Hammerhead Resurrection (19 page)

Stacy stood beside Cantwell’s command seat staring at the dead Nav-Con as the minutes passed without information.

Finally Cantwell said, “I feel like I can’t see at all without that thing on. Fire control, did we get any shots off?”

“I have no information on that at the moment, sir.”

“Let me know when you do.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Comm, do you have the life pods directed to our landing bays?”

“Coming in now sir.”

“Good man. Tell me when they’re in.”

“Yes sir.”

“Keep the communication channels clear of chatter folks.”

Cantwell turned back to the Nav-Con. His finger tapping on his armrest. Standing, he walked out under the lattice of bridge windows and looked up at the stars.

“Engineering,” he said, his eyes still on the jeweled swath of the Milky Way.

“Yes, sir.”

“Any information on why we’ve lost thrust?”

“I have inconsistent information coming in, sir. I’ll update you the moment we have enough detail for an accurate report.”

“Thank you. We need to complete our deceleration very soon if we want to touch down.” He went back to watching the stars.

What Stacy was seeing in him now she understood to be what separated him from a non-war commander. His experience had taught him to keep his mind clear,
go to the void
as Jeffrey had called it. The fate of the survivors in life pods, the men and women on the Lacedaemon, and the human race as a whole might rest on his next few decisions, decisions which had to wait until he knew more. In the waiting, he could yell at people to hurry, remind them delays meant death, but Stacy saw in his silence that he understood he had the best people in the right positions. They needed nothing but time to do their jobs well. They knew the urgency.

A shatter of sound filled the bridge as the entirety of the Nav-Con display filled with a cylinder of static. The static faded, leaving behind the sparks of the fleet, pulsing in a deep-red light save the Lacedaemon’s single, constant identifier. Brilliant-orange life pod markers swarmed the Lacedaemon.

“We have positioning now sir, but no visual,” the Nav-Con officer said.

“Get a camera launched.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Damage control,” Cantwell called out, “Do we have any information on thrust?”

“Coming in now sir,” an efficiently gray-haired officer to the right of the navigation stations said. He watched his screens a moment longer before approaching the command seat. “Sir, we have a problem.”

Stacy could see Cantwell didn’t care to hear of more problems.

“Name it sailor.”

“We have no drive plates, sir.”

“What?”

“The damage reports indicate the rear quarter of the ship is gone… cut away.”

“Cut…” for a moment Cantwell appeared visibly shaken. His expression stilled as he asked, “Do we have emergency thrusters?”

“Yes sir, side maneuvering thrusters used in tandem at the correct vectors can decelerate us effectively. However, within that solution lies our trouble.”

“Which is?”

“The fuel required to achieve a degrading Earth orbit, which will effectively deplete our hydrogen/oxygen reserves.”

Cantwell said with understanding, “We have to use all of that just to drop into degradation. Then…”

The gray-haired officer continued his thought, “we won’t have enough fuel for a controlled descent.”

Cantwell motioned for the officer to come closer. The officer leaned over the left side of Cantwell’s command seat.

“Are there any other options? Any fuel-use scenarios, which might work?”

“I’m sorry, sir,” the officer said, “There are no other scenarios, and if we don’t implement in the next few moments, we won’t have enough distance to achieve degradation. We’ll slingshot past Earth and enter a solar impact trajectory.”

“Damage control,” Cantwell called out, motioning for a woman with short red hair to approach.

She walked with stiff steps to the command chair, her eyes strict, but her face young. “Admiral,” she said with a slight nod of her head.

“Officer, paint me a picture of the drive plates. Is there any way they can be repaired?”

“If the reports are accurate, there are no drive plates, sir.”

The Nav-Con officer said, “Sir, we have a visual coming in now.”

On the Nav-Con, the marker of the Lacedaemon blurred into the actual ship, life pods swarming into the landing bays. The rear half of the ship grew until it filled the display. Stacy’s heart sank. The last hundred feet had been sliced away at a steep angle, deck after deck flayed open to space.

“That’s a definite no,” Cantwell said.

The red-haired officer nodded. “Yes Admiral.”

Cantwell said, “It’s amazing the isotopes didn’t collide. We were lucky.”

“More than you know, sir.” She walked over to the Nav-Con and pointed to the open decks where small bits of insulation and metal still floated away from the hulk of the destroyer. “The weapon cut right through both containment vessels. A secondary explosion here,” she pointed to a crater in the low center of the mess that had once been the aft section, “caused by environmental oxygen, blew the material in opposite directions. Note how the damage spreads outward? That’s all secondary damage from the blast.”

