Ghost and Soap

The night had been quiet. Too quiet, the kind that made the hairs on the back of a soldier's neck stand at attention. Ghost shifted his weight against the rocky outcropping, his scope sweeping the coastline below with methodical precision. The Adriatic stretched out before them, black water kissing the rocky shore, waves catching the faint silver of a cloud-shrouded moon.

"Anything?" His voice came low through the comms, clipped and efficient.

"Aye, jack fuckin' shite," Soap's Scottish burr crackled back. The sergeant was positioned fifty meters to Ghost's left, tucked into a copse of wind-gnarled trees that overlooked the old shipyard. "Konni's either packed up an' buggered off or they're doin' a bang-up job of hidin'. Cannae even see a bleedin' cigarette."

Ghost grunted. Price's intel had been solid, putting a small Konni cell in this abandoned fishing port, running weapons through the islands. But after six hours of watching, they'd seen nothing. No patrols. No lights. No radios squawking. Just the wind and the water and the yawning emptiness of derelict warehouses.

"Might be a wash," Ghost said, though the words tasted wrong. He didn't like it. His gut had kept him alive through things that should've killed him a dozen times over, and right now his gut was telling him something was off.

"Want me tae move in closer? Get a look inside the big warehouse?"

"Negative. Hold position. We'll give it another hour, then—"

The sky split open.

One moment, darkness. The next, a searing streak of white-hot light tore through the cloud cover, so bright it left after-images burned into Ghost's retinas. An impossible roar followed and the ground beneath them shook with a deep, bone-rattling thump that Ghost felt in his teeth.

"What the fuck—?!" Soap's voice was barely audible over the rumble that rolled out across the water.

Ghost had already swung his scope skyward, tracking the trajectory. The object—meteor, missile, God knew what—had carved a blazing arc across the heavens before slamming into the island's far side, maybe a klick and a half north of their position. Smoke and dust already billowed up against the night sky, a dark plume that swallowed the stars.

"Johnny, you good?"

"Aye—aye, solid. Lt, whit the fuck was that?"

"Don't know." Ghost was already on his feet, collapsing his bipod with a sharp snap. His mind raced through possibilities, each one more unlikely than the last. Missile strike, but no launch signature. Satellite debris falling out of orbit, but the descent angle was wrong. Meteor—possible, but the Balkans weren't exactly a hotspot for cosmic activity.

"Did it hit the water or the island?" Soap asked, and Ghost heard him moving too, gear rustling.

"Island. North side. Impact was..." He calculated quickly. "Roughly twelve hundred meters from our position."

Silence hung between them for a beat. Ghost could almost hear the gears turning in Soap's head, the same calculations running through his own: This is not our mission. This is not our objective. Report it, call for exfil, let someone else deal with it.

"Ghost..." Soap's voice had dropped, all the usual banter stripped away. "We should take a look. Before whoever else saw that gets there first."

He was right. A blast that big, that bright—every ship in the Adriatic would've seen it. Every radar station from here to Trieste. The clock was already ticking.

"Rally on my position," Ghost said. "We move fast, we move quiet. Standard recon protocol. Touch nothing, engage nothing. We're eyes only."

"Copy that."

Soap emerged from the treeline less than a minute later, his silhouette stocky and familiar against the darkness. Even in the low light, Ghost caught the gleam of his eyes—sharp, alert, maybe even a little exhilarated. Bloody Scot always did thrive on chaos.

They moved north along the ridgeline, picking their way through scrub and loose rock with the practiced ease of men who'd done this a thousand times. Ghost took point, his rifle held low and ready, while Soap covered their six with periodic backward sweeps. The smoke plume grew larger as they closed in, backlit now by a faint, pulsing glow that made absolutely no sense.

"This isnae right," Soap murmured. "Should be a fire, aye? Impact crater, burnin' trees, that sort of thing. The light's too... steady. Too blue."

He was right. The glow emanating from the impact site had an eerie, electric quality, casting strange shadows through the trees ahead. And now that they were closer, Ghost realized the area was unnaturally quiet. No birds, no insects. Even the wind seemed to have died.

They crested a final ridge and saw it.

Ghost stopped so abruptly that Soap nearly walked into his back.

The object sat in a shallow, smoldering crater that had carved a scar through the rocky soil. It was no meteor, no missile, no piece of falling satellite. It was a craft—sleek, angular, its dark hull marked with lines that pulsed with that same uncanny blue light. It was maybe thirty meters across, half-buried in the dirt at a sharp angle, and it was like nothing Ghost had ever seen. No markings he recognized from any military on Earth.

"Steamin' Jesus," Soap breathed. "Is that... is that a fuckin' spaceship?"

Ghost's mouth was dry. His mind, usually so sharp and tactical, had momentarily gone blank. He'd prepared for ambushes, for firefights, for double-crosses and IEDs and every other flavor of shit the world had served him over two decades of service. He had not prepared for this.

"Ghost. Ghost." Soap was gripping his arm now, voice tight with an emotion Ghost rarely heard from him. "Whit dae we dae?"

He forced himself to breathe. To think. The soldier in him clawed its way back to the surface, shoving aside the primal awe that threatened to freeze him in place.

"We report it," Ghost said, his voice steadier than he felt. "Then we go down there and secure the perimeter until backup arrives."

"Secure the—are ye aff yer heid? That's no' a bomb, Lt, that's a fuckin' alien ship!"

"And if whatever's inside it is hostile, I want to know about it before it gets within striking distance of a civilian population."

Soap stared at him for a long moment. Then a grin. Tight, slightly manic, but a grin nonetheless.

"Aye," he said. "Fair enough. But if we get probed, I'm tellin' Price this was yer idea."