The Ninth Circle: A Novel of the U.S.S. Merrimack

by R. M. Meluch

  Someone was shrieking like world’s end. The screamer was on her feet, wasn’t wearing any blood, and wasn’t standing over someone else who was bleeding.

  Civilian.

  Civilians were allowed to scream.

  The medical hover with its wounded took off the way it came, thrashing through the alien greenery.

  The crews of the other two skiffs loaded heavy equipment onto their hovers. They promised to come back for the new arrivals’ personal belongings.

  Those who could walk set out toward the camp in a loose column, ducking and high-stepping through leafy branches, vines, thorns, fallen logs, dead leaves, and things that looked like dead leaves but hopped out of the way as your foot came down.

  Glenn carried her own pack. She took up the ass-end Charlie spot in the column.

  Her gear was heavier than when she’d packed it. She was heavier.

  Bugs with cobweb wings floated on the air. Crawling bugs with lots of legs scrambled up the tree trunks. Jumping bugs she didn’t see—she just felt them—collided with her ankles. Bugs that hid in the green-gold canopy whirred overhead.

  The ground under boot sole was soft and fragrant as a pine needle carpet. Forest creatures chirped, piped, whistled, and trilled. The air was easy to breathe.

  The expedition camp had been founded in the temperate zone on the currently summer side of the world. The temperature was comfortable. The humidity was comfortable. The barrage of smells and sounds were different but mostly pleasant.

  Concepts of beauty only held up among close members of your own genome. Alien concepts of beauty and ugliness differed extremely—if the aliens conceived of beauty at all.

  Even so, Zoe was beautiful.

  The forest looked strange, but no stranger than life on other continents of Earth must have appeared to ancient explorers.

  There was a sweet, rich tang to the forest air.

  Glenn swatted something that was biting her leg. Hoped it was not the sapient species here.

  Up ahead, the brush was clearing. Sunlight streamed through thinning branches and vines. Voices of happy greetings carried back from the front of the file.

  Glenn arrived last in camp. She heard a bleat like a goat.

  It was a goat.

  The nanny goat was snubbing her hay bag and straining on her tether to tear into some local vegetation with large purple leaves. The nan’s udder was swollen like a four-fingered water balloon.

  Patrick eyed the goat and the purple plant. Asked, “How’s the milk taste?”

  “A little interesting,” Dr. Rose said. This was Aaron’s second gig here.

  The expedition camp comprised a wide clearing bounded by six boxy spacecraft set in a half ring like Conestoga wagons, or like dormitories around a college green. There was a foundation for a seventh craft that was meant to be the Spring Beauty’s landing pad.

  Within the loose ring of ships were huts to serve as field labs and storage units and tents, which most xenos chose for their living quarters.

  And at the very center of camp lay a stone fire pit.

  The LEN camp had no common language—not to deny anyone his or her native tongue—so everyone wore language modules behind their ears.

  Glenn overheard someone complaining, rather loudly, about the distance she needed to haul her gear. Patrick nudged Glenn. “You should have crashed us closer.”

  “Starting to wish,” said Glenn.

  Glenn knew from an advance briefing that Zoe had a nitrox atmosphere—heavy on the ox—with a sea level pressure of nineteen psi. The planet tilted twenty-one degrees on its axis. The planetary rotation of twenty-two Terrestrial hours would make sleep cycles tolerable.

  Glenn reprogrammed her own chron to synch with Zoen local time.

  Hovers transported the last of the equipment from the Spring Beauty to the expedition campsite. The resident scientists helped set up huts and tents for the newcomers. They patched up the wounded, calmed the hysterical, and prepared dinner.

  Finally Glenn asked the Expedition Director, Dr. Izrael Benet, “Why did no one tell us the local sapience is space capable?”

  Izrael Benet was not the typical xeno. He was an administrator and a fund-raiser, which required him to be attractive. Izzy Benet maintained the dashing appearance of an adventurer. He was large-boned and muscular as an outdoorsman with a thick mane of wavy hair and deep brown bedroom eyes. He was the kind of man to whom philanthropists liked to give money.

