Carrier Out Of Time

The Pacific was flat as hammered pewter, and Captain Daniel Mercer did not trust it.Twenty-six years in the Navy had taught him that the ocean never gave anything away for free. Calm water meant something was coming, or something was hiding, or the sea was simply biding its time. He stood at the bridge windows of the USS Benjamin Franklin with a mug of black coffee going cold in his hand and watched the horizon the way a farmer watches the sky in tornado season.Four hundred and twenty miles north of Oahu. Day nine of Exercise Pacific Trident. The spring of 2031 had been quiet, and the brass in Pearl had wanted it to stay that way, which was why one hundred thousand tons of nuclear-powered American steel was steaming in slow circles across an empty stretch of ocean, launching jets at imaginary enemies."e;Captain."e; Lieutenant Kevin Shaw, the officer of the deck, stepped up beside him. Shaw was thirty, sharp, and wore the faint permanent squint of a man who'd spent too many hours staring at radar screens. "e;Weather's asking for you. Aerographer's mate says she's got something odd."e;"e;Odd how?"e;"e;She wouldn't say on the phone, sir. Said you'd want to see it yourself."e;Mercer set the mug down on the ledge beneath the window. Below him, the flight deck stretched more than a thousand feet toward the bow, gray and scarred and crawling with sailors in colored jerseys. Yellow shirts directing traffic. Purple shirts dragging fuel hoses. Red shirts wheeling missiles on hydraulic carts. It looked like chaos to anyone who didn't understand it. To Mercer it looked like a symphony.