Crysis Escalation

Refuse/Resist





HMS Robin Hood, Shakedown Run, Atlantic Ocean, off the Eastern Seaboard, 2034

Captain Cyrus Harper stared at the hardcopy of the order. He glanced over at the holographic image of the target. He could see the thermal imagery of the forces gathering amongst the ruins of Yonkers. He also noticed that part of the image had been redacted. The part of the image that would have shown exactly what was going on NY. The image had been shot from orbit. He guessed it had been shot by one of the CELL satellites linked to the Archangel orbital weapons platform. Why didn’t they just use that? the cowardly part of him wondered.

‘Sir,’ his executive officer Commander Stevens demanded. ‘We have our orders.’ Harper looked up at his XO. The man was tall, very thin and had a predatory aspect to his features. This had earned him the nickname “the ghoul” amongst the men. He was one of the breed of men that Harper had come to think of as “corporate” officers.

Next to his XO was Lieutenant Zinah Talpur, the commander of the small complement of Royal Marines on the Robin Hood. She looked less than pleased to be involved in this. Not so long ago, it seemed, an XO would have never dared to question – let along try and strong-arm – his captain like this, but things had changed. The navy had been privatised. The CELL Corporation, the monopolistic economic superpower in its own right, had bought the military from an increasingly close-to-bankrupt country.

Many of the officers in the navy had attempted to resign their commission only to find that their “contract terms” had changed. Harper hadn’t been one of them, but then the maiden voyage of the HMS Robin Hood was going to be his last voyage. He had joined at the turn of the century. Now in his mid-fifties, they would either try and give him a desk job or assign him to a training post. The latter appealed more than the former but neither appealed enough for him to stay. He had not renewed his term of service before the buyout. He was still able to leave. The Navy was, if nothing else, an enormous bureaucracy. Once something was done it was very difficult to undo it.

‘Sir!’ His XO was even more insistent now. Harper’s eyes flickered up to see him. He had not liked Stevens from the moment he had met him. He didn’t like his attitude, his style of command or the way he treated the men. He could see the hunger in the XO’s eyes. CELL ownership meant opportunities for the right kind of people. Stevens wanted Harper to refuse the order from their new owners, the order to fire on another sovereign nation to secure corporate interests, so he could take command. For him, career advancement was more important than anything else, even honour.

Harper, however, had misgivings. He didn’t care if the American government had okayed it. He didn’t care that it would be part of what passed for a combined-arms operation under the auspices of CELL. A company with this amount of power didn’t sit right with him. He had always assumed that anti-capitalist sentiments were for hippies and dropouts who couldn’t or wouldn’t play the game. Now he was less sure. CELL seemed like capitalism taken to such extremes it had started to resemble feudalism. That said, he had never disobeyed an order in his life and he wasn’t keen to start now.

‘Mr Stevens. I don’t know who you have served under before, but I am not in the habit of having my XO bark at me,’ Harper began.

‘Sir, it is my . . .’

‘Or indeed interrupt me. I have received the orders. We are still more than seventeen hours away from the point at which they will need to be acted on. I fail to see why you are here acting this way. In fact, I could do with an extremely good reason why I shouldn’t have you removed from duty and confined to quarters. Lieutenant Talpur, frankly I expected better of you.’ The young Pakistani woman at least had the decency to look guilty. Harper was less than pleased when he noticed that Stevens had his sidearm at his hip.

‘Sir, you do not have the authority to remove me from command,’ Stevens said, a little too smugly for Harper’s taste.

Captain Harper’s anger moved like a thundercloud across his face.

‘Why? Has God come on board in the last five minutes?’

‘Sir, these are decisions being made at board level by CELL command. They feel that you may not be prepared to properly execute their orders.’

‘And I wonder where they got that opinion from?’ Harper demanded. His reply was one of Steven’s thin, evil little smiles. That was it. He turned to Talpur.

‘Lieutenant, do you still recognise me as Captain of this ship or are you in mutiny as well?’

‘Now just a minute!’ Stevens objected.

‘You, sir, will remain quiet!’ Harper shouted. He rarely raised his voice.

‘Yes, Captain, but . . .’

‘Mr Stevens, you are relieved of command. Lieutenant, escort Mr Stevens to his quarters and confine him there.’

‘Mr Stevens,’ Lieutenant Talpur said, gesturing towards the door. He turned to look down at the much smaller woman.

‘Are you out of your mind?!’ he demanded.

‘Don’t make this any more difficult than it has to be please, sir.’

Stevens swung round to face Harper again.

‘You’re going to pay for this!’ he spat.

‘Another word and you’re confined in the brig. Lieutenant, relieve Mr Stevens of his sidearm, please. Leave it on my desk and escort him out of here.’

The lieutenant removed Steven’s M12 Nova from his holster and laid it on the Captain’s desk. She all but had to drag the protesting XO out of Harper’s stateroom.

Harper sagged in his chair as soon as the door closed. He had lost his temper and he knew it. He had let the evil little shit get under his skin and he had done something rash.

He glanced over at the half-full bottle of good whiskey next to the model of the 55-gun ship-of-the-line HMS Prince Royal. He desperately wanted a drink but knew he wouldn’t succumb to the desire. Not this time.

Any kind of ruckus of this nature on a Royal Navy ship meant a serious black mark on everyone involved’s record. The problem was he didn’t appear to be in the Royal Navy anymore. It seemed that they were even going to change the name of the ships. They would no longer be His Majesty’s Ships.

He glanced in the mirror over the sink in his cramped stateroom. He was tall, craggy, and had a hooked nose, which along with his eyebrows gave him a bird-of-prey-like appearance. Despite having waged constant war against middle-aged spread he normally thought that he was doing well for his age. Today he just looked tired, tired and old. He cursed this so-called “anti-CELL” resistance movement. If only they had left it another month before starting, he would have been out of the navy.

He could understand why CELL wanted some assurances that he would follow orders when the time came. If he balked at the last moment it could really mess up their plans. CELL had a lot of influence with the US government and although they had managed to buy the US Marines, which effectively had its own navy and air force, it had not bought the US Navy. The HMS Robin Hood was their best hope for a naval bombardment in the area. Though why they hadn’t chosen to use what had been, until recently, the US marines was beyond him.

Most of the conflicts that Harper had served in during his thirty years had been so-called low intensity conflicts: Iraq, the London Emergency, Sri Lanka, Columbia, even dealing with Ceph nests. Too many of them had involved him firing guns or missiles into civilian centres. Next to none of them had been stand-up fights. Once again his targets were ‘terrorists’. He knew that Yonkers had mostly been evacuated when CELL had effectively annexed New York in the wake of the Ceph invasion. On a conceptual level, Harper still had problems with an alien invasion of New York.

