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SCION OF THE SOUTHERN CROSS

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Kevin Ikenberry


Falling. Twisting. Wind buffeting. Spinning. Stomach reeling. Blurry.

I’m falling.

Falling.

Wake up, Mason. Janine’s voice. Wake up.

The parachute snapped opened. The jolt cleared the disorienting fog in my head. My chute’s deployment tightened the combat harness painfully under my arms and squeezed my crotch. The straps eased as the chute’s sensors determined I was condition one—good to go. A split second later, I felt my Vigilante’s ejection seat fall away. From pilot school at Perth, I knew to look up and make sure my canopy was good; I thought it was. There was no moon, and clouds covered more than half the sky. At ten thousand meters, grey clouds swallowed me. I’d break through into clear air at about four thousand meters, but there wouldn’t be anything more to see in the black. “Darker than a coal mine,” my wingman Jimmy Brooks liked to say. Brooksy died on the way into the target.

High-speed aerial reconnaissance was supposed to be a thing of the past. Once the War for Space had taken out every satellite system inside the geo-belt, imagery had become a hot commodity again. We’d flown a high-altitude ingress from Pearl Harbor, dropped low just west of Kwajalein Atoll and caught an autonomous drone tanker before sweeping west with every sensor we had. The bastards were waiting for us on the way out and forced us into the NEZ—the Nuclear Exclusion Zone.

Why?

Can’t think about that now. I opened my helmet’s faceplate, and the cold, dry air of altitude rushed inside. The shock of it on my skin cleared the rest of the post-ejection fog. Under my parachute canopy, the sky was dark. I blinked several times trying to get my bearings. Damned hard to do when ya can’t see anything.

Last I’d checked, the Spratlys were about eighty kilometers southeast. The Brits had a base there, but there were a thousand little islands and atolls around me. Behind enemy lines? Hell, there were no lines in the NEZ. Five years ago, great fleets tangled here and nuked themselves, and everything around them, into oblivion. Much of the South Pacific islands south and west of the Philippines were abandoned because of the radiation. There’d been some unexplained phenomena and activity in the area—surface ships no one claimed operated within the waters. More troubling were the really strange sonar readings from our hardened subs slinking around beneath the surface.

Below me the ocean was so dark I almost couldn’t make out the horizon, except to the north where a sliver of clear sky let me see the stars. North, toward Okinawa, where I should’ve been heading instead of descending under canopy. So much for the Vigilante being the fastest reconnaissance aircraft since the Blackbird.

“You can’t outrun fate, son.” I said the words out loud in the gravelly voice of my last check ride instructor, Commander Raymond. The guy’s mustache somehow fit under his faceplate with the same magic his rotund frame fit into a pressure suit. Some kinda miracle. The man had a saying for everything. More than once, his admonitions and commentary had saved my arse. I might not have outrun fate, or the SA-55 long-range SAM, but I had bigger problems now than surface-to-air missiles. There was no telling what was below in the NEZ, and I had to survive long enough to get rescued. I shook off the thoughts and got about it.

In an instant, the grey mist cleared, and I fell silently toward the blackness. Automatically, the drogue chutes rippled into full deployment and slowed my descent to a placid twenty meters per second. I was low enough to breathe without the suit now. The benefits of the automated system made me wonder how many poor blokes died during a slow descent from high altitude. I wasn’t going to do that, but I had more work to do.

My suit had watertight dams at the neck and wrists, so I took a minute to twist off my gloves and drop them in the ocean. After a half second, I lost sight of them. I worked my helmet off my head and also dropped it into the water. Maybe I’d see a splash? No such luck. I was pretty high up, still, but at least it wasn’t cold. Like it ever truly got cold in the South China Sea. If anything, the temperature seemed to rise with every second I descended toward the black water.

