The endless vessel, p.39
The Endless Vessel, page 39
Admiral Greene ordered all ships to take evasive maneuvers. The fleet split apart, all vessels diverting from their previous paths to ensure a single attack couldn’t take them all out at once. The strike group already had planes in the air, the standard combat air patrol sent up whenever the carrier went to alert status. More were scrambled and launched—F/A-18 Hornets and F-35 Lightnings, with rescue helicopters and secondary crews on standby.
It was an impressive display. But running through the mind of every sailor, soldier, and pilot who had seen or heard about the contact they were tracking—getting closer by the second—was the realization that there wasn’t a lot they could do. The enemy object was headed toward them at ten times the speed of the fastest man-made undersea object they’d ever heard of.
The Americans radioed warnings to the approaching object, indicating that they would attack if it did not change its course. These went unanswered.
The lack of response meant the strike group could now not be faulted for trying to destroy the thing, and so they did, sending out torpedoes and firing missiles and deploying countermeasures. The object zipped past all of that without much notice, other than an occasional swerve to avoid the worst of an explosion.
The unknown contact raced ahead until it was within five hundred meters of the Philippine Sea. Then it shot straight up from beneath the water, moving too fast for the eye to track.
The object stopped directly above the foredeck of the missile cruiser, hovering about ten meters up and five meters from the bridge, displaying itself for the entire fleet to see. The object was all white, pill-shaped, eight meters long. It stood on its end, floating in midair, and had clearly positioned itself to avoid attacks from the planes and helicopters buzzing around above it. Any shots from those aircraft against the pill would rain down destruction on the cruiser directly below it, as well as its personnel.
Sailors aboard the Philippine Sea attempted to destroy the object with small-arms fire, shooting at it from below with their pistols and rifles. These efforts had absolutely zero effect, and the order was quickly given to leave the thing alone lest it retaliate.
This order was given too late. With no warning, and no visible or audible signal from the pill, every system on the Philippine Sea died. Engines, navigation, radar and sonar, weapons, electrical, even the stoves in the galley—all at once, they ceased operations. The huge, multibillion-dollar, hyper-advanced vessel was now basically a rowboat.
This was troubling to the strike group’s commanders for many reasons. First among them was a fact that was not advertised to the general public: the Philippine Sea carried a variety of nuclear weapons systems. Generally speaking, when you had atomic bombs on board, it wasn’t ideal when the lights went out.
Running a close second to that problem was the fact that Ticonderoga-class missile cruisers had highly redundant power systems. A system-wide power outage like that suffered by the Philippine Sea should have been impossible. Yet there it sat, dead in the water.
Over on the strike group’s command ship, the enormous Nimitz-class aircraft carrier George H. W. Bush, heated discussions were in progress with respect to the best way to respond to the pill’s attack. A call request came through to its signals officer, on a highly secure channel normally reserved for only the highest-level communication. The incoming caller asked to speak to the strike group commander. He identified himself as the captain “of the fucking ship you assholes just tried to blow out of the water for no goddamned reason.”
Rear Admiral Gloria Greene issued an order for all personnel aboard the USS Philippine Sea to abandon ship. Then she took the call.
“This is Admiral Greene,” she said.
“And this is Captain Frank Tokyo,” said the enemy commander, who sounded ticked off indeed. “I wish I could say it’s a pleasure to meet a fellow sailor, Admiral, but the truth is I’m pretty damn displeased. Unprovoked, you just shot four Tomahawks at a civilian research vessel, a ship that I have the honor and privilege of keeping safe. You’re causing me a lot of trouble over here.”
Greene frowned. She knew that all four of her missiles had struck the intended target. She’d seen the telemetry herself. Nothing afloat that she knew of could survive four direct Tomahawk hits.
“What is the name of your vessel, Captain Tokyo? Where are you registered? Under what flag do you sail?”
Basic questions any legitimate captain of any legitimate ship would be able to answer immediately.
