Goliath

Pulling a few strings, the Bear set his wife’s plan into motion. Six months later, Rocky began her first assignment aboard the Aegis guided-missile cruiser, Princeton, working as a sonar officer.

The change of pace was exactly what the girl needed to solidify her toehold on sanity. Life aboard an American warship was challenging, and challenges brought out the best in Rochelle Megan Jackson. Her ego demanded that no man would ever outwork her, outknow her, or outaccomplish her. Within a month, she felt like her old self again. By the end of her first tour, her CO recognized her as one of the most reliable officers on his boat.

Three years and a promotion later, Commander Jackson earned herself a tour of duty aboard the USS Ronald Reagan, the newest carrier in the fleet.

It was there that the former NUWC director met Captain James Hatcher, a man twenty-five years her senior. Hatch’s first wife had died only a year before from a long siege by breast cancer, his sorrow making him a kindred spirit of sorts. What began as a friendship gradually nurtured itself into a physical relationship before either of them cared to notice. Worried that his career could be jeopardized by the potential “sex scandal,” Hatcher asked Rocky to marry him.

She surprised even herself by saying yes.

Friends gossiped that Rocky was merely seeking out a father figure, and perhaps they were right. Hatch was far from the man of her dreams, but she saw in him a good person, a stable companion, one who would not betray her fragile capacity for trust. He was also an officer on the rise, something not to be taken lightly. Rocky yearned to get back into the spotlight of her former high status, and Captain James Hatcher, the skipper of the flagship of the American Navy, could help lead the way. Despite vigorous protests from her father, the two married.

During that same week, Leavenworth experienced a prison uprising that left two men dead and the warden held hostage. As correctional emergency response teams rushed onto the scene, a lone convict—a former U.S. Army Ranger—had intervened to save the warden’s life.

After a crescendo of media-manufactured publicity, Gunnar’s heroic act led to an early presidential commutation. Having served five years and seven months, the former Ranger captain and NUWC traitor walked out of military prison a free man—and promptly disappeared from public scrutiny.

After honeymooning in Key West, Captain Hatcher and his new bride boarded the Ronald Reagan, the carrier’s fleet bound for the Mediterranean. Though Navy rules prevented Rocky and Hatch from “officially” bunking together, she nevertheless enjoyed their time together at sea. Reveling at having access to the Navy’s most advanced gadgetry, she quickly mastered all the ship’s sensor arrays. Her equipment scanned a volume of airspace out to several hundred miles around the battle group, while equally able to pinpoint and identify any underwater object approaching the armada for more than twenty miles from her ship.

And while she admitted to herself that she wasn’t exactly “in love” with Hatch, she did love and respect him, and after all, wasn’t that just as important?

For the first time since she could remember, Rocky Jackson actually felt happy.

The blips on the sonar screen become hazy. Rocky rubs the fatigue from her eyes, then massages the knots in her shoulders. Two more hours, then dinner and a shower. Maybe Hatch’ll even let me stay in his cabin tonight.

For a long moment she stares at her reflection in the orange monitor, thinking about what her life could have been. The thought tweaks a distant memory.

Gunnar had never liked the carrier’s Aegis defense shield. Though virtually impregnable to attack on the open ocean, the multilayered, multiship system possessed one basic flaw—its active radar and sonar also revealed its presence to the enemy.

Rocky shakes her head, annoyed at herself for wasting time thinking about the man who had nearly destroyed her. Adjusting her headphones, she refocuses her attention on the sonar monitor,

—a valuable premonition dying stillborn.

Captain Hatcher finds the congressman on Vulture’s Row, an open-air balcony overlooking the flight deck, positioned high up on the carrier’s island infrastructure. The two watch intently as a Joint Strike Fighter is secured to one of the catapults. The electromechanical slingshot, the first of its kind to replace the venerable steam method, is capable of tossing a pickup truck a half mile out to sea.

With a high-pitched roar, the JSF leaps across the suddenly small flight deck, accelerating from zero to 150 miles per hour in less than two seconds. The required 3.5 gees is ramped up in a calibrated 75 milliseconds by the sophisticated new catapult design, pushing its crew back into their seats with a force of over three-and-a-half times their own body weight.