The Ninth Circle

by R. M. Meluch

  Brat came racing through the grass with a huge toothy smile. He skidded to a halt and flopped over on his back in front of Glenn. He pawed at Glenn’s hands, careful of his own giant black claws.

  “Why, yes, Brat,” Glenn spoke to the upside-down fox. “This is why God put me on this planet.” She rubbed his furry belly. Brat’s tongue spilled out the side of his wide smiling mouth.

  Patrick said, “You know, babe, this really does beg the question: If you and I were created in God’s image, whose image is this?”

  Nox and his Damnati had built up a ferocious reputation in the space-ways very quickly. The bounty on the Xerxes was high, so the leopard did not need to hunt its prey. Bagheera need only flash the image of the leopard near a planet or an outpost, then the brothers could kill and loot whoever tried to cash them in.

  Space between star systems was a limitless black emptiness in which Bagheera could hide after a kill. The leopard need never come near a watering hole except to feed.

  Except that the brothers were all aware of a lack. They had known when they started down this path.

  “I want to go to a bar and talk to people I don’t have to kill,” said Faunus. “I want to shoot pool and throw darts. I want to drink with a bunch of assholes I don’t know. I want to bet on a ball game.”

  “Get laid,” said Galeo.

  “I was getting to that,” said Faunus.

  Nox caught himself nodding. He wanted a real woman. Hot Trixi Allnight was getting tired. Just like Pallas had said, you can’t go wrong with Trixi. And that was a problem. There were no surprises, no anticipation, no wobble in the throat when you bring up the subject. Trixi was a sure thing. There was no danger in the encounter, the uncertainty of a living mind, a real beating heart. He didn’t get that prickle of fear with a virtual encounter. He wanted real flesh and a new scent. He wanted to interact with unpredictable real people, not go through the motions of pandering programs that rolled out situations some designer thought a man wanted to hear or feel. Illusions in the dream boxes were near perfect. Near was another word for not.

  “Do we want to put in at a port?” Nox said.

  “I do,” said Faunus.

  “I think I do,” said Nicanor.

  “Isn’t this why we paint leopard spots in blood? So we can do this?” Leo said. “Let’s go.”

  “Find us a port, Leo,” said Nicanor. “Make it a disreputable one so we don’t run up against a swarm of police.”

  Nox put on a new image. He sliced his cheeks and colored the wounds so the scars healed into raised welts of red and blue. He dotted burns underneath the slashes and colored those yellow.

  The leopard’s last kill had netted them a space warehouse filled with interesting and useless junk. They hadn’t yet cut it loose. Nox rummaged through its strange collection for things he could use.

  He braided feathers and small bones and sharks’ teeth into his blond hair, which had grown below his ears. He tattooed a leopard paw print just below the back of his neck.

  On his upper arm, where fully fledged Roman legionaries were branded or tattooed with SPQR, Nox branded himself with a circled IX. The rest of the Circle followed suit.

  Faunus’ curls had grown wild and bushy. He donned a crown of thorns entwined with metal grapevines. He draped himself with a purple toga.

  Orissus wove wool into his hair to give himself dreadlocks. He had grown a beard. It was wide and bushy, nearly black. He braided a couple of pierced gold coins into the nest of it. He gilded one of his front teeth. He struck a pose with a machete. “How do I look?”

  “Too sweet for me,” said Nox.

  “Like hell,” said Pallas.

  Nicanor shaved his head and tattooed half his body in woad-blue Druidic bars.

  Leo put on a studded collar and arm cuffs and a headdress made of a wolf’s head and skin.

  “Should be a leopard,” said Galeo.

  “There wasn’t a leopard skin in the warehouse,” said Leo.

  “Are you a veles?” Nicanor asked.

  Once upon a time the velites were the poorest soldiers in the ancient Roman legions. The velites wore wild animal skins.

  “No. I was thinking something barbaric, like a Viking berserker,” said Leo. He had also patterned his arms with scars.

  “I thought you were an aboriginal American,” said Pallas. “They wore wolves, didn’t they, Nox?”

  “I wasn’t there,” said Nox. “But I don’t think there was ever an ancient culture that had wolves around who didn’t stick one on their heads.”