Not wearing the gloves made it easier to pull out my personal dosimeter and attach it to the survival harness where I could see it. This far away from the center of the NEZ, the chance for fatal radiation levels was low, but there wasn’t any way to be sure. Next, I patted the survival radio on my harness. Yeah, it was still there. I almost turned it on, but SOP said not to do so until I hit the water. So I waited. Standard operating procedures seemed pointless until needed and then they turned to gold. From training, I knew my suit would inflate a survival raft around me, and once I cut my way out the chute and its shroud lines, I could reach out and touch someone. At least in theory. I checked the watertight holster for my .45 pistol, too. Precautions were necessary when flying over the NEZ. I would need a miracle to survive it.

We had a lot of theories about the NEZ and not much else. The enemy hadn’t put together a naval force of any kind in five years, but every time we investigated the NEZ strange shit seemed to happen. In the days before the war, what the generals referred to as the shaping stage, the Chinese had surprised everyone with multiple nuclear strikes in and around the South China Sea. Our intel pukes said they’d attempted to irradiate nearby landmasses of all types to prohibit allied forces from gaining a foothold. They hadn’t bothered hitting the Philippines or Okinawa. Nothing that far out had concerned them, and they’d believed we wouldn’t move in since Taiwan had been nuked into a smoldering, radioactive slag heap. Still, we’d sent the ships in and turned the sea to a watery hell. Hard to believe that was fifteen years ago. When the war was aggressive, and our objectives were clear. We’d slipped beyond that now. Aggression always turned into stagnation. At least it had until recently.

One of their bases, on an unnamed island that hadn’t been on any pre-war map, activated. Flickers of power came first. Once the lights came on, our ISR assets concentrated on the island. Anything in the air met stiff resistance from multiple batteries of hypersonic antiaircraft missiles. We didn’t have the satellite networks anymore, so General Whitney said it was time we returned to harm’s way. Wars needed to be fought face-to-face and not behind our autonomous vehicles and space assets. Our Vigilantes were designed and built to fulfill that mission. They drafted every pilot they could scrounge. Hauled me right out of transpacific passenger flights for Qantas and into a tighter cockpit. I fared better than the poor blokes who got fighters and attack aircraft. Many of them didn’t last two weeks. I’d made it five years without incident. I could’ve gone home two years ago, but home wasn’t there anymore. The hole in my heart wouldn’t let me try.

The clouds above showed signs of breaking: the clearer weather we’d tried to take advantage of as it moved east. Hadn’t really mattered, though. I didn’t see a damned thing with my Vigilante’s optical systems. Infrared and my synthetic aperture radar caught some stuff, but I had no idea what it was. They have analysts and artificial intelligence for data interpretation. I was just a damned pilot sent to take pictures. Without an aircraft, I was nothing but a frightened bagman with a pistol and a bright fucking orange life raft. For a second, I wondered if command had received my download before I’d punched out. I’d made it to the target and snapped the pictures required. Maybe they’d gotten them. Wasn’t really my problem anymore, right? On the exfiltration from enemy airspace, I’d relaxed for a moment. The kind of mistake seasoned pilots make when things became routine. The kind of mistake some don’t walk away from.

Fucking SAMs. From somewhere nearby, I knew, but I hadn’t seen a thing until I was on top of them. For all I knew, the buggers were right below me waiting to fish my arse out of the water like a prize black marlin. I stared at the horizon and thought how it looked a little different from the way it had a couple minutes before and—

SPLASH!

My boots hit the surface and then I was underwater, completely submerged. My suit raft inflated as advertised with a little more force than I was expecting. My ribs took the brunt of it. Next thing I knew, I was on the surface under my orange, white, and green canopy and entangled in shroud lines like I’d lain down in a nest of angry death adders.

From the inside of my suit’s right thigh, I grabbed my shroud cutter and quickly separated myself from them. I wasn’t worried about them pulling me down with the raft around me, but I needed to get away from the chute in case friendlies came to the rescue. Trying to haul the wet mass in and use it for anything was a stupid idea. Cut a line, toss it away, move on to the next. A couple minutes later, I was free and moving to the next point of my internal checklist.

