The Myriad: Tour of the Merrimack #1

by R. M. Meluch

Jose Maria fumbled on the guitar strings, stopped playing. “Augustus, you surprise me. Are you being facetious or do you believe in God?”

  “For me to suppose myself the pinnacle of intelligence in existence would be a bit parochial, not to mention arrogant.”

  “But you are arrogant,” said Farragut.

  “I am also here. I have faith that Donner will fail to change the history of the universe.”

  “Because he must?”

  “Because he did. You are more arrogant than I, John Farragut. You just wear it well.”

  “You’re awfully sure of yourself when we’re talking about things for which there is no pattern.”

  “Of course there is a pattern. It’s called the universe.”

  “And there is a twenty-billion-year-old piece of lead 208 that says there is a hole in the big pattern,” Farragut countered. “Donner is importing into the past elements that don’t yet exist.”

  “He is, John? You mean he did. It’s done. Whatever damage he will do is done—done ten billion years ago.”

  “Done once implies it can be done again. Your course of action appears to entail closing our eyes, crossing our fingers and hoping. Never an option I was comfortable with.”

  “I am not here to give you comfort.” Augustus closed his eye.

  “You said Donner was courting a paradox and must be stopped.”

  Augustus spoke to the insides of his eyelids, “I believe I overreacted. The danger is all to the Myriad. The Myriad is collapsing, nothing more. The Myriad is not a Roman province; so I do not care. The LEN claimed jurisdiction; let the LEN save it. For Donner’s courtship with paradox, what is the effect of paradox? Ever seen one? I shall file paradoxes away with purple cows and not give them another thought.” And he was soon snoring.

  Upon leaving the torpedo bay, Farragut conferred alone with Don Cordillera. “What do you think?”

  “He’s wrong.”

  “A patterner? Wrong?”

  If anyone could tell a patterner he was mistaken, it would be Jose Maria Cordillera.

  “I know. In my heart. And so do you, young captain. His argument that he has never seen a paradox, therefore they do not exist, is feeble. Unawareness is not an argument. The dead are unaware. Though it is the knowing that is the danger.”

  “You lost me.”

  “Do you know the tale of Adam and Eve in the Garden?”

  People of the Book were become less and less common. But Farragut answered, “My dad still brings a Bible into his courtroom. And uses a Colt forty-five for a gavel.”

  “Then you know this story. It is the knowing, the knowing that changes everything. From the moment you know, return to the Garden is impossible.”

  “And you’re still losing me.”

  “Once you become aware of the light, you move toward it. Knowing that FTL is possible, the beings on Origin will try to achieve it. Nothing will stop them. The knowing of the possibility makes the achieving imperative. They cannot do as they would have done in ignorance. If Donner tells them of us, we will have thrown an apple back ten billion years. I believe we must get back to the Myriad. No time to spare.”

  “I’m with you.” And into his com, “Calli, best speed.”

  “Already at it, Captain.”

  “Then make it better.”

  And then the captain fell uncharacteristically silent, introspective. Not the ground-down sadness of all the deaths. Rather a wistfulness. “Captain Farragut, I sense you are no longer with me. You are perhaps traveling down the road not taken?”

  Farragut smiled. Direct hit. Looked a little embarrassed. “It gets the mind running that way, doesn’t it?”

  “It is not like you to second-guess yourself. The captain’s sights are forever forward. You do not spend your life looking back.”

  “For her, I do.”

  “Ah. A woman. I begin to see.” The older man smiled indulgently. “All rules disappear.”

  “Ever think, God, if I could only do it again, I’d do things different?”

  Jose Maria shook his head. “Do not we all? Tell me what you would do that you did not.”

  “In an alternate life, I married Maryann.”

  Jose Maria’s smile was bright white in his olive-bronze face. “Maryann. You should hear how that common name becomes so rare and exotic and precious in your voice. How it sings. Maryann.”

  “My first love. My only love, really.”

  “And so why did you not marry Maryann the first time around?”

  “She’s a fragile soul. I knew I wouldn’t be there for her. I married a tougher gal, who could do without me. And she did.” His mouth tightened into a chagrined line. “Maryann was sweet. Pretty. Gentle. Funny.”

