We were getting close. There was a nervous energy in the air.
“Movement,” Mayorga said. “North end of the beach.”
I swung my binoculars over. Something white was flickering across the rocks. “Is that smoke?”
“No idea. Steam maybe. There shouldn’t be any volcanic activity.” By the time she said that, the white cloud had spread further along the ground and it was moving way too fast. “Fog doesn’t spontaneously generate in the sunshine on a clear day.”
“Unless it’s magic,” I replied as it spilled outward to obscure our whole landing zone. I lowered my glass. “They’ve seen us coming. I think you just got that sideways you wanted.”
“About damned time. Terry alert Earl.” While he did so, she picked up the handset for the ship’s intercom. “Attention. This is your captain speaking. You should already be manning your battle stations, so if you’re not, quick dicking around and get there now. If you look to your east your will see beautiful Severny Island, where some weird ass magic fog is now obscuring my parking space. Gentlemen, I want my parking space. Gun crews prepare to fire on my order.” She dropped the mic back into the cradle. “Okay, boys. This is it.”
We’d done all that we could do. Now it was a roll of the dice. The next few minutes passed in nervous silence as we got closer and closer. The range on our main gun was much greater than this, but from here we could cover the entire area around the ruins, spot our own impacts—our gun crew would need all the help they could get for accuracy—and this put the shore within range of our secondary weapons. When we were two thousand meters from the beach, Mayorga ordered the engines cut.
While the Bride settled, the unnatural fog grew to fill the beachhead. I wondered if it was going to continue creeping out toward us, but it stopped at the water’s edge, lingering there, unnatural and malevolent.
“Something really doesn’t want to be seen.”
“Well, Pitt, that tells me they’re extra ugly.”
“Helos are doing their fly by,” Terry said.
I raised my binoculars and found the black dots speeding through the blue sky. MHI and three other companies had donated air power. In order to be flown here and armed, the vehicles had been temporarily leased to Krasnov. Skippy didn’t really understand the concept, but Earl had made it clear to our host company that if anything shifty happened concerning the ownership of our Hind they’d have to deal with a very angry tribe of Orcs. And I don’t care how much of a mobster you are, nobody wants to piss off Orcs.
“Spotters got movement on the eastern edge of the fog, looks like they’re preparing to defend against our convoy,” Terry said as he rapidly wrote numbers down on a note pad. Our handful of helicopters and prop planes wasn’t as impressive as the squadron of MIGs Nikolai Petrov had been able to call on, but our fliers still made for great eyes. “Skippy says they are not human. They’re, quote, ‘giant spike bug apes.’”
“Whatever the hell that is, as long as we’re sure they’re not friendlies.” Mayorga flipped channels on her radio. Terry was in contact with the convoy, but every individual Hunter had their own radio, and we were organized into channels and sub channels, by team, responsibilities, and language barriers. Organizing that had been a huge pain in the ass, but I’d made a spreadsheet for everybody so it wasn’t too confusing. Mayorga had memorized every channel. “One oh five team, this is the captain. Fire mission.” She snapped her fingers impatiently, and Terry handed her the note pad. She checked it against the laminated map on the wall to make sure the location made sense, we weren’t about to blast our friends, and then began reading off the coordinates. She waited while they read them back to her. “Confirm. Give them hell.”
We’d snuck in a few test firings of our 105mm howitzer on the voyage here. Since this wasn’t the most stable firing platform, they’d have to time the waves, and an old artillery piece bolted to your deck wasn’t exactly a technological marvel of modern computerized naval gunnery, this probably wasn’t going to be super accurate. Except a 105mm high-explosive shell makes one hell of an impact, so accuracy was a relative concept. There’s that old saying about horseshoes and hand grenades, but in comparison this thing just needed to land in the same zip code.
I stepped out the door to get a better view of the gun crew on the deck ahead of me. They were on the prow, getting blasted with salt spray every time the Bride came back down. It took about half a minute for the five man team to get the gigantic thing dialed in. I love all guns, but I’d never been trained for this sort of thing. These guys had all been artillery in various militaries, and they had been practicing together for the last couple months, so it was like watching a choreographed ballet, only if ballet wasn’t boring, and ended with a really awesome explosion. I made sure my hearing protection was in place. This friggin’ thing was loud. I couldn’t make out what he was saying, but their leader was shouting orders. One Hunter stepped away, pulling on a cord and—
BOOM!
