He kept his eyes open, though, and watched carefully, counting down, listening to the roar of the missiles as they hurtled into the distance, a tiny light receding further and further.
Then he heard it.
A distant, hollow splash, followed by a second.
Oh, crap.
Hopper’s voice crackled over the walkie-talkie. “Ord, anything?”
Keep it together. Keep it together. Be all business.
“Negative. It’s a miss.”
Then he saw the last thing he wanted to see under the circumstances: lights, glaring pale green in the distance, coming toward them. “Contact bearing 340. They’re following us…” Suddenly plumes of flame erupted in the night. “I think we’ve got a launch. Yeah… we’ve got incoming.”
We’re dead. We are so dead. D-E-A-D. God, Raikes is so hot. Dead dead dead.
“Twenty degrees hard starboard! All hands, brace for impact!” said Hopper.
As if they weren’t under attack, Nagata was focused on the board, studying the buoy transmissions. But none of that would matter if the enemy missiles struck home. Their only prayer now was that it really had all been happenstance that the stinger was heading in their direction. That the aliens didn’t really have any clue as to the location of the John Paul Jones. That they were likewise firing blind, and that their luck would be as poor as Nagata’s.
Might be seeing you again sooner than either of us would’ve liked, Stone…
They heard the whistle of the incoming missiles. Hopper closed his eyes, braced himself. Everyone else in the CIC did the same, save for Nagata, whose calm gaze never left the monitor.
Then the ship rocked violently, but there hadn’t been any impact. It was being caused by geysers of water blasting upward from the starboard side. Hopper’s eyes snapped open wide, astonished. Crackling over the walkie-talkie came Ord’s ecstatic voice: “That’s a miss! I love when they miss!” Then his tone changed back to its typical sense of impending doom. “Sir, they’re, uh… they’re getting closer. Close enough that we should, uh… are we planning on firing something, sir?”
Nagata studied the grid, thinking, seemingly impervious to the prospect of impending doom. “FOXTROT 24,” he said at last.
Raikes dialed up the coordinates. “FOXTROT 24,” she confirmed.
“Fire,” said Nagata.
Two more Harpoons exploded from their tubes. Raikes quickly loaded two more in anticipation of having to use them.
Seconds passed, and Hopper was certain that during that time not a single person exhaled.
Suddenly there was the distant sound of explosion, and if they had been up on deck, they would have seen an abrupt and brilliant burst of light upon the horizon. Ord’s voice came screaming over the walkie-talkie, “Holy shit! Hit! Big hit!” But the celebration was short-lived as, seconds later, Ord shouted, “Sir, they’re coming from both directions!!”
“All engines, full stop! Countermeasures!” Hopper immediately ordered.
Instantly the CWIS was employed, and again it was a waiting game to see if the anti-missile system did what it was supposed to do.
It did, but, again, only partly.
The ship rocked, and this time there was no mistaking it was as a result of impact. But Hopper knew immediately that they had averted catastrophe. The CWIS had managed to intercept at least some of the missiles, but apparently not all. They had sustained some damage; now it was a matter of determining just how much. He grabbed the 1MC—the shipboard public address system—and called out, “Damage report!”
It was Beast who responded first. “Sealing the aft magazine. We’ll stay afloat.” Seconds later other sections of the ship were reporting in, stating that there was no damage.
Okay. That’s a relief.
“Captain Nagata, we seem to have multiple targets. Care to do something about that?”
“Hai.”
“I take that as a ‘yes.’”
Nagata nodded. A moment of mutual respect passed between them. Then it was back to business. Nagata carefully tracked the second stinger. “Target… INDIA 37,” said Nagata.
“INDIA 37,” Raikes repeated. “One more time.”
Ord watched with growing enthusiasm and blossoming hope as another Harpoon missile leaped into the night sky, an avenging angel carrying considerable firepower. It streaked through the air, zeroing in on the alien.
The stinger tried to leap out of the way, but the missile caught the port pontoon, ripping through it and sending the ship tumbling back onto the water. It landed with a hellacious splash. The stinger listed in the water, and Ord could hear the engines misfiring, sputtering. It attempted to bound to the right but landed heavily, like a crippled bird.
“That’s a hit,” he said. “She’s dead in the water, about fifty yards to the right of where you hit her.”
Seconds later another missile launched from the deck of the John Paul Jones. The stinger apparently saw it coming, because it tried to launch one of its own missiles directly at it, hoping to counter it. It failed to do so. The white cylinder tumbled out of the launcher rather than being propelled, and slid into the water. The firing mechanism had obviously been damaged and the stinger was a dead duck.
Except it wasn’t. There was a surge of the waves, as if the ocean itself had a bet on the aliens and was trying to prolong the action, that pushed the stinger to one side. An instant later the Harpoon hit the water and sank uselessly beneath the waves.
“Miss. That’s a miss. You’re 10 degrees right,” said Ord.
In the CIC, Hopper nodded at the new information, making his own adjustments to the trajectory. “Second coordinates, ROMEO 36.” He nodded toward Raikes and said, “Have a nice day.”
Raikes, with a missile ready to go, fired.
Ord watched the third missile track launch. He followed its trajectory, murmuring, “Please, please, come on, please,” the entire time as the missile streaked through the air.
This time when it hit the stinger, there was no doubt. The alien vessel erupted in flame, blown apart by the power of the Harpoon. Even more, the second vessel got caught up in the backlash of the inferno and went up as well. Flames blasted upward like a volcano eruption, and cheers rang from all over the deck. “Hit! Sink! Big hit! Big sink!” Ord shouted into the walkie-talkie, doing an exuberant dance that would have gotten him roundly lampooned by anyone else in the crew under ordinary circumstances. But these were far from ordinary, and all that resulted was several others joined him in his terpsichorean celebration. Through the still-open walkie-talkie, he could hear the sounds of jubilation coming from the CIC as well.
Then he glanced at his watch and he was filled with considerably less joy. The night had fled and the sun would soon be rising. Once there was full visibility, the playing field would be level once more.
And he wasn’t convinced, when that happened, they’d be around to see another sunset.
SADDLE RIDGE
“What the hell are they doing?”
Sam had spoken so softly that Cal, who was right next to her, could barely hear her. But her exact wording wasn’t necessary; he was able to infer it from context.
The three humans were concealed in the tall, overgrown grass high on a hill that surrounded the Beacon International Project building. They’d gotten there by slithering along on their bellies, moving a foot at a time, stopping, waiting to make sure there was no reaction and then moving again.