Arisen: Death of Empires Read online

  Sarah realized now that this was serious – and got busy shutting up and listening to instructions. Handon looked at Park now. “How are your injuries?”

  “Superficial. All wrapped up. I’m good to go.”

  Handon nodded. Good man, he thought. Park had come a long way since his rescue from that bunker in Chicago. He turned back to Sarah. “Look for the rest of Alpha – they’ll have a CRRC, a combat rubber raiding craft. If you can’t find them, then get Park on a lifeboat or ship’s launch – and get physical if you have to.”

  “Where will you be?” Sarah asked.

  “I’ll come find you.”

  Professor Nigel Close, the bioscientist and Oxford professor who had been flown aboard – and then nearly shot and blown up for his trouble – squirmed and said: “This really isn’t a very safe place to be, is it?”

  Where is these days? Handon mused, but kept it to himself. He glanced from the older scientist to Dr. Park, and then back again. Park had toughened up. Maybe this man would, too.

  “It’s going to get worse before it gets better,” Handon said, grabbing a box of disposable gloves from the counter and tossing them at Close, who had just removed his. Close raised his eyebrows, not understanding. “The hospital’s about to get busy,” Handon said.

  And with that, and nothing more, he exited again.

  * * *

  Abrams snatched at the blinking handset in front of him – thinking it was good that it blinked instead of rang, since he couldn’t hear a goddamned thing on the bridge now. Every man and woman there was going 100 miles an hour, trying to ride herd on the chaos that threatened to engulf the ship.

  “Go for Bridge!” he shouted into the phone.

  “Bridge, this is DCS Actual!” The voice on the other end was also half-shouting in his ear – but was very welcome, and Abrams almost sighed with relief.

  The Damage Control Officer (DCO) was exactly the man he wanted to hear from. He would be buried in his Damage Control Station (DCS), assisted by a stability control officer, a casualty board operator, and damage analyst – as well as representatives from the nuclear reactor section, electrical, and ordnance. All of them would be fully tasked now – if not task-saturated – sending out teams and coordinating the damage-control effort, as well as serving as a central point of information collection and dissemination.

  It was almost never the initial attack that sank a warship – but always the follow-on fires, explosions, and flooding. So damage control was perhaps the most serious business in naval surface warfare. Arguably, the only people doing anything more important right now were in CIC, trying to keep them from getting hit again.

  But that was Drake’s problem.

  Abrams punched the call onto speaker, but the noise was still overwhelming, so he also pressed the handset to his ear and plugged the other with a finger. “DCS, Bridge, go!”

  “Be advised – we have dodged two gigantic bullets here. First was the top-attack missile.”

  Abrams gritted his teeth. He knew one of the Shipwrecks had effectively been a top-attack weapon, because it had been the designating missile, flying up above and guiding the networked swarm. That job done, it had slammed nearly straight down into the deck of the Kennedy, in a beautiful, horrible suicide dive.

  “We have no idea why, but the weapon impacted EXACTLY on the damaged site where Ammo City went up back in the battle. Anything flammable in the frames underneath was blown up days ago. And nothing’s been moved in since – everything’s been moved out, in fact, and roped off. It’s just tangled steel and empty compartments.”

  Abrams nodded. “So what the hell’s burning?” From where he stood, he could see out and down onto the inferno on the foredeck – though, even as he said it, he could also see the firefighters starting to organize their efforts to defeat it. But, for the moment, the fire seemed to be winning, and burning hot as hell.

  “It was a thermobaric warhead – a fuel-air bomb. But we believe that, for some reason, the mixture partially deflagrated, rather than conflagrating. So it could have been a hell of a lot worse – should have been.”

  “Casualties?” Abrams continued to peer down into the flaming disaster scene below. If that was a dodged bullet, he didn’t want to see one that hit.

  “We know we’ve got a number of serious burn cases, including some with seared or collapsed lungs – breathing ignited fuel will do that to you. No exact numbers yet on WIAs versus KIAs. But we’re well into double figures.”