The problem was, he knew the people he was being asked to bombard. Not personally, though it wouldn’t surprise him if there were a few familiar faces amongst them. But these were the same people he had known all his life. They were military people. He had served with their like. He understood why they were fighting. They were angry about the stranglehold that CELL’s energy monopoly had on the world and their privatisation of the militaries of a number of different nations.

He knew his orders were wrong, but he’d known orders had been wrong in the past. He had been aboard HMS Anguish when her Captain had been ordered to fire on south London in the face of widescale social disorder. That had been wrong. He’d spent the next four years as a functional alcoholic as a result of watching the south London skyline burn.

More than once he had questioned orders to fire on civilian population bases in Sri Lanka. By questioned he meant internally, of course, not out loud. He couldn’t afford to not play the game, not in His Majesty’s Navy. Not if he wanted a career.

At least he knew that he would be firing at soldiers who were under arms and intent on violence. He just wasn’t sure he disagreed with them. Just like he didn’t want to be taking orders from a rapacious multinational company.

Just one more month. Rachel and he had intended on using what was left of their savings, the little they had managed to protect in this apparently never-ending recession, and their paltry pensions to buy a place in Dorset. She would continue to teach, he was hoping to get work as a consultant for companies with ship building contracts with the navy.

He slumped in the chair and looked at the whiskey again. He knew what the easy option was. He knew what he owed Rachel, particularly after she had stood by him after the London emergency. After all, it wasn’t as if he hadn’t bombarded cities from the sea before.

What he needed was intelligence. The problem was that he was the only one he trusted with gathering the information. He didn’t want to leave the ship – in fact, it could be seen as treason – but he was running out of options. Actually, you old fool, you still have two, you just don’t like them, he thought. He didn’t trust his new employers. The Royal Navy wasn’t meant to be the enforcement arm of a multinational corporation. He needed to know more about the armed insurrection. The resistance wouldn’t risk their comms discipline to speak to him. That left speaking to them face-to-face, and the only person he fully trusted to do that was himself. He told himself that it was because he wanted to make an informed decision. He stood up and left his cramped cabin.

Harper reflected that he had a love-hate relationship with the HMS Robin Hood as he made his way towards the bridge through the ship’s narrow corridors. It was a superb vessel. It had a trimaran hull that incorporated SWATH – Small Waterplane Area Triple Hull – technology to minimise the ship’s volume at the surface area of the sea, where it would encounter resistance from wave energy. This meant reduced acoustic and wake signatures, which added to the vessel’s stealth capabilities. It also made the guided-missile stealth destroyer very fast. During test runs they had managed to get the ship up to speeds of just under sixty knots.

It packed a punch as well, even though its stealth properties precluded it from having the main gun that many other ships of its class were armed with. It had been designed as a near-invisible missile platform, a surface ship with comparable stealth capabilities to a submarine. Although without a main gun, it was armed with two fully automated 30mm Bushmaster auto-cannons and two rotary, radar guided, 20mm Phalanx close-in weapon systems designed to shoot down incoming missiles. As well as air defence missiles and ship-to-ship torpedoes it also carried 24 CVS401 Perseus multi-role cruise missiles.

Its inward sloping, or tumblehome, hull design, its lack of vertical surfaces or right angles and its construction out of hardened, molecular-bonded carbon fibre all added to a reduced radar cross section as well as reducing its heat and sonar signature.

However, the most impressive aspect was the cloak. An array close to the stern of the ship was capable of projecting a lensing field that bent light around the ship. This effectively made the Robin Hood invisible when it was stationary or travelling at speeds below twenty knots, and significantly obscured views of the ship at speeds in excess of twenty knots.

Harper had had to see it before he believed it. He was still less than convinced that the cloak wasn’t going to give the entire crew cancer. Allegedly developed from technology derived from the US government’s Project Rainbow, a smaller version of the cloak was rumoured to have been utilised by US special forces operators in the Pacific during the Lingshan incident and again in New York during the Ceph incursion.

The cloak was the reason that Harper had a love-hate relationship with the Robin Hood. Not because there was something sneaky, or indeed un-gentlemanly about an invisible ship, though the old fashioned, traditional, hidebound part of him felt there was. The hate he felt for this amazing ship stemmed from the cost.

A company that had been bought out by CELL had built the ship. The cloak had doubled the price of the vessel and the ship had come in significantly over budget. The Robin Hood and its two sister ships had significantly contributed to the financial strain that had forced Britain to sell its navy, which, despite its size, was arguably the best in the world. CELL had squeezed and squeezed the Admiralty, and then the Treasury and then the government. That was why Harper found himself hating the ship, despite how hard its capabilities tried to woo him.

The bridge was in the centre of the ship. It contained a series of dark carbon-fibre workstations illuminated by the holographic projections from the various departments: helm, weapons, engineering, communications, navigation etc.

Lieutenant Commander Samantha Swanson didn’t seem surprised to see the Captain, despite it being her watch.

‘Captain on the bridge,’ she announced, saluting. Harper returned the salute. She relinquished his raised leather swivel seat, which allowed a commanding view of the bridge, and stood with her arms behind her back by the navigation area. She was too professional to question or even show any reaction to his presence, though Harper guessed that Stevens almost certainly would have spoken to her and she would be aware of the Robin Hood’s orders.

Harper had worked with Swanson before, and had found the tall, sandy-blonde-haired woman to be a capable officer. He had recommended her for XO of the Robin Hood, which might have resulted in her eventual captaincy of the vessel but politics, and it was starting to look like corporate rather than Admiralty politics, had resulted in Stevens being foisted on him.

‘Navigation, plot a course to the west end of Long Island Sound, please. Engineering, enable the cloak. Helm, I want you to remain steady at twenty knots. Let’s see if this cloak can do everything they say it can. We are going to be giving our new employers a demonstration of their stealth technology.’

‘Sir, should we make Liberty Station aware of our new heading?’ Midshipman Walters, the head of comms, asked. Liberty Station was the CELL installation at New York that was ostensibly in command of the Robin Hood at the moment.

‘The purpose of this exercise is to test the Robin Hood’s stealth capabilities. We are going to see how close we can get to New York without being detected. Comms discipline will be maintained.’

‘Aye sir.’

Swanson glanced at the Captain but said nothing. She knew he was disobeying orders, and those that knew the purpose of the Robin Hood’s mission out here also knew that they could bombard the rebel positions in Yonkers from over a hundred and fifty miles away if they so wanted. A few people swapped glances but nobody raised any objections.

He felt rather than heard the background hum of the cloak as it initialised. The ship changed course. Even on the choppy sea the ship’s ride was so smooth it felt like they were sailing silently across silk.

They passed the lights of New London, New Haven, Bridgeport, Norwalk and they were heading towards Stamford on the northern, Connecticut shore of Long Island Sound. To the south, Long Island itself was dark. After the Ceph incursion and CELL’s aggressive land grab, real estate prices had plummeted horribly. Now the wealthy neighbourhoods like Port Jefferson and Whitestone had been abandoned. Empty mansions were homes for the displaced poor from the city, rats and wild dog packs.

