Hammerhead Resurrection (10 page)

Sitting in the officer’s lounge, Jeffrey sipped lemon-tinged iced tea. Under the heavy G’s of deceleration, the glass, his hand, and his arm felt as heavy as his heart. He’d be seeing Leif in less than an hour, and he had no idea what he’d say. Nothing would help. He felt powerless and, as it was his way to know what to do, unsettled.

He set the glass down with a solid thump on the table. After accelerating to nearly a quarter of the speed of light, they’d reached their median distance to the rendezvous point two days ago. After turning tail-on to their target, their deceleration had been constant. The thrust, shoving through the cross-mounted decks, caused the weight of objects to triple.

The motors of a passing sailor’s support frame whirred. Even with the frame, Jeffrey, who’d remained strong as he’d aged, felt exhausted from the constant exertion of simply moving about the ship.

“Finish up your food folks,” a CS called from the kitchen in a tone that echoed the same tiredness. I want all dishes in the next five minutes. I have to have everything washed and secured before we cut burn.

Jeffrey drank off the last of his tea and stood, his frame’s motors spooling up. As he walked, he kept his arms crossed. Lowering them caused swelling and tingling. The constant acceleration put strain on his heart as well. Even in the best circumstances, the human body could only handle such high deceleration for a few days before exhaustion began to break people down.

He made his way to his quarters, where he sat on his bunk and unstrapped the frame from his shoulders, hips and legs. Just to see how it would be, he tried to stand, knowing it was the equivalent of weighing over seven hundred pounds. He couldn’t lift himself from the bed.

An announcement came over the intercom, “Cutting deceleration burn in two minutes. As additional adjustments nearing two G’s may be required, maintaining
mag-boot connection to the designated floor surfaces is required.”

As Jeffrey put on his boots and connected them to the floor, the announcer returned. “Cutting deceleration in one minute… fifty-nine seconds… fifty-eight sec…” When it reached zero, the crushing force Jeffrey had become accustomed to vanished. His mattress decompressed, pushing him to standing as a knock sounded on the hatch.

He opened it to find Sam Cantwell.

“We’ll be rendezvousing with a shuttle from the U.S.S. Rhadamanthus in less than ten minutes. I thought you’d like to be present.”

A jolt of nerves rushed through him. “Yes… thank you.”

As Jeffrey followed Cantwell down the passageway, he could think of nothing to say. Leif’s deep emotions had brought him great joy and sorrow over his lifetime. They would be crushing him now. Jeffrey remembered Leif as a baby, small in his arms, heart quick in a little chest, eyes clear blue, lungs powerful. But Leif had been a man for well over a decade now. In that quick jump of memory, Jeffrey felt overwhelmed by loss. He felt as though he’d done nothing but lose throughout
is life, his friends to war, his wife to cancer, his little boy to time, and now Sarah.

Reaching the airlock, they stood facing the yellow and black striped wall, waiting. Jeffrey swallowed and shifted his feet.

It had taken him decades to so much as get his head above water. Through the process though, Jeffrey had found a strength he hadn’t expected. His mind had become like a storm scrubbed sky, quiet and clear.

Right now, Leif was caught in the storm. Jeffrey knew his son’s heart must be rent wide, a wound which would never fully heal. Jeffrey grieved, not for Sarah—her pain was over—but for Leif. Jeffrey could only offer to be there for him, offer understanding, and he understood too well how little that would seem to Leif at this early stage.

The light beside the airlock began to pulse red as air rushed on the other side of the armor-thick doors. When it faded, the light pulsed yellow, then green. Locks thunked, and the doors separated at the center black stripe.

The retracting door panels exposed men and women dressed in black Navy Special Warfare jumpsuits. As he scanned the faces looking for Leif, profound shock overwhelmed him when the door exposed Stacy. She offered him a subdued nod. Now Leif came into view to the left. A younger man, no more than 20 years old, stood beside him. Both wore generic green jumpsuits, and woeful tiredness underlined their eyes. Leif’s expression did not change when his eyes met his father’s, remaining dead, shut down. Jeffrey made no motion and said nothing, letting his son know that everything could wait.

Stacy saluted. “Permission to come aboard sir?”

Returning the salute, Cantwell nodded. “Granted. Welcome to the Lacedaemon.”

“Thank you sir.” She stepped out of the airlock, walked up to Jeffrey—her boots clacking on the deck—and saluted him. As he returned the gesture, he fought the urge to hug her in front of her team and lost to it.

Wrapping her in his arms, he said quietly, “Thank you for bringing him back to me.”

