MEDITERRANEAN SEA
090113ZJUL31:
Steaming silently through the waters of the Mediterranean under black skies, the USS Doris Miller (CVN-81), one of the last surviving carriers in the world, moved like a shark, awaiting its next mission as a vital global asset in the war against the Others. Currently, it was surrounded by a convoy of ships from various nations; while most of which were NATO-allied ships, more than a few were also those from navies that had once been rivals or foes. The past five years, however, had all but shown what was left of humanity that there was no such concept anymore, at least not between those who were native to this world.
On the Miller’s weatherdeck, US Navy F/A-35Fs and brand-new F/A-23As stood ready to launch at a moment’s notice. Backing them up were US Marine Corps and Royal Navy F/A-35Es, the latter complement of aircraft having been added to the ship’s arsenal after the destruction of the UK’s last carrier, HMS Prince of Wales, two weeks ago. At the side, performing picket duties were the French frigate Chevalier Paul and the Russian destroyer Lider, the latter of which was still undergoing repairs due to the recent fighting off the coast of Malta during the same battle that had cost the Prince of Wales and most of her escorts. The number of ships that currently plied the waters were far more than usual for a carrier strike group, but given the importance of the Miller, the typical standard of what made up a flotilla was a thing of the past, and the nations present considered the huge aircraft-laden vessel to be a priceless asset that could not be lost at any cost.
Within the hull of the ship itself, a crew of American sailors, augmented by personnel from other services and nations, kept this bastion of freedom afloat and running, a seaborne ant colony performing a myriad of tasks from the mundane swabbing of decks to the most intricate of electronic warfare and surveillance. To those not familiar with any of it, it probably seemed like a series of strange rituals and confusing actions, many of which didn’t seem as though they contributed to the war effort at all, but in the end, all were absolutely necessary, to keep the ship and the surrounding battlegroup ready in case conflict sought them out yet again.
After all, those aboard the Miller were one of the last lines of protection – not just for the United States, but now for the world and even the very survival of mankind itself.
=+=
In the middle of the aft weight room, a young woman pushed herself to the limit. Lifting weights via machine, she continued to do reps as sweat slid down her taut and toned muscles. Her deep black hair hung around her face limply, longer than it should have been and possibly even enough to get in the way, but she was more than used to that. The combination of the long hair, and muscles, in concert with her violet eyes and mostly Japanese ancestry lent her a model, ethereally beautiful and alluring look, even though she really didn’t care much about that. Truth be told, anyone who found her attractive while she was being a perspiration-soaked woman pushing weights in the middle of a sweat-fogged room really needed to get their head renovated, she mused.
Done with the last rep, she sat up, swiped a small towel off the deck and wiped the stinging sweat from her eyes, ignoring the sneaking glances coming her way from both other men and women in the room. Maybe in another time, she might have appreciated the gesture and even responded in kind to the guys, but for now, she paid them no mind; even if the rules regarding fraternization were relaxed to some degree, all things considered, she had no real time or interest in a relationship, anyway.
Especially in a situation where she had no clue if she would still be alive this time tomorrow.
She pulled off the headset she was wearing, banishing the music from a time long gone, replacing it with the clank of metal, the rumble of shipboard life and the background drone of other military personnel going about their own current free time. This in essence was the real soundtrack of the life of Lt. Jessica A. Aomori, United States Navy, and that was just the way things were.
“There you are.” She looked up and standing there, lurching over her in wash khakis was her friend, Lt. Sarah Tanner. With deep brown skin, intense dark-brown eyes and a taller, lither figure than Jessica, the pair were a study in contrast, especially given Sarah’s more happy-go-lucky demeanor. The two had met years ago at Officer Training School and were virtually tied at the hip ever since.
“Couldn't sleep, so I decided to burn off the extra energy,” Jessica admitted. “What's up?”
“Was looking for you,” Sarah replied. “Captain needs to speak to you; he’s waiting in the ready room.”
“Okay, tell him I gotta hit the shower and I’ll be there in ten.”
Sarah shook her head, jet-black locks of hair battering the sides of her head. “Nope; now means now.”
“Seriously?”
