First Strike (Hammer's War Book 3)

by James McEwan

  “Care to explain why it’s red and not green and in my office?”

  “I tracked the target to a club where it seems he was involved in a fight and then arrested. He is in police custody at the moment.”

  “So, you have government credentials. Use them to retrieve him,” Drake said with annoyance tinging his voice.

  “What reason should I use given the only thing he may be charged with is assault?”

  “I don’t know. You’re resourceful, I’m sure you’ll think of something. Just get it done or you can be the one to tell our Lord why you failed to obtain the target he wanted.”

  The comm line went dead, “Yes sir,” he grumbled.

  Inside the building, the lift came to a halt and the officer led Thad through a maze of cubicles to a glass office. On the door it read Detective Sergeant Mark Reed. Inside the office the detective was sitting behind a desk watching something on a holo screen. As Thad entered, the screen was at an angle that was dark to him, so he was unable to see what the detective was watching. The officer knocked on the door and Reed looked up, “Ah Mr. Hammer come in, come in.” He stood up and motioned towards a chair. The detective was tall, thin and looked to be middle aged. His light brown hair was just starting to show a hint of gray around the edges. He wore thin wire glasses, which Thad thought was strange given the number of ways people could have their vision corrected these days. No one wore glasses any more.

  Thad sat down in the chair and waited. Reed thanked the officer for bringing him up from holding and then turned to Thad, “Can I offer you something to drink, coffee, tea, maybe a soda?”

  “A black coffee sounds great right about now,” Thad answered.

  Reed nodded and ordered a coffee from his desktop replicator and handed the cup to Thad. “Thanks,” Thad said, gratefully taking the cup. “Can I ask you a quick question?”

  “The glasses, right?” Reed smiled in anticipation of his question.

  “Yeah.”

  “They’re just plain glass. I like the look,” he laughed brightly, “and my wife says they make me look smart.”

  Thad looked down at his black and still glowing red suit, “You know, I understand completely.”

  “Now Mr. Hammer, I’ve been reviewing the vid from the club’s security cameras. Do you know who this is?” He waved his hands over the holo keyboard and the vid flashed up on his side of the desk. Thad saw a close up of Freya.

  “Yeah you could say I know who she is,” Thad said wondering where the detective was going with his line of questioning.

  “Well, who is she?” Reed asked.

  “She’s one of my wives, but I’m surprised you don’t know already know that.”

  Reed punched a few more buttons on the holo keyboard and the picture changed to side-by-side pictures of Fiona and Freya’s Terrain Imperial passports. “The blue hair and makeup kind of made it hard to ID them.”

  “Yeah, I guess it would,” Thad admitted, realizing how different they looked with the makeup and wigs.

  “Well, I’m hoping they’ll be helpful in filing a complaint against Larry.”

  Thad was not expecting the detective to be looking to prosecute Larry. “I’m sure they will, but by the looks of things Larry got what was coming to him,” Thad said.

  “You wouldn’t say that if you knew that I’d been after that bastard for ten years now. He’s been the suspect in a number of truly vicious rapes. However, every time I get close to getting him the girls either get bought off or scared into silence. Then I saw your wife not only stand up to this prick, she kicked his ass, and I figured if I could get her to testify against him it would go a long way to show all those other victims that they need not be afraid, and maybe, just maybe I could finally put this jack hole where he belongs.”

  “I don’t like to speak for my wives, but I doubt they’ll have a problem helping out. However, you’ll have to get them up here and ask them.”

  “Already sent the request to have them brought up,” Reed said.

  Just then, a familiar voice came through the open door to the office, “You just can’t seem to stay out of trouble, can you?”

  Thad’s head whipped around and he saw standing in the doorway, large as life, his friend Dominic St. Claire. Thad jumped up in a flash and gave his friend a hug, “Well, you know me. Trouble’s my middle name.”

  Reed seemed a little annoyed at the interruption. “Excuse me sir, but I’m in the middle of an interview.”

