“Snake,” Campbell said, “can you hear me?”
On my notebook’s screen the colonel’s face appeared stiff. I had called Snake and Meryl back to the vacant briefing room to hear Campbell’s report. Meryl didn’t like having to meet with the man, even across the computer screen, but Snake asked her, and she couldn’t refuse him.
“Liquid’s warship, Outer Haven,” Campbell said, “is a modified version of an Arsenal Gear model stolen from the Patriots.”
The first Arsenal-class ship had been secretly constructed in New York Bay. Solidus’s terrorist plot, intended to locate information on the Patriots hidden within GW, resulted in the ship grounding on the island of Manhattan, destroying several buildings.
The true story was hidden from the public, and the shocking event went down as the largest naval accident in history, attributed as a software error in the Arsenal’s navigation systems—something akin to the divide-by-zero glitch that left a cruiser running Windows NT dead in the water off the coast of Virginia.
“After the Manhattan ‘accident,’ ” Campbell explained, “public criticism of the military swelled, and between oversight committees and a spate of new laws monitoring safety and operations, the US Armed Forces were paralyzed. PMCs gained prominence, and the war economy pervaded the global marketplace. Looking back on the events, I wouldn’t be surprised if Liquid—or the Patriots—had planned it all.”
According to Campbell’s information, the Patriots had built several more Arsenal-class ships—even after the original had been so publicly exposed. When Liquid took over Ocelot’s body, he might have gained knowledge of the ships dwelling beneath the seas.
The colonel continued, “Liquid has the warship crawling with IRVINGs and other unmanned weapons. According to Naomi’s data, Haven is crewed by a battalion of enhanced soldiers, each culled from the best each PMC has to offer, from Praying Mantis to Raven Sword.”
Through the monitor, Campbell looked at Meryl. She stood some distance behind us, toward the back of the room, yet she became flustered under the gaze of her father and looked away.
His daughter, his own flesh and blood, was about to embark on a desperate mission, to infiltrate the ship where Liquid’s PMC awaited. Campbell kept his composure as best he could, but I knew gut-wrenching emotion consumed him as he watched his daughter.
“Please bring her with you to the briefing,” Campbell had asked me.
Lacking confidence that I could convince her, I ended up leaving it to Snake.
The colonel had much to say to her—to his unknowing daughter, to whom he had never permitted himself to confess his illegitimate fatherhood.
But now, as every man and woman aboard the battleship stood ready before the fateful moment, this father and daughter had not been afforded the time to say what they needed to say. With or without the time, the two preserved a measured distance, unable to make themselves tell the tales they needed to tell.
“If Liquid succeeds in destroying JD,” Campbell said, “and gains control of the Patriots’ System, he’ll make Haven his flagship, and his PMCs will spread like wildfire across the globe.”
Still, Liquid’s plan to destroy JD was undoubtedly a considerable gamble. The more I thought about it, shooting a railgun nuke at a satellite traveling ten kilometers per second bordered on the outrageous.
Missile-based antisatellite weapons were developed by both America and the USSR during the Cold War. The early twenty-first century saw China successfully test an antisatellite weapon system, and in 2008, the US Navy shot down a malfunctioning spy satellite with a missile launched from an Aegis cruiser. That satellite was traveling at a little under eight kilometers per second; the missile flew at it head-on at a speed between three and four kilometers per second, making their relative velocity somewhere around eleven kilometers per second.
But missiles could be controlled after launch. A railgun, however, was essentially a cannon. Once its warhead was fired, the trajectory was largely fixed. With terrestrial targets, stabilizing fins could provide a form of last-moment guidance, but at JD’s orbit, the atmosphere was sparse, and fins meant little.
Moreover, this cannon floated on the ocean. No matter how large the ship, no matter what kinds of stabilizers were on-board, maintaining perfectly stationary firing conditions would be nigh impossible.
Liquid had everything riding on one moment. Just as we had everything riding on this one battle.
“This is our last chance,” Campbell said, “to stop Liquid from global domination.”
I knew that. Snake and Meryl knew that.
I couldn’t bear to see Campbell making the same mistake I had made.
Don’t you have anything more important to say right now?
In those last moments, I hadn’t been able to call Emma by her name. I hadn’t been able to tell Wolf how I felt. I hadn’t understood Naomi’s dying wish.
Not like this, Colonel. Time is something people never have. If you two keep up this measured distance, neither of you will ever tell each other anything. Yet still we languish and delay.
Then, as if in disregard for my exasperation, an alarm rang through the ship, and a voice came over the ship’s speakers.
“A large object is rapidly surfacing. We can’t verify the object, but measurements are in line with an Arsenal-class vessel. Proceed for visual confirmation.”
Even behind the closed door to the briefing room, we could hear the footsteps of crew running down passageways to the deck. Amid the suddenly hectic mood, I sighed and shook my head, and looked to Meryl. As the alarm continued its grating clamor, Snake held his eyes on Campbell in silent criticism of his old friend’s cowardice.
Meryl simply kept staring at the floor, with no indication she would return Campbell’s gaze.
You have to say something. Now is the time.
I glared at the father on the other side of the computer screen, trying to spur him to action with my eyes. But Campbell’s mouth was held half open, mute and frozen in search of words.
Snake jerked his head to beckon me. Liquid’s ship was surfacing, and we had to get moving. Giving up on Campbell, we reluctantly turned our backs to the monitor.
As Snake and I left the room, we could hear Campbell softly begin to speak.
“Meryl,” he said, “can you hear me?”
His was the voice of a father.
A father taking the first steps toward responsibility to his daughter.
✦ ✦ ✦
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