“He had me run around the ship looking for you instead of grabbing a yeoman,” Sarah insisted. “He even said, and I quote, ‘Even if you have to pull her out of the shower. But if you do, make sure she's got enough soap covering her, so I don’t have to see the kanji tattoo she's got by her twat.’”
Jessica frowned. “You just had to tell him about that, didn't you?”
“Jess, you were drunk. You told everybody, then tried to pick a fight with the Moroccan assholes who tried to proposition you,” Sarah reminded her. “Seriously, that is the last time I’m letting you drink that much.”
“Fuck you, Eunice.”
“You just had to go there, didn’t you?” Sarah accused.
“Well, it is your first name, isn’t it?” Jessica responded with a gleeful grin, making the taller woman sigh all the more.
“Yes, I was named after one of my grandmothers, and that’s why I go by my middle name, and you know that. Look, being raised by two gay dads was hard enough at times in still-backwards Idaho, but growing up with a name like that was a playground death sentence in Clark Fork. Little kids would just eat you alive.”
“Yeah, but at least it got you toughened up for the Navy, right?”
“Yeah, you have a point about that,” Sarah admitted.
Nothing more to add, the two wordlessly went up two more decks and towards the ship's bow, Jessica ignoring more glances at her somewhat revealing sweat-soaked PT attire. At least the Navy had the common sense to ditch white T-shirts ages ago, she mused silently. After a few more seconds, the two reached the ready room in question.
“Well, you two sure took your sweet time, didn't you?” a man with dusky skin and a thatch of graying-colored hair said as he leaned against the table, occasionally brushing his fingers against his wash khakis. Older than either of them, he was reedy thin, with a dapper pencil mustache that gave him the traditional “Latin Lover” look. Still, his slight movements gave him a feline demeanor, like a lion on the verge of pouncing if he caught you unawares. This was Capt. Jose Ortega, Commanding Officer of the Navy’s legendary Naval Special Warfare Development Group, officially known as DEVGRU – or better yet, as SEAL Team SIX, the best of the best. “The Old Cat”, as Ortega was nicknamed, was an old school operator – one of a dying breed, he often said. And given the business they were in, he very much typified the adage about why one should fear an older man in an occupation where youths died on a regular basis.
“Reporting as ordered, sir,” Jessica told him.
“Hey, Jess, have a seat. You too, Sarah. Bet you two are wondering why I called you for this little shindig, right?”
Jessica leaned forward in her seat the moment she sat down. “Does this have anything to do with PRETZEL DRAGONFLY?”
“Well, sorta. Specifically, it has to do with your report,” he said, still focused more on his fingernails than her. “I take it, after several days, you don’t wish to change anything?”
“Sir, I stand by what I put in my after-action. We were asked to back up the 9th Regiment in Rome, and we did so, as ordered. We engaged the Octos and we managed to evacuate as many as we could from the city before it was overrun.”
“I know and I have no qualms with that, Lieutenant. But, you see….” He paused. “There’s that supplementary report from Senior Chief Remington that I’m curious about.”
Sarah couldn’t help herself. Rolling her eyes, she said, “Oh, great – we’re going to talk about that.”
Ortega looked at his other subordinate. “Do you have anything to add, Lt. Tanner?”
“Yes, sir. As much as I completely trust Lt. Aomori, I highly disagree with her assessment. I certainly didn’t see anything and several of our junior woodchucks didn’t either.”
“I know what I saw, what I experienced,” Jessica stated. “I put it in my report and clearly, based on her report, so did Senior Chief.”
“Was that before or after you got dizzied by that plasma blast that threw you into a wall?” Sarah argued.
“I know what I saw,” Jessica repeated, gritting her teeth as she said it once more. She’d taken enough shit about it, but she wasn’t going to back down from the truth. “You know I don’t lie.”
“I know you don’t – sometimes I think you’re a little too honest for this job, Jess,” Ortega told her. “Furthermore, you’re one of the best operators I have, hands down. But even you have to admit this report is a little…out of the ordinary, which is why I want to hear it again.”
“As would I,” a new voice stated. At that, the three officers in the room stood up, just for the speaker to say, “As you were.”
“Well, hello, sir,” Ortega stated smoothly; it was clear he knew the other individual was coming. “Was just going over the Rome after-action with my lieutenants.”