Despite the tension that he could feel in the bridge, Captain Harper was appalled at how easy this was. Particularly as by now CELL must know that the Robin Hood was missing.

‘Mr Hamilton, will the East River provide you with any significant problems?’ Harper asked.

‘Er . . . no, sir,’ Lieutenant Hamilton said, not sounding entirely sure of himself. Harper had never worked with the plump moustachioed man before, but he had reviewed the navigation officer’s record and it had seemed more than adequate. You had to be something of a high flyer to have been posted to the Robin Hood.

Closer to the city, more and more of the surrounding habitation had been abandoned. There was mile after mile of dark empty buildings that used to be some of the most desirable real estate in the world. Now they were ghosts of suburbs and, as they got closer to the city, the neighbourhoods of New York. The only light or movement was from the occasional CELL patrol vehicle or helicopter, their searchlights lancing through the darkness.

What had once been a very busy waterway was now all but empty. The patrol vessels they did see in the distance, mainly CELL but some were US Navy, they gave a wide berth to. Nobody challenged them. Nobody even noticed them. The stealth field was working perfectly.

‘This is obscene,’ one of the ratings in the comms section muttered before being shushed. Harper wasn’t sure that he disagreed.

As they entered the East River, New York was a faint glow to the southwest.

Inside the bridge the silence was only broken by the occasional quietly spoken instruction. The tensest moment came when they passed within two hundred feet of a patrol vessel. The craft’s searchlights were being played across the dark riverbanks on either side of the river. They were presumably looking for resistance fighters. Lieutenant Chalmers, who ran the weapons section, glanced up at Harper but the Captain said nothing. He wasn’t even sure what he was going to do if they were discovered. Would he fight or surrender? If he fought would the crew follow his orders? The searchlight must have shone straight through the Robin Hood but the patrol craft did not notice them.

How can they not be aware of something this size so close to them? Harper wondered. Can’t they feel us?

‘Helm, bring us to within five hundred feet of the northern shoreline,’ Harper ordered. To the south of them was Rikers Island, the infamous prison now abandoned following the attack on New York. Information was exchanged rapidly, verbally and electronically, between navigation and the helm. Harper felt the ship change direction. ‘Hold position here. Lieutenant Commander Swanson, the planning room, if you will.’

The captain stood up and headed to the room adjoining the bridge. Swanson followed him. The room contained a conference table with a holo-projector in the centre and workstations around the side. Other than a picture of HMS Hood the room was bare.

‘Sir?’ the lieutenant commander asked, barely suppressed curiosity written all over her face.

‘I’ll be blunt, are you prepared to follow my orders?’ he asked.

‘Are these in contravention of our orders from CELL?’ she asked, equally bluntly.

‘I will say no, they are not,’ he lied, and he lied obviously. Understand what I can’t come out and say, he willed her. Take the word of your Captain when he lies to you. This would be the only protection she would get. It probably wasn’t enough. He saw the understanding on her face.

‘You can trust me, sir,’ she told him. He nodded, believing her.

‘I am going to be leaving the ship,’ he told her.

‘Sir . . .? Why?’ Her surprise was visible.

‘To gather intelligence.’

‘Sir, we have people . . .’

‘I . . . we need to make an informed decision. It needs to be me, I’m afraid.’

Now the young Lieutenant Commander looked less sure.

‘Does that change your decision?’

Swanson gave it some thought.

‘No, sir, I don’t believe it does,’ she told him, resolved.

‘You know, with me gone there will be a lot of pressure . . .’ She just nodded. ‘Very well. My standing orders are to remain here and remain hidden until I return.’

‘And if you don’t, sir?’

They now had eight hours before they were due to fire on Yonkers.

‘Then I am afraid the decision will be down to you,’ he told her. He left out that it would come down to her conscience. He left out that regardless of her decision it would haunt her for years. He knew Swanson to be twenty-eight years old, young for her rank. Too young for a decision like this, he thought.

She swallowed but nodded.

‘Rules of Engagement, sir?’

‘You will only fire if the lives of the members of this crew rely on it. The emphasis is on being sneaky.’

‘The ghoul? I mean Commander Stevens?’

‘He remains confined to quarters. If he gives you any trouble then put him in the brig.’ She nodded. ‘Anything else?’

‘No sir.’ She went to leave but hesitated. She turned back and offered her hand. ‘Sir, it’s been an honour.’

Harper looked down at the hand.

‘I am intending on coming back,’ he told her, smiling. She nodded and went back to the bridge.

Lieutenant Talpur’s cabin-come-office was next to the bunk area for her marines and it was tiny. This wasn’t too much of a problem for the Lieutenant as she was quite small. It was unpleasantly cramped for the Captain.

The Lieutenant handed the Captain a mug of tea.

‘I’ll be blunt. Can I trust you?’ the Captain asked. Talpur’s presence during Stevens’ insubordination earlier had soured his view of the marine officer. She sighed.

‘That it has come to this,’ she muttered.

‘Lieutenant, we don’t have a lot of time.’

‘It never occurred to me that I would ever disobey an order from the Captain of a ship that I was stationed on. The problem is, our chain of command has changed.’

‘An officer still has the right to refuse to follow orders for reasons of conscience.’

‘Until the terms and conditions of our contract are changed, and then their career will be over.’

‘Do you want a career in this service?’

The Lieutenant looked at the Captain, holding his eyes for a long time, measuring him, trying to decide what to say. She rubbed her face tiredly. ‘No.’ The Captain started to say something. ‘But I want to put food on the table for my family. I’m not sure that I have the luxury of your principles, sir.’

Neither do I, Harper thought as his heart sank. Although small in number, the marines would be crucial in maintaining control of the ship.

‘So I can’t rely on you, Lieutenant?’

‘No, sir, I’m sorry.’

She slid a piece of paper across the table. Harper picked it up and read the list of six names on it. Lieutenant Talpur’s was at the top.

‘Lieutenant?’

‘You need to relieve me of command and confine these men to quarters, as they all have dependents and quite frankly too much to lose. Sergeant Martin is unmarried with no children that he is aware of. He is also an outspoken critic of CELL . You can rely on Sergeant Martin, sir.’

‘The men won’t like that.’

‘And women. It’s been discussed, sir.’

Harper looked at the list and then back to the Lieutenant.

‘Thank you, Lieutenant.’ Talpur just nodded. ‘There is one other thing, Lieutenant. Do any of your men . . . people . . . have criminal records?’

Talpur looked pained.

‘Sir, a number of my people are in due to the Offenders Conscription Act. What do you need?’

‘A car thief, ideally.’

‘A Liverpudlian, then? I have just the man.’

