I recommend scrubbing this abomination with atomic fire.
CHAPTER 13
Most of us would be traveling by air, staging off the mainland, and landing at the little air strip on Severny Island. Others would travel in multiple ships with our heavy equipment. Most of those ships would offload at the Russian base, which had a harbor and a dock. Those Hunters would then travel over land to the site. Earl had volun—told me that I would be on the ship which would eventually get beached right off our target site to serve as our base of operations. When I’d had no problem with that assignment, he had asked me if I had ever ridden on the ocean in a flat-bottomed, low-draft boat before. I had not. He’d told me I was in for a treat.
In other words, it was awful.
I didn’t know a damned thing about sailing. I’d been on a handful of waterborne jobs since I’d joined MHI, but that was about it. Over the last few miserable days I’d learned a few things. A regular ship was relatively stable. It swayed, you got used to the movement, no big deal. The V shaped hull cut through the waves like a knife, usually pretty smoothly.
Not this ridiculous pig. It smacked each wave like the wide side of a two by four. Which sucks when you’re riding the two by four.
And the waves here were sometimes gigantic. It was frankly terrifying. Mayorga had explained to me—in very simple words because she thought I was a stupid land lubber—that a regular boat could be steered to take the big waves at the best possible angle, but our stupid boat had the responsive steering of a bus with square tires. So we hit everything head on in the most jarring way possible.
It wasn’t just the smacking, but then there was the rolling side to side action. I spent a lot of my first few days on board barfing. It didn’t help that everything inside our ship smelled like diesel fumes, mildew, and of course, puke.
Technically, this wasn’t even a ship. In naval terms it was a Landing Ship Tank. Which didn’t make any sense to me, since it was big enough to park actual tanks inside. LST was apparently sailor speak for ship that sucks to drive. Technically I think it was because it had a leaky garage door and a ramp for a front end. Our modified Ropucha class had been built in Gdansk, Poland back before I’d been born, and it was just over three hundred and sixty feet of ugly and slow. It had started out as a military vessel, but we’d bought it from a civilian company that had modified it to lease out for cargo hauling jobs. Judging by the smell I assumed that company’s specialty had been transporting garbage trucks and toxic waste barrels. All the poor Hunters who had the word Navy or Coast Guard show up anywhere on their resume had been drafted as its crew.
Today the waves were relatively calm, so our crew had kept the vomiting to a minimum, and many of us had gone above deck to enjoy the fresh—albeit freezing—air. The sky here went forever, with the tallest, most magnificent clouds I’d ever seen. They looked like castles up there.
“Reports show clear sailing the rest of the way,” Mayorga said. Our self-appointed captain was leaning on the rail next to me, drinking coffee and being her usual grumpy self. “Krasnov hired a couple of ice breakers to go ahead of us just in case, but we should be good to the island.”
“It is summer,” I pointed out.
“You think that particularly matters at this latitude? Before this part of the world was fully mapped, the ice routinely devoured ships. Forcing a northwest passage took guts and brains. And now we’re doing it in a glorified garbage scow.” She loudly cleared her sinuses and spit over the side. Mayorga might have been an attractive woman if she put her mind to it, but she really played up the hardened New Yorker shtick way too much for that. “Thank God for global warming.”
We had someone monitoring the weather nonstop. This thing wasn’t designed to survive an arctic storm. The currents were worse near shore, and it added miles to our trip, but we never dared get too far from land. We tried to plan around the weather, but if necessary we’d find the best place to park, and hope. Worst case scenario, Earl would lose his forward operating base, hospital, and gun platform, and the expedition would have to get by with tents. Now normally I was the one hell bent on not throwing away expensive resources needlessly, but I also wasn’t keen on drowning.
Mayorga was still thinking out loud. “I asked Cody about that one time if he thought it was legit or not. Global warming I mean. He said he’s a theoretical physicist, not a climatologist, but then he talked for like twenty minutes about computer modeling issues and ice ages and science nerd politics. It made my head hurt.”
