The Ninth Circle

by R. M. Meluch

  Then Glenn and Patrick turned back, still sticky and reeking of tomato pumpkin.

  Glenn whispered, “Is anyone back at camp studying those?”

  “Not me,” said Patrick. “I’m a xenolinguist, and I don’t want to talk to those! They’re not local. They’re not even Zoen. Those things are extraplanetary.”

  “How can you know that?” Glenn said. Sounded like she believed him. She just didn’t know why.

  “I feel it in my DNA.”

  20

  IMMEDIATELY UPON GLENN and Patrick’s return to the expedition camp, Director Izrael Benet had the two thrown into detention in a cargo container. Manny the pilot and Poul Vrba performed the actually throwing. Glenn might have put up a better fight. She just couldn’t believe what was happening.

  The container was built for transporting livestock so it was insulated and ventilated and equipped with a water supply and a drain. A portable crapper had been moved in, anticipating human inhabitants. There was also a mattress and some prepacked food, so no one needed to open the container to push meals in. These quarters had been ready and waiting for their return.

  Patrick called out through the vents to anyone within earshot, warning them of the extraplanetary aliens in the highlands.

  Glenn drew her splinter gun from under her jacket.

  “We’re shooting our way out?” Patrick asked.

  “Don’t be a crack,” said Glenn. She sat on the floor and disassembled her weapon. “I’m not sure I got all the pumpkin guts out.”

  They had rinsed off in the stream in the dark on their trek back here but hadn’t taken time for a proper bath.

  “You look pissed.”

  “Aren’t you?” Glenn asked, calm.

  “Yes. I don’t have a gun.”

  Glenn was not about to use her gun on the LEN, or even to brandish it. She was not the bloodthirsty goon the LEN members thought she was.

  “I’m not going to shoot anyone,” said Glenn. “I’m pressing charges when we get out of here.”

  Benet had violated their most basic international right of freedom.

  Patrick said, “You know that Izzy will just say he is protecting the environment.”

  “He can’t even claim that—given that he caught us in the act of returning to camp. You know if we were back on Earth on a university campus, no dean or project director would ever conceive of incarcerating people.”

  Patrick considered this, said at last, “It would depend on the department.”

  The space battleship Merrimack sublighted at the edge of the Zoen star system.

  “Engineering,” Calli sent over the com.

  “Engineering, aye.”

  “Transition to Zoen gravitation and Zoen sea level atmospheric pressure.”

  “Aye, aye, Captain.”

  Engineering gradually increased Mack’s antigrav and pushed the air pressure up to Zoe’s sea level, nineteen psi.

  All hands on board could acclimatize to Zoen conditions before they arrived at the planet in case Captain Carmel needed to put Marines on the ground immediately.

  And she might. Something was wrong. Merrimack had not been able to contact Lieutenant Hamilton. The com tech had been trying to raise her since the ship dropped from faster-than-light speed at the star system’s edge.

  Engineering signaled the command deck. “Captain. Did you want the atmospheric gas mix switched over to local?”

  “Negative,” Calli sent.

  “Oh, Forbin. I guess not,” said Engineering, apparently seeing the percentage of oxygen in Zoe’s atmosphere.

  For breathing, Zoe’s oxygen rich atmosphere would require no getting used to. The only adjustment would be in dealing with the threat of fire.

  “Colonel Steele.”

  Steele stiffened to attention at the back of the command deck. “Sir.”

  “No beam weapons on the ground. No sparks.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  But the fight started before they could hit the ground.

  As Merrimack swung into orbit around Zoe, she met with small spherical spacecraft that slammed themselves into the battleship’s energy shell.

  The attackers hit with all the fury of spitwads against Mack’s adamantine energy barrier. It was almost comical. But the command staff didn’t laugh at something that seemed to want them dead.

  Mack’s field was coded to let sounds of impacts through, so the crew would know they had collided with something.

  Inside Merrimack sounded like a tin house in a hailstorm.

  The XO, Commander Ryan, questioned Tactical, “Anyone on board those spacecraft?”

