Hammerhead Resurrection (33 page)

Afternoon sunlight glowed through the roof of Jeffrey’s tent as he lay on his cot lost in thought. Since Samantha’s death, Leif and Caterina had worked long hours modifying the remaining pilots. A second pilot, a young woman from Mikelson’s group, had died, and another young man had been left unable to speak. Jeffrey had, as best he could, and as he’d done so many times before, brought up an emotional numbness to shield himself from it. Still, regrets plagued him. If he’d dealt with Donovan when they first crashed, or if he hadn’t allowed himself to be taken down by the Sthenos fighter… she’d still be alive.

Stacy called from outside his tent flap, “Jeffrey?”

“Come in,” he said, sitting up onto the edge of his cot.

The flap drew aside and Stacy entered. More than a decade older than the twenty-something she’d been when they first met, she still looked young and beautiful despite the scar on her face, which he’d created with his rough stitches. She wore her hair slightly longer than the pixie cut she’d had then, but still, she had a playfully dangerous look, which reminded Jeffrey of Puck from A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream. That thought lifted him slightly from his self-imposed darkness.

She sat on a container and leaned forward, elbows on knees. When she looked at him, he saw a profound sadness in her eyes.

In a concerned tone, he asked, “What’s going on?”

Giving a slight shake of her head, she said, “Nothing. Leif asked me to come get you… said he’s done with the last pilot.”

He took hold of her hands. “Stacy, I know you well enough to see when something’s bothering you. Talk to me.”

She looked to the side, appeared to be considering speaking or not, and said, “I can’t stop thinking about President Delaney… that it was my fault. If I hadn’t gotten in Donovan’s face…”

“Stacy,” he fell silent trying to choose his words perfectly, which he knew to be impossible in such a moment. “I’ve been having the same problem.”

She looked at him, hopeful.

“We can only offer our best try at life, faults and all. We’ll make mistakes, and those mistakes will sometimes haunt us.”

“For how long?”

“Sometimes a day… sometimes a lifetime… Stacy, I’m sorry for what you’re about to go through. I regret that I’m the one who has to ask you to do it.”

“I not worried about the fight.”

He squeezed her hands. “As crazy as it sounds, the fight’s not the hard part. It’s the living afterward that’s hard. If we get through this, you might just understand what I mean. Hell…” He looked off through the half open tent flap, “I hope I’m wrong. I hope nothing worse than Samantha’s death gets under your skin.”

“It can get worse?” She said with a sarcastic laugh.

“A lot worse.” He touched the side of her face.

Lowering her eyes so he could see only her chin and nose, she asked, “You’ve dealt with things like this in the past. How’d you keep going then?”

“Hope and duty?” he asked, sincerely unsure. “Maybe stubbornness…”

“How do you keep a sense of duty after what they did?”

Jeffrey looked at his hands, turning the question over in his mind. “I don’t know. Why ask something like that?”

“Fifty years ago, when you came home, they turned their backs on you.”

“Not all of them did.”

Anger glowed in her voice. “A lot did.”

Jeffrey laughed heartlessly. “I do it…
we
do it because we’re not bankers or lawyers. Whether you like it or not, you’re a fighter. I know you don’t necessarily want to be, but when you’re needed, and now’s one of those times, all the bankers, lawyers, and elementary school teachers need you to do what they can’t. There are horrors they can’t face emotionally nor physically, so you and I have to do it for them.”

Stacy said, “And when the dirty work’s done, they can claim we don’t matter. They can say that the war never happened at all.”

“Not this time, not if I have my say. But even if you knew they would, you’d still fight for them.”

She looked at him with her intense, hazel eyes. “Why should we if they don’t care?”

“Because it’s how we’re built. When someone goes after those who can’t fight for themselves, we don’t have an off switch.”

A smile drew up the right side of her mouth.

He stood, pulling her to her feet and hugged her.

“Thank you,” he said.

She looked up at him. “What are you talking about? You’re helping me.”

“And you reminded me that I’m not alone.”

When she smiled, he said, “Do me a favor.”

“Sure.”

“Don’t die.”

“I’ll damn well try not to,” she said, with a sincere laugh, “but I hear my long term odds are pretty bad.”

That night Jeffrey dreamt he was sitting alone in the ready room of the U.S.S. Argalus, a ship long since decommissioned. His hands were young, unscarred; his right pinkie still had its last joint. Dim light came from the small reading lamps among the rows of seats. Maco walked in with his slow, sweeping gait, shoulders narrow, eyes wide like a bird of prey. Sitting down beside Jeffrey, he put his hand on Jeffrey’s forearm, fingers warm. On the left shoulder of his flight suit was the Hammerhead insignia, a shark with ghostly eyes, mouth open, tail curved under.

