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

by R. M. Meluch

  Merrimack’s instruments scanned the world for technology and population centers.

  The industry was built above ground, caked with soot and cold except for the nuclear plants. One of those gaped, cracked open from an apparent earthquake.

  Under the surface the world was riddled with warrens of bunkers and tunnels.

  Men couldn’t fit inside the tunnels. These tunnels were larger than the naked dirt passages on Zoe and lined with conduit. They were big enough to send drones through.

  The drones found no bodies. The clokes’ hollow bones decayed quickly, but the drones could still find traces of the larger bones, enough of them to say there had been clokes down here. A while ago.

  Scanners found a wreck of some kind of vessel on the surface. Huge one. The thing’s crash left a long wide path of destruction behind it stretching a quarter of the way across the continent. It had been a giant ship or maybe an orbital construction platform that came down. An enormous hot crater of lethal radiation marked the place where it finally buried itself to a stop.

  A search on another continent turned up less industry and cruder tunnels. There were mounds of cloke nails and hollow bones on the surface, the bodies decomposed, as if masses of the beings had poured out of the ground to die.

  “It’s starting to look like the clokes on Zoe are the only ones left,” said Dingo. “I guess we can’t drive the little squigs out after all.”

  “Yes, we can,” said Calli.

  “But they have nowhere to go.”

  “They can come home.”

  “Home is a little bit dead,” Dingo pointed out.

  “Not my problem,” said Calli. “They killed their own world. Or maybe they just let it die. Dead is still dead. They figured out how to get to the stars. They could have cleaned up their home, but they decided to cut and run instead. Here’s the bed they made. Stick ’em back in it.”

  Dingo didn’t argue too hard. “I’m not in love with them, Captain.”

  Standing at the rear of the command platform with the Marines, Glenn Hamilton thought, All the people like us are We, and everyone else is They. It was something Nox would have said.

  Nox washed his hands of Cinna’s blood. He changed into a fresh tunic. He threw the bloody one into the annihilator.

  When he came back out, he found that Bagheera had cleaned the deck, and the brothers had moved Cinna’s body into one of the other air locks.

  It looked like they intended to send their brother into the Deep. Nox guessed there was really no other choice.

  Galeo despaired. “I am the proverbial dead horse. Why does Fate keep beating me?”

  Nox told him, “Get up. I need you.” And oh, fug, I sound like Him. That other guy named John Farragut.

  The words always worked. Galeo rallied. He grasped Nox’s hand hard. “I’m here for you, frater.”

  “Do we say something over the body?” Pallas asked.

  They looked to one another.

  “Does anyone believe in anything?” Orissus asked.

  “Us,” said Nox.

  Nicanor nodded. “He was one of us.”

  They said their good-byes in the air lock, their regrets, and withdrew into the Xerxes one by one.

  The last one left, Nox knelt down and kissed the patterner’s forehead and murmured. “We did wrong by you, O Best Beloved. Shit, Cinna. Why did you let me kill you again?”

  Nox’s throat closed up. Cinna’s hand was gripping it.

  Cinna’s eyes opened. “You’re right,” Cinna spoke to Nox’s bulging eyes. “There wasn’t anybody who didn’t see that coming.”

  Cinna rose, holding Nox’s throat closed, talking conversationally, “Doesn’t being in The Ninth Circle of Hell require you to be dead?”

  Lieutenant Hamilton hadn’t been given back her command duties. Still, it happened in the middle of ship’s night—the Hamster Watch—that Merrimack’s drones discovered a res chamber on the clokes’ home planet.

  Chief Engineer Kittering advised the captain and the XO as they converged on the command deck, “The cloke resonator is not sending. It is receiving something.”

  Resonance had no age. It existed in the right now. That the res chamber was receiving something now meant the message was being sent right now.

  “Who is bloody sending?” Commander Ryan demanded.

  Captain Carmel asked, “Is the message coming from the clokes on Zoe?”

  “That is the problem, sirs,” said Kit. “It’s not any cloke talk we have on record from Zoe.”

