Battleship

of them were muttering about how ridiculous this whole venture was, but invariably they’d wind up saying it within range of one of the old salts, whose collective hearing was apparently still pretty sharp. As a consequence the reluctant sailors would be on the receiving end of a sound thwap to the head and a growled, “Show some respect, sonny,” from whichever of the elderly sailors happened to be within earshot.

Everything that smacked of either tourism or the ship being a museum piece was quickly scuttled or tossed overboard. Down came the large banner that read, “USS Mighty Mo Museum,” accompanied by a loud ripping noise that garnered some cheering from the old sailors. Hopper spotted, with amusement, one old sailor sweeping his arm across a shelf full of merchandise, knocking it all to the deck and then kicking it off the edge of the ship. A particularly joyous moment was when Beast, Ord and several of the old salts combined their efforts to heft a six-hundred-pound “Mold-a-Rama” wax machine, a particularly cheesy device that— for a buck—would produce a small wax replica of the Missouri while you waited. Kids loved it, and the old salts hated it particularly with a passion. For some reason it struck them as the ultimate trivialization of a once proud fighting vessel. Andy seemed especially enthusiastic about lending a shoulder to the endeavor. Slowly they hoisted it up over the deck. They grunted and shoved and for a few moments it seemed as if the machine was going to win the battle and thud back onto the ship. But then the momentum shifted to them and seconds later the wax machine tumbled down, crashed into the dock and shattered.

“Wax on, wax off!” shouted Beast as the old salts and he high-fived one another.

Andy started chanting, “Way to go, Mighty Mo! Way to go, Mighty Mo!” The rhythmic cheer caught on and soon all the elderly sailors were saying it, too.

Beast turned to Ord, chucked a thumb at Andy, and said, “Check it out. The rhyme of the Ancient Mariners!”

Ord stared at him. “The what now?”

Beast closed his eyes in annoyance. “Just get your ass up to the control room, okay?”

“Fine. Uh…” He glanced around. “Never actually been on a battleship, much less one this old. Where—?”

Overhearing the exchange, Andy called, “Segar! Bring the young man up to the control center!”

“Right this way, young feller.”

Ord turned and saw what appeared to him to be the oldest man on the planet. Segar’s eyes were set in what seemed a permanent squint, and his face was all jowl and bristle, with his head thrust forward defiantly on a thin neck. He was wearing white ducks and a short-sleeved blue shirt that had the Missouri’s name emblazoned above the right breast. His forearms were incredibly well muscled, given his age.

“You’re a sailor?” said an astounded Ord.

“D’ja think I’m a cowboy?” said Segar. He gestured for Ord to follow him and then moved with surprising speed. He didn’t walk so much as he waddled with long strides. Ord hustled after him.

Segar brought him straightaway to the control room, which was blocked off by cordons meant to keep tourists out. Without hesitation Ord picked up the wooden barriers and chucked them aside. Then he entered the room, Segar right behind him, and stopped dead in his tracks.

Where there ordinarily would have been a computer array, Ord was faced with what seemed to be ten thousand analog dials.

He stared at them, not knowing where to begin. Then he said hopefully, “Is there, like, a mouse or something?”

“Nope,” said Segar, shaking his head. “Used to be, but we got cats on board, so that ain’t a problem. Which is good ’cause sometimes the little buggers could get up inside there and start buildin’ nests. Screws up all the readings.”

Ord stared at him. “Riiiiight.”

Meanwhile another old salt, named Grumby—rotund and with a hearty laugh—had accompanied Beast down to the engine room. Beast stopped in awe, having much the same reaction as Ord had up in command. Massive boilers loomed over him like iron sentinels. He didn’t even know where to start, and looked to Grumby in bewilderment.

The old man laughed. “Step aside, son.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a book of matches. He lit one and then held it up in Beast’s face as if he were about to perform a magic trick. Then he tossed it to one side. It sailed through the air like a tiny shooting star and landed inside one of the boiler’s pilot burners. “Here there be dragons,” he said solemnly.

An instant later Beast understood what he meant as, with a massive roar of flame—as if indeed belched up from the mouth of one of those mythic reptiles—the oil that was deep within the bowels of the boiler ignited. “Best hold your ears,” Grumby advised him. Beast clapped his hands over his ears, although he noticed that Grumby was not doing likewise. Instead the old man was manipulating a complex array of dials, firing up the engine, which gave off a hellacious roar that was quite simply the loudest thing Beast had ever heard. Yet Grumby wasn’t flinching from the racket, which led Beast to conclude that years spent down in this cacophony had probably made the old man partly, if not mostly, deaf.

Grumby shouted over the noise, “Like a kitten!”

And Beast thought, Right, purring like a kitten. A thousand-pound kitten.

Hopper arrived at the helm, Nagata right behind him. A sailor named Driscoll was there waiting for them. Driscoll had narrow, canny eyes beneath bushy white eyebrows, and carried with him an air of adventure, as if he were a sailor on a quest to hunt down some great, legendary monster.

There was a sense of majesty in the room. Heroes in a great war had tread here, and—in a sense of ironic turnaround—had done so in battling the very people from whom the man at Hopper’s side had descended. Funny how enemies can become friends, Hopper thought, and wondered briefly if that meant someday the aliens now trying to annihilate them would eventually be allies.

Then he remembered the explosive death of his brother and hoped he wouldn’t be alive to see it. He didn’t want to live in a world where he had to be best pals with the monsters that had killed Stone. If that made him some sort of racist, if that was shortsighted of him… fine. He was really okay with that.

“How we looking on fuel?” he asked Driscoll.

“Six hundred tons, sir. Just enough for maintenance runs.”

“Ordnance?”

“Scraped what we could from storage. It ain’t much.”

He nodded and then said, “Cast us off, sailor. Set course for Saddle Ridge.”

Driscoll ran off to carry out the orders. As the combined crew of young men and old salts made final preparations for the ship to depart, Hopper—as he walked around the helm, running his fingertips along it with reverence—said, “You got kids, Nagata?”

“Children, yes. Three. I have three girls.”

“Three girls.” Hopper whistled softly.

“I am hoping to try for a boy, but my wife… she only makes girls.” There was something in his voice that sounded like a trace of humor, although with him, it wasn’t easy to be sure.

“Girls aren’t so bad.”

“They are my angels,” he said softly. “Do you have children, Mr. Hopper?”

It seemed to Hopper that the time for formality was long gone. “Alex. Please… call me Alex.”

“Children?”

“Not yet. But I’m going to. And I’ll tell you something, Captain Nagata.”

“Tell me what?”

“I can’t wait to put my arms around that little guy and give him the biggest hug that he’s ever gonna have in his life. Don’t think I’ll ever let go.” He sighed, his expression changing, and then patted the bulkhead. “Let’s just see how mighty she is.”

Minutes later, everyone on the ship was at their stations aboard the vessel that had the unenviable task of being the last, best hope of the human race. Hopper, standing up on the flying bridge, picked up the PA and clicked it on.

“I’m not good with words,” he said, his voice echoing throughout the entirety of the ship. “So let me just give you a fact. World War II ended on this ship. The Japanese Instrument of Surrender was signed on the very deck you