“All of the emergency environmental oxygen—”

“Is gone, sir.”

“So we won’t have air in how long?”

“We will be breathing pretty thick in less than a day.”

Cantwell tapped his fingers on his armrest. “So we have no nuclear thrust, fuel enough for about a thirty minute burn, there are twenty-three Sthenos destroyers bent on our destruction, and we’re the only surviving destroyer in a fleet of fifty-seven.”

Falling silent, he stared at the floor. Stacy felt certain what would happen in the next few seconds might be one of the most important moments she’d witness in her lifetime.

C
antwell’s head came up, “Helmsman.”

“Yes, sir.” The team lead of the four women and three men who sat at the helm controls said.

“Status.”

“Helm is responsive sir.”

“Good,” Cantwell said before trailing off. He sat for some time, and Stacy saw him drawing slow breaths, as if in meditation. Despite the situation at hand, his calm suffused her own thoughts.

“We’re still receiving life pods sir. If we decelerate now, we’ll lose over a thousand.”

“Navigation, when is the latest we can begin burn and achieve degradation?”

“Fifteen seconds.”

Cantwell’s tired, pale-blue eyes came open. “God speed to those we leave behind.” He paused as if he couldn’t get himself to say what needed to be said but, after a moment, did what must be done. “Cease rescue efforts, secure landing bays, and begin deceleration burn now. Adjust course. Set a glide path for the Amazon.”

One of the helmsmen looked over his shoulder, his expression sincerely surprised. “The Amazon sir?”

“Central delta. Make it happen.”

“Yes sir.” The navigation officers went to work at their station. The ship began an unharmonious vibration, and light gravity pushed into Stacy’s feet. The navigation officer looked back to Cantwell and said, “Atmospheric contact in forty-three minutes.”

On the Nav-Con the main maneuvering thrusters had come on full-burn shooting out clear-blue flame to the rear at forty-five degree angles. The life pods, still swarming the ship, fell away as they continued on their slingshot trajectory past Earth. Stacy imagined the people in those pods looking out the small, circular viewport as the wall of the Lacedaemon slid away, leaving the glass filled with stars. She bit her tongue to stifle the emotion the thought brought up.

“Commander,” Cantwell said. A moment later, he repeated in a calm but insistent tone, “Commander.”

She looked to him to see who wasn’t responding and found him looking at her.

“Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.”

He looked to his right, saying, “Captain Donovan.”

The captain looked to him.

“Come here please.”

When the captain had come to stand opposite Stacy, Cantwell said, “If we succeed in getting to the ground, we’ll have to evacuate this ship and get as many resources and personnel into the rainforest as we can. We’ll need food, water, and weapons. You,” he pointed to Donovan, “are to begin coordination of that movement now. You have approximately forty minutes before all personnel must be strapped down. Get started with assigning stations. This must happen fast. After we
touch down, we’ll have a four to twelve hour window before the Sthenos return. I don’t know what they’re planning, but I’m guessing they’ll want to assure the Lacedaemon is dealt with. We must assume demolition is imminent and get a safe distance away. A quarter mile is an absolute minimum.”

“Yes sir,” Donovan said. “We can move the supplies one-half mile off, then have the personnel move further out until we establish a safe-zone and return for supplies.”

Cantwell nodded. “Excellent.”

Cantwell looked to Stacy. “Zack, this is Captain Walter Donovan. He’s served under me many years. You can trust him, understood?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Captain, this is Special Warfare Commander Stacy Zack. Jeffery Holt holds her in high regard, and so do I. You can trust her. Clear?”

“Crystal, sir.”

“As we’ve not heard from Holloway nor Holt in two days, I have to assume they’re dead.”

His coarseness caused Stacy’s stomach to flush with acid.

“If something happens to me, you two are the commanding officers of this group. You,” he pointed to Donovan, “are logistics and large troop movement. Understood?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You,” he pointed to Stacy, “are guerilla tactics, which will be our main method of assault. We cannot face this threat head on.”

Stacy asked, “How do you imagine us dealing with it, sir? As you mentioned, if something happens to you, I’d like to know your thoughts now.”

“Our way, is your way, Zack. I have no guidance beyond that. You are the lead and the expert. Get in the forest with the singularity warheads we have left. Use them to play hell with the Sthenos.”

