An Interview in London (Part Two)

“Manchester, Bonaventure, Havock, Defender, Terror, and the Barham,” he lists. “Those were the ships that came to our aid. Together, they sunk another of the Abyssal frigates before the survivor called it quits and ran; guess even *they* know a losing battle when they see it.” He sniffs derisively and eyes his drink for a moment before evidently deciding against another swig, not that I’m complaining.

“After that things wound down. We got our prisoner back to Gibraltar within the next few days and the Major got in touch with Army Headquarters and the SIS. You can’t imagine the ruckus we caused when six old warships rolled into the harbour; the Spaniards were shitting bricks, probably would have kicked up much more of a fuss than they did if the attacks didn’t start intensifying. The real kicker though, was when they told the Major–who then told us–that there were *more* of those girls showing up all over the world: Britain, the US, France, Germany, Japan, Australia, Italy, loads of places. Then of course, we were told about the Abyssals.”

He sighs and rests an elbow on the table, running a hand through his hair. “I won’t bother telling you about them, I’m sure every possible theory on why they’re here and why they’re so damned aggressive has already been discussed at measure. I didn’t care much then, and I don’t really care a whole lot now. As far as I knew–as far as I *know*–they’re here, they’re mad, and it’s us or them.”

I quiz him on that attitude. Wouldn’t shock be a more natural reaction?

“What, you think we weren’t shocked at the knowledge that freaky-looking girls were rising up from the deep with enough firepower to knock over a fortress or two? Hell yes we were shocked, but unlike a lot of folk at that time, we’d actually *seen* them. More to the point, we’d seen that they could be beaten; that they could *die*.”

He gives me a measured look before rolling up his left sleeve. On his forearm is tattooed the insignia of the Parachute Regiment, with the motto ‘Utrinque Paratus’ underneath. He shows it to me for a few moments before pulling it back to cover his arm.

“I do have one of the SAS, it’s just on the other arm,” he tells me with a smirk before getting to the point. “You know what the Latin means?” he asks me. I shake my head.

“Neither did I when I first saw it,” he reminisces. “I was a pretty shit student, and languages–good God! They were the bane of my existence. Anyhow, what it says is ‘Ready for anything’. They break you down at Catterick in the first weeks of Hell–that’s what they call the 28-week training course–and build you back up to be the most aggressive motherfucker on the face of the planet. It sounds machismo as all hell but there really is no such thing as a Paratrooper who just gives up, because they’re drummed out of P Company before they get very far, let me assure you.”

I point out to him that he was SAS, not Parachute Regiment, by the time the Abyssals rolled around. He grins at me.

“And where do you think the SAS gets three quarters of its recruits? The Royal Marines?” He scoffs. “They say that roughly 80% of all men who go into the 22nd are Paras before that. They’re right. Doesn’t matter what anyone else says, the Paras are the best soldiers in our armed forces, and SAS training makes you even harder than that. When the rest were told, yeah there was shock, there was disbelief, but once that was over, it was business as usual: something else we needed to learn how to kill.”

I have to wonder if it was really as simple as that. He makes a face.

“Yes and no. On the one hand, as I said: that mentality we’d had drilled into us kept us going when everyone else kind of ground to a halt for a few minutes. On the other hand… well, I’m sure you know that ships are pretty difficult to kill on their ownsome, and we had no idea of the capabilities of these Abyssal things. Did they really see with their eyes or did they rely on additional senses like, I dunno, some sort of sonar? Could we feasibly board one and rig it to detonate from the inside? Would there be any resistance on board?”

He sighs in a dispirited manner, “These were just *some* of the questions that we bounced around. Eventually it was decided that, until we knew more about their capabilities, we’d have to sit this one out,” he shakes his head. “Those were frustrating times; got so bloody sick of it that I requested for a transfer to the SBS just so I might get a slice of the action.”

I ask him if his desire to ‘get a slice of the action’ was all there was to his transfer. He appears to mull over his response, working his jaw around before answering carefully, “Not entirely, no. You see, while we were waiting in Gibraltar for orders, we were told to keep an eye on the… girls. It wasn’t explicitly stated, or if it was, the Major never told us, but they were essentially confined to the Naval Base…”
***
He found Barham standing by a window, looking out over the quay and the waters beyond. A Royal Navy patrol boat, either the Scimitar or her sister-ship Sabre, was moored and appeared to be undergoing routine maintenance. Ben noticed her sword was at her hip once more. Security had a devil of a time asking her to relinquish it but each time she had, it had somehow made its way back to her a matter of minutes later. Eventually they simply gave up and very politely asked her to promise not to stab anyone with it.

