Hammerhead Resurrection Read online

  Delaney’s face flushed slightly, Jeffrey assumed, because her hug-it-out war policy was coming off the table.

  She asked, “Do we wait for the Hammerheads to be—”

  “Absolutely not.” Moore waved his hand with unmasked irritation. “I also do not agree with Captain Holt. Our drones are not inferior solutions.” He locked his dark eyes on Jeffrey. “You, sir, are living too much in the past. Our new technologies are better than the options we had before. We have thousands of drones. Those coupled with our new weapons systems have made the Hammerheads obsolete. Please reassign your pilots to Commander Holloway. Your services are no longer needed.”

  “No longer be—” Jeffrey began, but Cantwell’s fingers lifted a quarter inch off his knee. Jeffrey fell silent, and Cantwell offered no argument to Moore.

  With the president ending the Hammerheads with a few words, Jeffrey felt uselessness creep in on him.

  At least give me an old Phantom and let me fly out to meet them. Let me end that way.

  While Jeffrey found relying on the drones unsettling, there was one hope in the new weapon. Before he’d followed Sarah’s career, Leif had been part of the team to develop them. Jeffrey knew a bit more than he should about the classified systems. Perhaps it was true, perhaps the drones, coupled with those weapons could be the deciding factor. Maybe the Hammerheads were an obsolete concept—the age of blood and bone coming to a close in his lifetime. Still… Jeffrey couldn’t fully accept that. Perhaps that put him in the wrong.

  “Captain Holt?”

  The question had come from Delaney.

  Jeffrey looked to her. “I apologize. My thoughts were elsewhere.”

  Moore scowled. “Captain Holt, I need everyone here to be on the same page, I asked you and the others if you are willing to support the assault plans as laid out by Captain Donovan.”

  “If my services are no longer needed, then my support doesn’t factor in. True?”

  “Well said.” Moore looked to Delaney, who watched Jeffrey as if measuring his reaction to being slapped down.

  “Samantha, I’ll leave it in your capable hands. Keep me informed.”

  “Of course sir.”

  Moore turned to the empty wall to his right. “Cut the fee—” He and his half moon of desktop vanished leaving the black disk empty.

  Gerard Schodt stood, tucked his tablet under his arm and walked from the room, his voice fading down the corridor as he said, “We are dealing with an intelligent race. I refuse to take part in the idiocy of…”

  Seeming pleased with the meeting’s outcome, Donovan said, “It would seem, Captain Holt,” he weighted the word captain as if it were humorous to him, “that you are relieved from the trouble of having to work with Schodt after all.”

  Jeffrey tried to keep the anger from his voice as he said, “Yes.”

  Donovan’s smile held a malicious edge. “I doubt Admiral Cantwell will allow that. You’re a thorn in my side Holt, but we find thorns keep us on our toes.”

  Jeffrey distrusted the comment, which he’d most likely made to appease Cantwell.

  Standing, Admiral Cantwell smoothed the front of his uniform. “Well said, Donovan. Holt, the president did not give me a direct order to relieve you.”

  “I’m sorry?” Jeffrey asked.

  “Until someone tells me directly to do otherwise, I’m holding you to your commitment.” His looked to Delaney, who’s eyes had gone wider, lips parted as if to argue. “Do you take issue with that?”

  Snapping her mouth shut, she offered no agreement nor challenge.

  Jeffrey looked to Donovan. “I’d like to discuss tactics with your flight commander. May I be involved in that arena?”

  Donovan gave him a flat look. “Not if you continue to espouse your distaste for our course of action. I don’t need dissenters.”

  “Now that the decision is made, you’ll get no such unprofessionalism from me.”

  Donovan seemed satisfied with that. Standing, he said, “I’ll introduce you to Commander Holloway.”

  “Thank you, sir.” He followed Donovan out of the room.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Sitting in the officer’s lounge, Jeffrey sipped lemon-tinged iced tea. Under the heavy G’s of deceleration, the glass, his hand, and his arm felt as heavy as his heart. He’d be seeing Leif in less than an hour, and he had no idea what he’d say. Nothing would help. He felt powerless and, as it was his way to know what to do, unsettled.

