Hammerhead Resurrection (35 page)

As the hour of departure approached, Jeffrey walked among the Wraiths. Ducking under a stubby wing, he ran his hand down its smooth belly, wondering how long its life would be. Would they succeed or fail? If even one Sthenos destroyer survived, it would likely come here. The crash site of the Lacedaemon would be an obvious source of the attack. Despite their encampments being distant from the crash site, Jeffrey assumed it wouldn’t take the Sthenos long to locate them. He’d already set plans in place in that contingency. They would break into small units and disappear into the wild, the last major military force splintered to nothing. In that state, he had no idea how they could possibly rise up to fight again.

As he stepped out from under the Wraith’s wing, he saw, spray painted in flat-black letters under the cockpit sill,
Lieutenant Lila “Springbok” Okoye
.

Those like Springbok caused him the most worry. Sending men like Master Sergeant Mikelson against such poor odds was easier. He, like Jeffrey, had at least lived the majority of his days. Most of the new pilots, however—

Hearing something shift above, he leaned back to see a crown of dark hair in the cockpit. He climbed the ladder and found Springbok staring at her instruments with haunted eyes.

“You okay?” He asked.

“I feel as though this is my last day.”

“And how does that hit you?”

She kept her eyes on the instruments, clearly not wanting to answer.

“On the Lacedaemon, when I asked you why you fly, you told me it was for the love of it, but there’s something else…”

Her luminous, dark eyes turned on him. “To prove my mother wrong.”

“Did it work?”

“I don’t think so. She said I wasn’t a warrior.”

“You’re not?”

“No. Warriors aren’t afraid.”

“You sure about that?”

She looked at him with suspicion.

Crossing his arms on the sill, he said, “When I was your age, I admitted to my flight commander, a pilot named Reggie Olds, that I was afraid. Holt-he said to me-,” he let his voice grow as gruff as Olds’ had been, “My great-great-some-such-damn-thing grandfather was a Brigadier General and a triple ace through World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. I’m
gonna tell you something he passed down, and you damn well better not forget it.” Jeffrey let his voice return to normal. “You want to know what he said?”

“Something about fearlessness?” she asked in a forlorn tone as if disappointed in herself.

“Not at all. He said that anybody who doesn’t have fear is an idiot.”

Hope glowed in her eyes. “You?”

Straightening his back, he looked away. “Yeah. I’m afraid of what’s coming, more for those like you than myself, but I’ve learned to keep going despite it. It’s a kind of liar’s dance. If we let fear lead, we’ll fail before we begin. We have to grip its hand, turn it, and shove it where we need to go.”

Her gaze returned to her instruments, her hand shifting the flight stick as if absently going through maneuvers in her mind. “I always thought bravery was fearlessness.”

“No.” He took hold of her shoulder. “Bravery can’t exist without fear. Facing what we’re
not
afraid of takes no will. Only when we’re scared to death do we show our true selves. Bravery isn’t about afraid or unafraid, it’s about what we do when we are unequivocally scared shitless.”

She laughed in an unsure way as she patted the instrument panel. “I wanted my mother to be proud of me.”

“Have you given this,” he touched the cockpit sill, “everything you’ve got?”

“Yes, definitely.”

“Well then, I can’t speak for her, but I’m damn proud of you.”

Stacy should have had one more block of buildings between her and the New York Public Library and Bryant park, but all structures in nearly a quarter-mile diameter had been razed to the ground, leaving only foundations and rubble-filled basements. The trees of Bryant park were gone, either having been scraped aside or crushed into the earth by the wide stern of the Sthenos destroyer. Halfway up the ship, already twice the height of the tallest building in Manhattan, the mist of clouds had descended down to what appeared to be secondary engine nacelles. Beyond the mist of clouds the ship narrowed and became vague in the high, colder air.

She looked back down to its broad base and felt dizzy. Large stabilization arms extended from the sides of the ship perhaps five hundred feet up. One was stabbed into the street near the building she stood on.

Surrounding the park boundary was the glittering, liquid fencing. In the fencing milled thousands of people.

“Suit-Con, five times zoom.”

She watched the faces of the people.

“A human shield.”

