(This story contains foul language, violence, gore, allusions to assault, and harm ideation. Reader discresion is advised.)

The tanker slowed down enough for the other vessels to speed forward, creating a spearhead formation with the admiral’s ship trailing behind them. When they got close enough to Aspido’s location, the tanker slowed to a crawl. Meanwhile, the attack submarines and the naval ships encircled the area, with the former setting up position further out than the latter. The destroyers launched unguided anti-submarine missiles throughout the center, with the crews aboard the submarines waiting as they heard the ordnances splashing into the water above. Eventually, the silence collapsed into a series of detonations happening down on the ocean floor ahead of them. The silence returned after the explosions, but only briefly until a heavy, thunderous bellow resounded within the pressurized chambers of the underwater vessels.

Outside, Aspido rose from the murky depths to confront whatever attacked it. The submarines began pressing forward, launching torpedoes once the animal was within range. The impacts made the giant creature react, but because the organs were still regenerating, its feelers blossomed out and lashed out in defense. One of the subs got too close and was swatted like a gnat, getting instantly destroyed. Captain Hunley’s and two others got grazed on their second go around of torpedo launches, but the proximity force of the swings was enough to make the vessels lose control, violently tossing their crews about and causing equipment to malfunction. One of them completely lost power and quickly sank to the depths below. As his crew ran about trying to extinguish fires, Captain Hunley tried calling up the admiral for the possibility of changing tactics.

On the tanker, static garbled most of the submarines’ urgent communications to the admiral’s crew. 

“It’s still not surfacing.” Elliott groused, spying on the center of the naval ring formation. “Launch more anti-sub missiles!”

“Sir?” Ducey asked his superior out of confusion.

Admiral Elliott turned around glaring at him yelling, “Launch more missiles! That’s an order!”

More anti-submarine missiles landed into the water. Some hit Aspido, but they also detonated around the submarines. One of the ordnances struck a sub directly on its side, and the resulting explosion snapped the vessel in half.

“What the hell are they doing?” asked Captain Hunley aloud in outrage, as he and his crew braced for dear life inside the quaking submersible.

A few missiles missed but detonated within the immediate vicinity of the second-to-last submarine. The rudder and hydroplanes were disabled, with only the propeller still functioning, turning the vessel into a large torpedo that collided into Aspido and exploded. The sea beast grazed Captain Hunley’s sub one more time before moving upwards to the surface, where it burst out of the water. The encircling naval vessels aimed their armaments and carried out a heavy bombardment upon the towering titan. Aspido swung its feelers, slamming the adjacent waters, pulverizing, and sinking ships within every strike’s impact radius.

Back on the tanker, Admiral Elliott gave the command to all present, “All hands stand by to abandon ship.”

While the word was passed, the crew engaged the vessel’s autopilot and headed off to wait on deck for the order to jump ship. He placed his hand on Vice Admiral Ducey’s shoulder, who was also in the midst of following the rest out the door. 

“Not you admiral. I need you here.” Elliott said to him.

While Elliott closed and locked the doors to the bridge, Ducey was awash in dread. Was what he feared would happen eventually, currently happening? When he found out the admiral selected him to join in on the mission, Ducey hoped the usual sucking up would leave his superior none the wiser about what he had done. When the admiral was finished, he faced forward, watching the scene of the battle ahead drawing closer, the tanker gradually picking up speed. Ducey swallowed the lump in his throat and asked, “What do we do now, sir?”

Nothing was said between them briefly, the atmosphere thickening with intensity, until Elliott broke the muted conversation. “Do you know what I was doing before I was called in to meet the president? I was prepping myself for a final confrontation with the anti-American forces that seek to harm this nation; an ongoing war for our nation’s soul.”

“What do you mean?” the vice admiral asked in confusion and worry.

“I was going to eliminate as many neo-Marxists as I could at one of their parades, clinics, or universities–”

“Hold on, as in a mass shooting or something? Is that what you mean by ‘final confrontation’?” asked the vice admiral alarmed.

“I will never stop fighting, long as our enemies continue to threaten the US! It is what I pledged to do throughout most of my life. However, the call from the president made me realize that this mission here is truly my God-given destiny.” He turned his head to glance at the vice admiral from his peripheral. “I know it was you who betrayed me.”

Ducey tried to pass himself off as ignorant of the accusation. “What are you talking about sir?”

Slamming his fists on the navigation console, Elliot then spun around to face Ducey. “Don’t you dare play dumb with me vice admiral! You told on me about my moment of weakness!”

“Sir, I have no-”

“Don’t lie to me. Do not fucking lie to me! Admit it! Admit it!”

“I did it!” Ducey finally relented.

