Hammerhead Resurrection (36 page)

Some sat on overturned stones, others on the dirt-crusted stumps of trees. As with the prisoners she’d seen earlier, they were all younger than perhaps forty, most in their twenties. Here and there she saw teens. Sthenos walked on their four legs among the people, who stayed well clear of them. The Sthenos from time to time would let fly a bolt of current from the rods.

To her left, she saw where a pit had been dug. Boards hung out over it. A woman sat on the board relieving herself, totally exposed to everyone. In her face, Stacy saw someone who had lost everything, given up all hope. On the other side of the park, Stacy saw people eating out of metal bowls.

As the wind shifted, the scent from the pit reached her, causing her to gag. The rancid smell shocked her back to her purpose, the weight of the pack on her back. In a best case scenario she was to mount the warhead up against the ship, but the fence appeared to border the entire area where Bryant Park and the New York Public Library had stood. While she couldn’t see beyond the towering base of the Sthenos destroyer, she assumed the fencing circumnavigated the space. She didn’t have time to recon the entire fence-line. The fence had been erected perhaps three hundred feet from the ship. If she planted the warhead at the fence line, it would cut out the entire bottom section of the ship reaching up halfway along its length. There would be no recovering the destroyer at that point. The entire drive section would be ripped away into the singularity.

Pushing against the weight of the pack, she got to her feet and walked to a nearby building foundation. There a gap into a service tunnel lay exposed. She dropped down into the low tunnel to
find a broken pipe extending from the concrete wall. Pulling the pack from her shoulders, she hung it on the pipe.

That’s that.

Pulling herself slowly and quietly out of the hole, she felt a massive relief at no longer having to shoulder the pack’s weight. She would be able to move much more quickly without it. She looked at her HUD and saw that she still had twelve minutes until her designated turn-time. Extra time was always good. When she looked out on the people beyond the fencing, she saw the girl from the transport, who had reminded of her of her sister, sitting near the fencing in a patch of grass and daisies. Stacy walked quietly over and stood watching her. The girl, completely unaware of Stacy, sat with a blank expression.

She plucked a dandelion and held it out to the fence. Stacy crouched down and watched the girl touch the flower to one of the glistening webs of the fence. The flower smoked and melted in half. Several petals dropped on to Stacy’s side.

Acidic?

As Stacy settled into a cross-legged position, her boot scraped along the ground, pushing a small rock aside. The girl stared at the rock and then directly at Stacy’s chest. Her eyes scanned through her, focusing on nothing. She looked back to the rock. Her eyes came back to Stacy, but focused too low, missing her eyes.

“Hello?” the girl whispered.

Stacy’s chest flushed with electricity. She should go,
now
. Instead, she leaned forward, close to the acidic webbing. She wanted desperately to talk to this girl. To tell her she was there, that they were going to put things right. But she wouldn’t put things right by her. She was going to kill her.

Stacy looked out on all the people beyond the fencing. She was not here to save them, but to destroy the destroyers. They didn’t have the ability to do both. She remembered what Jeffrey had said.
No matter what you find, plant those warheads. Keep them on your back if you have to.

All dead.

“Is someone there?” the girl whispered again. “Hello?” She said louder.

If she draws too much attention, they might sweep the area, find the warhead.

“Shhhh,” Stacy let out before fully weighing the risks of speaking. The girl fell silent. As Stacy watched the girl’s dark eyes, large and pretty in her delicate face, she wished she’d not come over to her, wished she’d never seen her.

“Who’s there?” the girl whispered.

Unsure of what to do, Stacy said nothing. No contact had been her orders. She’d already broken that and now found herself backed into a corner. She had to figure out how to get out. Standing, she took a step.

“If you leave, I’ll scream,” the girl said a bit louder, “Please—” her voice choked for a half beat, “don’t leave.”

Stacy settled back down and whispered, “Okay. Just don’t make any noise.”

The girl put her hands to her face, the half burned dandelion still between her fingers. When she lowered them, tears had wetted her cheeks.

Stacy’s HUD told her she had to begin her return journey in eight minutes.

The girl whispered, “You’re here to save us right? Please tell me you’re here to help us.”

I’m here to kill you all.

“Yes,” Stacy said, and had to clench her teeth after the lie.

“Who are you?”

“Special Warfare.”

The girl sobbed at that and covered her mouth. She looked over her shoulder at the nearest Sthenos guard who walked through the crowd of people quite a distance away.

“They let you sit this close to the fence?”

“They don’t care. When we got here a man tried to take one of their weapons. They threw him into…,” she held out her hand to the glistening tubes, “whatever this is. He passed through it without so much as slowing down. She pointed toward the sewage pits. You can still see him down at the end.”

Stacy did indeed see a scattered pile of something where the girl pointed.

“We can’t touch the fence, can’t overpower them, can’t do anything. Please, you have to help us.”