“I gathered that – I had some free time and I thought that I would come down and listen to this myself,” was the response. “My chief of staff tends to remove the interesting parts from his briefs.”
Jessica and Sarah briefly looked at one another; neither had expected this level of attention to the report. The newcomer was Vice Admiral Nelson Carper, Commander of Combined Task Force 831, the international flotilla serving as one of the last naval lines of war in this part of the world. He’d been a fighter pilot since the days of the First Gulf War and was known for his unconventional style; surprisingly, it had managed to get him promoted up the ranks, whereas a lesser person would have likely been drummed out of the service at that point. It was said that he had an appreciation for mavericks and the fact that he was here, ready to listen to Jessica’s story, might have indicated that.
That or maybe it’s all just smoke and mirrors and I’m about to get reassigned to a desk in Port Haywood, came the unbidden thought. With the destruction of the Norfolk naval complex, the world’s largest, the US Navy was rebuilding its fleet at the nearby Mobjack Bay, with Port Haywood being the new home for the Atlantic Fleet. And although the Seabees were busy working on getting the new facility set, rumor had it amongst the fleet that Port Haywood was where all the screwups eventually ended up.
The admiral began looking at a tablet, fingers gliding over the screen as he thumbed through the virtual pages of what had to be the report. “You know, I’ve been reading this fascinating little piece of prose here. Lt. Aomori, you should have been a novelist.”
“Admiral, with all due respect,” Sarah began. Jessica knew that Sarah was verbally throwing herself on the line for her even if they disagreed on the report’s particulars, and she appreciated her friend all the more for it.
“I wasn’t asking you, Lieutenant,” Carper cut her off with a grin that nonetheless implied an order to shut up. “I was asking our little storyteller here.” He then turned back to Jessica, his hazel eyes laser focused on hers. “Personally, I’m up for another telling of the story from our little raconteur here. Wouldn’t you say so, Jose?”
Leaning on the desk in the room as if it were just the most natural action to take under the circumstances, Ortega briefly nodded. “Given the uniqueness, I do most certainly agree it deserves another spin,” he agreed.
Jessica felt a metaphorical noose slide around her neck; she was essentially trapped. To talk about this was madness and she wasn’t even sure that she really lived through it herself. Maybe the medical staff were right, and it had all been a battle hallucination; given the hell that had been the fall of Rome, all things considered, she could be forgiven for what she’d written, if that was true.
But she knew what she’d seen, what she’d experienced. Her own life back home had taught her that. A life she’d mostly tried to forget, truth be told.
In for a penny, in for a pound, she sighed as she sat back down. “Well, sir, it’s like this….”
=+=
ROME, ITALY
031418AJUL31
Growing up three-quarters Japanese in Mesa Verde, most of Jessica’s friends had always thought she’d leaned towards wanting to see “the old country”, namely Japan. That was natural; given the typical anime-and-videogame infused mind of teenagers, such was a dream amongst them, especially when one could actually speak the language and pass for a Tokyo native. But to their surprise (and she had no idea why), one of the places she’d always wanted to visit, especially in her teenage years, had been Rome. During the summer when she’d vacationed at her maternal grandparents’ place in upstate New York, she’d been regaled of their tales of their own trips to Europe, and Rome in particular. To a girl who was more often used to hearing her paternal grandparents’ tales of their lives in Sapporo before they’d moved to America, the tales of grandiose Roman Holidays were tantalizing and a counterpoint to the dullness of her partial Japanese upbringing. Even more so, given Jessica’s natural eye for fashion and her desire to be a designer when she grew up, rather than being a part of the family ranch industry that her family owned just south of Mesa Verde.
Quite simply, in her mind’s eye, a visit to the Trevi Fountain was just something to die for.
Well, after all these years, she’d finally made it to the Trevi Fountain.
Sure enough, the dying came along with it.
As she pulled the body of a dead Italian soldier – a member of the Italian Army’s famed 9th Paratroopers Assault Regiment – away from the firing line, she wondered if the starry-eyed girl she’d once been could have ever envisioned that the ancient, breathtaking work of art she dreamed as paradise would ever be destroyed and smoking, its pool stained red with blood and no longer littered with coins from well-wishers but now instead with the dead.
