Empyrean Iris Story Collection Vol. 3

Thermonuclear

Wondered what would happen if he just gave the command.

The thought was so repulsive it shook him out of his momentary haze.

"Fire forward railguns!"

The ship jolted once as the two cannons fired.

"No detectable change sir."

He worried that would happen. They had thrown so much ordinance at this thing it was ridiculous, and still it kept moving forward with all he inevitability of mortality.

This thing was death incarnate, and it was coming to collect early.

He leaned forward, pressing a button o n his chair to radio down to the weapons deck, "Lieutenant , arm the nukes."

"Yes sir."

Nuke was actually a misnomer for the kind of bombs they had aboard the ship, a complete inaccuracy on his part actually. What they had below decks were two fifty megaton thermonuclear bombs or hydrogen bombs, which as he was told, worked with the idea of fusion rather than fission like more traditional nuclear bombs once had.

But there was something about the word Nuke that just.... seemed more serious, and the term had changed over the years to become a slang term for any atom-based bomb that could wreck your shit.

He saw heads turn at his words, but he didn't look back at the crew. Thermonuclear weapons had never been fired in the history of the UNSC. It just had never happened, there was no reason for it to have happened. The fact that they even had them was an immense controversy after everything that had happened during the fourth and worst world war, but yes, Admiral Kozlov's second ship had been outfitted with two fifty megaton warheads.

This was it...

Their hail Mary pass

The last ditch effort

Eleventh hour

In other words

This was it.

"Nukes armed, sir, ready to fire on your command."

The ship rocked again as another psychic wave rolled through the ship. Admiral Kozlov dug his fingers into the armrests of his seat, while others of his crew clawed at their hairlines. He had to swallow down the sudden and overwhelming urge to just give up, lay down on the deck and die. His entire chest throbbed with the need, tears rolled down his face and dripped onto the grey uniform collar.

A few of his crew members just stopped moving, their mental metal spent.

What was the point!

But no, no, he would not give up.

His ancestors wouldn't have given up and neither would he, this wasn't a trench in the cold snow of a Russian winter. His feet weren't freezing, and his digits weren't falling off with frostbite. He wasn't shivering in a shallow puddle of water or eating rations as hard as rock. He was sitting in a comfortable chair on the deck of a ship that cost more than the entire net worth of every Tsar combined, so no, he was not going to lay down and cry.

He was certainly going to sit up and cry but he felt that under the circumstances that was acceptable.

His ancestors had never had to face eldritch psychic horror either, so there was something he had one them.

"Target lock." One of his lieutenants whispered, her voice trailing in and out as she spoke, slumped against her seat.

"Fire missiles."

No one moved.

"For fucks sake." He was just going to have to do it himself.

Another psychic roar rolled through the ship, quelling him in his seat. Metal screamed and the crew screamed, and he screamed, but still, he pulled the trigger.