The other five who had accompanied them–the Manchester, Bonaventure, Havock, Defender and Terror–were sat in a lounge watching television with varying degrees of interest. Barham had sat through scant minutes before wandering off.

Ben cleared his throat softly, “You really shouldn’t wander off on your own.”

Barham did not answer, instead continuing to stare out the window, the rise and fall of her chest the only indication that she was even…

What?

*Alive*?

“Is this really all that remains?” she wondered aloud. Ben furrowed his eyebrows, unsure as to what she was talking about. “Gibraltar? Some paltry little islands scattered across the oceans? A few overseas installations?”

She turned to face him, a curiously mournful expression on her face. “What happened to the Empire over which the sun never set?”

Ben blinked. He had no answers for her of course; history had never held much interest to him even before he’d joined the Paras. Hurriedly, he racked his brain for *any* sort of response.

“Times changed,” was what he eventually settled on. It was a lame, unspecific answer, but even he knew there was an undercurrent of truth to it.

“I suppose they do,” Barham murmured, her voice barely a whisper, looking back out over the quay. “I just…” she started, but trailed off, unsure. “I suppose I’m a little surprised.”

“Surprised at what? That we don’t have an empire anymore?” Ben asked her as he moved to stand beside her.

“That yes but also…” she shook her head. “When I roamed the waves, we were, without question, one of the world’s major powers. When we spoke, others listened. *Millions* swore allegiance to Crown and Country in our overseas territories.”

She turned back to Ben, her eyes full of emotion, “My memories are incomplete, but I remember my death. I remember the chill certainty that those German torpedoes had gutted me and there was nothing anyone could do to save me. I remember my magazines exploding; how I *burned*, and I remember sinking… feeling the icy depths rising to claim me as they claimed so many others,” she shivered and, for a moment, she was a girl; a confused, scared young woman who was woefully out of touch with the modern world and no idea of how it worked.

“Did I die–did my *sisters* die–just so that my country could be rendered irrelevant?” she whispered.

“No,” Ben told her, this time he spoke clearly and with certainty.

“You died before the war ended, and I don’t know if anyone’s really told you yet, but I’ll assume you guessed that we won; the Nazis lost?”

Barham nodded.

Ben scratched the back of his neck in an awkward fashion, “Well, shit. Basically what it boils down to is…” he paused. He wanted to tell Barham that she and so many other brave bastards had given their lives to defend the free world from a monstrous regime; that they had died for freedom. It sounded heroic, and it was also corny as all hell. A cynical little voice in his head wondered if Barham was simply upset Britain no longer hogged the spotlight, but giving voice to it here and now of all times would be tactless at best.

In the end, he decided to suck it up and–as dear old grandmamma had told him–just roll with whatever felt right.

“Look, Barham,” he began, “I’m no historian; I was a shit student at the best of times. I only really joined the services and learned how to jump out of planes because–shit–I could run all day and I was a bit of a thrill-seeker. I–” he noticed the look of confusion on her face and realised that he was rambling before he’d even started to approach anything resembling a point.

“Okay, let me– ahh. Let me start over. Kids write essays on how the Allies fought for freedom; to defend democracy and all that rah-rah crap; lot of it is bullshit if you look a bit closer so I’ve been told. In the end though, I think it’s... well… I think that you and your sisters fought and bled and died so that, fuck… so that people like me could fuck up our lives.”

Barham blinked.

“Pardon?”

“Yeah, that’s right. So I could chase skirts and piss about in school all day and not realise I’d *fucked* myself until it was too late to do anything; so others could drink themselves to ruin and drive each other absolutely batfuck *mental*… but also so others might grow up without knowing how shit war is, so that these same people might grow up happy and get to lead a life of their *choosing*. I went into 2 PARA because I had no options, but with all the Saints as my witnesses I stayed because I knew if *I* could take a few shitty days in some blazing Middle Eastern hellhole being shot at by the locals, it’d mean no one else would have an even shittier time back home.”

