The Evil Thereof

By John Waterman

Balikpapan, Indonesia 12AUG2072

Edward Purcell looked out over the roads of Balikpapan Bay as the sun rose, climbing quickly from the mist on equatorial horizon like it always did in the tropics. The city of Balikpapan, filling both shores of the Bay, looked more run down than he remembered from his last visit, a few years ago now. Smokier, and more cautious. The RNV-SSN 71 Adelaide lay rock steady beneath his feet, the hard null-reflectance elastomer blocks of her curving hull’s outer anechoic coating scuffed and scarred from decades at sea. The lazy waves lapped at the exposed section of hull around her sail, and her rudder another hundred meters aft.

The working party had wrestled the RHIB out of its compartment at the base of the dozen-meter tall sail. They hauled the small boat’s armament out of lockers and mounted it. Two Skua overwatch drones rolled out of the compartment and whizzed into the air. A larger Harpy tactical defense drone whooshed aloft from the sail’s top, the deadly fruit of missiles and countermeasures hanging under its sensor stalks and machinegun. Much further overhead two almost invisible Skysweeper heavy drones kept station.

‘Almost ready to go, Ned?’ asked the Captain over his earbug.

He ran his fingers through his close-cropped black hair, then put his helmet on. ‘Yeah, Margie. Looks quiet out there.’ His visor pointed out the locations of a few small lidar emitters, navigation buoys, and some civilian boats flitting back and forth across the bay. A passenger helicopter skimmed past the buildings along the eastern shore, but the Adelaide’s threat detection didn’t classify it.

‘Boat’s ready, Sir,’ said Avei, the Samoan First Mate. ‘Benita,’ he said to the RHIB’s coxswain, ‘get the lads aboard and make ready to cast off.’ The shore party bustled onto the slightly bobbing ten-meter long craft; a gunner for the dual .50 cal HMG mount, two Marines, and Ensign Meredith. Like Ned and the coxswain they all wore body armor, helmets, and flotation gear, while the Marines carried battle rifles, full web gear, light rucksacks, and buddy drones. Ned and Meredith bore machine pistols. Everything was well worn though serviceable, in some cases older than their users.

The working party had stowed two deceptively heavy small crates, some fiberboard boxes, and a basket aboard the RHIB once it had finished inflating. The blanket covering the basket rustled, and Ned heard tiny meows come from under it. It took him a moment to realize what it contained. Naomi, the ship’s cat, had given birth a few months back. She’d escaped the Adelaide for a night when they’d been docked at Nagashima but as ever had come back aboard before they left port. Now her brood of variegated kittens would have to find their own careers ashore . . .

‘We’re ready at your signal, Ma’am,’ Ned said over the comm. He’d checked the plot of their short trip on his visor and saw the handshakes of Balikpapan’s Harbor Authority giving them permission to head for the small craft jetty. ‘Shore party of six’- and five kittens, he didn’t add- ‘aboard.’

‘Make way, Number One,’ the Captain replied.

‘Aye-aye, Captain.’ Ned tapped the coxswain’s shoulder plate and twirled his right index finger by her visor. Down in the armored cockpit she nodded and touched some icons on her panel. One of the Marines cast off and the RHIB shot forwards on its near silent electric pump-jet, followed by its flock of drones.

The trip across the Bay proved uneventful despite the large amount of outbound small-craft traffic. Threat detection cleared them all Ned kept his eyes to the north, where tall clubs of black smoke rose above the once-capital city of Nusentara. The New Brotherhood had been systematically reducing ‘resistance’ – and quite a bit of the city – as they tightened their hold on East Kalimantan. The latest situation, in what the pundits in Canberra and Tokyo were already calling ‘The Equatorial War’, had begun five months ago. The ‘populist’ New Brotherhood Of Indonesia had declared the Indonesian government ‘a Godless and corrupt sham’ and led a very popular ‘uprising’ against it. Everyone knew, though no one would say officially, that the Gulf Islamic States had given it support that no group of ‘guerillas’ would ever have otherwise.

Ned had been born into a world of near-constant low level war, chaos that followed the collapse of the Western Nations forty years ago after the Last European War. The US and Canada had succumbed to Corporate ‘re-stating’, China had fragmented with the Purge of the Hundred Families, the Koreas reunited and militant, allied with Taiwan; and Australia and New Zealand had formed a Republic as Great Britain convulsed into anarchy. The populations of Pacific islanders had fled to The Republic as the seas inexorably flooded out their nations. 