“Why would you betray me? You think you’re better than me, is that it?”

Figuring there was no point in hiding his true feelings anymore, the vice admiral declared, “I know I’m better than you! For one, I don’t believe in some sky daddy like a child believing in Santa Claus! You’re an incompetent brute with no aesthetic, who only got your rank because your old college buddy is the president! Do you know that he and the others laugh at you behind your back? You’re just an oblivious idiot they let hang around until the day your usefulness has worn out!”

“Lies! You laugh at me and the Lord, but His guidance convinced me to look pass your sinful ways, to protect you from all those drugged women you forced yourself onto!”

“Well – well, at least they were all of consenting age; certainly, more than you could ever claim!”

Elliott grabbed Ducey by the shirt and shook away the vice admiral’s apparent brazenness yelling, “You disloyal, godless atheist! You and your commie buddies thought with me out of the way, you could unleash your ultimate weapon to annihilate the one nation under God!”

“What the hell are you talking about? Where did you come up with this?” the vice admiral questioned with a quiver.

It was then the admiral let go of the vice admiral and began to speak calmer. “No matter, because today, you will be redeemed. -”

“Stop talking crazy! This is madness!” Ducey tried interrupting.

The admiral continued to speak loudly over him, “-but we are here to perform the ultimate sacrifice! This will finally wake the true Americans into rising and taking the country back from the radicals and their treacherous socialist agenda! I, you, and everyone else in this fleet will die with honor! As real patriots!”

“You crazy bastard!” the vice admiral said reflecting the fear for his life, “Screw you and screw the country! I’m not dying for the sake of your power fantasy! I’d rather be alive and risk a court martial, than be by the side of some pedophile excusing an elaborate suicide as some divine master plan! Die by yourself! I’m superseding your authority and giving the order to abandon ship!”

Ducey turned around to leave, but then he heard the loud shot of a pistol and felt a sharp pain in the back of his lower thigh. He looked back to see Elliott holding the gun waist high, still pointing at him. 

“You’re going to live to see this task through to completion, whether you like it or not, vice admiral.” said the admiral in an unsettlingly calm voice.

Ducey’s fear and anger combined and manifested itself into a charge towards Elliott, who then shot the vice admiral in one of his shins before getting tackled.

While this was occurring, Captain Hunley was being implored into making a difficult decision by his executive officer, as the sub’s interior sparked, burned, and creaked around his crew. 

“Captain, we’re taking on water, losing oxygen, and navigational systems are failing! What are your orders sir?” urged the officer.

“Only one thing we can do! Surface the boat!” commanded Hunley.

“But sir, we’re swimming blind! We have no idea where we’re going!”

“Better than drowning or suffocating down here!” countered the captain. “Now surface the boat!”

Up on the surface, the tanker drove full speed ahead towards Aspido, as the serpentine leviathan finished off the last of the naval vessels.

On the tanker’s navigational bridge, Admiral Elliott had Vice Admiral Ducey pinned to the floor, pistol whipping his face. Orbitals fractured, cheeks bruised, lips bled, and teeth shattered with every strike from the butt of the gun. Each hit punctuated the rhythm of the admiral’s declaration, “You. Will. Become. A hero. Whether. You. Like it. Or. Not.”

Ducey laid still, barely breathing, as Elliott staggered to his feet and moved to face Aspido. The ship fast approached the sea monster, which began lowering into the waters, contracting its feelers back into its wide-open mouth. 

“Come on!” Elliott yelled out as he took off his bloodied and torn uniform jacket, “Come meet your end! Satanic forces have sent you to destroy America to end the world, but I won’t let you! We will continue to carry out God’s will and we are the planet’s future, for I am the sword of the Alpha and Omega! I am His holy instrument to your vanquishing!”

The giant mouth was now level with the tanker cutting through the ocean waves. Admiral Elliott pulled a remote detonator out of his pocket, primed it, then threw his hand into the air in the victory pose and screamed out in a long winded, “For God and country!” 

Close to the end of his yell, Captain Hunley’s submarine breached the sea water and rammed into the tanker at full force, causing both vessels to go up in a spectacular, grand explosion. The force of it startled Aspido enough to rise back out of the ocean to possibly sense what the cause was.

Elliott was surrounded by the bodies, debris, and the wreckage of his entire fleet. His skinless face was wearing a smile, as if to express the delusional self-satisfaction of a job well done; a nation once imperiled by boogeymen now forever grateful, and his image of a Byzantine Almighty pleased. Admiral Elliott’s charred upper half descended deep beneath the ocean waves, sinking slowly into the abyssal umbra of Davy Jones’s locker, with only the hungry scavengers waiting to give him a warm hero’s welcome.