Hammerhead

by Jason Andrew Bond

  The metal rings on his jumpsuit clicked on the hot aluminum surface. Sitting on his knees, he took the screwdriver out of his pocket and loosened the fasteners on a vented inspection panel. He pulled the panel open and looked over the fuel and coolant pipes and heavy looms of multicolored wire. He ran his hand along the wire looms, smooth and solid. Moving to the other side of the engine intake, he pulled a similar panel. There he found the same thing: nothing wrong. He rubbed the back of his neck and clicked his teeth together.

  He traded the screwdriver for his flashlight, turned it on, and put it in his mouth. Then he got down on his belly and slid head first into the engine intake, the metal rings on his jumpsuit scraping.

  Waist-deep in the intake, he found a box glued down with a blue smear of epoxy. The sun had heated the intake enough that sweat began to run into Jeffrey’s eyes. He took the flashlight out of his mouth and wiped his forehead with the back of his arm. He inspected the box. It was about the size of a kid’s lunchpail and had a curled antenna sticking out one side. On the front, an LCD readout flashed dashes.

  Along the top edges of the box hung ragged strips of what appeared to be canvas. He gripped one, ripped it off, and held it up to the light. By the shape of the strips, Jeffrey guessed the canvas had been some kind of containment bag. The pattern of the strips suggested it had been blown open with small explosive cords. He ran his fingers inside the top of the box and found the same white powder as on the exhaust port, but here it was fresh and loose. He touched the tip of his finger to his tongue.

  “Sodium bicarbonate,” he said, “Nice trick. Well Arlo, you certainly don’t care about leaving evidence behind.”

  He took the screwdriver from his pocket, jammed it under the box, and yanked up. The box cracked free from its place. He pushed himself out of the intake with his elbows. Outside, a breeze blew on his damp face. His transport had nothing permanently wrong with it, and he had successfully evaded two attempts on his life. He looked up at the mountains around him. Thinking of these positive points did not improve his mood.

  Jeffrey looked back at the box and thought on what to do.

  Why would someone want me dead?

  He had done nothing important for over thirty years. During the war he had killed, but there was never a face-to-face interaction. In the end they had killed the invaders entirely. No one of any consequence should know him, and he had no current conflicts. He looked out at the smoke rising up over the southern ridge from the crash site and considered that his answer might lie in the wreckage of the Jules Verne.

  He slid off the transport and jogged to the bunker, carrying the box. As he opened the door, his sat-phone rang. He took it out.

  “Hello?”

  “Jeffrey?”

  “Yep.”

  “This is Sal over at Huntington Aircraft. You called about a tech named Arlo?”

  “Yeah. Does he work for you?”

  “No. You sure he said he was working with me?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s not possible—”

  Jeffrey cut him off, saying, “Sal, watch your back. Something’s very wrong.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “For now, but don’t tell anyone you spoke to me. If anyone comes asking about me, treat them like a rattlesnake: be nice and keep your distance.”

  “Is your transport okay? Do you need a lift? I can be there in less than an hour to pick you up.”

  “No. I’m okay, for now,” Jeffrey said, looking back to the smoke over the hill. “But I need to do a bit of research before I head out of here.”

  “I don’t know what the hell is going on, but be careful.”

  “Will do, Sal.”

  Jeffrey ended the call and stepped inside the bunker. He walked to the workbench and opened the bag with the spider in it. Setting the box from the air intake into the bag, he folded the top over. He went to the cabinet where his jumpsuit had hung and opened a drawer. He took out two boxes of bullets and two loaded clips. He put the boxes and clips into the cargo pockets of his jumpsuit. Then he took an angular .45-caliber Colt 1911 pistol from the drawer. The gun had nicks and wear along the surface, but when he thumbed the clip release it drew smoothly out. Setting the clip down, he pulled the slide back. A bullet flipped out. He caught the bullet in the air and then inspected the gun’s chamber and barrel. Picking up the clip, he pushed the bullet into it, slid the clip into the gun’s handle, and thumbed the slide release, chambering the round. He walked to the workbench, picked up the bag containing the box and the spider, and stepped out of the bunker. Without ceremony, he test fired the gun up into the mountain. He pocketed the gun and walked out into the scrap yard making his way toward the Gorilla.