It had been incredible, Harper thought. The inflatable raiding craft had been lowered between two of the trimaran hulls. Looking up and around him he could see the composite carbon-fibre of the ship’s structure. As the coxswain had taken the boat out from under the Robin Hood’s superstructure Harper had felt a moment of ionisation as they had gone through the lensing field. He glanced behind him and the Robin Hood was nowhere to be seen.

The other three people didn’t seem to be enjoying his moment of wonder as they made their way slowly and quietly towards the dark Bronx shoreline. The coxswain was intent on piloting the boat. Private Fry, more frequently known as Scouse, was manning the MMG at the prow of the small craft. Corporal Fenn, a tough young woman from rural north Yorkshire, had her SCAR assault rifle at the ready and was scanning the surface of the river as they headed towards the Bronx shoreline.

Harper knew that the Bronx borough of New York used to have a fearsome reputation for crime, particularly the South Bronx. Now all they would have to worry about was the occasional groups of homeless, even more occasional CELL patrols, and wandering dog packs. Though there were rumours of leftover Ceph bioforms. Despite having seen the whole thing on the news and acting as part of the rapid response force formed as a result of the alien incursion, Harper still had problems crediting the whole thing. Aliens on the streets of Manhattan still seemed too much like science fiction to him.

With a navigator’s eye Harper had used landmarks on the surrounding riverbanks to triangulate the position of the Robin Hood for his return journey. He was carrying a GPS device and had memorised the co-ordinates of the ship but he would not input them until the last minute in case someone got hold of the device.

They had come in under a rotting pier. Harper had told the coxswain to wait there for eight hours or until they returned. They had found a ladder that didn’t look too rotten and headed up into the eerily quiet borough.

A four-wheel drive vehicle would have been more useful, but the only thing that Private Fry had managed to find and get working was a compact. They had siphoned as much fuel as they could find whilst Corporal Fenn watched over them. In the distance they could hear the howls of a hunting dog pack. Further afield they could see lights in the sky. A CELL helicopter, heading towards Manhattan and whatever it was that CELL was doing there.

The sound of the compact’s engine starting up seemed incredibly loud amongst the dark, empty streets.

With two big marines and their weapons, the interior of the compact was quite cramped. Both the marines, like Harper, were out of uniform, wearing what dark-coloured civilian clothing they had found. They were still wearing their webbing, however.

‘I think it only fair to warn you that if we’re caught in civvies we may be executed as spies. If either of you want to back out, I’d understand,’ Harper told them. Fenn said nothing.

‘I hope we see one of these Ceph,’ Fry said in his strong Scouse accent as he flipped the night vision goggles down over his eyes. ‘I’ve never seen an alien before.’

Fry had studied the map, and many of the old street signs were still present. The Scouse marine had adeptly navigated through the abandoned city. They’d had to detour around rubble, push burnt wrecks of cars out of the way and, with an eye on the deadline, their journey had seemed horribly slow.

Harper had visited New York on a number of occasions. The place had always seemed teeming with life. This ghost husk of city he found impossibly eerie.

They had caught sight of Manhattan on several occasions. It was lit up, but lit up like a construction site. Much of the most famous skyline in the world was dark and broken-looking from damage received during the Ceph invasion. Harper could see new structures going up but struggled to make out what they were from this distance.

They saw nothing on their journey, not even wild dogs, the only movement the lights in the sky from the helicopters over Manhattan.

They crossed over the Bronx River and into Southeast Yonkers. The city was built on a number of hills rising from the Hudson River in the west. Like everywhere else, it seemed deserted. They were travelling along a wide road lined with empty apartment buildings and deserted businesses.

‘Sir?’ Fry asked.

Harper knew that the Resistance had spread out across the city in a bid to avoid making themselves one big target. Harper knew that this was one of the areas where CELL’s Archangel orbital weapons platform had found heat readings.

‘I would imagine they should find . . .’

Headlights dazzled them. The glare momentarily blinded Fry, and he cried out as he simultaneously tried to push the NVGs up and bring the car to a halt. Harper was thrown forwards but was aware of Fenn bringing her SCAR up to bear. Fry was reaching for his weapon.

‘Wait! Stand down!’ Harper shouted. Some kind of aging armoured vehicle had been pulled across the road in front of them. There were dark figures running towards the car. The car doors were yanked open and Harper found himself face down on the tarmac, his hands being cable tied behind his back.

Harper felt that his explanation, that he was the captain of a stealth missile destroyer well within firing range of them and that he needed to speak with their commanding officer, lost something of its import when delivered through a black hood.

They had been searched, searched again, searched one more time in a way that bordered on violation, and marched to a number of different places before finally being tied to chairs. Harper’s hood was removed and he found himself sat on a chair in a basement that had several inches of water covering the floor. Fenn and Fry were on either side of him, still hooded.

There were three people in here, all male. The first was a stern looking Caucasian man in his early sixties wearing urban pattern combat fatigues that looked very worn but still serviceable. He was in excellent physical condition for his age. His arms were crossed and he looked less than pleased to see Harper and the marines.

The second man was Hispanic. His hair was closely cropped, and he looked to be in his early thirties. He wore sleeveless jungle pattern fatigues under body armour and had an enormous Majestic revolver holstered at his hip.

The third man was sat opposite Harper. He had no hair and was thin, verging on the gaunt. He looked to be in his eighties but in very good shape for it. His eyes seemed younger, somehow. They were very much alive. He looked familiar to Harper, like someone he had seen on television.

‘Do you know who I am?’ the man asked. He had a strong German accent. Harper finally placed the man.

‘You’re Karl Ernst Rasch, the ousted head of Hargreave-Rasch BioChemical,’ Harper said warily. He glanced at Fenn and Fry.

‘And Cry-Net Systems, who own CELL , who in turn now own the Royal Navy. Or should that be the CELL navy?’

‘My name is . . .’ Harper started.

‘We know who you are. We have had your identity confirmed.’

Harper didn’t even ask how.

‘And these gentlemen?’ Harper asked.

‘Don’t particularly want their names known,’ the stern-looking man said. He was clearly used to command. Something about him made Harper think special forces. He wore no insignia on his uniform, just a small stars and stripes patch on one shoulder.

‘You are the Captain of the Robin Hood?’ Rasch said. Harper nodded.

‘They know where you are,’ Harper told them.

‘That was to be expected. Whilst I was CEO at Hargreave-Rasch I was aware of the contract to provide the Robin Hood. I am aware of its rather frightening capabilities. CELL have chosen not to deploy what used to be the US marines in New York due to fear of mutiny. Provably loyal CELL military contractors defend the city. In many ways, the Robin Hood is our biggest threat.’ He paused as if considering something. ‘Some would say it is an odd thing for its Captain to be riding around South East Yonkers at this time of night.’

‘I need to know why,’ Harper told Rasch. Corporal Fenn turned her head as if to look at him through the hood.

‘Are we courting the HMS Robin Hood?’

‘I need to know that this isn’t some kind of corporate vendetta.’

