by R. M. Meluch
Leo had a positive horror of nanites. Leo saw nanites under the bed, in every drop of water. The others ragged him mercilessly about it. Leo recovered in a moment and gave an annoyed laugh. “No, really, Cinna. What is it?”
“Nanites,” said Cinna.
“Verily?” Galeo tried to scoff.
Cinna glared at him. Cinna was always serious.
Nox, from the exam table, said, “I’m fine. See? No raving. No visions.”
Romulus’ nanites only affected Romulus. And his sister Claudia. The nanites had really slammed Claudia.
These nanites weren’t doing anything. “They screwed up,” Nox said.
“Do not underestimate the Romulii,” Cinna said. “Just because they are a bit insane, doesn’t mean they aren’t very, very clever.”
“So are we,” said Nox. A bit insane and very, very clever. “We’ll get through this.”
“I don’t think we will.”
Coming from Cinna, that was a death sentence.
“Why did the nanites target me?” Nox asked. “Is it because I wasn’t born Roman?”
“No. Because you’re the one who got who got himself scratched in the dungeon,” Cinna said.
Nox craned to look over his shoulder at the scratches on his back. Hell, they didn’t even feel infected. “Why didn’t these things just kill me immediately and be done with it?”
“That’s an interesting question,” Cinna said. “It needs answering.”
“He’s a Trojan Horse,” Leo said.
“Yes,” Cinna said. “I believe he is.”
A graveled voice sounded from the back of the group. Orissus: “Get him out of here.”
Nox said, “Maybe I’m not the right carrier. That’s why the nanites aren’t doing anything.”
“They’re doing something,” Cinna said.
“What can we do for Nox?” That was Nicanor. Stuffy martinet Nicanor. Nox suddenly loved the hell out of him.
Pallas suggested, “Numa has the resources to help Nox if he wants to.”
Graveyard snorts all around. Even Nox snorted.
“We can’t go to Caesar,” Faunus said. “We failed our mission. We didn’t kill Romulus. Merda, we didn’t even find Romulus.”
“Numa Pompeii won’t let anything with nanites near him. He’d kill all of us first,” Nicanor said. “Or, more simple, just order us to die.”
“Am I contagious?” Nox asked.
The brothers were keeping their distance. Leo was standing just about in the next solar system.
“Somewhat,” Cinna said.
“How what?” Nox yelped. “Which what!”
“I’m not sure,” Cinna said. “Those scratches are how the nanites got inside you. What they’re doing now, I don’t know.”
Cinna reached behind his back for the cables implanted in his spine. He plugged them into the base of his skull. His face relaxed. His irises, already black, looked like hollow pits. He connected the cables in his forearms, then made a last connection with a port to Bagheera’s data array.
He was only in for a moment. Then he pulled all the connections apart. He announced, “Do not kiss Nox good-bye.”
Nox took a breath of relief. “You mean I’m going to live?”
Cinna reworded for his brothers, “I mean don’t anyone kiss Nox when you say good-bye to him.”
“Oh, merda.”
They would be saying good-bye. From a distance.
Leo asked, from out in the corridor, “What are you going to do, Nox?”
Words stuck in Nox’s throat. How was he to know the answer to that? “You mean besides crying like a little girl? I HAVE NO IDEA!”
Cinna was watching the instrument readouts. He made an ominous little sound in his throat.
“What?” Nox snapped.
“Give Nox a strong sedative,” Cinna ordered Pallas.
“Tequila,” Nox requested.
“Something faster acting than that. Pallas, haste. We need to slow Nox’s pulse—fast. The nanites are circulating. And they’re oscillating.”
“I’m guessing that’s bad,” Nox said.
Cinna waited until after Pallas administered an intradermal sedative to respond. “It’s . . . ominous. Something will happen when all the oscillators sync-up.”
The sedative was already slowing Nox’s blood circulation. Nox asked fuzzily, “What happens if they sync?”