  CHAPTER 3

  Jeffrey walked toward what appeared to be a stack of scrap metal among several other stacks. This stack was more compact and unified than the others: a pile of metal angles, hydraulic hoses, and scratched black paint. He stepped through a gap in the side of the stack and into the shade. In the dim light underneath, he climbed up a ladder and opened the cab of the Gorilla. He strapped the bag containing the box and the spider in the corner, leaned against the back rest, pulled a five-point harness over his shoulders, and buckled it in the center. Then he reached between his legs, pulled the final strap up, and buckled it in. Flipping up a cracked plastic cover, he pressed the green power button. A whine and vibration rose up from the machine. He pressed the ‘CAB CLOSE’ toggle, and the steel plate doors swung shut leaving him with only the green glow of the power button. In the darkness, he found the gloves in his pocket and put them on. Then, reaching up, he took the VR goggles from a hook and pulled them over his head. In the goggles he could see, so close it was difficult to focus on, the outside surface of the Gorilla. He pushed the ear pieces into his ears.

  “Activate controls, code: Delta Oscar Romeo India Sierra.”

  A female voice said, “Activation Code accepted.”

  The Gorilla unfolded in a slow arc to stand twenty feet tall, squat legs and long arms, heavy shoulders, and no head. Jeffrey went through his pre-op check moving the fingers of one hand and then the other. He closed the fist and inspected the armored knuckle plates. Aside from a slight glitch now and again, the stereo HD image from the VR goggles soon fooled the mind into perceiving the large metal arms as physically part of the operator.

  Jeffrey held his left hand up in the black space of the cab, and the gorilla’s arm mimicked him.

  “Gorilla, cutter,” he said. The left hand folded open at the wrist, lay back on the forearm, and a metal bar extended from the opening. He pulled his index finger in a trigger motion, and a blue arc sparked along the edge of the bar.

  “Gorilla, hand.” The cutter retracted, and the hand flipped back into place. Jeffrey took a step. The cab’s floor panels shifted, imitating the sensation of ground moving underfoot. The Gorilla stepped forward.

  “Let’s get to it then,” Jeffrey said. The Gorilla, mimicking his motions, slapped its metal hands together and walked off through the scrap yard to a tunnel in the side of the mountain.

  Entering the tunnel, Jeffrey said, “Gorilla, lights,” and spotlights on the Gorilla’s shoulders flashed on, illuminating the shot-creted walls.

  As Jeffrey walked the Gorilla down the tunnel, more and more dust floated in the beams of the spotlights. When he should have seen sunlight glowing at the end of the tunnel, only dust and darkness surrounded him. Where the tunnel should have opened into the desert, Jeffrey found the way blocked by a section of the freighter. Brilliant pinpricks of sunlight shone through breaks in the structure. Jeffrey reached out, and the Gorilla gripped the obstruction, the metal folding in the hydraulic hands. Jeffrey pushed on it. The section of hull shifted but would not move.

  Jeffrey pulled at the structure. Two large pieces ripped free. He threw the pieces aside and pulled two more chunks of metal off the structure. He did this again and again, and larger beams of light broke through.

  When he had ri
pped out a hole as large as the Gorilla’s shoulders, he kicked at the lower section. The metal petalled out with each kick. He stomped the metal down and walked out onto the flat sheet of the landing zone. There, the lakebed ranged away from the mountains, its horizon a liquid blur in the heat. Wreckage lay strewn along the side of the mountain and out across the dry lakebed. A few hundred meters away, the freighter’s bridge, windows shattered, sat half-buried at the end of a long gouge in the dirt.

  He walked the Gorilla over to the bridge and looked it over. The Gorilla’s hands moved to its hips. “What a mess,” he said, and poked out the last unbroken window.

  “Gorilla, thermal,” he said, and his vision switched to a three-dimensional field of oranges and reds. The hull still showed some signs of heat, but had cooled significantly since atmospheric entry.

