Chapter 2 - John

This chapter contains battleships and teleportation.

John Lyon settled his eyes on the trim cruiser in the distance. Its guns, he could see, where still extended outwards in its famous belligerent silhouette against all the fog, though John could barely read the callsign across the keel. The Bastion. Such a warlike name for a cruiser that was older than Jesus and saw equally as little naval action. But as faintly as John could see the guns through the fog, he could faintly remember the Bastion being involved in some old revolution dozens of murky years ago, near the lost base at Kronstadt.

 

But now John saw his own guns were pointed at that cruiser. He stood at attention from his perch against the frozen deck rail, turned in his puddle, and regarded the chaos that was the firing drill on his dreadnought. Twelve 9-inch ballistic cannons, eighteen SAM launchers, and twenty-one mounted machine guns, and they were all about to be loaded. And even as John observed his crew serve their duty to their country with every iota of computerized discipline they were trained to exert, he knew they would never see true combat. And in a few minutes, they would practice their broadside barrage on a ship that had also never fought a real fight, except for some obscure revolution. Real warfare was so rare now, and hadn't been fought amongst battleships in years, and sure as hell wouldn't be in the future.

 

John supposed that war was always cold now. Politics through force succumbed to politics through satellites long ago, and more recently through satellites with missiles attached. And then again just yesterday when the East Americans completed Antfarm. John remembered his old XO detailing the rise of information warfare. He said that once the Americans built that computer, the safest places for the things countries fight over would be in their own virtual worlds, and there would be nothing worth fighting over in the real world. In the seas. That was before he got promoted to Admiral, got his own dreadnought, got his own son.

 

Jeremy never wanted to see his father at work, never wanted to wear a captain's hat or push buttons on the bridge. The infernal antfarm at home seemed sufficient. John scowled at an ammo boy's pristine performance and swiftly turned again in the puddle.

 

The Bastion was about to have its hull ripped down to its constituent atoms. A death fully of explosive glory to reward a service that had seen none. Except for that damn revolution which was rapidly beginning to seem like mere sailor's legend. Still, it floated there behind the walls of fog, and though its silhouette was vague and damp, it had a fearsome cry. It was old, and it was proud. John wondered how things had gotten so bad, where its captain had gone, where the cruiser had truly been, just what role did it play in the revolution. With eyes narrowed, pretended to pierce through the mist and see the Bastion's gunners at arms and the captain at work. It had to go, said the navy board.

 

John turned one last time and shouted the command for all batteries to immediately commence fire. And through the now-still fog, John had closed his eyes. He tried to wake up off that deck, tried to desperately hear the dark blue sea water lapping against the Bastion's armor. Tried to become the true admiral of the boat that had none, cling hard to the erupting deck and go down with his ship.

 

Admiral Lyon settled his eyes on the stout dreadnought in the distance, all its guns puncturing the fog with hellish projectiles. He knelt, kissed the Bastion's deck. Felt the seaspray engulf the cruiser at the precise moment the fires did. The bastion detonated and sank so quickly that the melted hull partially cooled, a warped steel corpse frozen in permanent explosion, speeding to the ocean floor with fleeting bubbles.

 

The ashes of Admiral Lyon sank with the corpse, to inevitably and forever coat the ocean floor, where they would eventually coalesce into nature, a leisurely growing reef under the cold surface. And under that cold surface where it is cold and hot and black, only Lyon's titanium Admiral's cross would endure eternity's punishment. It lay next to the steel corpse, two gravestones for nobody's commiseration. Two infinite memorials for nobody's remembrance.