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

by R. M. Meluch

The dirt perimeter was there to protect Zoe from invasive terrestrial species.

  DNA was a robust structure. Theoretically, terrestrial species could compete with native species for basic resources. Local life was carbon-based, so there could be competition for the same proteins, sugars, ni-trogenated soil, and habitat.

  Terrestrial life could disturb the natural balance. So the expedition maintained a buffer zone and kept its hydroponic vegetable gardens sealed in greenhouses inside the camp.

  They stopped short of raising fences. The campfire deterred most animals and birds from invading camp. The native animals were unusually wary of fire. Given the ferocity of blazes in this atmosphere, it was a good instinct to have. Predators would not approach, which was fortunate, as Zoe had some big ones.

  Woven polymer shields, something like riot gear, were stacked near the camp perimeter. The shields looked like rigid spiderwebs, but they weren’t sticky. Expedition members used them to confront native animals that wandered into camp and to shoo them back out.

  Glenn carried a heat stick with her with which to brew a single cup of coffee. She found herself a nice granite boulder at camp’s edge, sat down, and gazed up at the half starry sky.

  You only found skies like this at extreme galactic north or south or here on the Rim. Half the sky was deepest, deepest black, pricked by a few lonely lights. The fuzzy dots in the darkness were other galaxies. The other half of the Zoen sky was heavily spangled and glowing with the full host of the Milky Way.

  Another bright streak across the starfield made Glenn shrink on reflex. Felt like an idiot for doing it.

  Nothing she could do now except wait for Merrimack. Or for the sky to fall.

  A motion made her look lower.

  Thought she saw something in the trees but couldn’t make it out. She had removed her implanted gunsights upon taking leave from Merrimack . The gunsights contained night vision filters. She could have used them here. She’d forgotten how truly dark planetary nights could be.

  Glenn gave an old-fashioned squint across the cleared perimeter into black foliage.

  She made out the little treetop acrobat. It was a squirrel-bodied, possum-tailed, big-eared, huge-eyed thing. Seemed to have a ferret’s nose for a party. It wasn’t alone. There was a whole troop of them in the night trees, bouncing through the springy boughs. Looked like they were having fun. But who could tell with aliens? For all Glenn knew, swinging and bouncing could indicate aggression and fear.

  She had brought a splinter gun with her on this journey. She kept it hidden, holstered across her back under her jacket. Didn’t feel any need to draw it.

  Abruptly the tree ferrets scattered, and Glenn heard footsteps approaching behind her.

  The walker came to a stop at her shoulder, standing close enough for her to feel his body heat. She didn’t turn. She knew his scent.

  Patrick had come out to find her. Glenn thought he was going to ask her to come back to the fire, and she prepped a retort. But with insight Glenn didn’t know he had, Patrick reached his hand down to her and said, “We don’t need these people. Let’s jump this ship.”

  She craned her head around to stare at his offered hand. She looked up into his soft brown eyes. Asked, “Don’t you want to stay with your colleagues?”

  “Any of ’em thank you for saving their screaming faces?”

  There had been an awful lot of screaming when she’d landed the Beauty.

  “No.”

  “Then fornicate ’em.”

  His hand waited, palm up. Glenn was touched. She set aside her coffee and put her hand in his. She rose. Their fingers interlaced. They crossed the dirt perimeter and wandered away from camp into the alien forest.

  Tired of wallowing in self-pity, of blaming their fate on everything and everyone, Nox, Pallas, Nicanor, Orissus, Faunus, Leo, and Galeo agreed they would take their evil luck and make a stand in their new home in hell. They put their fists in a circle. They wanted to call out some kind of team name but didn’t know what they were.

  They were traitors and cowards.

  “We’re bottom feeders,” said Nicanor.

  “Yeah?” said Nox. “Let’s feed off the bottom. We will be pirates.”

  Nicanor said, “Do we not need a pirate ship in order to be pirates?” Might have been sarcastic.

  “Of course we do,” Nox said. “We need to get off this world. Phoenix is Roman soil, and I won’t prey on Rome.”

  That part sounded good. It fell to Leo to ask the question so obvious it sounded dim: “How do you intend to get a ship?”