  He set the glass down with a solid thump on the table. After accelerating to nearly a quarter of the speed of light, they’d reached their median distance to the rendezvous point two days ago. After turning tail-on to their target, their deceleration had been constant. The thrust, shoving through the cross-mounted decks, caused the weight of objects to triple.

  The motors of a passing sailor’s support frame whirred. Even with the frame, Jeffrey, who’d remained strong as he’d aged, felt exhausted from the constant exertion of simply moving about the ship.

  “Finish up your food folks,” a CS called from the kitchen in a tone that echoed the same tiredness. I want all dishes in the next five minutes. I have to have everything washed and secured before we cut burn.

  Jeffrey drank off the last of his tea and stood, his frame’s motors spooling up. As he walked, he kept his arms crossed. Lowering them caused swelling and tingling. The constant acceleration put strain on his heart as well. Even in the best circumstances, the human body could only handle such high deceleration for a few days before exhaustion began to break people down.

  He made his way to his quarters, where he sat on his bunk and unstrapped the frame from his shoulders, hips and legs. Just to see how it would be, he tried to stand, knowing it was the equivalent of weighing over seven hundred pounds. He couldn’t lift himself from the bed.

  An announcement came over the intercom, “Cutting deceleration burn in two minutes. As additional adjustments nearing two G’s may be required, maintaining mag-boot connection to the designated floor surfaces is required.”

  As Jeffrey put on his boots and connected them to the floor, the announcer returned. “Cutting deceleration in one minute… fifty-nine seconds… fifty-eight sec…” When it reached zero, the crushing force Jeffrey had become accustomed to vanished. His mattress decompressed, pushing him to standing as a knock sounded on the hatch.

  He opened it to find Sam Cantwell.

  “We’ll be rendezvousing with a shuttle from the U.S.S. Rhadamanthus in less than ten minutes. I thought you’d like to be present.”

  A jolt of nerves rushed through him. “Yes… thank you.”

  As Jeffrey followed Cantwell down the passageway, he could think of nothing to say. Leif’s deep emotions had brought him great joy and sorrow over his lifetime. They would be crushing him now. Jeffrey remembered Leif as a baby, small in his arms, heart quick in a little chest, eyes clear blue, lungs powerful. But Leif had been a man for well over a decade now. In that quick jump of memory, Jeffrey felt overwhelmed by loss. He felt as though he’d done nothing but lose throughout is life, his friends to war, his wife to cancer, his little boy to time, and now Sarah.

  Reaching the airlock, they stood facing the yellow and black striped wall, waiting. Jeffrey swallowed and shifted his feet.

  It had taken him decades to so much as get his head above water. Through the process though, Jeffrey had found a strength he hadn’t expected. His mind had become like a storm scrubbed sky, quiet and clear.

  Right now, Leif was caught in the storm. Jeffrey knew his son’s heart must be rent wide, a wound which would never fully heal. Jeffrey grieved, not for Sarah—her pain was over—but for Leif. Jeffrey could only offer to be there for him, offer understanding, and he understood too well how little that would seem to Leif at this early stage.

  The light beside the airlock began to pulse red as air rushed on the other side of the armor-thick doors. When it faded, the light pulsed yellow, then green. Locks thunked, and the doors separated at the center black st
ripe.

  The retracting door panels exposed men and women dressed in black Navy Special Warfare jumpsuits. As he scanned the faces looking for Leif, profound shock overwhelmed him when the door exposed Stacy. She offered him a subdued nod. Now Leif came into view to the left. A younger man, no more than 20 years old, stood beside him. Both wore generic green jumpsuits, and woeful tiredness underlined their eyes. Leif’s expression did not change when his eyes met his father’s, remaining dead, shut down. Jeffrey made no motion and said nothing, letting his son know that everything could wait.

  Stacy saluted. “Permission to come aboard sir?”

  Returning the salute, Cantwell nodded. “Granted. Welcome to the Lacedaemon.”