Jeffrey felt the long-dead pilot had something to say, but Maco, as had been his way, only nodded once. There seemed to be a contentment in his expression, an acceptance of the inevitable. As the ready room and Maco faded away, Jeffrey found himself in the pitch-black night filled with the sounds of insects and the falls. His heart settled into a rare tranquility as he drifted back into a dreamless sleep.

He woke with the glow of dawn, fat rain drops pattering across the tent’s fabric. Remembering the dream, he felt he understood. It hadn’t been his mind spinning with stress that had brought his dead wingman to sit with him. Against all logic, Jeffrey felt it really had been Maco, as though he’d come to give Jeffrey permission to send more to be with him.

As he dressed, he felt as though
Maco’s spirit, calm and reserved, was still with him. When he left his tent, the rain had faded to intermittent drips, but the plants remained speckled with moisture. The air smelled clean. High up, strips of blue shown through the clouds, which the sun undercut, illuminating the sky fire-red. As he walked among the tents, the smell of boiled oats and coffee drifted in the cool air.

Lost in thought, he came into the ready room clearing and found himself standing in front of more than two hundred pilots, twenty-two special warfare operatives, and the support staff.

He squared his shoulders as he looked over their faces, young, some pretty, some strong, some closed-off, others nervous, all venerated by him.

Conversations faded as all attention became focused on him.

“Those who’ve gone before you gave their lives so that the world could live. Make no mistake, your odds of following them tomorrow are high. I know you’ve signed on for no less. In that you give of yourselves wholly and completely… and selflessly. Because of that willingness to sacrifice—” Emotion welling in his chest cut him short, “you are the true north I set my will by, and I am proud to call you all Hammerheads.”

Kodiak stood, punched his fist in the air, and gave a deep, resounding whoop, which the entire group echoed. Jeffrey held up his fist as well, but made no sound as he was overwhelmed at the pride he felt in them, and the grief already growing for what he knew was coming even if they found victory.

He remembered something Admiral Cantwell had said to him years before.
Wars are not won, they are survived.

As he scanned the faces of these new Hammerhe
ads, ready to face the horde one more time, he said, “You’ve all had the chance to test your new limits with short flights, and I’m impressed with how well you’ve adapted to them. Now on to business. When we fly out tomorrow one pilot will have a Special Warfare operator, the other will have a second singularity warhead. You must stay dark and undetected, so fly low. By low I mean within feet of the ground. We have no precise recon, so you’ll have to scout your own landing area. This stage contains the largest risks to the mission. You must remain undetected until the warheads can be triggered. Passively scan for vehicle and airborne signals and avoid them at all costs. If you fail here, we all fail. One Sthenos destroyer in orbit is already more than enough for our Wraith pilots to have to face.”

“All singularity warheads will be hard triggered.” He looked to special warfare. “At 5PM tomorrow GMT, correctly placed or not, they’ll activate. We can’t risk manual triggering. If upon arrival at the location, no hiding location can be found, you’ll keep the warhead on your back so it remains
stealthed and wait with it. You let it take you. Is that clear?”

“Yes sir,” all the special warfare operators said without hesitation.

“Good. Thank you all.”

“If,” he looked back on the pilots, “the Sthenos destroyers are not disabled at 5PM GMT, you are to go live and kamikaze the second singularity warhead in. That’s forty-four singularity warheads dedicated to this attack. We have only nineteen more. Those will be with the Wraiths.

“The Lakota pilots who aren’t assigned attack groups are on clean up. You’ll be assigned one of two staging points, one in south eastern New Mexico, the other in Luhansk, Ukraine. From there you’ll wait until 5:01 PM GMT before attacking Sthenos forces in Denver and Moscow respectively.”

“Once the Sthenos destroyers are taken out, break radio silence to confirm. We will
not
respond. At that point, all surviving Lakota fighters will move to join forces in Denver or Moscow. From those locations we’ll begin working through remaining Sthenos forces. If our current experience in atmosphere holds true, you’ll be able to readily outfly the Sthenos fighters.”

“You’ll move from one former Sthenos destroyer location to the next. After Denver will be L.A. When L.A. is clean, move on to Tokyo. You’ll have to scavenge your own fuel and supplies along the way. You’ll run out of ammunition. When you do, you must find more. Success tomorrow will not bring us to the end. The Sthenos will be on Earth for a long time to come. There will be issues with the human populations as well. Warlords may rise up. If we’re successful tomorrow, we’ll see the best and the worst from human
society over the next several years. Those who live will help rebuild the world. Are you ready to do that?”