Stacy felt unsure at that. “How big are these warheads?”

Cantwell held up his hands shoulder wide. “Just under fifty pounds.”

“I can work with that.”

Cantwell nodded. “But first we have to get this dying heap planet side without killing everyone. Donovan, get your people coordinated. When we stop moving I want every single man and woman on this ship carrying gear. Get any vehicles we can salvage obscured before the Sthenos obtain orbit.”

“Yes sir.” As Donovan walked away he shot Stacy a sidelong look.

“Don’t let him bother you Zack,” Cantwell said. “He’s harsh but solid and sure.”

“Which is why you told him to team with me.”

Cantwell nodded. “If he gives you any trouble, you remind him of that. It’ll keep him aligned, but I expect you,” his tone became sharp as he pointed at her, “to play ball with him as well. Clear?”

“Yes sir, but I’m sure that you’ll assist us.”

“Laying everything on one person’s leadership is a low odds bet. We must prepare a contingency if and when our own deaths finds us. I expect you to do the same with your own team.”

“Yes, sir.”

“People are going to die. Are you ready for it?”

Stacy looked to Marco, X, Horace, and Jacqueline, who stood near the rear of the bridge. She imagined them in a firefight, not marking lasers but live rounds, tracers flying through smoking air. “I have no idea sir, but we’ll do the best we’re able.”

“That,” Cantwell said, his expression flat, “is the only true answer.” He pointed to the row of jump seats along the curved, rear wall. “Get strapped in.”

“Yes, sir.”

As Stacy walked away, the navigation officer said. “Thirty-five minutes to atmospheric contact, sir.”

Stacy strapped herself into a jump seat with Jacqueline to her left and Marco to her right. X sat on the far side of Marco.

Jacqueline said, “O.C. I—”

Stacy held up her hand to silence her and pointed to Cantwell, who walked up to the row of helmsmen. “Ladies and gentlemen, this is exactly what you’ve trained for, do you understand me?”

“Yes, sir,” they said, some with conviction, others with unsure quietness.

“You will save thousands of lives today, do not think otherwise.” Then his voice boomed out, “Do I make myself clear?”

The helmsmen all shouted back, “Yes, sir.”

“Good.” Leaning down, with his hand on the team lead’s shoulder, he said something into the young man’s ear. Facing the rest of the bridge, he said, “I want every single body in this bridge strapped down
now
.”

Staff began running for seats. Essential personnel drew five point harnesses from their station seats while non-essential personnel ran to the jump seats along the wall near Stacy and her team.

Stacy said to Marko, “I wish you were at the controls of this thing right now.”

Horace nodded. “You got that right.”

“Me? Hell no. My skills are with small craft. These folks are experts with a monster like this. I’ve never so much as pulled one out of orbit.” He pointed to the helmsmen, “They’ll get the job done.”

X’s eyes narrowed. “I think that’s the first humility I’ve ever seen from you Fields.”

At the command seat, Cantwell pulled a harness over his shoulders. He touched a switched on the armrest. “All personnel, prepare for crash landing. This is not a drill. Repeat, this is not a drill. Do not attempt to use escape pods. We are going to ride the Lacedaemon down to the planet. Repeat, do not use escape pods. Strap in and ride the ship down.” He paused for a moment before saying, “God speed everyone.”

One of the navigation officers said, “Reaching degradation orbit with alignment to the Amazon basin in three… two… one… Deceleration burn cut.”

“Engines responding nominally,” another officer said.

Cantwell nodded.

“Turning for reentry,” navigation said. The stars above spun and the broad Earth, sunlight glittering off the Indian Ocean came into view from the left. The rotation stopped with the planet impossibly brilliant before them, the terminator of night cutting the globe in half. The ship lifted its bow slightly.

Marco said to himself, “Keep us belly on folks, nose up.” He lifted his chin as if willing the ship to raise its bow to the correct glide path. The growing Earth reminded Stacy she’d been here before. For the second time in her life she would ride a disabled ship out of orbit. She’d been the only survivor the first time.

The Earth swung slightly to the right as if a great pendulum hung from the bow of the ship. As it centered, Marco said, “There you go. Now get that nose up a bit more and let’s ride it in.” As if Marco’s quiet coaching had found an ear, the bow of the ship rose.

“Just a bit more,” Marco said, but the ship remained steady.

“I’ve lost the vertical bow control,” a helmsman called out as he looked to his left, “Can you shove the back end down?”

