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

by R. M. Meluch

The ropy tail slapped her. She crested the mammoth’s rear, and crawled up its back onto its neck. She hooked one arm over the root of one ear to keep it out of her way, and she set her sight on a saber. Fired.

  The saber flinched as the splinter pierced its hide and lodged in its ribs. The saber snarled at the sting.

  Glenn pulled the second stage trigger.

  The splinter splintered.

  The saber convulsed upward, all four feet off the ground. Its body twisted in the air and dropped to the ground. Frothing red blood ran from its mouth.

  There was nervous commotion all around, mammoth and saber. The sabers held their tiny ears flat back, a very terrestrial gesture of fear. The mammoths acted confused, scared. They did not break ranks. They were already in the position they assumed when they were scared.

  Glenn took aim at the biggest saber in her view and stuck a splinter into its ear. The saber pawed at its ear, shaking its head. Glenn pulled the second trigger. A piece of skull and fur burst outward in a red iron-blooded spray.

  Overhead, the tattlers squawked. The sabers roared confusion, anger. The mammoths squeaked.

  Glenn’s mount rolled its trunk up. The trunk rose before Glenn like an enormous serpent, then the nostril prodded Glenn questioningly.

  Glenn petted the giant nose away. “I’m working here.”

  A saber sprang up under her mount’s lifted trunk. No time to aim, Glenn pulled two triggers in quick succession. The splinter caught the leaping saber in its open mouth and immediately detonated.

  The saber’s throat ruptured out of its neck. The saber fell thrashing on the ground coughing and gagging. It clipped one of its own pack in the ankle with its facial saber.

  Glenn’s mount flinched as the blood spattered its trunk. The mammoth forequarters lifted off the ground and came down to crush the wounded saber. The mammoth shook its head, tusks waving. Knocked Glenn off-balance. She slid downward, where massive sides pounded together and huge feet stamped craters in the ground.

  Glenn clutched at the mammoth’s ear to stay aboard. It took two hands. Her splinter gun slid away and dropped amid the stamping mammoth feet.

  The ear waved. Glenn lost her grip on the ear. She grabbed at anything. Feathers. Thick handfuls of feathers. She shut her eyes, grunting, hauling herself up the moving wall hand over hand. Glenn pulled herself back over the crest of the mammoth’s neck, and she clung to it, tight as skin, until the sabers dissolved back into the gray-green trees.

  The two biggest mammoth males charged out of the circle to give chase. The hembras closed ranks behind them and stayed that way until the males returned. Then they all joined in stepping on the dead.

  The males shook their tusks at the sky where disappointed tattlers circled, braying.

  Glenn climbed down her mammoth’s butt. Her hands tingled. All her nerves felt like they were sparking.

  She found her gun. It was completely embedded in the ground within a mammoth footprint. She wedged the gun loose, moved apart to find a place to sit down and pick out the dirt.

  A mammoth nose ruffled her short, short hair. The animal seemed to know Glenn was responsible for the exploding sabers. Making that connection had to indicate a certain level of intelligence. Glenn gave the trunk a little stroke and expected it to go away.

  The mammoth kept snuffling and nudging her. Another joined in, prodded her with its trunk.

  Glenn tried to shoo the trunks away without actually slapping them. Finally she cried, “Patrick, what are they doing?”

  Patrick pointed up at the carrion birds. “I think they want you to shoot the tattlers.”

  Consul Marco Camiciarossa was dubious when the young American man showed up at the Italian consulate on planet Phoenix and introduced himself as John Farragut, Junior.

  “You are Admiral Farragut’s son?” the consul asked, skeptical.

  Camiciarossa had never heard that the famous Admiral John Farragut had a grown son.

  “I’m his brother,” said this John Farragut.

  Curiouser and curiouser. Camiciarossa gave an uncomfortable laugh. This was a joke. A weak one. “Who would name two sons John?”

  “You obviously don’t know our father. His Honor has an ego. I’m the junior. I know it’s odd, but it’s God’s truth.”

  Camiciarossa politely asked to check his visitor’s DNA. He expected this obvious fraud to quickly excuse himself and withdraw.

