Hammer's War 1: Forging the Hammer (8 page)

“Boy you sure do know how to talk to
them lady folk. I’m surprised that you don’t have to fend them off with a stick.” Doctor Hammer was poking fun at Thad, who just rolled his eyes and started for the door.

Thad
grumbled, “I don’t know about you, but I‘m getting something to eat.”

The cool air inside
Bob’s was a welcome change from the outside heat.  Jenna seated them right away even though it looked like Bob’s was almost full.  “The place is busy tonight because a convoy of deep space cargo ships stopped for some fresh water and other supplies.”  She explained. 

The thing about cargo haulers was that they were very much like the long haul tr
uckers of the twenty and twenty-first centuries.  They came from all walks of life, some even had children, and there were a few here with their kids making it a very noisy place.

Doctor Hammer
and Thad ordered their food.  While they were waiting, Thad chose to enjoy a glass of Jenna’s lemonade. For some reason he had never ordered it all the other times that he had been here with Doctor Hammer.  There was something so good about this lemonade, and he could not shake the feeling that it was important to him for some reason.  The more he sat and drank the remarkable lemonade the more he tried to remember what he felt was just out of reach.  Then something clicked, a flash of memory came back all at once.  Faces of dead people flashed in his memory, then the feeling of anger and a file folder with pictures of small children with red ink stamped across the faces and the lettering read terminate.  Suddenly he remembered coming to the bar for the first time.  He also remembered the men in the bar, smashing out the man’s teeth, and...  the beating.

Doctor Hammer noticed that Thad
’s skin had turned a light puce green and that he had started sweating.  He also noticed that Thad had a thousand yard stare, “You alright
son?  You don’t look like you feel too well.”

Thad got up from the table and started for the restroom in the back, “I
’m fine, just needed to use the restroom.”

On his way to the restroom,
Thad passed Jenna as she was bringing the food to the table.  He pushed past her so fast he nearly knocked her over, and he would have, if it were not for her years of waiting tables.  She was able to dip and dodge without spilling a thing. Her skills amazed Doctor Hammer.

Confused by Thad’s reaction
, Jenna turned to Doctor Hammer, “Is there something wrong with the lemonade?”

Doctor Hammer took sip of the drink, “
No.  It’s wonderful as always. I think it could be a little motion sickness.  We were just trying out his new grav-bike that he built.  Between me and you I think he pushed it a little too hard.”  The truth was he didn’t have any idea what was wrong with Thad, but he couldn’t help wondering if it was a side effect from one of his new procedures.

In the
bathroom, Thad pushed his way through the door of the closest stall.  He dropped to his knees and grabbed the sides of the toilet.  Thad retched hard, at first nothing happened, but after a second round of retching, the contents of his stomach were expelled violently.  His sudden sickness was not from the bike ride, the lemonade, or any side effects.  The need to vomit came from the flood of images that had been unlocked from his memory.

Thad had been dealing with nightmares for months now, but this
was the first time he had a waking nightmare.  He was overwhelmed by the memories that had hit him like a ton of bricks.  He finished emptying his stomach.  Luckily, the only thing in there was the lemonade.

He went to the sink
and washed his face in the cool water.  He could understand the memories about the bar and the beating, but the faces of the dead and the file with the children haunted him the most.  He looked at himself in the mirror, “Who was I?”  He half expected the image in the mirror to answer him and he was afraid of the answer he might get.

While Thad was in the restroom, three
rough looking men entered the bar.  It was not out of the ordinary for rough types to enter this bar.  God knew Bob’s had seen its share of bad men in its day. So no one paid much attention to them, except Doctor Hammer.  He watched them as they entered together then split up.  One stayed near the door, while the biggest, and by the look of him the dumbest walked towards the back where he stood by the hallway that led to the restrooms.  The man who looked to be the boss of the crew went straight to the bar.  If their behavior wasn’t a big enough clue that something no good was about to happen, the fact that the big dumb looking one was wearing a long heavy coat was a dead give a way that he was hiding something.  

