Chapter 31

Chapter 31

Gliders. Five … no … six of them. An alien Special Forces team? Was this the A-team? Or the B-team left outside to provide backup support while the A-team infiltrated the facility? The latter, he thought. That's what he would have done. He squeezed back the throttle, hoping the high-pitched whine of the outboard hadn't alerted the backup gliders. The large, triangular-shaped barge loomed in front. A glider scooted by, one of the smaller single-rider versions Stark was retro-engineering. The creature's back was turned to him. Steve pulled his sidearm and aimed at the creature's back, noting the curious lack of armor on the greyish flesh.

Nothing but slaves…

Shooting the creature in the back would serve no purpose but to alert his compatriots of his approach. Steve holstered the weapon, spinning the wheel of the tiny boat and frowning as the current tried to drag it downriver. On second thought, maybe that wasn't such a bad idea? The docks were on the east side of the island because the current rammed any boat that tried to approach from the west into the rocky shore. Steve fired up the engine and drove away from the fight, looping upriver. He waited until he felt the current drag him in the direction he wanted and aimed the boat right for the island, cutting the engine completely.

As he'd anticipated, the current carried him right into the tidal wall which ran along the entire island. It was low tide. Waiting until he felt the bump of the boat hitting the rocks, he threw out the cinder block with a rope through the middle which served as an anchor. He had no idea if it would be adequate to hold the craft once the tide began to rise, but it was a rental. Not an asset of S.H.I.E.L.D. He'd be less than pleased if he had to pay to replace it.

Another glider passed just as Steve was splashing through knee-deep water to the shore. He froze. As he'd hoped, the lower-level soldiers were slow to recognize a potential threat unless it moved towards them. Another piece of the puzzle … a picture that was beginning to make sense. As soon as the glider moved beyond him, he finished the trudge through the icy waters, grimacing as it soaked through his shoes. The first lesson any soldier learned was to always protect your feet. It was going to be one hell of an unpleasant mission.

He ran along the stone sea wall, careful to keep to the shadows as another glider passed. One skimmed the dock. There would be no getting onboard that way. It was November. This was really going to stink! Stripping off his favorite leather jacket and praying he'd be able to retrieve it before the rising tide carried it away, Steve slipped back into the water, careful not to draw the attention of the gliders by splashing.

The icy water hit him like a sledgehammer. Hyperventilating to keep his core temperature from dropping, he did the breast stroke to swim to the opposite side of the enormous floating fortress, keeping his head and body under water as much as possible to reduce his visual footprint. Another glider passed as his hand bumped the barnacle-ridden hull. The sound of boots pacing back and forth alerted him climbing out of the water unseen by the gliders was not his only problem. Like all things the lower-level sentries did, there appeared to be a pattern to the glider's patrol pattern and the back-and-forth pacing of the soldier on the deck above.

Now that he knew what he was looking for, he could predict their movement. Tick. Tick. Tick. Steve forced his heart rate to slow as he counted the rhythm. Slipping beneath the water until he was almost to the bottom of the hull, he continued the count, waiting until he estimated the sentry on the deck would have his back turned one way and the patrol glider would be at the far reach of his patrol arc, then kicked up out of the water like an orca breaching the waves. It was not much momentum, but enough to grab the lip of the deck, the purpose for all the work he did between missions on parallel bars and gymnastics rings. Suppressing a grunt of pain as shoulder muscles screamed in protest at the abuse, he swung himself up, his movement anything but graceful as he flopped onto the deck of the ship like a fish out of water.

A human?

The dark-skinned male whirled and rushed towards him, his blonde afro gleaming against ebony skin. One of the missing Melanesian Islanders? The man wore a black jumpsuit not too different from what S.H.I.E.L.D. agents wore on missions, attire designed to blend into the night. The M-16 held casually in his arms came up, aiming right for Steve's heart. A heart not protected by his usual armor.