  “Not a problem.” The alleged John Farragut, Junior, presented himself for testing. “Anything you want.”

  Astonishingly, Camiciarossa found an authenticated record that Admiral John Alexander Farragut actually had a younger brother also named John. The younger John had a different middle name than the admiral. This younger John Farragut had the same middle name as their father. The visitor’s DNA and retinal image checked out to the identity John Farragut, Junior.

  It was so fantastical that Camiciarossa had to make one more crosscheck, in case the science had been subverted. Camiciarossa would not be gulled. In an ancient day it was common to use obscure knowledge to verify someone’s identity. Consul Camiciarossa resurrected the old challenge. “Mother’s maiden name?”

  “Winfield.”

  Camiciarossa flushed, embarrassed. The young man was who he said he was. Camiciarossa tried to make amends for grilling his guest. “Signor Farragut. I do so apologize for the terrorist treatment.”

  The young man waved the apology away. “Understandable. Expected. You got a strange request from a total stranger. And I have to confess I can’t pretend I’m on any official business. I saw one of these at an air show, and they just don’t let you get within five hundred feet.”

  John Farragut, Junior, had asked for a tour of the Italian ambassador’s Xerxes transport.

  “I fell in love from afar,” said the younger Farragut.

  The Farraguts were a wealthy family. Camiciarossa hadn’t known they were quite that wealthy.

  But Camiciarossa supposed one needn’t be able to purchase a Xerxes in order to lust after one. “It is a magnificent machine,” Camiciarossa assured him. “I think even Rome must admit it is the premier ship of its kind.”

  The two strolled out to the secure area of the consulate, arm in arm, LEN fashion. The much grander Italian embassy building loomed beyond the compound wall.

  Camiciarossa’s eyes kept straying aside, stealing glances at the cuts on the young American’s face. When a slight bump to his side made young Farragut wince, Camiciarossa took the opening to ask, “Are you injured?”

  Farragut nodded. “I got thrown by a horse.”

  Horsemanship was an aristocratic pursuit. “You are an equestrian?”

  “Not a good one.” The young man touched his ribs gingerly.

  Camiciarossa thought his guest had forgiven him for his rude welcome. This Farragut looked somewhat like the infamous admiral but more refined, with less brawn. He was just as blond and six foot tall. “We don’t see many Americans here. What brings you to Phoenix?”

  “I’m on an old-fashioned Grand Tour,” said Farragut. The Grand Tour was still a custom among the well-bred gentry. “I’m seeing the cosmos. Other people. Other places. I’m thinking of becoming an ambassador when I finish school.”

  A very pleasant surprise. “That would be a change from your brother,” said Camiciarossa and immediately checked himself. What a ghastly thing to say. He feared he had insulted his guest.

  But this John Farragut graciously agreed, “Wouldn’t it?”

  The famous Admiral John Alexander Farragut was a U.S. cowboy who negotiated at gunpoint. Admiral John Alexander Farragut was not well-loved by the League of Earth Nations.

  “I am not my brother,” this John Farragut assured Camiciarossa.

  That was a good thing, the consul thought.

  They had come to an open area close to the ordinary transport hangars.

  Energy sparked off the young man, an anxious anticipation like a boy on his first date. He searched about for his beloved.

>   Camiciarossa smiled. “See her?”

  Puzzled. Expectant. Farragut said, “No.”

  Camiciarossa could not hold back his grin. “You see—or don’t see!—this is beyond perfect optical invisibility.” He commanded the air, “Bernini! Reveal yourself.”

  The Xerxes appeared from emptiness.

  The young man’s intake of breath was satisfying.

  Camiciarossa enjoyed his shock and depth of emotion. The young man was profoundly impressed.

  The Xerxes was an aggressive, faceted, flying wing, big as a yacht. Even revealed it was difficult to see. The harder one looked, the more diffuse its details. It took on colors of sky and ground and the maintenance hangars behind it.

  “In full stealth our Xerxes refracts light and scatters the image so it cannot be detected by any electromagnetically sensitive means. Sounders can send a ping straight at it; the Xerxes won’t be there.”