“That’s nice,” I said as I got ready for our next bone jarring impact.
The most obnoxious part of our sea journey wasn’t just that our boat sucked, but that its name rubbed that suckiness in our faces. As far as the Russian government cared, this was a regular Krasnov operation. He held the contract for monster problems on the island, so legally speaking this was just a routine mission that happened to bring along some foreign consultants. The fact that there was a thousand of us converging on the place with enough armament to overthrow a small country was merely a paperwork oversight on his part.
Yet because of those legal issues, it meant that our base ship needed to be owned by KMCG. They could get approval to have a privately owned armed vessel in their waters for monster hunting, but there was no way to do that with a foreign one. So our ship had officially been registered as the Pride of Krasnov. And I’m pretty sure he did that just to screw with us. The crew of course, had begun calling it the Bride of Krasnov.
“You know what I wish they had here?” Mayorga asked.
“Warmth?”
“Pirates. Just imagine somebody trying to board us. We’re the ultimate Q ship. The Bride looks like trash, but we’ve got so many heavily armed bad asses on board the look on those pirates’ faces would be hilarious. Briefly…Hell, I’m out of coffee.”
“Do you ever stop drinking that stuff?”
“When I sleep, but thankfully I don’t do that much so it doesn’t cut into my intake. Go figure.”
“Maybe you could have Milo rig you up an IV drip bag you could just carry around with you.”
“He’s one of those Mormons, so he’d probably lecture me about how coffee’s bad for me.” She had a malicious grin. “Come on, Pitt, every Hunter I know is addicted to something. What’s yours?”
I thought about it for a second. “Dispensing indiscriminate justice and the righteous smell of gunpowder.”
Mayorga chuckled. “I was going to guess accurate spreadsheets. Anyways, I’ve got to get back to the bridge. Carry on.”
“Aye aye, Captain.”
For me, carrying on meant prepping our mobile base and doing miscellaneous odd jobs. The Bride truly was a run down piece of junk, and the emergency repairs had been to get it seaworthy enough to make one final journey, and mounting lots of guns. The interior remained crap. The crew spent our days unpacking gear, installing equipment, and trying to turn this hulk into a serviceable base.
None of that was particularly difficult, so I had plenty of time to think of things that could go wrong. The hardest job on the Bride was keeping the pumps working so we wouldn’t sink, but I was mechanically incompetent, and not of much use unless one of our engineers really needed to put some torque on something. I spent a lot of time trading messages with the various other groups of Hunters who were also converging on Severny Island, but those were just updates, and I couldn’t do much to help them either.
I’d gone from insanely busy to bored overnight. I’d helped organize this whole thing, but since I was going through that gate, Earl didn’t want me in charge of anything on the island. It wouldn’t do any good to have people looking to me for direction when I would be on the other side for who knew how long. Well, hopefully not too long, because Poly said the gate only pointed toward a specific world for a month.
The hardest part of this was knowing that I had done everything I could, and now there was nothing left but to wait.
So I went back to my cabin and reread the Petro
v reports. In a few days this room would be our ops center and packed with Hunters, but for now I had one corner to myself. I’d stuck the old Vietnam pic of my dad in a little frame and put it on the wall. He made a good motivator.
The reports weren’t happy reading, but I hoped they would be a help. Earl had read them too, and he felt certain it had really been written by his old enemy, Nikolai. While it was possible some of it had been altered by Stricken—with that nefarious weasel who could tell—but if they were accurate, it painted an ominous picture.
* * *
To: Committee for State Security – 17th Directorate Chairman
Summary of 2nd Inspection Expedition to State Anomaly 168. July 15, 1962 – Special Purpose Military Commissar N. Petrov reporting.
