Hammerhead Resurrection (16 page)

Admiral Cantwell’s voice came over the comm. “Acknowledged.”

Even though she hid it well, Jeffery saw the admiral’s shortness drown the remaining
embers of her spirit. She took the railing in her hands as if for support.

No time for it now. You’ll have to help her with that later.

Jeffrey pushed the comm link. “This is Captain Holt.” He looked at the status displays. Less than 5,000 fleet fighters left.

12,000 fighters lost in four minutes.

He’d never seen anything this bad, but he reminded himself, no one had died… yet. He looked over the pilots in the room. Each was identified by the ship’s name, Lacedaemon, and a number from one to one hundred. “Commander,” he asked Holloway, “are the other strike forces organized with the same identification system?”

“Yes, sir.”

He looked to one of the flight controllers. “How many fighters have singularity warheads?”

“Forty-three of the remaining seventy-one, sir.”

“Bring thirty-three back home right now.”

“Yes, sir.”

Jeffrey said into the comm, “Strike force commanders, we have to split solutions here. We need to preserve our key advantage, namely the singularity warheads. I need you to get ten on target. Get any remaining fighters with singularity warheads back to your ships. Divide your remaining fighters to protect those ten with singularities. We’re going to disengage the fighters and make a run at their destroyers.”

We never should have engaged the fighters directly. With weapons this powerful, we should have gone for broke from the first moment.

He said both into the
comm and to the room of pilots, “We’re going to do some suicide runs kamikaze style folks. Let’s do as much damage as we can. When the lead attack ships are within range, don’t release the singularity warheads, just set them off.”

The
comm became a mess of voices again, some capitulating, others angry.

“I don’t have time for questions or comments,” Jeffrey said. “You’ve agreed to follow the Lacedaemon command for this maneuver, and I am the voice of that command at this time. Get your fighters on target.”

The comm fell silent.

Jeffrey turned his attention to the Nav-Con. Most of the green markers formed up and began moving away from the dogfight toward the destroyers. A smaller group turned and headed back toward the fleet.

Well done.

“Keep your motion up fol
ks. Don’t be an easy target,” he said and turned to Holloway. “Commander, I need your help.”

At this, the shadow over her lifted somewhat. “Yes, sir.”

“I need you to analyze the fighter groups. Get the individual flight groups I’ve just created on target for disparate Sthenos destroyers. Get the other fleet flight bosses doing the same. We need even coverage, understood?”

“Yes, sir.” Holloway moved down and began talking with her
miniboss.

Jeffrey leaned into the
comm again. “Strike force commanders. You’ll be receiving adjustment instructions from Commander Holloway. Please follow them quickly and to the letter.”

Holloway sat down at a station, looked over the screens, and said into the desk mounted microphone, “Strike force Kobayashi 55, redirect to target Sthenos 6. Flight group Rothschild 85, redirect to Sthenos 14…”

On the Nav-Con the yellow Sthenos markers trailed after the fleet fighters. The green lights continued to wink out both on the Nav-Con and around the room. The pilot’s who had lost their final drones had removed their helmets. Some sat at their stations, eyes dazed. Others unstrapped and came to stand on the far side of the Nav-Con, watching the final moments of the fight.

Realizing he was holding his breath, Jeffrey let it out and breathed in deep, slow draws as he watched more lights wink out. As the recalled fighters returned to the Lacedaemon, the ship’s main guns began to thump, firing at the pursuing Sthenos fighters.

Jeffrey’s attention turned to the fighters closing in on the Sthenos destroyers. The next minute was an exercise in self control. The wheels had been set in motion—now he could only watch and wait. Jeffrey clacked his teeth together as an irritated twitch ran through his right calf.

“Come on, just get me a few there.” He was gripping the command station rail as if he could somehow squeeze extra speed for the fighters out of it.

More lights winked out. Only 2,000 fighters remained. On the status display the friendly counter continued to scroll downwards, the right-most digit a blur. 1900… 1800… 1700… down to 1500.