A human shield she had to ignore, if she could. She scanned the ruined foundations below and saw no suitable attachment point for a zip line. Not that she could if she wanted to. A fixed line might be seen, and she had no way to deliver it.

Several Sthenos walked among the people. With their metal rods crackling, they directed individuals toward a white wall, which had been erected against the side of the ship. If individuals did not comply, they were shocked. Sthenos at the wall moved the people through a doorway set in the, perhaps fifteen foot, metal wall. The
walled area had no roof, only serving to partition the crowd from the interior.

After passing through the door, the people moved down a hallway where Stacy could just make out the tops of their heads. She saw a blue spark. A man’s arms came up as he took off his shirt. Nothing more. Her eyes scanned down the hallway where several Sthenos guards twitched metal rods, directing the unseen people along. At the end of the hallway Stacy could just make out the blonde crown of a woman’s head. The last Sthenos guard lifted her hair and swept a blade through it, leaving her with a spiked scalp. The Sthenos dropped the hair to the side.

The next doorway led to a larger, square area. One man stood in its center completely nude. A Sthenos touched its rod to his chest.

“Suit-Con,” Stacy whispered, “Zoom in ten times.” The HUD’s magnification leapt forward. Now she could see the man’s face and the rod at his chest. The tip of the rod pulsed a brilliant white, and he fell, either unconscious or dead. As she watched though, she saw his eyes move, wide with fear now, not dead, but paralyzed and aware.

The Sthenos hooked metal shackles onto the man’s feet.

“Suit-Con, zoom out two fold. The image backed away until she could see the man’s entire body as the Sthenos picked him up by the shackles, the man hanging upside down, his arms limp over his head, wrists and elbows loose, eyes wild with fear. The Sthenos hung him on a rack with moving hooks. She’d seen that type of rack before… in a meat processing facility in Greely
, Colorado.

The sliding hooks moved the hanging man, swaying slightly, toward the wall. The wall shifted open, and he passed through. When the doors closed, the blonde woman with her hair cut short, was allowed into the space. The Sthenos guard touched the rod to her chest and the pulse flashed again. She fell. He shackled and racked her as he had done the man, and the woman, hanging upside down, moved off.

Stacy remembered a memoir of World War II in which Jews were told by Nazi guards to fold their clothes carefully and put them where they could find them when they came out of the showers. To lead people to the slaughter one must simply give some hope of survival until the last moment. If the people in the pen around the Sthenos destroyer knew what was happening inside those walls, they would not go quietly, they would revolt even if it meant death. At least she’d like to believe they’d rather die fighting than strung upside down.

The rack snaked through the area. Biped creatures with long, delicate limbs—smaller than the Sthenos—worked with shrimp-like speed. They wore white garments, spattered red. Men and women hung from the rack every few feet, all moving with a swaying grace. The first creature cut a circle around the ankles and the wrists of the man, whose eyes remained wide but facial muscles slack in paralysis.

Stacy wanted to look away, but a mixture of duty to report what she’d seen and target lock prevented her.

Another of the creatures, working beside the first, slit from the first cuts up the insides of the arms and legs to the torso. At the next station another slit the skin from groin to throat, gripped it at the ankles, digging with clawed fingers, and tugged the skin from the body in one large sheet. The sheet of skin was thrown onto an pile.

The man, now a body of muscle and tendon, his face lined with runnels of blood, moved to another creature, who sawed open the breast bone, and slit the belly wide. As it worked the blade inside the torso, bowels and organs fell out. Another creature threw the entrails into a pit dug into the ground. Around the edges of the pit Stacy saw lengths of gut, small wet things she thought might be kidneys, and other gore.

Only then did a creature cut the man’s throat with one quick motion. As blood poured in a great torrent out of the neck, the life faded from the man’s eyes. Stacy felt grateful for it going.

The next creatures removed major muscles. One took the thighs, another the calves, another the glutes. One creature worked down one side of the back while another did the opposing side. The chest was worked through. Fat and sinew were tossed into pits while the larger wet, red muscles were set onto conveyors, which carried the meat through openings in the side of the ship.

When they’d finished, the man’s body was nothing more than a skeleton with full head, hands, and feet. As it passed over a dark pit, the final creature whipped a broad blade through the ankles. The remainder of the man fell into the pit. The shackles still held bare feet. The creature took them from the hook, tossed the feet into the pit, and re-hung the shackles, which moved out of view through an opening in the wall.

