The Myriad: Tour of the Merrimack #1

by R. M. Meluch

  “How did you escape?” Farragut asked.

  Glenn started, stopped, a conspiratorial gleam in her eyes. She asked, “John, do you know how to get a ferret into a bag?”

  “Is this a joke?”

  “It’s kind of funny, but no, it’s God’s truth.”

  “Okay. How do you get a ferret into a bag.”

  “You open the bag and the ferret climbs right in.”

  “And that works?”

  “Ninety-nine times out of ninety-nine,” said Glenn, hand over her heart.

  “You opened a bag and the LEN walked in?” Farragut asked, not quite following.

  “Just about. And it’s pretty much how they caught me first, actually. They had a cell rigged with hologram projectors so the cell looked like a corridor. They opened the hatch for me, and I walked right in. Hit the wall. They turned off the projectors and locked me in.

  “But here’s the ferret-brained part. They left the projectors in there. I rerouted the power from the overhead light to the projectors and turned them back on.”

  “And the hologram corridor was narrower than the real cell,” Farragut guessed.

  “Yes it was. About this much narrower.” Glenn set down her burger to hold one palm flat against her back, the other palm flat across her breasts. “Now, John,” she quickly retrieved her food. “If you were holding someone prisoner and you opened her cell and saw an empty holographic corridor instead of a cell, what would you think?”

  “I’d look for a Hamster in the wall.”

  “And you wouldn’t walk right in with a stunner in your thigh holster! Zap. Zap. I’m free. I ran back to the displacement chamber—not locked, not guarded, didn’t have to zap anyone else. Displaced here. That’s about as far as I got. But I was working on it.” She took a big bite.

  The ground murmured. The ponds rippled. Fish jumped from the water. Birds took flight.

  Farragut started like an alert dog, but Glenn kept eating. “That happens all the time here.” She caught tomato juice dripping down her chin. “Most people sleep outdoors.”

  Even with the tremors, it was pleasant here. Warm. Sitting in the alien grass with a pretty woman under the brilliant, starry sky.

  But sense of urgency nagged like a bad tooth. Farragut asked, “What about Donner? Did you deliver my warning about using the kzachin?”

  “Yes, sir. I did accomplish that much of my mission.”

  “How did he receive it?”

  “Badly.” She put down half of her burger. Heaved a sigh, stuffed. “I believe Donner fully understood everything I told him. Too fully, really. He did not agree to withhold information from Origin.”

  “Then he’s risking paradox.”

  “Yes, sir. He is.”

  “Did you explain that to him? He’s a reasonable being.”

  “How reasonable can anyone be when he learns his home world—the cradle of his kind—is a dead ball of dust and he must never go back to see it alive again? He made all the connections, John. He figured out that a billions-year-old civilization ought to have lots of starfaring descendants by now—especially the way his people breed. And he cares. He’s a dictator—he’s a good one. How do you tell him he must not change the complete death of his homeland?”

  Farragut rose. “I’ll tell him. Now. You feeling up to it, Lieutenant Commander?”

  “Yes, sir.” She cleaned off her hands, stood up. She cautioned, “It’s not going to turn him, sir.”

  “Probably not.” He could not ignore the human element in human history—and Donner was human enough. Whether on a personal level or on the species level, everyone wanted to live. Your name, your children, your world, your self, your love. And hates and jealousies and sorrows were all human and all part of history, the drops of water that wear the canyon into the mountain. Human tears counted.

  Into his link Farragut sent shore to ship, “Colonel Steele.”

  Augustus muttered, “We need the flattop for this?”

  Farragut paused to answer Augustus. “Say a super-race comes along and tells us we must not use the Fort Ike shotgun ever again, so it’s going to take us a year to get back to Earth—or to Palatine—with only FTL normal. What is the proper response to an edict like that?”

  “A one-digit salute?” Hamster suggested.

  “I would expect something with more lead content,” said Farragut. And into his link, “Mr. Steele, a Marine guard if you will.”

  Dr. Patrick Hamilton had been sedated since the second swarm battle, in which he had been parted from his right foot. A bit of a crybaby, Patrick Hamilton did not want to endure the pain and ick factor involved in reattaching his appendage while conscious.