  “Gorilla, visible spectrum,” he said, and his view returned to normal.

  “Now let’s see if you can shed some light on what’s going on.”

  “Gorilla, cutter,” he said, and the left hand flipped back and the cutter extended. He held the cutter to the first window support and curled his finger. The blue arc sparked, and metal splattered away, leaving a gap as wide as the cutter. When he had cut all the window supports, he gripped the roof and folded the entire section back. The metal whined and hoses cracked. As he bent the roof back, sunlight filled the bridge, and he saw the internals had not fared well. All the seats had ripped free, and they–as well as other debris–had destroyed most of the instrumentation at the flight consoles. Shattered glass, metal housings, and insulation lay across the floor. He reached in and lifted out one of the broken chairs, exposing a human leg.

  “Gorilla, power down,” Jeffrey shouted. Heart pounding, he flipped the CLOSE CAB toggle, unbuckled his harness, and slid down the ladder even as the Gorilla finished crouching down. He dropped off the end of the ladder and ran out into the desert sun. He ran up the berm of dirt and climbed over the cut-open window frames. The ship smelled of burnt oil and baked paint. He began throwing debris away from the leg. He grabbed hold of the ankle, and the leg slid out of the pile. A gray pant leg covered the skin, but just above the knee the leg ended in a cracked femur that protruded from the meat of the thigh. He tossed the leg aside and felt his stomach flip.

  He took a moment to settle himself and then turned over a panel exposing the rest of the body, both arms dismembered from the torso. Blood soaked the surrounding debris. He felt his head spin, and bile rose in his throat. He knelt down, put his hands on the deck, and drew in a breath. The cool of the metal deck soaked through his knees and palms.

  God, I’ve gotten old.

  Sitting back on his heels, he drew another breath, spit into the debris, and pressed his palms to his forehead. Feeling the metal rings of his gloves on his face, he pulled the gloves off and folded them into his back pocket.

  The flipping in his stomach faded. He stood, favoring his stiff back, and began moving more debris. He found a second body stuffed under a console. The head had been sheared off across the bridge of the nose. Under the exposed bone of the sinus cavity, the mouth hung slack. As with the first, the body had bled out in the final resting position.

  He found a third body, a young woman, lying face down under another console. He pulled off a few more pieces of debris and turned the body over. Her impact with the controls had stamped the word ‘Ion’ backwards on her forehead, and a deep cut exposed the white of her cheekbone. Even in death she was pretty; however, Jeffrey could see from her athletic shoulders and arms that she had been tough. Her short brown hair, which was still pixie cute, appeared more ‘efficient’ in uniform.

  He turned, and something gripped his ankle. Jeffrey shouted out and jumped, yanking his leg away. He stared at the woman, his heart hammering at his ribs. She now lay with her arm extended toward him. Her eyes fluttered, and she grimaced. Lifting her arm, she brought the shadow of her hand over her eyes. Her arm began to tremble, and she let it drop to her belly. Jeffrey stepped around and crouched over her, blocking the sun from her face.

  Her eyes opened, hazel and glassy, one pupil larger than the other.

  “Can you hear me?” he asked.

  The woman’s eyes tracked to him. The larger pupil constricted somewhat but still did not match the other. She reached out, and her fingers closed on his forearm. She whispered, “Did we survive the crash?”

  Jeffrey looked back to the bodies and then put the palm of his hand on her forehead. “You’re safe now, at least for the time being. Just relax.”

  “They’re trying to kill me.”

  “They already tried, sister.”

  The woman muttered and lost consciousness.

  “Hey,” Jeffrey shouted at her, patting her uninjured cheek, “you have to wake up. You can’t go to sleep. Can you hear me?” But she had lost consciousness. He sat back on his heels and looked out at the desert sky and then to the two bodies and the woman.

  Before today’s over, someone else is probably going to die.

  “I’ll be damned if it’s going to be me,” Jeffrey said to the desert. He looked back down at the young woman. “Right now I need to get you stable and then get us the hell out of here.”