“There’s no if. Synchronization is a mathematical certainty. Each oscillator affects all the others. When two oscillators with different periods pulse at the same time, they lock together in the same rhythm and they do not fall out of step with each other. Eventually, all the oscillators will sync-up with one another. Then it’s not good. We could be in danger.”
“What about me?” said Nox.
“You?” said Cinna. “No question. You’re done.”
“Keep them from syncing!” Pallas cried. Those were words Nox tried to say, but he was too slow to form them.
“I can’t,” Cinna said. “They’re mingling in Nox’s bloodstream. They’re in different phases now, but every time one pulses in the vicinity of another, they lock step. It’s a symmetrical bond. Sooner or later all the oscillators will pulse together.”
“So what happens when they are all synced?”
“I’m pretty sure they blow up.”
“Get them out!” Nox cried.
Cinna’s hesitation was disturbing. When he spoke, it was worse. “We don’t have the equipment to extract nanites.”
Nanite extractors were exotic specialized equipment. Bagheera was created to be an ambassadorial ship and, though it was exceptionally well supplied, it didn’t carry anything like nano-synthesis equipment.
“And we have damn little time. While Nox stays on board, we are all in danger.”
Nox asked in a drugged calm, eyes swimming up to Cinna’s beautiful face, “Are we pitching Nox out the air lock, Little Brother?”
Cinna turned his opaque gaze down to Nox. “That is the plan. Yes.”
Orissus brought a life pod to the medical compartment. Nox obediently rolled into the thin-membraned sac. He thought to ask, “Why am I doing this?”
Cinna closed the sac three quarters of the way around him. He left it open over Nox’s face.
Nox’s brothers, in full containment suits with personal fields activated, carried the life pod to the air lock. Leo wasn’t one of the pallbearers. Leo opened the air lock and stepped way aside to let the bearers step through.
The brothers placed Nox in the air lock. The last person Nox saw was Pallas, who nodded encouragingly, stupidly clinging to hope. “It’ll be okay.”
The life sac closed over Nox’s face. It was dark in here. One of his brothers had given him a bottle of tequila. Nox hugged it like a teddy bear.
He felt a pressure change with the air lock shutting, sealing him off.
He knew when the air lock opened. His life pod lost contact with the deck. He heard the swish of expelled air. And that was the end of external sound. His life pod ballooned out, stretched taut.
He floated, weightless, alone with his own breathing, his own pulse, and the soft whisper of the air circulator.
There was no light. Dammit, they hadn’t given him a light. Nox floated against the smooth confines of the life pod. He touched against one side, and slowly bounced to the other side.
This isn’t a life pod. It’s a body bag.
He’d been tossed into the vastest of all oceans. The pressure was minimal. He felt puffy. Heat distributed unevenly, forming uncomfortable cooling eddies around him.
The membrane that separated him from eternity seemed so fragile. It felt as if it might tear at a thought.
How long do I have? He’d asked that before being cast outboard.
Cinna had answered. Bes
t you not know.
His heart beat slowly. That was the drugs. It was hard to panic with a heartbeat this slow. All his little oscillators were joining up and flashing together in greater numbers. He felt his own exhalation through his nostrils against his upper lip.
He would have liked some sound. Music. A voice link. Someone to talk to. They’d sent him out with a com tuned to the international emergency channel, but no one was talking to him.
He heard his sluggish pulse brush at his eardrum. Sounded like little pairs of breaths.
He smelled his own fear. Claustrophobia crept through him in the black heart of infinity.
He gave a slow-motion kick in protest.
A noise formed in his throat. It would have been a scream if he had the energy.
Bagheera lurked, dark, cloaked in perfect stealth, monitoring the tiny life pod from a distance.
Bagheera didn’t carry the facilities to clean the nanites out of Nox, but as Cinna told his brothers, “Someone out here does.”
