Hammerhead Resurrection (21 page)

By the end of the fifth hour a good deal of supplies had been moved to the waypoint a quarter-mile away. While some climbed the racks and lowered supplies on ropes and pulleys, others moved through the ship rappelling down the vertical decks seeking out items such as bedding and waterproof material for shelter.

Captain Donovan had organized two chains of five hundred sailors each, which led away from the cargo holds into the forest. The men and women passed containers and bundles one to the next.

In the hangar Jeffrey, the pilots, and the flight deck personnel had succeeded in pulling the AI gear out of the remaining drone Wraiths and loaded them with as many armaments as would fit under their stubby wings. The VR flight room had been destroyed, but the machine shops had enough remaindered seats, which were modular and bolted directly back in, to return the ships to their original configuration.

With the ships prepped, the pilots gathered under one of the nose cones. A humid breeze carried the scent of rich soil and sap through the yawning side doors, which only two days before had lain open to the vacuum of space.

Jeffrey said, “We have functional Wraiths, but we need true aircraft. Wraiths are only effective in a vacuum. They don’t have broad enough control surfaces for atmospheric dog fighting. We need something like Kiowa for air-to-air combat…” He faded off in thought.

“Sir?” Whitetip asked.

“I have an idea, but let me think on it awhile. You,” he indicated the flight deck crew who’d helped them remove AI gear, “collect as much maintenance gear as you can carry and get out of here. Pilots we’ll need to fly out the far hangar doors and come around well away from the supply lines.”

They nodded. All understood the radiation risks of the nuclear drives.

“All right folks, get to a cockpit.”

The pilots saluted and jogged to their ships. Jeffrey went up the ladder behind Whitetip and climbed into the empty space behind her where the navigation officer’s seat would have been. He sat on a metal rise at the rear of the cockpit.

“I don’t have a seat, so take it easy; I don’t want to die before we even begin.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence, sir,” she said with an easy laugh.

Jeffrey laughed as well, finding himself sincerely liking the young woman.

The cockpit glass lowered, and she fired the nuclear thrusters, horrendously loud in the atmosphere. The Wraiths ahead lifted off their landing skids, hovered down the flight deck, and moved out into the bright sunlight. When Whitetip’s Wraith had a clear path, she lifted it off and hovered forward. Jeffrey hadn’t flown in a nuclear drive fighter in a long time. It felt different than a turbine driven aircraft, which moved in smooth, analogue lines. The Wraith felt twitchy, as if it were a half-broken horse, still unsure if it was willing to take a rider. When Whitetip came out into the sunlight she accelerated out over the trees. The power curve felt unlimited, hydroelectric. Jeffrey squinted into the sunlight as she flew a few feet above the forest canopy, turning in a wide arc. The Lacedaemon looked like a great, titanium whale, its back flexed and creased as if swimming.

Reaching the landing zone, she hovered the Wraith between the crowns of two large trees and descended. Leaves shoved against the sides of the ship and branches cracked beneath. The light fell into jade-green dimness. The Wraith tilted slightly sideways as she set down on uneven ground.

The engines shut down, leaving them in deep silence.

Jeffrey said, “Now all we can do is hope these things cool down enough to avoid thermal detection when the Sthenos come through.”

A switch clacked and heavy fans came on outside, blowing potentially radioactive materials away.

When the fans shut off, Whitetip said, “The radiation levels outside aren’t great but they won’t kill us. I wouldn’t want to use Wraiths this way every day though.”

The cockpit lifted as Whitetip asked, “You really think they’ll hit the Lacedaemon?”

“Yes… at least I would.”

She pulled a ladder from the side of the ship, and climbed down. Jeffrey followed. As he stepped onto the dark-red soil, he looked up at the rainforest canopy high above. In the distance, the last few Wraiths still searched for gaps large enough to land in, filling the air with a thunderous roar highlighted by popping shrieks.

Jeffrey and Whitetip made their way to the rendezvous point as the distant Wraiths fell silent. Jeffrey enjoyed the sensation of his natural weight on his feet again, but the heat and humidity felt even more oppressive due to the transition from the perfect environment of ship-borne life. The humidity made him feel as though his mouth and nose were packed with damp, oven-hot cotton. He wished Cantwell hadn’t decided to land here, but understood why. The rainforest was largely unpopulated and easy to disappear into.

When they arrived at the rendezvous point, he felt a rush of relief when he saw Stacy talking with a sailor standing over a backpack.

“…singularity is a remarkably effective weapon,” the sailor said to her. “We found no portal effect as some had suspected. Once the reaction is done, all the matter drawn in is left as a super-dense mass, almost a perfect sphere. Very strange looking.”

“Everything?” Stacy asked. Her eyes, with dark circles under them, had lost their usual illumination. As Jeffrey came to stand beside her, she glanced at him. Looked again. Her eyes went wide as she said with disbelief, “You’re alive.”

“I am.”

“You’re alive,” she shouted with anger. Tears welled in her eyes, but her feet seemed pinned to the ground, as if she didn’t know how to deal with her feelings and still be a military commander.

Jeffrey wrapped his arms around her, hugging her tight. Without hesitation, he felt her arms lock around him. One sob escaped her.

After a moment, she said into his chest. “I’ve already had to live through my father’s death. I don’t think I could face yours.” She leaned away from him, and touched the side of his face. “You’ve
got
to be more careful.”

He nodded as he let her go, and said to the man she’d been talking with, “I apologize for the interruption sailor. Please continue.”

“This is Ensign Roth,” Stacy said.

“I…” Roth said in an unsure tone, “I was describing their function.”

Leif had detailed the function of the singularities to Jeffrey more than a year earlier, but he wasn’t supposed to know them. He motioned for the man to continue.