This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.
Tracers and thin yellow-green beams of energy filled the air, the former from her own side and the latter from the strange weapons carried by the Octos – a dysphemism for the alien invaders officially referred to as the “Others”, a result of their generally cephalopodic bodyframes. In many ways, they resembled something like the alien ships once described in the old book The War of the Worlds, but this was real life, and there was real death occurring here in Rome, one of the very few major cities left on Earth that had been spared Decimation and subsequent attacks by the Octos.
Now, it was 6.2 million civilians, crowded into the capital of Italy and the de facto stronghold of Southern Europe, and the Octos were slaughtering everything they came across regardless of military status or not. Both NATO and UNIF – the United Nations Interdiction Force, a multinational organization made up of nations that weren’t already parts of existing military alliances – responded, and the Italian Army, immediately backed by French, American and Libyan troops, struck back in a desperate attempt to evacuate the city and maybe – maybe – save the so-called “Eternal City” from being turned into a smoking crater.
It was into this hellpit that DEVGRU Platoon Alpha, codenamed “The Amazons”, were thrown in. In the mostly-still male bastion that was Special Warfare, the Amazons had been the result of some congressman successfully convincing the Navy that women could be just as dangerous and lethal. Whether due to political correctness, smart marketing or the growing crisis that was the war, the prototype unit, SEAL Team NINE soon proved itself above and beyond what had been expected of it, pulling off successful missions where other troops had failed. In time, while there was no rush to completely integrate the other SEAL teams, much less convince the other services to start their own, SEAL Team NINE had been given a full deployment status, just as the other units were. But the biggest feat was that Platoon Alpha, the top platoon in that unit, had been redesignated a special platoon in DEVGRU, with Jessica having been given the coveted slot of Officer in Charge.
But as the saying went, with great power comes great responsibility, and now here they were, ordered into a hopeless situation with almost no chance the tide could be turned. Their orders were to be merciless and brutal, and to give harder than they got, to send a message that humanity was by no means thrilled with First, or any subsequent, Contact. After all, the Octos certainly had no care for the Geneva Conventions, assuming they knew what those were and given that 90% of humanity had been murdered at their tentacles, even mankind itself was now inclined to return that favor. The orders of the day now tended to be that any human, from the vilest criminal to the most innocent child, was to be protected at all costs; and any Octo that gave any indicator other than that of total surrender – and so far that had not happened – was to be taken out with extreme prejudice.
So it was into this that the Amazons became involved with Operation PRETZEL DRAGONFLY, a stupid name created by stupid mission planners who selected operational titles based on the intent to not offend. Because, as Sarah told Jessica, that was clearly the most important thing to worry about when the survival of the human race was at stake. At the time, Jessica recalled laughing heartily at her friend’s joke.
She admitted she could use some of that cheer now as she glanced at the unblinking stare of the young soldier who would never get to see another tomorrow.
“Doc, what’s the prognosis?” Jessica asked absently while she slammed another magazine into her M110A2 as the other members of her fireteam returned fire against the latest enemy volley. Her fireteam been separated from most of the platoon a while back and as much of a hairball as this turned out to be, she hoped the rest of her gals were still amongst the living. They were currently under reduced communications, so it wasn’t as though she could just start a social media chat with her friends.
The medic, a young petty officer by the name Lacrosse and who, to Jessica, looked like she was barely out of high school, never looked up from the body she was inspecting. “Well, L-T,” she said in a clinical tone, “I might have been able to save him if the Octos hadn’t put one of their lasers straight through his heart. Cauterized a hole straight through the body the size of the whole organ.”
“Fuck. Okay, you did what you could,” Jessica told her. “Grab one of his tags and let’s see if we can get the fuck somewhere safer.”
“Safer? In this fuckhole?” Lacrosse asked, disbelieving.
Despite the situation, Jessica laughed, leaning behind the remains of what had once been an automated taxi. “Hey, we’re at the Trevi, okay? You throw three coins in the fountain and it gives you good luck!”
“Who the fuck uses physical money nowadays?” was the reply. “All I have is my debit card!”