He paused to take a breath, “At the end of the day, no matter whether it’s now or seventy years back when you and yours patrolled our waters, there’s a lot of good in this world; a lot of good, honest folk, and it and they are worth fighting for–worth fighting to defend. *That’s* what you fought for… what I’d like to believe you fought for.”

They stood in silence for five full minutes once he finished, and Ben was beginning to flush, wondering if he’d overdone it, or if what he’d said had sounded corny after all.

Then, finally, Barham started to… giggle?

She had a hand raised to her face and was stifling full-blown guffaws. Every so often, she’d pry open an eye to peer at him and her barely-restrained, hitching laughter would kick off even harder. Ben felt his face heat up and he immediately looked the other way and stuck his hands in his pockets, embarrassed. Eventually, when she had calmed down, he turned back to her. She was wiping a tear from her eye.

“I am sorry,” Barham tittered. “That was just… ahhh,” she sighed.

Another minute passed on by, and then Barham cleared her throat, drawing Ben’s attention. He scowled when he saw that her good humour had yet to entirely fade. Then she said something that stopped him stupid, and completely wiped the scowl from his face.

“Thank you.”

This time it was Ben’s turn to blink.

“You what?”

“I must confess it wasn’t particularly… *eloquent*, but I think I understood. Mostly. Thank you for making an effort. It… means a lot more to me than you know.”

Then she smiled at him. It was a tentative expression at first, but gradually it grew warmer. Ben smiled back, and together, between them, a moment was shared. Then Ben realised he’d been staring and cleared his throat before turning away.

She really was very attractive.
***
So, he did it for Barham?

“Her and the others, yeah,” he replies with a nod. I catch the briefest of pauses after he says ‘her’ and wonder what precisely that it means. He certainly made note of her physical appearance, or should that be avatar? Manifestation? The photographs made available to the public certainly do justice to what he’s told me of her.

I study Ben McLeod, his body language is still and neutral, but for a few short moments he won’t meet my eyes. Does he think I noticed the pause? Is he wondering what I make of what he’s just told me?

Could he conceivably have fallen–or started to fall–in love with Barham? The possibility is as curious as it is tragic, and though I realise it’s in poor taste I can’t help but ask.

He is still and unmoving when I ask him the question, and he remains as such for an agonisingly long while; so long that I start to wonder if he is experiencing some sort of flashback and has, in fact, not heard me at all. Then He fixes me with a blank, unreadable stare, and keeps it going, unblinking, for an impressive length of time before he continues.

“They processed my transfer request in a few weeks and, somehow, some way, it got itself approved. I packed up my kit and was transported to Poole to undergo the integration process.”

I try to shift to topic back to Barham but, for the moment at least, he ignores me each time. Eventually I cave and ask him what this integration consisted of.

“Nothing I’m allowed to tell you,” he informs me. I remind him that, strictly speaking, he’s not allowed to me any of what he’s told me so far. He shrugs, conceding the point.

“Mostly physical stuff, that wasn’t much of a hassle; I had a much harder time undergoing Selection for the Paras. Then there were more complicated aspects of marine warfare, which was a little more difficult but useful enough I guess. After that was done, I got my green beret and was assigned to my unit just as the Navy cooked up a rather interesting little scheme.”

He grins at my curious expression, “With all that was going on, it was decided that we really, really needed to learn more about the Abyssals. That they were dangerous was already obvious but even now we still know nothing about why they appear and what they really *want*. The Royal Navy and the Royal Marine Commandoes–which also meant us in the SBS–got special orders: we were to cooperate with the ‘Returned’ and try to board and subdue an Abyssal.”

I blink at him.

He nods, “Yeah, you heard right.”

I assume ‘Returned’ was in referral to the Barham and the others like her, and when I ask him to confirm this, he gives me another nod. Then, going on what he’s just told me (or, more specifically, the language used) I go on to assume that this ‘special mission’ was a failure.

“Of course it was,” he scoffs. “Nine times out of ten any boarding team was too far to be able to make much of a difference and those odd times they *were*, it usually resulted in them getting blown out of the water before they even got close. As far as I know only one team managed a successful boarding action but… well, they never made it back. Comms were allegedly lost the minute after they reported scaling the hull, or so the rumours go.”

I ask him what sort of ship it was that they boarded, and what he thinks they encountered on-board.

