SWNOVELS Chapter Chapter Sixteen
De Loock and Lieutenant Miro frantically cut away at the rocket launch housing. Suddenly a second klaxon sounded. De Loock dropped his torch into the water and grabbed Miro’s torch out of his hands.
‘Okay,’ he shouted, ‘Out! ... Now!’ He threw the burning acetylene torch into the water and made ready to leave.
‘Aye aye, Captain, I’m right behind you... God save our souls.’
A huge jet of compressed air burst from one of the missiles. The two men dashed as more jets of air and steam bellowed from the silo. A sudden, almighty eruption consumed them both.
On the surface, a missile launched from the sinking ship. It lifted off perfectly; then another missile launched, then another, and another.
Half the planet away and forty fathoms down, the second submersible, Sprite, approached and docked successfully with the Pegasus. Falstaff, Walden, and Rees were standing by the hatch as it burst open with a hiss and a jet of water.
The water subsided and Falstaff aided his men into the tiny craft. ‘Right, Rees, out! You too, Walden.’ The two men scrambled into the Sprite’s hatch. Falstaff hesitated.
Rees called from inside the submersible, ‘Captain, you are coming?’
Falstaff gave a look that didn’t need an answer but he answered anyway. ‘You gonna hold my hand, Rees.’
‘Sure, if you say so… all the way to Wales. You’re the boss, Captain.’
After one last look back inside his vessel, Falstaff put his hand on the internal hatch’s recognition-screen, cleared his throat and yelled into the mike, ‘You bitch! You will never open again… that is my last order… Captain Falstaff – OUT!’ He spat into the bay, then climbed into the submersible and closed the Pegasus’ internal hatch. The submersible crewman laid an explosive charge inside the docking bay then closed and made fast the submarine’s external hatch, and then closed the submersible’s hatch. Water flooded between the two vessels and the submersible successfully detached and moved away.
The submersible was now some distance away as the charge in the submarine’s hatch detonated. Inside the Pegasus, water gushed in from the blown hatch. Just as it was about to flood the main decks and the rocket-silo, all the hatches slammed shut, made fast and the seal-bolts spun closed. Two missiles erupted into launch-action, the first starboard, and the second port.
Caxton stood with hands behind his back in resignation. The senators sat in deathly silence watching hardly believing, none daring to speak. Meticulously the Megatron screen plotted the trajectories of the flocks of flying missiles,
Caxton’s voice broke the silence. ‘The left hand of God; what have we done to deserve this?’
‘What effect ground-to-air, Mister President?’ said Ravenhill.
Caxton stared at her for a long time before answering. ‘None!’ he said, at length.
‘You want to add to that, Mister President?’ said Ravenhill. ‘Off the top of your head.’
‘Off the top of my head, Madam, the prediction is that missiles will detonate over every continent of the globe – we cannot intercept. I think, Field-Marshal, that this is our Armageddon.’ He bowed his head in a silent prayer, then lifted it and spoke out to all. ‘Ladies and gentlemen… now we pray.’
In the Sprite, four men were cramped in the space made for three.
‘What’s our chances, Captain?’ said Rees.
Falstaff thought a while. ‘Well, let’s see,’ he turned to the crewman, ‘How long to the surface, Sailor?’
‘Sir, we got to take ten minutes for you three to fully decompress.’
‘Okay,’ said Falstaff looking back to Rees, ‘If we survive that, and get topside, then we’ll be safe to get blown to kingdom come when the Mare explodes… at least it won’t be suicide. But that’s purely speculation.’
‘Well,’ said Rees, ‘if yous three don’t mind, I’ll use my time to finish a letter.’ He turned to the submersible’s crewman, ‘Keep her steady, shipmate.’ He took the envelope from his thermal-suit and opened it and leaned the paper onto Walden’s back. ‘Do’ you mind, Walden, there’s noplace else to lean?’
‘Go right ahead,’ growled Warden, ‘people have leaned on me all my goddam life, why object now? Anyways, I’m going to while away my time with a favourite movie, I know just the one.’ He smiled and closed his eyes.
