by R. M. Meluch
“These are the radios?” said Ski, staring at his alien.
“Are they?” Calli said back.
“This is dead, sir,” said Dr. Weng of his specimen. “Perhaps if I had more to work with . . . ?”
“Is there such a thing as a biological radio?” said Calli.
“Don’t see why not,” said Ski.
“Because there should be more signals if the clokes are all walking radios,” Weng snapped at Ski. “That’s why not.”
“There are only a few dozen signal sources worldwide,” said Calli. “The signal strength is too low for those sources to be talking to each other.”
“Maybe they’re listening,” said Ski. “Maybe only the group captain’s talking.”
Calli’s eyebrows went high. She absorbed that thought.
“Captain?” Weng prompted.
Calli said, “If only the command-and-control cloke talks, do the foot soldiers not talk to each other?”
“Maybe like ants talk.” Ski touched his fingertips together like conversing ants. “Couldn’t begin to tell you what they’re saying.”
Weng said, “Where’s the ship’s xenolinguist when we finally need one?”
“Yeah,” said Ski. “Ham. Where’s Ham?”
Patrick Hamilton.
“Dr. Hamilton is on the planet,” said Calli.
“Need him, sir,” said Weng.
Calli signaled her exec on the ship’s intracom. “Commander Ryan, I need to consult with Dr. Hamilton.”
The XO responded, “Sir, the LEN put up a shield dome ten minutes ago. We can’t see anything in camp. The expedition is not answering hails. And—”
Calli heard a quick exchange of voices before Commander Ryan returned to the com. “They just activated displacement jammers.”
Weng heard that. He looked to Calli. “I know the LEN don’t like us, sir, but what the Fortran?”
“Oh, foxtrot,” Calli said, eyes to the overhead.
We just found our pirates.
Nox was aware of heads whiplashing round his way. He returned Jose Maria’s embrace mechanically, because he couldn’t bring himself to stab the man. “My name is Nox.”
“Nox,” Jose Maria acknowledged. He stepped back from the embrace and somehow managed to turn Nox around so they were both facing the staring camp gathering. “Nox, this is Glenn Hamilton, and her husband, Dr. Patrick Hamilton. That is Dr. Melisandra Minyas. There is Dr. Poul—”
“You are trying to humanize them,” Nox said.
“Of course I am,” said Jose Maria, warm and calm. “And that is Dr. Aaron Rose, who makes excellent wine.”
It was harder to kill people with names.
“It won’t work,” Nox said.
But Jose Maria had already got inside Nox’s guard. Jose Maria had been a houseguest of his father back when Nox was still John Farragut, Junior. Jose Maria had never called him John John. Or worse, John John John. Jose Maria had recognized him through his scars and tats and bones. It meant Jose Maria had looked at him, really looked at him, and remembered him.
Nox felt his brothers’ stares. Felt a physical nudge behind his knee. A snuffling nose.
Jose Maria reached down to the nose’s owner. “This is my dog, Inga. I don’t think I had her when I visited.”
Oh, hell. He’s introduced his dog. He’s throwing the whole arsenal at me.
The bitch’s warm brown eyes, doggie smile, and wagging stub tail dared Nox to kill her.
Nox tried to salvage his authority, his ruthlessness. Had to make an example of someone. He put his hand on his machete hilt and spoke loudly past Jose Maria, “I seem to have everyone’s attention. Who is in charge here?”
Before anyone else could speak, Jose Maria said, “I am.”
He wasn’t. But apparently Jose Maria guessed that Nox had intended to cut off the expedition leader’s head.
Nox couldn’t kill Jose Maria.
We have broken bread.
“Son of a bitch,” Nox muttered.
Nox needed to keep up his role of vicious killer.
I am evil.
The thought of killing Jose Maria was making him physically ill. He couldn’t do it.
Nox was agonizingly aware of his brothers stealing looks at him and pretending they weren’t as shocked as anyone else to hear him called John Farragut.
