Hammer's War 1: Forging the Hammer (16 page)

Something he had said made a difference and she smiled at him, “Okay I will try to like them
. In fact I think I will have mom rewrite my programming, and have her remove jealousy from my emotions.”

Thad raised his
eyebrow, “Don’t you dare remove it, it is part of what makes you who you are.”

She seemed like that
.  A big smile beamed across her face, “Okay, but they still can’t ride on me.”

“Well on second thought maybe have Eve tone it down a bit,” Thad said as he stood up.

Rhonda broke out into laugher.  Thad gave her a strange look.  “I’m just kidding, you big silly head.  They are welcome to ride with us. It will be kind of like a four some.”

Thad groaned, “Rhonda, you sure are one of a kind.
”  After that night, if Rhonda was still jealous of the twins, she never showed it.

Now that Rhonda was no longer a
problem, and he had finally sorted out his feelings, Thad decided it was time, time for him to make honest women out of them, as they used to say.

The night he chose was nice
and a gentle evening breeze had cooled the air temperature down, so Thad thought dinner outside was perfect.  Before dinner, he had the housemaid bots decorate the patio with white lattice arches, sheer white drapes over the top of the patio, and tiny white lights.  Hundreds of white lights blazed away, making it look as if the stars had fallen from the sky and landed here. Standing in the center of the round table was a crystal tree that sparkled from every angle.  Thad was dressed in a black tux trimmed with deep maroon vest and matching tie.  Even Archie was dressed in a matching tux.

The girls had been ke
pt busy in the holosuite all day by Eve and when they were told that it was time to get ready for dinner they found formal dresses laid out for them.  Freya opted for the deep red sequined dress while Fiona chose a black silk backless dress.  After finishing getting ready for dinner, they made their way outside to join Thad.

Thad was stunned by the two beauties in front of him.  The girls
enjoyed seeing Thad all dolled up, but they were shocked too.  Knowing something was going on, Fiona said, “Okay Thad, what’s up?”

He
stood there and shrugged his shoulders, “What do you mean?”

Fiona
cut him off, “all this,” she pointed to the decor.

Before he could say anything
Freya followed up with, “And the wine and the food is top shelf, so what gives?”

“What
?  Can’t a guy do something with a little class once in a while?”

Freya laughed, “Yeah a guy can, but you are not just any
guy, now are you.”

Thad smiled, “Can’t get anything past you two can I?”

Freya crossed her arms across her breasts, “Okay out with it boy or these are off limits.”  Fiona copied her sister.

He laughed, “
Straight to the point is what I love about you two,” He reached under the table and pulled out two small boxes.  He placed one in front of each girl.  Fiona and Freya picked up their little boxes and opened them.  Their mouths opened and they squealed with joy. 

Thad came around the table,
and knelt down.  He took Fiona’s hand and slipped the ring, which had been in her box, onto her finger.  He then did the same for Freya.  He then took both of their hands into his, “Fiona, Freya, I have never met anyone I would want to share my life with until now.  I feel so lucky, both of you are so wonderful.  Would you two do me the honor of becoming my wives?”

Fiona had tears flowing down her checks,
as she wrapped her arms around Thad’s neck, and said, “I would love to be your wife.”

Freya also wrapped her arms around Thad and her sister, “
That goes double for me, and I can’t think of anyone I would rather share my husband with.”  They ate, drank, danced, and made mad passionate love all night. 

Two days later Thad got a notice that
Eve had two large crates at the spaceport ready for pick up.  Thad was in Doctor Hammer’s office, which was now his office, when he called for Eve.  She appeared in the middle of the room, lovely as ever.  However, before she could say anything Thad asked, “Eve you want to explain this notice about two crates in your name at the space port?”

Eve
looked at the shipping bill, “Oh they’re here, great!  Be a dear, take Archie, and go get them for me would you?”

“Eve
care to tell me what I’m picking up?”  Thad eyed the Hologram.

“Don’t you worry about it
, and you better not open it or I will tell the girls to cut you off for a month!”  Eve pouted.  “And if you open it, I will know!”

“Eve” he tried to protest, but then
the tablet he was reading switched to Fiona who was outside near the pool.  She was nude, sun bathing again. 

“
Fiona dear, you know what has arrived.  Thad said he will not go until I tell him what is in them,” Eve said.

Thad piped up, “I never said that
!”

Fiona jumped up
and stared straight into the camera, “Thad baby, be a good dear and do as Eve asks.  Otherwise you will not get any of this, for a month.”  She stood showing off her perfect tight body.

Freya was reading from a tablet that covered her bare breasts, “Or this either,” she
interjected, without looking up from her reading.  Thad gave in.  What could he do?  He was only human.

“Okay, okay, I
won’t open them.”  Archie entered the office and Thad said to him, “Come on Archie, we have some mystery boxes to pick up.”

“I
will get the sand crawler ready for travel,” Archie said.  Thad nodded, and a few minutes later they were rumbling across the desert.    

At the
port, he was sorely tempted to open the crates and have a look inside, but he remembered  promise to Eve about not opening them.  Archie was inspecting the crates, then without asking started to open one, “Archie stop,” Thad yelled at him.