  “Same way pirates always get their ships. We steal one,” said Nox, then added, “Not from Rome.”

  Phoenix was a Roman colonial world, but it had a cosmopolitan population. Non-Roman ships came and went out of Phoenix’s international ports daily.

  “Oh. Sure. Of course,” Orissus said. Definitely sarcastic. “How? We can’t get near enough to a spaceship to hijack one. No one will give us passage. No one will even let us aboard. We have no nationality. I bet they don’t even let us in the coiens spaceport.”

  “Think you could live on a Xerxes?” Nox asked.

  Orissus snorted. “Sure. Why not?”

  The Xerxes luxury transport craft was the highest of high-end nonmilitary spacecraft. The Xerxes was fast. It was beautiful—when you could see it, as the Xerxes was also stealthy and viciously armed for self-defense.

  It was not Roman.

  Products of Rome’s largest manufacturer, PanGalactic, had issues with tracking and control.

  The Xerxes was a breakthrough design from a consortium of neutral Asian colonies in Perseid space.

  For a non-Roman civilian spacecraft, the Xerxes had a lot of Striker in it, but the Xerxes was bigger and better, just as agile, and supposedly faster.

  Upon its debut the Xerxes instantly became the favored transport for heads of state.

  The United States Spacecraft One and Two had switched over to Xerxes transports.

  Caesar didn’t have one, because the Asian consortium that produced the Xerxes had chosen not to sell to Rome.

  A Xerxes didn’t need a fighter escort. Its base model was loaded with serpent’s teeth.

  Faunus said, “I want one.”

  Nox collected a few of his things and dressed as if he had a place to go. He put on trousers and shoes. Nox never wore trousers and shoes. Nox was a tunic and sandals man.

  He counted the coins from his purse. “I’m going into port.”

  “You’re picking up a Xerc, Nox?” said Orissus. “Get me one too.”

  “No, dumb ass.” Nox pocketed his money. “I need to get the maintenance and flight manuals first.”

  Glenn and Patrick made their way through vines, twisting branches, ferns, and thorns. Bioluminescent moss clung to tall trunks that looked and smelled like wood of a sort. Leaves gently fluttered overhead. Glenn stepped over a rotting log. The forest litter felt soft under her boot soles.

  Glenn and Patrick were not supposed to be outside the camp perimeter without exo-suits. Director Benet was going to detonate when he discovered her and Patrick on the loose. But there seemed little risk that anything Glenn and Patrick shed could wedge itself into a superior position within such a well-established ecosystem.

  They stepped into the clear where a tumbling stream had cut a course through sloping ground.

  The double moon rose, huge on the horizon.

  Patrick started up the vale climbing the rocks alongside the watercourse.

  Rocks and water were basically the same everywhere. Shale was shale. Water was water. Silica was silica. The chemistry was not exotic.

  Smells from the soft organic soil were a little different—a blend like damp earth, leaf litter, lichen, acorn hulls, wet shale, leather, and thyme. Green scents of chlorophyll breathed from the forest.

  Insectoids were lords of the universe. Most habitable worlds evolved something like them. Zoe had a double ration of those.

  Glenn did the Australian wave as
she climbed.

  She and Patrick reached level ground at a highland meadow.

  Got frisky in the open air.

  Fell asleep under an amazing array of stars.

  While it was still very dark, alien voices announced the coming sunrise—chirrups, whistles, clicks, burrs, songs, and a sound like someone running his thumbnail over a toothed comb.

  At dawn Glenn and Patrick rose. They shook out their clothes. The fabric was frictionless, so their clothes did not hold dirt or odor. Their bodies did. They bathed in the cold, cold stream and dragged themselves out shivering to dry in the sun in a patch of sweet grass.

  They checked their skin for crawling things, then got dressed.

  They breakfasted on beef jerk, which Patrick had brought along, and drank from the clear running stream.

  Glenn looked back toward the steep narrow vale they’d climbed. No one followed them. The LEN expedition hadn’t sent anyone to look for them. “They don’t miss us,” said Glenn.

  “I don’t miss them,” said Patrick.

  Glenn wasn’t sure if he really meant that or not, but it was nice of him to say.

