Hammer's War 1: Forging the Hammer (11 page)

Things were
quiet and Thad liked it that way.  It was after one of their movie nights when Doctor Hammer had something to show Thad.  He led him into the lab.  “Take a look at this. It is my newest invention.  This little guy here should help doctors working in undeveloped parts of the universe.” 

Thad was not sure what he was looking at
.  To him it just looked like a short bar of black plastic with a light on it.  “What is it?”

Doctor Hammer cracked a smile, “I call it a digital dimensional storage device or DDSD. “

“What does it do?”  Thad asked as he picked it up from the table.

Doctor Hammer took off his watch and placed
it on the table, “Here, place the light over the watch and push the red button to store it.” 

Thad pushed the button and a thin blue bar of light
, emitted from the device, scanned the watch, then a thin red bar of light went over the watch.  As it did, the watch dissolved into the light.  In a matter of seconds, the watch was gone.  “Wow!”

Doctor Hammer still smiling said, “I know.  Now push the green button to retrieve the item.”  This time a green bar of light emitted from the
device, and as it moved, the watch rematerialized.

“That is really cool Doc, but how does it work?
”  Thad was amazed.

“Well that is the trick, isn’t it?
”  Doctor Hammer was excited “You see with this little gizmo a doctor can carry all the equipment he or she needs without having to have a cargo ship with them.  What you see there is just a prototype.  The finished model should have enough storage capacity to store just about anything you like.  You will interface with a small screen that will list the contents of the storage device. You will simply scroll to the item you want, highlight, and push retrieve, wham-o you have your stored item!”

“That is simply amazing, but you
didn’t answer my question, how does it work?”  Thad asked again.

“Oh, it works on the principle that all matter on the sub-sub atomic level is nothing but energy
.  Energy is information, so I thought what if I had a scanner that scanned the object and mapped the atom structure creating a pattern.  It works the same way that food replicators work, by storing the newly created pattern in a memory buffer. However, the really clever part is how the matter is handled.”  Thad nodded to show he was fallowing along.  “Well it was just a matter of converting that matter into energy, which I just push back into the sub space void so I don’t have to worry about the power built up in the device.”

“I get
it, so when you want the item back you pull energy from the subspace void and convert it back into matter using the pattern stored in the device.”

Doctor Hammer was beaming
ear-to-ear, “You got it my boy, which is why you are such a great assistant and why when I go I hope you will carry on my work.”

Thad was honored that Doctor Hammer would want him to continue the work, but he was not sure how to tell Doctor Hammer he only understood about a third of
the things he was working with.  He smiled and placed his hand on Doctor Hammer’s shoulder, “Congrats Doc, you really have something here.”

“I know, but I am going to have to think of a way to keep people from figuring out the tech because if they do
it could be really bad.”

Thad thought for a second, “dead man’s switch
.”

“What’s a dead man’s switch
?” Doctor Hammer’s face contorted.

“It is
a switch that is wired to a person or held in the hand so if the person is killed the switch is triggered, and if it is attached to a bomb then it goes off.”  Thad drew a quick diagram on the screen with his finger.

At
first, Doctor Hammer didn’t understand what Thad was getting at, but then it dawned on him.  “I get it, if a switch in the casing is opened or tampered with then it sets off something in the device which renders the whole device useless.  Kind of like a criminal burning the evidence when the cops are closing in on him.  Yes it could work. I could make it so it converts itself into energy, then no one would have anything to reverse engineer.  Genesis, pure genesis, my boy!  I will have to do that.”  Doctor Hammer went over to a bin on a shelf and came back with another device.

“What does this one do Doc?
”  Thad asked.

“Right n
ow, not what it is supposed to.  I call it a singularity scalpel.  The idea would be for a non-invasive surgical tool. The way I want it to work is, let’s say you have a tumor on the inside of your colon.  The way we would deal with it now is to use a robot with a laser to cut it out of you.  The problem is, it causes scar tissue, and there is always the risk of infection.  The way this would work is you would use the screen to scan the area, find the tumor, select it, and move it out of phase.”  

Thad interrupted Doctor Hammer with a question, “
Out of phase?”

“Yes I have found a way to take items in this dimension and put them te
mporally into another dimension with only what I call a ghost in this dimension. Just enough of the item is left here so I can see it, move it, and then bring it back into phase with this dimension.  You could complete a surgery with no complications, or scar tissue to worry about.  At least that is the theory.”

“So what is wrong with the device?
”  Thad asked.

“
I can’t seem to get the damn thing to phase out just what I want and nothing else. Here I will show you.” Doctor Hammer took a pen from the table, sat it in a cup, and poured some water.  “Okay the cup is the body, the pen the tumor, and the water is the flesh and fluid in the body.  As you can see here in the screen I can select the pen,” the pen glowed on the screen.  “Now when I put it out of phase watch and see what happens.”

Thad watch
ed as the pen, cup, and water all but disappeared leaving only a faint image.  “I see the problem everything goes out of phase not just the pen.  Why is that?”

Doctor Hammer gave him what Thad liked to call the,
are you really that stupid look
, “If I knew why it did that then it wouldn’t be a problem would it?”

Thad felt he deserved
the stupid look
from Doctor Hammer this time, “Sorry, that was a dumb question.”

“I thought maybe you
could play with it and see what you could do, who knows maybe you will have more luck, than I did.”  Doctor Hammer handed over the device.

“I don’t know what I can do, but I
will be glad to play with it, however I do have a question,” Thad took the device. 

“Yes
?”

“How come the whole thing
didn’t just fall through the table?”

“Oh good question
, well it is because there is just enough of the item left in this dimension to keep it from falling through the table,” Doctor Hammer replied.

“Oh!”

