by R. M. Meluch
TR Steele had no sympathy for the ugly aliens he was rushing to save. But Steele was hot to kill pirates. Roman pirates all the better.
His Bull Mastiffs loved to shoot the guns. And they hated to lose a battle.
If this operation saved an arkload of plague rats, well, that’s the decision from upstairs. TR Steele’s Marines never never never threw a fight.
The Xerxes was gaining speed, still moving in the direction of the Ark, dragging the Striker with it.
Calli hailed Gladiator. “Numa, stop them.”
“Our Striker is making a lawful arrest, Captain Carmel.”
“You’re losing! Both those ships are going to crash into the alien Ark!”
“So much concern for creatures you call latrines,” Numa chided.
“There’s a difference between refusing the clokes access to Zoe and allowing someone to kill their Ark,” said Calli. “That Ark is their world. They built it, they’re living on it, and they have a right to it.”
“Well for them,” said Numa.
“Goddammit, Numa, it’s genocide!”
“Why are you swearing at me, Captain Carmel? That is Our Striker attempting to arrest your pirate ship before it can destroy the alien Ark. What are you doing about it?”
“Make your Striker let go! Those pirates don’t want to destroy the Ark! You know they don’t. They just don’t want to be taken alive! They want you to let go! You have the power to end this. Order your Striker to let go!”
“Grandiose of you to imagine Caesar is in your chain of command,” Numa said and cut the connection.
Calli slapped the com off. She composed herself and spoke to her exec. “This is a show. I know how this will end. At the last instant the Striker will miraculously find the power to reverse direction and carry the Xerxes away, the Ark will be spared, and the LEN will thank Numa for stealing their Xerxes.”
I think that’s how Numa intends it to go.
She was not going to let it go that way.
Tactical reported, “Squadrons in range, Captain.”
Calli issued orders, “Wing Leader. Wing Leader. Wing Leader. This is Merrimack. Hit the Xerxes. Hit the hook.”
Steele responded: “Aye, aye, Merrimack. All ships. All ships. Open fire. Hit the Xerxes. Hit the hook.”
Beam fire from multiple Swifts glanced off the energy hook surrounding the Xerxes. So many hits, so nothingness of damage, Kerry Blue just wanted to step outside and kick the target. She couldn’t possibly have less effect.
Cain said it: “Wing Leader, we can’t get a clean shot at the Xerxes! The Striker’s hook is just making a double field around the target!”
The patterner’s Striker had an unbreakable hold on the Xerxes, but the Xerxes was winning the tug-of-war, picking up speed. The joined pair were getting awfully close to the gargantuan Ark awfully fast.
For the Swifts chasing the pair, that Ark was taking on the dimensions of a mountain range.
Kerry Blue fired on the pirate ship. Hit it. Hit it a whole bunch of times. Did nothing. Absolutely nothing.
Heard the captain’s voice on the com, “Steele! Hit the Striker! And if Numa’s Accipiters get in your way, hit them too!”
Heard Thomas’ voice, with joy: “Aye, aye, sir!”
Captain Calli on Merrimack watched distant battle play out on monitors, the Xerxes dragging the Striker ever closer to the Ark, faster and faster.
I am playing chicken with my Marines’ lives. The Swifts cannot survive a close-in blast.
Calli thought out loud, “The Striker will let go of the Xerxes before it’s too late. It has to.”
Commander Ryan said, “The Striker will only let go if Caesar orders him to let go. Otherwise he’ll hold on to the death.”
Marcander Vincent, seated at the tactical station, reported, “Assuming the Ark takes an antimatter hit from either the Striker or the Xerxes, then by best estimate our Swifts will be within lethal distance in seven seconds. Five, four.”
The Swifts flew inside the Ark’s outriggers. The outriggers spread out for miles. But that was far too close to any matter-antimatter detonation for a Swift to maintain its inertial screens.
“Three, two, one. All Swifts are now within the range of zero survivability.”
Commander Ryan said, “Don’t let them in there, Captain. Get them out.”
“This is a charade,” said Calli. “Numa won’t allow the Striker to take the suicide plunge.”
The Marines fired barrages of beams at the pair. “Hit!”
No effect.
“Hit!”
No effect.
“GrettaaaaaaaaH! WILL you just DIE?”
The Xerxes was speeding in now, the Striker clinging.