  She’d been edgy and anxious when they left, obsessing about the alien attackers she knew were lurking just beyond the atmosphere.

  Fresh air, sex, and a quiet sky had calmed her nerves.

  She and Patrick were on the summer side of the world. It was just past solstice. The double moon was setting; its glowing hourglass showed both sides full.

  They followed the stream across the meadow.

  Slouching yellow-green trees lined the water’s wandering path on either bank. Tree roots hung down like bathers dangling their feet in the water.

  Patrick seemed to have a destination.

  Small jewel-colored creatures, like peacock eyes escaped from a tail, hopped between seed heads on the meadow.

  Glenn stumbled into a nest of popping screamers. The little aliens puffed themselves out round, all their yellow quills bristling like jagged spikes with black points.

  The quills were actually quite soft, the shrieks comical. Glenn couldn’t help laughing at them. The screamers kept hopping, popping, and screaming until Glenn and Patrick moved on.

  On gently rising ground, different sorts of trees crowded thick around the stream. Glenn caught glimpses between their rubbery trunks of the bright sunlight on another meadow beyond the watercourse.

  A flash of gold glinted through the trees’ gray-green foliage. “Oh, look!” Glenn exclaimed.

  Patrick saw it too. He threaded through the trees and climbed down into the streambed, sloshed through the water, and climbed up the opposite bank.

  Glenn followed him. They peered around either side of a massive gray-green tree trunk.

  Big, dark, shambling shapes moved on the meadow, like wayward haystacks. When the shapes passed from shadow into sunlight, their dark coats shimmered watery gold.

  Patrick inhaled. Held his breath a moment. Whispered, “My mammoths!”

  The giant animals bore some resemblance to woolly mammoths with their hulking shapes, their trunks, their short tusks, their tree trunk legs. But these mammoths’ long, fine wool was so shiny that the beasts appeared to be wearing silk pajamas. They moved peaceably in a herd.

  These were the animals whose recorded calls had shaken the Spring Beauty.

  There were no clashing grinding rock noises now. Not that Glenn could hear.

  Glenn and Patrick hid at the tree line, watching the beasts.

  The closest mammoth appeared to be male, biggest of the big. When breezes moved his curtain of gold locks, his undercarriage came briefly into view. Glenn knew you shouldn’t assume that things were what they seemed to be among aliens, but that really looked like a bull penis.

  The bull mammoth breathed deeply, slow and peaceful. He took unhurried steps and gave a slow flap of his giant ears. His trunk lifted, snuffled the air. The tiny orange eye on the near side of his head pivoted Glenn and Patrick’s way. The bull mammoth seemed to note their presence, then went back to grazing.

  “Are they friendly?” Glenn whispered.

  Patrick shrugged. “Wouldn’t know. We’re not supposed to interact with the natives. Just observe.”

  Glenn didn’t much care what the LEN supposed. “Let’s observe closer.”

  Patrick started to call her name, but she was already on the meadow.

  Nox entered the taverna in a town just outside of the Legion base. Legionaries frequented the place. Nox’s entrance met with mutters, stares, and glowers.

  This is what we call a pall.

  An ephebe named Tycho glanced, glanced twice, as Nox slid onto the barstool next to him.

  Tycho had enlisted in Legion Persus at the same time as Nox. Ever so not happy to see him now.

  Tycho flinched away. “Ho! Frater. Not good.”

  “Ave,” Nox hailed him.

  Tycho stared. Nox’s face was battered, his eye sockets black and purple. Tycho whispered through gritted teeth, his eyes flitting nervously everywhere. “Nox. I like you well, but you are persona non grata.”

  “No. I am nine-day-old wet crap,” Nox countered frankly. “But I’m not contagious.”

  “You think not?”

  Tycho was slithering off his stool like a frightened virgin. Nox closed his hand around Tycho’s arm and pulled him back onto his barstool. “Let the dead wolf speak.”

  “Nox—” Tycho tried to shrink away.

  “Stiffen up. I need a favor, O Best Beloved.”

  Tycho hissed, panicked. “Nox, I don’t even want to be caught breathing the same air as you!”