Steve flung forward in the tornado kick taught to him by Agent Romanov, the feint making it look like he was coming in for a punch before he spun a back kick to in the intruder's midsection. The gun fired harmlessly to his left. Drat! Now the others knew he was here! Using the momentum of the spin to face forward once more, Steve gave the intruder a good old-fashioned punch in the face before he could get his bearings and shoot again. Adding a left hook and a jab, Steve finished taking him out with sucker punch straight to the side of the head. The intruder crumbled to the deck. Just a slave… Steve didn't have time to feel for a pulse before the glider had finished its arc and spotted him.

Rays of light shot from the glider, exploding on the deck. Steve ran, weaving erratically in an effort to evade the weapons fire. One-one-thousand, two-one-thousand, three-one… Steve thanked whatever God had decided to resurrect a guy who'd noted back in 1945 the odd delay in the Chitauri reaction time.

The Triskelion had been designed to provide little cover for intruders, which meant there was little cover for him, either. But it did have weapons turrets. Steve dove towards a cannon, yelping as sparks from a Chitauri weapon ricocheted off the metal and seared through his shirt. Steve grit his teeth and climbed up into the turret, thankful the engineers who'd designed it had possessed enough sense to provide cover for a live gunner even though the weapon had been designed to be fired by computer from inside the ship. He punched in his access code, seizing control away from a computer which was, for some reason, not firing the thing at the alien gliders. He circled the gun, just barely in the saddle, and aimed in front of the alien glider.

The sound of the cannon making his ears ring as it blasted the alien glider out of the sky. The little ship floated on the waves, sparks marking the spot where the rider had met his death, and then slipped beneath. Steve spun the wheel, a manual override ridiculously 1945 in light of how advanced this weapon really was, and took aim at a second glider, and then a third. Three down, three to go. His eyes scanned the sky, watching for the remaining three.

A disturbance in the water caught his attention. A submarine? The thing rose above the waves and heaved itself into the sky, it's undulating form telling him this was a biomechanical machine, only smaller than the enormous Leviathan's. This was something he hadn't seen before. He spun the manual override, moving the cannon towards the Chitauri ship. Too slow! He wasn't going to make it. He dove out of the turret just in time to avoid being vaporized along with the gun, screaming in agony as his left leg crunched beneath him.

"Fuck!" Steve shouted in an uncustomary swear-word he'd picked up from the less well-mannered Clint.

The remaining gliders converged on his position. He ran for his life. Or more precisely, he hopped. A hop-run similar to the gait of a kangaroo as it dodged a larger predator. Zig. Zag. Zig. Zag. Weapons discharged all around him. Bernice… What he would give to taste one last kiss of those beautiful red lips! To say the words he'd been casually dropping into conversation to feel her out before he told her how he really felt about her.

The rat-a-tat-tat of automatic weapons firing from the shore drew the attention of the bigger ship, the biomechanical creature jerking its attention towards the new threat, leaving the gliders to deal with Steve. The cavalry … he hoped. Shots exploded all around him, only his decades-old experience dodging similar weapons fire in another time and war enabling him to survive thus far. An external stairwell had been left open, bodies of S.H.I.E.L.D. guards littering the deck. Heaving his body forward in a maneuver any major league baseball player learned, Steve dove into the stairwell, his hand missing the rail as weapons fire exploded millimeters from his body as he tumbled down the metal steps. Each thud down the stairs knocked a yelp out of his lungs. Just before he slid beneath the rail of the first landing and fell into the bowels of the ship, his hand met with the metal and stayed his fall.

"Ow," he whimpered, thanking his lucky stars he'd get that chance to finish his date with Bernice, after all. Pulling himself to his feet, he limped into the ship below.

X

Note: believe it or not, the oceans around New York and New England are –not- too horribly icy in November due to the Gulf Stream, which carries warm water (and hurricanes) up the coast. I live on Cape Cod, where on south-facing beaches it's common for some of the more nutty locals to go for a 'polar swim' up until New Year's Day because the water temperature is significantly warmer than the air. I once swam in 63 degree water in December. So don't feel too terribly bad for Steve, who is cold, but not frozen to death as happened when Red Skull's ship went down. The exposure to the cold November air –after- he climbs out of the water is what's going to really hurt!