“When that thing explodes, the Swifts’ fields will not hold.”
“Caesar wouldn’t sacrifice a patterner just to take out a pirate ship,” said Calli.
Commander Ryan said, “Didn’t you once tell me Numa hates patterners.”
Calli blinked wide.
He does.
Calli pounded on the com, “Steele! Squadrons! Wear off! Abort! Abort! Abort!”
The captain’s voice hammered in Kerry’s helmet. As close to screaming as Kerry Blue ever heard Carmel sound when she wasn’t on fire. Got everyone’s attention.
Kerry muttered, reversing hard. “I’d’a had him.”
The Striker kept its death grip on its captive. The Xerxes towed its captor, accelerating—
And pierced the alien hulk like a missile.
Both ships disappeared inside.
Captain Carmel barked: “All Swifts! All Swifts! Get clear of the Ark! You are too close.”
“Trying to,” Cain Salvador grunted. Realized, late, “This thing has a gravitational pull.”
Not a strong one but significant when he was trying to accelerate through the light barrier.
FTL was not happening. And Cain needed to be out of here yesterday. They all did.
Steele bellowed, “Slam it to the gate. Move! Move! Move!”
Kerry Blue: “Moving, aye. Like a slug!”
Steele: “Energy fields to the stern!”
Cain: “We’re about to get a push. Either to FTL or the hereafter.”
Kerry Blue: “See you on the other side.”
The Ark erupted, volcanic. Almost seemed to contract for a split instant from an internal event of cataclysmic intensity. Fissures formed in the hull all around the colossal structure, like landmasses breaking. And the whole thing heaved outward, revealing its core.
Lit up like a new sun.
Someone yelling on the open com, sounded like Kerry Blue, running ahead of the blast. “YeeeeeAhhahaha!”
“Oh—” Calli gaped speechless for several moments before the many images, grasping for a strong enough word. “Farragut!”
Held her breath until a voice sounded over the Marine com. At least one of the Swifts made it away alive.
It was Colonel Steele. “Wing! Call in by the numbers!”
“Alpha One, here.”
“Alpha Two, I think I’m here.”
“Alpha Three, here.”
Cain: “Alpha Four not present but accounted for.”
Carly was back on Merrimack, getting reacquainted with her arm.
“Alpha Five, aquí.”
“Alpha Six, I’m in the wrong neighborhood.”
“Alpha Seven, I’m in the middle of flying crap.”
“Baker One, I’m in Kerry Blue’s neighborhood.”
“Baker Two, I got the whole state of New Jersey running up my tail.”
“Baker Three, I’m in New Jersey.”
“Baker Four, here.”
“Baker Five, where am I supposed to be?”
“Baker Six, here.”
Charlie and Delta Flights called in. Every man jack and jane alive.
Colonel Steele called out coordinates for his scattered squadrons to muster.
Calli demanded of Tactical, “Mister Vincent. Give me status of the Ark. Sta
tus of the Xerxes. Status of the Striker.”
“Status of the Ark is smithereens,” said Marcander Vincent.
The Ark threw off chunks the circumference of city blocks at relativistic speeds, each jetting steam from many fractures into the vacuum. Powerplants the size of buildings became projectiles.
“The core got annihilated,” said Marcander Vincent. “The rest of it—well, there’s the rest of it.”
Parts of the titanic mobile world spewed in every direction. Giant plates ripped away. Pulverized bits blew out in colossal sand storms. Continued explosions erupted in the largest of the scattered pieces as nuclear furnace cores cracked open to perfect cold. Burning gases lit the vacuum in brief flashes for miles.
Merrimack, still hours away from the show, was getting her visual resonant feeds from the Spit boats. “Survivors?” Calli asked.
“That kind of hit?” said Marcander Vincent. “The clokes got flattened down to the thickness of a micron in about a trillionth of a heartbeat. They never felt a thing.”
“God rest their squiggy souls,” said Dingo Ryan.
Tactical went on, “It wasn’t the collision that did all this. The kamikazes were probably alive right up until the antimatter release dead center of the Ark. Sir, it was a single annihilation event.”
Calli felt a chill. A single event. “What exactly are you telling me, Mister Vincent?”
“There was only one antimatter source. The rest of the explosions are coming from within different pieces of the Ark.”
There should have been two antimatter blasts if the Xerxes dragged the Striker in with it.