  The young man found his voice. “That must make it tough for airspace control.”

  “Control is notified of its presence on a strictly need-to-know basis. And, of course, airspace control needs to know.”

  He took the young man for a walk around, pointed out the two antimatter engines bulging under the fuselage. They couldn’t really see the topside this close up, as the ship was tall.

  “Shall we board?”

  His guest was having trouble putting words together, overwhelmed. He nodded, “Please.”

  “Signor Farragut—” the consul started, then switched, hand over heart. “May I call you John?”

  The young Farragut hesitated. Camiciarossa thought he’d been too familiar. But Farragut explained, “Actually, I go by my middle name these days.”

  Camiciarossa had done the background check, so he didn’t need to ask what it was.

  “Of course.” Camiciarossa nodded. “Knox.”

  11

  GLENN AND PATRICK SPENT several days among the mammoths. At night the male mammoths paced guard duty in shifts. Mothers lay down in the tall grass, their babies between their forelegs.

  Came a morning when the herd woke early. Trunks extended up in the air, sniffing. Snorting. There was something on the wind they didn’t like.

  Glenn reached for her splinter gun.

  The herd got to its feet and shuffled away from the smell.

  There was something beyond the eastern trees they didn’t like. They didn’t hate it, but they were avoiding it.

  Glenn sniffed. Immediately she felt ridiculous. As noses went, she was seriously outgunned. She didn’t smell anything deadish or shitty on the breeze.

  “Are we going with them?” Glenn gazed after the mammoths.

  Patrick gave the kind of nod that said maybe. “I want to see what spooked them.”

  He seemed to have an idea what it was.

  Glenn and Patrick jogged across the wide meadow in the opposite direction from the mammoths. When they came to the trees, they crept softly through the underbrush to see what lay beyond.

  Where the vines and bushes thinned, they hunched low and tucked into a ready-made foxhole left by an uprooted tree. Huddled against the earthen wall of their bunker, Glenn slowly lifted her head and pushed aside a bare root to peer into the clearing.

  She inhaled a little gasp. A sound of shock, but good shock. A Christmas morning gasp, or a moonlit meadow filled with fireflies gasp.

  Patrick edged up to peer over the side. He breathed, “It’s them!”

  Glenn smiled, delighted. “They’re—”

  Charming was the word, but Glenn couldn’t bring herself to say it. Cute. Another word she didn’t know how to pronounce.

  “Foxes!” Patrick whispered.

  They were handsome animals, superficially vulpine, the size of very large dogs, wolf-bodied but with broader chests. The faces were tapered, their ears pointed and erect.

  They had Samoyed smiles.

  Fox language was what the LEN brought Patrick to Zoe to study.

  Half of the foxes were on all fours. At least a half dozen were walking on their hind legs in a bent leg stance, and one carried something in its forepaws. Several wrestled and tumbled. One lolled in the grass. Their palms and the soles of their feet were black pads.

  The foxes moved in ways that looked playful.

  All the pictures Glenn had seen of foxes were taken in a winter setting. The animals in those pictures had thick lustrous pelts. The short coats of these on the summer meadow were sleek and shiny as racehorses. Only the fur of their topknots and their tails was long and bushy.

  Glenn counted forty or fifty. May have missed some, and counted some others twice. They were gamboling and tumbling in the high grass.

  Glenn and Patrick went unnoticed, huddled downwind under the tree roots.

  Glenn noted the animals’ formidable claws, the canine teeth. She whispered, “What would they do if we went out there?”

  Patrick’s eyebrows shrugged. He didn’t know. “They share with each other. They don’t pick fights. They’re only ever aggressive toward prey.”

  “Are we prey?”

  “That, my Hamlet, is the question.”

  The foxes looked sweet and cheerful. And they were so . . . with each other. No one knew how they would react to humans.

  “They’re pack predators,” Patrick whispered. “They can bring down beasts the size of a yak. There could be a reason the mammoths shuffled on elsewhere. I’m not sure what kind of IFF we’d get here.”

  He meant Identification Friend or Food.