  “A different language?” Ryan asked.

  “It’s not cloke talk at all. Clokes click. This is just intermittent noise.”

  But the res tech spoke Calli’s worst fear: “The message is arriving in packets.”

  Relativistic distortion affected resonant messages when the sender and receiver were not both traveling FTL.

  Resonant messages only smashed together in packets when the receiver was in normal space-time and the sender was traveling faster than light.

  The res tech said, “The cloke resonator on the planet is picking up an FTL source. It doesn’t have a compensator to separate the instants.”

  Commander Ryan immediately ordered the helm, “Take us to FTL.”

  “Destination, sir?”

  “Don’t care. Around the block. Just get us FTL.”

  All became clear when Merrimack made the jump.

  The resonant signals expanded.

  “Confirmed,” said the res tech. “The sender is moving faster than light.”

  He transposed the frequency of the message into the range of human hearing, then put it on audible.

  It was clicking.

  Somewhere, right now, there were clokes traveling faster than light, sending messages home.

  Calli spoke low, “More than one. More than one. More than one. De Eendracht. Mayflower. Niña, Pinta, and Santa Maria.”

  “Sir?”

  “More than one. We are dealing with an entire planet. On any naturally evolved world, there is more than one nation. Their levels of technology are not always in synch. There is more than one cloke ship out here! More than one nation. More than one era. This planet did develop FTL capability while their generational ship was slogging away in sublight transit. There is another cloke ship. Where is it?”

  “We have its resonant signal,” said Dingo significantly.

  Calli knew where he was going with that. She headed him off. “I will not ask Numa Pompeii to give us the source on a res pulse.”

  Her husband, the ship’s Legal Officer was on deck. He murmured very low, “Pride, Cal. Pride goeth.”

  “I am not asking Numa for anything,” Calli said.

  Tactical spoke up. “Don’t need to, sir.”

  Sentinels at the edge of the Zoen star system had picked up a new plot. A ship had just dropped out of FTL outside the farthest orbit. Its profile fit no known nation.

  “IFF?” Calli demanded.

  The com tech said, “It’s clicking.”

  Tactical said, “Plot is on approach vector to Zoe. ETA fifty-six hours.”

  “Type of craft?”

  “Vast,” said Tactical. “It’s another Ark.”

  35

  CAPTAIN CARMEL SET the Merrimack on course back toward Zoe at moderate haste. At this pace, the battleship would beat the Ark to the planet with days to spare.

  A signal came in from the League of Earth Nations headquarters with orders for the Merrimack.

  “Take the message,” Calli ordered Red Dorset at the com station.

  “They won’t talk to me, sir. They want you.”

  “Then let’s have it.”

  A voice like an assistant God issued from the com: “Captain Carmel, you will not go near the alien spacecraft. And your weapons will not fire.”

  My weapons fire very well.

  “I have no intention of going ‘near’ the Ark,” Calli said. “Merrimack is on course to Zoe. If the Ark comes to Zoe while I am there, know that I wil
l prevent the invaders from off-loading on Zoe. You do not command my weapons against an alien invader.”

  “Why do you assume an invasion? Why can the ship’s passengers not be there to explore and to talk?”

  “They brought a moving van.”

  Admiral John Farragut picked up a resonant hail on the personal harmonic Glenn Hamilton used to hail him.

  It wasn’t Glenn Hamilton.

  Admiral Farragut didn’t show shock at the face on the screen. Surprise, yes. The major emotion coming through the resonator was concern.

  He saw a face like his own, a couple of decades younger, colored and scarred, with beads and feathers woven into the same blond hair as his.

  Admiral Farragut greeted the pirate with a nod. “Nox.”

  That left Nox momentarily mute. John had addressed him as he would have demanded. Nox had expected his older brother to insist on calling him by his birth name. But big John conceded that fight straight up.

  John Alexander had the touch. Not too many cow pies that man ever stepped in. And when he did, it was a big splashy stomp with a purpose. He was the favorite son. The first. The best.

  Nox wanted to hate this man. And couldn’t.