‘Think we’d be here if it was, ese?’ the Hispanic soldier asked him.

‘Please take the hoods off my men,’ Harper said. ‘And we’re unarmed, you can remove our restraints, you have my word that we will take no actions against you.’

The Hispanic soldier laughed. Rasch looked to the stern-looking soldier, who nodded. The Hispanic soldier took the hoods off Fry and Fenn and then cut the cable ties off their hands with a knife that bordered on machete-sized. The marines rubbed their wrists and looked around but said nothing.

‘I would imagine,’ Rasch began. ‘That like most rational people, you have significant doubts as regards the privatisation of previously national militaries.’

‘A national military is accountable to its government and ultimately to its people. A company is accountable to its shareholders at best, but more likely its bottom line.’

‘I left Hargreave-Rasch, a company I helped found . . .’ That can’t be right, Harper thought. Somewhere at the back of his mind he was sure that the biomedical company had been founded in the early 20th century. ‘Because I had become significantly concerned with its practices. The company as itself was out of control. There was no one person running it, no strong personality with a grasp of morality at the helm after the death of my partner Jacob Hargreave.’

‘Yourself?’

‘It was easy to get rid of me when I started objecting to policy. There was a board-wide vote of no confidence. The problem is that it is a company doing what a company will do, taking corporate capitalism to its nth degree because there is nothing to tell it to stop. With the energy monopoly, it now has endless resources. It has stopped being something that we would recognise as a business. Instead it behaves like a particularly rapacious virus. It will consume and consume until there is nothing left. It is the corporate meme out of control, and it will settle for nothing else than total global domination.’

‘Is that not the nature of the system?’ Harper asked.

‘Do you mean, “has someone won capitalism”?’ Rasch asked.

The stern-looking soldier snorted and shook his head.

‘Tell that to the people it’s enslaving, holmes,’ the Hispanic soldier said grimly.

‘This “live debt-free” scheme?’ Harper asked.

‘See, the energy they have is supposed to be generated free, right?’ the Hispanic soldier continued. ‘So they undercut the opposition and drive them out of business, then the costs start rising and rising. People get in debt if they want to be warm and cook and shit. So they look at this scheme, but once they’re in that’s it. They never quite seem to get out of debt. CELL owns them.’

‘Modern day indentured service,’ Rasch said. ‘And it’s not like they can really refuse to use CELL’s products. Now I’m the first to admit that democracy is a flawed system. It certainly got in my way more than once when I was CEO, and we used well-paid lobbyists to hijack it when it suited us to do so. At its basest democracy is legitimatised mob rule but I suspect we’ll miss it when it’s gone.’

‘And you feel a terrorist attack is the way to get your point across?’ The two soldiers with Rasch bristled at the word “terrorist”. Fry was trying to suppress a grin. Corporal Fenn remained impassive but kept on looking behind her into the darkness in the corner of the room.

‘If I could vote against it, write to my congressman or otherwise do anything about it, I would. I was probably the singularly most well-placed person to stop this company running out of control and I couldn’t. We’re not trying to get our point across, or terrorise anyone. We have a very specific goal to accomplish.’ The craggy-faced soldier cleared his throat. Rasch turned to look at him. ‘We will get nowhere with half-truths and obfuscations, Major.’ He turned back to Harper. ‘We are going after the mechanism for the CELL global monopoly on energy. The Ceph are a threat, and we will deal with them later, but right now we need to prevent my old company becoming even more powerful.’

‘It’s here in New York?’

Rasch didn’t answer. The stern-looking major looked less than pleased. Harper realised that he was dead if he didn’t join them. It might not even be that simple. Even if he agreed he would have to convince them he meant it.

‘They’ll hit you with the Archangel,’ Harper told them. Rasch was shaking his head. ‘They have to. If the source of their control is in the city they’ll have no choice.’

‘They can’t risk it. They may damage some of their valuable resources. Captain, it’s no coincidence that CELL are using New York as their base. They are harvesting the aliens’ technology and believe me, the last people in the world you want with that technology is a global super power that is accountable to no-one. Not if you ever want to live free again.’

‘Hyperbole,’ Harper said, finding himself angry. No, not angry, he thought, frightened.

‘We look like peaceniks, pinkos and hippies to you?’ the Major asked. ‘You know military men and women. What do you think it would take for them to get to the point where they are prepared to take an action like this?’

Distractedly Harper noticed Fenn glancing behind again. He was tempted to look himself.

‘I think you know this is true, Captain. I think that you have watched it slither slowly in over the past few years like a snake. I think you’ve known it was happening but desperately wanted someone else to handle it. Well, we’ve run out of people to handle it. There’s just us, here, now and as you can imagine we have a lot to do so I’m afraid I’m going to have to press you for an answer.’

Harper swallowed hard.

‘I’ll help you,’ Harper said. Somehow it still felt like betraying his country. Rasch nodded and then looked into the corner where Fenn had been looking.

‘Dane. Is he telling the truth?’

Harper watched as darkness seemed to recede around a massive and very powerful looking figure. It’s a cloak, Harper realised in amazement. The revealed figure was bizarre. It wore some sort of armoured exoskeleton made of thick, muscle-like cable. Half of the armour’s torso and helmet were painted white to resemble a skull and bones. Beads, feathers, bones and the skulls of rodents and birds were affixed to the armour in various places. The armoured figure wore a number of dog tags on a chain around his neck. There was a large automatic at his hip and he had some kind of sniper rifle in a sheath across his back.

‘His stress markers are all to shit,’ a surprisingly spacy sounding voice said. ‘But he’s telling the truth.’ The figure was looking away from the six people, as if staring at something none of them could see. Harper, Fenn and Fry were staring at the armoured man.

‘Are you an alien?’ Fry asked. The figure turned around to look at the scouse marine.

‘No,’ he said simply. The scouser looked crestfallen.

‘Yes, I could see why you’d be disappointed,’ Harper said to the marine.

Dane turned to Fenn. ‘You’re good.’

Fenn didn’t reply. She just watched the figure suspiciously.

Rasch looked up at the major.

‘Major Winterman?’

The Major was giving some thought to this.

‘I don’t like this,’ Winterman finally said. ‘There are too many ifs. Yes, the Robin Hood would be of a tremendous amount of use, possibly pivotal, but even allowing for the good captain’s willingness he still has a sizeable crew that needs to do as he says.’

‘The Major is right,’ Harper said. ‘Normally the discipline on a royal navy ship is excellent. CELL’s takeover has changed things. There are elements on board that would oppose supporting you and others who would wish to distance themselves from being seen to be doing so.’

‘I’ll go with him,’ the armoured figure said casually, though his focus still seemed to be elsewhere. ‘It’ll be fun.’ Harper turned to look at the bizarre but obviously powerful individual.

‘Dane, we’ll need you in the final assault.’ Major Winterman said.

