Battleship (Movie Tie-in Edition)

  The shirt she was wearing under her light jacket was thick with sweat as she walked along a dirt road. It was an access road, probably to accommodate park rangers, and so wider and a bit easier to maneuver. She needed it since she was starting to have trouble keeping her footing on the uncertain side paths, plus she was still worried that Mick might stumble and fall. She was certain he could physically withstand any bumps and bruises he might incur, but she didn’t want his ego to take a battering.

  She needn’t have worried, though. His confidence seemed to be growing with every step. Plus, she realized, he might actually be having an easier time of it in some respects because her heart had to push blood throughout her entire body. Since his legs were truncated, there could well be less strain on his system than there was on hers. “You sure can climb the hell out of a mountain,” she said.

  “This is not a mountain,” he said disdainfully.

  “It’s more of a mountain than that chair you had your ass parked in this morning when I found you.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “You got a little attitude on you there, Miss Admiral’s Daughter.”

  “I don’t have an attitude.” She reached down, picked up a large rock that was in her path and tossed it to the side of the road. “I’m just not real big on strong, competent men not living up to their potential.”

  Mick snorted at that. “You talking about me or the part-time fiancé that’s got that vein on the top of your forehead going like a freight train?”

  His casual reply annoyed the hell out of her, mostly because she despised the notion that she was that easy to read. In point of fact she had indeed been concerned about, and fretting over, Hopper. She just hadn’t thought that it was so obvious.

  Sam was about to tell him that her personal life was none of his damned business. Her job was to make sure he pulled his head out of his ass and made proper use of those extremely expensive legs taxpayer dollars had bought for him. Considering he’d spent the past months alternating between feeling sorry for himself and taking out his anger on physical therapists who were just trying to help him, he hardly had license to be judgmental about Hopper. It was high time he started getting his act together. She was prepared to unload this and more on him, but all of that vanished from her mind when something hurtled past just overhead, with an ear-splitting howl that reminded her of the old stories about banshees her grandmother used to tell her. When you hear the howl of the banshee, death is near. It froze her for a moment, and then the ground beneath her feet vibrated violently in response to whatever the hell it was that had shot past right over their heads, flying so low that it created a massive suction in its wake. Branches, stones, and dirt were all yanked into the air after it, and Sam and Mick—taking refuge behind some large trees—barely managed to avoid being hauled up along with all the detritus.

  Seconds later the noise and jet wash subsided. Sam’s hair was completely askew and she made vague attempts to tamp it back into place, having little to no luck. “What the hell was that?” she said.

  “No idea.”

  “A low-flying jet? Something from the MCB at K-Bay?” That made no sense to her, though. Why would a jet be flying that low? It was insanely unsafe for both the pilot and anyone who might be in the area.

  She knew there was a ridge nearby that would provide them a view of the base. It wasn’t terribly likely that they’d get any answers from this distance, but at least they’d be able to see if fighters were scrambling. Sam clambered toward the ridge, Mick right behind her. No words were exchanged between them as they made their way up to the vantage point: a few minutes later they were staring down in astonishment toward the distant base.

  They couldn’t make out a damned thing. The entire base was blocked by black smoke, blowing away from the ridge.

  “What’s going on down there?” she said.

  “Don’t know. Fire, maybe.”

  “Fire definitely. But what caused it? Maybe we should go down and—”

  “And what? Put it out? I left my fire truck in my other pants.”

  She nodded, silently acknowledging the absurdity of the notion. A couple of additional bodies weren’t going to do any good down there. The base was filled with marines who were trained to handle any situation. They didn’t need a civilian and a soldier with a couple of artificial legs inserting themselves into the middle of it.

  So they returned to the road they’d been hiking and continued on their path. The conversation between them became somewhat muted as they speculated on the cause of the fire at the base, wondering if that was somehow connected with the unseen jet that had hurtled past them at a dangerously low altitude.