  Director Benet’s deep eyes looked down on Glenn blandly. His baritone voice was mellow and patronizing. “The local sapience is not space capable, Mrs. Hamilton. They are simple beings.”

  “Then we are not the only aliens here,” Glenn said. “Someone else wants this planet.”

  “Someone wants this planet?” Director Benet’s face took on a befuddled expression. “Where did that notion come from?”

  Where didn’t it? “Everyone told you about our arrival.”

  “So they did,” said Izrael Benet. “You’re taking an enormous leap to a melodramatic conclusion from a false premise. ‘Someone else wants this planet?’ Someone else? For your edification, we do not want to take ownership of this world.”

  “They,” Glenn said, “do.”

  That won her an amazed condescending smile. “They?” Izrael Benet asked, disingenuous. “What they? Surely you don’t mean the meteors?”

  Rome kept no prisons. Incarceration was not a Roman punishment. There were, however, brigs for short-term detention.

  Nox paced his confines. Three strides and he had to turn around. He sat on one of the two benches. Drummed his fingers. Got up. Paced.

  Guards came. They banged on the bars and ordered him to stand away from the door. Nox took three steps back.

  The cell door opened.

  Pallas, Nicanor, Leo, Galeo, Orissus, and Faunus filed in. Their mouths moved as if chewing venom. A savage glint of satisfaction sparked in their dark eyes. They seemed happy to see him landed in the same cage as they.

  Nox sat on a bench along one wall. The six of them crowded onto the bench opposite him.

  No one spoke.

  Nox was in free fall. Like jumping off the Widow’s Edge. Dropping down and down, and he kept going down. He knew what his brothers thought. They thought he’d ratted on them.

  And he could not defend himself. It would be whiny, groveling, and pointless. He could only salvage his one last shred of dignitas, in his own eyes if no one else’s.

  If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

  Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

  Or being hated, don’t give way to hating . . .

  Hate was easier to hold than abject misery. Nox let his brothers hang on to their hatred.

  The next morning the squad was marched before the Legate for judgment.

  The Legate’s chamber inside the Principia was hung with bronze and black colors. The imperial silver Eagle, the Legion standard, and the imago of Caesar Numa loomed over the Legate’s high bench.

  The guards looked shamed, as if something of the accused had rubbed off on them.

  Nox stood directly before the bench.

  The blood brothers made their stand at a distance from Nox, as far to the side as the guards would allow them.

  The Legate spoke first to the six who stood apart from the one Other. “Death is too good for you. You are cowards. You caused your brother’s death, then left him and let another brother take the blame.”

  Nox felt his face burn red.

  “You are trash. Shame on the Empire when semper fidelis means more to the Yanks than to one of your own. The name Antonius will be stripped from you.”

  Nox could not look at his brothers. He could feel the daggers in their hearts and in their eyes.

  Done shredding the brothers, the Legate turned his hawk glare to Nox. “You ran. You may have gone back, but that doesn’t change the fact that you ran. Comes a moment in battle that proves the man. You proved yourself in the moment of emergency.
You are no better than the rest of this sputum. On top of that, you lied to us to preserve cowards. You will suffer the same sentence. You will all be drummed out of the Legion and no longer be called Roman. From this day forward, should anyone kill you, it will not be murder. Should you fall on a sword, it gives no honor. Take them out. I can’t bear to look at this offal.” The Legate rose tall, quaking with rage. “Slave!” He pointed down from his high bench to where the brothers stood. “Wash that floor!”

  The guards marched the brothers out of the Legate’s chamber as the slave moved in to erase their footsteps.

  The Legion stood at grand attention.

  This morning Nox had thought to join their ranks. Now men he wanted to stand shoulder to shoulder with would not even look at him. They glared over his head, their eyes narrowed, stone hatred on their faces. Six hundred men arrayed in laser precise columns and rows.

  His beloved Legion Persus assembled to spit him out.

  At a command, the Legion divided. A passage opened up between its halves.

  Oh, this hurts.