“I will,” Stacy lied.

Just get the girl calmed down enough so you can get out of here.

As she imagined herself walking away, living while the girl was left to die, she considered sitting here beside her. It would be better to die with them than live having killed them. She would have done her job… but what of what she’d seen? Jeffrey had told them to make careful note of Sthenos interactions and, if possible, report back.

Someone else will report it from one of the other locations… maybe.

Still, she knew she had to leave if she was able.

“Everything’s going to be okay.”

“My parents are dead,” the girl said, as her eyes brimmed anew. “They electrocuted them and…” She fell silent.

The girl’s tears reminded Stacy of the heavy weight of losing her own father. The image of him slumped in Maxine King’s reeducation chair came to her. The suddenness of the memory caused her to gasp. She shook her head and muttered to herself, “Let it go.”

“What’s that?” the girl whispered.

Stacy remained silent.

“Hello?” the girl whispered, her eyes going a bit wider as she leaned forward. “Are you there?”

“Yes. I’m here.”

The girl’s head dropped and she exhaled. She looked so pitiful, Stacy said, “I’m going to get you out of here,” and wished with all her heart it wasn’t a lie. At least the quick death Stacy would give her was better than what the Sthenos would offer.

The girl’s back and shoulders trembled with crying. After a moment, Stacy heard a quiet, “Thank you.” The girl lifted her head to face what Stacy knew was only an empty street. The girl’s eyes, red from crying almost caught Stacy’s but shifted lower like a blind person’s. “Please hurry. There isn’t much time.”

“Why do you think there isn’t much time?”

“They’re butchering us.”

“It wasn’t here,” the girl said, her eyes falling back to the dandelion in her hand. She tossed it toward Stacy. Passing through the fence without resistance, it fell into smoking pieces. “They ate my parents in the front yard, right out in the open. My mom shot one of the fuckers arms off before she died though.”

The foul language coming from the young, pretty girl seemed the worst thing the Sthenos had brought to the world in that moment. As the girl pantomimed her arm blowing off with her fingers flicking wide, Stacy found it strange how, through all the dark things she’d seen, one harsh word could have such an impact on her.

“I couldn’t look away as they—”

When she faltered, Stacy said, “My father was beaten to death,” surprising herself in her bluntness. She hadn’t spoken about it in years, having finally put the ghost to rest… as much as it would rest.

The girl’s eyes rose again. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

“I understand how hard it is.”

“Did you have to watch?”

The question did not strike Stacy as cruel or dark, but hopeful as if searching for someone who would know her own pain.

“No, but the woman who ordered it made me look at his body afterward.”

The girl said nothing.

Stacy, in her early twenties at the time of her father’s murder, had already had her mind steeled by the military. This girl was nearly a decade younger. She should be planning for her first dance,
worrying over who would ask her to go, not watching her father being eaten alive.

“You don’t have to tell me if it’s too much.”

“No,” the girl said, wiping her nose with the back of her hand. “You have to go tell them what they’re doing here.”

“I know what they do,” Stacy said, hoping to spare the girl the grief of having to recount it. “Its…” but she fell short, not wanting to tell the girl what was happening on the other side of the wall.

The girl’s chin puckered and her face tightened, “It’s beyond that wall isn’t it? They’re processing us like cattle aren’t they?” She let out a gasping sob.

Noticing her sob, the nearby Sthenos guard turn
ed to her.

“I’m sorry—”

“Shhh” Stacy cut her off and fell silent as the guard walked up to the girl. In that lowered, centaur-like position it still towered over the girl. Lifting the rod, which crackled with blue arcs, the guard let out a deep thrumming mixed with the skin-chilling, variant clicking.

The girl stared hatred at it as she plucked a dandelion and tossed it at the guard’s feet.

The thrumming tones increased, vibrating Stacy’s chest and legs, and the clicking grew sharper. The Sthenos stood on its hind legs, its middle appendages folding around its waist. She caught the scent of ozone most likely coming off of the cooling unit on the back of the suit.

“They won’t do anything to me,” she said with an angry growl at the guard, “because they don’t want to damage—” she r
ipped up a handful of dandelions and tossed them at the guard, “the meat.”

As the dandelion
s fluttered to the Sthenos’ broad, multi-clawed feet, Stacy found herself amazed at the girl’s boldness. This girl was much stronger than she’d been at that age. Stacy had been a coward, nervous on the stage of the world. This one however, captured and sentenced to die, still had a great deal of fire in her heart. Stacy wanted to put a hole in the Sthenos’ smoked face shield with the pistol on her hip, use the small length of det-cord she carried to blow down the fence, and take the girl with her.

The rod in the Sthenos’ hand crackled. Whipping its arm, it sent a blue bolt crackling into the girl. Back arching, she fell, her hands locked into claws. The Sthenos settled down on all fours and walked away. The girl lay on her back, her arms relaxed
, one in the grass and one across her belly. Her empty eyes reflected the pale-blue sky.