It was with great relief that I heard of the Directorate’s decision to bomb Gorod Chudovish. I was saddened to learn that the bombs would not be dropped directly on the site, but rather many kilometers away. It was felt that the pressure wave would be sufficient to destroy the above ground structures and collapse the entrances to the catacombs, yet leave the interior undamaged should the state ever wish to study the anomaly again. A direct impact would be a waste of potential state resources.
In public, I supported the Directorate’s decision to not turn SA168 into a crater. However, since this report is for the Chairman’s eyes only, I will be frank. I believe your half measure was a mistake.
It was with great trepidation that I returned to SA168. Due to the extreme radioactivity at the site, I chose to undertake this mission alone. My condition allows me to recover from exposure which would permanently sicken or kill other soldiers. Stealth and quickness would allow me to avoid any remaining creatures. On July 12th at 2300 I left new Observation Post 2 on foot. I was able to cross through the blast zone. There were no signs of life above ground. All that remained were ashen skeletons. Species indeterminate.
The above ground structures have been completely destroyed. However, in the ruins of the pyramid I was able to find an open passage below ground. The under city was damaged, but as was initially reported, the city continues to change. It gave the appearance of healing itself. I regret to inform the Chairman that the dimensional gate remains intact. It is now a sunken, festering pit, but I saw that various creatures continue to crawl forth. Many of the warring monsters we documented earlier were killed, but new ones are already replacing them.
The great crypt chamber was not disturbed by the blast. The Asakku remain on guard there.
It is with great sadness that I must report that I discovered the fate of your dear friend Dr. Koroborov, who was thought lost on the previous expedition. I ambushed an Asakku hunting party. During the battle, what I first took to be a deformed Asakku addressed me in Russian. Afterwards I discovered that it was our good doctor. He had been physically mutilated, and his skin had been painted white to match his captors. At first I believed they had done this to him, but he had inflicted this upon himself, and willingly fought for the creatures.
Koroborov’s mind seemed shattered, yet he informed me they were not guarding a tomb, for their god was not dead, rather sleeping for thousands of years. Our atomic bombs had merely made him stir briefly before returning to his slumber. The Asakku were greatly saddened by this, because the “awake time” was when their underground armies would be set free to “harvest all the flesh beneath the sky.” After that he descended into mad ramblings, so I put him out of his misery, and returned to report my findings.
I will speak plainly. I understand the Directorate’s desire to utilize all of our supernatural assets—otherwise I would never have been spared and given the opportunity to serve the Motherland—but the mysteries within SA168 are beyond us. We should not toy with them. We do not belong there.
I beg of you, leave that accursed place be.
* * *
I stood alone on the deck, satellite phone forgotten in my hand.
Dad had broken his promise.
Mosh had called from the hospital to tell me. My brother had started sobbing. I could barely understand him. I’d thought I would be ready for this. I wasn’t.
There wasn’t enough night here. My skin was burning but tears were frozen on my cheeks. I couldn’t remember crying.
It wasn’t right. It wasn’t just.
But it was over. He was gone. It took a while to sink in before numb turned to angry. We’d been cheated.
“You saved his life. You couldn’t give him a few more weeks?” I shouted at the heavens. “Why? Why now? I’m doing what you want! I’m fighting your war! I don’t even know who I’m fighting for! I don’t even know who it was who sent him back! You think you can use us like pawns and throw us away when you’re done! My dad sacrificed everything. Everything! He spent his whole life tortured knowing you selfish bastards were going to pull the plug as soon as his job was done. He did it anyway! He raised me for this knowing I’d die in the process. He did it anyway!”
The ship was pummeled by the waves, but I was too furious to feel the impacts. I didn’t even realize that I’d smashed the sat phone into pieces against the grating. I was seething. My chest felt like it would burst. My hands were shaking. I didn’t want to be here. I wanted to see my dad one last time. I wanted to comfort my mom. I wanted to hold my wife in my arms and be there for the birth of my child.
Only a bunch of cosmic factions beyond human understanding were having a turf war over my planet, and my family had gotten drafted. It was bullshit. It was a rigged game with no way out.