  That seemed to put St. Claire on the defensive, “Sorry to interrupt, but you do have any idea who you’re speaking to?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact I do, Mr. Thaddeus Hammer heir to the Hammer fortune and one of the richest men in the known universe.”

  “Oh well, okay then,” St. Claire said to Reed before turning to Thad, “What are you doing here?”

  “Bar fight and you?”

  “I’m doing my background interview for my intergalactic PI license.” St. Claire paused for a second, “How many bodies did you drop?”

  “None, I left everyone alive, if not a little sore for the experience.”

  “Excuse me Mr. Hammer. Would you care to introduce your friend since he seems to have injected himself in your interview,” Reed said.

  “Oh,” Thad said. Before he could say more a loud voice boomed from behind him and St. Claire.

  “Reed! I need to talk to you.”

  Thad and St. Claire spun around to see who the source of the voice was. As it turned out it belonged to a less than average height cop whose round face and large mustache made him look a bit stern however, but it was something in his eyes that seemed to show a kindness that was rare amongst the law enforcement profession. Thad had seen the same thing in St. Claire’s eyes when he had first met him. The markings of rank on his uniform told them he was the Chief of Police.

  St. Claire took one look at the chief’s face, “Well look at you, you old bugger, Chief of the Isis Police.”

  The chief turned to look at who was addressing him in such a familiar way, “Well I’ll be an untar’s uncle, Dominic St. Claire,” he stuck out his hand. St. Claire grabbed it hard and they shared the hardy handshake and quick embrace of old brothers in arms.

  Detective Reed was a little bewildered at the chain of events unfolding in front of him, “I guess I’m the only one who doesn’t seem to know Mr. St. Claire.”

  “Ah don’t worry about it Mark. Old Dom here and I use to serve together in the Police Core. In fact, he saved my life a couple times,” the chief said as he patted St. Claire on the back. “By the way, how’s the leg treating you? Cold still bug you?”

  The St. Claire from this reality must have sustained a wound that he hadn’t, so he played along, “It’s gotten better over the years actually, but I can still tell when the weather is about to change.”

  Thad watched the exchange between the two old friends and wondered what was taking the twins so long. Surely it had been long enough for them to come up from holding.

  What had been holding up the twins was a large dark skinned woman who appeared to collect body and facial piercings like a girl scout collects merit badges. She had approached Fiona, and stood almost nose to nose with her. She came so close that when she opened her mouth to speak; her row of rotting teeth produced a smell so foul that Fiona had to swallow hard to keep from throwing up on her.

  “Your hair, I like. Give it to me,” she said.

  Fiona normally would have just given the wig to her, had she just asked, but this woman didn’t ask nicely and it wasn’t really about the wig. She was trying to express her dominance and control over the women in the cell. She was a bully, pure and simple, and her demands were a reach for power.

  “Look sister, it’s mine and you can’t have it. Now get out of my face before I get upset,” Fiona said in defiance.

  Fiona under estimated the woman’s resolve to be in charge. The woman threw back her head and laughed. Then without warning the woman turned her head back toward Fiona an
d attacked. Her head came forward fast and hard. The head butt was intended to break Fiona’s nose. Fiona didn’t have a lot of time to react. The only thing she could do was turn her head so the blow landed on the side of her nose and cheek. The blow didn’t smash her nose like the woman had hoped for, but it did bloody it.

  Before the woman could further her attack on of Fiona, Freya was on top of her. She grabbed the woman by the hair and pulled her head back. “That’s my sister you bitch.”

  The woman surprised Freya by enduing the pain and twisting around so she was now facing her. She grabbed Freya’s hand and wrenched it free along with a good amount of her own hair. Fiona wiped blood from her nose and mouth and stood up, “That was a mistake!”