  Abrams exhaled. So that was the one impact point he could see. It was the one he couldn’t that terrified him. “And the second missile?”

  “A dud.”

  “What?”

  “It impacted two meters above the waterline, in 03 Deck at frame 172. If it had exploded, we’d all be headed for the bottom right now. But it’s just sitting there, inert, having penetrated nearly ten meters, pushing crap ahead of it. EOD techs are making the warhead safe now.”

  “Copy that.” Jesus, Abrams thought. “Casualties there?”

  “None reported yet. But somebody would have really had to piss off God to be walking down that exact stretch of companionway at that exact moment, and get physically crushed by the thing.”

  “What else?”

  “Nothing at this time. Updates when and as.”

  “Bridge copies all. Out.”

  Abrams now turned to the room – where a few others had stuck their heads up at the speakers and managed to make out the gist of that report. And he just traded Holy fucking shit looks with everyone.

  He was amazed any of them were still breathing air right now, rather than water.

  Or fire.

  * * *

  Drake didn’t slow as he hit CIC, fast-marching straight toward Lieutenant Campbell, who was holding court in the middle of the big, dark, high-tech space.

  She had on an officer’s service khaki uniform – tan button-up shirt and trousers – which didn’t do a lot to reveal her average, or possibly athletic, build. Drake knew she had straight black hair, but it was tucked up under her tan-and-black cover with anchor insignia. She looked, now that Drake came to notice it, like Demi Moore in A Few Good Men. Except scarier.

  Plus wearing a very big gun on her belt.

  She also had fine lines around her eyes, which indicated long and hard experience, approaching middle age, or low body fat, Drake had no idea which. She was 32, or maybe 42. He didn’t know that either. All he knew was he wouldn’t take her on. And definitely not in her own cave.

  Because of the permanently dim light, Drake smashed his shin into the corner of a console as he entered – and had to clench his teeth not to howl in pain.

  As he crossed the room, he shook his head to try and clear it. Ever since that grenade had gone off ten feet from his face, in the assassination attempt on the scientists on the flight deck, his thoughts often seemed wrapped in gauze. He assumed this would pass. Now was absolutely no time for a slow-witted or degraded commander. He couldn’t let it impair his operational efficiency, his command, or particularly his judgment.

  I’m fine, he thought. Just gotta push through – like I’ve done a hundred times before.

  “Sitrep,” he said to the LT.

  “Our situation,” Campbell said, “is that we’re currently completely defenseless – sitting ducks. And goddamned lucky to still be floating.”

  Drake sighed. “Roger that, LT. What else?”

  “Enemy vessel still cruising south at top speed, we’re still heading north – and the flight deck still a no-go for air ops. But no new attacks – ballistic missiles or any other kind.”

  Drake drew another breath. Was his vision swimming? It must be the light in here. “And how the hell did we survive this first attack?”

  “Unbelievably dumb luck.”

  “Screwy guidance on the Shipwrecks?”

  “Don’t think so,” Campbell answered. “Our analysis says those missiles hit their targets – exactly.”

  “So the GPS satel
lites worked for once. Right when our enemies needed them.”

  “Yep. But DCS says one warhead, the thermobaric, didn’t go off completely. And the other didn’t go off at all.”

  “Jesus,” Drake said. “That’s a fucking miracle.”

  Campbell shrugged. Her sangfroid was amazing to behold. But that was why she got paid the big bucks – or why she ran CIC at any rate – total unflappability.

  She said, “Partial deflagration isn’t that uncommon with a fuel-air bomb. But that other one should have torn our guts out.”

  “Why didn’t it?” Drake asked.

  “My guess? The Russians have had two years of ZA just like the rest of us. And they presumably haven’t been running a lot of missile drills or live-fire tests. Nor maintaining their warheads to exacting standards. Never mind replacing them on schedule.”

  “So, basically, everything’s going to shit.”

  “Yeah. And, luckily for us, that included these particular warheads. But we can’t count on getting that lucky again.”