It was also what my father had raised me to do.
When I spoke again, my voice was nothing but a broken whisper. “I’ll still get the job done, but I’m not doing it for you…I’m doing it for him.”
CHAPTER 14
The island was in sight.
I was on the bridge of the Bride, scanning the approaching landmass through a pair of binoculars. All I could make out from here was dreary grey rocks. The rocks went on for a while before it turned into the island’s glacial cap. The sea between us was clear of ice and relatively calm.
From here the island looked lifeless. It probably wasn’t.
“I’m not seeing any movement yet,” I reported.
“Want to take bets on how long that will last?” James Conason was our helmsman. He was from our Florida team, and his background was driving a Coast Guard cutter. He said in comparison to his old ship, Pride of Krasnov was like going from a sports car to a bulldozer.
“Let them come,” Mayorga muttered. She was also scanning the horizon for threats. “I didn’t pay all that money to weld all these guns onto this barge hoping those pendejos would stay hiding underground. Close to two thousand meters. Full speed ahead.”
The engine got louder and the ship shook more, but we weren’t going to be setting any records in this thing.
With four people in it, the Bride’s bridge was cramped. This was no warship. Most of its life had been spent hauling vehicles up and down rivers and coastal waterways. You didn’t exactly need the bridge of the Enterprise to pull that off. All we had to work with was a narrow metal room with a bank of windows on the front. It was even more crowded now since we’d installed quality instruments—most of which I didn’t understand—and screens displaying information—which I didn’t know how to decipher. There was one Hunter giving orders, one driving, one running communications, and me standing in the doorway being the mostly useless non-nautical type.
“Overland vehicles are on their way. Everything is still on schedule.” Terry Van Ausdall was running all our comms and monitoring all of the various displays I didn’t particularly understand. Like May, he was former Navy, but he’d gotten picked for this job because Earl said he was to electronics what Milo was to mechanical stuff. He had been the one who had installed all of the Bride’s new high-tech gizmos. “Skippy will be in range in three.”
Mayorga checked her watch. “Anything else?”
“The pumps are working. The engine hasn’t caught on fire for
two whole days. We’re red lined at a blistering fifteen knots.”
“I could get out and swim faster,” Conason grumbled.
“Skies are clear. It’s a sweltering twenty degrees above zero. Winds are five knots from the north. And the Russians must have believed their loud fat dude with the big mustache that we’re not invading them, because there’s no naval vessels on the radar coming to sink us.”
“They’d send a sub. Torpedo us. We’d never see it coming and sink in seconds. Plausible deniability. No international incident. That’s what I’d do.” Mayorga’s default expression was a scowl. Even her team lovingly said that she had resting bitch face, but right now she seemed extra grumpy. “But realistically, the Ruskies will let us kill all their super monsters for them, then declare us border crossing criminals.”
“Eh…hope not” I’m the one who negotiated the Krasnov deal, but I had to admit she had a point. However, to prove that everything was safe Krasnov had sent some of his men to join our ship’s crew as a sign of solidarity. They hadn’t snuck off in a life boat yet, so that was a good sign.
“Nothing’s gone sideways yet. Something always goes sideways,” she muttered. “That worries me.”
The Bride was crash slapping its way toward the beach. If we timed this right we would be in position to provide fire support before the convoy rolled up from the base. They’d been unloading and staging at the harbor and air field for the last few days. Despite the huge number of armed foreigners the local garrison had been polite, were happy to stay out of the way, and nobody had freaked out yet. It appeared Krasnov had kept up his end of the bargain. Word from Earl was the garrison commander seemed happy to have somebody clean out this nest of vipers for him so his life could go back to boring irrelevance. The Russians were supposed to be pretty nonchalant about how their monster hunting companies conducted business, but this had to be pushing it. Krasnov was either way more diplomatic in his native tongue, or he’d paid a shit ton of bribes to some generals.