  The bartender came over. Looked at Nox hard, then took down a glass, held it under the bar. Nox heard the unmistakable hiss and gurgle of the glass filling. The bartender set the glass of warm yellow liquid before Nox. “On the house.”

  “Yeah. Thanks,” said Nox. He nudged the piss out of smelling distance and turned back to Tycho. “Can you get a copy of the complete documentation and training manual for the Xerxes?”

  He was peripherally aware of someone moving across the room, getting ready to take a free swing at him.

  Tycho put out a staying palm toward the menacing man. “Stay out of this.”

  The man gestured. “That belongs in the cloaca.”

  That was Nox. Cloaca was the latrine.

  “I might acquire this piece of crap,” Tycho said, as if considering taking a slave. “Don’t mess it up any more than it already is.”

  The man backed away, disappointed.

  Tycho whispered to Nox. “I always liked you, but that was before you turned yourself into worm manure. Why would I get Xerxes specs for you?”

  “Why wouldn’t you? You can get them.”

  “I can. But it’s not like you’re ever going to get near a Xerxes.”

  “Right,” said Nox.

  Tycho looked him over. Looked again. “You are going to steal one?” Tycho thought he was being ridiculous.

  Nox’s gaze remained steady, his blue eyes cagey within their bruises.

  “You are insane.”

  “No, I’m not,” said Nox. “I got exactly nothing to lose.”

  He saw Tycho’s resistance waver. Spectacular disasters were hard to look away from. Tycho said, “You’re going to liberate one? How? Whose?”

  Nox said, “You do know I’ve still got United States citizenship?”

  The United States was a LEN member. Not its favorite one, but a member all the same.

  “It’s going to take more than that,” said Tycho.

  Nox shrugged. “My crash, right?”

  Tycho shook his head, but he was giving in. “The entertainment value of watching you self-immolate could be worth it.”

  9

  GLENN STOOD IN THE SUNLIGHT, watching the mammoths for any reaction to her presence. Here and there a trunk rose in the air and sniffed. No one moved deliberately nearer. No one moved away.

  No one stopped grazing.

  Patrick followed her out on
to the meadow at a shambling gait. He lazily swung his arm across the grass tops like a trunk.

  He spoke casually aside to Glenn, his eyes locked on the bull, “If you see any ears go straight out to the sides, bag your ass back to the trees.”

  But the mammoths were unconcerned. One or two turned orange eyes at Glenn and Patrick for a moment, then paid them no more heed than they did the native creatures in the field.

  Having never seen anything like the humans, the mammoths hadn’t developed any aversion to them.

  Glenn and Patrick joined in with the herd.

  There were other hangers-on among the mammoth troop. Lizard-like things assumed the role of ox-peckers. Spindly-legged avians scavenged seeds in the mammoths’ deep footprints.

  Patrick’s ambling brought him alongside one mammoth, Glenn close behind him. The mammoth’s golden curtain of fiber swayed and gleamed in the sunlight. Glenn had to touch. She let the back of her hand brush the long silky strands.

  “Oh!” she said quietly.

  Patrick grinned, confirmed what she had just discovered. “They’re feathers.”

  Glenn smiled, amazed, letting the silky feathers fall through her fingers. They flashed light and dark.

  “The color’s not pigment,” Patrick said. “It’s structural. The feathers are refractive. That’s why they turn color in the sun. Like hummingbirds.”

  “Big hummer,” said Glenn. The mammoth hadn’t minded—or perhaps not noticed—her touch.

  “There’s probably a layer of down underneath her silk jammies but I’m afraid to grope her to find out.”

  “Her?”

  “This is a gal.”

  The she-mammoth was tusked like the males.

  Looking across the meadow, Glenn couldn’t tell the boys from the girls, except for the moms with their babies.

  Glenn and Patrick agreed without speaking that it was best not to go near the babies.

  The babies were classically cute, chubby, round, with big round heads and big round eyes, and downy feathers. They were clumsy. They tripped over their own trunks. The smallest baby was eight feet tall.

  Patrick fished out his omni from one of his many pockets. He’d known what he was doing when they set out on this safari. He was recording. He checked the chart of extremely low frequency noises.