  Then they heard the sound of tires coming up the dirt path and they moved to one side, giving way, assuming it was some sort of official vehicle heading toward them. They turned out to be correct, as a police Jeep Wrangler cruised up quickly behind them and then pulled over.

  There was a cop at the wheel who looked like he’d grown up watching reruns of Walker, Texas Ranger, and had modeled himself on them accordingly. Armed to the teeth, he had a name tag that read “Blake.” He looked at Sam and Mick as if they had no business being there.

  “You’re going to need to get off the mountain and find cover,” he said brusquely. He acted as if he was irritated that he needed to take the time to tell them this. “The roads are cut off and we’re evacuating the area.”

  “What’s happening?” said Sam.

  Mick pointed toward the sky. “Something just did a flyby. Does this have anything to do with—?”

  The cop didn’t even let him complete the sentence. “The island is under attack.”

  They were stunned into silence for a moment. “From who?” Mick finally managed to say.

  “We don’t know for sure. They’ve taken out the Marine base. Some people are …” He paused, looking for all the world as if he felt he was insane even for thinking the next words. “… using the word ‘alien.’ ”

  “Alien?” Mick didn’t understand. “You mean, like … Mexicans?”

  Sam didn’t know if she should feel more sorry for Mick or for the cop. She couldn’t keep the skepticism from her voice. “I think he means like little green men from outer space.”

  Mick snorted at that. “Oh, well, that’s not so bad, then. I mean, when they start giving me rectal probes, maybe they can check my prostate while they’re up there.”

  “I’m glad you think this is some sort of big joke,” said Blake. “Meanwhile the Navy’s engaging off the coast—”

  “Wait … what?” Oh my God … Hopper … Stone … Dad …

  As Sam tried to reorient herself around the bombshell that the cop had dropped on her, another Jeep came skidding to a hard stop behind Blake’s. There were three cops in that one. Two cops, with name tags indicating they were Officers Burns and Strodel, were in the front. A third, Kline, was crunched in the back. He hopped out and came around to the Jeep that Blake was driving, hopping into the passenger’s side. He was carrying a shotgun and chambered it meaningfully as he climbed in. It wasn’t a gesture meant to be threatening to Sam or Mick; instead he was simply preparing for whatever it was that lay up the road.

  Sam was still working on processing what Blake had told her. “The Navy? What do you mean ‘the Navy’? Which ship?” She had her cell phone in her hand but wasn’t getting any signal. The bars were flatlined. Piece of crap phone. “Please, can I use your phone? I need to make a call.”

  Blake shook his head. “No service. Phones, radios, everything is dead. Miss,” and he was clearly at the last of his patience, “we need you both off the mountain. Now.”

  “Okay, well,” Mick said, “can you give us a ride down to—?”

  The only response the cops provided was to shift the Jeeps into gear. Seconds later both of them raced up the road, leaving Sam and Mick in a cloud of dust.

  “Well, I feel so much safer now,” said Mick. Then, realizing where Sam’s head must be at, he turned to her and said, ??
?I’m sure semi-fiancé is just fine—”

  She put up a hand, trying to keep her voice from trembling. “Mick, could you just … not. Right now. Just not.”

  “Right. Okay.” He actually sounded borderline contrite.

  She needed a few moments to compose herself. It was one thing if she’d known in advance that Hopper was being deployed to an active war zone. She would have had time to mentally prepare for that and hope for the best. But this had caught her flat-footed. It was just supposed to be war games. Now all of a sudden they were … What? Battling alien invaders? She was suddenly feeling nostalgic for when the biggest problem they had was that Hopper was looking at a court-martial. My God, what’s going to happen next?

  The thought barely had time to cross her mind when there was a hellacious noise from where the cops had gone. The screaming of human voices was combined with the screaming of metal, becoming one huge cacophony of destruction.