  “John.” Nox nodded in return.

  John Farragut didn’t say anything off course. He went straight to the heart of things. “Is there anything I can do?”

  Nox shook his head. It was too late for miracles.

  John tried again, “Why are you calling?”

  Nox said, “I haven’t the damndest idea.”

  He’d found the admiral’s personal harmonic among Glenn Hamilton’s things in her tent. Nox did not know his brother well. They had only met a few times. Nox had come into being only after the eldest Farragut son left home to save the world.

  “Where are you?” John asked.

  “I am absolutely nowhere,” Nox said. “Headed home.”

  Big John could be naïve but he was no idiot. He knew which home Nox meant. The place everyone goes at journey’s end. Nox saw the fear cross John’s face. “Don’t.”

  Nox twisted a hard smile. “You know how they say it’s never too late to turn back on a wrong road?”

  “Yes.”

  “They’re wrong. Ever read Lord Jim?”

  Apparently he had. He said, “You don’t have to die, Nox.”

  “But you know I do, O Best Beloved. I’m kind of looking forward to it.”

  He saw big John trying to talk, with nothing to say. He does know it.

  And there are the tears. Big John Farragut was an unrepentant crier. Nox didn’t know how he got away with it, but no one ever called him weak. Nox couldn’t even say John Alexander Farragut wasn’t Superman. Because he was.

  Even Superman can’t save me.

  Nox had no idea why he called. He’d thought something would come to him. Nothing did.

  “Good-bye, John.”

  Merrimack was still two hours outside of the Zoen star system on the return journey from the cloke home world when Tactical’s coffee went splashing through the deck grates, the cup rolling.

  “Captain!” Marcander Vincent sang out. “Found your pirates!”

  He posted images on all the monitors.

  “Where?” Calli demanded.

  “Just sublighted at the outer edge of the Zoen system. Near the clokes’ Ark.”

  “And we can see him?” said Dingo. They shouldn’t be able to see the Xerxes unless he wanted to be seen. “Has to be a decoy.”

  “He’s got company,” said Marcander Vincent.

  “Company other than the Ark? What kind of company?” Dingo leaned in to see the one-man waspish ship with the Xerxes. “Is that—?”

  “A Roman Striker, sir.”

  “Bulldust!” said Commander Ryan. “Rome made another patterner?”

  “Or Rome wants us to think they have,” said Calli, who didn’t believe it.

  Tactical reported, “Striker and Xerxes are moving in lockstep. The Striker has a hook on the Xerxes.”

  “I didn’t think you could get a hook on a Xerxes,” said Calli.

  “We can’t,” said Ryan. “If it can be done, it would take a Roman patterner in a Striker to do it.”

  “Where is Gladiator?” Calli demanded.

  “Orbiting Zoe, sir.”

  Calli snapped to the com tech. “Give me Numa.”

  Red Dorset fed the Roman link to the captain’s console.

  Calli sent, “Gladiator, this is Merrimack. Your Striker has hooked a vessel that is the property of a LEN member nation. Deliver the Xerxes into our custody.”

  Caesar Numa answered Calli’s hail in person. His refusal was tranquil. “Under international law we are the arresting agent, and we are taking the pirates of The Ninth Circle into our custody.”

  “You can take your pirates, Numa. Hand over the ship.”

  “We made the arrest. We can execute criminals more efficiently than you.”

  “The ship, Numa. You can have your criminals. The ship is property of a League member nation. I demand you turn over the ship.”

  “You are not flying an Italian flag, Captain Carmel. I will not discuss disposition of the Xerxes with anyone other than a valid claimant.”

  Calli slammed off the com. Yelled at it, “You frumious toad!”

  “I’d’ve paid money to see you say that to his face, Captain,” said Commander Ryan.

  “I may yet,” she said. “I can’t let him get the Xerxes. If he reels that Xerxes in, he’ll keep it.”

  “He already has it.”

  “No, he doesn’t. Not while there are pirates inside it. What is Gladiator doing now?”

