Captain Weaver shook his head. “Not yet, Smith, but get a lock on them anyway.”
“Yes, sir.” Smith nodded. “I’ll be ready.”
“Sound action stations,” Captain Weaver ordered Ennis.
“Hoffman isn’t going to like that, sir,” Ennis warned him.
“My ship, my call,” Captain Weaver said. “We’re not officially part of DESRON 2, Ennis, and I’d rather be ready than not when those things make their move. I don’t think we’ll have to wait very long at all for them to make it.”
Major Lewis stood on the deck of the USS Mitchell. Surface Commander Hoffman had ordered that he deploy all of his men to defend the flagship should the squid creatures surrounding the DESRON make a move against it. Major Lewis had seen the footage of the monsters that the captain of the Braxton had sent over. It was still hard to believe that such creatures existed. The ships of DESRON 2 were too close in their formation for the CIWS of any of them to engage the squid things if they made a direct attempt at boarding. Producing a cigarette from his the pocket of his jacket, Major Lewis lit up. He puffed on it as he watched his second-in-command, Jenkins, getting the men ready. Major Lewis had ordered several SAWs set up at various points along the main deck of the Mitchell. They were a secondary line of defense should the squid creatures manage to make it up the sides of the ship and get aboard. Of course, Major Lewis didn’t plan on letting the creatures make it that far.
Alarm Klaxons blared not just on the Mitchell but aboard the other ships of DESRON 2 as well.
“Contacts inbound!” Tyler, the ship’s comm. Officer, informed him over the comm. unit inside his helmet. Major Lewis didn’t have time to ask how many of the things he could expect before all hell broke loose. The men he had stationed along the sides of the ship opened up with their rifles, firing downward, over the ship’s railing, at the waters below. Major Lewis rushed to join the closest group of his men. Jenkins followed after him. Major Lewis reached the port side of the Mitchell to see dozens upon dozens of the squid creatures slapping their tentacles onto the side of the ship and pulling themselves up out of the waves. They came scampering up the side of the ship like crazy-looking spiders. He watched as fire from his men tore at their ranks. One squid took numerous hits to its central mass and exploded in a burst of black blood and gore. Another took a burst that caused it to lose its hold on the side of the ship and tumble back into the water below. Still another had one of its primary tentacles blown completely from its body by one of his men packing a high-powered shotgun. The creature shrieked as the stump of its tentacles sprayed black blood, flopping about madly in the air, before another of his men finished it with a stream of fully automatic rifle fire that ripped its central mass to shreds.
For all the effort his men were putting into sending the things back to whatever Hell they had crawled out of, the squid creatures were just too fast and too many. The first of them reached the ship’s railing and lashed out with one of its primary tentacles even as his man carrying the shotgun blew it apart. That single swipe of its tentacles took the head off the shoulders of one of his men and knocked another from his feet with his right arm barely still attached to his body by a few strands of muscle and sinew. Three more the things reached the top of the Mitchell’s portside hull and flung themselves over the railing onto the deck. They too died quickly as his men concentrated their fire on them, but one of the things managed to spear his man carrying the shotgun through his chest. The soldier’s eyes went wide in horror as the tentacle that impaled him wriggled about within him and he knew he was dead. Blood flowed up and out of the man’s mouth as his body went limp upon the tentacle that was sticking through him. The squid thing flung the dead soldier’s body over the edge of the ship even as it too died from several bursts of point-blank fire from the other soldiers surrounding it. Those three squids were really nothing more than a distraction to keep his men from continuing to defend the side of the deck. In the brief moment it took to eliminate them, half a dozen more were over the railing after them.
“Fall back!” Major Lewis shouted at the few men near him who were still alive. The squid creatures were having their vengeance full-on now that they had reached the deck and closed to melee range. Tentacles slashed open throats, guts, and faces as other tentacles crushed and snapped bones. By the time he, Jenkins, and the two other survivors of the overwhelmed unit got behind the covering fire of the nearest SAW, there were at least forty of the squid creatures on the deck along the port side of the Mitchell. The heavy SAW chattered pouring fire into them, cutting half of them down like a scythe sweeping through a field of barley. It wasn’t enough though. The other twenty or so squid creatures came crashing into the ranks of his men around the SAW, making short work of them. Major Lewis ignored the screams of his dying men as he fought on.
Someone or something shoved him roughly to the deck. Major Lewis slammed into it with a grunt, rolling over to bring the barrel of his weapon level with the squid that had struck him. He held the trigger of his weapon tight, emptying half of its magazine into the squid. The bullets reduced the squid creature that hit him to little more than black-smeared pulp, sending chunks of its body flying. What remained of its corpse flopped on top of him. Major Lewis shoved the squid off of him and leaped to his feet just in time to see Jenkins lifted into the air by one of the squid creatures. One the creature’s tentacles was wrapped about Jenkins’ throat, the other around one of his legs. With a sharp jerk, the squid creature yanked Jenkins’ leg from his body. A muffled, strangled attempt at a scream came from Jenkins before the squid creature began to sling his body around in a circle above it by the hold it still had around his throat. Major Lewis was close enough to hear Jenkins’ neck snap as the squid flung him around before finally tossing him over the side of the ship.
The loud cacophony of gunfire that had sprung up all over the Mitchell’s deck was dying out. Major Lewis could hear only a few scattered batches of automatic weapons’ chatter left. He knew the battle for the ship was lost. The squid had fully overrun his men and were now working at tearing at the doors that led into the flagship’s interior corridors.
Major Lewis had spent most of his adult life as a soldier. He always knew he would die in combat and today looked to be that day. If the squids reached the Mitchell’s interior, all was lost. Surface Commander Hoffman wouldn’t have enough personnel left to hold the monsters at bay and run the ship too. Major Lewis made his choice without hesitation. He dug the grenade he had slipped into his one of his jacket’s pockets out and pulled its pin. With a berserker like battle cry he ran straight into the cluster of squids attacking the doors. The flash of the explosion was the last thing he saw as the grenade blew him and a good number of the squids he had charged into to bits.
Surface Commander Hoffman and Shooter, his XO, watched the massacre of Major Lewis and his men on the Mitchell’s deck outside. Lewis and his men had killed a staggering number of the squid creatures, but the engagement had still been so one-sided and brief that massacre seemed the only word to describe it.
“They’ll get in,” Shooter told him. “Those doors aren’t going to hold them.”
Surface Commander Hoffman looked over at the XO and knew Shooter was right.
“Contact!” the Mitchell’s sonar tech, Robinson, shouted. “Something very large and very fast is approaching the DESRON from the south at over thirty-five knots.”