The Ninth Circle

by R. M. Meluch

  Dak marched up in the direction of the caves in the rocky hillside.

  The foxes rolled their cages like giant hamster balls alongside Dak. They rolled into Dak’s path, humming. Agitated.

  They were afraid of something.

  The pack leader unlashed the door of his own cage, climbed out and jumped around Dak. The leader’s gestures—if you could read alien gestures like human gestures—seemed to say: No, no, no. Caves bad.

  The alpha male scampered into and out of a cage as if to show Dak how to do it.

  Dak told the fox, “Look! I get what you’re telling me to do, Fur Face. I’m just not doing it. Look at me! I’m Black!”

  Colonel Steele, who had been marching rear guard, hiked up to the scene of the noise. He demanded, “What is the issue, Marine?”

  Flight Leader Cain Salvador told him, “The foxes don’t want us near the caves. They want us to get in those cages.”

  Steele’s night vision turned on in the gathering darkness. He looked from Cain to Dak to the caves to the empty woven cages to the antic foxes inside their own cage balls. “What’s in the caves?”

  “I don’t know, but I bet it comes out at night during the new moon,” said Cain.

  Steele’s eyes moved over his Marines, the twitching foxes, the caves, the sky.

  The sliver moons were slipping below the horizon.

  Here at the edge of the galaxy, at this hour, the world turned this face toward the starless side of heaven. When those moons disappeared, the sky was going to be pitch black.

  Steele ordered, “Get in the cages.”

  Kerry Blue woke to something. Immediately forgot what it was. She knew what was happening while she was still asleep. Now she was awake and couldn’t remember what it was. She thought her cage shook.

  She remained still, listened. Heard insects buzzing, crickety chirps, notes like birdcalls.

  Big fronds rustled, waving in the warm breeze, but she couldn’t see them. She heard Dak and Cain snoring. Smelled green scents and earthy musk. Saw nothing. May as well have her eyes closed. It was foxtrotting dark out here.

  Kerry Blue shut her eyes. Dozed off again.

  She smelled something rank. Felt something big. Now that really was a shake this time. She woke up rolling. Over and over, bouncing.

  Things that came out to feed under the moonless sky on the blackest night of the year were here. She hadn’t seen anything in the daylight like those she sensed clawing at her cage. Heated gusts breathed on her. These things must have been in the caves.

  She switched her night vision on. It didn’t help much. There wasn’t any ambient light to enhance. She got an infrared image of a jagged gaping mouth. Claws raked at the outer bars of heavy vine. She felt the swiping paw roll her cage.

  She grasped at one of the inner vines to hold on as she rolled hip over shoulder.

  Someone else yelled. Dak. He sounded upside down. “What’s happening ?”

  “Something is trying to eat my feet!” Kerry shouted.

  Hot breaths seethed between teeth. Kerry unholstered her splinter gun. Rolled.

  She heard Rhino, fluent in blasphemy.

  Someone else yelled, “I dropped my fragging gun!”

  Kerry got off a shot. Her target gave an angry snort so she knew she’d jabbed a splinter up the thing’s broad nose. She pulled the second stage trigger. Fragged it.

  Felt a wet spray with an ungodly squeal. She hadn’t killed it. Not near.

  Oh, crap. It’s angry. And I’ve got gunk on me.

  The thing batted her into a furious roll. She held on till she crashed into someone else’s cage.

  Someone else was yelling, “Get this thing off me!” Sounded like Taher.

  Kerry Blue tried to get a bead on the mouth that latched onto her cage. The mouth and her foot were in same direction.

  She braced for a sting in case she nailed herself. She fired.

  Didn’t feel anything in her foot. But a sharp cry came from the mouth.

  She detonated the splinter.

  The thing threw her, cage and all, screaming. She heard the wrenching screeches diminish behind her. Her springy vine-framed ball rolled and bounced down a hill, picking up speed, with Kerry inside it.

  The ball rolled off an edge. Dropped. Bounced. Splashed. The rolling slogged to a wet stop.

  And now she was sinking.