Even fifty feet away the blast still compressed the jelly of my eyeballs. It made me grin. No wonder I’d never met an arty guy who didn’t have hearing damage. I snapped my binoculars up and waited for the impact. It came a moment later on the far side of the fog, throwing up a massive plume of dust and smoke. Nice.
There were a bunch of other Hunters assembled up top, manning the secondary guns, waiting for a chance to do their jobs, and all of them cheered that explosion. Months of training and preparation came down to this. Asag had been working in the darkness, hurting us so many times, it felt good to hit back.
The howitzer had been mounted on what was basically a great big sled to absorb recoil. It bounced back, then slid back into place on hydraulics. Within seconds the gun crew had the breach open and was running what looked like a giant pool noodle up the howitzer’s barrel to clear it, while the others prepped the next shell. They were rolling now. Mayorga must have given them the go ahead to make it rain.
I stepped back into the bridge. The three Hunters in there were snapping short, terse sentences back and forth. Lots of stuff was happening, and none of it was my area of expertise. So I kept my big stupid mouth shut and let the professionals work. The choppers were calling in more targets. The convoy was tearing ass toward the objective, and the Bride was going to beat it like a meat tenderizer until they got too close.
The second howitzer blast rattled the windows and caused dust to rain from the ceiling.
“Skippy says that impact was one hundred meters south of target.”
All things considered, that probably wasn’t too bad, but Mayorga banged her fist against the console in front of her and shouted. “Unacceptable!” She got on the radio and started giving instructions to the gun crew. Her corrections were delivered in this calm, rational, clearly stated manner, but when she hung up it turned into, “I didn’t drive this piece of shit across the top half of the world to miss!” Then she downed the rest of her coffee. “Terry, get me more targets! Pitt!” She stuck her stained mug toward me. It had the logo of the USS Ronald Reagan on it. “Reload.”
“Yes, Ma’am.” I went over to the coffee pot, happy to feel useful.
The howitzer kept up an impressive rate of fire, getting off a shot about once every ten to twelve seconds. They were blasting the crap out of the landing zone. According to the radio chatter, as long as we landed them anywhere in the fog, we were killing something. Keep in mind, the pilots could only see the creatures big enough to stick out of the fog, and there were still plenty of things moving. From up there it must have looked like we’d kicked an ant hill.
“Something is moving along the shore dead ahead.” Through my binoculars I couldn’t make out much through the mist, but whatever it was appeared to be slithering like a snake, only it had to be about the size of a killer whale. “There’s a hell if I know what at twelve o’clock.”
“What does that punk think he’s looking at?” Mayorga said as she lifted the microphone. “We’re getting eyeballed. Twenty mil batteries, ligh
t up that beach.”
Our pair of twin 20mm autocannons let rip. There was one forward, and a second one directly above our roof. I’d never been in the bridge when these had fired before. It was like being inside a metal drum while it was rhythmically beaten with a hammer. Earl had procured these four Oerlikons off of a damaged frigate in the Pacific, shipped them home, and had them in storage since World War Two. Free autocannons? I guess there were some perks to working for a secret organization like Special Task Force Unicorn, or whatever they’d called it back in those days.
Gigantic tracers flew into the fog as the slither whale beat a hasty retreat. The Oerlikons may have been antiques, but they still worked just fine.
“Engine room says they’ve got noise on the outside of the hull. Tapping. Like claws maybe. Possible intruders coming up the port side.”
“Pitt!” Mayorga shouted.
“Here.”
“You heard the man, prepare to repel borders.”
Now that was something I was good at. “Yes, ma’am.”
* * *
With the way Gorod Chudovish seemed to act as some sort of monster magnet, drawing all sorts of nastiness here from across multiple worlds, it wasn’t surprising that there’d be threats from under the water too. So we’d practiced for this.