  When finally he rose from his sick bay cot, he was dismayed to learn that, though the ship was in orbit around Arra, he was not permitted to displace to the surface to try out his reconnected foot in the starshine on the green Arran meadows.

  Since Merrimack was back in the Myriad, Patrick figured that Glenn must be back on board. And since it was mid watch, his wife would be OOD. Dr. Pat would just see who was allowed to go where.

  As he made his way to the control room, people looked at him as if he’d grown four eyes—or an extra foot. They whispered behind his back, glanced away when he turned round.

  He overhead one furtive exchange: “That’s Hamster’s husband.”

  “Oh. Him?”

  Patrick Hamilton arrived at the control room to find Commander Calli Carmel on watch. He double-checked his chron. It was definitely the Hamster watch. “Where’s Glenn?”

  The whole control room turned around to stare. More of those weird looks. Embarrassed. Pained.

  Finally someone clued him in: While you were sedated, your wife was kidnapped by the LEN, escaped, was presumed killed in a capture attempt, but turned up alive on the planet Arra.

  “Oh, is that all?” Patrick said, customarily flippant. Wondered when someone had intended to wake him up to let him know. “Where is she now?”

  “Planetside with Captain Farragut.”

  Someone hissed the speaker quiet, as if he’d said something he shouldn’t. Patrick Hamilton glanced at all the eyes that quickly averted in numbing silence.

  Feeling as if he was waking up much later than he had thought, Patrick Hamilton asked, “Is there something else I should know . . . ?”

  Donner had a monitor screen illuminated in his audience hall, the screen filled with Merrimack’s mauled hulk.

  The Archon turned from the horrific image to Captain Farragut. “You found your monsters.”

  “We did,” said Farragut, then told Donner in the most exigent terms he could find in the Myriadian language that Donner must not—must not—go to Origin ever again. Must not even let the beings of Origin learn of the existence of starfaring peoples this side of the kzachin or of the possibility of true FTL travel. “You cannot tell them anything about us. It will change history.”

  “How simply you can say so.” Donner’s tone was tempered, but his mane stood up along his spine in fighting set. “It is not your world. It is not your history.”

  “It is my now and you must not change it,” said Farragut.

  “Very well.”

  The dictator’s acquiescence took them all by surprise, left Farragut off balance. He had been braced for a storm. Got instead a quick easy okay. Captain Farragut looked to Colonel Augustus and Lieutenant Colonel Steele to make sure he had not mistranslated Donner’s answer.

  And to their startled stares, Donner insisted, “If I must, I must.”

  Steele breathed a sudden obscenity. Farragut turned sharply. Found Augustus nodding in agreement with the Marine’s comment. Augustus spoke in English, (“Even the musclehead figured that one out.”)

  Farragut caught on. (“Donner already sent the message.”)

  (“Weeks ago,”) Augustus guessed. (“Probably the moment we arrived in the Myriad.”)

  (“Then it’s all done,”) said Steele. (“It’s all over and nothing happened.”)
<
br />   (“Maybe not,”) said Farragut. Hoped so. But would not bet on it. (“It’s not like he could just displace a ship to the Rim gate. It would take an Arran ship a while to travel from Arra to the kzachin that leads to Origin.”)

  (“How long of a while?”) Steele directed that to Augustus.

  A hint of a smile lurked in Augustus’ dark eyes. Black humor there. (“Weeks.”)

  Farragut’s heart sped. (“Augustus! Assume Donner sent a messenger ship to Origin when we first appeared—Do we still have time to stop that messenger?”)

  (“I’m not plugged in, so I can’t run the numbers, but given that Donner is stalling us with this agreeable bullshit, I would have to say yes.”)

  All eyes returned to Donner. Though the Archon could not understand their words, he must have guessed what they were saying, because he now held a projectile weapon trained on John Farragut’s head.

  Farragut’s posture deflated a little with an impatient sigh. Never appreciated that view of a firearm. He implored, “Donner, logic dictates—”

  “No, Captain Farragut. I dictate.”

  The Archon gave his weapon a small lift to draw attention to it. “Primitive enough by your standards, but it’s lethal enough for my purposes.”