Nox gave up the idea of killing someone for now. He pushed ahead with the rest of the Circle’s plan. “Your presence is required around the campfire, Don Cordillera.” Nox motioned Jose Maria out of his elegant ship.
Jose Maria complied. The dog trotted at his heels, stub tail wagging.
Orissus was keeping watch over the flock around the fire pit. Orissus told them that anyone caught with a com would lose his hands. Out came the coms onto the ground. Then Faunus searched everyone. He didn’t find any hidden coms. Orissus, with his black bushy beard, his wild hair, his gold tooth, and his machete, looked just too eager to cut off the hand of a holdout.
The brothers searched all the ships and all the tents and huts for anything that could be used against them. Nicanor acquired a list of all expedition personnel and called roll to make sure no one was AWOL.
“Anabelle,” Nicanor called. “Which of you is Anabelle?”
Met with silence.
Nicanor roared, “Where is Anabelle!”
The scientists were cowed speechless.
A small voice offered, “The goat.”
Orissus’ eyes bulged menacingly.
The voice got smaller. “Really. Anabelle is the goat.”
Nicanor looked to his brothers, “Is there a goat?”
Pallas said, “I saw a goat.”
Pallas left the fireside and walked out between huts and parked ships. He returned within moments suppressing a grin. He waved a feed bowl embossed with flowery letters: Anabelle. “Explains why Anabelle doesn’t have a last name.”
Satisfied now that everyone was seated around the fire pit under Orissus’ guard, Nicanor, Pallas, Faunus, Leo, Galeo, and Nox did a second more thorough search of the camp. Then they closed up the ships and sealed the hatches with nothing more formidable than tape.
The tape might as well have been radioactive iron bars.
The expedition members did not need to be told not to disturb the tape.
Nox noticed a glassy shimmer in the air overhead. Leo had got a defensive energy dome up. There would be no bolts from the blue now. No skyhooks either. If Merrimack found them, she would need to put soldiers on the ground to root them out.
We have hostages.
The civilians were as docile as livestock, hoping they were dairy cows, not beef cattle.
“That was a productive meeting, folks,” said Faunus. “You can go back to your beakers.”
One scientist seemed about to tell him that his “beakers” were inside one of the sealed ships. He thought better of it.
Data and pictures had begun streaming in from the drones that Merrimack sent to scout the titanic alien ship five light-years out from Zoe.
It was a vast rotating cylinder, using old style centripetal force for gravity. Newer parts had been constructed and kluged on over a series of generations.
The huge ship had a manufacturing plant in tow, big and dirty. As there was no need for pollution containment in interstellar space, the plant churned out smoke and radiation behind it.
“It’s a nuke,” Commander Ryan told Captain Carmel.
“The cloke ships weren’t nukes,” said Calli. “Even their orbs were hydrogen powered. Are we sure this vessel is a cloke ship?”
“Affirmative. Their three-toed prints are all over it. They had a little accident in there. It’s hot.”
“What do you mean hot?”
“Radioactive,” said Commander Ryan. “It ought to be glowing in the dark.”
Little accident apparently meant catastrophe.
“Does any part support life?”
“The drones are still scouting, but it doesn’t look hopeful,”
said Dingo. “If anyone is hoping. I’m sorry, I don’t like the squiggy little things. Our drones can’t board. The ship is sealed up tight, and a sounding indicates its passageways are too small for a drone to move inside.”
“Where is the cloke home world?”
“We don’t know.”
“Why don’t we know?” said Calli.
“There’s nothing back in line the way this barge came. Not in this galaxy. They must have changed course at some point, or at several points.”
“It’s leaving an obvious trail,” said Calli. “Dispatch a drone to backtrace the carrier’s emission trail.”
“Aye, aye, Captain,” said Dingo Ryan.
He sounded reluctant. It must have seemed a diversion of resources when they had a crisis down on the planet.
“I want to clear my six,” Calli answered his unspoken objection. “That generational ship has been in transit for centuries, but you know their home world technology has not been standing still waiting for this crew to report back. They planted squatters on a planet that already has a resident intelligence. They wrecked a LEN ship and they attacked us. They could have FTL technology by now for all I know. If I want to line up an end run against the clokes, I need to know where their end is.”