“I’
m sorry Sir, I thought I would inspect the contents for any damage before you sign for them,” Archie said as he released one of the crates sealing clamps that had been in his hand.

“Can’t do that,”
Thad paused just long enough for Archie’s mouth to light up.  “Eve made me promise we wouldn’t open them.”

“Well in that case Mr. Thad
Sir, I will load them up,” Archie said.

“She said I couldn’t open them
, but she never said anything about having a sneak peek,” Thad said, tapping his head near his right eye.  He switched to x-ray vision.  At first, he was not sure what he was looking at, because of all the packing. He adjusted the filters until things became much clearer, when he burst into laughter.  The contents of the crates were human, female love bots.  However, that’s not what made him laugh, it was that one looked just like Eve and the other was the spitting image of Rhonda.

Wondering why Thad was laughing Archie asked, “What has engaged you
r laugher mode?”

Thad threw his arm around the robot
’s shoulder and patted him on the back, “You are going to love this.”  They loaded the crates and headed back home.

When they returned to the compound, Archie off loaded the crates while Thad went to find Eve.  “Eve, the crates are here and I didn’t open them.  You can check the seals.”

Eve’s hologram appeared right in front of him blocking the hallway,
“I will,” then she stuck out her tongue.

“Oh, by-the-way, they did a great job.  The likeness is uncanny,”
Thad said, grinning slightly.

“You think so?  I can’t wait
to get them uncrated and try mine on,” She paused, her hands on her hips then she pointed a finger at him, “Hey you said, you didn’t open them.”

Thad had a
big smile on his face, “I didn’t.”

Puzzled, she cocked an eye in his direction, “Then how did you know?
”  He pointed to his right eye. “I should have known!  I should have had them put in lead lined boxes.” 

“What’s going on?  Eve you okay?”

She seemed annoyed by the question, “I am perfectly fine, thank you very much!  What would make you ask such a silly question?”

“It’s just that you normally would not have
forgotten about my implant.  You would have told me not use it, but you didn’t, why?”  Thad asked his arms folded across his chest.

Stunned,
she said, “I’m not sure. Perhaps I need to run a diagnostic on myself.  Alternatively, it could be the fact that I have been so busy with the girls, designing and fabricating clothing.  I keep wondering why they want so much clothing, when they hardly wear any of it.”

Thad looked at her with his
,
do you think I am a stupid human
look, “Eve you can do stuff in your sleep or could, if you slept.  What is really going on?”

She leaned forward, “Okay, but you must not tell the girls I told you, they asked me to help plan the
wedding two months ago. Between the wedding plans and all the other things I have going on I must have forgotten to check my own database.  Oh well.  No one is perfect.”

“Wait a minute, two months?  They must have known that I was planning on marrying them for a while now I guess.
I never stood a chance.”  Thad had to laugh at himself.

Ignoring his comment Eve w
ent on to explain the love bots “The love bots were Fiona’s idea.  She wanted Rhonda and me as bride’s maids so I ordered the custom love bots from Love Dolls.  That way we could have a physical presence at the wedding.  I chose the love dolls because they were the most lifelike.  The only way you could tell they were not human, was to cut them open.” 

As the plans for the wedding
progressed, Thad looked around for a place to hold it, but there was no place in town or anywhere else on the planet that would fit the bill.  There was a local pastor, but his very small congregation met in an old warehouse.  That was not going to fly for Thad.  He wanted the girls to have the very best.  He contracted an architectural firm to design and build a grand church.  After its construction, Thad gave the building to the town and to the pastor to worship in.  The only condition he placed on the deal was that The Julius Michael Hammer Memorial Hall was to be the name of the building.  No one had any objections to the name, in fact, most people wanted to change the name of the town to Hammer’s town, but Thad thought that was way too much.

Thad also found
out that buying a hover limo outright, and having it shipped, was cheaper than renting one in as much as the nearest rental agency was twenty five hundred light years away.  As the day of the wedding drew closer, everything was either acquired off world or fabricated in-house for the big day.

Eve loved
wearing her love suit, as Thad jokingly called it.  Once she started to use it, she never stopped.  Eve also made herself the official wedding planner.  She would ask Thad questions about the marriage practices of humans.  As it turned out, Doctor Hammer never programmed any of the information into her data banks and had placed a line of code which prevented her from learning anything about marriage until he passed.  She was playing catch up, downloading and learning everything she could, but some things confused her electronic brain, “Thaddeus, I don’t understand this thing about polygamy, monogamy, polyandry, and polymorphic relationships.  I understand what they are, but things have changed so many times over the centuries. What is socially accepted today?”

“Well these days about anything goes.  It used to
be that marriage was defined as a union between a man and a woman, but in the early part of the twentieth century it was redefined as a union between man and woman or man and man or woman and woman.”

“Ah yes
, the homosexual rights to marriage act enacted in the first part of the 21st Century” Eve said smiling smugly.

“Well
it opened the door.  Once it was redefined, there really was no argument against polyandry or polygamy.  Later, once the human race met aliens and cross species, love affairs happened, marriage was redefined once again as polymorphic, or basically anything goes.”  Thad explained.