  Kerry dropped her gun. In the blackness she felt quickly around with her hands at the hard vines for the lashing that held her cage shut. She was clawing at the knots. The twined ropes were wet. They seized together tighter. She drew her knife.

  And her cage was sinking. It was already up to her waist.

  And took a roll for the worse.

  Kerry screamed, “I’m in the water!”

  With water up to her chest, she floated, the top of her head pressed against the hard vines. She took her blade to a vine. Barely scored a couple of grooves in it. Water was rising at her chin. She took in a giant breath.

  Water rose up over her nostrils, filled her ears, shut her eyes. She felt around for the ropes that held her cage shut.

  Thomas will save me. He always does.

  The cage rolled slowly upside down. Don’t get water up your nose. You cough and you’re done. She’d lost touch with the ropes on that roll. Leaves and dirt swam in her face. Algae brushed against her in slimy veils. She snorted them off her nostrils. Hard bubbles tapped her face.

  Her head was singing. Lungs burned.

  Needing to breathe.

  Did anyone even know where she was?

  I want to breathe. I want to breathe real bad.

  Hold it. Hold it. Hold it.

  She’d lost her place during the last roll. Lost her knife. Couldn’t find the twine to claw at it. Grabbed the bars and tried to shake them. Stupid. Stupid Stupid. The vines were hard enough to keep out giant creatures. She wasn’t going to shake her way out. Her motions were heavy and slow under water.

  Thomas will be here.

  Lungs felt to be splitting.

  It didn’t look like Thomas was coming.

  Why the hell did she have to say till death do us part?

  Jose Maria de Cordillera was the only person in camp not afraid of the pirates. He knew they were deadly. Jose Maria was at peace with the concept of death.

  He sat at the fireside, in the depth of the darkest night, his dog’s head on his knee.

  Nox sat down on another bench. Said, “Thank you for respecting my name.”

  “A man is not who he was,” said Jose Maria. “He is who he chooses to be. I am familiar with men who have more than one existence.”

  Nox struggled not to feel shame at what he’d become. “I had damn few choices.”

  Jose Maria picked up a stone. “Not mine to throw.” He let the stone fall from his hand.

  Nox said, “I can let you inside your ship to get something to sleep on.”

  Jose Maria motioned the idea away. “I have a hammock out here.”

  No one was confined to his tent, but all the xenos were hunkered down anyway. Except for Jose Maria. And the one woman. She had taken a matter-of-fact walk across the grounds to the head, then stopped in the galley, then walked back to her tent with a glass of water.

  Nox had caught her looking at him during dinner. Not the way the others looked at him. Nox could tell that she recognized him, or someone like him.

  He knew he had never met her. But her name was familiar. Glenn Hamilton. Glenn Hamilton.

  Mrs. Hamilton.

  A snag. A jerk. Kerry sank to the bottom of her cage. Her cage was rolling.

  And rising. Head up. Huge breath. Rolled back under. Rolled up. Another gasp. A voice. “We got her! You still with us, Blue?” Dragging up on land. Rolled her upside down.

  “Oh, frag a hag!” she rasped.

  “She’s okay!”

  Someone got a red light on. She could see, sort of.

  Thomas Ryder Steele. And Cain Salvador. They were out of their cages, hauling her c
age away from a pond. Twitch and Carly were there too. Kerry dimly saw the others, their backs to her, arranged in a defensive half ring, splinter guns at the ready, watching for monsters.

  Steele growling, “God dammit, Blue! Stay out of the water!”

  Kerry felt warm. The growling was sweet. He’d been scared out of his head for her.

  Asante Addai took the hail from the ship. Of course Mack had monitors all over them. Merrimack had detected splinter fire.

  The XO’s voice: “Do you have pirates down there?”

  “Negative,” Asante responded. Pirates? “We have wild animals.”

  “You really oughtn’t be shooting the native wildlife.”

  Oh, yeah. This from a guy called Dingo.

  Kerry heard that. Yelled, “It was trying to eat my feet!”

  “That’s the being’s nature,” said the voice safe, way high and dry on the space battleship. “You need to allow for alien nature.”

  “Yeah, sir?” said Kerry Blue. “It didn’t allow for my nature!”