  Every bit of common sense would have dictated that Sam run in the opposite direction. Instead she ran toward the source of the upheaval, Mick doing his damnedest to keep up with her. The road curved to the right and suddenly a hand clamped onto her shoulder. She was about to let out a yelp when another covered her mouth and turned her violently around.

  It was Mick, and the perpetual look of annoyance was gone, replaced with total focus on Sam’s safety, not to mention his own. It was easy for her to forget that this was a trained soldier, a man who had been dropped into the middle of life and death situations and come through them … well, alive, if not in one piece.

  He dragged her to the side of the road and whispered fiercely in her ear, “Are you stupid or something? Little Miss Admiral’s Daughter should know better than to go running into the middle of a fight without a clear idea of what she’s getting into. Now stay behind me, got that?”

  She nodded, her eyes wide. Slowly he removed his hand from her mouth. She looked up at him and said quietly, “You caught up with me. That’s … wow.”

  “Yeah, well, stopping someone from doing something incredibly idiotic can be a huge incentive.” Then he put a finger to his lips to indicate they should stop talking. He moved slowly down the road, Sam following behind him.

  Unfortunately stealth was a slight problem because the servos in Mick’s legs continued to whir softly. He winced visibly at the noise and endeavored to keep his legs as straight as possible. If he didn’t move his knees, then the noise was minimal.

  Having taken the lead, he made his way to the bend in the road, gesturing for her to stay back and keep her mouth shut. Whatever the hell had caused the ruckus was gone, but Mick was determined not to run headlong into an unknown situation. Mentally Sam scolded herself; she should have known better and, if he ever heard about it, her father would have something to say.

  Assuming he’s all right.

  Mick peered around the corner, minimizing his own exposure, and then he turned to Sam, looking utterly shaken. He gestured for her to join him, and she did. When she saw what he was looking at, her jaw dropped in astonishment.

  One of the Jeeps was lying on its side. The other had been ripped into a grotesque shape, little more than shredded pieces of metal that wouldn’t have been recognizable as a vehicle if there weren’t tires lying on the road. There were no signs of human bodies in either of the vehicles.

  She saw a large branch of some sort lying on the road, and it was only when she spotted blood seeping from it that she realized it was a human arm. There was a leg nearby, and a piece of a torso—not even the whole thing—that had the name tag “Blake” still attached to it.

  For a moment she forgot where she was, forgot everything except the horror of what she was seeing. Reflexively she opened her mouth to scream, but Mick heard the sharp intake of air and fortunately turned fast enough that he could once again clap a hand over her mouth. He pulled her to the ground behind a tree in order to get out of the sight line of whatever it was that had done this, especially if it was still around. Sam screamed nevertheless, but it was severely muffled by his hand. “Shut up!” he hissed into her ear.

  She breathed heavily. Again. Her eyes were still wide with terror, but she managed enough of a nod that he slowly removed his hand from her mouth.

  “What … what the hell did this?” she said. Speaking too loudly wasn’t a problem; she could barely get any words out at all.

  “I have no idea.”

  Then something stepped into view, something that—although Sam could not have known it—was of the same race as the creature that Hopper had seen standing atop a vessel three hundred miles away.

  The alien being was studying the dead police officers—or the remains of them—with what seemed to be a clinical detachment, as if trying to figure out how they had fit together in the first place before they’d been butchered.

  Then, slowly, its attention turned toward Sam and Mick’s hiding place.

  At which point, Sam completely lost it.

  Her body began to convulse and Mick had no choice but to cover her mouth again. In fact, he had to do more, because her impulse was to scramble to her feet and run like hell. Such a move would have been suicide. She didn’t dare draw that degree of attention to herself.

  But it was as if Sam had completely lost control. She was trembling violently, her eyes were bugging out of her skull, and tears were pouring down her face. It wasn’t just her own safety that was tilting her into the throes of hysteria. It was the realization that the absurd claims the cop had been making were true, and that Hopper was facing a completely unknown enemy that, for all she knew, had already killed him and everyone on his vessel.