“We’re called the Leave Us, out of the Fuck Alone, under the beautiful flag of Or You’ll Regret It–land,” Tokyo said. “Or maybe you didn’t notice that one of your missile cruisers doesn’t work anymore. Thank goodness it’s a boat and not a plane, huh? At least it can still float.”
“You’ve just admitted to attacking and disabling a US Navy vessel, Captain Tokyo. That was a very bad idea. I advise you to deactivate whatever jamming system you’re using and return my cruiser to full operational status, or—”
“Or I’ll regret it? I literally just said that. To you,” Tokyo broke in. “I mean it, too. We are non-hostile, but we are very far from defenseless. You can go your way and we’ll go ours, and your fine bridge crew and all the sailors and officers under your command can live to see another sunset, with this all being chalked up as one of those weird things that happens out here. I guarantee you’ll never see us again.
“Or,” he went on, “you can push me, and you and your people will learn a hard lesson. I’ll give you the easy version right now, for free. Five words, easy to remember: Don’t fuck with Frank Tokyo.”
During the time this exchange had taken, the USS Philippine Sea had evacuated all three-hundred and sixty-four sailors and officers aboard. Once they were clear, one of the circling F-35s was given the order to fire at the bizarre pill-shaped aircraft still hovering above the disabled ship. The pilot did so.
The distance to the target was short, and the missile got there in almost no time at all. It hit the pill dead center, exploding in a blast of superheated air and fire. The pill was not destroyed, but it did take some damage. Its systems were slightly compromised, its reaction time slowed by a hair.
So when the missile’s impact ignited fuel and weapons stored in the bow half of the Philippine Sea, causing a massive secondary explosion, the pill could not evade that much larger blast. Its shell cracked, it came apart, it died.
Greene clenched her fist in triumph as the sound of the blast faded, and her techs confirmed that the enemy object had been destroyed.
She now knew that the other side’s weapons were not invulnerable. Sure, it took a lot to knock them down, but that was fine. She was in command of an entire carrier strike group (less one missile cruiser, of course). She had a lot of boom at her disposal.
“We are under attack,” she said, addressing her bridge officers. “I want the enemy vessel gone. Eradicated. All tactics and weapons systems authorized. Let’s make sure nothing’s left but an oil slick on the waves.”
And if that oil happens to glow in the dark, she thought, thinking of the nuclear arsenal at her disposal, so be it.
Admiral Greene laughed, joy in her heart.
ABOARD THE LAZARENE, LIEUTENANT CHEN XIAOLI GESTURED at the bridge’s threat display, where a number of bright red dots were projected against the east-facing windows.
“Fighters inbound, sir,” she said. “Their new F-35s and some F/A-18s.”
“Any of them nuclear-capable?” Captain Tokyo asked.
He’d parked himself back in his command chair at the center of the bridge. His mood had soured on losing the pill drone. It shouldn’t have happened.
Never thought she’d burn one of her own ships like that, he thought. Took out an entire missile cruiser just to kill one little drone.
That single action suggested to Frank Tokyo that the American commander was not making sound tactical decisions. It felt like a choice made out of frustration or anger, which meant he could (possibly) expect the same going forward. It meant irrationality and—much worse—unpredictability.
“We haven’t been keeping a close eye, captain, but there’s honestly no reason to think they aren’t. The Americans like to—”
“Stick a nuke on anything they can. Yes, Lieutenant, I know,” Tokyo said.
He had a decision to make. The Lazarene could shoot down these incoming planes and let this whole thing escalate, as it most certainly would. Escalation, in this case, could be deeply dangerous.
The bridge crew had been analyzing signals traffic from around the world. Team Joy Joy had claimed responsibility for the attacks on the internet and communications networks, and it was clear that they had partly accomplished that by infiltrating the world’s navies and shanghaiing a bunch of submarines. It wasn’t that much of a stretch to figure they could get a rear admiral or two as well. If the Lazarene was up against one of those fanatics, it was just a matter of time before the A-bombs started flying.