“These singularity warheads, are actually small light-speed drives and, as a result, time machines.”

Stacy scowled. “You’re joking.”

“Not at all. A single atom of hydrogen is sent in an electromagnetically shielded loop.” He made a small circle with his hands. “The loop’s only this big. The hydrogen is accelerated up to the speed of light with electrical impulses.”

Stacy’s right eye narrowed with disbelief. “Light speed? What the hell powers it?”

“A fist-sized fusion reactor, ma’am.”

“And what happens when the hydrogen reaches light speed?” Stacy asked.

“According to Einstein’s theory of relativity, as a mass, in this case the hydrogen atom, approaches the speed of light, it should become infinitely heavy.”

“Does it?”

“Absolutely,” Roth said with a faint smile. “That’s what creates the singularity, but not in the way we initially expected. It doesn’t gain mass gradually as Einstein theorized. The moment it hits the speed of light, it begins slipping backward in time.”

Stacy stared at him, her face slack. “You’re messing with me.”

“No ma’am, I wouldn’t do that. It slips back in time. As it does, a second atom occupies the same space as the first. It does this over and over again, a trillion times in a billionth of a second. That one atom-sized space becomes infinitely dense, creating a singularity with an event horizon half a mile in diameter.”

“I see why it did so much damage to the Sthenos destroyer.” Stacy crouched down and touched the canvas exterior of the warhead’s carrying case. “All in a backpack.”

“Exactly, no amount of armor plating or shielding can resist it,” Roth said. “If we could get one into a Sthenos destroyer, it would pull the entire thing in on itself.”

Jeffrey said, “We have thirty three Wraiths with singularity warheads on them, but I haven’t seen this portable type before. Are there more of these?”

“Yes sir, we have thirty of this style.”

Jeffrey nodded absently. “Cool.”

“Very cool,” Stacy said.

“I’ll have to talk more with you later Commander Zack,” Jeffrey said as he walked away.

Stacy called after him, “Where are you going?”

“I’ve got a few things I need to look into.”

…

Jeffrey had been vague because he didn’t want to speak of what was troubling him. It was something that had been floating in the back of his mind since the attack had begun and had worried at his thoughts more and more as the situation had worsened. He’d successfully pushed it from his thoughts, but now, as he walked along the uneven ground beneath the tall trees, which were infused with the sounds of insects and birds, he searched the surrounding faces for the one person he had to find aside from Stacy—Leif.

As he walked among a few service people stacking water and food, he heard footfalls behind him.

“Jeffrey.”

He turned to find Delaney walking up to him. “You haven’t seen a medic yet. You need to get those wounds treated.”

“I will soon.”

“
Now
.”

He let out a breath. “I need to find my son first.”

At that her determined look softened. “I’ll walk with you.” As they moved on, she asked, “Did you at least drink water?”

“Yes,” he said and couldn’t help but smile.

“What?”

“We fairly hated each other only a few days ago, and now you’re after me like a mother hen.”

“I… didn’t exactly
hate
you,” she said with a light laugh.

He stopped and faced her. “Samantha, I apologize for how I spoke to you on the bridge and in my quarters. My comments were unnecessarily rude.”

“I’m sorry as well… for everything.”

In the following silence Jeffrey became transfixed by her eyes, the color of leaves in autumn, glowing with sunlight.

Forcing himself to look off to the forest, he said, “I need to find Leif.”

“After we’ve found him, I want you to see a medic.”

He nodded his assent as a female sailor nearby said, “If you’re looking for Leif Holt, he’s right over there.” Jeffrey looked to her. She pointed over his shoulder.

He turned and, searching the faces on the far side of the clearing, saw his son carrying a crate, his shirtfront dark with dried blood. Jeffrey jogged over to him, feeling as though he might lift him off the ground and swing him up onto his shoulder as he had done
when he was small. Leif put the crate down with a thump and nodded to his father.

Jeffrey said of the blood on Leif’s chest, “Not yours I assume.”

Leif shook his head. “No. I’m glad you’re alive. I wasn’t sure for two days.” He said it in a casual tone though, as though he’d always expected to find his father alive.

“It might not always work out that way.”

Leif shrugged. “So far so good.”

The other personnel had set their cases down and left. The breeze rustled leaves overhead. Jeffrey looked to Samantha, who nodded and walked away.

He asked Leif, “How are you holding up?”

Leif looked out into the forest. Jeffrey could see that he was at the edge of his ability to cope with the strain he’d been under.

“There’s no shame in grief son. If we try to hold it in, it only hurts us more. We’re safe for the moment, in a place you can let it out a little… if you can.”

Leif gripped his hands together.

“Leif I want you to know—”

“We fought.”

“What’s that?”

Tears welled in Leif’s eyes. “The last words we had… were an argument.”

When he fell silent, Jeffrey said, “Sit, son.”

Leif sat on the container he’d been carrying and Jeffrey pulled another one close and sat facing him. He took hold of Leif’s shoulders. A subtle tremor ran through them.

Jeffrey said, “I know it’s difficult to see now, but it will get easier.”

Leif pushed Jeffrey’s hands away. “I don’t want it to
get easier
.” His voice fell to a near-whisper, “I feel like if it gets easier, I’ll forget her. I can’t let that happen.”

Jeffrey took hold of Leif’s hands with a firm grip. “Leif, she knew you loved her in the end. You set the stars by her.”

Jeffrey felt Leif’s arms relax somewhat. With his head down, he looked exposed, his spirit broken. Drawing slow breaths that tremored in his chest, he shook his head slowly.

“She knew you loved her. You have to accept that.”

“It’s not that,” Leif said quietly.