by R. M. Meluch
“I don’t smell anything,” said Dak.
“I do,” said Carly. “It smells . . . clokey.”
It was the same dank smell that clung to her hand after she carried the severed cloke arm back to camp when they’d retrieved Roodoverhemd’s body.
The squad had been issued shovels and archaeologist’s trowels. Kerry looked at the trowel. Looked at the hard dirt. Looked at the trowel. “They are kidding.”
Big Richard jabbed his shovel at the dirt. Its blade cut a quarter inch in. He stopped. Backed away. “Exactly how far under is this thing?”
The foxes caught on to what they were about, moved in, and took over.
“Ho! Frommage!” Dak yelled. “Look ’em go!”
Hard-packed clay, pebbles, rocks, and roots went flying from under the foxes’ digging claws.
They soon hit curved metal and kept digging down around it.
The Marines stood back and watched. Steele couldn’t even order them in to assist. They would just be a drag on the operation.
A clumsy, fuzzy-coated baby fox waddled through the weeds and pawed at Dak’s boots. Dak picked the pup up. It had some weight to it, but a lot less than his field pack, and it was a hell of a lot cuter. Dak liked cute things. The pup was pudgy, its downy fur reddish-gray with black socks. “Hey ya, little guy.”
The fox puppy licked Dak’s chin.
“Flight Sergeant. What are you doing?” That was Colonel Steele.
Dak nodded his head down sideways to where the foxes were unearthing what was starting to look like a spaceship. “Supervising, sir.”
The fox pup curled into a comfortable ball in Dak’s arms and shut its big eyes.
“They’re doing a good job, sir,” said Dak.
The excavation crew had uncovered the whole alien spacecraft. Now they were cleaning their claws and combing their fur.
The alien ship’s design was a basic flying cigar. The bulk of it was an antiquated hydrogen powerplant. The rest of the vessel was a cylinder no bigger than a Swift.
“Skat. That’s not very big,” said the Yurg.
The dimensions were not human-sized. Neither were the clokes, so that made sense.
“Those things came in this?” Dak said, dubious. “This barge must have been stuffed like Kerry Blue’s locker.”
Mama fox came to collect her cub from Dak. She took the sleeping furball and popped it into her belly pouch. The opening contracted so fast, Dak wasn’t sure what he just saw.
“Did you see that?” Dak cried.
“Ignore the foxes!” Steele bellowed.
Icky Iverson found a round hatch in the spaceship’s fuselage. He pulled on it. And immediately dropped it back in place, surprised.
“It’s not locked!”
“Something must have come out,” said Rhino. She pulled the hatch back open.
“They came out a very long time ago,” said Asante, counting the strata in the dirt walls of the excavation pit.
“Look for a radio,” said Cain. “We’re supposed to check for radios.”
“Look how?” said Rhino. “I can’t get in there. Hell, I couldn’t get Carly in there.”
The hatchway was small. You couldn’t get a fox in there, and the foxes were not volunteering to try.
“Who’s got the crowbar?” said Rhino.
Steele dropped the red crowbar down into the excavation pit. Rhino caught it. She started breaking the ship’s hull open.
The curved panels came apart without too much effort. The black metal alloy looked similar to the hulls of the orbs that attacked Merrimack .
“I got a cloke-print!” Rhino held up a piece of decking that bore a distinct three-toed star track on it.
“Captain’s gonna like that,” said Cain. “Are they seeing this upstairs?”
Steele signaled Merrimack on the harmonic exclusive to this operation. “Merrimack. Are you reading this?”
“We see it, Colonel.” That was Captain Carmel.
“It’s a cloke ship, sir.”
Foxes had a cat’s compulsive need to sit on whatever you were working on, and a young white she-fox set her chin on Steele’s wrist com as he was talking to the ship. Steele tried to shoo the animal away.
“What is that?” the captain said. “Is that what they’re calling a fox?”
“Yes, sir. This is our excavation unit.”
Even Carmel had to say, “They’re kind of cute.”
“They’re annoying, sir. But they brought the right tools for the job.”