  Pallas remained unadulterated. He looked handsome and civilized in his short tunic and trousers. Only the brand of The Ninth Circle announced that he was not civilized.

  The Xerxes ditched its spaceborne warehouse and approached a space outpost that had grown up around a triple-star system.

  Bagheera did not flash its leopard holo-image on approach.

  Leo did not identify their ship when he requested dockage at the largest station in the outpost. Bagheera had dropped out of stealth mode. Anyone looking out a viewport would be able to see by the station lights that it was a leopard-spotted Xerxes.

  The station controller advised, “You may put in at dock fifty-three.” His voice hitched, not having a name to call them. He didn’t demand identification. Didn’t want it.

  “He knows who we are,” said Pallas at Leo’s shoulder.

  “I believe he does,” Leo replied, then on the com, “No. I don’t like that dock. Move that scow out of dock thirty-nine. I’ll take his spot.”

  Control hesitated. “The owner is not on board.”

  “I don’t care. Move him. Only him, and no other ship. No other ship departs before we do if their crew is addicted to breathing.”

  Station control did not actively object. He did ask, “What is your intent?”

  “Drinking, whoring, shedding a lot of heavy money,” said Faunus. “Or laying siege. Your choice.”

  The ship in dock thirty-nine pushed out from the station, cast adrift.

  Leo maneuvered Bagheera in to take its place.

  A new voice sounded over the com. Identified himself as the stationmaster, and asked, “Anything you require?”

  “We’re on holiday,” said Leo. “If anyone tries anything, we’ll go back to work.”

  “I want your stay to be as pleasant as possible. Please report any problems to me first. If you would?”

  Leo muted the com. Spoke aside to his brothers, “Obsequious toadie, isn’t he?”

  “Hey, I like him,” said Faunus. He reached over Leo’s shoulder to activate the com. “Where’s the best place to get a drink?”

  “Ambrosia Club. Fifth level.”

  The brothers belted on their personal fields. They were all aware that a PF only protects you against something coming at you fast, not a shiv slipped under the ribs. So they put on bronze cuirasses. Nicanor’s was shaped to his torso. Galeo’s was scaled. Orissus’ was segmented. Pallas wore chain mail. Nox and Leo wore synthetic mesh. Faunus went bare-chested. “It’s all just coming off anyway.” He carried brass knuckles.

  Sufficiently menacing, the pirates boarded the station. They strode onto the main concourse with an attitude that screamed: You play by our rules, we won’t hurt you. Maybe.

  They carried swords and machetes hanging from their belts. Their daggers were hidden.

  As they passed, a drunken voice called blearily after blond, fair Nox and his six tall, menacing brothers, “Hey, Snow White. Where’s your other dwarf?”

  “We killed him,” said Nox. Kept walking.

  Starting at the Ambrosia Club, the brothers were treated like underworld royalty. They overpaid for everything, so the business owners in the station warmed up to them fast.

  The lure of bounty was out there, but this bounty would be tough to earn—especially if this lot were who they seemed to be. And bounties were not easy to collect even if you managed to do the deed. You really couldn’t trust the authorities to credit your kill an
d pay up. It was much easier and immediate just to take the money these cheerful monsters were throwing around.

  Leo brought the ambassador’s portable analyzer with him from the Xerxes. He used it to test their drinks and food. The analysis ran clean every time.

  Whether from fear or fawning, no one in the station tried to poison them.

  To Galeo the cloners had given musical ability the others didn’t have. He got up on stage in one of the clubs and jammed with an acid Flamenco band. He left the stage with an autumn vintage señora who could teach a young man things.

  “Women like pirates,” Nox said, dazzled and astonished to be treated quite so well. “Who knew?”

  “Who didn’t?” said Faunus.

  A sound like drumming on a hollow log made heads lift up all over the field.

  The foxes stirred, paced, restless, ears up.

  The drummer wasn’t one of them.

  The breeze was moving the wrong way for sniffing. The drumming came from downwind.

  Noah, a big red male, frisked to his favorite hollow log and drummed something back.

  More drumming sounded from the woods downwind.