Finally, Stacy was able to look away.

“Suit-Con, eliminate zoom.”

As her view returned to normal, she realized with some disappointment in herself that her hands were trembling. She gripped them into fists.

Get off this roof and do what you came here to do.

Leaning over the edge of the building, she saw that the pile of rubble not only blocked the streets, but had been shoved up along the side of this building. If she rappelled down from here, she’d end up on it, which would make far too much noise.

Walking to the corner of the building, she looked down, scanning the place where she’d stood looking up at the rubble. She lay down and leaned over. The overhanging cornice ran around the top of the building here as well. That’s all she needed.

She felt along the small seam where the stone slabs met. Sitting up, she looked around the roof and found a thick steel grate set in the floor. She pulled on the grate. It lifted out readily.

No use.

She looked to the stocky legs of the water tank. Walking over to it, she tied her line to one of the angle-welded legs. As she returned to the ledge, she played out the line. Taking a small, black plasma cutter from a chest pouch, she ran it along the mortar seam between two stones. With a huffing sound, it vaporized the mortar six inches deep.

She sat in silence to see if the sound of the cutter had attracted attention. Her timer said she had twenty minutes to her target turn-time.

Setting the rope into the gap she’d created, she found it wedged nicely.

She’d done a swing-out descent before, but not with an extra fifty-five pounds on her back. It had to be done that way though, as there was no way to lower the warhead down. She simply had to go for it. Stepping up onto the cornice, she walked away from the destroyer playing out another sixty feet of line, which should give her five to ten feet of clearance over the rubble. She set her auto-braking belay device on her suit’s center harness clip and ran the line through it. As she entered her height from the ground, the estimated height of the rubble she needed to clear, and her current distance from the pendulum source, she hoped the belay device would pay out line correctly. Too slow and she’d swing back and crash into the rubble, making a hell of a noise and surely exposing herself. Too fast and she’d hit the ground at a dead fall, break her leg or worse. Again, screwed.

No time for the timid.

She pulled the rope snug against the gap in the cornice. When she activated the ATC it clamped down on the rope. Fighting the urge to grip the free line, she drew a deep breath as she positioned her boot toes at the edge of the cornice. A pigeon flew by eighty feet below. Crouching down she exhaled as she leaned forward, face first out over the street, and as her weight pulled her forward, she shoved hard with her legs, pushing herself as far away from the ledge as possible.

Her guts went electric with the zero G, and the wind roared in her ears. As she arced downward, she held the line loosely in her hand, just enough to keep herself head up.

As she fell, the line remain
ed taught, pulling her in an arc. She groaned through gritted teeth as the heavy pack strained at her back, threatening to pull her upside down. She gripped tighter on the line as she swung toward the rubble. As it came racing up at her, it appeared that she wouldn’t clear it. The building also felt far too close. The rope swept her forward. The rubble blurred under her feet, and she was arcing out over the ruined street. The belay device came alive, whirring, and she had reflexively gripped the line, which now flashed a burning pain in her hand from the friction as it played out. She relaxed her hand, willing herself to not let it go entirely. As the length of line extended, she did not go upward, but moved parallel to the ground like a casted fishing lure. Slowing to a stop, she fell. The ground slapped a sharp pain into her feet through her boots. Her eyes followed the line from her hand up to the roof ten stories above.

“I can’t believe that worked,” she whispered to herself.

Remembering that the rope was hanging out like a flag, visible to the Sthenos, she removed it from the belay device. She’d played out all but four feet of the line.

When she let the line drop, it slithered back to lie across the rubble pile, it’s dark gray and brown mottled surface disappearing in among the urban colors. She moved quickly away from where she might have made noise. As she approached the liquid-mesh fencing her back ached from the weight of the pack coming down on her at the end of the descent. She crouched down on her heels. The burning pain in the palm of her left hand told her she’d cut through the glove but couldn’t afford to evaluate her injury. No blood dripped from the hand and she still had full, if painful, use of it. Not as much as she could say of the right hand with its snapped tendon.

She looked to the thousands of people beyond the fencing.