Crysis: Escalation (19 page)

At your captain!
an outraged and barely rational part of Harper thought. The top of the rating’s head came off and he fell into the water as well.

Harper turned and saw Dane, still in the water, the big automatic in his hand, a suppressor attached to its barrel.

He’s killing my men,
Harper thought. Dane seemed to surge out of the water and grab hold of the ladder leading up to the raised boat bay. There was flickering light from the boat
bay and Harper could see bullet impacts against the hull of his ship. The armour that Dane was wearing changed somehow. It started to look more like overlapping plates. The armour was lit up with
sparks as multiple impacts knocked Dane around, but he continued climbing the ladder. The hatch to the boat bay was closing.

You can’t assault the ship on your own,
Harper thought,
there’s Royal Marines on board!

Dane, still taking fire, leapt off the ladder and grabbed the edge of the boat bay hatch as it was sliding shut and pulled himself up. The hatch closed.

Harper realised that he was shaking badly and still struggling to keep his breath. He knew that he needed to get out of the water or he was going to die. He struck out towards the ladder below
the boat bay hatch. It was only then he realised just how strong a current there was in the East River. Harper had always prided himself on keeping in good shape. He had never felt his age so
singularly as he did during that long, long swim.

His hand grabbed the lowest rung of the ladder. He found that he did not have the strength to pull himself out of the water.

Is that it?
he demanded of himself,
you get this far and you quit?
He remembered the pathetic mess he’d been in the wake of the London Emergency. The excuses and lies
he’d told Rachel.
Is that who you are again? Are you just going to lapse into self-pity and letting people down again?

It took everything he had to pull himself out of the water. Then again as he pulled himself up to the next rung. Then again, but it was getting easier. The hatch above him started to open. The
shadow of a figure stood in the warm light of the boat bay. Harper just kept climbing.

‘I’ve got you, Captain,’ Dane said and all but picked Harper up and deposited him on the floor of the boat bay. Harper saw more dead sailors, at least six more, men and women.
He scrambled backwards across the floor, away from the armoured figure. Harper frantically tried to drag something out of the pocket of his sodden coat. Eventually he managed to free the wet
Browning Hi-Power automatic pistol and, shaking like a leaf, he pointed it a confused Dane.

‘Stop killing my men, you bastard!’ he screamed.

‘Captain, they’re trying to kill us,’ Dane said, reasonably.

‘I don’t care! No more killing! Do you understand me?’

Dane shrugged.

‘Sure, there’s no need to shout.’

Harper climbed to his feet. It was only then that he realised how astonished he was to be alive.

‘You need to get out of those clothes, Captain,’ Dane told him. ‘And I don’t think that the Browning’s going to fire now.’

Harper stared at his service weapon for a moment as he collected himself.

‘Can you still cloak?’ Dane nodded. ‘Do so and watch the hatches.’ It took moments for Harper to find a towel and some clean clothes in one of the lockers. He stripped,
towelled himself dry and changed as quickly as he could. He was dressed as an able seaman now, and the only shoes he could find that came close to fitting him were a pair of garishly coloured
trainers.

People came into the boat bay. He heard shouted orders, a brief burst of gunfire that made him jump and then duck for cover. This was followed by the sounds of physical violence and some
unpleasant snapping noises.

Harper emerged from behind the lockers to see Dane standing over three battered and mostly unconscious ratings lying on the deck.

‘It might have been useful to interrogate one of them,’ Harper suggested.

‘You’re a very hard man to please,’ Dane replied calmly.

Harper relieved one of them of their M12 Nova sidearm and some spare magazines. He pointed at the opposite hatch to the one the sailors had just come through.

‘That way.’

Dane moved in front of the Captain. Harper watched as the lensing field bent light around the armoured figure and seemed to swallow him. There was a slight disturbance in Harper’s vision
if he looked hard enough, presumably due to the movement, but otherwise he could see straight through Dane’s armoured form as if it wasn’t there.

A rating came round the corner. He saw the captain and started bringing his SCAR to bear. The SCAR was yanked up as the sailor was beaten into the bulkhead by an invisible force. The gun
disappeared, enveloped by the cloak’s lensing field. Another sailor opened a hatch and peeked out, a pistol in his hand. He was yanked out of the hatch and flung into the opposite wall,
before being slammed into the ground.