‘S’cool, man. You got a boat you can loan me?’ Dane asked a surprised Harper.

‘Er . . . yes, an IRC.’

‘I’ll watch the rockets, it’ll be like the Fourth of July, man. Really pretty. Then make the rendezvous with my man Chino.’ He nodded towards the Hispanic soldier, who nodded back smiling at the armoured figure.

‘It’s your decision, Major,’ Rasch said. The Major gave it more thought but then nodded to Chino. Chino took a laminated map out of one of his fatigue pockets and gave it to Harper. It was a map of New York with grid references and co-ordinates on the back.

‘Our biggest problem, captain, is a series of automated and manned gun emplacements. They have near total coverage and can deny us movement on street level,’ the Major told him.

‘What about moving underground?’ Harper asked as he studied the co-ordinates.

‘Much of the city is still flooded, much of the underground may still be extensively damaged due to Ceph action, and we can’t know what changes CELL have made beneath the streets. If the Robin Hood takes these gun emplacements out you will save a lot of my people.’

‘The spirits of dead warriors will look on you and know you to be righteous,’ Dane said. Fry was staring at the armoured figure and then started to laugh.

‘Don’t worry about my man Lazy Dane none,’ Chino said. ‘He’s just been living in that suit a little too long. It’s cooked his head.’

‘My righteousness aside, how good’s this intel?’

‘Swift, silent, deadly, ese. Forward observation a speciality,’ Chino said proudly.

‘Yes, well I understood what some of that meant.’

‘The intel’s solid, captain,’ Major Winterman assured him.

‘When?’

‘Zero five hundred eastern standard,’ Winterman told him. It was the same time that Cell had ordered him to fire on Yonkers. He had four hours to get back to the Robin Hood and prepare.

‘It’s been a long time since a British ship has fired on an American city,’ Harper said.

‘1814. The War of Neutrality,’ Major Winterman supplied.

‘It’s alright man, we’re on your side this time,’ Chino told him.

Captain Harper was sure that the battered Bulldog light transport vehicle was older than Private Fry and maybe Corporal Fenn as well. With a four-wheel drive and Lazy Dane, who could apparently see in the dark, at the wheel they made much better, if more frightening, time back.

The only thing that the large armoured warrior had said on the return drive was to ask if they could “see them all”. It had both the marines searching the surrounding area with their weapons at the ready until they had realised that Lazy Dane was seeing things they weren’t. None of them had any idea what the strange figure had meant and not even Fry had wanted to enquire further.

The coxswain had moved into good cover and didn’t come out until he was sure that it was the Captain and the two marines returning. The boat pilot was nervous of the massive armoured warrior but said nothing.

Harper typed the co-ordinates that he had memorized into the GPS device as they made their way across the black waters of the East River. There was just the slightest glow on the eastern horizon now. Fry was manning the MMG again. Fenn was looking all around, her SCAR at the ready. Dane was sat in the centre of the boat, his legs crossed.

Harper looked up. There was a ripping noise. His brain registered lights coming towards him. Something hit him hard. He was in the water. Panic. He could see the water churning close to him, darts of phosphorescent light shooting through it. Someone grabbed him and dragged him to the surface. He gasped air into grateful lungs. There was more of the ripping noise. The boat was gone. It had ceased to exist, along with Private Fry, Corporal Fenn and the coxswain, who Harper was pretty sure had been called Harman. The water was churning again as tracers hit it from the Phalanx 20mm rotary cannon.

He could see the muzzle flash. It looked like a constant flickering illuminating the darkness. The muzzle flash was refracting strangely with the Robin Hood’s cloak, distorting it. The ship had moved. Not far, just enough to have had them heading towards the wrong place.

‘Hold your breath, man,’ Dane was next to him in the water. The armoured soldier must have knocked him out of the boat. ‘I’m going to have to drag you.’

Harper had enough time to take a mouthful of air before he was pulled under the cold, cold water. He mastered the panic of submersion, the helplessness as he was dragged along at a surprising speed. Then panic again as he realised that Lazy Dane was swimming towards the Robin Hood, not towards the riverbank. Then panic as his chest started to hurt and he desperately needed to breathe. Can the suit breathe under water? his frightened mind thought. He was sure that Dane was going to forget about his dependency on oxygen.

‘Breathe, hyperventilate, saturate your system with oxygen and then a final deep breath,’ Dane told him. It took a moment for Harper to understand that he was on the surface again and interpret Dane’s instructions. Then they were under again.

Hyperventilating shouldn’t be a problem was the most lucid thought he managed, but even that was tinged with more than a hint of hysteria.

He had no idea how long it took. It seemed like he was underwater for an age, the cold trying to rob his precious breath, and that he was only on the surface for moments. Everything was black under the water except the occasional flickering light above them. Harper’s fatigued and frightened mind finally managed to work out that the light was the Phalanx firing again.

Somehow they were under the Robin Hood. He was at the surface. Gasping air into lungs that didn’t feel like they were inflating properly. His heart felt funny in his chest. There were ratings in the boat bay. Harper knew their names but couldn’t bring them to mind. They were armed. They were shouting something at him and pointing weapons. Harper was struggling to work out what was going on. One of them had a red beam of light coming out of his chest area. The red beam went away and two red holes appeared in the rating’s chest and he tumbled into the water. The other rating was turning, raising his weapon, and pointing it at Harper.

At your captain! an outraged and barely rational part of Harper thought. The top of the rating’s head came off and he fell into the water as well.

Harper turned and saw Dane, still in the water, the big automatic in his hand, a suppressor attached to its barrel.

He’s killing my men, Harper thought. Dane seemed to surge out of the water and grab hold of the ladder leading up to the raised boat bay. There was flickering light from the boat bay and Harper could see bullet impacts against the hull of his ship. The armour that Dane was wearing changed somehow. It started to look more like overlapping plates. The armour was lit up with sparks as multiple impacts knocked Dane around, but he continued climbing the ladder. The hatch to the boat bay was closing.

You can’t assault the ship on your own, Harper thought, there’s Royal Marines on board!

Dane, still taking fire, leapt off the ladder and grabbed the edge of the boat bay hatch as it was sliding shut and pulled himself up. The hatch closed.

Harper realised that he was shaking badly and still struggling to keep his breath. He knew that he needed to get out of the water or he was going to die. He struck out towards the ladder below the boat bay hatch. It was only then he realised just how strong a current there was in the East River. Harper had always prided himself on keeping in good shape. He had never felt his age so singularly as he did during that long, long swim.

His hand grabbed the lowest rung of the ladder. He found that he did not have the strength to pull himself out of the water.

Is that it? he demanded of himself, you get this far and you quit? He remembered the pathetic mess he’d been in the wake of the London Emergency. The excuses and lies he’d told Rachel. Is that who you are again? Are you just going to lapse into self-pity and letting people down again?