  The woman howled like a wild beast and charged the twins. Freya sidestepped while Fiona let lose a kick that landed in the woman’s midsection that stopped her advance. Freya dropped the hair that was still in her hand and then threw an elbow that connected with the woman’s jaw. A rotten tooth few out of her mouth and hit one of the spectators in the eye. She screamed and held her eye. This angered her friend and the fight was now two on two. After a few seconds of punches, kicks, and slaps the fight had grown to include everyone in the cell.

  As soon as the fight broke out alarms sounded in the control booth, and it wasn’t long before the officer in the control booth pushed a button that fired off a large stunner in the ceiling of the cell. Everyone in the cell fell to the ground instantly stunned. The officers then opened the cell and entered, carefully arranging everyone so they wouldn’t suffocate.

  Upstairs the Chief and St. Claire were still catching up when Reed asked, “Sorry to interrupt your reunion sir, but didn’t you want to see me for something?”

  “Oh right,” running into St. Claire had made him almost forget why he had come downstairs to talk to the detective in the first place. “I wanted to find out why I have some stuffed shirt from Special Services wanting to take Mr. Hammer into custody?”

  Reed shrugged his shoulders, “Sorry Chief I have no idea. I didn’t call Special Services.”

  St. Claire asked, “Clyde, did you say Special Services?”

  “Yeah, why do you have something to do with this?”

  “Nope just a hunch. You wouldn’t happen to have a copy of his credentials would you?”

  The Chief handed St. Claire the tablet he had been holding, “Here.”

  St. Claire looked over the man’s credentials. The Chief read his face, “By the look on your face I take it you’ve seen this guy before?”

  “You could say that. Look Clyde I’m telling you this guy is bad news, really bad news,” St. Claire handed the tablet to Thad. It had been years since Thad had seen that face and a lot of his memories from that time were still fuzzy. He looked hard at the man’s face. He felt that he may have known him at some point in his past, but he couldn’t quite remember. However, the ID he knew, and he knew it well.

  “Care to elaborate? The Chief asked.

  “No not really, but what I will tell you is that if he’s here for Thad then it’s not good,” St. Claire said. He wanted to continue when the building shook and each man had to struggle to stay on their feet. The lights flickered on and off a few times before staying on.

  Reed beat them to the punch, “What the hell was that?”

  “Nothing good I’d wager,” Thad said as he set the tablet down on Reed’s desk.

  As combat veterans both the chief and St. Claire spoke, with the chief starting the sentence, “That sounded an awful lot like.”

  “An orbital strike,” St. Claire said, finishing his sentence.

  The chief ran for a window followed by St. Claire, Thad, and lastly Detective Reed. They crowded each other to get a look. Luckily they were in the upper part of the city and high up at that, so they had a good view as they watched several more strikes slam into important buildings.

  Downstairs in the lobby, the hooded man had ditched the hood for a black suit worn by the Special Service agents. He was getting upset that it was taking so long for the police to turn Thad over to him. He walked up to the sergeant sitting behind the desk. “What is taking so long? Are you all a bunch of idiots or just plain incompetent?”

  “Look sir, I don’t give a damn who you are! You don’t come in here making demands. You filed the paperwork and it will take as long as it takes. Now sit down and shut up.”

  “Do you like being a sergeant? Because if you don’t get Hammer down here right now I’ll see to it that you never wear a single stripe on your uniform again.”

  This didn’t impress the sergeant, “I don’t answer to Special Services, and I sure as hell don’t answer to you. So unless you want to see what the inside of my cells look like you’d better watch your mouth. Now sit down and shut up, I won’t ask you again!”

  At that point, the building shook as the first bombardment struck the city. Seven knew his time was up. He turned and left the building as quickly as he could.

  After watching a few explosions, the Chief snapped himself out of the shock of seeing his city under attack and the old soldier in him took over. “We’re under attack, and I have work to do.” He turned to leave, but before he could take more than two steps the building shuddered unlike anything they had yet experienced. The lights went out for all of them, and it was a few minutes before any of them came back to.