  Of course Donner would not be able to see the energy wall Colonel Steele had activated, LD to LD. Charged with security, Steele had been entirely ready for this reaction. Donner might detect only the slightest refraction in the air between him and his target. The greater giveaway was Farragut’s lack of concern at having a weapon pointed at his face.

  Farragut’s steady gaze met the eyes behind the gun. “What is your purpose, Archon?”

  “To save my home world. This planet—Xi, you call it. Lieutenant Commander Glenn Hamilton tells me it is Origin and it is dead. Tell me, what killed my world?”

  “Any number of natural forces could have done it,” said Farragut. “Entropy is a basic condition of the universe. My home world will be dead in ten billion years.”

  Donner spoke thickly, deeply felt. “But your descendants will not be dead. Your people travel far. I know my people did not go elsewhere. They have not the means. And if I sent them heavy elements with which to build thousands of ships, then you would find something of them still on this planet Xi, even after ten billion ‘years.’ Something left besides the back of a reliquary . . .” He broke off with a quaver in the voice, a glistening in the coal-black eyes.

  Myriadians cry. Human tears.

  Donner snarled, “It means I did not help them. I did not help them yet. I see there is a God, and God sent you to show me my error. I am destined to save them. I will change my history.”

  Farragut suppressed a groan.

  The heavy air shimmered with sound. A chorus of cricking, the fluttering of myriad wings, the scraping of serrate legs. The bluster of swarms of insectoid life.

  Farragut shivered in the Arran heat, his hair pricking up like Donner’s mane at the sound, the sound that stirred only the most elemental dread.

  And saw everywhere—from the sponge bushes, from the lake, from the vine trees and coral gardens, from the water and the rock faces—insects rising.

  “Hive sign!”

  16

  DONNER FROWNED, perplexed. Not accustomed to losing the attention of those he held at gunpoint. Might as well be holding a toy for all the regard it won him.

  Captain Farragut yelled into the back of his hand, (“Calli. We have Hive sign. What’ve you got?”)

  (“Nothing. Negative Hive sign. We are quiet. Are you sure it’s not another mimic?”)

  “Dead sure. This planet is being pinged.”

  The Hive often sent scouts ahead, which always betrayed their presence this way. The scouts’ signals back to the Overmind set the local insectoid life to panic. With a being as unified as the Hive, in which the Overmind had instantaneous knowledge of every one of its cells, the concept of stealth was so alien to the Hive as never to occur to it. There were no sneak attacks.

  Even Donner, who had never witnessed Hive sign, was instinctively disturbed by the sight of Arran creatures swarming and flapping and creeping out of the ground.

  (“They haven’t found the ship yet. We’re all quiet here,”) Calli sent. (“Do you want some bugs down there for confirmation?”)

  (“Do it.”)

  In moments, a terrarium of telltales blasted into existence on an LD. Immediately ants poured out of their tunnels and pawed at their glass confines.

  (“Hive sign confirmed,”) Farragut reported.

  Donner stared at the shiny black bodies beetling out of the sand. Listened to the eerie noise all around them. Spoke to Farragut, “Your monsters. They are here.”

  “They’re not here quite yet,” said Farragut. “That’s the point singer—somewhere on planet. He’s calling the monsters to dinner. (Calli! Break res silence. Gimme a res scan. Get an idea who this creep is singing to. Any swarms in the immediate neighborhood?”)

  (“Initiating scan.”) And, quickly, (“Got ’em. Two hundred light-years out.”)

  (“ETA?”)

  (“Five—whoa. Stand by. We have another sighting, closer.”)

  (“Where?”)

  (“Stand by. We’ve got another hit. Another. They are waking up on all sides. This stellar neighborhood is lousy with dormant swarms. They’re not dormant anymore.”) She read off multiple plots, converging on the Myriad. (“Nearest swarm so far is one month out.”)

  The Overmind woke its dormant swarms in proportion to the size of the bait.

  “You will drive away these monsters you have summoned,” Donner commanded.