  “Thank you sir.” She stepped out of the airlock, walked up to Jeffrey—her boots clacking on the deck—and saluted him. As he returned the gesture, he fought the urge to hug her in front of her team and lost to it.

  Wrapping her in his arms, he said quietly, “Thank you for bringing him back to me.”

  When he let her go, she tried to smile. Failed. To hide the redness that had bloomed in her eyes, she did not turn as she spoke to her team. “Let’s go folks. Time to debrief.”

  “Yeoman,” Cantwell said to a man standing beside him. “Show the Special Warfare unit to my ready room. We have a great deal to discuss.” He looked to Stacy. “Commander Zack, I will be with you shortly.”

  “Yes sir.” She saluted and followed the yeoman out. Each member of her team saluted, and when the Admiral returned his salute, they walked out.

  “Son,” Admiral Cantwell said to the younger man from Europa base, “I’ll see you to your bunk.” He motioned for the young man to follow him.

  “Okay,” the young man said, stepping out of the airlock. Jeffrey could see he was unsure, scared, but not in mourning. He’d lost no one. His family, and anyone else close to his heart, was safe at home… as safe as anyone on Earth was at the moment.

  Jeffrey listened to their footfalls fading down the passageway. Stepping out of the airlock, Leif came to stand before him, stony eyes on his father’s chest.

  “I’m sorry Leif.”

  Leif gave a curt nod.

  Jeffrey didn’t want Sarah’s death to root down in Leif as the deaths of those close to him had, but he’d been through it too many times. It had to be this way. Death’s natural order required it to dig into the soul, sinking into the dark soil to grow a dismal weed, which would have to live its course before withering away, leaving behind a scarred stump. Leif had always been a bit more like his lighthearted mother in his youth, but as he’d moved through his twenties, his seriousness and focus had intensified. At this moment, Jeffrey wished Leif could have stayed more his mother’s son. She’d always been able to express her emotions more readily. When her own mother had died, she had sobbed openly, letting the grief pour out of her. In his hardened stare, Jeffrey understood Leif would cultivate Sarah’s death, hold it close and let it grow deep… but she deserved no less.

  Jeffrey took hold of Leif’s shoulders and watched his face, feeling uneasy. There was something else there. Something more had happened on Europa base, but now was not the time for badgering.

  He said, “If you need to talk, I’m here, but that’s the last I’m going to bother you with it… for now."

  As Leif’s eyes rose to meet Jeffrey’s, Jeffrey said. “Let’s get you to your quarters so you can clean up. They have a lot of questions for you.”

  Concern formed in Leif’s eyes. “What happens next… with them?”

  “You mean the Sthenos?”

  “Yes.”

  “We kill them.”

  “Good.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Laying in his bunk in the more comfortable 1.5 G’s created by the fleet’s acceleration toward Jupiter, Jeffrey’s thoughts turned to the war fifty years before. Sthenos destroyers had appeared on the shoulder of Mars and shattered Demos, obliterating its observation base and raining debris across the planet’s surface, battering a Russian facility. An international declaration of war had been made within the hour. A global mobilization for war hadn’t occurred in over two centuries. Before World War II commanders and kings could recline in the safety of their cities far from the front as their young men—mostly poor and underprivileged—did the fighting and dying. The nuclear age changed everything. The apocalyptic warheads had unexpectedly brought peace. The destruction of Nagasaki and Hiroshima had not just ended the war in the Pacific theater, it had marked the end of all major national conflict. Unable to attack their enemies without putting themselves and their own families in as much risk as the young soldiers at the front, world leaders, sane or insane, had been forced to find new, better methods.

  Nagasaki and Hiroshima had been leveled, as many as a quarter million people killed in just a few days, because Japan needed oil, and the U.S. had stopped supplying it. Jeffrey had been to the conflict’s point of origin—Pearl Harbor. He’d looked into the translucent water where trigger and convict fish drifted and darted through the half-disintegrated hulk of the U.S.S. Arizona. Looking across the calm water through the floating monument’s white beams, he imagined a prop driven Mitsubishi Zero, one of the most deadly weapons of war yet built, coming in slow and loud. Yet, despite the destruction of the attack, Japan had missed her mark. The carriers had been away December seventh…

  Jeffrey sat up and said into the darkness, “The carriers were away…”

  Leaping from his bunk, he threw open his hatch and sprinted down the corridor, his old knees aching against the additional half G. As he approached a cross-corridor, a sailor came around the corner. Jeffrey tried to dodge him, but the sailor side-stepped in the same direction, and they crashed into each other. Jeffrey caught a support beam as he snatched the sailor’s shirt, keeping him from falling.

