Peter David - Battleship

Hopper slowly got to his feet, grunting in pain only once. “You’re making that up.”

“I swear on my life, I’m not. Hell, you can ask her yourself when I introduce you…”

“You… you’d do that?”

“Yeah.”

Hopper crossed the living room and threw his arms around his brother. Stone felt vaguely uncomfortable. “Dude… being hugged by a mostly naked brother… could you, y’know… not?”

“Sorry, sorry.” Hopper stepped back. “Yeah, that wasn’t cool. So… so when do I meet…” His voice trailed off as it sank in. “You’re introducing me after I enlist, aren’t you.” It wasn’t really a question.

“They say you never get a second chance to make a good first impression. But as it turns out, that’s exactly what you have,” said Stone. “You’re going to get spiffed up. You’re going to get enlisted. You’re going to get your life headed in a direction we can all be proud of. And then you’re going to get your second chance to make a good first impression.” He spit in the palm of his hand and held it out. “Deal?”

Hopper sighed heavily. “Y’know… if it were just my own future, I’d tell you to shove it. But we’re talking about the future of my unborn kids, so…” He spit in his own palm and they clasped hands firmly.

It was a cloudless day, the sky an achingly perfect blue. The shouts of “Here! Over here!” and “Watch your back!” filled the field at Kapi’olani Park, a three-hundred-acre expanse named after Queen Kapi’olani, the 19th-century consort to a Hawaiian king. In the distance, Diamond Head loomed, and the more fanciful might imagine gods perched atop it, looking down at the foolish mortals engaging in their meaningless pursuits.

There was an all-purpose expanse of lawn that had been used variously for competitions ranging from football to baseball to just a few kids tossing around a Frisbee. On this particular day, it was host to a soccer game being played so intensely, so brutally, that one might think lives depended upon it.

Instead it was something of far greater import to the players involved: pride.

Over the sideline of the field fluttered a banner that read, “Navies of the Pacific Rim, Welcome to RIMPAC 2012.” No one was paying attention to it, however. Instead the several hundred fans were focused entirely on the game being played, screaming themselves raw with encouragement as two teams squared off for personal and national glory, not to mention bragging rights.

Ten countries. Over one hundred players. This was the third day of a three-day tournament, with more than half the field of competitors eliminated in the round-robin group play of the previous two days. This morning, two of the remaining four countries—Australia and South Korea—had fallen. Unlike the previous day’s losers—who were off in the local bars drowning their sorrow and frustration—this day’s failed champions had hung around, mostly so they could respectively root against whichever of the remaining two countries had managed to knock them out. Thus it was fairly evenly split, with half the sidelined players cheering the United States and the other half rooting for Japan. The rest of the hundreds of spectators were likewise a mix of competing loyalties. There were a couple of scuffles as waved arms led to elbows accidentally striking heads, but for the most part everyone’s attention was upon the activities on the field.

Alex Hopper was currently in possession of the ball, moving it deftly downfield. Running alongside him was Walter Lynch, a man with a build so formidable and a body so hirsute that he had picked up the fairly obvious nickname of “Beast,” even though in his usual day-to-day deportment, he was as mild as they came—except when he needed to be otherwise.

This was one of those occasions, and Beast was not hesitant to throw his weight around. Japanese defenders were doing everything they could to try to get within range of Hopper in order to take the ball away, and Beast was running interference that an NFL linebacker would have envied. He stopped short of knocking people aside with a sweep of his heavily muscled arms, but he was fast enough on his feet to body block anyone who came near, sending more than a few of them falling on their asses.

However, even Beast couldn’t be everywhere. As he was distracted to the right, Hopper saw a player coming in fast from the left. “Beast!” he shouted over the bellowing of the crowd and quickly passed the ball over to him. Beast wasn’t as quick as Hopper, but once he had the ball, all bets were off. An opposing player came in too close and Beast simply knocked him aside, sending him flying off his feet. No one bothered to mount a protest with the referees; the refs—one American, one Japanese—had proven consistently and deliberately blind to anything on the field short of one player trying to rip out another’s throat with his teeth… and even that might have passed uncommented upon.

The Japanese were leading three to two and the time was ticking down.

“Go, go, go!” shouted Stone, who was playing goalie for the Americans and was moving up and down the line.

On the sidelines, Beast’s wife, Vera, was cheering wildly. She was renowned for her easy smile and out-sized personality. She was cradling one of their five-year-old twin boys in either arm. Facially they were dead ringers for their dad. The joke was that they’d probably be sprouting hair on their backs before they hit their eighth birthday.

On one side of Vera was weapons specialist and petty officer Cora Raikes. Copper-skinned, with hazel-green eyes, fiery red hair and a Bajan accent, she was shouting instructions and strategies even though no one on the field could possibly pick out her words. Next to her, matching her enthusiasm, was Seaman William Ord. He was a fairly recent arrival to Hawaii. Wide-shouldered and solidly built, Ord looked exactly like what he was: a farm boy who had spent autumn Friday nights in high school playing football. He was a big believer in the axiom of hoping for the best and expecting the worst. “Tie it up! Tie it up! We’re definitely going into extra time!” he shouted, right after which he muttered under his breath, “This isn’t gonna end well.”

Beast shoved the last defender clear. The Japanese goalie looked ashen, seeing the man-sized equivalent of a locomotive bearing down on him, and then Beast took the shot.

At the last second it was blocked, bouncing off the chest of a defender who appeared to have come out of absolutely nowhere. He deftly took control of it and moved around Beast as if the larger man were standing still.

“Nagata again,” Hopper said with a snarl. Hopper and Captain Yugi Nagata had been going at each other constantly from the first minute of the game. Nagata was the tallest Japanese player—nearly five-eleven—and it gave him reach and speed that most of his teammates couldn’t begin to approach. His black hair was close-cropped, as befit a Navy man, and he wore an expression of perpetual, unflappable superiority no matter what he was doing. It was this, more than anything, that infuriated Hopper.

It didn’t help that Nagata was also a hell of a soccer player.

He started bringing the ball back up the field. Other defenders came in from either side, but Nagata—never taking his eyes off Hopper—shouted an order in Japanese. They immediately peeled off.

So that’s how it’s gonna be? Fine. I get it .

“Back off! I got ’im!” Hopper called out to his teammates. He saw a quick flash of amusement in Nagata’s eyes and knew that he had correctly intuited the captain’s mind-set. With a minute remaining, it was time to square off, mano a mano .