I saw a full white rectangle on my dosimeter. On closer inspection, there was a tiny amount of black indicator on the sensor’s edges, but the remainder hadn’t been spoiled. From a pocket on my harness, I withdrew the chewable anti-radiation tablets. The medicine tasted like rancid cherries, but it was far better than the alternative. I choked them down and managed not to gag as I grabbed the survival radio and toggled the switch to On. Next, I pressed the emergency beacon button and held it for ten seconds before releasing it. I prayed, but that wasn’t on the checklist. All I could do now was wait and hope someone had picked up my—

Something moved to my left, snapping the placid water. I turned my head that way. Dark eddies curled the surface. My brain almost overloaded. My raft and pressure suit were supposedly bite proof, but I wasn’t taking a fucking chance. The shark repellent packets were stowed by my left thigh. Grabbing one while wearing a pressure suit was hard, even with the gloves off, but I fetched one and slid the water-soluble packet into the sea.

There was no odor, and I couldn’t see anything in the dark water. I didn’t know if it was working or not. I sat there, tense and waiting for something to happen for a good long time. Nothing did.

See? Even gear from the lowest bidder works.

Satisfied for the moment, I patted the pouches on my harness until I found a small bottle of water. My instructors had said to conserve as much as possible. I almost laughed at the thought. Water surrounded me. I had a portable desalination kit in the raft, too. If I was out here that long, no amount of shark repellent or luck was going to help if the stories about the NEZ were true. I screwed off the cap and gulped the fluid before slipping the empty bottle back into its pouch. Training taught us garbage left a trail and to leave nothing behind, so I didn’t.

If what we knew about the NEZ was true, though, garbage was the least of our concerns. Twelve months ago, the USS Wohlrab steamed into the NEZ on a reconnaissance mission and went down with all two thousand souls aboard. Rescue sorties uncovered “an unprecedented swarm of emergent biologics.” Bullshit. The intel pukes loved making up inoffensive terms for everything. These . . . things weren’t new species or something dredged up from the depths of the Mariana Trench. They were mutants, pure and simple. Sharks with two heads? No? Godzilla? No, but close. Megafauna. Another intel word. Mutants. The kind who’d just as soon eat you if they found you. There were images captured by some of my mates, and they were the stuff of fucking nightmares. Whatever they did in the NEZ, our enemies hadn’t just purged the islands to protect themselves inside an irradiated bubble—they’d unleashed hell incarnate.

I glanced at the water and wondered if the shark repellent would attract them. My panic rose and fell in a matter of seconds. It was too late to do anything about it now. One side of my mouth curled under, amused. Five years ago, as a nugget flying my first combat sorties, I’d been scared shitless most of the time. Every noise and groan the Vigilante made brought countless fears to mind, and I’d probably taken years off my life worrying about them when, in reality, I couldn’t do a thing. At my altitudes and speeds, if things went wrong I’d be dead in a couple of heartbeats. Better to relax and be present. The only thing I could do was sit still, be quiet, and do my job. Right now, that meant following the checklist and hoping like hell somebody’d brave the NEZ to fetch me.

I sighed, moved to a better seat in the raft, and yelped. A vaguely human face peered from just above the height of the inflated raft. Large, dark eyes stared at me, though there wasn’t much of a nose over the wide, dark mouth. The skin looked more like a dolphin’s than a human’s, and its color was similar. I didn’t see any hair or ears or anything, but my brain was already ahead of me.

A fucking siren.

I froze. So did it. We looked at each other for a good fifteen or twenty seconds until my radio squawked. The siren trilled in shock and disappeared beneath the waves.

“Rooster Five One, Watchtower. Got your beacon. Advise status.”

I shook so hard it took a second for me to press the transmit button. “Watchtower, Rooster Five One. Condition One. Over.” I managed to sound calm. We pilots have that knack. The wing could have fallen off the fucking plane and we’d still sound smooth and confident.