It took everything he had to pull himself out of the water. Then again as he pulled himself up to the next rung. Then again, but it was getting easier. The hatch above him started to open. The shadow of a figure stood in the warm light of the boat bay. Harper just kept climbing.

‘I’ve got you, Captain,’ Dane said and all but picked Harper up and deposited him on the floor of the boat bay. Harper saw more dead sailors, at least six more, men and women. He scrambled backwards across the floor, away from the armoured figure. Harper frantically tried to drag something out of the pocket of his sodden coat. Eventually he managed to free the wet Browning Hi-Power automatic pistol and, shaking like a leaf, he pointed it a confused Dane.

‘Stop killing my men, you bastard!’ he screamed.

‘Captain, they’re trying to kill us,’ Dane said, reasonably.

‘I don’t care! No more killing! Do you understand me?’

Dane shrugged.

‘Sure, there’s no need to shout.’

Harper climbed to his feet. It was only then that he realised how astonished he was to be alive.

‘You need to get out of those clothes, Captain,’ Dane told him. ‘And I don’t think that the Browning’s going to fire now.’

Harper stared at his service weapon for a moment as he collected himself.

‘Can you still cloak?’ Dane nodded. ‘Do so and watch the hatches.’ It took moments for Harper to find a towel and some clean clothes in one of the lockers. He stripped, towelled himself dry and changed as quickly as he could. He was dressed as an able seaman now, and the only shoes he could find that came close to fitting him were a pair of garishly coloured trainers.

People came into the boat bay. He heard shouted orders, a brief burst of gunfire that made him jump and then duck for cover. This was followed by the sounds of physical violence and some unpleasant snapping noises.

Harper emerged from behind the lockers to see Dane standing over three battered and mostly unconscious ratings lying on the deck.

‘It might have been useful to interrogate one of them,’ Harper suggested.

‘You’re a very hard man to please,’ Dane replied calmly.

Harper relieved one of them of their M12 Nova sidearm and some spare magazines. He pointed at the opposite hatch to the one the sailors had just come through.

‘That way.’

Dane moved in front of the Captain. Harper watched as the lensing field bent light around the armoured figure and seemed to swallow him. There was a slight disturbance in Harper’s vision if he looked hard enough, presumably due to the movement, but otherwise he could see straight through Dane’s armoured form as if it wasn’t there.

A rating came round the corner. He saw the captain and started bringing his SCAR to bear. The SCAR was yanked up as the sailor was beaten into the bulkhead by an invisible force. The gun disappeared, enveloped by the cloak’s lensing field. Another sailor opened a hatch and peeked out, a pistol in his hand. He was yanked out of the hatch and flung into the opposite wall, before being slammed into the ground.

Oh well, at least they’re not dead, Harper thought.

They turned the corner. Two sailors were waiting for them. When Harper saw the muzzle flash from the barrels of the SCARs he knew he was dead. He raised his arm up pointlessly to ward off the bullets. The automatic weapons fire was deafening in the confined corridor. He heard a grunt of pain and felt something stumble against him. Dane became visible again. The armour changed. Harper actually heard the sound of plates sliding across each other. Dane started striding forward. The front of his armour was wreathed in sparks as the sailors panic fired at the strange figure. He reached the two sailors and Harper watched as the armoured figure did something unspeakably violent to both of them. Harper was transfixed for a moment and then remembered what he was doing. As the last of the shots stopped ringing in his ears he realised he was hearing shouts.

He tried opening the door to Lieutenant Talpur’s cabin and found it locked.

‘Dane, if you would,’ Harper said. The armoured figure stalked back down the corridor and tore the lock out of the door.

‘Sir?’ A slightly surprised looking Lieutenant Talpur said as she glanced at Dane’s armoured figure.

‘Report,’ Harper ordered.

‘Commander Stevens and a number of the junior officers have taken the ship,’ the marine lieutenant told him.

‘Lieutenant Commander Swanson?’

‘Executed for mutiny along with Sergeant Martin. Most of the crew are too frightened to do anything. Those that wouldn’t go along with him are confined to quarters under guard.’

‘How’d he get the drop on you, Lieutenant?’ Harper asked, trying to ignore the hammering and shouting from the marines’ bunk area next to the Lieutenant’s cabin as they broke through the locked door.

‘Unbeknown to me, Stevens had a key to the armoury. He armed his supporters. Those of my men on duty found themselves confronted with a lot of armed matelots. Those off duty were caught unawares. Nobody wanted to start shooting in the ship.’

Not the Royal Marines’ proudest moment, Harper thought. That said, there were a lot more sailors on-board than there were marines.

‘Lieutenant, I need to know where you stand and I need to know right now.’

‘Sir, did you not hear me correctly? He executed Sergeant Martin.’

Harper nodded. Dane handed her the SCAR as the marines kicked their way out of their bunk area. The remaining twenty men and women of the platoon started spilling out. The first two grabbed the guards’ SCARs and spare magazines.

‘Stevens’ people have all the weapons,’ Talpur told him. Dane told some of the marines where they could find more SCARs, those that he had left littered around the ship. A few of them headed off to collect the weapons.

‘This Stevens?’ Dane asked.

‘Him you can kill,’ Harper said grimly, thinking about the promising young Lieutenant Commander and the marine sergeant who were now dead. ‘I want no unnecessary firing, Lieutenant.’

‘Describe necessary, sir?’ one of the marines who was armed, a young woman, asked. Harper thought he heard Dane chuckle.

‘Where possible I want to speak to them,’ Harper said. The marines looked to Talpur.

‘Sir, with all due respect I’m not going to needlessly endanger my people. If they are at risk, taking fire, then they’re damn well going to shoot back.’

‘I said where possible.’

‘So they’re allowed to kill the sailors?’ Dane asked.

‘Yes, they’re not bloody Americans. Now lead the way and try and soak up some of the gunfire.’

Stevens had, of course, secured the bridge. Ratings loyal to him had barricaded the approaches and were using open hatches as cover. Harper had his back to one of the bulkheads. He, Lazy Dane and the marines were hiding round the corner from one of the three corridors that lead to the bridge.

‘We need to assault the corridor, sir,’ Talpur told him.

‘I can clear it,’ Dane told him.

‘Wait, both of you,’ he said. ‘You men, listen to me. This is your Captain speaking. I don’t know what Lieutenant Commander Stevens has told you, but he is a mutineer who has murdered two members of this crew. Anyone aiding him is also a mutineer. I will show leniency if you put down your weapons now and surrender immediately. If you do not then you will be dealt with by a platoon of very angry Royal Marines who are looking for revenge for the death of one of their own. You may get some of us, though I think it unlikely. You will all, very certainly, die.’

He waited. He could hear talking.

‘We’re coming out. Don’t shoot.’

Harper nodded, relieved. The sailors were roughly manhandled, relieved of their weapons, cable tied and left lying face down.

