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

by R. M. Meluch

  “Oh, my God! Fire! Fire!” Not sure who was screaming that.

  Nicanor, Pallas, Orissus, Faunus, Leo, and Galeo collected together around Nox because Nox was as serene as a hurricane’s eye.

  “Is Merrimack trying to flush us out with a ruse?” Pallas asked. “Or should we be running.”

  Nox said quietly, “There’s no fire.”

  Sabers and antelopes, fleeing side by side, seemed to think there was a fire. Night-flying monkey squirrels flew in broad daylight, their giant eyes slit-lidded against the brightness.

  Benet shouted, “Where’s the fire? Who started a fire?”

  “We haven’t found it yet, Izzy,” said Dr. Rose, checking his shaking instruments. “Stop yelling. Wow, look at that.”

  Overlapping echelons of majestic birds passed over.

  Dr. Rose noted the direction of the wind. It was coming out of the highlands, from where the animals fled.

  “If there’s a fire up there, it will spread this way.”

  The expedition members begged the pirates to allow them to take shelter inside their ships.

  Nox told them, “You break any hatch seal, I’ll burn you myself.”

  Many of the xenos noted that the pirates weren’t running for their lives. They wore no displacement collars that could blink them to a place of safety. The pirates weren’t afraid.

  Jose Maria de Cordillera and his dog had climbed on top of his Star Racer Mercedes. That would not protect them from fire, but it got them out of the way of the torrent of beasts that were now galloping and bounding through camp.

  The pirates collected a few bottles of Dr. Rose’s wine, climbed up to the flat topside of one of the spaceships in the half ring, and settled down to watch the parade of strange creatures.

  “Damn, there goes our tent,” said Nicanor blandly.

  Most of the xenos climbed atop other ships and watched. Someone brought the goat up. They scanned the horizons for fire.

  No plumes of smoke appeared. The only smells were of animals.

  Mammoths came lumbering down from the heights, their long golden feathers waving, their short tusks lifting and lowering. They raised their trunks, squeaking.

  Herds of glass deer ran through the camp, their transparent flesh revealing their organs and bones, their hearts beating very fast.

  Boxcar mice snaked along the ground in long segmented chains like toy trains, nose to tail.

  Armored land squid pelted along backward, and furry little bellows voles propelled themselves in high arcs, jumping breath to breath.

  From their high shelter atop the ships the xenos could see over the treetops, down to the wide river, where animals of all kinds muddied the water.

  The beasts stomped on the riverbanks.

  Glenn climbed up the ship where the pirates were gathered. Her eyes were red and hollow and wet. There was a meek set to her shoulders that were always so proud. “Nox? Do you know where my husband is?”

  “He’s doing just fine,” Nox said, and moved over to make a place for her. “Have a seat.”

  Glenn sat down between Nox and another pirate, the nice one, Pallas.

  “You need to see this.” Nox tilted his head toward the lowland.

  Down in the wide river crowded with creatures, predators and prey milled together, none particularly hungry. Giant flightless snakemouths—birds with powerful legs like ostriches, their beaks able to unhinge to swallow prey whole—didn’t snatch anything from the assembled buffet. They jostled with the sabers, slipping in the sediment. They trampled the riverbanks with their hooves.

  Mammoths’ wide feet sank into the mud under the weight of their gargantuan bodies. Water swirled brown around their tree trunk legs.

  Anything buried in the riverbanks was obliterated and washed away.

  By nightfall still no flickering glow of fire appeared up on the heights. No waft of smoke carried down on the wind.

  Strange animals wandered through camp, disoriented.

  By dawn it was clear that there had been no fire.

  The animals started returning to the highlands at a more leisurely pace than they had left. Many of them strayed into camp.

  Xenos with polymer shields guided them around the compound.

  The creatures couldn’t smell the gas fire at the center of camp, but they bolted as soon as they saw it.

  Patrick stole back into camp. Not many people had noticed that he’d been gone. He stowed his sound equipment inside his tent, which was still standing, though there were many strange animal tracks around and through it.

  The tent flap moved. He gave a guilty start.