Rees shrugged and began to write:
(Letter #5) USA SPRITE, MARCH 2025
“How slowly the time passes here, encompassed as I am by frost and snow! yet a second step is taken towards my enterprise. ––Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein again. Sorry to start a letter this way, but I like to give some quality writing in first off, just to compensate for my semi-literate stuff. So… yet another letter… I got five now waiting to send. Chances are, Baby, I won’t get the opportunity to post any of them, encompassed as I am in this coffin with Captain Ahab and the Ancient Mariner… they’re both crazy. But at least the captain is hell-bent on surviving this. I don’t see it myself, but he’s ordered me to survive… as I said, he’s crazy. The Mare has a life of her own, and she’s fought us every step of the way. Walden… you know Walden, you met him once, anyways, I think he had the right idea, ‘Blow the Mare to bits.’ We even tried it, to blow the fuc/ the ship up, but she wasn’t having none of it.
If all goes well, I’ll phone you. I love you and I love our child, mine or Milton’s leastways her father is navy. Milton, you say, hasn’t a clue about… you know, what happened… about that night. What a no-good drunk that man is. Anyways, I’m not going to do no DNA test, I’ve decided. What the hell… it won’t make her look any different, and I’m not sure I want her to. She’s beautiful, just like you… nothing at all like that cross-eyed, twisted-nosed, buck-toothed, bandy-legged Milton (no disrespect to him). I’m getting all this out of my system, Honey, because if I do make it home, and assuming you have me back, we’ll never mention it again. It was my fault anyways. I should never have left you alone that night. Leastways I should have stayed sober… Oh dear, oh dear… how I do run on. That’s it… I’m just waiting now to see if the Mare blows us all up––before we left I poured a gallon of purifying acid down her internal access port, just for spite… Ouch! – I love you both. Rees.”
Smithson and Mitzi lay propped up on a huge mound of pillows in their UN hotel bedroom. They were watching the uncensored news on CCTV. She looked at him as he studied the screen. He was what she called, ‘the typical aristocrat’ – suave, debonair, understanding, reasonable and attentive, the sort of thing that would make any red-blooded Kiwi woman puke… except her. He’d do for her just as he was. Smithson turned to her, attracted by her burning gaze. He smiled and got up, kissed her and was about to speak but was, for once, lost for words. He shook his head in bewilderment and walked into the bathroom. Mitzi called after him.
‘Looks like I won’t get my hands on your money after all. I was going to buy a ministry in Auckland with it, I’d got the place all picked out.’
‘I don’t understand it,’ he called back, ‘Why? Who? What in God’s name did we do that was so wrong?’ He paused, closed his eyes – via his QuickVision implant, he summoned a kaleidoscope of images: scenes from the WWII holocaust, the legions of skeletal dead being bulldozed into communal graves, the bombing of Dresden; Hiroshima and Nagasaki; the napalm incineration of Vietnam, the infamous burning naked child, then on to the 9/11 twin tower destruction; the setting fire of the oil wells in Kuwait, and on to the devastation of the third Desert War; then the finalé, and possibly the most inexcusable, the extinction of the dolphin and the blue whale. Viewed in graphic 4Dimension and MirageColor, Smithson bore graphic witnessed to the blood-lust slaughter of the last of that innocent species. He pinched his eyes with finger and thumb, pushing away the tears. The horror evaporated. ‘Marjoram!’ He said it loud so Mitzi could hear, ‘Will it be all of us, or like the biblical Passover, just the firstborn?’
‘The firstborn’!’ said Mitzi, giving a look of wonder. Then it seemed to click. ‘Smitty!’ she called a little louder, but in the bathroom, her voice was lost to the noise of running water.