“Adjusting aft pitch,” another helmsman said.

In a few moments, the lattice framing between the glass panels began to glow as a faint rumble grew. When the rumbling became a trembling in the deck, a panel of glass near the center of the lattice gave a sharp, crystalline crack. A line ran, spider quick, across its surface. Another cracked, and another. The lattice frame glowed bright orange now, and the stars began to fade behind a faint violet-blue. As the violet turned to pure blue, and the vibration in the seat became extreme, the first glass panel window shattered inward. The next window let go and the next.

Wind coiled around Stacy, whipping her hair into her eyes and buffeting around her neck. Bits of glass nipped at her face. The air moved so fast past her nose and mouth it sucked the air from her lungs. She had to fight to draw breath. The bridge, bathed in the orange light of the glowing windows, vanished in acrid smoke so thick she couldn’t see her knees. The smoke tasted acidic in her throat. She coughed in spasms. The smoke coiled away from her, whatever fire had caused it seeming to have been snuffed out as quickly as it had formed. As the smoke dissipated, she drew another coughing breath. Through the eye-watering wind, she saw a low mountain to their right, draped in trees. Her eyes squinting, she could see Cantwell, the veins in his neck standing out, screaming commands to the helmsmen, who probably were unable to hear him.

Something’s very wrong.

They hung from their straps now, as if on a vertical wall of metal, out over the blurring valley floor. The dark-green trees of the rainforest came on fast, blurring. She smacked Marco’s knee. He leaned his head close to hers and she screamed at him, “How fast you think we’re going?”

He watched the trees rushing by for a moment before leaning back to her. She knew he was yelling at the top of his lungs but could barely made out, “More than mach one.”

Then we’re going to die.

There was no way a crash landing deceleration from that speed was survivable. That’s what had killed the others last time. She had lived only by the fortune of having her seat mounts break, easing her deceleration just enough to live. Now she was strapped to the nose of thousands of tons of metal with only a lattice frame between them and their point of impact.

One of the helmsmen lifted her fist in victory as torrents of brilliant, yellow flame raged out from the sides of the bridge
windows, the roar of rockets overrode the rush of the wind. Stacy’s shoulder straps hauled on her, and blood pressurized in her skull as her vision tinted red.

The trees below the ship slowed more and more as the retro rockets burned. The ship lurched as a loud crack was followed by green leaves billowing into the bridge, swirling around the men and women at their stations. The green seemed unreal to Stacy. Moments before they had been in orbit and now a leaf, smacked free from a branch, slapped across her face.

She watched the leaf arc and spin down the row of jump seats, past each man and woman. As it touched the back wall, the deck heaved. Stacy’s head snapped to the left and her vision tunneled and returned, filled with tracing stars. The ship lurched and shook, and Stacy felt at any moment her seat would rip free. The scent of broken wood and rich soil filled the bridge. With unnatural suddenness, the ship went still, her ears rang in the silence, and sunlight warmed her face.

As the haze of dust and smoke cleared, she found herself hanging from her harness at the top of a two hundred foot vertical, metal wall. The window lattice had been crushed down, now perhaps only ten feet away from her. Halfway down the wall, where the navigation crew, the Nav-Con officer, and Cantwell had sat, tree tops lay against the decking, and the lattice had been smashed flat.

Marco looked a bit punch drunk as he reached for his buckle. Slapping her hand over his, she said, “Watch the drop Fields.”

Marco looked down the wall, and said in a dazed tone, “Thanks O.C.”

“We need some way to climb or rappel down.” Stacy said.

“We have no rapping gear,” Jacqueline said, “so climbing’s the only way.” Locking her boots to the deck, she pulled on them. They released as they were designed to do. “These won’t help us here. They’ll let go as our weight pulls away from the wall.”

Down the rack of jump seats, near the tree tops, some had unlatched and were climbing into the branches, using the seat frames as a ladder. Here the wall of jump seats were inverted, so when Jacqueline unlatched herself her feet swung out.

Stacy gr
abbed her wrist, but Jacqueline said, “Thanks O.C. I’ve got this.”

Swinging her hips forward, she hooked her feet into the seats further down and, with her back at a forty-five degree angle to the ground, climbed down the seats. Stacy unlatched herself and followed Jacqueline, her arms burning in the short time it took to reach the vertical portion of the wall. Halfway to the tree tops, she heard a scream from above, which
dopplered past. Branches cracked. Below her, tree tops tussled back to stillness as a thump rose from the forest floor. Looking up, she found Marco and X still above her.