On the Nav-Con, the groups of lights had grown small. He only needed one to get through to each destroyer. They were close. He looked back to the counter 1100… 1000… 800. The fall accelerated as the Sthenos had fewer targets to focus on.

Fifty years ago the Hammerheads had been described as a chain saw on wood. Now he knew how the Sthenos had felt, smaller numbers killing larger numbers to the man, but what the Sthenos had just done in five minutes, had taken the Hammerheads a year of bloody fighting.

Jeffery had often wondered what the Sthenos’ intention had been fifty years before. They might be close to finally finding out… if they lived.

Whole fighter groups had now disappeared from the Nav-Con. Sthenos destroyer 8 had no fighters on course to strike, nor Sthenos 17, or Sthenos 2. Those were now guaranteed to make it through the fight.

Three healthy destroyers is already too many.

Three green sparks very near Sthenos 12 caught his eye. One winked out. Two sparks. Now one.

He said, “Nav-Con, create a small zoom field on Sthenos 12.”

As a small circle zoomed in at the point of the Sthenos 12 destroyer, a green marker came into view, it’s distance displayed above… 8 miles… 7… 6… 5. A hoard of Sthenos fighters closed in on it, but the ship rolled and jigged and spun in an amazing, patternless chaos as it closed on the destroyer. In that chaos Jeffrey saw the hand of a brilliant pilot. 3 miles… 2.

As the fighter, Lacedaemon 15, reached the nose of the Sthenos destroyer, Jeffrey said under his breath, “Fire it.”

But the fighter did not initiate the singularity. The pilot continued down the ship, corkscrewing and jigging. The green light winked out. Jeffery’s heart sank.

Yet, even as his hope died, the side of the Sthenos ship began to peel away. The metal rushed to where the fighter had been, compressing there in an impossibly small sphere, which continued to reduce in size. Metal rained away from the Sthenos ship in ribbons and sheets until the ship seemed to have been bitten almost completely through by a great, jagged-toothed maw.

Jeffrey let out a relieved breath.

The reaction stopped just as quickly as it had begun, leaving some metal sheeting and reinforcement to float past the point of singularity. A haze of metal and
outgassed ice crystals vented from the side of the Sthenos destroyer as though it were bleeding to death. Having been cut nearly in half, at its thinnest point, the hull twisted and ripped apart as the ship separated into two monolithic sections, bow and stern.

“Lacedaemon 15,” Jeffrey shouted into the room where almost all the pilot’s connection lights had turned red, “get your ass
up here.” He looked back to the Nav-Con. A few green sparks remained, and one by one winked out.

He scanned the Sthenos destroyers. “How many did we get Holloway?”

Holloway looked up at him as the last green sparks of their fighters vanished from the screen. “Just the one, sir.”

Jeffrey felt his heart sink as if burrowing down into his belly with hard claws. Nineteen Sthenos destroyers against fifty-seven of theirs.

Not even close to enough.

A young woman, with shockingly deep-blue eyes and short blonde hair, looking no more than nineteen, walked up the three steps of the command tower stairs and saluted Jeffrey. She couldn’t weigh more than 95 lbs and barely broke five feet tall.

Jeffrey said, “Yes?”

“I’m Lacedaemon 15 sir, the one you called for.”

“Oh… yes… of course. Well flown pilot… very well flown.”

“Thank you sir.”

“What’s your call sign?”

“Call sign sir?”

“Holloway,” Jeffrey asked, looking to the commander, “You don’t have call signs?”

Holloway spoke with a quiet tone, as if everything she’d done, every decision had been an error leading up to this catastrophe, “Too many pilots sir, no time for them.”

“You,” he said pointing to the young pilot, “are pale.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Yes, sir?”

“Your call sign is Whitetip now.”

“Whitetip, sir?”

“It’s a shark; as of this moment you’re the first fully-fledged member of the resurrected Hammerheads.”

