Miller scrambled up the ladder to the cockpit and leaned in close enough to Worm that he could smell the sharp stink of sweat mixed with jet fuel. “Maybe a hundred rounds before it jams,” he shouted. Shit. At the machine cannon’s rate of fire, that was possibly three seconds’ worth of shooting.
Worm gave a quick look at the plane’s cockpit screens to make sure the aircraft was running the preflight checks. At least something was working as it should.
For a second, maybe two, Worm allowed himself to think of his fiancée. She’d be out surfing about now, working off some of the dark energy her dreams often left her with. They were supposed to meet at the Moana Surfrider hotel that night for a drink. She hadn’t told him which of the bars she’d be in, though; she never did. He would have to find her, and then they would sip mai tais and fantasize about what it would be like to get married there. He had promised her a fairy-tale ending to her story.
The image was dashed as the canopy closed down. Worm flashed a thumbs-up to the crew chief below and mouthed a word.
Payback.
USS Coronado, Joint Base Pearl Harbor — Hickam, Hawaii
An antitank rocket fired from a nearby freighter hit the USS Gabrielle Giffords, moored nearby. It was unnecessary; the Giffords was already taking on water from an explosion below the water line, as were most of the U.S. Navy warships in the harbor.
“Is ATHENA online yet?” shouted Captain Riley. The Automated Threat Enhanced Network Awareness program was like the ship’s nervous system, tying together sensors and network nodes with software that was as close to artificial intelligence as the Navy would permit aboard a warship. The ship’s autonomous battle-management system allowed a shorthanded ship like the Coronado to track targets and coordinate with other forces faster than a human crew could manage.
“Almost ready,” said one of the crew. “It’s still booting up.”
“Wake the bitch up! I want targets. And I want this ship protected,” said Captain Riley.
“Sir, even when it’s online, ATHENA’s going to have trouble in port,” said Simmons.
“We’re already in trouble,” said Captain Riley.
“The data flow might overwhelm it. If ATHENA crashes, it’ll drag down the rest of the ship’s systems, or we might get some blue-on-blue, given the range we’re dealing with,” said Simmons. “Let the crew fight the ship. Trust them.”
Captain Riley squinted the way he did when he knew someone else was right. “Good call, XO,” he said. “When ATHENA comes up, keep it in watch mode.”
This gave Captain Riley the chance to deliver the order he’d yearned to give all his life. “Main gun, batteries release! Engage enemy ship, the fucker that fired at us,” he shouted.
The Coronado’s 57 mm main gun came to life; the turret pivoted, pointed an accusing finger off the port side, and then fired across the harbor at the Directorate freighter from which the rocket’s smoke trail still extended.
After seven rounds, the main gun’s firing paused. And then the realization sank in among the bridge crew. The tiny cannon’s five-pound shells were far too small to do any real damage to a hundred-thousand-ton freighter twice the size of a World War II battleship. The LCS had a main gun fit for chasing away pirates, but not much more.
Tracer rounds began to flash toward the Coronado, yellow lines reaching out from the freighter and two other ships in the harbor. Their fire hadn’t had much of an effect, but it had gotten the other side’s attention. Heavy machine-gun rounds clanged into the Coronado’s superstructure. A sailor struggling to untie the ship’s forward lines from the pier’s cleats disappeared in a puff of red.
Simmons peeked his binoculars through the open bridge hatch and panned them quickly around the harbor. He frowned. He could see small boats being launched from the freighters. There were at least nine Navy ships sinking and four others being swarmed by what looked like boarding teams. A fast-moving black dart, a helicopter of some sort, sent a volley of rockets into the bridge of the USS Pinckney. In the distance, green tracked vehicles moved down the road closest to the shoreline. He suspected they were not friendly. He put the binoculars down when he heard Captain Riley shout into his headset, “Just someone cut the damn mooring lines!”
The Coronado’s foredeck was empty. Bloodstains on the deck marked where two more sailors who’d tried to free the ship had been cut down. Simmons winced, knowing that that they would need every sailor they had to get the ship out of this kill zone.
Nearing the Coronado’s bow, Horowitz looked up at the bridge. He’d run out of 5.56 mm rounds for his M4 and had been ferrying ammunition to a sailor firing an M249 machine gun at the nearby freighter.
“On it!” Horowitz shouted. He raced inside the nearby passageway and pulled out the fire ax. He ran toward the rope but slipped on a pool of blood and cut his palm on the blade of the ax. He couldn’t help himself and laughed. The absurdity of slicing yourself with an ax in the middle of a gunfight.
Horowitz belly-crawled out to the mooring line, staying low to avoid the fire. When he reached it, he jumped up, held the ax high over his head, and then smashed it down on the thick braided-Kevlar line tying the Coronado to the pier.
It made little impression; the ax parted only a few strands. He lifted it again, and again. Soon his chest heaved and his arms burned, and he couldn’t hear anything but the buzzing in his ears. At some point, a bullet struck the ax head, but Horowitz held it fast despite the ache in his hands.
One of the ship’s caterpillar-like SAFFiRs (Shipboard Autonomous Firefighting Robots) crawled onto the deck nearby and was immediately hit. The child-size robot sprayed a cloud of chemical retardant all over the deck before rolling into the water. “One last time,” Horowitz said to himself with a grunt, “and then we are out of here.”
He didn’t see the Directorate PGZ-07 antiaircraft vehicle that rounded the corner on the rise above the pier. Without any targets in the sky, the PGZ trained its twin-barreled 35 mm cannon on the U.S. ships in the harbor, the closest being the Coronado.
“Shit,” said Simmons as he watched Horowitz’s shredded body cartwheel into the water.
“Target, starboard side. Hit that bastard! He’s the one who just lit us up,” shouted Captain Riley.
The ship’s 57 mm Mk 110 cannon rotated away from the freighter and toward the Directorate vehicle as fast as Jefferson could pull the targeting joystick. While the main gun couldn’t make much of an impact on a hundred-thousand-ton ship, the rounds chewed apart the lightly armored twenty-two-ton vehicle, and it exploded, sending flaming shrapnel through the building behind it.
Simmons was in command mode, listening to his crew on his headset as much as directing them. He heard shouting one moment, then dispassionate descriptions of overheating or damaged equipment. The crew was proving to be good under pressure, which was exactly why he had driven them so hard.
“We’ve got to go now, Captain. Line’s all but cut through,” said Simmons.
“You heard him, get us out of here,” said Captain Riley.
Simmons recognized the false confidence in his captain’s voice. They both knew the Coronado would have to battle its way out of the flaming harbor.
A sudden buzzing noise made everyone on the bridge duck. A quadcopter appeared right in front of the bridge’s windows, nervously hovering, like a wasp looking for a way inside.
The Mk 110 main gun spun to engage the V1000, but the quadcopter hovered inside the gun’s arc of fire, feinting and dodging with the turret’s jerky moves as the gunner tried to slew the joystick fast enough to get a shot at it.
The bridge crew froze, expecting a volley of armor-piercing flechette micro-rockets. The V1000 flared back, flashing a backlit view of its empty rocket pods, and then raced straight up and out of sight.