The following day Doctor Hammer, Thad, and Archie took the sand crawler into town.  Doctor Hammer figured he would load up on some supplies.  Archie pulled up in front of the freshly painted general store.  Doctor Hammer jumped down, “You two get the supplies loaded.  Carl just got in a new case of Jack Daniels, and I’m off to go get it.”

Thad watched as the little Doctor trotted off dressed in his
trademark khaki shorts, Hawaiian shirt, sandals, and his tan pith helmet, which covered his little wrinkled head.  Thad turned back to the robot that was standing there, “Come on Archie, the supplies won’t load themselves.”

The problem with the increased business
in town was that it also brought increased crime.  The Sheriff had to hire a few deputies to help keep the peace. They were nice boys and a couple of them saw Thad loading supplies.  “Can we give you a hand Mr. Hammer?”

Thad looked at the two young men, both of them couldn’t be a day over twenty, “Sure, we can always use a couple of extra hands.”

A few days earlier on his ship, the Night Terror, Big Red entered the mess area where the crew was arguing where to go next.  “Listen up ye bunch of space dogs!  I think it is time for us to visit Nome again.”  His voice boomed. 

Max spoke up, “but Capitan
the place is a hole.  There is nothing there, but some used up whores and old men.  Why would you want to go back to Nome?”

Red thr
ew down his tablet. It bounced, sliding towards the crew, “If any of ye morons read something once in while you’d know that Nome was just featured in the new issue of Up and Comer Magazine.”

Confused Stan said, “So
?”

Red folded his massive arms and sighed heavily, “
So ye idiot, the article says, and I quote,  ‘The small moon Nome, once the home to the lost and forgotten has become the home to one of the universes most interesting up and coming businesses, Miss Jenna’s Homemade Lemonade Company.
 
The article goes on to say a lot of new money is flowing into that there little moon of Nome, and I think we should go exact our cut.”

That got a cheer from the crew, “Pipe down
ye dogs,” Red barked.  “Now, before ye go getting all crazy and tear up the place, I think ye should take a little R&R time, get the lay of the land, while I figure out how best to squeeze every last credit out of that there little moon.”
That garnered another cheer.

The Night Terror landed on the same day that Thad, Archie, and Doctor Hammer were in town to pick up supplies. 
After landing, Mighty Max and too tall Stan could barely wait for the airlock to open before they ran straight for Bob’s and the bottle.  Two more of the crew made a b-line for the Nymphia, while the ship’s engineer thought the down time was a good time to do some work on the ship’s engines.  Big Red himself liked to stay on board most of the time.  He was wanted on too many planets.  He didn’t like to take the chance a bounty hunter might be out there looking for him.

Inside Bob’s
, Mighty Max and his drinking buddy, too tall Stan had been drinking since they got there, and with every drink, Max and Stan were getting closer and closer to being falling down drunk.  Carl was trying to hide in the back as much as he could.  He hated to deal with these guys when they were sober, but drunk they scared him to death.  Luckily, for him the two space pirates were the only two in the place at the time.  Bored with just drinking, Max pulled out his laser pistol, “Stan throw that bottle and let’s see if I can hit it.”

“Okay sounds good to me,” Stan said
, as he tossed a near empty bottle into the air.

Max missed it, “Toss another
one,” he said.

This time Max hit
the bottle, spraying glass and liquor all over them.  The two drunks looked at each other and laughed.  Stan tossed another bottle, this time it flew over his Max’s head. Max spun around to hit a bottle and missed it.  The bottle hit the wall and shattered right above the doorway.

Doctor Hammer
was unfortunate to walk through the door at that very moment and was showered by the glass, “Hey what the Hell?” he yelled out.

Way too
drunk to know better, Max turned his gun on Doctor Hammer, “Hey old man get out of my way, I’m trying to hit that bottle.”

Doctor Hammer understood he was in trouble.  He knew these men and knew that they were bad enough sober
, but drunk there was no telling what they would do.  He held up his hands, “Whoa there cowboy, why don’t you put the gun down son, and let me by you a drink.”

Max stood there swaying, “
What are you saying old man?  I can’t buy my own drinks.  Hell I don’t have to buy them.  I just take what I want.” 

Hammer tried to back out the way he came
, but it was too late. 

“Hey
, I wonder if he can dance, what you think Stan?”  Max tried to aim at the floor, but he was so drunk he could not tell the floor from the roof.  He was swaying badly when he pulled the trigger. 

The blast from the laser pistol hit Doctor Hammer just left of the sternum,
burning a hole straight though his heart, killing him almost instantly.  Doctor Hammer, the man who never hurt anyone and spent his whole life working to help people, now lay dead in the doorway.  Max didn’t even flinch.  He turned back towards the bar, “Bar keep, get your fat ass out here and get me more drink!”

“
What have you done?”  Carl asked as bravely as he could.  He had been watching from the back.  He ran to the body of Doctor Hammer.  Carl picked up his limp body “You are dead men walking now,” he said and gently carried Doctor Hammer out.  

Max stumbled to the bar and sat down, “What do you think he was talking about?”

Stan stumbled to the stool next to Max, he tried to sit down, but fell off twice before being able to stay on.  “I don’t know, don’t care, pour me another one.”

Thad, the two young
deputies, and Archie were still loading supplies into the sand crawler when he noticed Carl carrying a body into Doctor Burton’s place.  Doctor Burton was the local doctor who took care of the small stuff.  For anything major, he would always send them to Doctor Hammer.  Thad wondered what was going on, and then his heart seemed to fall right out of his chest as he caught a glimpse of the brightly colored shirt.  Thad burst through the door of Doctor Burton’s office, heartbroken, tears flooding his vision.  He rushed to the side of Doctor Hammer.  “What happened?”