Frank Tokyo was not one to back down from a battle. Part of him wanted to fight it out, to shoot down all those planes—which he most assuredly could—and then head straight for that carrier group, get all the big guns out of the locker, and really see what the Lazarene could do. He thought he’d win. But he might not.
Engaging in a head-to-head battle with this admiral risked literally everything, endangered every living Lazarene. The stakes were as high as they could be. Going after the Americans now went against everything the ship had tried to do for almost two hundred and fifty years, and risked not just its people but the incredible treasures it had discovered in that time, from the Haunted Forest on down.
But that didn’t mean he had to sit here and take hits for no reason.
“Send out another few pills on an intercept course for the American fighters,” Captain Tokyo ordered. “Shut down their engines, but do it at a decent altitude. All those planes have nonelectrical ejection systems. They’ll be able to pop out, drift down to the water, and wait for their people to pick them up.”
“Yes, Captain,” said the XO.
That’ll buy me a little time—not much, but a little, he thought.
Frank Tokyo knew he could not risk taking the Lazarene into battle. Not against an enemy commander capable of the decisions this American admiral seemed willing to make. He needed to stop this. Shut it down cold before things really got out of control. He didn’t have enough pills to disable the entire carrier group before they potentially fired off a nuke, especially if they had some submarines tagging along. The admiral was the problem. If he could just—
He stood straight up from his command chair. Lieutenant Chen looked at him, one eyebrow raised.
“Never again,” the captain of the Lazarene said.
“Never again,” responded his first mate.
“Get the Council on the horn,” Tillaroy said. “I need to borrow something.”
ADMIRAL GREENE COULD NOT BELIEVE WHAT SHE WAS HEARING.
“Every single plane?” she said.
“Yes, Admiral,” said Captain Davenport, the frustration in his voice obvious. “Our attack wing engaged with two more of those pills about a hundred kilometers from the enemy vessel. Both enemy drones deployed that same unknown weapon that deactivated the power systems on the Philippine Sea. All our aircraft were lost, but the pilots ejected safely. We’ve sent search-and-rescue units to pick them up.”
“Did any of them get a shot off? Even one missile?” she asked.
“Two Sidewinders were fired at the hostile aircraft, but they, ah, dodged.”
“Fine,” Greene said. “We’ll try a different approach. We’ll go for an area of effect, where we can have a high level of confidence that we’ve destroyed the target. Prep two LRASMs and set a target zone on either side of the last known position of the enemy vessel.”
The AGM-158C long-range anti-ship missiles were the most powerful nonnuclear weapons in the strike group’s arsenal. They were specifically designed to kill large naval vessels, and had sophisticated stealth and maneuvering capabilities that let them evade any countermeasures deployed against them. Admiral Greene loved them. They kicked ass. Even just one was damn strong. Two together would smash the enemy vessel between them like a couple of sledgehammers.
It had to be done. It was clear to her that this Frank Tokyo was a true enemy of joy.
“Another call, Admiral,” the comms officer called. “Same channel as before.”
How the hell did they get our access codes? Greene thought, but walked over to take the call. She assumed it was another attempt at negotiation, or possibly a surrender—but the time for that was over.
“We have nothing to discuss, Captain Tokyo,” the admiral began, but stopped.
She felt like something had interrupted her, but no one had spoken. She heard nothing but silence on the other end of the line. Though . . . no. It was not the silence of a dead connection, or even an empty room. This was a dark quiet, hollow in the middle. The silence of something listening.
“Cut the connec—” she cried, but it was too late.
Something came through.
Admiral Greene kept her ship, well, shipshape. There was very little paper used on her bridge, and all was kept well stowed in its proper containers.
But not so far away from the bridge of her aircraft carrier was a huge pile of wreckage that had once been a warship called the USS Philippine Sea. Its hull was still afloat, though not for much longer; it was rapidly taking on water. Pieces of the cruiser’s superstructure dotted the surface around its hull, kept from sinking by soon-to-dissipate bubbles of air trapped inside. Between them floated much smaller pieces of wreckage and trash, everything from lightweight parts of the ship to chunks of insulation and coffee cups and even a few sailors’ caps.