  “Did she marry another?”

  “Not last I looked. I try not to look.”

  “What are you afraid of?”

  “That she found someone. That she didn’t. I’m still not in any position to do anything about it. Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve seen Earth?”

  “That is a choice, young Captain. I think you could find your way home again for a pretty, gentle, sweet, funny wife.”

  “Afraid she still loves me. We get married. I go back to war and get eaten by a gorgon. And where does that leave Maryann?”

  “Alone. As you left her the first time. Except this time, she knows she was loved.”

  Blue eyes turned up to the overhead. “Ah, shit, Jose Maria. Next chance. As soon as we get out of this one. I’m going home and stealing that gal away from whoever’s got her.”

  Kerry toyed with the short springy hairs of Steele’s chest. Trapped a few golden coils between her fingers. “I’m coming back as a blonde in my next life,” she said.

  The blond meadow heaved under her hand with Steele’s snort. He didn’t open his eyes. “Just don’t do it in this life. I like your hair.”

  Kerry grinned, parked her chin on his chest, peered across the meadow to his face. He looked younger with his eyes shut, all his facial muscles relaxed.

  The two lay in a pleasantly tired tangle, enjoying the press of damp skin. Steele’s heart thudded slowly under her chin. Sounds from the rest of the ship were noisily peaceful, engines, voices, the whap of balls on the squash court—probably Farragut because there was a whole lot of spectator noise. Men hooting like a baboon troop. There were always plenty of side bets when the captain was on the court, lots of money on the table, lucky pieces changing hands, someone drinking out of a shoe. Voices rose expectantly, fell away laughing. All was right aboard Merrimack.

  Except that Flight Sergeant Blue was sleeping with her CO. And that seemed right, too, at the moment.

  The ship’s spirits had bounced after the memorial service for the dead. John Farragut had been amazing. Could keep his dignity in tears. He sent their comrades on their way with words of glory, words for each by name. The service took four hours. You didn’t notice the time passing. He had you laughing and crying. And at the end of it, Merrimack felt whole.

  “Everybody’s talking about what they’d do differently. You know, if we can go back in time and change what we did.”

  Steele’s eyes stayed shut. Voice sleepy. Not so much interested in what was being said as the simple act of talking to her. “So what are you thinking of changing, Marine? And it better not be your hair.”

  “I’d tell Dak not to turn his back on that gorgon. I’d tell Cowboy not to be such a dick and just fly his Swift forward.”

  That opened his eyes. “You would bring him back to life?”

  “Yeah. So I could kick his balls inboard. I’ll never get to do that now. That lying, cheating, rat bastard. How ’bout you?”

  “How ’bout me what?” He was not going to wish Cowboy back for any reason. Liked Cowboy fine as he was. Dead.

  “What would you do different?”

  He grunted, didn’t answer.

  Kerry changed topic, quick as a butterfly changing flowers. “Did that count as one furball or two?”

&nbs
p; “Did what count? Those two swarms we just hit? That was two. Why?”

  Kerry gave a merry wiggle against him. “I just ticked over lucky thirteen.”

  Thirteen. The magic number of hand-to-hand encounters with the Hive, after which your survival rate takes an enormous leap.

  Steele snugged her closer to him. “Good. Don’t get careless.”

  “Yes, sir.” Kissed him. “How many have you been in?”

  “How many what?”

  “Furballs.”

  “Thirty. Forty. I don’t know.”

  “Well, hell, Thomas! You’re gonna live forever.”

  “Workin’ on it.”

  She suddenly remembered, and for the first time understood, one of the xenos trying to explain mocking-birds to her. That the boy mockingbird with the most stolen songs gets the girl. Because if he can sing the song of a hawk, it means he’s met the hawk and lived to tell about it.

  She loved Thomas Ryder Steele for all his hawk songs.

  Then he was asking her, “Got any interest in propulsion systems?”

  “Me?”

  “You see anybody else here?”

  “I’m too dumb. Why?”

  “You’re not dumb, Kerry Blue. Navvies lost most of their propulsion department.”