Doctor Hammer had a pretty good idea that something bad was about to happen, but there
was nothing he could do, but wait and watch.  He just hoped that Thad stayed in the restroom for a while.  He was really starting to think of him as a son and like any father, he was more worried about Thad than he was about himself.  It did not take long before his suspicions were confirmed. 

The man at the bar looked at
his crew and nodded, this was the signal.  The men produced weapons and the one with the long coat revealed a nasty looking plasma rifle, a weapon clearly not suited for this kind of work.  Plasma rifles were invented during the first Dreenoi wars.  They fired a pancake
like ball of plasma that expanded outward the farther from the barrel it went.  It was ideal for clearing out Dreenoi tunnels.  Fire a couple of plasma rifles down a tunnel and you could fry anything in it.  The fact that this moron chose a plasma rifle in a restaurant was a clear sign that these guys had no clue of what they were doing. This made them very dangerous.  As there is nothing more dangerous than
an idiot with a gun, except perhaps for an idiot criminal with a gun.

The leader jumped up on the bar in a dramatic way
, flourishing his pistol, “I don’t really have to tell you this is a robbery, but I’m kind of a traditionalist so nobody move, this is a hold up!”

The big guy with the big gun was so excited by this he just could not control himself and pointed the plasma rifle at the ceiling, “Yeah this is a hold up
!”  To emphasize his point, he pulled the trigger.  There was brilliant flash of light as a glowing stream of plasma shot out of the end of the weapon and burned a two-foot hole straight through the roof.

“Damn it Frankie
!  How many times do I have to tell you I do the talking!  And, no shooting that thing inside!” 

“Sorry Phil,” he lowered the weapon pointing it at the floor.

“Names you asshole, what did I say about using our real names?”  Phil hissed angrily.

Frankie
said, with a pouty lip, “Sorry Boss.”

Phil turned his attention back to what he was doing, “
So now you all have seen what my trigger happy friend can do.  I would advise you all from doing anything stupid and just place all your valuables here on the bar.” He then turned to Carl who was standing behind the bar. “You, fat guy,” he waved his gun at the register.  “Empty the register please, and put it in a bag for me.”  Phil, then smelling the aroma of the food said, “oh and bag up a couple of those meals for us. They do smell fantastic.”

Carl was angry that these thugs
for robbing him, not to mention blowing a hole in his roof, but the chef inside him was pleased his food smelled so good they wanted dinner too.  “Yes Sir,” he said through gritted teeth.

Inside the
restroom, Thad heard the plasma rifle discharge and he instinctually knew something was very wrong.  Without thinking about his next course of action, he acted purely on impulse and quietly slipped out of the restroom. He carefully took stock of the situation, identifying the three scumbags, which was not hard to do; they were the ones waving guns around. He took a moment to plan out his attack.  Never once did he give any thought to what he was doing or why.  It was as if someone had thrown a switch inside him. At the moment, he felt like a robot about to carry out its programmed commands.  He thought
I can do it, take out all three without hurting anyone else, but I will have to be fast.
  Once Thad started his attack it happened so fast, no one knew what was going on until it was over. 

Thad
quietly slipped in behind the idiot named Frankie.  He slid his hand around Frankie’s side and grabbed his gun.  Then all Hell broke loose.  With extreme speed and violence, Thad pushed the weapon up so fast the barrel smashed into Frankie’s nose, breaking it instantly. Blood gushed from his nose, however Frankie was not about to go down that easy. He spun around to see who had attacked him.  Thad’s first attack had disarmed the big man.  Now he had his gun, Thad used it like a club.  He smashed the butt of the rifle into Frankie’s knee, breaking it, with a sickening crunch.  Frankie screamed like a little girl as he fell, his head crashing on a nearby table, knocking him out cold, and flipping the table upside down on top of the would be robber.