Many of the smaller remnants of the destroyed ship now lifted out of the water as if simultaneously scooped up by a giant, unseen hand. These bits of metal and plastic and glass whipped through the air just above the waves until they reached the George H. W. Bush, at which point they rose, gathering in a spinning, churning ball just outside the windows of its bridge tower.
Five pseudopods spun out from the ball’s substance, and its central core lengthened, flattened. The whirling mass took on a humanoid shape, though skeletal, incomplete, and significantly larger than any person had ever been.
This did not go unnoticed. Members of the carrier’s bridge crew drew their sidearms and began firing at the thing, shooting directly through the windows. The being took no notice except to incorporate the spent bullets and shards of glass from the bridge windows into itself.
The thing moved forward, pulling itself inside the bridge through one of the shattered holes. It was huge, too huge for the space, bent, and twisted. It was a thing of broken glass and charred metal, the image of war, an enemy. It scraped and tore its way forward, and presented itself to Rear Admiral Gloria Greene, who stood with her empty pistol gripped loosely in one hand.
“What are you?” she said.
In answer, it offered a smile of shards.
III. Eighteen: The Lazarene.
WITH THE HELP OF PETER MATCH, LILY CARRIED THE BODY OF her father out of the Echolands and back to the Round of Doors. The alarms had ceased; all was calm.
“Oh, god,” Lily said when she saw the guards lying on the floor.
Both of them, the swarthy man and the pretty woman with the pink hair, were both obviously dead, eyes staring, bodies twisted.
“My dad, he—”
“No,” Peter Match said, gently helping her lower her father’s body to the deck. “It wasn’t Dr. Barnes. I did it. When I came back for the axe.”
Lily looked at Peter. He seemed . . . smaller. Like he had shrunk into himself, as though his soul was cringing away from the reality of what he’d done.
Good, she thought.
But perhaps not as strongly as she would have before she found his tree in the Echolands.
A sound at the entrance to the chamber. They looked up, and there stood one of the Automen, staring at them with its bulb-eyed face. Its head shifted, moving smoothly on a well-oiled neck. It looked at the first guard, the second, Frederick Barnes, and then back at Lily and Peter.
“Please remain where you are,” it said, its voice really quite beautiful.
IT TOOK A WHILE, BUT EVENTUALLY LILY AND PETER WERE TAKEN into custody by the ship’s security team, frightening people in grey coveralls who identified themselves as Allbrights.
“Lily didn’t do any of it,” Peter told them. “It was all me.”
“We know” was the reply. “But she brought you here.”
Now they sat in cells in the ship’s brig, facing each other, separated by two sets of white bars and a short length of corridor, supervised by a single guard—yet another of the Automen. Lily thought they’d been there for at least a few hours. Peter hadn’t said a word in all that time. He sat on the bunk built into the cell’s rear wall, arms on his knees, head hanging, hair in his face.
That was fine. Lily wasn’t in much of a talking mood, either. She assumed she was living her last few hours of life before the Lazarenes executed her with some high-tech version of walking the plank. She didn’t want to waste any of it. She had a lot to work through—the life and deaths of her father, the life and death and rebirth of her mother, and even everything she’d learned about Peter. David too. She was thinking about David.
She was considering the miracle that was the Echolands. Lily almost—almost—forgave her father for his choice to spend his life studying it. She’d gotten so little time there.
Lily tried to remember every moment she’d had in the forest, all the lives she’d touched. She wondered about those people, the long-dead and those still alive, in two places at once. In the Echolands and, at the same time, out in the—
“Peter,” she said. “Wake up. I need to talk to you.”
“I’m not asleep,” he said.
“I know,” Lily said. “Look at me.”
He did. His eyes were bloodshot and red-rimmed, and she realized he’d been crying.
Good, Lily thought again.
