Tad Broach and his wingman Gunnar Brooks watched their carrier succumb from 500 feet in the air. Circling and flying point in tight formation with the other two F-19’s, they banked the wing into a holding pattern around the two ships. They were trying to decide what to blow up when the first blast went off. Tad saw a bright flash from under Stephen the King that lasted a split second. Then another light-burst, this one longer in duration and engulfing the whole carrier in an curtain of flame. He saw a shockwave go skittering across the water 360 degrees around and away from the ship, and then the carrier Stephen the King exploded from the middle, nearly cleft in two from the super-heated concussion. There was a gigantic spray of water, and Tad saw a cloud of debris leak out into the water where the ship had split. He knew immediately what had happened and was about to address his team when Gunnar clicked in and yelled:
Demon Fire! Holy shitballs that was the fucking Demon! I wonder if they’ll follow with the…
Just then, as if in answer to Airman Brook’s unspoken question, they watched rapt, as what looked like thousands of tiny vapor trails broke from the sea around the Stephen the King. From fifty yards to Port and fifty yards to Starboard, Broach watched as the deadly trails rain-bowed through a sharp ellipse and then went bombing back down toward the Carrier, penetrating, and disappearing, into her flaming decks.
Gunnar again on the coms:
oh boy, this is gonna be…
They saw the results three whole seconds before the concussion tried to knock them from the sky. Broach rolled hard away from the roiling turbulence, and they were looking straight down when the upper decks of the King disintegrated in fire. When the smoke cleared, the Carrier Stephen the King had been reduced to a crippled scow, dead and breaking apart in the calm frigid Atlantic. Everything clear of the sea was burning and the water around the ship was a black death gruel of machines, spent ordinance, and ripped flesh. Broach didn’t waste time. He hailed the wing and spoke calmly:
Break the wing and climb. One at the deck, two in the clouds.
Gunnar cleared the coms then, and the three aircraft split the formation with Tad‘s plane throttling and heading for the ceiling, with number two spaced at one hundred yards and rocketing the same direction. At the apex of the climb both fighter jets heeled over like skateboarders on a half-pipe. A moment later they were diving full-out towards the sinking wreck. Broach didn’t have the Simnus on his radar, the cloaking device had made that kind of tracking impossible. He did however, have a good idea of the thing's location considering where it would have to be to deploy a Demon Fire / Dark Promise protocol. Tad heard Gunnar praying into the aircraft coms:
Don’t dive motherfucker, don’t fucking go deep. Not yet…
***
The conversation, all but completed, had suddenly taken a turn for the worst. The thing inside his friend had tried to buy him, promising him riches and women and whatever else he may desire in exchange for the prize that Stark and Stark alone could give. He’d sounded urgent and almost desperate though, and by the time he was finished threatening and bragging it was clear to Kevin that the Thing’s plan - whatever it was - was not going to go off unless he gave the Thing what it needed. That knowledge made Kevin Stark invincible. He knew it. The thing knew it. Stark would die, but he’d die with his honor and his secrets intact.
The beast, in all his time traveling in and out of the earths history, had never heard anything from human beings save cries of helplessness and pleas for mercy. This time it was he who was absorbing the taunts and jeers, and he who was doing the begging. He went at Kevin Stark a hundred different ways. He threatened him with death. Stark said “kill me.” He threatened the death of family. Stark had none. He threatened to wipe out every living thing on the planet. Stark wished him luck. Before long, frustration turned to rage and the meter on Kevin Stark’s life ran out. As he got up to leave the Captains quarters, the Thing lashed at him with the open hand of Brendt crushing into the back of his skull. The blow - only meant to hurt, was too much for Stark’s neck. His spine broke cleanly at cervical two, and he was dead as he slid to the floor. The Grey Beast shed the skin of Captain Brendt then, making ready to proceed without the precious information so coldly withheld from him. He got to the con as a giant moving puddle of grey slime, and made sure the ship was still steaming toward the coordinates he’d ordered.
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