When he let her go, she tried to smile. Failed. To hide the redness that had bloomed in her eyes, she did not turn as she spoke to her team. “Let’s go folks. Time to debrief.”

“Yeoman,” Cantwell said to a man standing beside him. “Show the Special Warfare unit to my ready room. We have a great deal to discuss.” He looked to Stacy. “Commander Zack, I will be with you shortly.”

“Yes sir.” She saluted and followed the yeoman out. Each member of her team saluted, and when the Admiral returned his salute, they walked out.

“Son,” Admiral Cantwell said to the younger man from Europa base, “I’ll see you to your bunk.” He motioned for the young man to follow him.

“Okay,” the young man said, stepping out of the airlock. Jeffrey could see he was unsure, scared, but not in mourning. He’d lost no one. His family, and anyone else close to his heart, was safe at home… as safe as anyone on Earth was at the moment.

Jeffrey listened to their footfalls fading down the passageway. Stepping out of the airlock, Leif came to stand before him, stony eyes on his father’s chest.

“I’m sorry Leif.”

Leif gave a curt nod.

Jeffrey didn’t want Sarah’s death to root down in Leif as the deaths of those close to him had, but he’d been through it too many times. It had to be this way. Death’s natural order required it to dig into the soul, sinking into the dark soil to grow a dismal weed, which would have to live its course before withering away, leaving behind a scarred stump. Leif had always been a bit more like his lighthearted mother in his youth, but as he’d moved through his twenties, his seriousness and focus had intensified. At this moment, Jeffrey wished Leif could have stayed more his mother’s son. She’d always been able to express her emotions more readily. When her own mother had died, she had sobbed openly, letting the grief pour out of her. In his hardened stare, Jeffrey understood Leif would cultivate Sarah’s death, hold it close and let it grow deep… but she deserved no less.

Jeffrey took hold of Leif’s shoulders and watched his face, feeling uneasy. There was something else there. Something more had happened on Europa base, but now was not the time for badgering.

He said, “If you need to talk, I’m here, but that’s the last I’m going to bother you with it… for now."

As Leif’s eyes rose to meet Jeffrey’s, Jeffrey said. “Let’s get you to your quarters so you can clean up. They have a lot of questions for you.”

Concern formed in Leif’s eyes. “What happens next… with them?”

“You mean the Sthenos?”

“Yes.”

“We kill them.”

“Good.”

Laying in his bunk in the more comfortable 1.5 G’s created by the fleet’s acceleration toward Jupiter, Jeffrey’s thoughts turned to the war fifty years before. Sthenos destroyers had appeared on the shoulder of Mars and shattered Demos, obliterating its observation base and raining debris across the planet’s surface, battering a Russian facility. An international declaration of war had been made within the hour. A global mobilization for war hadn’t occurred in over two centuries. Before World War II commanders and kings could recline in the safety of their cities far from the front as their young men—mostly poor and underprivileged—did the fighting and dying. The nuclear age changed everything. The apocalyptic warheads had unexpectedly brought peace. The destruction of Nagasaki and Hiroshima had not just ended the war in the Pacific theater, it had marked the end of all major national conflict. Unable to attack their enemies without putting themselves and their own families in as much risk as the young soldiers at the front, world leaders, sane or insane, had been forced to find new, better methods.

Nagasaki and Hiroshima had been leveled, as many as a quarter million people killed in just a few days, because Japan needed oil, and the U.S. had stopped supplying it. Jeffrey had been to the conflict’s point of origin—Pearl Harbor. He’d looked into the translucent water where trigger and convict fish drifted and darted through the half-disintegrated hulk of the U.S.S. Arizona. Looking across the calm water through the floating monument’s white beams, he imagined a prop driven Mitsubishi Zero, one of the most deadly weapons of war yet built, coming in slow and loud. Yet, despite the destruction of the attack, Japan had missed her mark. The carriers had been away December seventh…

Jeffrey sat up and said into the darkness, “The carriers were away…”

Leaping from his bunk, he threw open his hatch and sprinted down the corridor, his old knees aching against the additional half G. As he approached a cross-corridor, a sailor came around the corner. Jeffrey tried to dodge him, but the sailor side-stepped in the same direction, and they crashed into each other. Jeffrey caught a support beam as he snatched the sailor’s shirt, keeping him from falling.

Without a word to the sailor, Jeffrey sprinted up the ladder to the broad expanse of the bridge, where he stood huffing, sweat dripping from his forehead.

The night watch commander turned to the commotion as a yeoman called out, “Captain on Deck.”

In a shocked tone, the commander asked, “Captain Holt,” her eyes scanned downward, a slight flush blooming in her cheeks, “why aren’t you in uniform?”