Phil
, still on the bar, heard the commotion from behind him and turned in time to see Thad who was now in midair.  He had jumped over Frankie’s body as it was hitting the floor, dropping the rife as he went.  With a second leap Thad landed on the bar sliding feet first towards Phil.  Phil tried to bring his pistol to bear, but he was too slow.  Thad slid into Phil like a major league baseball player sliding into home plate.  Thad’s booted feet slammed into Phil’s ankles, which snapped like bar pretzels. The force of the blow sent Phil tumbling ass over-end.  He cartwheeled off the bar and landed face first on to the metal floor with a squishing sound.

Still
in motion, Thad slid past a Cargo hauler with a half-full heavy glass mug of beer in front of him.  In one fluid motion, Thad grabbed the glass as he went, using his feet to stop as he hit the end of the bar.  Thad used his momentum to spring up to a standing position.  He flung the glass mug at the man by the door. The mug hit the man in the face, shattering; beer and blood went everywhere.

It s
tunned the man, but it did not neutralize him.  Thad jumped off the bar and, in a fraction of a second, covered the distance to the man who was trying to see through the sting in his eyes from the blood and beer. He raised his pistol to shoot, but his vision was so blurry he couldn’t make out his target. He fired wildly at Thad, most of the shots when wide and slammed into the bar, burning several holes, but hurting no one.  One shot hit Thad in the left shoulder, sizzling away a chunk of flesh.  Thad didn’t even notice he had been hit.  He charged forward, his only thought to stop this guy before someone got hurt.  Thad reached the man and grabbed his gun.  Thad twisted the gun with so much force and speed the man did not have a chance to let go.  The robber’s fingers snapped first, followed by the bones in his wrist.  Pain neutralized the would-be robber as the gun was torn from his hand.

The whole take down took only seconds and when it was over
only the bad guys were hurt.  A young blond girl of about seven broke the tension, “man that was awesome!”  Laugher erupted from the crowd as they were still processing what had just happened.  Thad collected the guns and placed them behind the bar.

Carl took them and said, “Thanks
.”

Thad nodded, “Tie these thugs up and someone go get the
Sheriff please.  Now if you all don’t mind I think I would like to eat my dinner now.”  That got a cheer from the crowd. 

“Dinner is on the house!
”  Carl yelled as the crowd cheered again.

Thad sat down
, picked up his fork, and started eating, as if nothing had happed at all.  Doctor Hammer just sat and stared.  The missing chunk in Thad’s shoulder was completely healed and left no evidenced that he had been injured at all.  Doctor Hammer knew there were things about Thad he did not know and now he was not sure he wanted to know.  

The rest of the evening was
quiet.  The robbers were taken into custody by the Sheriff who remarked that these were the first arrests he had made in years.  It also turned out that there was a small bounty on their heads.  The Sheriff offered it to Thad, but he suggested Carl get the money to fix the roof, the bar, and maybe the bad air conditioner that just happened to stop working again.

The ride home was quick and
quiet. Thad knew something was bothering Doctor Hammer, but he was not sure what it was.  He figured Doctor Hammer would tell him if he wanted him to know, so he didn’t press him.  Once they reached the compound, Doctor Hammer went into his private study without saying a word.  Thad put Rhonda in the garage and promised her he would wash her in the morning. 

“I will hold you to that
promise,” Rhonda said, as the lights when out in the garage.

Thad ma
de his way to his room where he stripped off his clothes and tossed them in the laundry bin.  He stood naked in his bathroom staring at his shoulder in the mirror.  No matter how hard he looked, he couldn’t find a scar, nothing-not even a mark. 
The Nano’s had done their job well
he thought.  “Shower, hot,” he said to the bath computer.  In seconds, steaming hot water poured over his body washing the dust and blood from him.

As he stood in the hot
water, Thad went over the events of the evening. He couldn’t understand what about those events so upset the doctor.  He finished up his shower, dressed for bed, and finally laid down.  In a few minutes, he was asleep not understanding it wasn’t the robbers or the events that upset the doctor, but it was the complete lack of emotion Thad displayed afterwards.  The doctor was concerned by the way Thad attacked those men with the calm indifference one would have as if they were going about any normal daily task, like brushing one’s teeth.