Putting the falling man out of her mind, she climbed down the rest of the jump seats to the tree tops. Instead of climbing down though, she moved horizontally along the crushed lattice work, through the branches until she reached Cantwell’s command seat. She had an unreasonable hope to find it empty, him already safely descended to the forest floor.

Reaching the command seat, she shoved a heavily leafed branch aside, exposing Cantwell hanging from his shoulder straps, head slumped forward, a tree limb speared through his belly. She felt his neck. Still warm but no pulse.

Looking at his gray head, she felt a sudden sadness for the old man. While his passing marked the loss of invaluable experience, it was something more for her. She hadn’t known him well, but he’d been a connection to Jeffrey for her. With them both gone—

“That’s no good.”

She turned to find X, his arms draped over a branch, his feet planted on what had once been the hand rail of the command station.

“No,” she said. “We don’t have a lot of these guys left. We need to do a better job of protecting them.”

“I don’t know if we have any left at all,” X said, but Stacy didn’t want to think about Jeffrey being gone. She couldn’t believe it
had happened so soon in the war. He’d been the survivor of the impossible. If this engagement had taken him so readily, how could they hope to survive?

“Come on O.C., let’s get down from here.”

As Stacy climbed down the branches, consoles, and lattice work, she felt warm wetness on a seat’s headrest. Holding up her hand, she found it slick with blood. Down, ten feet lower, she saw blonde hair. Past the hair, where shoulders should have been, she saw only leaves and smaller branches. Lowering herself around the seat, she found the headless torso of a female navigation officer still strapped in. Looking down the row of seats she saw that all of the helmsmen had paid for their efforts with their lives.

Another scream sounded above her and a body came crashing through the branches to her right. She saw a blur of legs. The sound of cracking branches raced to the forest floor.

She began descending again. When she reached the place where the branches ended and fifty feet of trunk should have remained until the forest floor, she found a tall berm of soil, dug up by the energy of the crash. She dropped onto the berm and climbed down the steep, loose slope until she stood on solid forest floor. The air felt heavy, and sunlight fell in a shattered mosaic across hanging mosses and bladed leaves.

Fighting the desire to crouch down and place her palms on the dirt, she turned to Marco and Jacqueline as X hopped down the berm. X looked up to the trees, pressed up into the lattice of the bridge. Several more had been driven forward, now hanging at steep angles over their heads. He said, “So we stand until the Great Birnam Wood rises against us.” He absently kicked a broken tree limb.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Jacqueline asked.

“
MacBeth,” X said.

“Who’s in charge here?” An exhausted but authoritative woman’s voice called out.

Stacy turned to find Commander Holloway walking from around the side of the wreck. She had a nasty cut across her temple, which had soaked her shoulder red. A large group of pilots followed her, all covered in dirt, and grease.

Stacy felt a wave of relief at seeing the woman who had been with Jeffrey. “Commander Holloway, I am so glad to see you. Do you have Captain Ho—”

“I’m in charge here Commander.”

Captain Donovan gave Stacy a withering look as he approached. He asked Holloway in a hard tone, as if being trapped in the belly of the Lacedaemon had been a shirking of duties. “Where have you been?”

“We were trapped behind a bulkhead. When we…” she fell quiet looking at the ferns and broad leafed plants. Somewhere a frog cricked. “Where the hell are we?”

“The Amazon,” Donovan said without emotion.

Holloway looked slightly taken aback as she said, “We were trapped by a crushed bulkhead. When we crashed, the side of the ship ripped open, affording us an escape route.”

Donovan nodded as though it was an acceptable excuse. “Your pilots will join the others in cargo. We must get supplies moved out as quickly as possible.”

As Stacy scanned the pilot’s faces, she asked, “Where’s Captain Holt?”

Holloway shrugged her shoulders. “No idea. He was one of the last into the duct work we used to evacuate the flight control center. He and two others didn’t come out the other end. We’d hoped they’d found another way out.”

“No one’s seen him.”

“That isn’t important right now,” Donovan said.

Stacy’s eyes snapped to Donovan as her heart thumped at the walls of her chest. Remembering that Cantwell had told her to team with him, she checked herself from speaking her mind. She huffed her breath out her nostrils.

“Get your people to the cargo hold,” Donovan told Holloway.