Battleship

Commander doesn’t have priorities and agendas of his own that are being pursued. Once this operation is completed, it might well be worth the Land Commander’s time to join forces with his hatchling mate, the Sea Commander, and see about having done with the World Commander once and for all. A seemingly unthinkable notion, but still… worth considering.

That is when the Land Commander hears an unexpected noise. It is a loud roaring; not living, but mechanical. His best guess is that it sounds like the sort of noise made by an engine propelling a primitive human vehicle, similar to those vehicles that they destroyed upon first making landfall. So it couldn’t be one of those…

Wait…

The Land Commander suddenly tries to recall. Did he wind up actually destroying all of those vehicles? Or did he leave one in working order because he got distracted with dismembering the humans, the first of the species he’d had a chance to inspect close up?

His answer arrives seconds later as one of the vehicles tears into view. The humans—two of them, sitting in the front—are shouting loudly, their words incoherent but their intentions clear.

The vehicle’s wheels churn up dirt beneath them as it heads full bore straight at them. Its speed and solid construction are proving to be a formidable combination as the Land Commander’s troops are knocked aside by the vehicle’s velocity. Before the Land Commander can intercede, before he can even target them, the creatures hurtle directly between two power cells, ripping cables loose. The power cells go dark. The vehicle continues on its path of destruction, heading directly for the main dish array.

If it had been constructed solely of solid Regents materials, it would be impervious. But thanks to the damned World Commander, it is a hodgepodge of Regents technology combined with more breakable Earth tech. That proves the sort of devastating problem that the Land Commander had anticipated, but had been unable to convince the World Commander to take precautions for.

One of his warriors comes running out of nowhere, his helmet off, clearly having been in the midst of a salt stick break and not having had time to reattach it. He attempts to get in between, and then the vehicle crashes directly into him, pinning the soldier to the base of the makeshift tower. The impact crumbles the front end of the vehicle, beams and debris tumbling down upon it.

The Regents-provided components of the antennae, deprived of power from the cells, begin to wilt. They slump forward and are now angled toward the ground, rather than the sky for which they are designed.

The Land Commander cries out a trill of alarm. He ignores the humans in the vehicle—they will be dealt with soon enough. Instead he struggles to repair the ripped cables. If he does not…

…the alternative is simply too horrible to contemplate.

U.S.S. MISSOURI

“Permission to panic, sir,” said Ord as the gigantic flagship loomed before them. Under the circumstances, for Ord, that was a fairly restrained response. It was likely that he was trying to do the same thing Hopper was at that moment: fight down an overwhelming sense of despair.

“Denied.”

“Permission to ignore denial, sir.”

“Shut up, Ord. Stay focused.”

“With all respect, sir, I am focused, because there’s really nothing else to look at. Sir, we’ve got to turn around!”

“No time,” said Hopper curtly. “We have to get to the Ridge.”

Technically Nagata was the senior officer. He would have been within his rights to assume command of the situation, although considering it was a U.S. ship, it might have been debatable. As it was, the subject didn’t even present itself. Nagata simply turned to Hopper and said, “What are we going to do?”

“Their launchers are going hot!” Raikes informed him from the firing controls.

Sure enough, two massive launchers had clicked into position upon the alien flagship. Hopper could discern from the shape of them that they were packed to the gills with those same white cylinders that had both sank Nagata’s ship and utterly destroyed Stone’s.

The voices of his people were coming at Hopper fast and furious over the 1MC, so quickly that who was actually speaking seemed to blur together. “How do we respond, sir?” “We’re a sitting duck here, sir!” “We’re gonna be swimming in a minute!” “Sir!” “Hopper!”

Hopper felt as if he were outside his own body, watching the rest of the world telescope away until he was alone, isolated, focused. Time slowed down and the entirety of all his experiences—everything he’d learned, everything he’d read—was laid out right there in front of him like a pure white corridor of understanding, waiting for him to pluck out some strategy that would save them all, something that the aliens couldn’t possibly see coming, because they were rigid and binary in their way of thinking, while the human understanding of war was…

“Holy shit,” he whispered, and then practically shouted, “The Art of freakin’ War!”

“What?” Nagata was clearly bewildered. “What are you talking about?”

Hopper ignored the question. “Battle stations, people!”

As the klaxon sounded throughout the battleship, Ord turned to Nagata. “Did he say, ‘The Art of War’?”

“Hai. That scares me.”

“Why?”

“Because he doesn’t understand a word of it.”

* * *

Hopper, his eyes wild with the fire of inner vision, continued on his seemingly hopeless quest to get to Saddle Ridge, shouting orders as quickly as he could. “Beast, all engines ahead full! Ord, come to course one-two- zero.”

“That’s right at it, sir!” said Ord, suddenly recalling the berserk Hopper sending the John Paul Jones on a collision course with the stinger. “We’re engaging head-on?”

“We ain’t buying it flowers, Ord. Fire control, weapons status?”

Raikes’s voice filtered through. “All turrets up and ready to send some hell downrange, sir.”

“Hold your fire. We don’t have enough ammo. We can’t afford to waste a single shot.” Hopper paused a moment, considering, and then said, “Bring all three turrets to two-three-zero degrees.”

Raikes sounded puzzled. “The target’s at one-two-zero.”

“I know.”

“But sir,” she pressed, “that’s the wrong direction…”

“That’s an order, Raikes.”

On the deck below, the crewmen watched in complete shock as the primary offensive weapons of the ships —the three turret towers with the 16-inch guns—rotated to face away from the enemy. The flagship was looming like a vengeful steel god, and the Missouri was speeding toward it with its three 16-inch turrets pointed 180 degrees in the wrong direction. It was as if they were inviting the enemy to take a free shot. There were confused cries from the old salts:

“He’s gonna get us killed!”

“Has he lost his mind!”

Only Andy appeared sanguine. “Shut up, the lot of ya. We lived this long and every damned day’s a gift. Men like us ain’t born to die in our beds. ’Sides, I like the cut of that young man’s jib,” and he indicated Hopper, visible through the windows of the flight bridge. “He’s got a trick or two up his sleeve.”

“Hope you’re right,” said Grumby.

“’Course I’m right. My lips are movin’, ain’t they?”