He’d never really noticed the political changes when he was young, just his family’s and neighbor’s hardship (and at times hunger) in Melbourne as the world economy crashed, bounced back, and then crashed again hard. The magical open Internet had slowly fallen apart from cyberattacks and the loss of server farms worldwide. Cellphones had become just amusing neutered toys to hand to kids (until they couldn’t be recharged anymore) when only landlines and a few hardened military satellite links remained from once limitless communication. He’d done well enough on the mandatory military exams to choose service in the Republic of Australia and New Zealand’s Navy. It kept him and his aging parents fed and housed even though things got a little tougher every year. Twenty years later, he was the First Officer of one of the RAZNN’s remaining five ‘nuke boats’. 

‘Comin’ inta the jetty now, Sir,’ the coxswain’s voice cut in after about ten minutes. The trip could have taken a third of that, but they had to keep speed down. Two months ago someone had snuck some stealthed reactive mines into the Harbor. Five ships had already been sunk, including a big container vessel whose cargo still burned where it had run aground on famous Kemala Beach. Now no one went fast or hard in the entire Bay. The Adelaide’s defenses kept the submarine reasonably safe but civilian shipping and light boats didn’t have that ability. The stealth mines, if any were left, could as likely attack a motorized tinny as a 50,000 tonne cargo vessel. Stochastic targeting routines made them terrorist attacks, not measured decisions.

‘Acknowledged,’ Ned replied. He was instantly appalled as he looked at the small boat jetty they approached. Hundreds of people swarmed across it, dragging luggage and children and pets to and fro as they sought places on the boats there apparently hawking passage. He had no idea where the people thought they could go, since most of the boats barely looked able to get across the Bay, let alone out onto blue water. They had seen some old cruise ships anchored far out in the Bay, beyond the putative ten-km range of the attack mines; Ned wondered if they were selling passage away from here now that the New Brotherhood assaulted the capital.

A cloud of drones hovered over a small group of people surrounded by a detachment of Indonesian Marines. The heavily armed troops faced outwards with bayonetted rifles, keeping the crowd at bay. Ned’s visor showed the green carat marking their destination. ‘Put in there, Benita.’

‘Aye-aye, Sir.’ The RHIB nosed past a few lighter boats and went around a larger scow. The gunner kept his dual ‘Ma Deuces’ pointed just above the surrounding boats as he traversed the gun mount smoothly, ensuring right-of-way though not threatening- yet. Two men stood out in the small group, their significant others clinging close to them. Ned figured one of them as the ‘package’ that he had to take back to the Adelaide. He had no idea who the other civilian was, but he looked important.

‘Ambassador Lo Ping?’ Ned shouted in English above the noise of boat engines and unhappy people. ‘Sir? We’re from the Adelaide.’ One of the men waved. A Marine tied the RHIB up against the jetty and flipped out a gangplank. The other Marine kept watch out past the cordon of his Indonesian counterparts, rifle ready but not yet pointed anywhere in particular.

‘Here. I, uh, also have another here to whom I have granted passage.’ The RANZ Ambassador gestured to the other man. ‘This is, uh, Mister Nahadden.’ The fellow wore a civilian suit, but Ned’s jaw dropped. Oh shit, Ned thought, it must have all really dropped in the pot . . . Marshal Nahadden, the President Pro Tem of Indonesia, had a face familiar to media watchers. ‘He and his daughter have requested diplomatic asylum in the RANZ, and I have granted it.’

‘Ladies, gentlemen, please step aboard quickly. My apologies, but only one bag each. Carefully, now. I’m Commander Edward Purcell,’ he pronounced it as PUR-cell, ‘of the RNV Adelaide.’ 

‘Thank you, Commander,’ said Nahadden in unaccented English. ‘For my life and my daughter’s, I thank you.’ His voice was a resonant baritone that had once captivated Indonesia as its Vice-President. Ambassador Lo Ping and his wife came aboard next. Ned made sure that they all took secure seats under the gun tub.

‘Okay, let’s get the cargo ashore.’ He and one of the Marines, Corporal Carstens, unloaded the RHIB. The Marine went to put the basket of kittens on the jetty first, but Ned stopped him. ‘Not here, Corporal; they’d be grease spots or snacks in moments. We’ll have to find them safer shores elsewhere, eh?’ He handed the basket to Nahadden’s teenaged daughter. They unloaded the fiberboard boxes first, then swung the pair of ten-kilo crates of gold bars into the arms of two waiting Indonesian Marines. Ned assumed it was payment for safely delivering the Ambassador. Gold had held its perennial value and acceptability in a world where little else did for long.