  Thad clawed his way back to consciousness. At first, there was no sound, but that was soon replaced by a loud ringing in his ears and distant cries. He tried to move, but the pain in his shoulder was so intense he nearly passed out again. He looked around, but it was dark and the only light he could see was coming from fires that had erupted in the building. Though he knew the building was burning, he could not quite determine what had started the fire, as he shook off the haze of unconsciousness.

  St. Claire came to and his ears were filled with the same ringing that Thad was experiencing. He had somehow felt the strike coming and without thinking, he had grabbed the chief and pulled him down just a fraction of a second before everything went black. He could feel the chief under him trying to push St. Claire off him, so he rolled to the side and off of the chief.

  Over the top of them on what was left of the outer wall, an emergency light was sparking and flashing. St. Claire stood up and pulled it off the wall. As soon as he did it stopped shorting out and the lights came on. He knew the chief was okay as he could see him scrambling to get to his feet. St. Claire called out for Thad, but the ringing in his own ears made it hard to tell if Thad was yelling back.

  St. Claire swung the beam of light around and could see that most of the upper part of the building above him was gone and what was left was on fire. He started to choke a bit on the smoke so he ducked down to get out of the smoke as best as he could. The chief padded him on the back and then pointed to some legs that were sticking out from under some debris. The two old soldiers didn’t need to speak to understand each other and with a simple hand signal, they went over to the legs. By the looks of the pants and shoes, it must be Reed. St. Claire tried to lift a steel beam that had come down on top of the pile of rubble.

  He struggled with it for a few seconds before it began to budge. The Chief pulled on Reed’s legs trying to free him. His efforts were rewarded with the grizzly knowledge that his detective had met his fate, as the two legs were all that were left of Mark Reed.

  “Stop Dom, he’s dead,” the chief yelled. St. Claire’s hearing was coming back well enough that he heard the call to stop lifting and he let go. The beam slammed back down the few inches that he had moved it.

  “Nothing we can do, let’s see if we can find your friend,” The Chief said as he handed St. Claire the light.

  The smoke from the fires would have overcome them by now had it not been for the fact that most of the building’s floors that had been above them were vaporized by the starship’s laser that hit the building, leaving their floor open to the air. The early morning air was thick with smoke from many fires
throughout the district; however, the natural up draft created by the buildings was pulling the smoke high above them leaving them clean air to breath.

  Down below in the woman’s holding cells both Freya and Fiona had been out when the building was hit. The shaking of the building had jogged them both back to the land of consciousness. Fiona’s nose hurt and when she felt it she found that someone had inserted a blood stop capsule up her nose and cleaned up the blood from her face. The blood stop capsule was an old, yet still reliable, piece of tech. It was a simple gel capsule that the medic would cut a slit into, allowing the coagulant to flow out of, and the capsule would then be inserted into the wound. By the time the capsule dissolved the blood flow would stop.

  Freya had lost her wig and her makeup was badly smeared. She was sitting up with her back against a wall looking over to Fiona who somehow still had her wig on, “Hey sis I think you’ve messed up your makeup.”

  Fiona looked at her and cracked a smile, “You think?”

  “Just a bit.”

  “You’re not looking so peachy yourself,” Fiona replied.

  It was then that they noticed that all the regular lights were out and the emergency lights were on. “Hey Fie, any idea why the lights are out?”

  Fiona looked around, “I have no idea, but it can’t be good.”

  Freya jumped up and went to the cell door, which in this case was a transparent metal door. She looked out into the darkened hallway and couldn’t see anyone. She tried to see if there was anyone in the control booth that controlled all of the doors. There was no one there either. She tried the door, but it wouldn’t budge. The magnetic lock had shut off. The way the lock was designed it used a magnet to pull a steel bar to the side, opening or closing the lock. In the event of a power outage it was designed to remain locked. The only way to open it now was by a key on the other side of the door.

  “Well I can’t see anyone, which isn’t good, and unless someone shows up, I don’t think we’re getting out this way,” Freya said.

  Chapter 16