Dingo nodded down. “You’ll have it, sir.”
Dinner at the LEN expedition camp was always taken around the fire pit. This evening, seven of the xenos had pirates eating off their plates and drinking from their mugs.
No one talked.
Nox avoided making eye contact with his brothers.
He caught the woman whom Jose Maria had introduced as Glenn Hamilton stealing glances at him. Not that everyone wasn’t stealing glances at him. Nox was sure he didn’t know her. She was petite. Kind of pretty. Several years older than he. She held herself tall, but she was actually nearly a foot shorter than he was. She was the only one besides the pilot who wasn’t called “Doctor.” Her red-brown hair was cut very short and not styled. It was kind of a hack job. Her eyebrows were funny, as if she’d shaved them off and they had grown back wild. It was strange because she was dressed neatly and had pretty hands. And a wedding ring.
After dinner, bags, clothes, and belonging came flying out of one large tent. Nicanor leaned out the entrance, and looked round for his brothers. “Is this one okay?”
Nicanor had chosen the best tent for the pirates’ quarters.
Five xenos scurried to retrieve the jetsam as it came flying out of their former lodging.
Orissus moved in to help Nicanor clear out what the Circle didn’t want from the tent. It became a game of who could get more distance.
The dislodged residents quietly looked for someone to take them in.
One of the displaced xenos hovered at the tent flap, wary of flying objects. He leaned into view and called in politely, “Pardon me. Will the beds be—?” He trailed off, finishing with a heave-ho motion with his hands. Coming out?
“No,” Nicanor said. He counted up the beds in the tent. There were five. “We need two more.”
Pallas and Galeo set out to liberate two more beds from elsewhere. They took a liking to the split-log bed frame in one of the other tents.
Poul Vrba watched them haul the bed away. It wasn’t Vrba’s bed, but he made a show of quiet indignation. “You are pirates?”
Galeo blinked at Vrba a couple of times. There were silver pieces of eight worked into Galeo’s corn-rowed hair. His neat goatee was dyed a brilliant red. The number 666 was tattooed on his forehead in red, a black cross between his eyes. Galeo asked Vrba back, “You are a moron?”
Poul Vrba said evenly, “You know I have the legal right to kill you without legal process.”
No sooner said than Vrba’s throat opened up, smiling bright red, blood spraying, an artery spouting a pumping stream. His body thrashed, slumped, dropped to reveal Nox behind him, patched wetly red down the front of him.
Nox’s eyes flared at the others, who were staring at him as if he’d grown an extra head.
“Don’t look at me like that!” Nox shouted. “It’s natural selection! What kind of dung sniffer tells a pirate ‘I have the right to kill you’ like inviting us to tea! This outfit isn’t called the ninth ladies sewing circle!”
The Marines on the ground received orders to proceed toward the LEN camp, best speed, and under no circumstance to be detected.
Avoiding detection would not be difficult to do for the first leg of the journey. The ground rose between them and their destination.
The Marines were on the march when Merrimack received a hail from Flight Sergeant Asante Addai. Commander Ryan took the hail.
“I can’t get a hold of Ham at the LEN site,” Flight Sergeant Asante Addai said. “Is he upstairs?”
Patrick Hamilton was likely a prisoner within the LEN camp. Or dead. But the XO was not sharing half-cooked information just yet.
“Dr. Hamilton is not available at present,” said Commander Ryan.
“Well, sir, tell him his fox translator don’t work worth a skat.”
“What is the language module not doing for you, Flight Sergeant?”
“Anything! It doesn’t recognize anything these foxes hum at us.”
“You’re over two hundred klicks away from the LEN settlement,” said Ryan.
“Yes, sir,” said the Marine.
“Your foxes are probably speaking a different dialect than the foxes Ham talked to.”
“Oh,” said the Marine. “Well, have him come over here and talk to these ones.”