“I think it was a cruiser of some kind. As for what they may have found on the thing? Shit, I dunno, and I don’t really think I want to. I know I’ve ragged on them a fair amount but RMC’s–especially those that make the SBS–ain’t no slouches; they’d have made their objective or died trying,” he rubs his forehead and works his jaw around, and I notice he’s taking slightly longer, larger breaths through his nose as if to calm himself down. “Whatever it was that did for them, I hope it was quick; can’t imagine the Abyssals would have much use for prisoners.

“Despite the setbacks, we kept trying. I was on the water for weeks and weeks on end as we roamed the coast of the Isles and tried to grab ourselves a prisoner and I bloody hated it. I never much liked sea travel before but living on such a cramped space with hundreds of others who are just as frustrated and pissed off as you? It was even worse considering that, after all the failures, morale was at a slump, especially among the boarding parties.

“Anyhow, after months on end, we hauled back to London for a bit of shore leave. It’d be good for us and the ship I was on–the *Albion*– needed some TLC of its own. So us, our RN escorts and the other four ladies–”

I interrupt him there, curious as to who he means by “other four ladies”. He blinks at me before realising his error.

“Oh! Sorry, guess I forgot to mention that bit. Those girls who had returned to us were organised into flotillas and sent out along with a Royal Navy vessel or two as escort. Ours, as it just so happened, consisted of the very same girls who had saved our bacon in Syria; all of them except Bonaventure, who’d been assigned to a different task force, and Terror, who was a mite too slow to be able to comfortably keep up. We did see her on the first day of shore leave though.”

That must have been nice.

“It was,” he says, a faint echo of a smile gracing his haggard features before fading as quickly as it had come. “Then the 18th rolled around…”

London.

“London,” he echoes with hooded eyes and a haunted expression.
***
His first thought was that his head hurt.

Like, *really* hurt.

Then he realised something was screaming in his ears and his chest felt like a horse was standing on it.

Ben McLeod awoke to find himself lying on the cold steel floor of a ship corridor. Why was he on a ship? Had he and the lads gotten hammered last night and scragged some RMCs again? It’d certainly explain the killer headache. The wailing sirens on the other hand… not so much. Or why the corridor was cast in a deep, threatening red light. Then the previous months caught up with him and he remembered that he hadn’t been either SAS or Para for a good, long while.

And then he remembered what had happened just before he’d gone and knocked himself out.

“Oh shit,” he breathed, terror infecting him like a virus.

Even now, as his senses returned more completely, he became aware of the distant, muffled din of conflict: booming guns that thundered like only naval guns could; shouts and cries and the clatter of small arms fire. All the bloody good *that’ll* do us, Ben thought darkly as he pushed himself up, wincing as pain shot across his chest like a hundred tiny splinters of agony. He exhaled shakily; Christ, had he ever been hurt so bad it killed him just to *breathe*?

He took an unsteady step forward–

And then something exploded, and Ben was flung against the bulkhead, smashing the side of his head against a blown-out light before collapsing to the floor once more. He cried out as the hearing in his left ear suddenly dimmed, quickly dazed and overwhelmed by the explosion of pain. He vaguely remembered something like this happening not so long beforehand. Unlike the last time, however, he did not black out.

Something wet trickled down the side of his face as he forced his reeling body to rise again. Groggily, he raised a hand and held it to the spot on his head that ached the most. It came away bloody, and his hearing was still muffled; that probably wasn’t good.

“Fuck,” he croaked, vision swimming. He took a step forward and suddenly vomited, emptying his guts all over the deck. The stink overwhelmed him in the confined space and he threw up again, splattering his boots with half-digested mashed potato. He groaned and forced himself on, steadying himself against a bulkhead with one shaking arm, ambling towards a stairwell in a graceless, drunken fashion, each step taking him closer to the distant din of battle.

The short climb to the top deck of the Albion was one of the hardest things Ben had ever done; his vision was spotty throughout his ascent and three times he felt like he was going to faint, but eventually he made it to open air. There, he was assaulted by the reek of cordite, the acrid tang of smoke, and unholy stench of roasting fat that mingled with the sea air to create an unholy aroma that would have made him hurl again had he any more left in his gut to expel. Instead, he simply fell to his knees and dry-heaved. When he was done, he looked out at the waters beyond the Albion–

–and saw Hell.