“Yes, sir!”

“Good. Now I hope you said your goodbyes because as of right now your asses belong to me. When Holloway has assigned your group and destination, prep your aircraft and get the hell out of here. I want all flights outbound at dusk.”

He stared at them for a moment before asking, “Do you all understand?”

“Yes, sir,” came the booming chorus of pilots and special warfare.

“Does anyone have any questions?”

“No, sir.”

As the area cleared, Stacy walked up to Jeffrey, gave him her winning smile as she said, “You ready to make history?”

Jeffrey returned her smile as best he could manage. “Yeah.” But his heart wasn’t in it. Win or lose he already grieved for her. He’d seen brilliant souls worn threadbare too many times before.

Stacy had to cover eight miles in a few hours with a fifty-five pound pack on. Her legs burned. To keep herself going, she picked small points along the road to reach. Ahead she saw a stoplight, blinking red, somehow still powered.

Get to that in ten minutes.

The clock on her HUD ticked down. She reached it a few seconds late. The traffic signal tilted in the breeze. She looked ahead for her next goal. Her back and shoulders hurt. The main weight of the pack rested on her hips as it should, but the straps still dug into her shoulders and she felt her balance weakening as she put miles behind her.

At the drop off point, when she powered up the suit, her arms had disappeared save a slight shadow thrown by her HUD to show her body position. She’d given the suit the command to shut the ghost off. She felt exposed when she could see her outline even if no one else could. She’d waved her hand in front of her eyes, marveling at the efficiency of the suit, which masked her visually, on radar, the electrical and heat signs of her body, and cooled her exhaled breath to ambient temperature. Ten years earlier Jeffrey had defeated special ops mercenaries equipped with stealth suits by reading the CO2 which had been exhaled. Since that time, CO2 scrubbers had been added, which left her effectively invisible. She could only hope the Sthenos didn’t have some form of detection they hadn’t considered.

At her back, the suit’s small fusion power source gave off a tiny whine. A seed-sized hydrogen sun burned behind her shoulder blades. Without its electromagnetic shielding it would simply burn out, but not before cutting her in half. The shielding was programmed to fail first away from her, but a catastrophic failure, immediately cutting power from the back up battery, would kill her. Everyone who wore the suits tried not to think about it.

In the distance, she could see the spire of the over mile-high Sthenos destroyer towering above dark-green oak trees. As she walked out of the empty streets of Clifton NY, she felt unsure. She’d expected the interstate to be jammed with cars. There were none. The Sthenos had either let those on the freeways go, or had stopped them before they could fill the roads.

Soon she saw the towers of the NY skyline catching the sun. She was right on schedule. As she walked, the sun hung in a brilliant ball straight above, but she didn’t feel the warmth of the day nor the wind. The suit kept her at a comfortable temperature. She did feel the burn in her thighs and sweat running down her back. She drank now and again from the tube at her jawline, which she could use without lifting the face mask. The suit had been designed for an operative to remain stealthed for days, only needing to shut down the shield to eat or relieve oneself. She would hope to need neither in the next few hours.

In another tiring but steady hour, she reached the edge of the Hudson River and the mouth of the Lincoln tunnel. As she approached, she found that a large structure with matte-black, armor-plated walls had been constructed around the mouth of the tunnel. She assumed the other bridges and tunnels had similar defenses or had been destroyed.

Scaling the ivy-covered embankment to her left, she climbed over a concrete barrier into an industrial area. She walked among the buildings—all dead quiet. Cars remained neatly parked, a few with their doors or rear hatches open. She touched the hood of a black sedan where it seemed an electrical arc had burned the paint.

Where have the people gone?

As she considered it, she guessed she didn’t want an answer. A deep humming rose up from behind her. Returning to the barrier, she looked down to the four lanes of concrete, which would have led into the tunnel if not for the armored obstruction. She rested her chest on the barrier to relieve the weight of the pack. The humming grew to a rumbling. It seemed to be coming from the direction from which she’d come. The ground and the barrier began to vibrate. To the west, a massive vehicle came into view, rounding the final bend in the highway. The night-black transport hovered a few feet off the ground on a warping energy field. Approaching the tunnel entrance, it stopped perhaps 100 yards from the metal wall. The rumbling faded away as it set down. Between seams in the armor, the side of the transport dropped inward and slid to the side. Something moved in the dark interior.