  “Have to be tiny if they are,” said Marcander Vincent at Tactical. He gave the XO the dimensions—less than two meters in diameter. “Or one very uncomfortable person wrapped around a powerplant who doesn’t need to eat, breathe, or operate equipment.”

  “We can’t assume anything,” Commander Ryan said.

  “Except that they hate us,” said Marcander Vincent.

  Another barrage hit the ship’s defensive screens.

  “Are they—?” Commander Ryan squinted at the images on the Tactical monitors. One of the orbs coming in for a second strike looked decidedly dented. “Are they attacking without shields?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Tactical.

  A scanner tech confirmed, “Hostiles show no energy shells. Nothing shielding them except their hulls.”

  “Life signs?” said Calli.

  “None,” said the tech. Revised, “Nothing we recognize as life.”

  “They appear to be under remote control,” said Tactical. “But I can’t pick up the control signal.”

  “They could be operating by an internal program,” Commander Ryan suggested.

  Captain Carmel spoke. “Confirm negative life readings.”

  “Negative life signs confirmed. Nothing living on board the alien vessels,” Tactical reported, then muttered low into his console, “Would anything with a brain pick a fight with a space battleship?”

  “That’s enough, Mister Vincent,” Calli said.

  Another flock of orbs moved in and slammed against Merrimack, clattering.

  “And that is enough,” Calli said. “Colonel Steele!”

  Steele was standing by at the rear of the control room, rigid, silent, disciplined. But the captain could almost hear him praying to be unleashed.

  “Sir.”

  “Set the dogs on them.”

  The Marine Battery took to the starboard gun blisters. Merrimack’s port side faced the planet. There would be no shooting off the port side.

  Marines of the Wing charged to the hangar decks, barking. Mustard-suited erks stepped away from the readied Swifts.

  Kerry Blue suited up, snapped a displacement collar around her neck. The landing disk was already in her cockpit. She climbed up the Swift’s wing, jumped into the cockpit, strapped in, connected hoses. Did a com check. “Alpha Six here.”

  “Copy, Alpha Six.”

  The elevator shaft descended around her crate. The lift started up with a jerk. She’d have thought the boffins could smooth out that part of the ride. Guessed it wasn’t nobody’s priority.

  The elevator’s top hatch slid away as Kerry’s Swift rose to the flight deck atop Merrimack’s starboard wing.

  On either side of her she saw other Swifts rising from their shafts. Above her was open black space and stars, the planet Zoe shining huge and pretty over there.

  Black orbs bashed themselves against the Merrimack’s slightly glittering energy shield overhead. Like watching birds slam into a window. These birds didn’t learn. They came back and slammed again.

  Kerry activated her Swift’s own shield. A Swift’s energy screen was not nearly as stout as Mack’s, but it would protect her from this crowd.

  Kerry glanced aside. The Swifts of her Flight crouched all in a row. Kerry winked to Alpha Five. Checked in by the numbers.

  Got clearance to launch.

  Thrusters priming.

  T
hree. Two. One.

  Engaged.

  At the same instant Merrimack’s shields over the flight deck disappeared and deck clamps released.

  Merrimack gave her Swifts a gentle nudge. Alpha Six went catapulting off the flight deck, Kerry Blue screeching, “YeeeaAAAAH Ha Ha!”

  A controller’s laconic voice reported over her headset, “Alpha Flight away.”

  Swifts of the Baker, Charlie, and Delta flights launched from the upper and lower sides of the battleship’s wings.

  The Mack’s wings were wings like a building has wings, not wings like an airplane’s wings. It was as aerodynamic as Mount Rushmore.

  Merrimack’s spaceside gun blisters winked awake.

  There was always a contest with the Battery for most kills. You didn’t even need to dare them anymore.

  Kerry heard Flight Leader Cain Salvador on the com. “Target the spaceward orbs only. No shooting in the direction of the planet.”

  “I got your planet, Cain,” said Dak.

  Cain: “Tally ho! Tally ho! Got one!”

  Carly: “Got his hermano!”

  Twitch: “Hoo rah!”

  Rhino: “Come to Mama—ho! Here he comes! WASTED!”