“Yo, Ponchik! We’ve got company!” I shouted as I ran down the cat walk. “Port side.”
I think he said good but it was hard to tell, because it was drowned out by our howitzer’s muzzle blast. The four men Krasnov had sent to join the Bride took up their weapons and followed me. Since they’d gotten here too late to get put on any of the gun crews, they were my rapid response team for the front of the ship. Trip and four other Hunters were aft. I clicked over and radioed him too. “Trip, it’s Z. Check the sides. Something’s climbing aboard.”
“Roger that.”
The deck was slick with ice and slush as I ran toward the edge. Since going overboard in these waters meant quickly freezing to death, and there was the possibility something might breech us, or we might have to rope up and scrape something off the side, the response teams were all dressed in ridiculous, cumbersome, neoprene, cold water immersion suits, with regular load bearing vests on top. Normally Monster Hunters look kind of bad ass when we go to work, but you can’t really look cool dressed in a bright orange condom.
I reached the safety rail and glanced over the edge. “Oh shit!”
The side of the ship was swarming with bodies. They were ichthyoid, with weird fish features stretched over small, misshapen humanoid forms. Their rubbery skin glistened with slime. Their webbed fingers ended in sharp points. They were climbing, slow and clumsy, but inevitably, like their nasty scaly bodies were suctioned onto the metal. The closest one was only a few feet below and it looked up at me with giant blank eyes, its mouth puckering open and closed like the world’s evilest carp. The scene was nightmare fuel.
I backed up, flipped to the ship’s main channel, and hit transmit. “This is the response team. We’ve got a ton of saughafin coming up. Hundreds. I repeat, hundreds of deep ones.” I motioned with my hands for Ponchik and his men to spread out as they approached so we could cover as much area as possible. “We need backup.”
Mayorga’s voice came over the intercom. “Attention crew. Deep ones are crawling up the sides of our ship. All odd numbered gun teams, go give our guests a warm welcome. Even numbered teams stay on your guns.”
As our howitzer fired again, I peered back over the side. There were so many green bodies churning the water directly beneath us, it was like we parked in a pile of thrashing, twitching fish monsters. It was really disgusting. As the Bride lifted on the waves, it revealed more creatures stuck to the side, like fleshy, nasty barnacles.
Everybody hated deep ones. Mankind had been dropping depth charges on them whenever they were discovered since the twenties. With this many attacking, there had to be a huge settlement right beneath us. They were vile beings, smarter than they looked, with a language, and customs, but as far as we could tell those mostly consisted of kidnapping people to sacrifice to their weird gods.
The others had caught up with me. Krasnov’s representative aboard was Ponchik, a big, muscular, Dolph Lundgren looking dude, who spoke pretty good English. “Fish men.” He turned to me, disgusted. “They will lay their eggs in us!”
“Screw that noise.” I’d left Cazador back with my armor. I figured for this kind of up close and personal business it was Abomination time. I swung my 12-gauge over the side. “Open fire!”
The closest fish man was right beneath my feet, mouth popping rhythmically. Its head exploded so violently that purple blood splattered my survival suit. The four Russians hung their rifles over and let rip, all of us on full auto. There were so friggin’ many of these things that we couldn’t miss.
Bodies ruptured. Limbs were blown off. The swarm kept climbing. Their slime had to be like glue, their bodies were so suctioned onto the metal sides, that even after you killed them, they didn’t fall right away, they just kind of hung there floppy, until they peeled off, all while their fishy brethren kept climbing right over them.
The worst part was that they never made a sound.
I reloaded. “Keep it up!”
“This is aft response team,” Trip said. “There’s more here. The ship is completely surrounded.”
The other Hunters who had left their battle stations reached the sides and joined in. Within seconds the entire ship was surrounded in a ring of continuous small arms fire. The waves crashing beneath us went from ice blue, to pink, to purple, and then into a horrific slime foam as the fish men’s guts chummed the sea.
I went on the main channel. “Mayorga, this Pitt. They must have a settlement right below us. We need to go.”
“If we move we can’t provide fire support to the convoy. They’ve got some big shit in that fog. Hold them as long as you can.”