The inner passages of the ship were small. Even a cloke could not have stood up in there.
With the crowbar, Rhino cracked open the ship’s control center. She uncovered no radio. No communications equipment of any kind. But there was evidence that some pieces might have been removed a long time ago. The Marines found brackets that held nothing.
The Marines pulled the wreck apart and ran scanners over the pieces. The readings went up to the Mack by res pulse for analysis. The ground troops couldn’t send up the pieces themselves, in case the pirates were watching for displacements.
Wherever in the world the pirates were.
LEN scientists posted no sentries.
Nox, on point, crossed the dirt perimeter into the LEN expedition camp in daylight. He gestured toward one large hut at the outer edge of camp, which bore a red cross blazoned across its roof. A red cross was an international do-not-shoot symbol. That was a good place for the brothers to be. The red cross also indicated there would be medical help inside.
The brothers nodded in silence and proceeded to that hut.
The door hung open. Leo went in first. When he signaled the all clear, the rest of the brothers hurried up the ramp and in.
Leo kept watch at the door while the others rummaged through the medical supplies and looked over the machines. They had no idea what half of them did. They didn’t know how to operate the other half.
Leo hissed. Someone was coming.
Leo and Faunus flattened themselves against the wall on either side of the entrance. The others pulled back out of sight.
Someone came stumping up the ramp at an uneven gait. A male voice called, “Cecil! Cecil!” He put both hands to the doorjambs and leaned his head in the entryway. “Cecil?”
“Not Cecil.” Faunus seized the man by his throat and pulled him inside the hut. Faunus growled into the man’s face, “You heal us or die.”
When Faunus loosened his grip on the man’s throat, the man squeaked, “I’m a xenoaerologist, not a doctor.”
The man was wearing safari shorts. There was a giant angry red swelling on his left calf, a large black stinger still in it.
“Skat.” Faunus hadn’t caught the doctor. He’d caught a patient.
Faunus hauled the man into a back room and parked him hard in a chair. “Have a seat. If you require immediate attention, I can amputate that for you.” Faunus’ machete swung on its hanger.
The xenoaerologist shook his head, finger before his lips, promising silence, and assumed an attitude of very patient waiting.
A shadow fell in the entryway. Another man stood framed in sunlight, blinking, his eyes not adjusted to the inner dim. But he was immediately aware of the presence of strangers in his hut. His voice suggested it was his hut. He demanded, “Who are you!”
“Boy Scouts of America,” said Nox. He closed a fist on the man’s lab coat, yanked the coat up under the man’s chin, and pulled him inside. Leo shut the door behind him.
Half strangled, the white-coated man began noticing bandanas, earrings, bones, scars, feathers, dreadlocks, brass knuckles, and machetes.
Nox told him, “You are going to heal us, or you will be up to your eyeballs in eyeballs.”
The man lifted his open hands, spoke through clenched teeth. “No violence.”
“That’s not your call to make,” said Orissus.
The man’s eyes moved, inspecting the faces around him. Nox could tell the man, who was apparently a medical doctor, saw the illness
in them.
Nox released the physician with a rough push toward a workstation.
The physician recovered his balance and caught sight of the xenoaerologist sitting in the back room with his bee-stung leg puffed up. Alarm crossed the physician’s face.
The man in the back said meekly, “Hi, Cecil.”
“Aaron! What did they do to you!” the physician—Cecil—bellowed.
“Tiger bee sting,” the xenoaerologist, Aaron, said quietly. “I can wait. They were here first.”
Dr. Cecil smoothed down his white coat. He turned on a piece of equipment and beckoned one of his patients to come toward him.
The pirates stood huddled in a glowering pack, not moving except to cough or swallow down bile.
The physician prompted, impatient, “Someone?”
Nox stepped forward.
“Look out for nanites,” Leo warned. “He could put nanites in us.”
Horrific things had been done with nanomachines.
Nox told Leo, “These are not that kind of people.”
“Thank you,” said the physician stiffly. He had taken grave offense at the suggestion that he would use medicine as a weapon. The Hippocratic oath was older even than Rome. First do no harm.