  A low humming buzzed through the pack. Foxes paced, stood up on their hind legs. Paced.

  Glenn felt the tension. It was not quite a fear. Heads lifted and lowered. Foxes called tentative yips.

  Glenn found Patrick and stood close to him, shivering. He put his arms around her. She felt his heart beating fast. He watched the trees, apprehensive, alert as a fox. Glenn asked quietly, “What’s happening?”

  “I think we have company.”

  “LEN?”

  “No.”

  Male manes stood up. All ears pointed forward.

  Glenn whispered even more quietly, “Is this bad?”

  “Not sure.” Patrick nodded ahead. “There.”

  Glenn saw them at the trees. A wide line of pointed ears like a picket fence. A row of eyes.

  The brothers of The Ninth Circle had money to burn. Had their money not been in the form of coins, they would have set fire to it for the hell of it. They were lords of the space station.

  “Sir?” a station minion approached Faunus with a diffidence bordering on groveling.

  Wallowing in a blissful half-drunken contentment, a woman on either arm, Faunus gave the man a lazy come-hither with his brass-knuckled fingers. “Approach.”

  The voice sounded like the stationmaster they had heard over the com. “I thought I should warn you, there is a ship of war approaching the outpost.”

  Faunus kept his expression neutral, not sure how to play this.

  Nox pasted on a smile and sang, “Feeding time!” He jumped up, dropping the nymph off his lap. Pretended this was jolly great news.

  Leo was wearing an earpiece. He opened a com link with the Xerxes. Listened. The Bagheera confirmed. Something heavily armed had dropped out of FTL and was approaching the outpost, on direct line with this station. The incoming plot did not announce itself or identify itself. It was not transmitting an IFF. Bagheera’s passive scanner had picked it up.

  Nox spread the word to the others with false cheer. “All fangs on deck. Fresh meat, boys!”

  Faunus dropped a caesar’s ransom in coins on the informant. “Here’s your kill fee.”

  The stationmaster bowed. “Anytime, gentlemen,” he said, happy for the fortune. Ecstatic to see them leave.

  The pirates bayed through the station corridors as if eager for a kill. They bounded to the lock where Bagheera was docked.

  Dropped the charade when alone with each other aboard their Xerxes.

  Leo flashed the leopard holo-image with their standard, their flag, and their motto lasciate ogne speranza as they departed the outpost, just to let them know, yes, we really are The Ninth Circle and you have been spared.

  Nox looked over Leo’s shoulder at the helm. “What’s after us?”

  “It’s big,” said Leo. “It’s Roman.”

  “I am not going to fire on Romans,” said Nicanor.

  “Give them their own path,” said Nox.

  “They seem to want our path,” said Leo. “And in case it makes a difference, it’s Gladiator.”

  “Merde,” said Nicanor.

  “Run like a flaming rabbit,” said Nox.

  “Flaming,” said Leo, jumping past light speed and slamming the Xerxes to threshold velocity. “And rabbiting.” He changed direction.

  Nicanor watched the plot reappear on the monitor on their stern. “He’s following us.”

  “How in the hell?” Leo breathed.

  “It’s a Roman battlefort,” said Pallas. “Imperial Intelligence can get a loc on a resonant source.”

  “But we’re not resonating,” said Leo. “Are we resonating?”

  Leo changed direction. The plot changed with them.

  “We must be,” said Nox. “Find it!” Himself tearing open equipment panels, searching for a hidden res unit. “Bagheera! Did anyone other than Nox, Pallas, Nicanor, Orissus, Faunus, Leo, or Galeo board within the last six standard hours?”

  “No one.”

  “‘No one’ as in somebody named No One, or no, negative, no persons boarded?”

  Bagheera confirmed that the only persons to board within the most recent six standard hours were Nox, Pallas, Nicanor, Orissus, Faunus, Leo, and Galeo.

  “Maybe the res source is outside,” Pallas suggested. “Someone could have planted a limpet on the hull.”

  “Bagheera wouldn’t let that happen,” said Nox.

  A dragging muddy sound churned inside the Xerxes’ engines. Red warning lights flashed all across the control console.