  TR Steele stalked away from camp in the night blackness while the others slept in their cages in a stand of trees that kept them from rolling anywhere.

  Carly was the sentry this watch. She let him pass.

  She let someone else pass too, dammit. He’d crossed the perimeter to be alone.

  Snapping twigs and that voice sounded behind him. “You mad at me, Thomas?”

  He snarled at her in a whisper without turning around, “You were underwater, and I couldn’t breathe!”

  He brought his fist to his chest. Felt all locked up in there. “I fucking told you to get in the fucking cage. I put you in there! I did! Dammit, Blue, I can’t protect you!”

  “Hoo bloody ra,” said Kerry Blue.

  Very philosophical she-man, his Kerry Blue.

  He seized her and kissed her hard. Her lips were cold and rubbery under his. He tried to press warmth back into them. Her clammy fingers held the back of his head.

  I can’t lose her.

  He couldn’t protect her either. She was a Marine.

  Hoo bloody ra.

  After two days that lasted forever, Glenn stole away from the LEN encampment. Her mouth felt as if it were full of nettles as she crossed the dirt perimeter behind the storage huts.

  The defensive dome that the pirates had energized over the LEN camp did not extend down to ground level, so she was able to walk out. The pirates were not guarding against walkaways. They had confiscated all the displacement equipment and had jammers going, so attempting displacement would be fatal.

  The pirates weren’t worried about escapees, because there was always the hanging threat, if one person torqed them off, the pirates could execute nine or ten of his friends.

  Everyone was taking great care not to upset The Ninth Circle—even Director Benet.

  Glenn moved at a casual walk. She picked wildflowers for the first hundred yards into the forest, as if that were what she’d come out here to do.

  She was taking an enormous risk. It seemed safer than doing nothing.

  Beef cows did nothing.

  She moved slowly not to set off any of the woodland sentinels. Those blue things had calls like crows.

  She stopped, crouched down, waited, and listened, in case she was followed.

  She continued by starts and stops. Even when she made it two klicks out, she was still afraid to breathe.

  She found the Spring Beauty.

  The forest had recovered quickly. If she hadn’t known, Glenn couldn’t tell that there had been a fire here. The tree trunks, scarred from the falling wreckage, had healed over. Vines had grown over the fuselage, and something was nesting in the life craft.

  She climbed carefully over weeds and bits of wreckage to get to the ship, and crept inside.

  There was a chance that the pirates hadn’t secured Spring Beauty’s res chamber. She wasn’t sure if the pirates even knew the Beauty was out here.

  A scatter of animal droppings pelleted the control room deck. Something was cocooned in the copilot’s seat. Blunt shards from the shattered viewscreen lay strewn across the deck. Panels from the overhead had dropped. Glenn moved them aside to uncover the res chamber. She cringed with every loud metallic creak. Her hands shook with her pulse.

  The res chamber was gone.

  Dammit. They took it.

  They knew this ship was here. She had to get out of here. Now.

  Then remembered. Of course the res chamber was gone. She felt incredibly dim. Incredibly relieved. She herself had pulled that res chamber out of the console to take Admiral Farragut on a visual tour around the shipwreck.

  She found the res chamber where she’d left it, stowed in a corner aft of the control room. A stretch of the overhead had buckled in since then. She had to climb under that to get at the res chamber. The chamber was wedged in between panels, but it looked intact. She reached in. Touched the control.

  Held her breath.

  The unit powered on.

  Glenn fed in the harmonic. She hoped the Navy hadn’t changed codes since she’d gone on leave. She whispered, “Merrimack. Merrimack. Merrimack. This is Glenn Hamilton.”

  Waited. Nothing.

  She didn’t know the current code words. “Gordon? Red?” she called the com techs by name. “It’s Glenn Hamilton.” She made sure her face was on camera.

  She imagined the crew on the command deck were trying to determine her authenticity.

  Finally a voice answered without video. “Lieutenant?”

  The voice of Calli Carmel.

  “Captain!” Glenn whispered a shout. “Pirates have taken over the LEN expedition camp. I’m in the Spring Beauty, a few klicks outside camp.”