As she regained consciousness, she blinked and whispered, “Are you still there?”

“Yes.”

The girl kept her eyes on the sky as she said, “They had me shackled when they ate them. They skinned my mother like a deer.”

The girl patted her hands on her belly casually, as if she were discussing her weekend with a friend. “They want the good meat. They killed the older ones, burned the bodies. I’ve thought about it a lot. I think they ate my parents because they’re only allowed to eat the older ones… maybe the ones that fight back. I think they’re exporters. They’re butchering us and,” she pointed to the sky, “they’re going to sell the meat to whoever is out there.” Stacy’s eyes followed the girl’s finger up to the cirrus-streaked sky.

The girl sat up and held her head as her face winced with pain.

“Please don’t leave me here.”

Stacy looked to her HUD. She should have left two minutes ago. She could make up the time, but it put her at risk.

“I can’t stay now, but keep your head down. I’ll be back.” The lie burned.

The girl looked over her shoulder at the Sthenos walking among the people, their rear legs bending unnaturally backwards. As she looked back, the fear in her eyes broke Stacy’s heart.

“I can’t help unless I leave. If they try to take you through those doors…” She took her K-bar from its sheath and shoved it tip-first through the fence. As the knife left her hand, it materialized and fell to the dirt. The handle smoked where it had brushed the fencing. “…do as much damage as you can.”

The girl covered the blade with her hands and slid it under her thigh.

“I have to go,” Stacy said.

The girl nodded, eyes down. “You’ll be back right?”

“This will be over soon enough.”

As Stacy stood, she felt something more needed to be said, but couldn’t find the will to lie further. Instead, she walked away, haunted. She made her way with quick gliding steps to where her line hung down the building, draped over the rubble pile. She had yet to strategize how to get back up the rubble pile. Without the weight of the pack, and already having a line set, it would be easier.

The rubble at the front of the building consisted of everything from roofing tiles to concrete slabs to pieces of sinks and toilets. Large slabs of concrete made up this side of the rubble. Her eyes tracked up the slabs, as she visualized herself jumping from one to the next, but each path she picked ended in wide swaths of tile, bricks, loose stone, insulation, and glass. Far too noisy to disturb. Her eyes scanned up the line to where it disappeared over the cornice. If she made a noise and attracted the Sthenos now, they would see the line. They would know someone had infiltrated. They might launch the destroyer. Scanning the rubble all around, she found no place that would allow her a quiet escape and nowhere she could hide which was outside the singularity’s range.

She was effectively trapped. She thought of going to sit with the girl until the warhead triggered, or she could hunker down in the hole where she had set the… the hole. In the corner of her memory she recalled that there had been a half buried door in the low tunnel. She ran back to the hole and dropped down. There she found a metal door half covered with a slab of concrete. Pulling on the steel handle, she found the slab too heavy to move on her own. Taking out a new length of line from a second spool, she wrapped it around the slab. She tied a trucker’s hitch in the rope and ran it up to a half exposed pipe on the far side of the hole. Wrapping the rope around
the grating and then back to the hitch knot, and again, and again, she created a series of pulleys. She pulled on the rope slow and steady, and the slab shifted out of the way, dragging a path in the accumulated dirt with a ceramic sound. She sat listening to the street above and watching the clock on her HUD count how many minutes she’d overridden her departure time.

The street above remained quiet.

A few more minutes.

Still nothing.

Okay, time to fly.

She stuck her head into the doorway to find total blackness.

“Suit-Con,” she whispered, “infrared.” Infrared lamps mounted to her helmet lit the area. In her HUD, a narrow shaft, running down to a landing some thirty feet below, glowed in a ghostly green. A steel ladder had been bolted to the far side of the shaft. Stepping out onto it, she lowered herself down the rebar rungs to the platform.

A short passage opened into a subway tunnel. The end of a subway car sat somewhat tilted in the quiet tunnel. She looked over the side of the train, into the windows, and along the narrow concrete walkway. Finding nothing of interest, she began moving west along the foot-wide walkway. Counting her steps, she maintained an estimate of how far she’d come. She’d need a subway station or access shaft beyond the fenced area.

The tunnel turned northward. She walked on until she felt she’d moved well-away from the rubble perimeter, but found no access shafts nor stations. With each step north, she added to her distance to the rendezvous point. She began a low, quiet jog, again grateful to no longer have the weight of the pack.

Her HUD began pulsing red. She was now forty-one minutes past her departure time. She should be swimming the river now.

A loud clank of metal on metal sounded out ahead of her. She stopped and scanned the tunnel. The tracks lay to her right. Out ahead, perhaps 100 yards, a small frame of brilliant-green glowed around a doorway.