“Authenticate X-ray Seven Holden Fiat.”

Still shaking, I turned on the low-wattage lamp on my TAC-TAB strapped to my left thigh. I’d written the authentication response in grease pencil on the bottom portion of the tablet’s screen. In the Vigilante I controlled all the sensors from the TAC-TAB. Out here, it was pretty useless. In case of capture, though, it was the first thing I had to destroy. I wiped off the markings and sent, “I authenticate Bravo Mustang Niner.”

“Copy all. Sit tight, Rooster Five One. Maintain radio silence. We know where you are and we’re vectoring assets to you.”

“Roger,” I said just as the face emerged again from the water. It rose up and placed two clawed . . . hands on the left side of my raft. Each had two large fingers and what I thought was a thumb. It stared at the radio and then at me with an emotion I’d seen before.

Little Benny’s face appeared from the shrouds of my memory. His watery blue eyes staring up at me in wonder, curiosity, and awe. The creature at my side was so similar; I wondered if it was a baby. A scar along one side of its head said otherwise. I wondered if I should smile or stay silent. A part of me wanted to scream bloody murder, but I did nothing. The siren—whatever it was, I went with my brain’s designation—looked at my face and then to the left shoulder of my suit. The Australian flag with its depiction of the Southern Cross appeared to catch the creature’s attention. It raised a black claw and gently scraped and traced the stars with a sort of reverence before it looked to the south.

To my shock, it pointed in a very human way and made a low hooting sound like nothing I’d ever heard before. A melody of tones that somehow conveyed both awe and confusion. I looked over my shoulder and saw the Southern Cross visible through the breaking clouds.

“That’s right.” I nodded. It nodded in return and stared at my shoulder. The claw touched my shoulder again. Below the flag was a white strip with black lettering that read “Mason.” I watched the siren’s claw trace each of the embroidered letters one by one.

The siren cocked its head to one side like a confused puppy. My brain flashed to how Benny used to do the same. A deep breath cleared the memory—I needed to focus. I raised my right hand slowly and pointed at my chest.

“That’s me. Mason.” I pointed to my name and again at my chest. “Mason.”

The creature trilled again. After a moment, it pursed its lips and tried a different sound. All I heard was a hum. The hum broke into two parts. High and low. Two syllables almost as clear as when I’d said them. I blinked in recognition and nodded before scolding myself for moving.

“Yes. Mason.”

Again, it hummed for a moment and stared at me. I took a deep breath and realized I wasn’t shaking as much as before. My fright became curiosity. I took in everything about its strangely human/porpoise features and appendages. I saw gills moving on its neck, but from what I could observe it suffered no distress at being above the surface. Its shoulders were narrow and sleek, as if built for swimming fast.

I wanted to laugh. My training hadn’t covered this. What was I even supposed to do? I was afraid of scaring it. Afraid of it leaving me alone in the darkest night imaginable. Wide dark eyes stared at me in the same manner, silently asking questions. Remaining still grew more difficult with every passing second. Again, the creature’s claw touched the stars on my shoulder and looked into the distance. I didn’t follow its gaze. Looking south would only hurt. I’d lost everything when the Chinese had nuked Cairns, finally dragging us into the war along with the rest of the damned world.

Janine. Benny. Jennifer. Their faces came up again in my memory and lingered on Janine. Her smiling at me as we walked the Gold Coast after our wedding, her dress billowing in the onshore breeze. My heart ached. Over time, the images became less clear, but the feelings remained. They’d been my entire world and then they were gone. Gone because the politicians decided the global economy needed a war. We got something so much worse—just like we always did.

I wasn’t sure who’d won or lost anymore. I watched the creature staring at the stars and wondered what it might be thinking. Its behavior seemed to suggest a sense of awe. Perhaps a quest for understanding or knowledge. As fast as I thought it, I discounted it. Who was I to even know what something so . . . alien might be thinking or experiencing? I was just a pilot. Flying was all I had. My sense of wonder had died in Cairns with my family. Until this moment.