  She tried to tear away from Mick but he only held her closer. He said, “Shhhh,” into her ear, and that noise was enough to cause the alien’s head to whip around and look in their direction again.

  Mick quickly wrapped an arm under her chin with the crook of his elbow over the midline of her neck. Then he pinched the arm together and Sam suddenly felt dizzy, as if something had shut off the flow of blood to her brain. And she blacked out.

  She came to some time later, jolted awake by the deafening sound of something else flying low overhead. Sam looked up and saw a vessel that was unlike any air vehicle she’d ever seen. It was huge, and appeared to be composed of two sections. The upper one was long, wide, and flat, like the top of an aircraft carrier. There didn’t appear to be anything atop it, although she couldn’t be sure from this angle. But the front was open, as was the back, allowing for the possibility of smaller vessels flying into and out of it. The lower section, the underside, was two-thirds the length of the upper, deeper than it and with what appeared to be a series of oversized clamps running along either side.

  She was still in the exact same place that she’d been in when she’d passed out.

  The alien was gone. So was Mick.

  She felt a resurgence of the panic that had seized her earlier. Convinced she was alone, Sam had never been more terrified in her life. Then she heard soft movement from up ahead, and for a moment she came close to freaking out again before she heard the telltale sounds of Mick’s hydraulics. Sure enough, there he came around the bend. He looked stunned, as if he couldn’t quite believe what he’d seen.

  So distracted was he that he nearly stumbled over Sam, who was just now sitting up. He crouched in front of her, his eyes flickering with concern. “Are you all ri— ow!” The last was a result of the fact that she’d just punched him in the solar plexus. Not hard, but enough to get a startled exclamation out of him.

  “You put a sleeper hold on me?” she demanded. “You dick!” With no sign of the alien and Mick now speaking in a normal tone, she wasn’t attempting to keep her voice down. “You could’ve killed me if you hadn’t done the hold correctly!”

  “Yeah, I know.” He didn’t seem particularly concerned over her ire, although he was rubbing where she’d struck him. “Because I’ve used it to kill people. So I know how to do it right and I know how to do it dead. Which is what
we would’ve been, thanks to the Predator over there, if I hadn’t done something to shut you up. You okay now?”

  She nodded, although doing so made her neck sore. “What happened after you—?”

  “Dropped you like a bad habit? Well, he was looking right where we were hiding, and he took a couple of steps toward us, and then suddenly that ship showed up and he lost interest. I guess he had bigger fish to fry.”

  “Or bigger planets.” The entire thing seemed demented; she felt like she was running to catch up with events as they were unfolding, except she was on a treadmill, getting nowhere fast while the world sped along without her. “Where did you go?”

  “I followed him. He seemed pretty distracted by the new arrival. I saw others like him, setting up some kind of … I don’t know what it was.”

  “But … what are they?”

  “You mean our new pals? I have no idea.”

  “What are they doing?”

  “If I had to guess … considering that they seemed to be setting up shop with some kind of satellite dishes ahead a ways … they’re building something.”

  “Where is everyone?”

  “Everyone? You mean our armed forces? Our Navy, who’s out fighting them in the ocean? Our marines, who just got the crap blown out of their nearby bases? Gee … I don’t know.”

  “Where’s my father? Where’s Hopper?” Tears, uncontrolled, started running down her cheeks.

  Mick was clearly running out of patience. “Stop,” he said firmly, and there seemed a chance that he might wind up knocking her unconscious again if she didn’t get ahold of herself. She gulped deeply and snuffled a few times, doing the best she could.

  “Mick?”

  “What?”

  “Am I dreaming?”

  His face softened, but only a little. “I don’t think so. I know I’m not, because I know that when I’m dreaming about gorgeous women, there’s no scary aliens around.” Despite the seriousness of the situation, that last comment actually made her smile slightly. “Can you pull it together, Sam? Can you?”