Before entering the shower Smithson studied himself in the ceiling-to-floor mirror. Mitzi was to have been his very last swansong, and of them, there had been many. What he’d missed all his life was there in her, his soul mate. His first wife, Hilda, he had loved, or grown to a kind of love over the years. They’d married mainly as ‘the next bright thing to do’ – it was the correct fortuitous move, virtually arranged. Hilder Battenburg, heiress to a German shipping-line, had been the best of her year. The best of that on offer in the money ‘cattle-market.’ An unkind analogy, he thought, though nevertheless true. But now, when at last Mitzi had agreed… curtains! ‘A bad bloody do all round, old boy, what?’ He said it to his mirror image. There needed to be music. He closed his eyes again. It had to be Elgar… Enigma… Nimrod oozed into his ears. It crept up from somewhere in his stomach and up into his chest. The delicious, poignant music found its way into his lungs, taking away his breath; the brass section growing and vibrating upwards to his throat and into the top of his head, piercing like hot English mustard, through to his very brain – an explosion of nostalgic fantasy: England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales and France, the crushing sadness of the fallen in battle, and–
‘Smitty!’ Mitzi’s acrid voice accompanied with her banging on the door shattered the moment. ‘SMITTY! Stop playing with yourself in there. I think I’ve got it.’
The submersible was just two fathoms from the surface. Forty fathoms below, missile after missile launched from the Pegasus. From the small porthole, Falstaff could see them through the clear freezing water as they smashed through the ice layer in true salvo order, port then starboard. On the surface contrails, streaked the skies in all directions, north, east, south, and west.
The Sprite, after jettisoning the whole of its buoyancy fluids, was winched slowly up through the ice and into the massive US Navy rescue quad-helicopter. Falstaff, Rees, and Walden clambered out in time to watch in horror as the last of the missiles launched. From the cabin, they watched as the helicopter took them to the rescue frigate. There they stood looking into the sky long after the last wisp of contrail evaporated into the heavens.
Falstaff and Rees took a long awaited shower, but Walden retired to the near darkness of the officer’s mess. It was between shifts and the mess was empty. He needed this seclusion; he had some soul-searching to do. This time, he’d have to tell them about his leukomia. They would all be there, the whole family. Saying nothing while at sea was one thing, that was personal, but staying quiet now would be a damn lie. It was no good, he couldn’t think it out; what he needed was a distraction. He closed his eyes and called up his personal programmed excerpts: his favourite classic movie, Dr. Strangelove. ‘Goddam apt,’ he thought to himself, ‘Not MultiField, not 4Dimension, not MirageColor, just stark two-dimensional black and white – how goddam apt.’
––In his office, General Jack D Ripper looked paternally at his aide, Group Captain Mandrake, who sat, with tortured face, on the leather chesterfield. Ripper put a comforting hand on his troubled aide’s shoulder and spoke through a below of smoke, disgorged from the huge cigar clenched between his teeth.
‘Mandrake!’ the word floated on the raft of blue.
‘Yes, Jack?’
‘Have you ever seen a commie drink a glass of water?’
‘Well, no I... I can’t say I have, Jack.’
‘Vodka. That’s what they drink, isn’t it? Never water?’
‘Well, I... I believe that’s what they drink, Jack. Yes.’
‘On no account will a commie ever drink water, and not without good reason.’
‘Oh, ah, yes. I don’t quite… see what you’re getting at, Jack.’
‘Water. That’s what I’m getting at. Water! Mandrake, water is the source of all life. Seven-tenths of this Earth’s surface is water. Why, you realize that… seventy percent of you is water.’
‘Uhhh God...’
‘And as human beings, you and I need fresh, pure water to replenish our precious bodily fluids.’
‘Yes,’ said Mandrake, with a nervous chuckle.
‘You beginning to understand?’
‘Yes, ha, ha.’ He began to laugh, and then he quietly wept.
‘Mandrake, have you never wondered why I drink only distilled water, or rain water, and only pure grain alcohol?’
‘Well, it did occur to me, Jack, yes.’
‘Have you ever heard of a thing called fluoridation? Fluoridation of water?’
‘Ah, yes, I have heard of that, Jack. Yes.’
‘Well, do you know what it is?’
‘No. No, I don’t know what it is. No.’