I summoned my courage along with every first contact scenario I’d ever seen from movies—good and bad. The siren snapped its head to the left, stared into the darkness for a moment, and then it was gone. I caught the tip of a fin heading north just as I heard the roar of an approaching engine. Was it something I’d done? My heart raced for a second, and I wanted to call out for it to come back, but I didn’t.

“You ain’t outta danger yet, mate.”

Damn you, Brooksy.

Instinctively, I reached for the sidearm strapped to my lower chest, but I didn’t pull it out. With my pressure suit and built-in raft, I was an easy target. There would be no submerging under the water and sneakily playing commando. If I tried any of that, I’d be dead. I released the pistol’s grip and opened the pouch next to it. Inside were five Bitcoin, a silk Australian flag with a translated chit asking for my safe return to Australia, and some candy. I decided to leave those, too. I put my hands on the sides of the raft and stared toward the low, rumbling engine when I heard it whine suddenly, as if the propeller had come out of the water. Then, there was a whump before it shut off and silence fell.

The dosimeter caught my eye. Almost half of it was black. As if I didn’t have enough on my mind, the radiation had risen to dangerous levels.

Gunfire erupted in the distance, snapping my attention back to the more immediate threat. I saw orange light from the muzzle flashes milliseconds before the staccato reports arrived. There was an awful scream. More gunfire—this time multiple weapons. Another scream. A thunderous splash. Down to one rifle. A few shots. A scream. Another lone report. I ripped the TAC-TAB off my thigh and dropped it into the ocean without turning my eyes away from the fight’s general direction. A few seconds passed, then a moan wafted toward me on the breeze before I heard a violent splash and then nothing. Another boat engine revved and screamed before racing away in the distance. I sucked in a deep, slow breath and listened until I heard nothing but the breeze.

Silence.

The raft suddenly buckled from back to front, and the sea bubbled and frothed around me. I turned my head and saw the slick conning tower of a British attack submarine emerging thirty meters away. Before my eyes, the hull appeared, and the starlight illuminated the water cascading off it like a surreal waterfall. Quickly, the entire hull breached the surface, and I saw a hatch midway toward the stern open in the starlight.

Silhouetted sailors in hazardous exposure suits came up through the hatch, and two of them waddled toward the edge and dove in headfirst—toward me.

I looked in the direction of the earlier skirmish. Voices called behind me. I heard an amplified voice over speakers calling to the rescue team. And then, I heard it.

Tones. Trilled tones followed by a distinct, low hum broken into two distinct syllables.

I heard the hum again. Calling. Calling me.

“I’m here! It’s okay!” I yelled over the sudden noise surrounding me. Men appeared at the raft. Several threw an arm over the side, grabbed fistfuls of my pressure suit, and towed me toward the submarine. “I’m here!”

“We’ve got you, sir,” one of the men said. “Stay quiet. This sector’s crawlin’ with boats.”

A white light shined down on us from the tower, and I shielded my eyes with one hand. In the distance, right at the edge of the light, I saw the siren bobbing in the water. Those dark eyes stared at me, and I saw a large dark smear around its mouth and realized what had happened. Inexplicably, the siren had stopped the patrol and . . . fed on them. It had saved me.

“You don’t understand!” I said, but none of my rescuers paid any attention. I kept looking out to sea.

I didn’t know how it was possible or if it was even real. The raft hit the side of the submarine and more hands grabbed at me and pulled me up by my armpits. I heard the survival raft get punctured followed by the tearing of the strong fabric as the holes widened and the suit deflated. The suit’s weight became enormous. There were far too many voices in my ears. I didn’t hear them. I stared into the distance.

The hum came again. No one seemed to notice it but me. I raised a hand with my fingers spread. The siren mimicked it perfectly. A goodbye wave.

