CHAPTER SIX - Ben
Perseus’ Last Monster
The USS Perseus hummed through the Gulf of Alaska, approaching the heart of the mermaids’ city. In the bridge, Reeves scanned the empty surface, and then turned his eyes to the monitor. Several thousand feet existed between him and the seafloor. Life signatures moved far below.
Flee, he thought. I’m giving you a chance.
The US Navy had been monitoring the increase in mermaid activity over several years. Until now, traditional means—iron nets, helicopters, safety regulations for boaters—had been enough to keep the American people safe. With the breach of the Aleutian Treaty and the rising number of attacks in the Pacific Northwest, it was time to deploy Perseus whether she was finished or not.
Captain Larson slowed the ship to a crawl and looked expectantly at Reeves. He tugged the sleeves of his uniform, trying to relieve his sweating underarms. It was no use. The uniform was too crisp, too stiff.
His pulse pounded—but not from fear. He’d been on too many drills to feel that anymore. He’d received months of special training for Operation Perseus, and now that the time had come, an immense feeling of guilt pressed on him like a boulder.
You owe her your life.
He shook his head. He was just following orders.
But every time he closed his eyes, that mermaid’s face flashed through his mind as it had done countless times—blank, bloody, lifeless.
“Chief?” said Captain Larson.
“Yeah. Give me a minute.”
Reeves scanned the water, pretending to focus on something.
The mermaids had become a threat to national security, yes, but there must be a better plan than this. He’d been unsuccessful yesterday in convincing Officer Miller to investigate that merman, who obviously had power over the serpent—but how? Did he possess something that could grant anyone control?
Reeves almost laughed at himself for considering the possibility. What did he expect, a magic trident?
“Chief, every second we wait—”
“I know,” said Reeves. “Hold on.”
Larson rolled her eyes. Though she had more years of experience than him, she was being forced to take his orders on this mission, and she had been challenging his every move since they left. Reeves pretended not to notice the way her team gave him sidelong glances and sarcastic retorts. It wasn’t his fault their teams hadn’t met and trained together before Perseus launched. They were all being shoved into this mission prematurely. Besides, he was plenty qualified for this position. It was the matter of actually going through with the operation that made him want to vomit.
It had never left his dreams, the face of the one who had saved his life. And then she lay on the rocks, blood spilling from a dozen places where iron bullets had penetrated, those brilliant brown eyes wide open and glazed. He could never be sure who’d pulled the trigger on her. It could have been anyone on his team, reacting as they were trained to when the mermaids breached the facility.
She’d saved his life, and his team had shot her. He would never be able to forgive himself for that.
Reeves picked up the mic and reported their status to Officer Miller.
“Get your crew ready,” he said to Larson.
He caught the second eye-roll as she turned away.
The defiance didn’t bother him. He’d spent several years of grade school being the shortest guy in gym class, so he was used to his peers underestimating him. He’d grown up working extra hard to prove his abilities.
The moment the bridge door closed, leaving him alone, Reeves raised the mic before he could think and found himself blurting, “Sir, don’t you think we’re jumping the gun?”
Silence. Then, “Reeves, the entire Pacific Northwest is being invaded. Civilians are at risk.”
He gazed across the glassy water, beautiful and peaceful. “Sir, there are whales in the area.”
“Now, Reeves,” Miller barked.
Reeves gripped the mic tighter. To disobey would be to lose his job. Everything he’d spent his life working towards would be gone because he was too much of a coward to pull the trigger on a few sea demons.
But was that all they were?
The ship bobbed in silence for a long moment.
Outside, shouts erupted. “Chief!”
Reeves burst through the bridge door. His soldiers stood at the railing, rifles aimed at the water. He hurried to the port side.
They were surrounded. Women—no, mermaids—poked their heads from the water, watching. They didn’t try to scale Perseus’ iron hull.
“Everyone back up,” commanded Reeves before the mermaids could lure anyone.
His soldiers took three synchronised steps back. Reeves averted his eyes from the water, unable to face the lives he was about to end.
Perseus’ deck was bare, unadorned, but the key feature was there. An iron railing in the middle formed a barrier around a coffin-like hole. Larson and two crewmates slipped between the railings and jumped inside. They hadn’t waited for his orders. Reeves’ tongue felt too fat in his mouth to shout at them for this.
The operative weapon was supposed to be controlled from a computer screen, but the engineers hadn’t had time to implement it, so everything had to be executed manually.
He heard Larson barking orders and the clank of machinery. Perseus shuddered. The panel on the keel was opening.
Reeves scanned the members of his team. None looked nervous, but he was certain every one of them was sweating like he was—possibly terrified. What they were about to do was unprecedented, untested, and highly dangerous. The ramifications were bigger than any op he’d heard of in years.
His team, unlike Larson’s, awaited his orders with an air of respect, which he returned in equal measure. They’d worked with him and become his friends over the months. He couldn’t let them down.