  CHAPTER 4

  Stacy Zack heard shouting nearby, but darkness surrounded her. She tried to remember where she was. She had been on a ship. The memory materialized into a dream, and she found herself sprinting down a ship’s corridor, jumping through each hatch. As she ran, footfalls landed close behind her.

  “Wake up,” a deep voice said. “You have to wake up.” It boomed through the metal in the walls of the ship and shook the deck. The hallway seemed to grow confused and too small, then unfocused, and then it disappeared. A bright redness grew all around her, and she opened her eyes to a splitting- white light. She saw blue sky and a wisp of cloud. She tried to sit up, and the sky shifted sickeningly sideways. Her stomach turned. She lay back down and gagged. A shadow leaned over her.

  “You back with me?” the voice asked.

  She held her hand up over the sun and made out the figure of a large, fit, gray-haired man with a neatly trimmed beard. He wore a green jumpsuit. Her hand felt heavy and trembled as she held it up. She let it drop. The sun blasted back into her eyes. The man moved away. A rasping sound came near her, and then something large and rectangular blocked the sun over her.

  “Where am I?” she asked. As her eyes adjusted to the light, she found herself in the shade of a chair.

  “You’ve crash-landed in the desert, very near the center of Nevada,” the man said.

  She tried to sit up again. Her vision blurred, and she felt the man’s hands grasp her shoulders, pressing her back down.

  “Be careful now,” the man said. “I think you should just lay flat until we figure out how bad off you are. You hit your head very hard.”

  “Am I alone?”

  …

  Jeffrey wished she would just lay back and stop asking questions. He looked over to the blue tarp he had draped over the other bodies. A breeze tugged at the tarp exposing the open sinus cavity. He thought to ignore the question, but sooner or later it would have to come out.

  “You were with two others, but they didn’t survive,” he said.

  The woman laid her arm on her belly. A trail of blood ran from the cut on her cheekbone, across her ear, to the back of her hair.

  “What’s your name?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “Your name, what’s your name? I’m Jeffrey.”

  The woman lifted her hands and stared at them. “Um, I…” She scowled and then said, “My name.” She looked off to the right and then back at Jeffrey. “It’s Stacy Zack.” She reached up, touched her cheek where the blood flow had almost stopped. Her finger slipped into the cut and across the bone and she yelped. Her eyes rolled up in their sockets, and she lost consciousness again.

  “Damn it,” Jeffrey said. He went to the cracked wall of the cab, ripped some insulation foam-rubber from it, and ca
refully placed it under her head, bracing the sides of her neck. “You’re lucky to be alive. What the hell were you doing on this freighter?”

  He patted the good side of her face again and shouted at her, “You can’t sleep now. You have to stay awake.” But she remained still.

  Jeffrey gave up trying to wake her and found a first aid kit bolted on the back wall of the bridge. He brought back several supplies. He laid out a sterile cloth and then set out some swabs, a packet of suture, a needle driver, bandages, and tape. He scrubbed his hands with hand sanitizer and then put on a pair of nitrile gloves. He tore the end off a paper pouch, exposing a swab that dripped with an iodine solution. He swabbed out the cut on her cheekbone, going up under the skin and across the bone.

  “It’s probably good you’re unconscious for this.”

  He opened the packet of suture and grasped the curved needle with the needle driver. As he pulled the needle away, the attached suture drew out of its plastic holder. Stabbing the needle into the skin at the edge of the cut, he threaded the suture through. He tied a small knot to fix the end of the suture and pulled the wound closed with ten stitches.

  Tying off the suture at the other end, he clipped away the extra, and set the needle driver down. After he had coated the area with more iodine and then a light greasing of antibiotic ointment, he looked over his work and said, “That will get you through for today anyway.” He laid a rectangle of dressing over the area and taped the edges down. Then he sat down in the debris beside her.

  Every so often the woman muttered a few quiet sounds and shifted. He looked around the cabin, thinking about how to build a stretcher for her. He took up her wrist to check her pulse, and she pulled her arm away. Her eyes opened, and she sat up fast. She winced and held the small of her back.