  Asante: “Got one! Got two! Let it rain, Noah!”

  Planetshine made the targets visible. Really visible, not just plots on the tactical screen. The targets showed as black orbs in black space, but they had a metallic sheen to them that reflected the sunshine and planetshine.

  The orbs made no defensive maneuvers. They came straight in and tried to bash you. And you just hit them.

  Big Richard: “Target acquired. Target secured.”

  The Yurg: “They don’t boom much, do they?”

  It was true. Kerry noticed. You hit them and they exploded apart nicely into flying shards, but there was no blaze. No flash. No burn. No color. No proper blow-uppage.

  If you wanted to see the flash, you needed to look at your instrument monitor.

  Colonel Steele watched his Swifts scribble paths across the Tactical monitors on the command deck of the Merrimack. Listened to their shouts over the com.

  His Marines had spent the last two years rebuilding the Pacific Northwest. They liked destroying enemies much better. His bull mastiffs were hungry.

  Around him sounded the hiss of the big ship’s guns and the pounding from the gun blisters on the starboard side of the battleship.

  His pilots’ excited voices overlapped over the com. He kept listening for one.

  Kerry Blue: “Hey, Zeus, what was that!”

  Asante: “I don’t know, but there are twelve more just like ’em coming in hot and ugly from the eights.”

  Cain: “Evade.”

  Kerry Blue’s plot in the Tactical monitor was already ’vading before Cain got out the e.

  Lawrence: “Got ’im!”

  The Yurg: “That was my shot, Dickus!”

  “Mine now,” said Lawrence.

  During the war, Rome had given the colonel a Roman name, Adamas, which was the Latin word for steel. Some of the Marines decided they must take Roman names for themselves. So now they had names like Nauseous, Bilious, Bobicus, and Fredicus.

  Lawrence, who already had the nickname Big Richard, had become Dickus Maximus.

  Asante Addai: “Got one. Got two.”

  Carly Delgado: “Mine.”

  “Dang! Look at those moons!” That sounded like Dak Shepard.

  Cain: “Do not shoot the moons.”

  Tactical commented at his station, “Hostiles have no sense of self-preservation.”

  Commander Ryan said, “We like that in an enemy.”

  The com tech turned from his station. Spoke low, “Captain, I’m picking up low energy squawking on three radio frequencies on the planet.”

  Calli crossed to the com station, concerned. “From the hostiles?”

  “No, sir. From the ground. There are no radio towers down there, and the signals are very low strength. No voice, no music. I thought it might be LEN wildlife tracking devices, but it’s not a homing signal. It’s clicking, and it has order and pattern to it. It’s not coming from inside the LEN expedition campsite, and I can’t get a visual on the sources. There are scattered sources in different hemispheres. Someone is sending code.”

  Captain Carmel snapped her fingers in the direction of the cryptotech. “Qord!”

  “On it, sir,” Qord Johnson acknowledged.

  The com tech fed the radio transmissions to the cryptotech’s station.

  Kerry Blue lost count of her kills. Her crate would keep score. The Intelligence ferrets didn’t believe your report anyway. The sum of all pilots’ reported kills always totaled up to something like five times the actual number of enemy dead.

  Merrimack’s sensors located another cluster of orbs on the far side of the world. The hostiles were traveling toward Merrimack, but so low-powered that they seemed to be walking.

  So the Swifts streaked around the planet to get them. The ship’s gunners cried foul.

  A new guy: “Who’s ahead in the kill count?”

  “Who cares,” Kerry sent. “This is skeet.”

  “I care,” the new guy sent. It was his first time firing his guns in anger. Though this action was more like firing in annoyance.

  Kerry found she did better if she moved slowly and let the orbs come to her. She just needed to watch that they didn’t try to fly up her tail.

  Kerry sent, “Carly, get over here and watch my six.”

  Alpha Four maneuvered alongside Kerry Blue, facing the opposite direction. They sat still and killed all comers.

  Twitch: “For why don’t anyone blow up!”

  Twitch was right. These colorless, flashless explosions the orbs made on detonating did not make good fireworks.