Inside the coffin, Larson and her crewmates worked quickly. There was a click and a mechanical groan below as the launcher emerged. Reeves had seen the thing moored; it was the size of a pickup truck with twenty supercavitating torpedoes positioned in a circle, and now they would be pointing into the pure blue depths of the Gulf of Alaska.
Reeves peeked into the water. The mermaids must have felt or seen the weapons, because their peering faces had disappeared.
“Ready to fire, chief,” said Larson.
Reeves’ mind shut down as panic rose inside him, pulse hammering at his throat.
“Chief.”
“I know, Larson!”
There was nothing he could do. He was a pawn. His job was to give the order, and with all these eyes on him, it was his only choice. To back out would be to lose everything, to bring shame on his team, to become a subject of ridicule for Larson’s. He would have to return to Miller and tell him what happened. He would return home to overly supportive but secretly disappointed parents, and live the rest of his life in another line of work, knowing he’d failed.
Someone screamed at the other end of the deck. Reeves whirled to find one of his soldiers collapsed, a sea spear jutting from his shoulder. One of Larson’s crewmembers ran to help.
Everyone else on board had lifted their rifles and crouched into position.
Reeves cursed. He had to make the choice: everyone aboard Perseus, or the mermaids. The answer should have been obvious. A teammate had gone down. But how could he pull the trigger on the entire North Pacific Ocean? He couldn’t do this.
He turned to Larson, adrenaline pulsing. He would be relieved of duty for this. He would prove her doubts correct and be a failure to himself and his team.
“Oh, for God’s sake!” she shouted.
She stomped the lever into place.
“Larson!”
The ship shuddered. Beneath the hull, all twenty torpedoes would be launching in tandem.
Reeves’ pulse pounded. It was too late. It couldn’t be fixed.
“Brace!” bellowed Larson.
Reeves and the crew gathered in the centre of the deck and crouched at the railing, wrapping limbs around the poles and each other—because the proper safety equipment had not yet been installed.
The first torpedo exploded. Perseus rocked in all directions. An icy spray slammed down over Reeves. He gasped, taking long, slow breaths that tasted of brine and seaweed. Water thundered across the deck. The shockwave had not yet settled when the second torpedo went off.
Each one was designed to detonate at a different range than the previous. With every explosion, shards of iron would be blasting in all directions, driving shrapnel into any creature it could reach. That included mermaids, mermen—and wildlife. Nothing within miles had a hope of surviving.
The third explosion rocked Perseus more violently. The waves churned like a maelstrom. Reeves focused on holding his body tightly to the deck, thinking he might vomit. He had never been one to get seasick, which was fortunate considering his career—but the rising nausea had nothing to do with choppy waves. He squeezed his eyes shut, clinging to the railing, and for the second time in his life, he began to pray. Forgive me.
He waited for the fourth explosion, determined to count each one and mourn the deaths he had let happen. How was it possible that this was only the fourth missile—out of twenty? He should never have agreed to that many. There would be nothing left in the Pacific.
The time for the fourth explosion came and went. Reeves opened his eyes to find Larson staring at him, her brown eyes enormous, pupils dilated.
“What happened? Is it faulty?” she said.
Crack.
The ship lurched with such force that everyone was lifted into the air. Reeves watched the deck fall away. He seemed to hover in mid air for a second, and then the deck flew back up to meet him at sickening speed. He flailed, as if trying to swim, and got his hands under him in time to stop his chin hitting the deck first.
He smelled blood. He tasted it, thick in his mouth.
Thuds echoed around him as the others hit the deck, coughing and gasping.
A siren wailed. The hull had been breached.
“Larson … find … out—” Reeves coughed.
He sat up and clutched his chest, trying to get the wind back into his lungs.
He tried again. “Find out what’s—”
A thunder rose over everything else. The deck tilted. Reeves slid down it, reaching wildly for something to hold onto. He found a cleat barely big enough to wrap his fingers around.
Waves frothed beneath him. Bodies hit the water. The spray stung his eyes as he looked around. A few crewmembers hung from the deck beside him, and beyond that, he saw only the gaping insides of the hull.
He blinked, trying to process what this meant.
It dawned on him with the same feeling of an icy swell crashing over his head. The ship had broken in half.
They were sinking.
The sky darkened. Reeves looked up and saw something else, something infinitely worse than his broken ship, which sent a chill from his spine down to his dangling legs. His brain clouded over. He was going to pass out.
The enormous black head rose from the water and gazed coolly down at them, pupils narrowing.
Useless thoughts dashed through Reeves’ mind: how his life had just begun, and how he’d never be able to get married, or have kids, or take a beach vacation—not that he was especially keen on visiting the beach, ever again—and how he hadn’t expected his life to end quite like this. And he’d never gotten the chance to fly the LM-80 Cormorant.
Then the other serpent head came out of the water and rose beside the first. It opened its mouth. Fragments of iron and shrapnel fell from its jaws.
The seventeen remaining torpedoes, crunched into pieces, plunged into the waves below.