  It was Glenn, looking curious.

  She seemed to guess that Patrick had said something to the mammoths.

  Patrick had broadcast a message, very loud. Up in the high country he’d blasted on wavelengths between eighteen and twenty-three meters, too long for the human ear to detect.

  Glenn whispered, “What did you say?”

  “Fire.”

  There hadn’t been a fire. Not now. Not in ages.

  So how had he known what to say?

  Glenn said, “You know the mammoth word for fire?”

  No one had been monitoring mammoth lo-fi speech long enough to have ever heard mammoths utter that particular word.

  Patrick shook his head no. “I said it in elephant.”

  It wasn’t so much a word. It was a literal note of panic that provoked an instinctive reaction, a fear written on one’s genes.

  Patrick sounded the alarm. The mammoths led the charge. Other animals took up the call in the audible ranges, which sent everyone rushing down to the river.

  To trample the clokes’ seeding area.

  Glenn threw her arms around Patrick. She clung to him tightly.

  Patrick put his arm around her. He felt tall. I am the man.

  “Now I can dance,” said Glenn.

  In the evening Glenn danced the hora around the fire pit. It was a white gas flame in the pit. Still, the light caught the red in her hair and made the civilized young woman look purely savage. Hers was a defiant, angry dance.

  Glenn said, “I need to teach the foxes this one.”

  Nox met Patrick’s gaze across the fire pit.

  Patrick had not told Nox anything of what he’d done in the highlands. But Nox knew. He’d let the jungle in.

  Nox closed a fist that said well done.

  Director Benet was calling the stampede an ecological disaster—because of the crushing of the cloke egg deposits on the riverbanks.

  Patrick’s back stiffened straight up. “What hole did you excrete that idea out of, Izzy? The clokes are an invasive species.”

  “The clokes are endangered,” said Izrael Benet. “We must protect any other clutches.”

  “Endangered?” Glenn said. “We have no evidence of that. The planet could be lousy with them.”

  “It’s not. We would have seen them on the global surveys.”

  “Why do you think they deserve protection?”

  “Why?” Benet said back, as if she’d asked why he should keep breathing. “They’re infants.”

  Glenn fought to keep the shrillness out of her voice. “Infants? You call those infants? ”

  “Nymphs,” said Benet. “Eggs.”

  “And you would let them hatch?”

  “We must protect them. We must let them live and breed. Or else what are we?” Director Benet declared and stalked away from the fireside.

  The answer to that question came from behind her, murmured into Glenn’s ear for only her to hear. “Pirates.”

  Nox was there.

  Glenn turned, lifted her brows at Nox, questioning.

  Nox said softly, “Your man had the right idea. It’s just that a bigger mammoth is required.”

  Patrick’s stampede had taken out just one clutch. There were more. There had to be a lot more.

  “Got one?” Glenn asked. She thought her question was ironic.

  Nox may have nodded.

&nbs
p; There was a saying on Merrimack: If anything’s gonna happen, it’ll happen on the Hamster Watch.

  Lieutenant Glenn (“Hamster”) Hamilton was not here, but the middle of ship’s night on board Merrimack would always be the Hamster Watch.

  There had been a wildlife stampede two days ago. The LEN encampment had caught the edge of it. Merrimack’s Intelligence Department sifted through the recordings of the event for signs that any human beings might have slipped out of camp under cover of the chaos. They turned up nothing. They also analyzed the patterns of animal movement, searching for any evidence of creatures avoiding an invisible Xerxes-sized object. That also turned up nothing.

  Now Chief Engineer Kit Kittering had the deck. She was expecting a quiet watch.

  Commander Stuart (“Dingo”) Ryan, the XO, was in the maintenance hangar, which doubled as a rec area. He had a V-mask on. From outside Dingo seemed to be shadow boxing. From his own point of view, Dingo was in the ring with Ali, who floated like a butterfly and stung like a jackhammer.

  Dingo was collecting his virtual teeth off the deck when his V-helmet abruptly went blank and an oh-so-polite voice advised him that this program had terminated due to the ship’s elevated alert status.