  “Status unchanged. Orbiting Zoe. Gladiator is not heading out to meet the Striker at the edge of the system. The LEN pirate hunter Windward Isles is moving out.”

  “What direction are the Striker and the Xerxes traveling?”

  Tactical responded, “The Striker is dragging the Xerxes by an energy hook in the direction of Zoe. That would be toward Gladiator. But they’re a couple of billion miles out yet, and they are not moving very fast. The Xerxes is resisting. I’m reading a lot of energy output from the Xerxes.”

  The Xerxes was digging in its virtual heels.

  “That’s going to be a long tow,” said Commander Ryan. “If the Striker is hauling the pirates to Gladiator, he won’t make it until sometime after Judgment Day.”

  “Captain!” Tactical cried.

  “Say something, Mister Vincent,” said Calli.

  But already she saw it on the monitors. The Striker’s slow progress was slowing down more. Drastically.

  The pirate ship had fought the towing Striker to a near standstill.

  Then their direction reversed. The larger Xerxes dragged the smaller Striker by its own energy hook in the direction the Xerxes wanted to go.

  The Striker struggled, not letting go.

  “What’s happening here?” Calli demanded. “Who has whom?”

  “It’s the Striker’s hook, sir. But the Xerxes is setting the course at the moment,” said Tactical. Then noted, “Gladiator has launched Accipiters.”

  Accipiters were fast Roman attack ships. That would indicate some concern on Numa’s part, even if the battlefort Gladiator did not break from its orbit around Zoe.

  “Is this real?”

  Commander Ryan said, “The Xerxes can’t realistically go anywhere with that ball and chain on it. The pirates are just delaying the inevitable.”

  The pirate ship flashed its visual image—the last thing men saw before they died. The Xerxes appeared engulfed in a bright hologram of an enormous leopard, a silent roar issuing from its red-dripping mouth. The skull and crossbones flag stood posted on her bow alongside the molten circled IX travesty of a Roman standard. The bloody scrawl across the leopard-spotted hull read in Italian: Abandon All Hope.

  He’s changing the color of inevitability, Calli realized.

  The leopard didn’t intend to go far.

  She could see which di
rection the locked pair of ships was going.

  “He’s hitting the Ark.”

  “Suicide?” said the XO.

  “Why not?”

  The pirates were going to die. They could still choose how.

  The com tech reported, “Captain, I’ve got the LEN here. Screaming.”

  Apparently one of the several international ships denied landing rights on Zoe was sending a live feed of events at the edge of the star system back to Earth.

  “League HQ wants to know why we aren’t stopping the Xerxes from flying into the Ark.”

  Calli asked the com tech, “Is the LEN’s concern for the Xerxes or for the Ark?”

  “Not sure, sir.”

  Calli took up the caller. “Sir, on LEN orders, I don’t have anyone near the Ark. Merrimack is two hours out from the star system, best speed.”

  Purple words issued from the com.

  Calli shut him off and hailed her rear guard. She had left two Spit boats with two squadrons of Swifts behind in the Zoen star system. “Colonel Steele! Scramble Swifts! You have trade at the edge of the star system. Hit the Xerxes!”

  The way Swifts docked with a Space Patrol Torpedo boat, the Swift’s cockpit opened up onto the deck from below, so the docking bay looked like a plot of fourteen open graves.

  Colonel Steele jumped down into the cockpit of his crate. He automatically grabbed down for his displacement collar.

  Colonel Steele barked lots of alien words. “Where’s my fugging collar!”

  It was supposed to be in his cockpit, stowed next to his seat for immediate grabbing. He let everyone know it wasn’t here. Going to bust some erk down to dog washer when he got back to Merrimack. It was the erks’ job to have these crates prepped before they left the Mack and ready to go in the blink of an eye——which was too much bloody time as it was.

  “COLLAR!” he roared again.

  Rhino’s voice: “Heads!”

  Heard something making a rattling slide across the deck toward him. Steele caught the displacement collar as it dropped down from overhead.

  He snapped the collar on and hauled his canopy forward over him.

  Back to task. Could bludgeon erks later.