Thick pillars of smoke rose from Southend-on-Sea, carried by a spitefully strong wind that whistled mockingly as it fermented the infernos that shellfire had ignited. Broken hulls littered the entrance to the Thames; the Dauntless, which was sinking bow-first into the water, its hull cratered and rent; the Argyll, which was ablaze and scarcely recognisable but for the fact that it wasn’t the Somerset, which Ben knew had been destroyed in the opening salvoes by a concentrated barrage of such ferocity that the frigate had scarcely managed to fire off a shot. Off in the distance the Diamond was slugging it out with what he assumed was a pair of Abyssal Destroyers. It wasn’t faring particularly well.

Then there were the girls.

Oh the girls…

Terror was rent in two; her lifeless blue eyes staring blankly up at the cloudy skies while her curly ginger hair billowing out around her head to frame it like a halo. The little Monitor-class ship had returned in the form of a twelve-year old girl, with a dry sense of humour and a motor mouth on her that could turn a nun into an axe murderer; she had developed an obsession with Nestle Smarties over the last six months. Ben had bought her two large tubes of the chocolates as a gift while on shore leave not the day beforehand.

Defender floated nearby; the strangely undamaged silver tiara she wore the only thing that identified her bloodied, ravaged body. She was soft-spoken and kind, and had developed a fascination with modern British politics, most particularly the fall of the Liberal Democrats, or the Whigs as they were once known.

Rowdy Manchester–who had been incredibly popular with the Royal Marines and Ben’s own SBS unit both for her broad sense of humour and uncanny ability to mimic the voices of other individuals–died moments later, a crippling detonation from within coring her like an apple. She crumpled to her own blasted deck, bleeding from every orifice, eyes wide with shock and pain, and already starting to glaze over as she breathed her last.

Havock lived yet; her guns trained on an Abyssal battleship and firing, firing, *firing*. Her short, chestnut brown hair was streaked with blood and her left arm was missing from the elbow down but still she battled on. Of all the returned ships, she had been the most reserved, the most cautious; never offering more than a word or two, and even then not only unless she deemed it necessary. She’d found her voice now though, and her face was twisted into a savage, horrific mask of grief, pain and fury as she howled her defiance at the immense, twisted warship bearing down on her.

Then the battleship’s batteries spoke with thundering finality, and Havock joined her sisters in the mouth of the Thames, limp and lifeless.

Barham stood alone, positioned to block the entrance to the river with her hull. Her guns boomed, but she was only one ship, and there were seven Abyssal craft of varying size that converged on the pockmarked warship, their own batteries tracking her; marking her.

I have to get her out of there, Ben thought deliriously.
***
“After Portsmouth, the Royal Navy set up a constant guard around both the port, and London. There’d be a rotation every few weeks; ships would resupply and then they’d head off, leaving the new arrivals in charge of gate duty. They attacked just as we were in the middle of resupplying as the previous garrison–such as it was–had taken off. I don’t know why the left so soon, it was damned stupid of them to have left that early; maybe it was down to miscommunication, lapse of judgement, negligence, whatever; doesn’t matter now.

“They hit us like a force of nature. At least three battleships, and a mix of others; mostly destroyers though, I think. Some fifteen tainted warships closing on the road to London with just nine of us to defend it. Ten if you counted the Albion–which no one was–and a few joint squadrons of US F-15s from Lakenheath and RAF fighters from Coningsby and Marham scrambling to help out,” he scoffs, his expression bitter. “They got there just in time to stop them levelling Buckingham Palace. Drove them off, sure, but not before they’d razed everything along the riverside.”

He motions towards the pub window; and London outside. It’s still pelting it down with rain, and still a grey, miserable day. It seems morbidly fitting.

“Even now, they’re still digging up bodies,” he states, “a couple thousand are dead for definite; even more than that are still missing, and most of that number are probably dead as well,” he muses with a dour, tired tone of voice. “Millions of pounds in damages and… well, shit, you’ve been outside; you’ve seen what people look like around here.”

He laughs; a short, sharp, humourless bark that momentarily draws the attention of the rest of the pub. They stare for a moment before returning to their drinks. Ben gestures with a hand and shakes his head at me.

“It’s like we’ve already lost.”

Another lengthy pause settles over us before I muster up the courage to ask about Barham.