The U.S. Space Battleship Merrimack carried a hospital bigger than that of most terrestrial cities. Merrimack had nanite scrubbers.
Normally hunting anything in space was like trying to find a needle in a pine forest. But Cinna knew where Merrimack had been a few terrestrial days ago. Merrimack gave away her position when she sent Caesar a resonant hail.
Merrimack was nearby, astronomically speaking. Not a coincidence. The Americans were hunting the same installation the brothers had just found.
With the lifepod in tow, Bagheera raced at threshold velocity to Merrimack’s last known position. Cinna gambled that he would find Merrimack still in the Indra Aleph star system, wandering in the wrong pine forest.
And here she was, cruising at sublight velocity. But even now, the space battleship was gathering in her drone scouts, perhaps making ready to leave.
Merrimack was a big plot with a distinctive shape. There was only one other spacecraft like her. Her upper and lower sails were swept back like fletching on an arrow. Merrimack’s wings were not wings for flying, though they gave an impression of flight. Merrimack had wings like a building had wings. Merrimack was as aerodynamic as a skyscraper.
The pirate ship set Nox’s life pod adrift across the Merrimack’s path with a white flag and an SOS beacon.
Cinna murmured a benediction into the void. “Good hunting.”
12 January 2448
U.S. Space Battleship Merrimack
Indra Aleph Star System
Perseid Space
Merrimack moved at sublight speed through the Indra Aleph system. Her drones had turned over a lot of rocks, searching for the one Romulus was hiding under. There was still more space to cover, but Captain Carmel was starting to think the Roman had thrown her a bone.
“I’ve been played. Dingo. Bring in the drones and get us back on our previous course.”
“Aye, aye, Captain.”
The drones were coming in when Tactical sang out, “Bogey! Directly in our path.”
“Evade.”
The pilot threw the space battleship into an immediate reverse. Merrimack’s inertial shell kept everything that was inside her from flying out through her nose. Even so, you felt the heave.
Calli absorbed the import of the word directly.
Directly in a battleship’s path signaled intent.
Calli announced over the loud com: “Battle stations.” Then to her command crew, “Tactical. Identify the object.”
“Shit!” Tactical cried.
Doubting that the object was literally excrement, Captain Carmel said with restrained irritation, “A statement with more content, if you please, Mister Vincent.”
“Object is a life pod. With a life in it.”
The com tech reported: “I have an SOS on the common band. Interstellar standard.”
The sensor tech reported: “The SOS is transmitting from the life pod, sir. The pod is showing a white flag.”
Calli felt her face go slack for an instant, astonished.
Someone had tossed a life pod in her path, like a baby in a basket.
“Who else is out here? Where is the Accipiter?”
Tactical reported, “Negative sightings.”
The sensor tech added, “No readings of spacecraft other than our drones. No sign of a shipwreck that ought to go with that life pod.”
“It must be from the Accipiter,” Dingo said.
Calli frowned. She had her arms crossed, her eyes narrowed. “The life pod is sending an SOS. We can’t ignore it.”
“It’s a trap, sir,” Dingo said.
“That is clear. What’s unclear is what to do with it. It’s a trap into which we must step. We cannot act like—” She hesitated to speak it. “—pirates.”
Dingo Ryan: “Signals!”
“Signals, aye.”
“What ship is the life pod registered to?”
Embedded in any life craft’s SOS sounder was a code that identified the life craft’s mothership.
The signals specialist ran down the code. “Life pod’s signal traces back to Bernini. That ship is no longer extant.”
“Then tell me what kind of ship Bernini was when it existed,” Calli said.
There was a pause and a hitch while the specialist ran the query twice. “Pacific Consortium make, Xerxes model. Italian-flagged ambassadorial craft. Reported stolen.”
The words hit the command deck like a grenade.
The signals specialist kept reading, “Destroyed in ’forty-seven. That was last year.”
Yes. Most of us saw that happy event.