Oh well, at least they’re not dead,
Harper thought.

They turned the corner. Two sailors were waiting for them. When Harper saw the muzzle flash from the barrels of the SCARs he knew he was dead. He raised his arm up pointlessly to ward off the
bullets. The automatic weapons fire was deafening in the confined corridor. He heard a grunt of pain and felt something stumble against him. Dane became visible again. The armour changed. Harper
actually heard the sound of plates sliding across each other. Dane started striding forward. The front of his armour was wreathed in sparks as the sailors panic fired at the strange figure. He
reached the two sailors and Harper watched as the armoured figure did something unspeakably violent to both of them. Harper was transfixed for a moment and then remembered what he was doing. As the
last of the shots stopped ringing in his ears he realised he was hearing shouts.

He tried opening the door to Lieutenant Talpur’s cabin and found it locked.

‘Dane, if you would,’ Harper said. The armoured figure stalked back down the corridor and tore the lock out of the door.

‘Sir?’ A slightly surprised looking Lieutenant Talpur said as she glanced at Dane’s armoured figure.

‘Report,’ Harper ordered.

‘Commander Stevens and a number of the junior officers have taken the ship,’ the marine lieutenant told him.

‘Lieutenant Commander Swanson?’

‘Executed for mutiny along with Sergeant Martin. Most of the crew are too frightened to do anything. Those that wouldn’t go along with him are confined to quarters under
guard.’

‘How’d he get the drop on you, Lieutenant?’ Harper asked, trying to ignore the hammering and shouting from the marines’ bunk area next to the Lieutenant’s cabin as
they broke through the locked door.

‘Unbeknown to me, Stevens had a key to the armoury. He armed his supporters. Those of my men on duty found themselves confronted with a lot of armed matelots. Those off duty were caught
unawares. Nobody wanted to start shooting in the ship.’

Not the Royal Marines’ proudest moment
, Harper thought. That said, there were a lot more sailors on-board than there were marines.

‘Lieutenant, I need to know where you stand and I need to know right now.’

‘Sir, did you not hear me correctly? He executed Sergeant Martin.’

Harper nodded. Dane handed her the SCAR as the marines kicked their way out of their bunk area. The remaining twenty men and women of the platoon started spilling out. The first two grabbed the
guards’ SCARs and spare magazines.

‘Stevens’ people have all the weapons,’ Talpur told him. Dane told some of the marines where they could find more SCARs, those that he had left littered around the ship. A few
of them headed off to collect the weapons.

‘This Stevens?’ Dane asked.

‘Him you
can
kill,’ Harper said grimly, thinking about the promising young Lieutenant Commander and the marine sergeant who were now dead. ‘I want no unnecessary
firing, Lieutenant.’

‘Describe necessary, sir?’ one of the marines who was armed, a young woman, asked. Harper thought he heard Dane chuckle.

‘Where possible I want to speak to them,’ Harper said. The marines looked to Talpur.

‘Sir, with all due respect I’m not going to needlessly endanger my people. If they are at risk, taking fire, then they’re damn well going to shoot back.’

‘I said where possible.’

‘So
they’re
allowed to kill the sailors?’ Dane asked.

‘Yes, they’re not bloody Americans. Now lead the way and try and soak up some of the gunfire.’

Stevens had, of course, secured the bridge. Ratings loyal to him had barricaded the approaches and were using open hatches as cover. Harper had his back to one of the bulkheads.
He, Lazy Dane and the marines were hiding round the corner from one of the three corridors that lead to the bridge.

‘We need to assault the corridor, sir,’ Talpur told him.

‘I can clear it,’ Dane told him.

‘Wait, both of you,’ he said. ‘You men, listen to me. This is your Captain speaking. I don’t know what Lieutenant Commander Stevens has told you, but he is a mutineer who
has murdered two members of this crew. Anyone aiding him is also a mutineer. I will show leniency if you put down your weapons now and surrender immediately. If you do not then you will be dealt
with by a platoon of very angry Royal Marines who are looking for revenge for the death of one of their own. You may get some of us, though I think it unlikely. You will all, very certainly,
die.’

He waited. He could hear talking.

‘We’re coming out. Don’t shoot.’

