Unknown Rider

Master Chief Ivy rose next to her and gripped her arm gently. “Ma’am, are you okay?”

“I want his wings!” She ripped her arm free, livid at the jet jockey. “Get me their CAG! I’ll have his ass for this stunt!”

“Ma’am!” the Officer of the Deck shouted again.

Still fuming, she spun toward the window and looked up in time to see one of the glowing orbs disappear. Her racing heart slowed, and she leaned forward into the glass to look at another, just as it too disappeared in the fog. One by one, the lights extinguished until darkness again ensconced the ship.

“All stop!”

“All stop, aye, ma’am,” the lee helmsman replied, standing up the throttles to silence the cruiser’s motors.

Beth spun away from the window and darted through the door onto the open-air bridge wing. She looked up into the sky, barely able to make out a few of the brighter stars through the thick fog, but the orbs that had harassed them for the last half hour were notably absent.

She unclipped the radio from her belt and brought it to her mouth. “TAO, Captain. What’s the air picture?”

Martin’s response was immediate. “They’re gone! They just disappeared.”

“Closest contact?”

“Bolt Four One is overhead our position.”

Her anger at the jet jockey returned, and she looked up, knowing full well she wouldn’t be able to spot the single F-35C Joint Strike Fighter flying over her ship. She would take him to task for his circus stunt, but she couldn’t afford to let it blind her from her responsibilities.

You are the captain.

“Surface contacts?”

“New contact. Unknown merchant vessel bearing zero two zero for two zero miles,” Martin replied. He added, “It was in San Clemente’s shadow.”

“What about AIS?” Beth asked. The Automatic Identification System used transceivers on board ships to supplement surface search radars in identifying contacts. She had seen Iranian vessels attempt to cloak their movements by turning off their AIS transponders, but for a vessel to do so in international waters so close to America’s coast was unheard of.

“Off,” he said.

She stormed back onto the bridge and walked to the radar console, looking at the blip of the unknown surface contact just beyond the dark outline of San Clemente Island. She still thought it unlikely the objects harassing her ship had originated from a ship so far away, but she didn’t believe in coincidences.

“All ahead full,” she said. “Left full rudder, steady on course zero two zero.”

Damn the torpedoes, she thought. Let’s find out who you are.

Bolt 41

Marine F-35C

Colt’s vision slowly returned after he relaxed his white-knuckled grip on the stick, and he exhaled into his mask with relief. He scanned his airspeed and altitude and felt his tension evaporate after assuring himself he was in a climb and had averted a disastrous collision with the warship. But his hands shook with the aftereffects of a boatload of adrenaline.

“Thank you, Jesus.”

He leveled off at five hundred feet over the water, four miles to the ship’s stern, and banked left to regain sight of the Mobile Bay. Gasping for breath, he barely noticed when one of the orbs disappeared. The digitally created square around it remained for a second and a half before it too disappeared.

What the hell?

He flew across the glowing wake as a second orb disappeared, followed quickly by a third. The targeting processor scrambled to keep up, but the artificial squares also disappeared after a short lag. Momentarily forgetting that CAG had ordered him to break contact and return to the ship, he rolled out on a heading to parallel the ship’s course and quickly designated the Mobile Bay as a target and allowed the EOTS to slave to the ship.

By the time he flew abeam the cruiser, the last remaining ball of light had vanished. Poof. Into thin air.

He raced by the ship at three hundred knots before banking the jet in a climbing left turn, thankful it seemed to be responding to his control inputs again. Crossing the bow, he craned his neck to look at the ship over his shoulder, only subconsciously aware it had come to a dead stop. Continuing to circle, he surveyed the infrared image of the ship on his display, searching for any sign of the orbs. But they were gone.

What the hell is going on?

“Bolt Four One, Banger, status?”

“Banger, the bogies appear to have… uh… vanished,” he said, still unable to believe it, and unable to put into words what he had just experienced. They were over twenty miles from the nearest piece of land without another ship in sight, but still he directed his radar into a surface search mode, looking for any plausible explanation for the orbs’ disappearance.

“Banger copies. The bar is open. Shogun directs buster.”

Shit.