I let go of my radio and went back to shooting.
“Did we interrupt a fish man orgy or something?” Ponchik shouted.
“That’s really gross, man.” The howitzer fired again. “The skipper says we hold them as long as we can. Pick a zone, cover it!”
Someone else came over the ship’s general channel, but they neglected to identify themselves. I suppose they were a little distracted. “One o’clock high! Incoming!”
I was too busy slaughtering disgusting fish men to see what that meant, but it couldn’t be good.
One of Krasnov’s men had quit shooting to clear a malfunction, enabling a saughafin to get its claws over the safety rails. It turned out as soon as you gave them a proper handhold, they were way faster. He was still wrestling with the charging handle as the monster got its webbed feet onto the deck. I stepped over as I flipped out Abomination’s bayonet, and drove it right through the creature’s brain. I twisted it out in a spray of purple and the thing dropped soundlessly.
“Get your shit together or transition to a different weapon!”
Ponchik berated him in Russian too. The Hunter seemed chastised. Good. It beat having eggs laid in you. He got the malfunction cleared and got back in the fight.
“Tupitsa! Forgive him, Mr. Owen. Sergei is inexperienced.”
“Damn it, I told Krasnov no newbies.” I went back to killing, with blobs of purple brain flying off Abomination’s bayonet with every muzzle blast.
“Da. But it is a party,” Ponchik said as he reloaded. “Sergei is Mr. Krasnov’s first cousin. He employs many relatives. The boss wanted no one to feel left out.”
I don’t know how we pulled it off, but we held them off. I’d fire off a mag, reflexively reload, dump that mag, repeat. I just kept working the muzzle back and forth, blasting everything. I’d fired so many magazines full of buckshot so fast I was getting sore, and since I practice so much that I have literal shoulder calluses, that was saying something. Abomination was getting so hot it was burning my neoprene gloves. It was like shooting fish men in a barrel. It was disturbing. I’d alw
ays been told these creatures were cowardly, only attacking when they had overwhelming force, and they’d bail if you put up sufficient resistance. Only these were downright suicidal. We must have parked on top of the most fanatical fish men in the world.
Suddenly I felt the Bride lurch beneath my feet. Either we’d just started moving again, or there were so damned many fish men underneath us they’d picked us up and were carrying us.
“Oh my gosh. You should have seen what happened when the propellers came on!” Trip exclaimed. “That is the most blood I have ever seen!”
Moving then…
Mayorga came over the intercom again. “All AA gunners back to your stations. Unknown airborne targets closing. 105 team cease fire and help clean up the fish men. We’re driving for the island.”
That was probably a good call. Our howitzer could only keep up that high rate of fire for a few minutes before it got dangerously hot. I really didn’t want to cook off one of those shells. It would probably crack our ship in half.
The Bride slowly moved out of the awful chum puddle. I hadn’t heard the splash as Milo’s special barrels had gotten rolled over the side, but I sure felt them when the depth charges went off. Vast plumes of water were hurled into the air behind us. Water doesn’t really compress in an explosion, so any Deep Ones that had been swimming our way had just gotten mulched.
Luckily, the remaining creatures began detaching from the side of the ship and falling back into the discolored water to get away. We’d survived that wave. I could only imagine how bad it would have gone if they’d made it topside. In a matter of minutes we had killed hundreds of them. The sides of our ship had been painted purple. While Sergei started puking, I checked my chest rig. Most of the mag pouches were empty. I looked down. There were empty plastic magazines all over the deck, and so many shotgun hulls that it looked like a skeet range.
Damn…And we hadn’t even reached the island yet.
“What’s wrong, Owen?” Ponchik asked, obviously excited. “We beat them!”
“That’s a lot of potential bounty money and no bodies to show for it.” We were out of our jurisdiction, but a good argument could be made that these were in league with Asag, and therefore PUFF applicable. We had cameras all over the ship, so hopefully we could get a turn in off of that evidence alone. Fanatic banzai charging saughafin might even be a special case, which would mean requesting a PUFF Adjuster and a big payout. “Just business, you know.”