Carstens flipped back the folding gangplank and went to cast off. A flash of light passing from left to right reflected off of the windows of the buildings in front of him made Ned whip around just in time to see, six kilometers away, the Adelaide’s sail launch upwards on a bright peal of flame and debris. The loud CRACK-VOOM arrived two seconds later, about the time that the gunfire began. The next moments were, as Ned remembered from Kipling much later, a ‘sauve-qui-peut’.

Lance Corporal Gomez, the other Marine, raised his rifle and shot both of the Indonesian Marines waddling off with the gold. Corporal Carstens scrambled onto the jetty, shooting at the troops’ officer and sergeant. The gunner ripped off a few dozen rounds from the twin .50s, right over the decks of the boats and scow behind them. Hot brass tinkled down over the heads of the RHIB’s passengers, causing indignant squawks. 

‘FUCK! Piss-bolt NOW, Benita,’ Ned cried, grabbing his machine pistol from its sling and crouching low. Meredith did the same beside him, clearly confused. ‘Cover the passengers, Ensign!’

Both of the Marines had each grabbed a crate of gold from their dead carriers and now darted back to the RHIB. Meredith ripped off a long blast from his machine pistol, back over the Marine’s heads, ignoring Ned’s order. A spatter of ill-directed return fire pinged across the jetty and poked a few holes in the RHIB’s portside pontoon. They were of no consequence to the self-sealing foam, but others wouldn’t be to human flesh.

The RHIB backed water with a surge of power. The Marines slung their crates underhanded towards the boat and then leapt towards it over the rapidly opening gap. They landed among the still bouncing crates onto the deck, one of them tumbling down cursing. Ned reached for him, but Gomez yelped ‘just me fookin’ ankle, Sir. Not hit.’ Meredith and Carstens fired towards the troops on the jetty, who had other problems now. The crowd had gone non-linear under the impetus of the explosion and gunfire, with some fleeing, some flattening, and some charging the Indonesian Marines. Drones exploded, rifles chattered, and grenades slammed out, tearing dozens of civilians into bloody heaps. Shreds of paper and cloth fluttered around them.

The gunner slammed measured bursts out at anything that looked threatening. A rocket from the Harpy drone above them pulverized the person about to fire a rocket into the RHIB, as well as the entire small boat he had been on. The Harpy’s 6.5mm machinegun went peck-peck, peck-peck, peck-peck, knocking down low-level drones and hitting individual people deemed ‘hostile’.

‘Feed me,’ the gunner sang out. Carstens elbowed Meredith, who dropped his machine pistol on its sling to put fresh canisters of .50 cal ammo from the locker beside the gun tub onto the feed racks. The RHIB ran full tilt towards the Adelaide, now settling in a large wash of foam and smoke into the shallow bed of the Bay. Life rafts ejected from compartments along her hull. Chunks of the sail hit the water in blasts of spray; Ned refused to see the bodies that hit alongside them.

Reports from the RAZN NavTacNet, maintained for now by the Adelaide’s overwatch drones, came in through his earbug. “Possible IRBM launches from Islamic States and India, targets unknown as yet.” “Be advised, all vessels in the Java and Celebes Seas, and the Makassar Straights, warning of hostiles! Indian and GIS anti-shipping drones have activated, immediately-“ “GeoSynch One and Two are masked, all LEO sats are being hit by inter-orbit fire-“ “-LEO Squadrons Six and Seven, begin-“ Ned just let it all flow in one ear and out the other.

The Marines had stopped shooting as they left the jetty far behind. The gunner still hammered out the occasional burst. Ned looked at their cowering passengers. All seemed very shaken but hale. ‘God. Damn. IT,’ Ned shouted at no one in particular. ‘Bloody HELL!’ His home was a shipwreck now, and Australia . . .suddenly felt quite far away. ‘Free hands to the lifesaving gear,’ he ordered in a calmer though still loud voice. The Marines and Meredith turned towards the lockers along the pontoons. Ned turned to the civilians. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, that also means you. Please render assistance.’ He dared not look at the water, or what it held.

‘What now, Commander? The Ambassador eyed him strangely.

Ned dumped his helmet onto the deck. ‘What now, indeed,’ he 

muttered. It was quiet enough to hear the pitiful mewing coming from the basket hugged close by Nahadden’s daughter.