  “Is this a hostage situation?”

  “We’re not locked up, but yes, I’d say we were hostages. Except I don’t know what they want. They killed one man. John did.”

  “John John?”

  It shouldn’t have shocked her that Calli already knew John Farragut, Junior, was here. “Yes, sir. He’s—” Glenn didn’t know how to describe what happened to him.

  “Is John John a CIA operative?” asked Calli.

  Glenn’s voice stopped up entirely. Not a question she ever expected. She recovered. “I don’t think so. He’s mad as a cut snake. The pirates know that you are up there.”

  “Yes. We met,” said Calli.

  Glenn guessed there had been some shooting involved.

  Calli said, “Lieutenant, do you know who you’ve got there?”

  “I—” thought she did. “Guess I don’t.”

  “These pirates call themselves The Ninth Circle. So far as we know, everyone who has ever seen them is dead. They’re not shooters, so don’t rely on a personal field for protection. They use blades or garrotes. John Junior goes for the heart. The others are cutthroats.”

  “John can take out a throat too,” said Glenn. “I saw that for myself. He calls himself Nox.”

  “What are their numbers?”

  “Seven.”

  “You mean John plus seven,” said Calli.

  “No. Seven total.”

  “A Roman contubernium is eight,” said Calli. “These men used to be a tent party. Where’s the eighth?”

  “They haven’t mentioned anyone else.”

  “There has to be one.”

  “Maybe he’s dead?” said Glenn.

  “That could be, but, to be safe, assume there is an outlier. Probably left guarding the Xerxes.”

  “Say again, sir. Guarding the what?”

  “Your pirates hijacked a Xerxes class transport on a planet named Phoenix. They’re smart, they’re vicious, they’re trained, and they have nothing to lose. Find where they parked their ship. It will be under extreme stealth. I have a map of your expedition camp here. Where do the pirates stay?” Merrimack’s video turned on and presented the camp layout toward the resonator.

  Glenn was able to point out the pirates’ tent. “They all spend the night there. But sooner or late
r you’re going to find one in Dr. Nooan’s tent instead.” There was some heavy flirtation and Stockholm Syndrome happening between Dr. Ilsa Nooan and the big sybaritic one named Faunus.

  Far removed from civilization, mating behaviors change, and well-educated civilized women go for the biggest savage in the pack.

  “Nooan’s tent is the singleton on the east side, closest to the fire pit.”

  “Do the pirates post sentries?”

  “No. They count on intimidation to keep us in line. They’re probably counting on our presence to keep you from blowing the site away. They have a dome up.”

  “We’ve seen that.”

  “We’re accessible on ground level. The pirates are tall, and they don’t duck to get outside.”

  “How often do they leave the dome?”

  “Random times. Never all together.”

  “Do they bring anything back from their ship?”

  “No. They’re never gone very long. They wear personal fields. They do what they want. They graze like sacred cows.”

  “How did they arrive? Did they displace in?”

  “They came on foot. I didn’t hear displacement.”

  Displacement was loud.

  “Outstanding,” said Calli.

  That narrowed the search radius. It meant the pirated Xerxes was within hiking distance of the LEN camp.

  “You realize I didn’t actually revoke your commission, Lieutenant,” Calli said.

  “Yes, sir. I guessed that.” Glenn had fervently hoped that. But at the time she’d really thought she had been pushed down a mineshaft.

  Calli had only done it to give her an excuse to leave Glenn in place over LEN objections.

  “Get close to John John,” Calli ordered. “Find where they left the Xerxes and how many men are in it. There has to be an eighth man. Failing that, keep the pirates in place. Call in when you can.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  Calli’s audio and video ceased.

  Glenn turned off the resonator.

  So Captain Carmel was sending in the Marines. Glenn knew that from what the captain had asked. And from what she hadn’t said. With Glenn a hostage, it was best to tell her as little as possible.

  Glenn crawled back out from under the collapsed overhead. She dragged a charred seat cushion in front of the gap to mask the resonator from view should anyone look down there. She left no footprints as she moved forward to the exit.