  Marines were pretty much interchangeable. They all had the same basic head-bashing, straight-shooting skill sets. They’d all been trained in twenty-one different scenarios, and were making up more all the time. On top of that, Kerry was a Swift pilot. But if she pranged, they’d just bring another up from the Battery.

  Navvies, on the other hand, navvies were smart. They were all excessively educated specialists. They held lofty-sounding ranks, but most of ’em were outside the chain of command. Civilians in uniform—that’s what they were. But they knew things. They were engineers.

  Merrimack was a long way from home, and there were no replacement engineers to be taken out of a box somewhere on board. If they wanted a trained engineer, they had to haul all the way back to Fort Ike and put in a request, or else they had to educate one right here.

  “Sounds like what Reg wants,” said Kerry. Reg Monroe had only ever enlisted so she could go to college.

  “I already got Monroe.” The bodies hadn’t been cold when Colonel Steele was surrendering Reg to the navvies. “I’m talking about you here.”

  She gushed a giggle. “You see me as a navvy?”

  No. He didn’t. But, “Like to get you out of my chain of command. Think you could be interested in engineering?”

  “I’m a Marine. Why don’t you do it?”

  “Too dumb,” said Steele.

  “Then I guess we’re screwed.” Kerry laid her cheek to his chest.

  He closed his eyes again, ran his hand down her smooth back. “Yeah.”

  Shrieks cheered from somewhere in the ship. A resounding hoo ra! together with a falling groan. Taunts and laughter. Steele guessed the squash game was over.

  Kerry lifted her head at the sounds. “Hey. We beat Farragut.”

  The chant took form: “Serge! Serge! Serge!” Serge Olivero. Big ox of a gunner from the Battery. Any time the Fleet Marines beat Navy was cause for celebration. And winning against Captain Farragut, well that was cause for a near riot.

  After a while Kerry asked again, “What would you do different. If you could go back in time?”

  “Nothing,” Steele said.

  “No, really,” she coaxed. “Would you . . .” she broke off, afraid to finish. Touched his face as if fearing it would vanish. “Us. Would you . . . not . . . if you had it to do again?”

  He dropped his chin to his chest, the better to glare at her.

  Her hand retreated. “I just get the idea you don’t think this is the brightest idea you ever had.”

  He coiled her hair around his big hand, imprisoning her head in his grip. Growled at her. “You think I’d have come this way if I had a choice? You’re with me, Marine, no matter where this goes. So just get used to it.”

  She nipped his scowling lips. “Yes, sir.”

  As Merrimack approached the Arran system within the Myriad, the ship’s low band sensors picked up the LEN’s giant spherical ship in orbit around the planet, with Merrimack’s two space patrol torpedo boats near it at the Trojan points.

  The LEN sent a message demanding John Farragut’s presence aboard Woodland Serenity immediately.

  “Captain!” the tac specialist started in alarm. “The SPT boats are transmitting the wrong IFF!”

  His report silenced all chatter in the control room and brought Farragut to the tactical station. “So what are they sending?”

  “There’s an embedded code within the normal recognition signals. It’s—” Jeffrey paused, double-checking, nodded, finished, “Yeah. It’s code beta twelve.”

  Farragut looked to his control room officers. “What’s beta twelve?” Emergency code, he knew that much. But beta twelve was not one he had ever used in his seventeen-year career.

  “Hostage situation, sir.”

  “Oh, for Jesus,” Farragut breathed. “Mister Carmel!”

  Calli took up the loud com: “Battle stations.”

  15

  LIGHTS FLASHED. The klaxon blared.

  Colonel Steele reported to the control room. Squeaky clean and flush red. His Marines were at their stations, the Battery at their gun blisters; the Wing sitting in their cockpits in the drop decks.

  “What’s the LEN ship transmitting?” Farragut demanded.

  “Normal IFF. The LEN doesn’t seem to see the problem.”

  “Strongly suggests that they are the problem,” said Farragut. Looked to his officers for confirmation. “Anyone?”

  “That would be my take on it, Captain,” Calli concurred.

  “Mr. Steele?”

  “I agree, sir. Never trusted ’em.”

  And the LEN wanted Farragut aboard their ship immediately.