“Oh good I was wor
ried it would not be accepted, and you and the girls would be shunned.”

Thad laughed, “You don’t have to worry
.  This town is not big on marriage anyway.”

It was late at night and Thorne was in his office sitting at his desk when a full size holo reproduction of Federation Ambassador Helen Sexton appeared next to his desk.

Thorne
did not look up from the tablet he was reading, “So Ambassador, what do I owe the pleasure of a personal call?”

Helen Sexton could not stand
Thorne, but he was the best at what he did, and she needed him.  “You can drop the title George,” she said with contempt in her voice.

“Okay, Helen what do you want.
I’m very busy,” he sniped at her.

She held her temper, “It has taken three years for this information to seep through the many levels of red tape before it landed on my desk
, but if you are too busy then never mind.”  

Still not looking up
Thorne said, “Cut the crap Helen, what do you want?”

“I thought you would like to know where your malfunctioning weapon had run off to.
”  She said with a smirk on her face.

That got
his attention, he dropped the tablet and looked up at the hologram, “How in the Hell did you get that information?  My people have been running down every lead for three years.”

“I know, you seem to be a better killer than detective,” she
grimaced at him.

“Now that is just low even for you
Helen.”  Thorne grumbled.

Her fingers pushed at something in front of her, something
Thorne could not see, so it looked like she was groping the air.  “I’m transferring the file now.  It turns out your boy is on a little back water moon called Nome, out on the very edge of human controlled space.  His DNA turned up in a request for information from a Doctor Hammer.”

“Really, Doctor Hammer
?  The famous Doctor Hammer, the guy who invented most of the breakthroughs in medical science over the last fifty years?”  Thorne asked, as he wondered why the famed Doctor Hammer would have a DNA sample of Marcus’.

“Yes that Doctor Hammer. 
Apparently, your boy ran into some kind of trouble he couldn’ handle and somehow ended up on the good Doctor’s operating table.  He sent off the sample in an effort to identify him,” she said sitting on the edge of her desk, which made it look like she was sitting on the edge of his.

“So, if he did it three years ago, why are we just now finding out about it?
”  Thorne seemed irritated by the information.

She brushed a long strand of graying hair out of her face,
“You have to love the speed of government.  It took that long to filter through all the levels of bureaucracy.  It would have gone unnoticed completely if it had not been for my A.I.  She was running a check on all identification requests.”

Thorne
scanned through the file and did not see anything else about his asset, after the identification request.  “Are you sure he even survived?”

“Well, if you keep reading the file you will see the good Doctor was killed in a shooting
incident almost a year ago.  However, the file has nothing about what happened to the man who shot Doctor Hammer.  My sources, however, turned up a witness.  This witness said a man, who lived with Doctor Hammer, who called himself Thaddeus Hammer, son of Doctor Hammer, went nuts, and single-handedly killed the whole gang of space pirates that had been responsible for his death.  Furthermore, it appears the Sheriff and the town folk covered the whole thing up.”

“Wait!  Doctor Hammer has no family and no record of a son.
”  Thorne said, as he looked deeper into the file.

“Exactly, and as you can read for yourself,
we have no record of any children for Doctor Hammer until two and half years ago when all of a sudden there is a full record.”  She said condescendingly.

Thorne
leaned back in his leather chair pondering the new information, “So you think he is my asset?”

“What do you think
?  You muscle bound moron.  I swear if you were not so good at your job, I would have no use for you,” she said as she stood up again.

“Well then,
it’s a good thing that I’m really good, isn’t it.  I will dispatch a team right away.  By the way, who is this witness of yours?”  Thorne was really annoyed now.

“A man named
Leonard Jensen, the former hotel handy man.  Now he mostly does odd jobs, as he can.  He is the only one who would talk about Thaddeus Hammer.” 

“I wonder why?
”  He said out loud, more of a question to himself than to her.

“I guess Mr. Thaddeus
Hammer had some kind of run in with him, over a girl,” she said.

“That is
interesting.”  Thorne’s attempt to smile reminded the Ambassador of a shark about to bite.

“I want you to take him alive, if you can.  Find out what went wrong
and how much he knows about our current operation,” Helen said.

Thorne
sighed, “I doubt he knows much.  He was only read in on the very early parts of the operation.”

“No matter what he
knows, he is still a security risk, and I need to know how much of our plans are out there.  I need to know if we have been compromised in anyway.  After all, the very public assassination of the new Terrain Emperor is not something I want traced back to me.  The Terrains don’t mind killing their own people, but if an outsider does it, well,” she paused.  “They have the power to bring down the Federation not to mention destroy all that we have worked for.  If this doesn’t work it will mean war, and not the war we are trying to create,” she said.

“I doubt anything has been compromised, if it had been we would not be here talking now, but
I will do my best. Anything else I can do for your highness today?”  Not giving her time to answer, “No? Good, I will contact you when I have him in custody.”  He pushed the off button on his end and the hologram blinked out.

Thorne
was pissed after the conversation.  He pushed the button on the intercom, “Major, get your ass in here now!”