Day 144 - Babel - Chapter 40 (1359 words)

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BABEL

By Wayne Webb

CHAPTER 40

There was the constant hum and vibration to keep them company, but that was all that could be heard in the depths on the Pacific Ocean. An Observation Lounge made absolutely no sense on a military submarine, there was no science or exploratory nature to their work, just purposeful journey to deliver destruction. For most of Captain Frank Grundy's career it had not been delivered, it was threatened or balanced somewhere, a reminder of what could happen and not what would happen. That had been good because he had relied on the human instinct of self-preservation. There were no human instincts here, only invaders that needed to be pushed back.

They had already decimated the population of the planet, he had seen the footage and saw the largest cut to the fleet resources he had seen in his lifetime. He felt very lucky to have been part of a group inoculated and isolated from the disease as it ravaged his country, working on an extended tour of duty underwater. The entire crew of two submarines were engaged in a race, of sorts around the globe. They were recreating the voyage of the USS Triton's underwater circumnavigation of the globe, They were completely cut off and out of touch with the rest of the fleet for a couple of weeks in preparation, when the first bout of the flu hit the world and they, like everyone else assumed it was just that, so they remained isolated all the way up to the departure date.

When they re-emerged after a tightly run race between themselves and a second boat also vying for the best time in the Triton's footsteps, they did not realise that they had not only missed the initial phase of the Babel, but they had no idea that their victory was going to be the last official operational tour they would have before Phase 2 kicked in and everything started to collapse in on itself. A large number of the crew were still on the boat when the Babel hit and they lost only a third of the current crew due to rotation, bringing on new sailors who had already seen Phase 1, which had burned out, and then began the language difficulties.

They let the sailors who could not speak off at the base and tried finding answers, but there were none to be had. Frank was a Navy man and he reverted to orders and protocol whenever he could, but there was no longer a chain of command outside of his ship, so he became what his crew needed to survive, the boat became their world and they took to sea and awaited orders. Nothing came and they stayed out for a long time before coming home to stock up, take what supplies they could and take stock of the situation.

It was almost a year before they were contacted on emergency channels by the interim government of the United States after they had spotted them on satellite feeds patrolling in the Pacific Ocean. Order had been restored and they were once again in the Navy, such as it was. They trained, patrolled and spent a long amount of time scavenging parts and weapons on orders from the new government. There was no president, but there was a couple of Generals, an Admiral and number of former government agency types who were making up orders for the security and defence of the United States.

The problem was that there was simply no one to fight, defend or protect against anymore. They assumed that there were others like them in similar situations, but they had seen and heard nothing of these. They had travelled to allied countries and to enemy states and found nothing but chaos and disorder, with no concerted efforts making it work without the ability to communicate. Europe was a loose collection of villages again, the Middle East had become nomadic in nature, as was almost exactly like the faintly racist expectations of their superiors. People the world over fished and farmed for themselves, but there were troubled areas too, most of the United Kingdom was empty, they had fled to the continent for warmer climes and competing for larger areas of land, unlike the tiny island they had overcrowded for centuries. Riots and violence made most of the cities no longer liveable, people took to boats, makeshift ones when necessary and crossed the channel to a better life. Hundreds of thousands of people perished in the exodus and the fear, the desperation left bodies lying in roads, fields and plenty washed up on the beaches.

The world had settled down, and some areas were better than others, but humanity was surviving and the ship that Frank captained that patrolled beneath the waves for a country that was no longer really a country, was becoming increasingly irrelevant as time wore on. Then the Ships arrived, huge saucer things that appeared on the radar and satellites that the provisional government had access to, and they came to earth in the Southern Oceans, floating so very slowly through the atmosphere and then creeping up the coast lines of New Zealand and attaching themselves to the largest city there.

As soon as the ships appeared in the atmosphere and made for one specific area Franks boat was given orders to intercept. They had been in Europe and had been given their orders to head home to base for new equipment and crew before deploying again to the South Pacific country, so far and isolated from the rest of the world. They were home again within a short period and in that time they had learned more about the ships. They had settled in place and stopped moving on either side of the largest population centre of the country, at least historically. A little w

They did not know what it meant, but the centralised provisional heads of government all came to the submarine base to welcome the Ohio class back to base at King's Bay in Georgia. They also brought with them some nuclear weapons specialists, men who looked at home with the idea of war on a personal level. They moved quietly into quarters on the submarine and the Captain was given the orders by the provisional government, to take out the invaders.

They were in the water and submerged again, deploying first to Pearl Harbour to pick up supplies and to stage the attack from there. The plan was to take the long way at first, replenish supplies and check the local warheads in Pearl Harbour and rationalise the ordinance they had to hand before making the attack run. There was a tightening of the urgency and time-frame once they were in the water. Frank Grundy had seen the footage, and seen live feeds of the ships moving, the scale of them beggared belief. They would need to hammer the ship with everything they had to take it out of the sky. Satellites had been taking images, thermal scans and electromagnetic readings for weeks now and still there was nothing of any use, they were impervious whatever technology and tools they had at their disposal.

They were in Hawaii when the Babel join with the Nodes from the Ship and the Loop was created. It was a day or so before they fully grasped the situation with the Babel of New Zealand being connected, but it became apparent after the bombing on the wharf that they were now acting as a cohesive unit, and they reached the same conclusions about alien mind control as Victor had over half a world away. They got in the water immediately and set course for the Hauraki Gulf in Auckland, New Zealand with the nuclear powered, nuclear armed submarine.

It had been almost forty years since the country had barred the visitation of Nuclear powered ships in the nineteen eighties, and now a decade or two into the new century a submarine, powered by a nuclear reactor, and armed to capacity with Trident missiles, each with eight nuclear warheads apiece, crept quietly into the harbour and waited for orders.