The Xerxes class ship hadn’t been called Bernini then. The pirates who hijacked the Italian ambassadorial craft Bernini rechristened it Bagheera.
“Can’t be,” Dingo said. “We saw that ship die.”
“We did,” Calli said. As much as anyone could really see anything out here. You were dependent on sensors to tell you what you saw.
Bernini/Bagheera died a very showy death with a lot of credible witnesses to verify it, including Caesar Numa’s own patterner.
Dingo Ryan suggested, “The pirates must have ballasted their life pods sometime earlier.”
Calli shook her head. “You actually think this is a life pod that someone picked up at a surplus outlet?”
“You’re right,” Dingo backed away from his suggestion. “That doesn’t explain what this life pod is doing appearing suddenly in the middle of nowhere with a live person inside.”
“This is not the middle of nowhere,” Calli told Dingo. “It’s right in front of us.”
Dingo said, “Trap.”
Calli nodded. No question. “Trap.”
Someone behind her—had to be one of the Marine guards flanking the hatch—blurted, “Sir! What if it’s Colonel Steele?”
All personnel on deck stirred. Colonel TR Steele had been the commander of Merrimack’s half battalion of Fleet Marines. He’d vanished months ago. In fact he vanished the same day the pirate ship Bagheera died.
Calli had never realized just how vital that man was to this ship until she didn’t have him. She felt a massive amount of surprised hope rise suddenly on her command deck. Everyone wanted to believe it was Colonel Steele.
Calli felt a chill. “It’s not,” she said, dead firm.
I should shoot it. White flag be damned. That pod was registered to a pirate ship.
She could make a bomb-proof case in front of a board of inquiry as to why she blew away a lifeboat signaling an SOS and showing a white flag.
“Targeting!”
“Targeting, aye.” Targeting sounded nervous.
“Get me a lock on the life pod.”
“Lock, aye.”
“Fire Control.”
“Fire Control, aye.” Fire control sounded frightened.
“Send the trigger up here.”
“Aye, sir.” Fire control sounded relieved. “You have the trigger, sir.”
Calli regarded the light on her console, indicating the armed trigger. The safety was on. For now. “Com.”
“Com, aye.”
“Get me on the universal human distress channel.”
“Channel open, aye. On your console, Captain.”
Captain Carmel spoke, “Inhabitant of the life pod, identify yourself.”
She listened to a long stretch of dead silence. Then a sluggish voice came back in Americanese, “Pirate, ma’am.”
A few sharp intakes of breath sounded around the close-packed stations on deck.
Calli returned, “Don’t ma’am me, I’m not your mama.”
Not too articulate, the voice went on, “I know who you are, Empress Calli.”
“Then you know I don’t need to honor a white flag for a pirate. How stoned are you to identify yourself as a pirate?”
“I’m already dead, ma’am.”
Calli looked to the sensor specialist to confirm the dead status. The young man tilted his hand one way then the other to say really close.
“Your pod is failing,” Calli said into the com.
“I noticed that,” the voice returned, sluggishly dry. “I am also riddled with nanites. My exploding nanites are programmed to go off when my oscillating nanites synchronize. Something like that.”
Calli and Dingo exchanged silent stares.
Dingo spoke into the com, “Have your own lot get you out of your fix, pirate.”
The pirate’s diction was getting sloppier, “Don’ have the right equipment. Can spot ’em. Can’t get ’em out. You’re the only ship might could maybe help me. My name used to be John Farragut.”
Calli reeled away from the com as if she’d been spat in the face.
The voice from the com slurred onward, “An’ I’ve seen Adamas.”
Calli motioned toward the com tech, her finger slicing across her throat.
“We’re mute, sir,” said the com tech.
“Scan! Scan everything!” Calli ordered aloud. “Tactical! Is there anything else out there?”
“Negative spacecraft,” Tactical came back. “Unless it’s a Xerxes. And I will bet all our lives there is a Xerxes very close to us right now.”