  Drake shook his head again. “How long until we’re out of range of those goddamned Shipwrecks?”

  Campbell looked up at the big board, and eyeballed it. “Not for another forty minutes.” Drake grimaced. “I don’t know what to tell you. It’s a long-range, over-the-horizon weapon, and we’re not yet that far over the horizon.” She stepped over to an ensign at a tactical station, and put her hand on his shoulder. “Get the commander an exact figure.”

  While they waited, she turned back to Drake and asked, “How soon until we can get air up?”

  “Unknown at this time. It’s down to damage control clearing the damned deck.”

  Campbell shook her head. Both of them knew full well that with the Kennedy still in range of the Admiral Nakhimov’s devastating anti-ship missiles, their air power was the only defense they had. Today, a kick-ass offense was pretty much the only defense.

  But Drake was still boggling that they had just sailed into such a potentially lethal situation – and that it had somehow washed over them so quickly, leaving them basically unscathed, or at any rate floating. It was madness.

  Compared to this, he thought dazedly, the world practically made sense fifteen minutes ago…

  * * *

  Handon wasn’t wrong about the hospital getting busy.

  Handon’s rarely wrong, Sarah thought.

  Thirty seconds after he left, the three of them in the lab heard the big swinging double doors of the hospital bang open. And behind them was a long and sprawling train of the wounded, and their carers. There was shouting and bleeding, scalded and steaming flesh, moaning and crying, stretcher-bearers and walking wounded.

  First they trickled in, then flooded, with Doc Walker at their head, directing the procession like a parade master in some superheated hell. The place went from being like an office on Memorial Day – somehow everyone had slipped out, without those in the lab noticing – to Grand Central Terminal (also in hell). And now the whole medical staff was back.

  But there weren’t enough of them.

  When Sarah stuck her head out into this maelstrom, Park and Close peeking around behind her, LCDR Walker, the imposing flight surgeon and CO of the hospital, spotted them instantly. She was working on a patient – not to mention directing work on a dozen others – but she found the bandwidth to shout over at them.

  “Don’t just stand there with a stupid look on your face – do something useful with a stupid look on your face!”

  Sarah and the two non-medical doctors in her charge gloved up. As they rushed into the fray, one of the other medics directed them: “Grab that stretcher! Clear that table! Okay, I need you two going around the room doing airway management – put heads to faces, feel for breath on your cheek, watch for rising and falling chests. While you’re there, see if you can stop any hemorrhaging – pressure!”

  The medic grabbed Close’s gloved hand, and pressed it down onto a thigh wound, which was pumping bright-red arterial blood onto the table, another gout with each beat of the young man’s strong heart. “Pressure! But mainly airway monitoring. Anyone stops breathing, you scream. Got it?”

  Sarah nodded vigorously. She knew the drill – police work required regular training in emergency life support. Not to mention the ability to function in a crisis.

  But as she looked around the nightmare tableau of the hospital, she realized she’d never been part of a mass casualty event on this scale – with the obvious exception of the fall itself, though on that occasion the casualties had all been chasing her. But her training kicked in and she got to work – including supervising Park and Close.

  As she checked an unconscious woman’s airway for obstructions, then put her into the recovery position, she paused to wonder if she should actually be getting the scientists closer to a lifeboat right now. Handon hadn’t been totally clear on the urgency of that operation.

  Which meant he wanted her to use her judgment.

  The wailing and gasping of the wounded crested and fell all around them.

  And the floor was already slick with blood.

  Pissed Off God

  The JFK - 03 Deck, Frame 172

  Wesley almost crashed straight into it, as he, Melvin, and Burns dashed around the corner into the adjacent companionway. All around them, the ship’s sirens blared, deafening them with a piercing wail that seemed to bore into their heads. It took Wesley a few seconds even to work out what he was looking at – and more than a little courage to refrain from running away again, right back in the opposite direction.

