Hammerhead Resurrection (34 page)

As the thing emerged into the sunlight, it brought back a long forgotten memory of a black widow Stacy had found in her garage as a child. The spider had looked as though it were leather-wrapped, shining and vicious. It was quadruped, but with two arms making six limbs total. The long legs, thin at the joints, bent backward as it walked. Its waist was narrow and the chest curved inward, giving the creature a stalking appearance. The arms, like the legs, were thin and pitch-black. It held a long metal bar, most likely, Stacy assumed, some kind of weapon. Its narrow head and long jaw gave it an almost hatchet-like appearance. Its dark visor caught the sunlight with a flash of light. Stacy understood then that she wasn’t seeing the creature but a helmet and environmental suit, or perhaps defensive armor. Two hoses ran from the sides of the face to a finned backpack. Waves of heat came off the pack as the creature moved forward.

They’re cooling arrays
.

Glancing at her HUD she saw that the ambient temperature was 84 degrees.

…and yet they still need to stay cool.

Two more Sthenos emerged, holding the metal bars as if a street gang armed with lengths of high-tech pipe. As they gathered at the end of the ramp, the first swept its arm in command and a keening sound punctuated by clicks and a low vibration sounded out, resonating in Stacy’s skull.

A young man emerged from the darkness. A metallic bar bound his hands together, and a cable between his ankles caused him to take short steps. A woman, perhaps twenty years old, followed him. Another cable connected them at the waist. Another woman appeared and then a young man. As the chain gang grew from the side of the transport, the first man tripped, falling forward. A Sthenos made low sounds laced with menacing clicks as it held out the bar. An arc leapt away from it, stuttering from the young man’s heel up to the base of his skull. The arc left its ghosted memory on Stacy’s eyes as the young man convulsed on the ground. The Sthenos let out the low resonation as it pointed toward the building.

Stacy’s trigger finger curled closed.

The man pushed himself up to kneeling. As he tried to stand, his legs trembled, and he crouched back to his knees. The woman behind him said something to him. Coaxing the man to standing as best she could with restrained hands, she helped him walk toward the building, the chain of people following in a single file.

As Stacy watched the people come from the transport, she noticed that there were none overweight, none younger than teenagers, and none older than perhaps forty. This group had been processed elsewhere, distilled from the general population. They were young and strong. But why?

The Sthenos weren’t here to destroy humanity. They wouldn’t have transported these people here in that case. This wasn’t just about water and ore. Jeffrey’s theory on slavery came to mind again, but something she couldn’t pinpoint told her it didn’t fit.

She counted in tens until the last person emerged from the doorway. Two hundred in total. The last was a girl of perhaps fifteen, tall and thin but athletic. She still had a touch of a little girl in her cheeks. Her shoulder-length, dark hair shone in the sun, reminding Stacy of her own sister. The girl’s head rose and scanned the top of the wall where Stacy crouched. When the girl’s eyes passed her location, Stacy wished she could uncloak for a split second to give the young girl some hope that someone had come, that she wasn’t alone, but the girl’s eyes, hollow as if they’d been cried empty, swept past.

As the chain of people approached the structure, a tall doorway slid open. The metal was at least a foot thick. More Sthenos came out, these wearing red suits with a similar leathery sheen. As the young man and the woman, still helping him walk, approached, one of the red Sthenos held up a metal rod, it’s end sparking. Stacy’s gut tightened and her shoulders glowed with adrenaline with the desire to step in, but there was nothing she could do. Live or die, those people were on their own.

The chain-gang moved into the tunnel, disappearing from view one at a time.

They might have turned the tunnel into a prison, which would be smart. Only two points to guard and no way to effectively blow doors without sending shockwaves down the tunnel or drowning the prisoners.

Still, something about that felt wrong to her as well. She guessed that the chain gang’s destination was in Manhattan. She looked up to the Sthenos destroyer towering over the skyline, clouds catching on its upper reaches.

The rumbling rose up again, but it did not come from this transport. Looking up the highway, she saw another come around the distant curve.

She backed away from edge of the road, stepping carefully among the debris, and turned east toward the river. With no tunnel access, she would have to swim. When she reached the water she stepped in and visually confirmed that the suit was correctly throwing holograms over the holes she made in the water.

Inflating small airbags, which ran down her chest from shoulder to hip bone, she settled into the water. The airbags compensated for the weight of the pack as she quietly breast stroked across the river.