Harper nodded, relieved. The sailors were roughly manhandled, relieved of their weapons, cable tied and left lying face down.

‘We need a plan to assault the bridge,’ Lieutenant Talpur said. ‘Shit!’ Harper just strode up the corridor.

‘Don’t fire. I’m coming in!’ the Captain shouted and stepped onto the bridge.

‘I like him,’ Dane said to the appalled-looking marine Lieutenant.

Harper walked onto the bridge, all eyes on him. There were a dozen sailors in here with SCARs pointed at him. The cadaverous form of Stevens was stood in front of the
Captain’s seat, pointing a pistol at the Captain.

‘Drop the weapon, Harper,’ Stevens said.

Harper looked down at the pistol. He had forgotten it was there.

‘It’s Captain Harper, Commander Stevens.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘We don’t have much time. Put your weapons down now,’ he told the armed ratings.

‘They are under orders from their new Captain. You, on the other hand, are guilty of mutiny!’

‘Guilty? What, no court martial? And you have replaced me as Captain on what authority?’

‘Orders from our new . . .’

‘Owners! Son, the closest thing the Navy has to an owner is His Majesty the King. Did he tell you to mutiny?’

‘Like it or not old man, things change. The government, our actual employers, have sold us . . .’

‘Then the government has failed! We are the Royal Navy, we serve, we defend the people of the United Kingdom of Great Britain. Our only consideration is the best interests of those people.
Those interests will not be served as the maritime enforcement arm of a rapacious multinational company, responsible for a number of atrocities and reintroducing indentured servitude to the
civilised world.’

‘So what? We make up our own orders, become little more than pirates guided by Captain Harper’s morals? The same morals you had, presumably, when as the ranking weapons officer on
board the
Anguish
you fired on your own capital city?’ Stevens demanded.

Harper closed his eyes for a moment. He remembered Battersea Power Station backlit by flames, but he pushed it down. He couldn’t afford to dwell on that now, to falter.

‘Stevens, we’re British. We ruled the sea. We have a proud history of piracy.’ There were a few chuckles from around the bridge. ‘And the most important thing any officer
possesses is a conscience. The world knows full well of the horrors of military men forgetting that. You know that this order is wrong. You know that working for CELL is wrong. You know that
killing Lieutenant Commander Swanson and Sergeant Martin was wrong. And you know you’re not doing this out of any sense of duty. You’re doing this because you know that you will be
rewarded for it.’

Harper had noticed that the majority of the sailors had lowered their weapons now. Stevens was still aiming his pistol at Harper, however.

‘I’m not an officer anymore, sir,’ he all but spat. ‘I’m an executive.’ He started to squeeze the trigger. Then the gun wasn’t there anymore, and
neither was his hand. There was only a bleeding stump. Stevens looked at his wrist in horror. Dane flickered into view holding a large and very sharp knife with a bloody blade.

‘Get that corporate piece of shit off my ship,’ Harper ordered. Dane thought about refusing – strictly speaking Harper wasn’t in his chain of command – but he
grabbed the now howling Stevens and started dragging him off the bridge.

Talpur and the rest of the marines poured into the bridge and started removing weapons from the sailors.

‘Lieutenant, can you please let the rest of the men out of their quarters?’ Talpur nodded and took six of the marines with her, leaving the rest to secure the bridge and finish
disarming the sailors who had been watching the other entrances.

‘Any of you who do not wish to follow my orders, please leave the bridge now.’ A number of ratings and officers left their stations, but not so many that the ship wouldn’t be
able to function. ‘Navigation, set a course for the Atlantic by the most expeditious route possible that doesn’t involve going past Manhattan. Engineering, keep the cloak up. Helm, as
soon as we are in open water I want fifty knots out of her.’ He was giving these orders as he walked across to weapons, glancing at his watch. They had little time left.

The commander of the weapons section was standing up as Harper arrived at his station.

‘Lieutenant Chalmers?’ Harper asked.

‘I’m sorry, sir,’ Chalmers said. He wouldn’t meet his Captain’s eye.

‘Get off my bridge,’ Harper ordered, disappointed. He turned to the second in command of the section. The petty officer had not moved. He handed the man the laminated map. ‘You
have ten minutes to plot firing solutions for those co-ordinates. Can you do that, Bridges?’