She stared at him, her mouth falling slightly open.

“Now,” Jeffrey bowed his head to her, “I have to get up to the bridge, please forgive me.” He turned as a blast rocked the ship and smoke poured from the hatch to the exit corridor. Jeffrey looked back to the Nav-Con, but it had gone dark—now just a flat, dark disk. Beams from the emergency lights hung in the smoke.

Someone yelled from behind him, “The corridor’s blocked, the entire thing buckled shut.”

Jeffrey ran to the hatch where something large and dark blocked the corridor. He had to stare at it for a moment before he could understand it was the far wall, crushed down.

“Commander Holloway, is there another way out of this area?”

Holloway shook her head.

Jeffrey closed the hatch and spun the locks. He touched its surface as he asked the sailor beside him, “This isn’t a sealed hatch is it?”

“No sir,” the sailor said. “It’s good for only a few hours of fire control. If the ship loses pressure on the other side, that hatch will let our air right by.”

“Let’s do what we can to keep that from happening.” Jeffrey turned back to the pilots and to Holloway. He pointed to the ceiling. “What’s up there?”

“Air handling. Why?” Holloway asked, her expression bewildered. “There’s no way out of here. We’ll have to wait for…”

Jeffrey stepped close, speaking into her ear so no one around them could hear. “Ma’am, I need you to change your mode of thinking and fast. You must accept this one thing, odds are this room is going to be ripped in half when those Sthenos destroyers get into range. We have to get out and get to escape pods on our own. No one is coming.”

Holloway’s brow furrowed. “There’s been no command to abandon ship.”

“True ma’am, but we need to prepare as if it has. We have 19 Sthenos destroyers bearing down on us, and,” he
pointed to the closed hatch, “that is only from one of their fighters.”

Holloway raised her voice to him now. “We don’t know—”

“We don’t know what commander?” He’d had enough. Until that moment he’d been uneasy with outranking key officers. He wasn’t used to it. When he was a Hammerhead, a commander had been well above him. Coming back, he’d fallen into old habits of deferral—
sir’s
and
ma’ams
. He knew too well his deferral categorized him in the minds of those like Donovan and Holloway at a lower social strata. He hadn’t cared, until now.

“Commander Holloway, are you unsure of the hostility of their intent?”

“No,” in the intensity of his tone, she faltered, “I—I wasn’t suggesting—

“Are you suggesting they’re ineffective in their intent?”

Holloway looked down.

“I’ll no longer argue with you, commander. We must evacuate this area now if we are going to preserve pilots for the fight, and believe me that’s all we’re preserving them for.” He leaned in on her. “You find yourself in a new world Holloway. If we don’t work together, we all die. I don’t just mean the men and women in this room. Do you understand me?”

Holloway lifted her chin and squared her shoulders, eyes professionally blank, “Yes, sir.”

“You’ve got a lot of value Holloway, and I’m trying to offer you some respect, but I swear to God, if you don’t stop swinging machetes at my knees, I might start taking it personally. Is that clear?”

“Yes sir, crystal clear sir.”

Jeffrey let his tone quiet as he said, “Welcome to war Holloway, if you live through it, you’ll never be the same.”

“Yes sir.”

As Jeffrey looked up to the air duct grating, the ship shook again. A few of the pilots lost their footing as their
mag-boots jerked free from the deck. Air hissed around the hatch seams, and Jeffrey’s ear drums strained against the depressurization. The hissing fell silent. With all eyes on the hatch, Jeffrey knew everyone in the room was thinking exactly what he was.
Will they lose their air?

Holloway said, “We lost pressure somewhere. Blast doors must have sealed off the affected area.”

Jeffrey motioned for Whitetip to come over to him. “You’re small so you’ll make a good scout.” He looked to the rest of the pilots. “I need something to pry that grate off.” He heard the clank of a metal panel, and an object was passed toward him through the pilots. The pilot nearest him handed him a yellow and black crowbar.