The current carried her downstream as she swam. She would now be swimming directly over those prisoners walking down the tunnel. When she reached the island, she climbed out of the water over craggy boulders. Crouching low, she waited for excess water to cascade from her. While the suit covered over anything close to it, the water falling off would leave a visible signature. Shaking off the remaining excess water, she held her hand up. The suit compensated for the wetness still on her leaving her invisible again. Hopping up the boulders, she climbed a short concrete
seawall to the pavement and made her way up 34
th
street, but when she reached 9
th
Avenue, she looked north several blocks to where the Lincoln tunnel emerged. A bit ahead of schedule, she felt that if she could learn something more about the Sthenos and their intentions, anything, then the time spent would be worthwhile. As she approached 38
th
street, she saw something she didn’t understand.

Down the street, a tall barrier shimmered in the late morning sunlight.

“Suit-Con,” she whispered to activate the suit’s voice recognition, “zoom five times.”

Her view of the barrier leapt forward. It had a similar patter
n to cyclone fencing, but glittered as if crystal.

As she approached the fencing, she whispered, “Suit-Con, eliminate zoom.”

Beyond the fencing, emerging from the mouth of the tunnel, were a group of prisoners. Not those she’d seen earlier. They’d probably already moved into the city. These, freed from their chains, walked in a loosely formed group. Their faces held hopelessness.

As she approached, she found the entire length of the street lined with the glittering barrier. Its uneven lattice seemed to be more of a natural
spiderweb of clear, thin tubes. The tubes appeared to be melting in the sun, just about to drip, but never did.

She watched the people move by. A Sthenos passed within a few feet, walking on its rear legs, monstrous in its height of perhaps ten feet. The middle appendages hung at its sides, while its elongated head swept back and forth scanning the prisoners. The creature wore a suit the color of fresh blood, which creaked as it walked. It stopped, dropped down onto four legs and looked in her direction. Stacy held her breath. Despite the stealth suit, she felt as though she were fully exposed. The Sthenos looked back to the men and women as it let out the low resonance again, imbedded with sharp clicks. The resonance vibrated in Stacy’s chest, and the clicks made the back of her neck sparkle with animal terror. At that moment, she understood in her gut why they’d come.

Prey.

She waited for the Sthenos and prisoners to pass before she moved on with quiet steps.

One block south of the barrier, she turned east on 37
th
Street. As she walked, the weight of the warhead burned into her legs. At each intersection, she looked north to see that she was keeping pace with the prisoners, who had continued along 38
th
Street, it’s entire length seemingly blocked by the glistening barrier. As she closed in on the Sthenos destroyer, its great spike towering against the blue sky, she guessed that it had landed near the New York Public Library, perhaps in Bryant Park, squarely in the heart of Manhattan Island.

At 6
th
Avenue the barrier on 38
th
Street turned north. She decided to continue down to 5
th
Avenue before turning north as well.

The empty street felt alien. She’d been in Manhattan before. Coming from small-town Colorado, she’d been unprepared for the crowds in one of the few areas on Earth that had maintained its density as the world’s population ebbed. People
had walked shoulder to shoulder on sidewalks in a great river of humanity. The streets teamed with cabs and delivery trucks, the chords created by their variant fusion engines filling the air with resonant music.

Now she walked alone and invisible among the towering buildings, feeling as if she were surrounded by ghosts. Looking to her invisible hands, she felt a ghost herself. As she looked at where her arm should be, a loud clank sounded beside her. The bottle she’d kicked skittered out into the street, fell from the curb, and shattered in the gutter. Flushing with adrenaline, she crouched down.

Dammit Stacy.

A deep thrumming rose up in the distance. She ran to the crook of a staircase, knelt down, and waited. As the sound grew, a small, black ship, hovering on the same warping heat the transport had, sailed around the corner.

They’d wondered how sensitive the Sthenos would be to intruders this close to the landing zone. Now she knew.

Very sensitive.

The small transport hovered up to the area where the bottle had broken and green laser lines scanned in a grid across the sidewalk and walls of the building, spreading out and rotating. Stacy was caught dead center in the scan pattern. She looked directly at the Sthenos pilot, who wore a distinctly different helmet than the prisoner handlers.

Here’s where I find out how good these suits really are.

She became hyper aware of her breathing, remembering how Jeffery had detected Maxine King’s mercs. Even though the CO2 flaw had been dealt with, she wondered what faults the engineers hadn’t considered. The Sthenos pilot seemed to stare directly at her. For all she knew, it was trying to understand why she was sitting still and not running for her life.

Pulsing with the ship’s power source, the air filled with the sharp, clean scent of ozone. After a moment, she dared think that, if it could sense her, it would have done something by now, killed her or attempted to communicate. The grid of lasers appeared again and scanned over her. Beneath her and behind her she saw the grid land unhindered on the brick wall as the suit bent the laser light around itself.

The Sthenos turned the ship to the west and flew away, kicking out paper and dust from the gutters as it went.

She wasted no time in moving her position. She’d allowed herself to become distracted, which was totally unacceptable. She couldn’t fail to place the warhead, and she almost had.