“Well, I went to her of course. I couldn’t do anything for the others, but if I had a shot at getting her out of that hell, I was going to take it. I picked up an SA80 from somewhere–fuck knows what good it’d have done me, but I felt safer with it–and grabbed a landing craft,” his face falls; he seems almost ashamed of himself. “I never even thought about any poor sods who might still have been on-board the Albion. There was only her, and I was too delirious with concussion to be put off.”

I ask him what his plan of action was. He snorts derisively, and a bitter, pained expression flashes across his face for the briefest instance.

“There wasn’t any plan except take her *out* of that hellhole by whatever means there was. It never occurred to me in my condition that there literally was no way out for her. They summon either those dumb-looking outfits or their original bodies and ride them like war chariots. There’s no separating the two and Barham?” he inhales deeply through his nose. “Well…”
***
It felt like an aeon before he arrived, but arrive he did. His vision was still swimming and his short-term memory was splotchy at best. He was dimly aware that he probably had a concussion but couldn’t find it in himself to care. It was all just too unreal; the fire, the noise.

The death.

Barham’s hull was marred and cratered from a dozen different wounds she had suffered as every Abyssal gun had turned on her. Even the sturdiest battleship would have shuddered under such a barrage, yet she fought on; one of her main batteries reduced to molten slag, rudder blown away. Still her guns roared in defiance of the unholy storm that raged around her.

He felt exhausted, more exhausted than he’d ever felt before in his life. Had Hell in P Coy been this bad? Had Selection? He couldn’t remember. His head hurt, hurt, hurt and his thoughts were all jumbled and he was certain his heart was banging around in his chest all wrong. The only thing he knew for certain was that she was up here somewhere and he had to save her.

How?

Any way he could.

Why?

“Because I–” he yelled, and stopped as he clutched at his pounding skull, leaning against the side as his legs almost buckled and gave out beneath him.

Gritting his teeth and snarling like a feral beast, he pushed himself up and forced himself onwards.

Just like they taught you in P Coy, he thought dimly: Three more steps. Then three more after that. Three more after that… three more after…

Then he was on the main deck.

And there she was.

She stood facing the onslaught, her expression grim but defiant. She was strangely unmarred by the fighting; appearing just as perfect as the day she had appeared before him all that time ago in Syria; the tails of her red coat fluttering in the wind, her sword out of its sheath and pressed point-first on the deck, hands resting atop the pommel as she calmly observed her many enemies.

He called out to her, but she didn’t hear him. So he staggered closer, until once again he stood at her side, resting on the stock of his rifle, he reached out a hand to touch her–

“Why are you here?” she asked, her voice strained.

“I came to save you,” he answered, as if it were obvious.

Slowly, she turned her gaze towards him. She always had such soft eyes, but now they were hard and uncompromising, and full of fear. For a moment, it felt to Ben like the fighting had ceased; like the Abyssals had paused to take in the scene that was unfolding on Barham’s main deck.

“There’s no saving me now, Ben.”

Ben blinked, and blinked again, and this time he truly *saw* her.

Barham’s bloody hands clutched the pommel of her sword in a death grip, shaking at the effort it took just to keep hold of the weapon. Blood streamed down the side of her face and her lip was torn by shellfire. Her left flank was covered in wounds: scratches; lacerations; gouges; burns. The golden aiguillette had been ripped from her shoulder, along with a chunk of her red tailcoat, and the skin it exposed was charred and black. Her hair was filthy with dried blood and oil, and her legs quivered with hurt and exhaustion. It was costing her everything just to stand up.

Ben felt his heart stop in his chest at the sight of her ravaged form.

“Before she sank, we got word from the Dauntless that jets from the Royal Air Force and American squadrons at Lakenheath were scrambling,” she informed him in a dry, pained voice. She sighed. “I was rather hoping I might get to see them in action myself. Oh well… maybe some other time.”

Ben shook his head in denial, understanding full well what she was telling him.

“If I let them through here, they’ll murder their way up the Thames and through London. You know this.”

Ben nodded his head, too shocked and hurt and tired for words.

“Good,” she smiled at him. A trickle of blood ran from the corner of her mouth and dripped from her chin. She turned her head away from him to look once more at the Abyssal ships that rent her apart even as they spoke. “I have to say, this isn’t quite how I pictured my new life ending… but, compared to how it happened the first time, I suppose it’s not so bad.”