“Contact! Contact, two o’clock!” someone called. The light flashed up and illuminated the creature for a fraction of a second before it submerged. A cannon from the tower opened fire. Rounds splashed around where the siren had been and then stopped. The water stilled.

“No! Wait!” I screamed. “Cease fire!”

A deep voice growled in my ear. “Shut up, goddammit. You wanna get killed? We’ve got you and your gear. Now, get below, sir.”

They didn’t understand. I struggled against them. Flailing. They assumed I had panicked. More hands clutched at me. Adrenaline crashed through my body, but there was nothing I could do but stare into the abyss and hope it stared back. There was nothing. My resolve gave way.

A half dozen submariners dragged me up the hull and placed me on my feet. The decontamination team sprayed me from head to toe with a warm solution that smelled like sweaty feet and then wiped down my exposed skin twice. One of them plucked the dosimeter away from my suit. The whole thing was black. Had I not taken the pills, I might’ve been dead.

A frogman with a darkened face scanned my left wrist with a device, nodded, and motioned me to the hatch before I realized he’d checked my identity with a pistol in his opposite hand. We took no prisoners anymore.

“He’s clean, sir. Class-three exposure. I’ll alert sick bay.”

A burly, mustachioed man in standard naval coveralls appeared at my side. His bald head reflected the light in the humid air. “Squadron Leader Mason, I’m Leftenant Kernot. Welcome aboard the Adelaide. Let’s get below, sir. The enemy’s about.”

I moved where he pointed and looked again toward where the siren had been. The dark sea rolled gently and blanketed its secrets for another time. As I climbed down the ladder into the boat, I glanced at the Southern Cross and closed my eyes. My body went down the ladder simply from the weight of my suit and my suddenly fatigued limbs, but my mind heard nothing but the siren’s trill.

Another decon team approached with noxious smelling wipes. Four sailors wiped down my exposed skin and started the process of getting the heavy exposure suit off my exhausted frame. As they worked, I opened my eyes and looked at Kernot. “What’s our position?”

He squinted at me. “Twenty-six nautical miles northeast of RAF Spratly Bravo, sir. We’ve been in the area conducting sweep-and-clear operations. Are you hurt?”

I shook my head but noted the position, intent on returning once the war ended, if I managed to survive. “I’m fine.”

The hell you are, Mason. You’re thinking about sirens and all kinds of crazy shit. A laugh threatened to erupt from my chest. Instead, I clenched my jaw and fought the smile away. For the first time in years, I was thinking about the end of the war. About something besides dying.

Old Raymond had another saying: “You think beyond the end of the war, ya might as well not think beyond the end o’ the fuckin day. They don’t call it harm’s way for nothin’, mate.”

Bullshit. A man has to have something to live for to make dying worth the cost. I’d be back. I had to know. The rest of the suit came off, and the cool air of the submarine’s atmosphere chilled me almost as much as the steady, cautious gaze of Leftenant Kernot.

“Let’s get you to sick bay, sir.”

“I’m fine, Leftenant.” My voice was soft under the dive alarm as the submarine slid beneath the surface and turned hard for the Spratlys. I tremored as the adrenaline burned out of my system. With a sigh, I said, “Just damn glad to be aboard and off of that raft.”

Kernot stepped closer, as if he couldn’t hear me. He smiled, but it was more from concern. For the first time, I noticed the intelligence insignia on his coveralls. “There were multiple small boats near you. Sonar reported gunfire at the surface inside a thousand meters. Did you see anything?”

I turned to Kernot and shrugged. “Heard it. Yeah, somebody squeezed off some rounds to the north but nothing close to me.”

“Did you see anything strange, sir? You were in the NEZ, you know.”

The truth might end my war, but I’d rather spend my service obligation in a cockpit than the brig. I knew, and the secret was mine and mine alone. Between every heartbeat, I heard it trill my name.

I met Kernot’s eyes. “Not a thing. Black as a coal mine out there.”


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