Omega Days (Volume 1) - By John L. Campbell Page 0,53
beneath the Golden Gate. A pair of flaming bodies dropped out of the sky and slammed onto the deck. After a moment, one of them began to drag itself away.
Coming back from a Far East tour, Nimitz had first stopped in Hawaii for two days before heading east, and then up the west coast. Her support ships dispersed, and the air group had flown off to their home port in Seattle, leaving the cavern-like hangar deck empty of aircraft except for the ship’s helos.
“Combat reported in the reactor spaces,” said the petty officer.
Mosey spun to look at him. “Did you hear any weapons fire?”
“Negative, sir.” The young man swallowed hard. “Only…only moaning.”
Midway up the California coast, things had gotten strange, and then quickly stepped over the line into madness. It had been those SEALs they brought on board. A lone helo carrying a team of special operators had flown in from Los Angeles, reporting casualties on board. The eight men had been mixing it up in some kind of “civil disturbance” and were pretty badly torn up, having to be taken off the helo on litters and whisked down to the medical facilities. Mosey heard scuttlebutt about bite wounds of all things.
The attacks started in sick bay, and then spread. Within an hour what looked like a full blown mutiny was underway. A mutiny? On an aircraft carrier? Ridiculous. But in the midst of it the admiral had been killed, the captain went missing as was presumed dead, and the executive officer had taken command of the ship.
“Sir,” said the quartermaster, “the nav gear indicates we need to come right.” She was nervous. None of them had ever entered San Francisco’s waters before – there hadn’t been an active naval base here for many years – and this was unknown territory. The regs required that a knowledgeable harbor pilot take command of the bridge to guide them in. They should have remained off shore until one arrived.
More bodies were slamming onto the deck from the bridge above, several of them burning. Most started moving again after impact, and Mosey couldn’t take his eyes away from the sight. There was no sign of the grapes who had been chased a moment ago.
“Lieutenant, we need to reduce speed and come right.”
Mosey rubbed at his lips again, still staring out the window. The fighting was everywhere, seemingly in every compartment, and cries for help choked the intercom, frightened voices shouting over each other. The XO had put Mosey, the only officer around, in command and left to lead a large security detail in an attempt to retake the ship. That had been two hours ago, and it was twenty minutes since he had last called in.
The quartermaster appeared beside Mosey and gripped her senior officer’s upper arm tightly, her voice coming through clenched teeth. “Sir, we are going too fast, and if you do not maneuver this ship, we are going to run into Alcatraz. Do you read me, Lieutenant?”
Nimitz cleared the Golden Gate, and the city came into view on the right. The ship’s bridge went silent as everyone stared. San Francisco was blacked out. Heavy smoke rose in pillars visible against the lighter evening sky, and within the city itself, fires raged. One skyscraper’s top dozen floors were ablaze, making it look like a giant birthday candle. The steep boulevards and the sweeping Embarcadero, normally lined with headlights, were black, and the famous pier which usually glowed like a carnival was a silhouette sprinkled with small fires. The blinking lights of a lone helicopter drifted high above the city.
“It’s dead,” Mosey whispered.
Nimitz sliced through the choppy waters at one-third its max steaming power, throwing a powerful wake from its steep, razored bow. An alarm went off, and another young man in khaki yelled, “Sir, we have a collision warning left at zero-four-zero degrees.”
The QM-2 ran to her terminal. “Lieutenant. Lieutenant!” She swore and turned to the helmsman. “Come right fifteen degrees. Slow to seven knots.”
The young man spun his tiny wheel – a chrome disc the size of a dinner plate, something which always shocked visitors to the bridge of such a massive vessel – and the great ship began to turn, although slowly. The collision alarm kept sounding. Before the order to slow could be executed, the hatch to the bridge banged open, and Mosey spun around. “Why isn’t that secured?”
Two men came through, a younger man in bloody blue camouflage with a rifle over his shoulder, half carrying-half dragging