Then she took hold of his arms and pulled him close, drawing him into a warm, soft embrace. She smelled of blood and oil, and Ben felt her shaking against him even as he resigned himself to inevitability. Shakily, he raised his own arms and wrapped them around Barham, feeling tears run from the corners of his eyes down his dirty cheeks.

“I’m sorry,” he wanted to say, but all that came out was a choked sob.

“I know,” Barham soothed, “and I’m sorry too.”

Then she gently pushed him away, grabbed him with both arms–

–and threw him, with all the strength that remained in her battered, broken body, off of her deck.

“Goodbye,” she said, still smiling.

Then she vanished, replaced by a fireball that enveloped her like a jealous lover, tearing her away from the world–and Ben–forever.
***
The rest of the story is all familiar to me, as it is to anyone who turned on their televisions that mournful day. Once the fleet guarding the Thames was destroyed, the Abyssals sailed on through, laying waste to all they could, reaching Canary Wharf before precision airstrikes by RAF and USAF jets forced them to retreat. The attack was a statement, and it hit every one of my countrymen like a punch to the gut.

It seems to have hit Ben McLeod hardest of all. The knowledge that Barham’s sacrifice did ultimately little to halt the slaughter that followed has probably eaten away at him ever since. I try to console him; to tell him that it could have been much, *much* worse if not for those heroic girls and the Royal Navy escorts. He grunts in response. I have no idea if that means he realises and accepts it, or if it means nothing at all to him.

We sit in silence for almost ten minutes before he finishes his drink and gets up, slipping on his raincoat.

“We’re done here,” he says abruptly. He looks terrible, and with his haunted, haggard expression, lifeless grey eyes and unshaven face, I’d never once have pegged him as Special Forces were I to pass him on the street. Part of me wants to ask him more questions, while the rest just wants to leave him to his misery. I’m aware that I feel keenly sorry for him as he pays his tab and makes his way to the door, his feet shuffling along like a homeless down-and-out. I don’t even remember to thank him for his time.

Then he opens the pub door, pauses, and looks back at me. We maintain eye contact for a few brief seconds before he turns away and steps outside and into the cold, wet London evening, leaving me with only the suffocating silence of the pub and the patter of the rain for company.
***
Ben McLeod stopped outside the pub and raised his head, letting the rain run across his face. After a few seconds of this, he grunted sourly and placed his hands in his coat pockets before starting the trudge back home. He had hoped–however melodramatic that hope was–that it might wash away the memories, and all the hurt they dug up with them.

There was a man in black standing outside the pub with an umbrella. His skin was coffee-brown, and a pair of smart spectacles were perched on the bridge of his nose. He wore a curious smile on his face, and his mud brown eyes were locked on Ben as he left. The impression he gave Ben was one of a smug, self-satisfied know-it-all.

Definitely a spook then.

He eyed him up and considered running before deciding against it. What the hell could he really have done? What had happened in London was hardly a secret, nor was the little number in Syria once the SIS had gotten their prisoner to start singing. So, he met the agent’s eye and gave him a cordial nod. The spook nodded back.

“Sergeant McLeod?” he asked.

“Like you didn’t know already,” Ben groused.

“Then I’ll skip the formalities. You can call me John, and if you wouldn’t mind, I’d rather like to discuss your future.”

Ben shrugged and fell into step with John, who offered him shelter under his umbrella. Ben mumbled a few words of thanks.

“After the little display you gave when they hoisted out of the river,” John said as they walked along the darkening street, “I’m sure you can imagine that your future in the military is being… considered.”

“Meaning they’re trying to find a nice way of tossing me out.”

“Crude, but also apt I suppose.”

Ben raised an eyebrow. He hadn’t expected such an honest, direct response.

“I guess it makes sense,” he sighed. “I did kind of deck an Admiral… and a Colonel…”

“And three Majors and a Second Lieutenant,” John added, before giving him a curious look. “You didn’t have to break the poor boy’s nose, you know; he’d literally come out of Sandhurst the week before.”

“He had a baton,” Ben explained. “They don’t really teach you much in the Paras beyond ‘terminate with extreme–’”

“Prejudice,” John interrupted, “yes, yes, I’m very familiar with the creed of the Parachute Regiment; you’re all very strong, very tough men and you eat danger and shit victory and all of that other chest-thumping bravado stuff. Useful, but hardly precise.”