“It’s an ambush.”

“Excuse me?”

“It’s the only thing that makes sense. They know we’re dangerous. They wouldn’t just show up and start mining.”

“We’ve been through this, captain.”

Holt waved the comment away. “They want us to think they don’t care. They want us to mount an attack. It’s Pearl Harbor in reverse.”

She looked at him as though she thought he’d lost his mind. “I don’t follow y—”

“They know we’re afraid of them. They
knew
we’d overreact.”

“Overreact?”

“Yes,” Jeffrey said. “They want us all together, moving toward Jupiter. Out here, we’re sitting ducks, and the Earth is unprotected.”

“For three Sthenos destroyers? They’re good, but not—”

“There’s not three, I guarantee it.”

At that, the watch commander blanched, looking upward, out the latticed bridge windows as if her eyes might tell her something that the instruments couldn’t. She looked back to Jeffrey with disbelief. “The long range scanners…” but she trailed off.

Jeffrey said, “Fifty years ago, they arrived at Demos without warning. We never sorted out how they did that.”

“They can stealth x-ray scanners.”

“Yes.”

“Oh my God…”

“Exactly.”

The watch commander turned to the man beside her. “Yeoman, get Admiral Cantwell.”

“Yes ma’am.”

…

Admiral Cantwell stood in the center of the bridge looking out on the depth of space. “How many do you suppose there might be?”

“No idea,” Jeffrey said, his eyes on the Nav-Con where the Lacedaemon hovered in the center. Behind it followed the motley array of battle cruisers—many of the same cruisers he’d helped save ten years earlier. Some had only recently returned to service after the damage of ejecting their reactor cores. The ships’ drive sections glowed in various fission hues, thousands of lives on each ship. He’d seen destroyers cut in half by the Sthenos. He’d seen them shot through—rammed through.

Cantwell put his hand on Jeffrey’s shoulder. “Fifty years ago, with only ten of their own destroyers, the Sthenos demolished or disabled over 90% of the Earth’s militarized fleet.”

“Sam, we’re not facing three, and not ten. There are more… I’m sure of it.”

Cantwell said, “Jeffrey, I know you feel convinced of this, but I can’t turn back or disperse the entire fleet on a hunch. We’ll need new orders from the president.”

“Perhaps I can help with that,” Vice President Delaney said as she came up the ladder onto the bridge. She looked half-asleep to Jeffrey, the first time he’d seen a frailty in her otherwise bulletproof demeanor.

Admiral Cantwell gave Delaney a summary of what Jeffrey had told him.

Her brow furrowing with skepticism, she asked, “So this is based on a hunch?”

Jeffrey said, “A hunch and one other thing. Sam, I wanted to save this until the vice president was with us.”

He said to the Nav-Con officer, “Please bring up Europa.”

With a practiced motion, the Nav-Con officer swept the fleet aside. The Jovian system came into view with Jupiter about the size of a marble surrounded by a chain of bright sparks. The planetary system shifted to the right as one spark centered itself and grew until Europa was four feet in diameter, suspended over the Nav-Con’s surface.

The moon’s pale, cracked surface shone bone-brilliant in the distant sunlight. A blade-thin scar ran across its face.

The Nav-Con officer asked, “Did you want to see the Sthenos ships?”

“Yes. Thank you.”

The moon lowered as its dome expanded across the Nav-Con’s disk. The scar grew into three ragged canyons. At their termini, the Sthenos destroyers cutting cannons still tore into the ice, illuminating it a pale-green.

When Delaney moved to Jeffrey’s side, he could feel warmth from her arm near his. He suppressed an impulse to move away from her.

Delaney pointed to the Sthenos ships. “Ma’am,” she said to the Nav-Con officer, “can you zoom in more?”

“Absolutely Ma’am.”

The center ship grew until its midsection had filled the Nav-Con. The gnat-like ships still arced around the destroyer, ice caught in insect-like mandibles. As they approached the destroyer, they released the ice to freefall toward the dark opening on its back. However, the ice fell past the opening, crashing down to mix with the other debris misting the surface.

“It’s all a show,” Delaney said.

Jeffrey nodded. “I’m not sure of their true intention, but this,” he pointed to the ships, “is a sham. We’re walking into a trap.”

“You assume it’s a trap,” Delaney said.

“Ma’am I—”

She raised her hand to silence him. “What do you propose we do about it?”

“We arrest our approach. My guess is, we’re doing exactly what they want us to. If we change that behavior—”

Cantwell cut in, “We can observe their reaction to it.”

“What,” Delaney asked, “if they don’t react?”