  The exiles had to walk through that.

  Just when Nox thought he couldn’t get any lower, any deader, they killed him again. Was there no bottom?

  He felt all the eyes.

  The brothers had never been fully fledged legionaries, so there was no rank to strip from them. They’d been told to wear civilian clothes for this. Nothing black. Nothing bronze. Or it would be stripped off their bodies.

  The line of the condemned was ordered to face left. That put them in a single file with Nox in the fore, facing that horrifying passage. And beyond that, straight ahead, lay the gates.

  The drums started. Nox’s stomach fluttered in time.

  The drums abruptly stopped.

  A name was called. Pallas Antonius.

  Nox heard a stirring behind him. Confusion among his brothers. Pallas heard his name. Didn’t know if he was supposed to do something.

  No. The name had been called for the Censor to strike it from the rolls.

  “No such Roman citizen,” the Censor reported.

  The drums rolled again. And silenced.

  Another name called.

  And one by one the brothers’ names, their identities, their existences were erased.

  At the last, a centurion ordered the file forward. That’s when someone threw up. Nox heard the retch and splat behind him. He didn’t look back to see who it was. Might have been any of them. Nox stalled a moment to let his brother recover. Then he began their walk down their final exit.

  The drums started up again. Not a roll this time. A thudding grave march. Nox didn’t have orders, but he found himself walking to the drumbeat, lurching ahead, leading the others.

  The Legion ranks turned their backs on them as they approached.

  Oh, and here came the breakfast he didn’t eat. Nox forced it back down.

  When Nox was clear of the rearmost row of legionaries, the mammoth gates of the Legion compound parted before him.

  The hideous drums fell silent.

  It had been a ghastly sound. The silence was suddenly worse, broken only by their own footfalls.

  Nox marched his wretched file through the towering gates. Heard one of his brothers stumble and sag behind him. Heard someone else pulling him upright and piloting him out.

  They made it out of the compound.

  Behind them the gates shut with a resounding boom. The bar dropped.

  Rome didn’t use stone walls to keep enemies out in Anno Domini 2447. The stone walls were symbolic now, a reminder of Rome’s ancient heritage.

  The walls also kept out desert scavengers, which was what the brothers were now.

  Clear of the compound, their orderly Roman file dissolved. They were no longer a contubernium. They were not Roman. They were no one. The wretched seven fanned out.

  And now Nox’s brothers were going to rip him apart.

  It began with a fist to his kidney. Didn’t see who threw it. Pain shot out his eyeballs. Couldn’t breathe. Doubled over and landed cheek-first in the dust. Took a kick in the gut. Couldn’t even try to breathe. Nausea had nowhere to go. Heat rose in his face. A glob of spit splatted on his eyelid.

  “Wait.”

  They all sounded alike, but Nox knew somehow that this was Pallas talking.

  And he knew Orissus by his damaged larynx. “What for?”

  “Something,” said Pallas. Deeply uncertain. “Something.”

  “What something!” someone else cried.

  Pallas made halting sounds of someone grasping for a half-formed thought. His words staggered out. “The Legate. The Legate said . . .” His voice stopped.

  Nox cracked an eyelid. Saw Pallas’ blurry boot in his face, nudging him. Pallas leaned down. “The Legate said you lied to them to preserve cowards. What did he mean by that?”

  Nox could not breathe. Even if he could have spoken, he refused to try to explain. The truth was pointless. Better his brothers not know. They wouldn’t believe him anyway. They were going to kill him. Just go silently.

  Pallas roared, “What did you tell them!”

  Nox gaped like a fish on land. His diaphragm wouldn’t move. Kept him from screaming in pain.

  Faunus hauled him up by his armpits, dropped him on his feet a couple times. Nox’s diaphragm relaxed. Nox gasped.

  Faunus snarled in his ear. “What did you tell them?”

  Pallas looked unnerved. “You sold us out.” Those were his words. Pallas’ voice said he didn’t believe them anymore.

  Nox said nothing. Blood oozed from his lips. From his nose. Inside his head was very hot.