“We can be precise when we want to be,” Ben growled, narrowing his eyes dangerously at John, who still had that smirk on his face.

“Quite, but before you threaten to strangle me with my own spinal column, Mr McLeod, let me inform you that I have an offer for you.”

Ben raised an eyebrow at him and stopped, folding his arms across his chest.

John had the decency to at least appear sheepish, “Okay; the *SIS* has an offer for you.”

Ben motioned for him to continue, so he did, “I’m sure I don’t need to impress upon you the threat these… ‘Abyssals’ pose to us as a species. We have no idea where they come from, what they want, or even how they come to simply *be*.”

“You’re telling me stuff I already know about. Get to the bleeding point.”

John continued as if he hadn’t been interrupted, “Their opposite numbers; ‘Ship-Girls’, ‘Returned’, ‘Ghost-Women’, whatever. They’ve been of tremendous value when properly supported: the power of a warship contained in a… well, a person. Often a young woman as I’m sure you’ve noticed, though we have rare–albeit sketchy–reports of males as well.

“The problem is that these girls had precious little clue regarding the world today, particularly those who have only recently returned to us. Some of them are simply curious as to how their predecessors lived, or about the world as it exists today. Others are... decidedly more difficult. That’s where you come in.”

Ben blinked.

“Let me see if I have this right,” he asked, “you want me–someone trained to kill people in more ways than people know how to *die*–”

“Not sure why you feel the need to let me know that in particular.” John interrupted. “No one here’s calling your masculinity into question.”

Ben suppressed the urge to deck him flat and carried on talking, “As I was saying: You want a member of Her Majesty’s Special Forces to *babysit* a bunch of ship-people.”

“I suppose it does sound rather absurd when put like that.”

“That’s one way of putting it.”

“Think of it as an opportunity. You get a moderately easy assignment, you’ll receive a fairly substantial bump to your payslip, and you get to take the fight back to the enemy. You’ll help us *bleed* them.”

“I’ve always been more of a ‘hands-on’ type of guy,” Ben frowned.

“Oh I’m sure you’ll get to flex your muscles now and then; impress the Navy girls. Maybe even one of the–”

“Not interested,” Ben told him, whirling around and starting to tramp away before his temper really started to flare.

John sighed behind him, “I didn’t want to have to use this,” he muttered.

Ben wheeled on him, half expecting the spook to have pulled a gun on him. He hadn’t. In fact, John didn’t seem to have budged an inch from when they’d stopped.

“We know the name and profile of the ship that killed the Barham.”

That little statement punched a hole in his heart, and he almost staggered back. His hands started to shake, and a chill swept through him. For one, dizzying moment, Ben saw red.

“Who…” he breathed raggedly, rage overtaking him. “What’s the–”

“I could tell you but it would do you no good, save to add a name to your nightmares,” John told him. Ben wasn’t surprised to find that he knew about those.

There was a tense moment that passed between the pair. Then, John sighed, his smirk fading entirely, “Look, before this whole mess in the oceans of the world, you made something of yourself. I happen to think that it would be a crying shame to let you drop off the radar because of a bad decision made in a bad moment. I can’t and won’t promise that, if you take me up on the deal, you’ll get a shot at Barham’s killer. I *would*, however, rate your chances significantly higher–and more survivable–than if you tried to act out some hair-brained scheme that would only get you killed.”

Ben took a deep breath in and let it out slowly. Then he took another, and released. Inhale. Exhale. Okay, that felt better, his hands had stopped shaking and he was thinking a lot more clearly now, or as clearly as he could right now.

“Why me?” he asked. “I’m a potential basket case, I’m not a therapist, and I’m damn sure not *Navy*.”

“All of those are true,” John conceded.

“So why then? What makes me so bloody special?”

“You know the answer to that perfectly well Ben.”

“What, because of Barham?”

John gave him an enigmatic smile.

“I take part in your little social group and I get that name and maybe an opportunity?” Ben asked. John nodded.

It should have been a lot more difficult than it was.

“All right,” Ben said with a slow nod.

“Marvellous,” John said. “Follow me then, we’ll have a lot to do and not a whole lot of time to do it in.”

Ben said nothing, content to fall in and listen as the pair began the trek through the dismal, wet London streets.