Reaching 5
th
avenue, she looked north. Two blocks up, a wall of debris two stories high blocked the street. As she approached, she saw it consisted of loose brick, metal ducting, and other materials. It couldn’t be climbed in silence. Her HUD told her she had thirty minutes to plant the singularity warhead and begin her return trip. She could try and climb the pile slowly, but one broken bottle had the Sthenos on her in seconds. If they cornered her up there, the shifting debris would easily give her away. Climbing over wasn’t an option, and she couldn’t leave the warhead here, as it was still too far away to assure destruction.

Her gaze tracked up the ten story building to her left. The debris lay halfway up its side like a swelling wave, frozen in time.

If I can’t go over, I go up.

She walked around the back of the building. She wouldn’t be able to climb with the weight of the pack. Giving the street a quick check, she took it off. The pack became visible as it came away from her torso. Taking a flat disk from a cargo pocket, she drew a filament cord from its edge and attached it to the pack’s top strap. She clipped the spool to her hip and began climbing. The broad window sills made for a straightforward ascent, but even so, as she gripped the sixth floor sill, she felt her fingers slide. The empty air behind her back loomed. She adjusted her grip and held herself to the wall. If she fell she’d die, or at least break something bad enough that she’d wished she had died. Worse than that, would be the failure of the warhead. Where it sat, it would cut a crater in the hide of Manhattan but nothing more.

Reaching the top floor of the building, she had to lean her head back to look at its overhanging cornice. She felt her gloves pulling at the skin of her fingers as her grip slipped by micrometers. Looking down at the street over one hundred feet below, she saw the line of the thin cord pulling in the breeze. She turned her attention back to the stone cornice. Climbing was not her strong suit, and an expert
dyno
, as rock climbers would call the leaping transition, was well above her skill set. She looked to see if she could go around the cornice, but it ranged all the way to the building’s edge. She looked into the tenth floor window. She saw office furniture and a design table, now only a black sheet of glass without power. Breaking the glass to get inside wasn’t an option.

Do or die.

She looked up again, picked a target between two buttresses, huffed twice, and leapt.

Her heart went airborne with her, and she felt her entire body go effervescent with thrilling fear. Her hands caught the stone, and the gripping surface of her gloves held. Her body swung out and back, causing her grip to slip slightly. Her foot kicked the window,
which thumped but did not break. Her forearms began to burn. She had to move fast. Her grip would last only a few seconds under her full body weight. Pulling herself up, she shot her arm forward, praying for something to grip. Her fingers brushed an edge, but couldn’t hold it. She slid back to hanging, her arms extend. Her shoulders began to burn. Gritting her teeth, she pulled with everything she had, reached with her right arm, and caught the edge with the last two joints of her ring and middle fingers. Her ring finger slipped free, tearing the nail away from the bed. As her middle finger began to slip, she pulled as hard as she could. The palm of her hand exploded with pain as she reached with her left hand, caught the edge, and brought her right leg up stomping into the buttress to create friction to hold herself up. Sliding her right hand forward, she locked a solid grip on the stone edge, pain flaring up her arm. Hauling herself over the ledge, she rolled off to the roof where she collapsed on her side holding her right hand. She held it up to look at it, but could not see it. Telling the HUD to throw a ghost of her on the display, she bent her fingers. The ring finger trailed behind the others, and pressing on the palm of her gloved hand, she could feel the tendon knotted in her palm. She’d snapped it.

She lay for a moment longer, drawing slow breaths. It would be no use to lean over the ledge to recover the warhead if she became dizzy and fell. After several slow, meditative breaths, she shifted to her feet. Staying off her right hand, she leaned over the edge. Pulling on the cord with her left hand, she tried to lift the pack, but with only one good hand, she couldn’t grip to pull it straight up. She drew her left forearm under the rope and pulled it left. Then she drew her right forearm under the line and drew that right, lifting the pack off the ground, the cord now passed from her belt, behind her left bicep, around her left forearm and over her right. Twisting to maintain the distance between her arms, she swept her left forearm under the extended cord again, and now had two wraps of the cord around her forearms. She twisted her body and swept her right arm under the cord, now three wraps and had lifted the warhead up four feet or so. She began going back and forth like a
taffy pulling machine, wrapping the cord around her forearms and lifting the pack. By the time she had it within grasp of her left hand, she had her forearms wrapped in a thin sheet of the cord. She gripped the top handle and pulled the pack up and over. Sitting on her butt, she unwrapped the cord from her arms, laying it out in a careful ribbon so as not to tangle it before rolling it back up on the flat spool.

She pulled the pack on and walked across the silver weather-sealed roof. When the base of the Sthenos destroyer came into view, she whispered, “Oh my God,” and felt her willingness to place the warhead vanish.