  “Leo! What’s happening?”

  “We have an anchor,” said Leo. “We’ve been hooked!”

  “Faster!” Orissus bellowed.

  “Faster doesn’t help,” said Leo. “We’re in a hook. No matter how fast we go, Gladiator comes along with us.”

  Both ships sped in the same direction. The Xerxes was not exactly being reeled in so much as the battlefort was reeling itself up to the Xerxes.

  Gradually the distance between them closed.

  “So we can’t pull away,” said Nicanor. “Can we push him off us?”

  “You mean shoot him?” Leo said.

  “Can we?” Nicanor asked. “Can we fire weapons?”

  Leo turned around to give Nicanor a withering glare. “It’s the Gladiator . A Xerxes is armed to repel pirates. This yacht was never designed to take on a Roman battlefort.”

  Felt a deep metal on metal clunk, hull against hull.

  “He’s here.”

  “He’s inside our inertial field. How did that happen?”

  More deep thunks shook the decks. “He’s establishing dock.”

  “No. He mustn’t.” Nox opened a general Roman com channel and spoke, “Not your battle, Gladiator! Do not attempt boarding. We will defend. Abandon all hope ye who enter!”

  “They’re pressurizing the air lock,” Leo reported.

  Nox yelled into the com, reverting to Americanese, “Goddammit, this is hell! Don’t try it!”

  I don’t want to kill Romans.

  He asked Leo, “Are they forcing the hatch?”

  “They don’t have to,” said Leo. “It’s opening for them.”

  Despairing, Nox pleaded over the com, “Wait, ah, wait for I am Death.”

  Bagheera was programmed to kill unregistered boarders.

  “Intruders in the air lock!” said Leo.

  “Alive?” Nox asked.

  “Very.”

  “No. Can’t be. What’s not happening here? Who turned the auto guard off? Bagheera! Defend!”

  The ship’s defenses failed.

  “The inner hatch is opening,” said Leo. “We are boarded.”

  Of a single mind, the brothers scrambled for machetes and charged to the air lock.

  Legionaries were marching into their antechamber. Not just legionaries. They were Praetorians arrayed in bronze armor. They were magnificent
. They were everything Nox had wanted to be. Strong, proud, noble. Roman.

  Faunus flew at them in a screaming charge, his machete raised. The first guard threw him back easily with a sweep of his shield. Faunus lost his footing, fell flat on his back on the Persian carpet.

  Nox wielded his machete toward a man’s knees. Felt the weapon turn in his hand. Clash of metal banged at his eardrums. Shouts hammered off the walls.

  We’re dead. We’re dead.

  19

  THE INTRUDERS STEPPED OUT from the trees. They were foxes. Different foxes. Glenn and Patrick knew all of their own pack individually. They had named them all.

  The two packs faced each other across a wide swathe of grass. Noses were up, smelling the air. Foxes hummed, heads bobbing. The two groups edged closer to each other by starts, stops, retreats.

  Then Conan stepped into the middle ground and went down in a smiling bow with a tail wag. Even Glenn knew that one.

  The stately male with bold gray flanks from the other side stood straight up and dropped into a return bow. And the two were off, racing in circles, each chasing each, tag and tumble.

  Tension melted into a mass frolic. Everyone sniffed everyone and batted each other with paws. They caught small animals and played tug-of-war with them until the carcass tore in half. Then the two sides traded halves.

  Patrick cocked his head, listening hard. A fissure formed down the center of his brow and stayed there. He was having trouble with something.

  “Different language?” Glenn guessed.

  Patrick hesitated, tilted his head to one side then the other. Rephrased, “Different dialect.”

  Glenn couldn’t hear the difference.

  “I’m not getting all the words,” Patrick said. “Neither is Conan.”

  The leader of the stranger pack, the grand male with gray sides, came over to Patrick and Glenn at a loping trot. His color was not the faded gray of age. It was an iron gray hue. Patrick dubbed him Graysides.

  Graysides looked hard at Patrick and Glenn. He sniffed them. Sniffed again. Glenn got the inevitable nose in the crotch. Graysides hummed something to Conan. Before Conan could reply, Patrick hummed something back.