  Without a word to the sailor, Jeffrey sprinted up the ladder to the broad expanse of the bridge, where he stood huffing, sweat dripping from his forehead.

  The night watch commander turned to the commotion as a yeoman called out, “Captain on Deck.”

  In a shocked tone, the commander asked, “Captain Holt,” her eyes scanned downward, a slight flush blooming in her cheeks, “why aren’t you in uniform?”

  “It’s an ambush.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “It’s the only thing that makes sense. They know we’re dangerous. They wouldn’t just show up and start mining.”

  “We’ve been through this, captain.”

  Holt waved the comment away. “They want us to think they don’t care. They want us to mount an attack. It’s Pearl Harbor in reverse.”

  She looked at him as though she thought he’d lost his mind. “I don’t follow y—”

  “They know we’re afraid of them. They knew we’d overreact.”

  “Overreact?”

  “Yes,” Jeffrey said. “They want us all together, moving toward Jupiter. Out here, we’re sitting ducks, and the Earth is unprotected.”

  “For three Sthenos destroyers? They’re good, but not—”

  “There’s not three, I guarantee it.”

  At that, the watch commander blanched, looking upward, out the latticed bridge windows as if her eyes might tell her something that the instruments couldn’t. She looked back to Jeffrey with disbelief. “The long range scanners…” but she trailed off.

  Jeffrey said, “Fifty years ago, they arrived at Demos without warning. We never sorted out how they did that.”

  “They can stealth x-ray scanners.”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh my God…”

  “Exactly.”

  The watch commander turned to the man beside her. “Yeoman, get Admiral Cantwell.”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  …

  Admiral Cantwell stood in the center of the bridge looking out on the depth of space. “How many do you suppose there might be?”

  “No idea,” Jeffrey said, his eyes on the Nav-Con where the Lacedaemon hovered in the center. Beh
ind it followed the motley array of battle cruisers—many of the same cruisers he’d helped save ten years earlier. Some had only recently returned to service after the damage of ejecting their reactor cores. The ships’ drive sections glowed in various fission hues, thousands of lives on each ship. He’d seen destroyers cut in half by the Sthenos. He’d seen them shot through—rammed through.

  Cantwell put his hand on Jeffrey’s shoulder. “Fifty years ago, with only ten of their own destroyers, the Sthenos demolished or disabled over 90% of the Earth’s militarized fleet.”

  “Sam, we’re not facing three, and not ten. There are more… I’m sure of it.”

  Cantwell said, “Jeffrey, I know you feel convinced of this, but I can’t turn back or disperse the entire fleet on a hunch. We’ll need new orders from the president.”

  “Perhaps I can help with that,” Vice President Delaney said as she came up the ladder onto the bridge. She looked half-asleep to Jeffrey, the first time he’d seen a frailty in her otherwise bulletproof demeanor.

  Admiral Cantwell gave Delaney a summary of what Jeffrey had told him.

  Her brow furrowing with skepticism, she asked, “So this is based on a hunch?”

  Jeffrey said, “A hunch and one other thing. Sam, I wanted to save this until the vice president was with us.”

  He said to the Nav-Con officer, “Please bring up Europa.”

  With a practiced motion, the Nav-Con officer swept the fleet aside. The Jovian system came into view with Jupiter about the size of a marble surrounded by a chain of bright sparks. The planetary system shifted to the right as one spark centered itself and grew until Europa was four feet in diameter, suspended over the Nav-Con’s surface.

  The moon’s pale, cracked surface shone bone-brilliant in the distant sunlight. A blade-thin scar ran across its face.

  The Nav-Con officer asked, “Did you want to see the Sthenos ships?”