  He tore off his V-mask, cursing but happy to have all his teeth, and ran through the ship’s tight corridors and up the ladder one level to the command deck.

  Kit advised him as he barreled past the Marine guard flanking the hatch, “Plot coming in, sir. Big one.”

  “Define ‘big.’”

  “Not big like the clokes’ mobile continent but bigger than us. Sir, it’s the Gladiator.

  Oh, bullyrings.

  The image of the gargantuan Roman battlefort appeared on the monitors.

  Romans. Who invited Romans?

  “Who’s in command?” Dingo demanded.

  The com tech answered, “Same guy as last time we met.”

  “Wake up the captain.”

  “She’s awake,” said Calli, striding in. She waved down the Marine guard’s announcement of her entrance and anyone’s attempt to stand at attention.

  “Sir,” said the XO. “We have Romans. Hisself is here.”

  “Caesar,” said Calli.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Load a torpedo.”

  “Shot across the bow, sir?”

  “No. Hit him.”

  Commander Ryan spoke. “Targeting. Firing solution on Gladiator.”

  “Targeting, aye. Firing solution acquired, aye.”

  “Fire Control. Stand by forward beams.”

  “This is Fire Control. Forward beams powered up and standing by.”

  “Fire torpedo. Fire beams.”

  Asante Addai ran up to the front of the column to bring the squad’s resonator to Colonel Steele. The link was more secure than a normal tight beam. “Sir. We have Romans on the roof. Actually, we have Caesar.”

  Steele immediately bellowed to his squad, “Personal Fields active! Everyone!”

  Steele took up the resonator to confer with Commander Ryan on Merrimack.

  The Marines at the rear of the file came forward. Some of the foxes shouldered into the huddle with them. Rhino whispered to Carly. “Qué pasa? Are we at war?”

  “No,” said Carly. “But that don’t mean they won’t shoot. Caesar’s upstairs.”

  “Caesar Numa?” said Rhino. Her eyes lit up. “You don’t mean he’s here? I mean, him. Really here?”

  “Yeah,” Asante nodded. “That’s what the Dingo told me.” He pushed fox whiskers away from his face.

  “No big surprise,” said Kerry Blue. “We always end up at the same party.”

  “The captain and the emperor always get into a pissing contest,” said Carly. “And the cap’n can piss pretty far for someone who don’t got a pistol.”

  Kerry added, “I think he kinda likes her. She kinda hates him.”

  Rhino’s grin made her elfin face look wolfish. “I knew I boarded the right boat.”

  Asante turned to see that Steele was still talking to Merrimack. Couldn’t tell what the presence of Romans was going to do to their orders. Right now the Marines had orders to search for a pirated Xerxes within “walking distance” of the LEN expedition camp.

  Rhino questioned the order. “Why don’t we just storm the camp?”

  “We need to secure the Xerxes first,” said Cain. “Otherwise the pirates can call the Xerc to come rescue them.”

  “Yeah. Like Superman’s horse,” said Dak.

  “Where are we?” said Kerry Blue.

  Asante checked his omni. “We’re still over a hundred klicks out.”

  “I don’t think that counts as walking distance,” said Kerry. Her trousers were shredded into long flapping strips that left her strong lean legs on display.

  Dak said, “Can you walk in front of me, Kerry Blue?”

  “Shut up, Dak.”

  “Wait, wait, wait,” said Rhino. “A Xerxes has full stealth.”

  “Yeah?” said Cain. His tone said, so what?

  “We have orders to search for something invisible,” said Rhino.

  “Yeah?”

  “How are we supposed to do that?”

  “If you walk into it, say ow. Throw rocks and see if they bounce,” said Cain. “Nobody cares how we do it. We have orders to find it.”

  Steele got off the resonator. He shouted at the file to spread out.

  They crossed over the ridge crest. The trek was mostly descending from here, except for that last leg up from the river. The land was more open, the trees more scattered. In the distance lay a wide river.

  The Yurg called forward from the Charlie spot. “Colonel? The Vols aren’t coming with us.”