“Priority?” said Commander Ryan.
“They’re building cages,” said Asante. “The foxes are. I got a bad feeling about those cages.”
“Figure it out, Marine. Dr. Hamilton is otherwise engaged.”
27
NOX STALKED into the woods. He found a stream and lay in it, pissed, quaking, letting the cold current wash the blood away.
His brothers were waiting for him when he came stalking back across the dirt perimeter under the edge of the energy dome into the LEN camp as night was falling. They had sent everyone else to their tents.
Nox made straight for the fire pit, took a spot on the bench closest to the fire, and leaned in, shivering.
Pallas was the first to dare talk to him. “John Farragut?”
Nox spat toward the fire. “My name is Nox.”
Faunus sat on the ground, cross-legged. “Tell us a story.”
Nox let his shoulders drop for a moment, then straightened up. He inhaled for strength. “Once upon a time, O Best Beloved, when the famous Admiral John Alexander Farragut was not yet famous and not yet an admiral and only eighteen years old, he pissed off his father. And his father, the Honorable Justice John Knox Farragut, decided that his eldest son was an unacceptable heir to His almighty name. So John Alexander was cast out of Farragut heaven—or he left, I’m not sure which way it went. Because I didn’t exist at the time, O Best Beloved. And Justice John Knox Farragut, Senior, who art in Frankfort, created a new being in his own image and bestowed upon this later-born son his full name, John Knox Farragut. Junior. And this boy child grew up thinking he was ever so special. He was the Chosen One. He had His Honor’s name.
“Well, O Best Beloved, I can be slow to learn, but I did catch on finally that big John Alexander is, was, and ever shall be the center of the Farragut universe. My name, my special name, was given to me as a slap at big John Alexander. John Alexander is the Chosen One. I am the bluff and discard.”
“And what does that make us?” Orissus asked, standing over him, his muscles bulging in his crossed arms. “Are we your tools to get back at your father?”
“That would only make sense if His Honor knew what I had done,” said Nox. “He doesn’t know. I haven’t told him. I just left without a look back. You are my brothers.”
During the war, Roman warships had flown right over the house. Nox remembered His Honor ran out there roaring. Nox had looked up and thought they were the most glorious things he had ever
seen. And he’d gone to Rome. Decided to be Roman.
“You don’t need to do anything to be American other than be born on a piece of U.S.-flagged dirt.
“The province of America was founded by Romans. Columbus. Jefferson. It’s become a bastardized travesty of Rome. You don’t need to serve your country to be an American. Full citizenship isn’t earned. It’s just dropped on you by birthright. You can dance on a burning flag, and no one can take your U.S. citizenship away.
“Rome always treated me as me. When I swore allegiance to Rome, there was no braying news flash from Palatine back to the States to say, ‘Ha ha, we got a Farragut to change sides.’ Rome took me as I was. And when Rome threw me out, it was for something I did.”
“But you said the inquisitors asked you if you were a mole for the United States,” said Nicanor. “Somebody didn’t accept you as you are.”
“He was wrong,” said Nox. “I am and will always be Roman.”
The foxes were sunny and curious. They had been a huge help to the Marines digging up the cloke shipwreck. Now they were just in the way.
The Marines had orders to get closer to the LEN encampment. The foxes had decided to come with them.
The Marines were passing through a shallow pass between low hills when the foxes began gathering thick woody vines and weaving them into large lumpy balls, like double cages.
The balls had an inner compartment and a woven outer shell equipped with a vine-hinged door. The foxes rolled their finished creations along with the file.
“They’re cages,” said Dak. “Look at that. Fourteen of us. Fourteen cages.”
“They’re steamers,” said Rhino. “They’re going to try to slow cook us. I bet there are hot springs around here.”
The tight set of twin moons that circled Zoe every thirty-five local days were on the wane, following the sun over the western horizon.
As the dusk gathered, the foxes told the Marines to get in the cages. At least that’s what the Marines thought all that humming and gesturing meant. The foxes even held the doors for them to get in.
