Джозеф Нассис - SNAFU - Heroes [An Anthology of Military Horror]

“What’s your point?”

“No nation on earth can face your fleet in any version of a surface battle. You have more ships and better military technology, and you can call in more – far more – resources. Everyone knows this. But consider how the Taliban has been able to wage so long and costly a war with your army in Afghanistan, and how they fought the Russians to a standstill at the height of Soviet power. They have no army, no technology. So what do they have?”

“Hit-and-run terrorists who hide among the civilian population and comes at us in small and very mobile groups.”

“Bloody right. It’s the exact kind of warfare that greatly helped you Yanks fight off our larger and better-trained armies during your Revolution.” She spread her arms to indicate the massive saltwater tanks, and the bodies floating inside. “Now imagine the hit-and-run terrorists needed for a war against a fleet. A fleet that can detect any metal ships and which can sweep away any network of mines. Imagine teams of Merpeople who could swim undetected into the heart of your fleet, carrying with them small satchel-charges and non-metallic limpet mines. Enough of them, with the right equipment, could destroy your fleet without North Korea or China launching a single missile. And what defence could you offer? You can’t patrol beneath the surface for something this small and mobile. It’s impractical to the point of impossibility.”

I wanted to tell her that she was out of her mind. That she was delusional. That such a plan was far too wild to ever work.

But the faces of the dead scientists mocked my denials. The powerful bodies floating in the brine told me that my view of the world was relevant to yesterday. Today was a different and much more terrible day.

“I have to call this in,” I said. “I need to get someplace where I can get a clean signal and get every-fucking-body out here.”

She looked at me with her dark eyes.

“Captain,” she said, then amended it. “Joe… you do understand that if this technology is acquired by our people – yours and mine – they’ll do the same thing, continue the same research.”

I said nothing.

“They’ll make monsters, too,” she said, “because the proof is right here that monsters are the next viable weapon of war.”

“Monsters,” I said, echoing the word. It tasted rancid in my mouth. “But what options do we have? The Koenig people are in custody, their research is either slag or it’s in these computers, and we don’t know if they’ve already shared their secrets with the Chinese or North Koreans. If our enemies have these weapons, won’t we have to…”

I heard what I was saying and knew that it was absolutely true and absolutely wrong. It was the trap that has escalated warfare since the invention of the longbow. Since the gun. Since the first nuclear bomb.

It was keeping up with the Joneses in a very real and very ugly way, and unless everyone suddenly came to their senses then how could we avoid committing sins of conscience in defense of our people?

What’s the answer to that question?

Where’s the path that leads us away from ever escalating the arms race?

“Joe,” she said as she walked over to the bank of super-computers, “the Koenig people haven’t sold the information yet. The secrets are all here. The research that was burned was a decoy. All of it is here.”

“You can’t know that.”

“Yes, I can. I do know it.”

“How can you be so sure?”

Without turning she said, “I’m sure, Joe.”

And she said it in Grace’s voice.

Exactly Grace’s voice.

My mouth went dry.

I took a small step toward her. “Grace…?”

“If we destroy these computers, it stops here.”

I licked my lips. “The senior Koenig people are—”

“It stops here. This abomination goes no further.”

I wanted her to turn around. I wanted to see her face. I needed to see the light of Grace’s soul shining out of her eyes. If that was an impossible wish, who cares. We stood in an impossible place.

“Grace…” I whispered again.

And then a sudden violent sound of splashing water broke the moment into pieces. I spun around as three monstrous shapes rose from the pool.

Gray-green skin.

Black eyes.

Rows of teeth.

And webbed hands that ended in terrible claws.

Two of them rushed at me, and one launched itself at Felicity Hope and slammed her back against the computers. Felicity screamed in a voice that sounded like the call of a wounded seagull.

I heard myself yelling. Screaming, really. But the sound was lost beneath the roar of the Mermen who ran at me, and thunder of my gun as I fired and fired.

One of them abruptly spun sideways, his face torn away by a bullet that went on to strike a glass cylinder. The glass shattered in a spray of jagged pieces and gushing water. The occupant of the tube tore loose of the wires and fell heavily to the floor.

I saw this only peripherally as the second creature slammed into me.

He was enormously strong and he drove me ten feet backward and nearly crushed me flat against a concrete wall. Even with the impact I managed to keep hold of my gun, but the monster twisted its head and clamped its jaws around my forearm. Blood exploded and I heard my wrist-bones break. Pain burst with inferno heat inside my arm and I almost blacked out.

But there is a part of me that is as cold and inhuman as these monsters. It’s the part of me that survived the trauma of my childhood by being too vicious to die. It’s the part that somehow allowed me to complete the mission that Grace had died to accomplish, even though it meant facing impossible odds. It was the part of me that could kill despite idealism and compassion. It was the part of me that, on some level that I have never wanted to examine with total clarity, enjoys all of this. The pain, the violence.

The killing.

As my flesh ruptured and my bones broke, that part of me shoved the civilized aspect of my mind to one side. In that moment I stopped being a man and became the thing I needed to be in order to survive this encounter.

I became a monster.

With a snarl as inhuman as the thing that attacked me, I drove my knee up into its crotch, then head-butted the thing so hard I could hear cartilage and bone shatter. I drove my stiffened thumb into its eye, bursting the orb. Then I kicked its screaming, writhing body backward.

My right arm flopped bloody and limp, the fingers feeling like swollen bags of blood. My gun was gone — I had no idea where.

I ran at the monster that now lay twisting on the floor, hands pressed to its bloody eye-socket. Its other eye stared at me with uncomprehending horror. It had killed the scientists in this room. It was a predator thing, designed for slaughter, and now it was hurt and helpless and being stalked by something that did not fear its power.

It raised one hand in defence and I kicked it away, then stamped down hard on its throat.

Without even pausing to watch it die, I whirled toward Felicity.

But she was not there.

Instead I saw the third Merman sprawled in a growing lake of blood, its whole body torn apart so savagely that its arms and legs were attached by strings of meat.

Something bulky and gray shot past me, brushing close enough to strike my uninjured arm. It moved so fast I could barely see it.

It plunged into the water and was gone.

It was not a woman, that much was clear. It looked like an animal.

Almost like an animal.

Its gray fur was criss-crossed by jagged cuts and streaked with blood. Within a moment all that was left was a stain of blood on the eddying waters.

I stood alone in the cavernous lab.

Twenty feet away, the Merman who had fallen to the floor when my bullet smashed its tube was beginning to stir.