  Glenn watched intently for a while. Couldn’t help smiling as the foxes played. She glanced aside to Patrick, who had turned around to sit with his back against the embankment, facing the other direction.

  She was surprised to see him so pale. And he’d stopped talking.

  The short hairs stood up on the back of her neck. Patrick’s gaze was fixed immediately behind her. Glenn noticed the body heat now radiating at her back. And an animal smell. Patrick spoke straight ahead of him in a small strained voice, “Grandma, what big teeth you have.”

  As the Italian consul Marco Camiciarossa ushered his visitor into the Xerxes’ air lock, the inner hatch sealed fast against their approach. The ship spoke in a firm voice. Could have been male or female. “Unregistered person attempting entry.”

  Camiciarossa spoke: “Bernini. Register Knox as friendly.”

  A scanner light moved up and down the two people within the air lock. Nox held his breath.

  A soft chime sounded. The inner seal relaxed. The ship pronounced: “Registered.”

  Nox closed his eyes.

  The hatch opened for them. Camiciarossa showed Nox around the spaceship.

  The overheads were higher than on military ships. This was a luxury transport for important persons. The control room was well ordered, black and steel, elegant, efficient.

  The galley was sleek, clean, equipped for a master chef. The food stores were low, as the ambassador was currently in residence at the embassy.

  The physical sleep chambers were small, accommodating only a very large bed and dresser. But the confines could transform themselves into illusions of anything you wanted—mountains, beaches, kingdoms under the sea.

  Nox was more interested in the technical achievements than the amenities. Camiciarossa showed off the machine’s engineering mastery—the helm, the sensors, the communications center, the water recyclers, the air scrubbers, the engines, which were custom built for each Xerxes, the inertial-field generators.

  “What is threshold?” Nox asked.

  “I can’t tell you.”

  Nox gave him a conspiratorial smile. “It’s fast, isn’t it?”

  Camiciarossa had to suppress his own smile. “It’s very fast.”

  He showed Nox the arsenal of serpent’s teeth. That name sounded better than “killer pencils,” which better described the missiles’ look. “Serpent’s teeth” better defined their effect—fast, penetrating, lethal.

  “They will rip through most inertial fields
,” said Camiciarossa. “Bernini is not an attack craft, but he could defend himself if he had to.”

  At tour’s end, the consul said, “I’m sorry I can’t take you up for a fly around.”

  “Oh, God, please don’t apologize!” Nox said, honestly horrified. “You’ve been amazing.”

  Nox reached into his pocket. Knew this wasn’t going to go in easy. He would get only one attempt.

  Nox didn’t carry a pocket knife, as most American men did. But he was in civilized guise, and he could carry a pen onto the ambassador’s spacecraft without setting off alarms, even though a pen was the instrument of a notorious assassination in recent history.

  Glenn turned her head, dreadfully slowly, to look over her shoulder.

  She saw the teeth first. Pointed teeth. Uppers and lowers on display in a wide vulpine smile. White. Gleaming.

  The fox had very large eyes.

  Glenn edged her hand toward her back, reaching for her splinter gun.

  Patrick hummed.

  The fox’s head jerked back. Its muzzle pulled down against its snowy chest. It looked surprised. The fox barked, jumped up, and dashed around the hollow in a tight, tail-chasing puppy circle. It sat up on its haunches on the trunk of the fallen tree and cocked its head.

  The teeth were still all there in a big smile. The black eyes gleamed.

  Was that the look of hunger? Curiosity? Challenge? Thrill of the hunt? Alien fear?

  Patrick climbed out of the root hole and performed a kind of salaam—a big full-body bow that brought his forearms to the ground and his butt up in the air. On Earth it was universal dog language for Do you want to play?

  The fox’s forepaws were armed with massive curved black claws. Before Glenn could react, one paw shot forward, batted Patrick in the chest. The fox darted away in bouncing leaps. Glenn gasped, “Patrick! Are you—?

  All right? she meant to say, but Patrick was scrambling to his feet, unblooded, brushing her off, and dashing after the fox. “I’m it!”

  The white tip of the fox’s tail gave a wag and flick in retreat. Might have been an equivalent to sticking out its tongue.