  Steele turned around. “What?”

  “Our volunteer unit,” said Cain, pointing rearward. “The foxes.”

  Steele looked back and up.

  The foxes were gathered at the ridge, a whole row of them, watching the Marines descend.

  They didn’t look frightened this time. They just weren’t coming. The ridge top was some kind of boundary for them.

  TR Steele marched back up and reviewed the band of alien volunteers.

  “Yeah. Um.” I’m trying to address a bunch of fluffy animals.

  Exactly how did one thank impossibly cute creatures for saving one’s life without getting terminally gooey?

  This is ridiculous. I’m not doing it.

  Steele frowned seriously. He spoke, gruff. “You did good work. And um. Thank you.”

  The bright-eyed foxes smiled at him. Ears up, listening.

  “That will be all.” TR Steele turned, rigid, and marched down the incline where his human squad waited.

  He didn’t look back. The damned silly things better not be following.

  “Why are We taking friendly fire, Captain Carmel?”

  “I’m sorry, Numa, I mistook you for a pirate,” Captain Carmel said innocently over the com. “Are you here to extract your pirates?”

  Caesar said, just as innocent, “We see no pirates in orbit. Of what pirates do you speak?”

  “On the ground,” said Calli.

  “If you have pirates on the ground, then kill them yourself. We have less than no interest in common outlaws.”

  “What brings you here?” Calli demanded.

  “Rome has colonies in Perseus space,” said Numa. “You do not.”

  “This is the Outback,” said Calli. “Zoe is not one of your colonies. Zoe is a LEN protectorate.”

  “We are here because this planet is under alien invasion.”

  “It is now,” said Calli, glaring pointedly at the image of the large invader before her.

  “Not us,” said Caesar. “We are no invader. We are here to defend a kindred world against alien invasion.”

  “That’s just your pretext to be here.”

  “What is yours?”

  “The United States is a member nation of the LEN.” Calli was wearing the green. “I’m protecting.”

  “Th
e world needs more protection than that,” Numa said.

  Calli clicked the com off.

  This planet is under alien invasion, he’d said.

  She thought out loud, “How the hell does Numa know about the clokes? He just got here.”

  There had been a broadcast about the discovery of Zoe’s DNA, so there was no surprise that Caesar knew Zoe was a “kindred world.” But no one ever announced the presence of the extraplanetary aliens, the clokes.

  Dingo spoke the only possible answer, “Caesar’s got someone inside the expedition camp. Either someone on the expedition or else those really are his pirates.”

  After the midday meal, Nox took Glenn on a walk outside the camp. The day was clear and brilliant, the sky so blue and deep Glenn felt if she gazed into it long enough, she might fall up. A high-soaring lizard-bird stooped into peregrine dive and disappeared below the treetops.

  Glenn felt a brush at her cheek. Nox. His fingertips touched a ragged edge of her hair. “What’s with the hair?”

  “A little incident involving crashing and fire,” said Glenn.

  “Then you came here on that ship in the woods?” asked Nox. He had seen the Spring Beauty.

  “I landed that ship in the woods,” said Glenn.

  Nox had a bright American smile. He almost laughed. “That’s brilliant.”

  Glenn tilted her head noncommittally.

  Nox said, “Nobody in camp cuts hair?”

  She had orders to get close to Nox. She didn’t like how close she was getting to Nox.

  Anything she said could get her killed. Blunt honesty had gotten Poul Vrba killed. Then again, no one had asked Vrba a question. Glenn said, “Prettying myself up in captivity strikes me as philosophically wrong.”

  Several of the women on the expedition had taken to wearing makeup and jewelry since the pirates’ arrival.

  Glenn didn’t sense anger from Nox at her answer.

  Felt more like approval.

  Nox himself was clean. He’d gotten the blood out of his linen-colored tunic. His black cargo pants showed no dull spots. His hair was freshly washed, and the teeth and bones braided into it were polished shiny ivory white. He had added in fresh blue feathers and gold-flecked porcelain beads.

  “Bagheera is an easy place to live,” Nox told her.