  “TR, let’s see how clean your dogs got their gun barrels. Open all ports. Uncap all guns. Load torpedo tubes. Mr. Carmel, bring us in angry.”

  Steele saw to the running out of the guns, as Calli barked orders to the helm and the engine room.

  When Merrimack closed within one light-minute, Farragut moved to the com tech’s station to hail his SPT boats on a tight beam. “SPT 1, SPT 1, SPT 1. Merrimack. Glenn, this is John Farragut. Respond.”

  Listened to dead air. Repeated the hail. More dead air. Then, finally, a voice. Not Glenn’s, on SPT 1’s tight beam: “This is Ambassador Aghani, LEN envoy. You are showing guns, Merrimack. May I assist you, Captain Farragut?”

  Farragut clicked off the caller, demanded of the com tech, “Where’s that signal coming from?”

  “SPT 1, sir.”

  “Aghani’s on my Spit boat?”

  “Affirmative, sir.”

  Anger coalesced in John Farragut’s face. You heard it in his breathing. He began to get an idea of the nature of this hostage situation.

  Farragut clicked the caller on. “Aghani, this is a military channel. Put Captain Hamilton on the caller.”

  Until the lieutenant commander was back aboard Merrimack, Glenn Hamilton was captain of her Spit boat.

  “Mrs. Hamilton is not available. May I help you, Captain Farragut?”

  Farragut did not ask anything more. Shut the caller off. Too white hot angry even to sound angry, he ordered softly, “Mr. Carmel. Start shooting.”

  “Fire Control. Wake up five starsparrows,” Calli ordered. “Plot some near misses around the LEN vessel Woodland Serenity.”

  “Fire Control here. How ‘near’ a miss, sir?”

  Calli glanced to Farragut who answered, “Near enough they can hear the birds. And slow enough for them to see them coming.”

  “Loads, sir?”

  “Shipkillers.”

  “Shipkillers, aye. Firing solution plotted. Fire Control standing by.”

  The XO looked to the captain. At his nod, Calli ordered, “Fire shipkillers.”

  “Fire Co
ntrol, aye. Shipkillers away.”

  Farragut hailed Woodland Serenity again. “Mr. Aghani, put Captain Hamilton on the caller.”

  “Captain Farragut,” Aghani began condescendingly, broke off in a squawk, “What are you doing!”

  Shipkillers ringed the LEN ship. The LEN sphere hung trapped into stillness like a knife thrower’s assistant, death brushing all sides.

  “I am attempting to establish contact with my officer. You must believe I will do so, no matter your cost.” Farragut shut off the caller. To his XO: “Status.”

  “Star Sparrows clear of Woodland Serenity. Not quite a clean miss, sir. We ticked a solar vane. Warheads still live.”

  “Bring ’em back for another pass.”

  “Fire Control.”

  “Fire Control, aye.”

  “Bring the Star Sparrows about, Davy. Do it again.”

  “Fire Control, aye.”

  As the missiles turned a one-eighty, the com tech reported, “Sir, it’s Woodland Serenity. They are speaking in tongues. Demanding to talk to you.”

  The missiles headed back for another ringing pass around Woodland Serenity.

  The com tech yanked off his headset. Reported: “Sir. They are screaming.”

  Farragut turned to the tactical specialist. “Is Woodland Serenity showing arms?”

  “No, sir.”

  “I hope they don’t think I’m bluffing.”

  Colonel Steele assured him, “The Mack does not look like she’s bluffing. They know they can’t take us.”

  “They don’t have much to bring to bear, Captain,” said Tactical. “Couple asteroid sweepers.”

  “Are they showing?”

  “No, sir.”

  Fire control reported the Star Sparrows clear of Woodland Serenity.

  Calli turned to Farragut. “Sir?” Awaited direction.

  Farragut took up the caller. “SPT 1. SPT 1. SPT 1. This is Merrimack. Captain Hamilton, respond.”

  Aghani’s voice again, indignant. “If Woodland Serenity ’s auto avoidance had reacted to one of those missiles and twitched it into the path of another, you would have the murder of five hundred civilian lives to answer for!”

  “They’re not dead, though, are they?” Farragut replied.

  “More’s the pity.” A murmur from behind.