  Barely ten feet away from them was what looked like a huge section of fat metal pipe. The companionway was a good ten feet across, and equally high, but the object spanned and nearly filled the entire space. On both sides of it, the interior bulkheads had been completely torn away. Twisted metal, debris, insulation, and wiring spilled out of both sides, covering the deck for many feet in both directions. There was smoke, dust, debris, and the smell of burning.

  The object itself was roughly cylindrical and painted a dark gray, though much of the paint had been scraped or stripped away. It had a few visible panels in its steel surface, all secured with large screws. In one spot, it had big Cyrillic lettering, which read: П-700 Гранит – and then below that, Адмирал Нахимов. It also seemed to be lightly smoking, or perhaps steaming, as well as making vague mechanical noises.

  Most amazingly of all: there was no one else freaking there. Just Wesley and his two guys. Whatever madness this was… no one in any position of authority or expertise was yet dealing with it.

  A few seconds earlier, Wesley and his guys had been casually sitting in the Naval Security Forces (NSF) Ops Center, when the whole compartment, the whole ship itself, seemed to violently shake, throwing everyone from their chairs down onto the deck.

  This was followed by the blaring of a siren, and a series of shouted orders over the ship’s tannoy. As Wesley and his crew, having not a clue what was going on, flooded out of the room in search of answers, the only bit of the announcement he managed to catch was: General quarters.

  Now they’d found the cause of all this havoc – but it was hardly reassuring. It was a goddamned gigantic missile sticking straight through the middle of the goddamned ship.

  And not just anywhere in the ship, Wesley realized with a jolt of horror. Because, directly beside the hole on the right bulkhead, he could now recognize the entrance to… his own cabin. Moving as if in a dream, he pushed open the ravaged and bent hatch, having to put his back into it to get it to budge. He managed to lever it open enough to stick his head in. And, inside, there was another twenty feet of missile – right where his bunk used to be.

  And where he had been lying not thirty minutes ago.

  He took off his hat in a gesture of stunned humility. And he thought: I am officially the luckiest Englishman alive… or is that unluckiest?

  He and the other two began to cough now, and covered their mouths. Wesley wondered if the missile
was giving off fumes, or if it had burst something in the area. From the massive devastation it had left behind when passing through what must be half the ship, he wouldn’t be surprised to find some conduits or pipes split. Something was making it hard to breathe.

  Just as he opened his mouth to give instructions to Melvin and Burns – though he hadn’t yet worked out what he was going to tell them – three energized-looking sailors skidded around the corner, almost running into them. They wore some type of hazard suit or heavy jumpsuit, and carried hand-held radios.

  Instantly, the one in the lead keyed his radio and half-shouted, “DCS, Team Two! We’ve got it! We’re on 03 Deck, frame 172!”

  Even before the radio squawked back, “Roger that, EOD Team en route” the man was grabbing Wesley by the arm and pulling him away from the steaming missile.

  “Are you out of your freaking minds?! Clear the hell out!”

  Wesley nodded, then looked around him, as if trying to decide where to go.

  “What, are you deaf, too? Get your asses up on deck and help fight fires! Go, go, go!”

  That actually sounded relatively safe to Wesley – not to mention that he had prior experience manning those firehoses, having used them to sweep the invading undead army from the flight deck. So he motioned to the others, backed carefully away, and then tried to remember how to get up top from there.

  Without going anywhere near that missile again.

  Goodbye to a Dead World

  Somewhere Over France

  It had stood stock-still for nearly a year, in the middle of the road, barely swaying even when the wind was high. Rain, storms, snow, and hail – all these had visited the town over the last two years, buffeting the figure, freezing it, thawing and drenching it yet again. Still it remained motionless, staring across the street at the front of a shop that had collapsed just weeks before. It had barely stirred when the entire wooden framework of paneled glass came crashing down, finally succumbing to the onslaught of unchecked weather. Just one eye had turned at the tremendous noise of cracking wood and shattering glass, but the other remained where it was, hanging by a thin shred of gristle.