  Eyes of alien blue told Donner he couldn’t. If John Farragut wanted to, if it were Earth itself, he could not. One month was not enough time for Merrimack to reach Fort Eisenhower for a refit, reload, reman. With five engines, dwindling projectiles, nine-tenths of a crew, and great holes in her physical hull, the Mack could not do battle again.

  “Donner, you cannot bring your people here from Origin. You’ll all be eaten alive.”

  “It’s too late. I told them to come.”

  (“Oh, for Jesus. Calli, get us out of here. Displace now.”)

  The look of betrayal on Donner’s face branded his memory as he vanished from Arra. He honestly believed he would never forget it.

  John Farragut hit the deck barking. Ordered a res message be sent to Earth. Update the Joint Chiefs of our—oh, for Jesus—our status.

  Ordered a res message to Fort Ike. Tell ’em we’re coming in hot. Give ’em our laundry list.

  Ordered displacement of the LEN detainees back to Woodland Serenity. Advised the LEN they would have a rescue operation on their hands in one month.

  Ordered a computation: Given the transit times between kzachin, what was the best time a vessel dispatched from Arra could arrive at the Rim gate at the Myriad’s perimeter?

  “Best time?” young Jeffrey, manning the tactical station, said. “Best time is through a connecting kzachin in the Centro system. If the Arran messenger left Arran space the moment that Merrimack’s first image was seen on Arra and didn’t stop at Centro, Donner’s messenger ship could be closing on the Rim gate now.”

  “Ping the Rim gate.”

  The sensor technician executed a resonant sounding of the vicinity surrounding the Rim gate and its connecting kzachin. Reported: “No vessels in transit between the kzachin connecting Arra to the Rim and the kzachin that leads to Origin.”

  Which was not to say a messenger ship could not pop out of the connecting kzachin at any moment, because there was no way of knowing anything about a ship inside a kzachin.

  Farragut leaned over the stellar plot. “So if the Arran messenger were to come out of that kzachin right now,” he pointed at the kzachin that connected Centro to the edge of Myriad. “How long would it take him to get from there to the Rim gate—the kzachin that goes to Origin?”

  “That would depend on how fast he’s traveling, sir. We haven’t seen Myriadian ships do mu
ch better than eighty percent c. Eighty percent c gives him a minimum transit time of two hours.”

  “Then get us to the Rim right now. We’re going to head him off.”

  “We’re a day and a half from the Rim, best speed,” Calli reminded him. “Unless it took Donner a day and a half to figure out what he was going to say and launch that messenger, or the messenger stopped off at Centro, he’ll be coming out of that connecting kzachin any time now. We’ve already lost this race.”

  “The messenger has not reached the Rim gate,” Farragut said, like a command. “Get me there first.”

  Racing toward the edge of the Myriad took Merrimack within five light-years of the planet Centro. In passing, Merrimack launched an SPT boat and a squadron of Swifts in a flying drop. The Marines had orders to proceed to the planet in silent mode and discover whether Centro was showing Hive sign or if the world lay still hidden from the Hive’s ravenous eye. The Marines were also charged with repulsing any space traffic which might try to make the local connection to the Rim gate. Though most of the company suspected that Echo Flight had already seen the messenger during early recon sortie.

  Steele suggested in parting that if the planet Centro lay dark, it could yet serve in the coming siege. Steele would look for a suitable base while there. But Farragut told him, “One battle at a time, TR. We lose this one, the rest of them won’t matter.”

  “Augustus—” Farragut blew into the torpedo storage bay. “I have to ask you to plug in. I’m going to need precise calculations coming up here, and I can’t afford to overlook any variables.”

  Augustus turned slowly, lowered, and lifted his lids slowly. “If that is a request, the answer is no. How bad do you want it?”

  “It’s an order,” Farragut rephrased. He looked at Augustus, really looked at him only now, taking in his tired, sour expression, the whole of his makeshift quarters—the sword propped, hilt-down, point angled up at midriff height. Farragut’s glance shifted uneasily from sword, to Roman, and back. “You look like you’re fixing to fall on that.”

  “Not now. Eventually. However—” Augustus plucked up the sword in disgust. “This is not the tool for the job.” Tossed it aside. “It ought to be longer and straighter. This is a gorgon slicer.”