Footsteps came up as a voice said, “There’s an exchange machine by the fountain. You stick your card in and it’s like five euros to buy three tokens to symbolically toss in.” Jessica looked over and saw her fireteam’s senior enlisted, Senior Chief Remington, moving towards her. Remington had originally been Army infantry but had switched services when she’d heard about the Navy’s SPECWAR pilot program. Needless to say, she brought a lot of experience to the group and more than once, Jessica had tried to convince the grizzled older woman to try for the officer route, only to be told by Remington that she didn’t want to be saluted for a living.
Poking her head over the scorched aluminum hood of the taxi, she fired several shots into the distance before ducking back down; less than a split second later, optic yellow lines filled the space where her head had been.
“Didn’t know that,” Lacrosse admitted.
“My first assignment was here in Italy back when I was a private,” Remington confessed. “Ended up sleeping with some artist I met here. One-night stand, fun times. Ah, the memories.”
“That’s nice, Senior Chief,” Jessica interrupted. “So what’s up?”
Remington pointed north. “Octos are starting to corral us in. Comms are still down, but word’s being passed that we’re pulling back across the Tiber. They’re already setting up the Vatican as a hotzone for evac.” The look in the older woman’s eyes were one of frustration. “We lost this one and lost it hard.”
“Fuck.” She didn’t even want to think of how many were going to be left behind, or how many dead whose bodies wouldn’t be buried. Her childhood memories were now at war with the fact that Rome would become a burning necropolis, a place whose only remembrance would be the smoking pit of what had once been the virtual capital of the world.
A second later, one of the petty officers spoke up. “Comms just confirmed what Senior Chief said, Lieutenant. We’re being pulled back to the Vatican. We’re going to get air cover soon enough, but we’re going to have to pull back soon. They need us to confirm the order.”
Before she could acknowledge it, there was a blinding flash of white light, and Jessica felt herself thrown into the air by some unknown force. She felt a blow across her chest hard enough to knock the wind out of her and she felt herself lose her grip on her weapon. A second after that was the painful impact of being slammed against something solid, followed by the spray of water. She blacked out for a second, vaguely recalling the same feeling she’d had when she’d been accidentally kicked by one of the horses on her family’s ranch when she’d been eleven. Back then, she’d gotten a broken arm and a lecture from her family on being careful not to spook the horses.
Now, she just didn’t feel like she’d been injured, but as her head spun from the blow and her eyes began to recover from the flash blindness that she’d just received, she felt like she was going to throw up. Her vision was still hazy, unable to see more than a few inches in front of her, and from the fact that she was soaking wet, she knew she’d been thrown into the bloodstained mess that was the fountain. She also guessed, given that she couldn’t see a thing and had no idea where her rifle was, she was as good as dead the moment an Octo drew a bead on her.
And then as if to add insult to injury, they approached to within visual range, as they came into Jessica’s cleared vision, getting her first in-person view of the enemy she’d been fighting for the past half-decade…and quite frankly, the classified images she’d seen of the dead creatures didn’t do them justice.
Shaped vaguely like cuttlefish, the creatures walked on eight tentacle-like legs, their six eyes covered with goggles of some kind. Unlike Earth cephalopods, the arrow-like appendages on their heads pointed forward, as if they had some sort of demented mechanism that urged them onward. Their bodies were slick and mottled, and partially covered in some sort of coral growth that served as plate armor, and in their long, noodly tentacles that served for arms they carried long, silvery sticks that had a pulsating crystal at the end.
It had been those weapons that gave her the most concern: She recalled hearing somewhere that attempts to reverse engineer captured copies of those weapons had backfired spectacularly; in particular, that the Chinese had attempted to do so, and there was now a massive crater in the Gobi Desert where a research lab had once been.
It was clear that they approached because they either thought her already dead or of so little concern that they had supreme confidence that she would be. Instinctively, she went for her sidearm. If she was going to go down fighting, she was going to give as good as she got. She would never see her family again, but at least the Navy would tell them she went down doing her duty to the last. And if it meant that they would get to live to see another day, even if she didn’t, maybe – just maybe – it would be a good enough trade.
“Okay, you sick sons of bitches,” she hissed, pointing her gun in the direction she hoped the Octos were. “You fuckers want to take me down? I’m not going down that easily you bastards!” she shouted.