‘We need a plan to assault the bridge,’ Lieutenant Talpur said. ‘Shit!’ Harper just strode up the corridor.

‘Don’t fire. I’m coming in!’ the Captain shouted and stepped onto the bridge.

‘I like him,’ Dane said to the appalled-looking marine Lieutenant.

Harper walked onto the bridge, all eyes on him. There were a dozen sailors in here with SCARs pointed at him. The cadaverous form of Stevens was stood in front of the Captain’s seat, pointing a pistol at the Captain.

‘Drop the weapon, Harper,’ Stevens said.

Harper looked down at the pistol. He had forgotten it was there.

‘It’s Captain Harper, Commander Stevens.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘We don’t have much time. Put your weapons down now,’ he told the armed ratings.

‘They are under orders from their new Captain. You, on the other hand, are guilty of mutiny!’

‘Guilty? What, no court martial? And you have replaced me as Captain on what authority?’

‘Orders from our new . . .’

‘Owners! Son, the closest thing the Navy has to an owner is His Majesty the King. Did he tell you to mutiny?’

‘Like it or not old man, things change. The government, our actual employers, have sold us . . .’

‘Then the government has failed! We are the Royal Navy, we serve, we defend the people of the United Kingdom of Great Britain. Our only consideration is the best interests of those people. Those interests will not be served as the maritime enforcement arm of a rapacious multinational company, responsible for a number of atrocities and reintroducing indentured servitude to the civilised world.’

‘So what? We make up our own orders, become little more than pirates guided by Captain Harper’s morals? The same morals you had, presumably, when as the ranking weapons officer on board the Anguish you fired on your own capital city?’ Stevens demanded.

Harper closed his eyes for a moment. He remembered Battersea Power Station backlit by flames, but he pushed it down. He couldn’t afford to dwell on that now, to falter.

‘Stevens, we’re British. We ruled the sea. We have a proud history of piracy.’ There were a few chuckles from around the bridge. ‘And the most important thing any officer possesses is a conscience. The world knows full well of the horrors of military men forgetting that. You know that this order is wrong. You know that working for CELL is wrong. You know that killing Lieutenant Commander Swanson and Sergeant Martin was wrong. And you know you’re not doing this out of any sense of duty. You’re doing this because you know that you will be rewarded for it.’

Harper had noticed that the majority of the sailors had lowered their weapons now. Stevens was still aiming his pistol at Harper, however.

‘I’m not an officer anymore, sir,’ he all but spat. ‘I’m an executive.’ He started to squeeze the trigger. Then the gun wasn’t there anymore, and neither was his hand. There was only a bleeding stump. Stevens looked at his wrist in horror. Dane flickered into view holding a large and very sharp knife with a bloody blade.

‘Get that corporate piece of shit off my ship,’ Harper ordered. Dane thought about refusing – strictly speaking Harper wasn’t in his chain of command – but he grabbed the now howling Stevens and started dragging him off the bridge.

Talpur and the rest of the marines poured into the bridge and started removing weapons from the sailors.

‘Lieutenant, can you please let the rest of the men out of their quarters?’ Talpur nodded and took six of the marines with her, leaving the rest to secure the bridge and finish disarming the sailors who had been watching the other entrances.

‘Any of you who do not wish to follow my orders, please leave the bridge now.’ A number of ratings and officers left their stations, but not so many that the ship wouldn’t be able to function. ‘Navigation, set a course for the Atlantic by the most expeditious route possible that doesn’t involve going past Manhattan. Engineering, keep the cloak up. Helm, as soon as we are in open water I want fifty knots out of her.’ He was giving these orders as he walked across to weapons, glancing at his watch. They had little time left.

The commander of the weapons section was standing up as Harper arrived at his station.

‘Lieutenant Chalmers?’ Harper asked.

‘I’m sorry, sir,’ Chalmers said. He wouldn’t meet his Captain’s eye.

‘Get off my bridge,’ Harper ordered, disappointed. He turned to the second in command of the section. The petty officer had not moved. He handed the man the laminated map. ‘You have ten minutes to plot firing solutions for those co-ordinates. Can you do that, Bridges?’

‘Yes sir.’

‘No, no, please god no!’ Stevens begged as Dane dragged him through the corridors of the ship. Dane stopped and turned to the Commander.

‘Seriously, you have to come to terms with this. This is no good for you. This is the fulfilment of your dharma, it’s a shitty dharma for sure, but you need to deal. This,’ he pointed at the sobbing man. ‘This is no good, there’s no dignity here for either of us.’

Stevens just gaped at him and then started crying and begging again. Dane sighed and resumed hauling the Commander through the ship.

Dane dragged Stevens up onto deck just as the hatches to the vertical launch systems were opened, revealing the warheads of the twenty-four Perseus cruise missiles.

‘There’s a beauty in the focused purpose of a weapon like that,’ Dane said. He kept a tight grip on Stevens as he watched the Bronx riverside go by. He watched it until the sight of all the ghosts got to him and he had to look away.

‘Please, please, I can tell you something?’ Stevens begged.

Dane turned to look at him.

‘Think of something good to say, man,’ Dane said.

‘They knew that Harper might be problematic and they were worried about him absconding with a ship that has the Robin Hood’s stealth capabilities. They knew I would be loyal . . .’

‘Harper’s loyal. You can be bought.’

‘They gave me a transponder,’ Stevens told him.

The suit was picking up lots of strange atmospheric readings, as if the air was ionising. They know where we are, Dane thought. He looked up. The clouds. They looked funny. Then they caught fire. He jumped. Everything became light and heat.

Dane jumped through steam and hit the molten riverbed of the East River. Then the water came back. He realised he had been screaming. The armour on his back, made from nearly indestructible alloys, had blistered and then turned molten and then fused with his flesh. All the times he’d fallen, been shot, stabbed, beaten, battered, run over. All the times that it had felt like he had died, none of it compared to this. This was pain in its purest form. Pain so extreme that it was an abstract. He was only conscious because of the suit’s advanced medical systems. No human had ever experienced this degree of pain before. Then, mercifully, he died.

The suit forced him back to life minutes later. The water all around him was boiling from the heat of the armour. He died again.

The suit had to block signals from a lot of his nerve endings before it could shock the soldier back to life with the built-in defibrillator. Dane came to again on the side of the river, amongst the ghosts. He did some more screaming but managed to get it under control. He lay in the mud, making it steam. He looked back upstream. The East River was moving quickly, trying to replace the gap where a significant part of the river had just been vaporised. Plumes of steam were still shooting high into the sky. The suit was repairing itself, separating away from Dane’s flesh and doing its best to return to a functional state.

The thing was they had missed, he thought, when he could think like a human again. The Robin Hood was gone, certainly. More ghosts. But had it been a direct hit he would never have survived, armour or not.

In the distance, the suit’s enhanced hearing brought him the sound of rapid large-calibre weapons fire. New York, he thought, I have to get to New York.