  Asante: “They gotta be packing hydrogen.”

  Kerry: “Meaning what, Doctor Science? Anyone see a target? Ho! That one’s mine, mine, mine, son of a she dog!”

  Asante: “Hydrogen don’t burn. It explodes.”

  Dak: “Where the flash?”

  Asante: “It’s invisible.”

  Commander Ryan overheard that exchange from Merrimack’s command deck. He turned to Captain Carmel. “That confirms there are no oxygen breathers inside the attack craft. Oxygen has a visible burn.”

  “Our dogs are running out of targets,” Tactical reported.

  Calli ordered, “Bring the birds home, Colonel Steele. The Battery can pick off the stragglers. Have them save me one. I want an intact orb.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  Steele issued the recall order.

  Over the com he heard Flight Leader Salvador shouting: “Cease fire! Alpha Two! Cease fire!”

  Alpha Two probably didn’t hear the order because he was mashing down his trigger and yelling at the top of his voice, “Grettaaaaah!”

  “Alpha Two, cease fire!”

  Dak annihilated his target. He ceased fire. Still hungry.

  It looked like Alpha One had the last target, but Cain wasn’t shooting at it. The orbs explode real easy when you shoot them, but Cain was just batting his around with the stoutest part of his Swift’s energy field.

  “Cain?” Dak sent, hopeful. “Are you gonna eat that?”

  Cain kept batting the orb but not delivering a fatal shot. He beat it with his forward cowcatcher, circled round to interrupt its flight, then hammered it again, sending it flying another direction. Like playing catch with himself.

  “Can I play?” Rhino sent.

  “Back off,” Cain ordered. “We need to reserve one. Captain wants a whole one.”

  With every hit, the orb reeled away from the impact, then gamely reversed course and came back at Cain’s Swift for another try.

  It took several hits to make it stop fighting.

  At last the orb hurtled off and kept going.

  Cain sped around to catch it and contain it. He nudged it to a near stop.

  The battered orb drifted in the direction of the nudge, unresponsive.
<
br />   “Wing Leader. Wing Leader. Wing Leader. This is Alpha One. Colonel Steele? Hostile neutralized. I think.”

  “Return to ship,” Steele sent and turned to the XO. “Your target, sir.”

  Commander Ryan spoke over the ship’s intracom: “Engineering. Ready half hook. Target the disabled alien orb.”

  “Ready half hook, aye. Target acquired.”

  Ryan: “Engineering. Engage force-field hook.”

  “Engineering, aye. Hook engaging.”

  Merrimack’s distortion field extended a tendril of energy to loop around the alien spacecraft.

  The half hook was a recent variation on a hook. Full containment had its perils. To put out a full hook was to enclose the target inside one’s own inertial field.

  A full hook on an enemy was an invitation to die. If a powerplant blew up inside your hook, you were done.

  The half hook was easier for an enemy to escape from, but he wouldn’t kill you when he tried it.

  This enemy wasn’t fighting. Best guess was it ran out of hydrogen.

  Engineering: “Target captured. Alien craft in tow.”

  Calli nodded to her exec. “Send a Vee jock out. See what we caught.”

  Merrimack deployed a small unmanned surveillance spacecraft. The drone was piloted from the remote pilot center on board Merrimack by a V-jock nicknamed Wraith. The surveillance craft’s readings were fed up to the command deck and to Ops for interpretation.

  It was immediately obvious that the orbs were unarmed, unmanned, low-tech, alien-built, and not meteors.

  “What jack squid thought they were meteors?” said Tactical.

  The XO, who usually ignored anything Marcander Vincent said, answered, “A civilian on the ground tried to tell our Hamster that these were meteors.”

  “Is the ship radioactive?” Calli asked.

  There was a quick conference with Ops. Tactical answered, “Negative radiation. It’s a hydrogen powerplant. No hydrogen in it now.”

  Calli ordered, “Mister Ryan. Have Wraith strip the powerplant out of that. Keep the engine in tow. Bring the rest of the spacecraft inboard for analysis.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  “Commander Ryan, organize a sweep of the debris. None of that makes planetfall.”