“Run!” screamed Alexis at the security feed. She realized she could scarcely hear her own voice in her blastdeafened ears.
On the bridge, Jonah tried in vain to impart the same message. Find cover, you stupid fuck, he mouthed, waving his arms, oblivious to his own safety.
Buzz didn’t hear Alexis, didn’t hear Jonah, could not have possibly heard them. Alexis saw the Moroccan man in fragments, tiny mosaics as the engagement played out. Buzz’s face, dripping blood from a massive cut across his forehead and scalp. His hands, grainy specs over the security feed, aiming his strange rifle at the submarine’s conning tower. Buzz pulling the trigger, firing a single ineffectual burst towards the man at the quad gun.
He held down the trigger, muzzle climbing as the continuous burst of fire danced across the hardened steel skin of the submarine, missing the anti-aircraft gun entirely and spilling bullets ineffectually into the ocean. The mercenary turned — those reflexes—and took aim.
Pulling his own trigger, the gunner emptied bullets into the bow of the Fool’s Errand, obliterating it. It was almost as if Buzz had said, and for my next trick, I will disappear as he was enveloped in a cloud of fire and pink mist. And that was that, he was just gone, along with the entire bow of the ship, both taken off the face of the earth as if they’d never existed.
At least Jonah still appeared to have his faculties. Alexis saw him find the pearl-handled handgun with one hand and jam it into the belt of his wetsuit. And then he called her over the radio.
“Full power to the engines!” he shouted. She noticed a brief silence — as far as the mercenaries aboard the submarine were concerned, the Fool’s Errand was a burning, shattered hulk. The one remaining console to her right flashed bright red; half of the compartments on the port side were taking on water as one critical system after another died in a cascade of technological failure.
The turbine engines roared to life, propellers supercavitating seawater into frothing bubbles as they spun up to a screaming pitch. Perhaps the Fool’s Errand had a trick or two yet — the props bit into the sea, throwing Alexis to the deck of the engine room as the yacht leapt forward, narrowly cutting across the stern of the attack submarine, full power to the engines, lazily wallowing to starboard as seawater rushed into the lowest deck.
The Somali coastline loomed in front of the bow feed as hurricane-force headwinds and roaring seawater ripped through the bullet-shattered hull of the engine room. Behind them, the submarine took lazy potshots against the stern of the vessel, forcing Alexis to duck as they ripped through critical systems.
She wrenched valves and switches, bodily throwing herself at the remaining hydraulic controls, trying to correct for the highly compromised hydrodynamics of the rapidly leaking hull.
“Come on you bastard!” she screamed at the controls.
Just moments, that’s all she needed. Just moments to get them close to the coastline, away from the submarine. And then probably get captured and executed by pirates. Goddamn fantastic.
The massive turbine engines of the Fool’s Errand sputtered once then caught again. Shit, fuck, shit shit SHIT! The coolant system was shot to pieces, no pressure, the engines already reaching critical temperatures. If one or both of them went — well, the resulting explosion wouldn’t just leave them dead in the water, it would turn the entire stern of the Fool’s Errand into a smoldering ruin.
“Alexis, what is happening down there?” shouted Jonah into the radio. Over the bridge security feed, Dr. Nassiri was on his feet, shell-shocked, staring empty-eyed at the gaping maw that was once the bow.
“It’s bad!” she yelled into the radio.
She realized she sounded scared, terrified. Not the impression she wanted to convey. He could probably hear the screaming mechanical distress of the engine room over the radio. Jonah would know whatever was happening down here couldn’t be good.
“Report!” he shouted.
“We’re shot to pieces!” said Alexis, her own voice distant over the sound of the wind. “All coolants systems are gone; we’re taking on water fast. I’ve bypassed every safety system just to keep us moving but we’ll be dead in the water in seconds.”
Silence over the radio as Jonah weighed his options. No lifeboats; but they’d just be floating orange target practice anyway. The submarine wasn’t here to take prisoners, that much was clear.
Jonah hadn’t released the transmit button on the walkie, and Alexis could hear Dr. Nassiri on the marine radio, screaming out a jumbled distress signal for anyone who would listen, anyone who would help. He pleaded with the submarine to stop the attack, to take mercy on the mortally wounded ship. Alexis could see he wasn’t even transmitting, the marine radio had taken a stray bullet, spilling the electronic guts of the device halfway across the shattered bridge.
“Give me one last burst of engine power,” growled Jonah over the radio. “Anything she’s got left I’ll need over the next fifteen seconds.”
Jonah thrust the joystick to port, bringing the Fool’s Errand around in a violent buttonhook, throwing Alexis to the deck again.
Last stand, thought Alexis. There wouldn’t even be anything left to bring to Texas, she’d just be some dumb American girl who disappeared from a godforsaken part of the world she was never meant to be in the first place.
With immense calm, Alexis bypassed the last of the safety measures and set the engines to full power. She dropped to her knees as the Fool’s Errand thrust forward, ruined bow pushing upwards into the sky as the turbines howled with fury. The Fool’s Errand completed the turn as unrelenting thrust accelerated the burning hulk forward.
It was funny how the mind remembered the little things in a time like this. Like when she first stepped foot on the Conqueror. A few days after walking up on stage to get her diploma for a masters in mechanical engineering with a focus in naval architecture. She’d read about the ship porting in Galveston, so she drove her shit-box car there, stepped on board, demanded to see the engineer and told him she could increase the power of the engines by 8.5 %. The moxie got her an interview; an 11.3 % improvement got her the job. She wondered if her car was still parked at the dock, rusting and moldering away unattended, windows clouded with dust, tires flat, batteries long since dead. She probably should have sold it.
The Fool’s Errand bore down on the submarine, gaining speed. Her instincts were right. Jonah was not a man who liked to lose. Over the video feed, she could see him crouched by a console, Dr. Nassiri at his side.
Surprised by the suicidal act of its cornered prey, the fire from the submarine stopped as the gunner took stock of the changed situation. The moment was all Jonah needed as the Fool’s Errand surged toward the submarine, passing sixty knots in speed, bearing down like a freight train.
“Brace for impact!” shouted Jonah over the radio, his voice echoing through every compartment of the stricken ship. Dr. Nassiri crumpled into a ball and rolled underneath the nearest console as tracer fire arced over the ruined bow and lit up the bridge and engine room with brutal intensity, raining sparks and metal fragments onto Alexis as she tried to find a position where she could survive the coming crash.
The destroyed bow of the Fool’s Errand dropped as the yacht reached hydrofoil speeds, the ship skipping across the water as it zeroed in on the submarine. The gunner froze as the Fool’s Errand threw her keel across the platform, a symphony of destruction. The impact hurled Alexis forward, smashing her face and head against a bulletriddled console.