Dr. Cecil made Nox spit on a slide, then checked the sputum under magnification so the pirates could see the microbes for themselves.
“I’ve seen quite a few cases of this recently,” said Cecil. “I can treat this.”
Leo watched him prepare the remedy, watching for evidence of nanites.
“They say the madness of Caesar Romulus came from nanites,” Leo said. “The work of the rogue patterner Augustus.”
“How can a patterner go rogue?” said Orissus. He had never believed that rumor. He cleared his throat loudly. “Patterners are programmed.”
“The patterner didn’t go rogue, and he didn’t break programming,” said Nox. “The devil is in the definitions. Augustus was loyal to Rome. But what is Rome? And what is that?” Nox moved forward, pointing at the concoction Dr. Cecil prepared.
Leo pointed, “Watch him. Watch him. He’s got two things in there.”
Dr. Cecil was loading an intradermal with two different antisera.
“It’s a two-stage treatment,” Cecil said, proud, irritated. “One to kill the infection. One to neutralize the toxins given off by the dying bacteria.”
“Prepare eight treatments,” said Nox.
There were only seven pirates. As commanded, Dr. Cecil loaded eight intradermals.
Nox picked up one intradermal at random. He handed it to Cecil, “Do him first.” He pointed at Aaron, sitting in the back room.
Dr. Cecil administered the shot to Aaron and walked brusquely back out to the front room. He crossed his arms, waiting for his next command.
Nox called into the back room. “How do you feel?”
“Honestly?” said Aaron. “My leg hurts. But I’m not complaining. Truly.”
Nox picked up one of the other intradermals. He pushed it into his own arm, the same way Dr. Cecil had administered it to Aaron.
“This stings, Doc,” said Nox. Tingling. Something was definitely happening.
Dr. Cecil pronounced, “You are healed. Next.”
None of the brothers hurried to step forward. They watched Nox.
Pallas asked, “How do you feel, Nox?”
Nox considered this. How did he feel? “Not bad.” He inhaled, exhaled. Felt something falling away inside him. Tightness loosened from his chest. His abdomen was quiet. His head was clearing. He coughed up a satisfying loughie and spat on the floor. He breathed more freely. “I feel pretty damn good, actually.”
“Great,” Faunus said thickly. He gave a juicy cough. His stomach whined. He pushed Nox aside. “I’m next. Orissus, if I die, kill him.” Faunus jerked his head toward Dr. Cecil.
“You know I will, frater,” said Orissus.
Dr. Cecil provided a receptacle for any further spitting.
It felt so good to be rid of the infection, the pirates actually used the spitoon.
Leo was the last one treated.
Orissus checked Leo up and down, frowning gravely, concerned. He lifted Leo’s eyelids with his thumbs, inspecting Leo’s eyes. Orissus growled deep dismay. “Worst case of nanites I’ve ever seen.”
The physician took off his diagnostic probe, placed it in the sterilizer. He set an automaton to clean the deck. “I have done my duty. Go now.”
Faunus stared at him with an amazed smile. Puffed a derisive laugh. “Go?” He didn’t even bother telling Cecil no.
Nox pointed to Aaron waiting in the back room with his ballooning leg. He told Dr. Cecil, “Fix him.” It was probably good to have healthy hostages, so he could threaten to mess them up later.
Cecil said, offended, “I don’t need to be told to heal the sick.”
“And I don’t need an anesthetic to cut out your tongue,” said Nox. “Do what you’re told, when you’re told.”
Cecil extracted the stinger from Aaron’s leg and administered anti-venom.
Nox ushered Cecil and the limping Aaron out the door with a rusty machete.
Faunus swaggered out to the fire pit at the center of camp, where many of the LEN expedition members were sitting on benches, talking. It was apparently their favorite gathering spot.
Several heads turned as the pirates came into their midst. Faunus boomed brightly, “What’s for dinner?”
More xenos looked up in alarm at the newcomers dressed like brigands.
Someone’s muttered aside to a colleague carried louder than he’d intended, “Where’d they come from?”
