“Looks that way.” Nagata didn’t sound especially enthusiastic, but he was obviously one to play things close to the vest. Plus he’d gotten his ship shot out from under him, so it was understandable he wouldn’t be too quick to celebrate.
“Good job.”
“Bad news is that it’s heading toward us,” said Nagata.
Hopper did a double take and he was pretty sure the blood was draining from his face. “Fantastic,” he muttered.
Beast and Hiroki, with the aid of some additional men, were busy tearing apart the starboard engine when the call came down from CIC.
The chief engineer knew Hopper as well as anybody and probably better than most. So he was able to tell from Hopper’s tone of voice that they were in deep trouble. Not that Hopper would be sharing that information over the radio. It wasn’t his style. He would focus on the problem at hand and leave everyone else to deal with their specific tasks.
“Beast,” Hopper’s voice filtered through the radio, “we need some power.” He said it casually, as if he’d suddenly realized they’d run out of booze and was asking Beast to make a beer run down to the local 7-Eleven.
Beast didn’t bother to ask why there was a sudden need for propulsion. He suspected that the answer wouldn’t be anything good. “Working on it,” he said into the radio.
“Work faster,” the admonition came back.
“Roger, working faster.” He clicked off the radio, returned to work, and looked at Hiroki. “Your boss like that? Always want it faster, quicker? Done yesterday?”
Hiroki stared at him, peering owlishly over the tops of his round glasses. It was fairly clear that he had no clue what Beast was talking about. Beast actually knew he was wasting his time. Thus far he’d communicated with the Japanese engineer entirely through emphatic pointing and gestures; clearly the smaller man spoke no English. Beast was talking to himself as much as he was talking to Hiroki. Instead, as he did his best to stitch his beleaguered engine back together, Beast kept a running commentary going. “It’s never fast enough. No matter how quick you turn it around, it’s always ‘Fix it faster. Faster faster faster.’” He snorted. “Like to see them fix up their gear after a two-fifty-pound Hippo Robot goes full berserk in their department.”
Beast looked up in surprise as, out of nowhere, Hiroki asked, “Your mother named you ‘Beast’?”
Everything stopped, the other sailors pausing in their endeavors and looking with barely restrained amusement at the way Beast was staring at the smaller man.
“Don’t worry about my mother,” Beast said curtly, and got back to work.
Nagata had been absolutely correct. There was a clear track on the monitor of one of the alien vessels—a stinger, most likely—heading straight at them.
Raikes, observing their approach from her station, said, “So they can outgun us, outmaneuver us, and more or less fly… and the one thing we have in our favor is that they don’t know we know they’re coming.” Hopper nodded. Raikes forced a smile and said heartily, “I love this plan. I’m thrilled to be a part of it.”
“That means a lot, Raikes.” He spoke into his walkie-talkie. “Spotters on deck?”
“Spotters ready, sir,” Ord’s voice crackled over the walkie-talkie. Ord would be at the port observation deck, since the other one had been blown to hell by the aliens. Other young men were scattered around the deck, armed with binoculars.
Are they terrified? A bunch of kids, many fresh out of the Academy, keeping a lookout for alien 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?”