Huck gave me the finger and our wrist P.D.A.’s vibrator alarms went off. Play-time was over.
“Gentlemen,” a live digital video of our unit Commander appeared across the two inch LCD plasma screens of our PDA’s. “Welcome to the Dragon’s Triangle.”
He was forty-six years old, bald and sported a stylish razor-sharp goatee. His name was Nathan Alexander Bishop. An ex-Navy S.E.A.L. He was once a commander of the legendary S.E.A.L. Team Six. When he joined A.C.E. he kept his operational call sign: Rogue 1; and ‘Matilda.’
Everything the Colonel said was transmitted to our wireless ear-pieces.
“The situation is as follows: at approximately 2200 hours a passenger Cruise-liner called theGossamer Muse radioed to the Coast-Guard that it was going to the assistance of a downed aircraft, possibly a civilian passenger jet-liner in the vicinity of the Dragon’s Triangle. The Coast-Guard immediately dispatched S & R cutters but lost contact with the Gossamer Muse less than an hour later.”
“Sounds to me Chief…,” the video image panned across to Jeffrey “Soul-Train” Ross. The big black Alabama native sat hunched uncomfortably in the confined space of the jet-copter’s cabin between siblings, Blade and Sabre; opposite the Colonel, “…like a job for the Coast-Guard.”
“It was,” the camera panned back to the Colonel, “until the Coast-Guard S.R.T.’s failed to check-in after their scheduled rendezvous with the cruise –liner. That was just over four hours ago.”
The Colonel nodded at some one off-camera.
“Now the good-news: D.O.D., NASA and SAT-Com have confirmed that no aircraft or satellites have been lost or reported lost within last twenty-four hours. SAT-Com analysts and our own Intel-people have confirmed the there was zero air-traffic within a five hundred mile radius of the Gossamer Muse between 2200 hours and 0100 hours. A twelve man, Chinese Special forces team, from Hong-Kong, landed on the Gossamer Muse twenty minutes ago and have secured an L.Z. for us. After dropping us off our three ‘Angels’ will land and re-fuel on the USS Stennis air-craft carrier, which is currently en-route to our position.”
“I don’t get it, Sir, two S.F. teams? What exactly does Intel believe we’re dealing with here? Pirates? Terrorists?” Huck asked a slight quiver in his thick southern drawl.
“Son, that’s the bad-news…,” a dark cloud came over the Colonel’s face,
“….And that’s why we got the call: Intel has no idea.”
I couldn’t help but get a bad feeling as watched the last of the three Arch-Angel transports slowly lift-off from the cruise ship’s heli-pad and dart off into the distance.
The ship was in total darkness. With no power the ship Gossamer Muse drifted in the black ocean-void like a lame duck. The only source of lighting came from the blue chemical lanterns purposely strewn across the deck and heli-pad. The sun was due to come up soon and the Chinese special forces team had taken up strategic positions along the deck and had formed a defensive perimeter around the heli-pad. Some knelt some were prone. Guns, facing away from the heli-pad into the darkness, ready.
While the four technicians un-packed their equipment the members of A.C.E. unit-Alpha assembled at the center of heli-pad. We stood shoulder to shoulder in single-file before Colonel Bishop and the Chinese Commander. Our black battle-dress body armor and black-camo face-paint contrasted with the light desert-camo combat gear worn by the Chinese.
Catherine ‘Cougar’ Dowling.
Alex ‘Brody’ Smith.
Jeffrey ‘Soul-Train’ Ross.
Joel ‘Huck’ Moody.
Miguel ‘Gringo’ Santos.
Roger ‘Colt’ Colton.
Kurt ‘Kid’ Davis.
Samuel ‘Priest’ Gabriel.
The twins. Chase and Emily Compton, ‘Blade’ and ‘Sabre,’ respectively.
And me.
“Gentlemen, this is Captain Li.”
Everyone saluted sharply.
Captain Li eyed the blonde-haired identical twins.
“Those are regulation?” Li asked, in stilted, accented English, referring to the Katana swords neatly strapped to their backs.
“Neither is this?” Colonel Bishop pointed a thumb over his shoulder to Matilda- the vintage modified ivory-grip, sawn-off Maverick-88 12 gauge pump-action shot-gun strapped to his back and quipped,” But I won’ tell if you won’t.”
Li nodded at the Commander’s dead-pan comment.
“Beijing has informed me that you have operational command. How do you wish to proceed, Colonel?”
Chapter 4
April 20th 2021
0635 hours
Gossamer Muse Super Cruise-liner
Deck Seven, Casino
The Gossamer Muse was a Mega class luxury cruise-liner clearly designed for the ‘filthy rich’ with the most opulent tastes. An extravagantly ambitious undertaking the G.M. was the third largest cruise ship ever built. With a total of 16 decks, the vessel had over 1400 passenger cabins and carried over 3000 passengers and a crew of a thousand. All of whom, for all intents and purposes, had mysteriously disappeared. Throughout the decks of the ship, we had managed to cover so far, there were a few signs of disturbance and struggle. However any suspicions of piracy were soon dismissed when in our search for survivors we discovered that the passenger cabins and the ship’s vault were virtually untouched. The only peculiarity we encountered were connected groupings of inch in diameter perforations randomly spread along the floors, wall and sometimes the ceilings of cabins throughout the ship. Disturbingly, the ship’s two mandatory small arms lockers were empty.
Two hours had passed and the technicians on the top deck, pool-side, had managed to restore partial power to some parts of the ship. We had just about completed about sixty percent of our sweep of the ship when my team arrived at the ship’s casino. The team consisted of two Chinese S.F. members Tan and Jin-Lao and a tech named Portly or something. We weren’t there long, when ‘Colt’ reported in over the com. Ahead of our scheduled fifteen minute check-in.
“Colonel, I’m on deck three: engineering,” he said hesitantly, “I think I got something here you should see.”
There was a moment of garbled static then the colonel’s gravel-laced voice,
“Show me.”
A few seconds later the P.D.A. of every Alpha unit member came alive.
The ship had taken on water in the lower decks but the damage appeared to be minimal. Deck 3 was almost totally underwater. Colt and two C.S.F. commandos were standing on an elevated walkway above the two-deck tall engineering section towards the rear of the ship. Their discovery that the ship was sinking paled in significance to their other discovery. The pods.
Floating in the waters that were flooding the slowly sinking vessel was a lattice-work of large spherical pods. The entire engineering section was filled with the interconnected, partially submerged pods that seem to emit a soft sickly yellow glow in the darkness. The pods themselves were a pale yellow color covered with blue-black veins that pulsed with life. Covered