  Pallas screamed at him. “You sold us out!”

  There were two Pallases. Nox’s eye contact wavered.

  Pallas shook him. There were three Pallases now. Breath buffeted Nox’s face. “Didn’t you?”

  6

  DIDN’T YOU!

  Nox folded back to the ground and sprawled face up, breathing.

  Pallas’ faces swam before Nox’s crossed eyes. A double ring of his brothers hovered above Pallas in a ferocious halo, fists ready to resume beating Nox to death.

  Peripherally Nox saw Faunus working up a great gob of spit and wrapping a strap around his hammy knuckles.

  Pallas demanded again. “You sold us out, didn’t you?”

  “We know he did, Pallas!” said Orissus, tired of this, stepping in with a cocked fist. “What’s a confession going to get us?”

  Pallas backed Orissus up, hand to Orissus’ broad chest. “I need the confession,” said Pallas. “The Legate said Nox lied.” He turned to Nox. Shouted in his face, “What did you tell them?”

  One eye swelled shut. There was only one Pallas now. Nox tasted blood on his split lips. Slowly he moved his head side to side; no. “Doesn’t matter.” He lifted a forefinger skyward. Whispered hollowly, “They have a coiens satellite video.”

  “They—!”

  The menacing ring flinched wider with an involuntary look up.

  The glint of satellites shone through the dusty haze. The ever-present day stars. Everyone knew the satellite Vigils were up there. You never paid them any attention.

  Nox tongued a loose tooth. Rasped, “Sat eyes.”

  “No,” said Orissus. Wouldn’t believe it. “No. All the latitudes and longitudes on this planet, and they just happened to focus right there, right then? Why would the Vigils focus on a cliff in the wasteland?”

  Nicanor said thickly, “Probably looking for guys doing what we were doing. We aren’t the only squad ever to walk a tyro off Widow’s Edge.”

  Just the only ones ever to drop one. The thought pounded in Nox’s head.

  Pallas’ face reappeared above him. Pallas looked and sounded quietly horrified. “You didn’t tell on us.”

  Nox gingerly gave his head the slightest shake. Croaked, “No.”

  His brothers backed away, stricken.

  “Skat, Nox!” Sounded like Faunus. That was sort of an apology. It was the most r
emorse any of them could bear right now.

  Apparently Orissus couldn’t bear it at all. He moved away, snarling to himself, insisting, “No.” Sounded like he badly wanted Nox to be a rat.

  Nox understood that. The reality was hard to face: We sold ourselves out.

  Nox sat up slowly, hand to his rib cage. Mumbled, “How many rings of hell are there?”

  “Nine,” said Nicanor miserably.

  The moment they had turned to run away, it was over. Even had Nox stayed behind, it would not have helped. He had the lose-or-lose choice. Run with his brothers or split with his brothers to stay behind with dead Cinna. Nox was faithless either way. In Rome you are your unit. If one of you is bad, you’re all bad. If one of you is good, you’re still all bad. Nox had tried to protect them. It had been for nothing.

  Useless. Useless.

  Pallas reached a hand down to Nox. Nox just sat in the dust, mourning. “O Best Beloved, we did not do right by our brother. Where do traitors go in the inferno?”

  “The bottom,” said Nicanor. “The Ninth Circle. With Judas, Brutus, and Satan.”

  Nox nodded carefully. Yep, that seems about right.

  “John!” Glenn cried when the admiral’s image appeared before her.

  Admiral John Farragut greeted her with a smile to light planets. “Hamster!”

  His blue eyes and soaring spirit radiated energy across the resonant link.

  Glenn never thought that man would ever touch ground. But John Farragut got himself stationed on Earth.

  She loved him. Always had. He was the road not taken. She and he were never meant to be. Glenn was a career officer. John Farragut needed himself a girlie girl to give him home and hearth and little Farraguts.

  They had each chosen their own road. Had she to do it over, Glenn would make the same choice again. But in this moment she clung to the happiness in John Farragut’s eyes, the affection in his voice.