“Mars,” said Faunus.
“Mars needs women,” said Orissus, flashing a gold-toothed grin from within his black beard.
Tentative expressions started to look adequately frightened.
Nox, Leo, Galeo, Nicanor, and Pallas fanned out to the ships, huts, and tents to round up all the xenos who were not already assembled in the center of camp.
Inside the parked LEN ship Amber Dragonfly, Dr. Sandy Minyas crouched over the resonator. Her fingers were clumsy keying in the emergency harmonic. She fumbled. Had to enter the harmonic again. Her breath came in shallow gasps. “This is LEN expedition base Zebra Oscar Echo. We ha—have—” Her whispering voice hitched. She was horribly aware of someone behind her, a large presence, smelling wrong.
The hilt of a machete smashed down on the res chamber. Sandy Minyas reared flat back into a pirate. A shriek flew out of her throat.
Then she was rising by her shirt collar.
“Move along,” said the pirate. He steered her around to face the hatchway and gave her a push. She stumbled out to the sunlight and let herself be herded with the others gathered around the fire pit. No one, not even Benet, said anything to her.
“Family conference,” Faunus sang to the assembling xenos. “There’s been a little regime change. I’ll wait till we’re all here.”
“Oh, look at that,” Leo pointed suddenly. “I want that!”
Set in the half-ring of uninspired square-built spacecraft, looking entirely out of place among the prosaic boxes, crouched a silvery late-model racing yacht.
Smaller than the other ships, smaller than the Xerxes, the Star Racer was fast, high end, gorgeous. It was too good for these people.
The pirates hadn’t searched that ship yet.
“Let’s take it,” said Nox. He marched up the ramp and tried the hatch. It was locked. Nox rapped on the hatch of the racing yacht with the hilt of his machete.
A dog barked inside. It sounded large.
Nox shouted through the hull, “Don’t try to take off. We’ll shoot you out of the sky and kill all your friends behind you.”
Leo added, “We’ll carve your name into their carcasses.”
The dog barking silenced.
The hatch opened.
Nox blinked at the figure in the hatchway—a trim, elegant, older man with a dignified youthful posture. He wore his long silv
ering black hair swept back in a tail.
Jose Maria de Cordillera gave a gentle smile and said happily to the pirate standing at his hatchway, “John.”
The other pirates gaped at Nox, their eyes big as full moons.
Jose Maria stepped out through the hatch, arms wide, and greeted the stunned pirate with an embrace and a kiss on either scarred cheek. “John Farragut.”
26
CAPTAIN CARMEL SUMMONED her cryptotech.
“Mister Johnson, what can you tell me about the radio transmissions on the planet?”
Merrimack had detected low-level radio messages on first arriving at Zoe. The staccato patterns were not any signal that would ever occur in nature. Some intelligence on the planet was clicking.
“It’s not a code,” said Qord Johnson. “It’s a language.”
“What’s the signal strength?” Calli asked.
“Weak,” the com tech answered that one. “Less than fifty watts. Frequency five hundred ten kilohertz.”
“That’s near the old Morse range, isn’t it?” said Calli.
“It is,” said Qord Johnson. “But this is not a code, Captain.”
“Is the LEN scientific expedition conducting wildlife radio tagging?” said Calli. “Could this be wildlife telemetry?” In that case she could be chasing literal wild geese.
“No, sir. It’s not ours,” said the com tech. Then specified, “Not human.”
“It’s an alien language,” said the cryptotech. “I’m the wrong man for this job.”
Code breakers did not untangle languages.
Calli paid an in-person visit to the xeno lab where the xenogeneralists Weng and Sidowski had their full cloke specimen spread out on a table.
Calli immediately zeroed in on the wiry filaments that looked like strands of coarse hair protruding from the cloke’s shoulders. “What are those?”
“Antennae,” said Dr. Weng.
“Radio antennae?” said Calli.
“Not necessarily,” said Dr. Sidowski.
“Could they be?” said Calli.
“Do you want them to be?” said Weng.
“Someone on the planet is talking on the radio,” said Calli.