It was then she felt a gloved hand on her own, gently pushing the gun down. “Let me take care of this,” an androgynous voice said. As Jessica’s vision began to clear, she looked at the person with her…and she couldn’t believe her eyes. A figure, about the same height as her, stood there, dressed in what could only be described as a sort of modern take on medieval armor. A facemask covering the figure’s features, she (at least Jessica assumed it was a woman, based on the person’s bodyframe) had on what appeared to be a carbon-fiber body armor that covered her arms, torso and legs. She also wore a bright red cloak, giving her a strange appearance between a knight and a superhero.
Jessica opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out. Still, her lips formed the phonemes: What the fuck?
The figure chuckled. “I’m here to help,” was all the stranger said, and then with a flourish, turned to face the Octos. If they hadn’t paid attention to her, the presence of the newcomer most certainly caught their attention, as they paused and began to squat, as if getting into an old-fashioned firing line.
As if on some unspoken yet unified command, the Octos immediately opened fire as one, filling the air with lasers. Jessica had enough presence of mind to dive back into the bloody waters of the Trevi just before she became another casualty, but to her shock, the newcomer didn’t even move, the beams missing her. Moreover, it was somehow as if the figure had known the rays would never hit.
“Are you crazy? You’re going to get your Goddamn self killed!” she shouted.
The figure turned to look at her and Jessica swore she thought she felt the vaguest sense of both a smile and nostalgia coming from the figure. “I’ll be okay, Jessie,” came the response. “Believe.”
And then the figure moved…or rather, moved. Lancing forward with a grace that shouldn’t have been possible with what she wore, the stranger immediately began flinging burning knives seemingly made of the purest flame towards her opponents. Each one slicing through the air with impossible precision before colliding with their targets. Once they did, they melted through the armor of the Octos in seconds, setting each target aflame and causing a gurgling, unnatural scream that rang throughout the battlefield. Somehow, within seconds the stranger, wielding weapons that didn’t seem possible, had taken control of the battleground, and was now pushing forwards, throwing the blades with abandon like some flamboyant ninja.
So focused on the attack, the figure never looked back to see if Jessica or her troops had survived, or if they were following; just a juggernaut already in motion on a preset path that led through the worst of Octo opposition. And opposition, of course, was meant to be mowed down without concern. Within minutes, she had vanished into the distance, leaving nothing but a trail of burning stench where the Octos had been a second ago.
Scrambling back to her feet, Jessica looked on with shock and confusion. What the hell had she just seen? Was any of it real? If she didn’t know any better, she would have thought she’d just witnessed what could only be called magic. The feeling intensified a second later as she felt something in her soul, something she hadn’t felt in a long time: something so ephemeral and gossamer it almost made her wonder if it had actually occurred, except that she knew it had – she’d somehow had forgotten about it, burying it in the furthest recesses of her mind.
“I’ll be okay, Jessie. Believe.”
The words slapped her across the face. She’d heard them before. Back before her own world changed. Back before she’d left home, disillusioned and set herself on the path she had now. Back when she’d foolishly thought she’d grow up being a fashionplate and model and would maybe become a fashion designer.
A secret had been revealed to her, a path that had taken her far from where she’d been. A smile…and magic.
She looked where the figure had been, and for the first time in years, her mind swam with possibility.
A word finally came to her lips.
“Tessa?”
“C’mon, Lieutenant, we gotta go!” The moment ended as quickly as it came, as she felt Remington slap her rifle into her hands. “Let’s get the fuck out of here while we still have the chance! Doc’s dead and half of our own gals are down!”
As if coming out of a reverie, Jessica blinked. “But we—”
“I don’t know what the fuck just happened, but whatever did just saved our fucking bacon and I’m taking that as a sign to get the fuck out of here!” her fellow SEAL barked.
Jessica looked at the ruined scene, the dead Octos and some of her own troops grabbing the bodies of the Italian soldier and now their own as well. As a general rule, Americans didn’t leave their dead behind and that wasn’t about to change now, especially when “the dead” included fellow human warriors.
“Let’s go,” she said, feeling the moment – and the magic – pass as quickly as it had come.
But the memory lingered.
