearing 340. They’re following us…” Suddenly plumes of flame erupted in the night. “I think we’ve got a launch. Yeah… we’ve got incoming.”

We’re dead. We are so dead. D-E-A-D. God, Raikes is so hot. Dead dead dead.

“Twenty degrees hard starboard! All hands, brace for impact!” said Hopper.

As if they weren’t under attack, Nagata was focused on the board, studying the buoy transmissions. But none of that would matter if the enemy missiles struck home. Their only prayer now was that it really had all been happenstance that the stinger was heading in their direction. That the aliens didn’t really have any clue as to the location of the John Paul Jones. That they were likewise firing blind, and that their luck would be as poor as Nagata’s.

Might be seeing you again sooner than either of us would’ve liked, Stone…

They heard the whistle of the incoming missiles. Hopper closed his eyes, braced himself. Everyone else in the CIC did the same, save for Nagata, whose calm gaze never left the monitor.

Then the ship rocked violently, but there hadn’t been any impact. It was being caused by geysers of water blasting upward from the starboard side. Hopper’s eyes snapped open wide, astonished. Crackling over the walkie- talkie came Ord’s ecstatic voice: “That’s a miss! I love when they miss!” Then his tone changed back to its typical sense of impending doom. “Sir, they’re, uh… they’re getting closer. Close enough that we should, uh… are we planning on firing something, sir?”

Nagata studied the grid, thinking, seemingly impervious to the prospect of impending doom. “FOXTROT 24,” he said at last.

Raikes dialed up the coordinates. “FOXTROT 24,” she confirmed.

“Fire,” said Nagata.

Two more Harpoons exploded from their tubes. Raikes quickly loaded two more in anticipation of having to use them.

Seconds passed, and Hopper was certain that during that time not a single person exhaled.

Suddenly there was the distant sound of explosion, and if they had been up on deck, they would have seen an abrupt and brilliant burst of light upon the horizon. Ord’s voice came screaming over the walkie-talkie, “Holy shit! Hit! Big hit!” But the celebration was short-lived as, seconds later, Ord shouted, “Sir, they’re coming from both directions!!”

“All engines, full stop! Countermeasures!” Hopper immediately ordered.

Instantly the CWIS was employed, and again it was a waiting game to see if the anti-missile system did what it was supposed to do.

It did, but, again, only partly.

The ship rocked, and this time there was no mistaking it was as a result of impact. But Hopper knew immediately that they had averted catastrophe. The CWIS had managed to intercept at least some of the missiles, but apparently not all. They had sustained some damage; now it was a matter of determining just how much. He grabbed the 1MC—the shipboard public address system—and called out, “Damage report!”