‘Do you realize that fluoridation is the most monstrously conceived and dangerous communist plot we have ever had to face?’ Sterling Hayden stopped; Peter Sellers threw up his arms to protect himself as the window glass in the office suddenly shattered to machinegun fire, ending the bizarre conversation. –
Walden opened his eyes momentarily and looked up to the heavens. A hundred miles above the two missile shoals, one from the Pegasus and the other from the Honfleur, were dispersing high in the stratosphere. He imagined the colossal explosion as it erupted with an enormity of which the civilised world had never known. It seemed destined to envelope the entire planet with a radioactive shroud. He couldn’t handle it; it was too horrific. He squeezed his eyes shut again; he needed a another distraction, something to dull his senses.
––Major Kong, Slim Pickens, was busily working in the bomb bay of his B52 bomber, splicing two wires together, trying to repair the defunct bomb-bay doors. Seemingly finished he attached an alligator clip to a bunch of cables in a panel above his head. There was a hum of electric capacitors as the bomb doors slowly opened. He grabbed at his big white Stetson to keep it from blowing away in the sudden slipstream, then he straddled the massive nuclear bomb. –
With finger and thumb, Walden pinched his eyelids tightly closed; he had to, he had to fight it and fine-tune his focus to stop the horror was creeping back. And this next bit of the film was his favourite.
– ‘Aaaaaa hooooo! Aaaaaaaa hooooo!’ Major Kong yelled into the heavens as the massive nuclear device dropped away from the gaping bomb bay, him along with it, riding it like a mustang. ‘Aaaaaa hoooo! Waaaaa hooooo!’ he screamed, steering the bomb as it plummeted earthwards, waving his hat over his head like an ecstatic cowpoke celebrating a rodeo ride. The scene in Walden’s head now erupted in a kaleidoscope blitz of exploding nuclear bombs, to the poignant accompaniment of Vera Lynn singing ‘We’ll Meet Again’. Then, with a graceful calm, the black-and-white movie footage imploded to blood red. –
Aboard the US rescue frigate, Falstaff and Rees and a group of shocked crewmen stood around their many stricken shipmates. Falstaff bent down to Walden’s smashed head and gently closed his blooded, unseeing eyes.
The news was greeted with spontaneous cheering as the Pentagon’s Megatron TV screen started to give its read-out.
‘Is it possible?’ Caxton stood up and raised his hands in elation. ‘Have we survived yet again? Thank God we have! Too high! All the bombs all detonated too high! Praise God and rejoice. The predict is that the radiation will have lost most of its potency before it reaches the ground, casualties will be minimal.’ His words were lost as cheers of relief resounded around the elliptical hall.
In the midst of the applause, the Megatron screen suddenly went dead. Monitors flickered and flashed, some exploded and caught fire. Alarmed, Caxton put his hands up to his head in anguish, then in pain. He grasped at the back of his head as if to rip it open. He twisted in agony, as did half the senators. All were writhing in pain, pulling at their heads and literally tearing out their hair. President Caxton was in his death throes; blood running from his ears and nose. Around the war room, other senators were suffering the same fate; stricken men and women writhed in agony. Caxton fell to the floor in a final convulsion. In the moments that followed, medics tried desperately, hopelessly, to aid their stricken President and the many senators. A legion of ambulance and medical teams now crowded the hall, even some of these were overcome and holding their heads; their white uniforms streaked with their own blood.
Around the entire world, stricken people in every city, every creed and colour screamed in agony, bleeding and dying as the grotesque cull of biblical proportions took its terrible toll.
The sky over Canberra, Australia had been its regular clear blue, but now it began to gradually darken as the nuclear tempest gathered and spread. There were vivid red flashes and bolts of lightning where minutes ago, cloudless azure. Inside Government house, Prime Minister Callahan sat with head bowed, speaking into his hand. He suddenly clasped his hands up to his head. He too was in pain, grasping at his temple. Now half the members were in agony.
Mitzi’s face of wonder had changed to stark realisation as she reflected on Smithson’s last statement. ‘Smitty,’ she called in desperation, ‘Smitty, the firstborn – I think that’s it! SMITTY!’ She dashed into the bathroom to find Smithson holding a bloody towel to his head. ’No, Smitty! ‘No!!’