=+=
As she finished her verbal recollection, Carper looked at her intensely for a second before saying, “You know, when I was a kid, I loved books like The Lord of the Rings. Stories filled with tales of knights and elves and magic and swords. You know, the fantasy kind of shit.” He reached up and pinched his nose bridge while shaking his head as he said, “That’s pretty much what anyone would have heard from your words right now, Lieutenant.”
“With all due respect, sir, I stand by my words,” she told him. She had, of course, left out the revelation that she suspected she knew who the figure had been. But if that had been the case, then what had happened so long ago….
I should have died that day, and not because of the Octos. But because of what we did. But that was the person I was back then, and I’d like to think I left her in the past.
She looked at everyone in the room. Roll the dice, Jess. That’s what you do.
She then fixed her gaze on the admiral once more, meeting his questioning expression with her own surety. “You may not believe me, and I understand if you don’t, sir. But I do not lie, and I swear upon my oath as an officer that I reported exactly as I saw it, sir.”
In a surprisingly soft voice, the flag officer replied, “I know you did.” The room fell into an uncomfortable silence as the two sat there, looking at one another, while the other two present wondered what would happen next.
Finally, it was Jessica who found the words to ask a second later: “So, what now, sir?”
Carper went back to his iPad, ruffling through virtual screens for a second. “In an hour, there will be a COD here to drop off intelligence files and pick up passengers headed off the ship.” He paused, then said without mirth, “You’re going to be on it.”
So, I guess that’s it, then. In telling the truth, she destroyed her career, though she had to admit that she had left out some things. But those weren’t her part to tell, she knew. Despite everything, she still owed a debt she could never repay. “So where to? Millington? Port Haywood? Or someplace worse than that?”
“Oh, you’d be lucky if I sent you to any of those locations, Lieutenant,” Carper said without a trace of irony. “No, you’re going somewhere far, far worse.” He paused for a second. “You’re going to the Mountain.” He then fished a small box out of his pants pocket, tossing it to her. “And you’re going to need these.”
Catching it easily, Jessica opened it. Inside were two golden oak leaf collar pins – the symbol of a United States Navy lieutenant commander.
=+=
An hour later a Royal Navy AW101 Merlin spun its rotors, dragging its great weight skyward. The workhorse of the British Fleet, it gracefully lifted off the steel gray deck of the Miller, heading northward along the iron-gray seas just as defensive drones flew a protective pattern around it. There had been an indicator on radar that a fleet of Other “Krakens”, the giant squid-like vessels that served as both air and oceanic attack craft for the Octos and all ships had gone to General Quarters, Action Stations, or their nation’s equivalent.
None of that, however, was anything that Jessica focused on. Right now, she knew she was just cargo, unable to affect combat in any way, shape, or form should something happen. After all, while she was Navy, she wasn’t a surface warfare officer. That wasn’t her specialty, and it wasn’t like in the movies where a tried-and-true ground pounder could just hop in a fighter and become an instant ace of the skies. Hollywood lies, even nowadays, painted that picture and when she was younger, she’d always wondered where that idea came from. As a more seasoned adult, it pretty much made her shake her head at the stupidity.
A voice called back from the cockpit, that of the pilot. “We’re clear of the battlegroup, Commander,” came the crisp British voice. “It’ll be a couple of hours before we get to our refueling point at Naval Base Cartagena. From there it’ll be a few more hours to Gibraltar, where your fellow Yanks have arranged to meet you there. All in all, the whole trip is going to be several hours, so you might want to get comfortable.”
“Thanks for the info, Leftenant,” Jessica replied, taking the courtesy to use the British pronunciation; it never hurt to be nice. “How long do we have escort?”
“The X-47s will continue to escort us for at least another two klicks out, ma’am. After that, we have our own Barracuda that will be flying escort.” She heard him chuckle slightly. “Part of the reason why we need to refuel – it’s not so much us as it’s our little robot friend that needs the petrol.”
“Roger that. I’m going to get some rack time,” she told them. “Let me know if you need me to do some shooting,” she joked in return, “though I think you’ll have it well in hand.”
“That’s our plan, Commander.”
With that, she snuggled into the jumpseat, glad that she’d learned how to pretty much sleep anywhere over the years. And closing her eyes, she let herself slip off into the arms of Morpheus.
And with that, she dreamed.