Jeffrey said, “We continue on to Europa and hit them with everything we have.”

Her expression darkened. Motioning for her guards to stay put, she walked toward the exit ladder saying, “Captain Holt, walk with me please.”

Jeffrey looked to Cantwell, who shrugged.

With suspicion, Jeffrey followed her as she descended the ladder from the bridge and walked down a quiet corridor. After rounding a corner, she turned to face him. When her eyes, the color of autumn leaves, met his, his heart rate accelerated. He exhaled to suppress what he dismissed as an instinctual reaction to a physically beautiful woman.

“I don’t think,” she said in a quiet voice, leaning close to him, “the president will allow the attack to be called off, but I wanted you to know, off the record, that I think there’s something to what you’re saying.”

“Why does it have to be off the record?”

When she took hold of his forearm with gentle fingertips, Jeffrey scowled. She stood perhaps only six inches shorter.

“You don’t have to distrust me Jeffrey. I’m not like them,” she said as she slid her fingertips down his arm. “I have a sincere appreciation for… experience.”

Her charm could not get Jeffrey to forget that she and President Moore had both made campaign promises to dismantle the military machine. Once, in an interview with News Source’s Terri Blakely, she’d called military commanders
fear mongers
and those serving under them
minions of an outdated and socially detrimental system
.

“I thought people like you had written off my experience as implanted hallucinations.”

Her smile vanished. “I can admit I may have been… wrong. Can you?”

“Wrong? In what way?”

“Jeffrey,” her easy smile returned, “I don’t need saber rattling right now. I need everyone to take a step back, and consider the possibility that we aren’t facing a villainous race here. So many wars in our history have been based on cultural misunderstandings. Those people up there believe very much in you. Every time you get them riled up to fight, my job becomes more difficult. I need support from
all
areas if we’re going to effectively face this situation.”

Jeffrey watched her for a moment before saying, “Vice President—”

“Call me Samantha.”

Disinclined to do so, he said with a sigh, “Samantha… I understand that you want to believe that life makes sense and everyone has intrinsically decent hearts. However, for every war fought over a misunderstanding, ten are founded in boundless greed. There was no misunderstanding when the Nazis murdered eleven million civilians and prisoners of war. Nearly every culture on Earth has been guilty at one time or another of allowing self-serving gluttony to flare into cold-blooded brutality. Societies seem to have a natural tendency to descend into egocentrism and bigotry even if they begin with the best intentions.”

“Those were
human
societies. We’re not dealing with humans.”

Jeffrey removed her hand from his arm and took hold of her shoulders. “I need you to believe me when I say the Sthenos are far worse.”

“But we’ve had more than 200 years of peace. Surely…”

Jeffrey let the flash of anger he felt show in his tone. “We’ve had
fifty
years of peace Vice President Delaney.” He glared at her, daring her to step back into her old beliefs. When she seemed to falter, he said, “In our own history, moments of long-term peace have come and gone many times. Those periods seem to be an exception to the natural order rather than a progression.”

Crossing her arms, she said, “That strikes me as a dismal world view.”

“I’d be happy to give it up, but the memories I have,” he touched his temple, “which are founded in my experience with the Sthenos, won’t let me.”

“What if that experience was based on a misunderstanding? What if there is a better solution?”

“It wasn’t, and there isn’t.”

She flushed with anger. “I won’t accept that.”

“Madam Vice President, I’d like nothing more than to be wrong. If we could solve this without death, I’d be the first one in line, but we can’t. Blood’s already been spilt.”

“Is that what this is about? Your daughter-in-law?”

Jeffrey went still, unable for a moment to believe she’d bring Sarah into this. “Don’t.”

“Don’t what? State the obvious? Don’t be like this Jeffrey.”

“Like—what?”

“Don’t make this about revenge.”

“I’ll make it about what I will.”

Her jaw flexed. Drawing a deep breath, she appeared to succeed in bolting her anger under a professional blankness. Straightening the front of her shirt, she said, “Mark my words
captain
, I won’t allow you to pour gas on this fire.” Without another word, She walked away leaving a cooling, empty space.

“Where are you going?”

As she disappeared around the corner, she said, “To get a message to the president. Despite your stubbornness, I’m still willing to back the testing of your theory. While we believe in different ends, I think we both agree that our current course is wrong. We’ll convene in the admiral’s conference room in one hour.”

…

Jeffrey sat beside Cantwell in the conference room. Delaney sat across from him. Cantwell, in good military fashion, looked well-rested despite having been stone asleep only a few minutes earlier. He sipped from a pale ceramic mug before saying, “I don’t think I’m going to enjoy the next few minutes.”