“You mean the Striker let go before the Xerxes self-destructed.”
“Yes, sir. I’ve got a trace image suggesting the Striker may have passed through the Ark and got away intact.”
He played back an enhanced computer scan of the ejecta from the initial blast. Something shot straight out the other side of the Ark, moving too fast to be propelled only by the explosion. In fact the plot moved ahead of the explosion. Marcander Vincent tapped at the replay. “That is definitely a small ship moving under its own power.”
“Do we know for sure which ship?”
Strikers were tough to detect, but they didn’t have the perfect stealth of a Xerxes. This ship left a trace.
“It’s returning the energy profile and trail signature of a Roman Striker.”
The Striker got away.
Calli breathed, “Numa, you bastard.”
The patterner lived. Calli wondered if Caesar would be pleased or disappointed.
“Will that shock wave from the annihilation hit Zoe?” Calli asked.
“Won’t affect the planet, sir. The shock wave has three and half billion miles to diffuse before what’s left of it gets there. Zoe is on the far side of the sun from this action. The light flash will get there in about five hours but the Zoens won’t even notice it.”
The Swifts of Red and Blue Squadrons had gotten clear of the flying wreckage and were returning to their Spit boats.
The Roman Accipiters had already turned around and were headed back to Gladiator.
Gladiator never left its orbit around Zoe.
Merrimack was still over an hour outside the star system.
Numa held all the high ground.
“Take us down from threshold,” Calli ordered. The race was lost. She signaled Gladiator.
Caesar deigned to take her call.
“Why didn’t your Striker let go sooner, Numa?” She knew he had been monitoring everything that just happened. “What was the point of playing chicken with the Xerxes? You lost the Xerxes and annihilated the alien Ark.”
“We did not annihilate the Ark. And don’t pretend to value the aliens,” said Numa Pompeii. “The pirates inadvertently did you and humanity a favor by killing the creatures and themselves. Survival is for the fittest. Not just the strongest. ‘Fittest’ also includes the useful and beautiful. The clokes are none of those things. We are.”
“Are you speaking in royal plurals again, Numa?”
Caesar Numa Pompeii said, “You will survive, Callista.”
Captain Carmel sent her report to the admirality. It was concise to the point of being abrupt. Just bald facts. She was too angry to put any insight or observation into it.
The cloke Ark had been murdered while she was off trying to save the cloke home world. It wasn’t the loss of cloke lives that angered her. She did not love them. It was the losing.
“Commander Ryan, you have the deck.”
The Marine guard at the hatch came to attention as Captain Carmel left the command platform.
Calli collected her Legal Officer in person. She leaned in the hatchway and swirled a half bottle of Scotch. “Mister Buchanan. This has to die.”
“Aye, aye, Captain.”
Rob Roy rose from his workstation, where he had been watching the death of the Ark and of the Xerxes play out on the monitors. He followed Calli to the Captain’s Mess.
The assassination of the Scotch was underway. The condemned had been seriously wounded to begin with. Calli finally said, “It appears that the pirates would rather die than be taken captive.” She ran that thought up like a trial balloon. She expected some resistance.
And got it. “That is the appearance,” Rob Roy agreed. Something wasn’t right in the appearance.
“Did they have other options?” Calli said. Then spoke her real suspicion aloud, “Was The Ninth Circle working under the covert command of Caesar this time?”
Rob Roy advocated for the devil, “If Caesar commanded the pirates, why would he make them squander the Xerxes?”
“That doesn’t help me,” said Calli.
Rob Roy poured her some reinforcements.
Calli said, “Numa wanted the clokes out of his universe and the pirates dead.” A light sheen of sweat made her appear to glow when she was drinking. “Why?”
Still on the side of the devil, Rob Roy challenged, “Why would you think that’s what Numa wanted?”
“Because it’s what he got.”
Rob Roy couldn’t think of a counterargument.
Caesar Numa had a bad habit of getting what he wanted.
“You are a frighteningly lucid drunk, Captain.”
Calli capped the bottle. “Take me home.”
Calli had been played. Knew it. She didn’t know to what end. She couldn’t bring herself to mourn the death of disgusting aliens, but the cloke Ark had come under suicide attack, and she could do nothing but watch.
Watch.
Was that what Numa needed her to do? Watch?
Had to be.
What did he need me to see?
What did I really see?
Merrimack had returned to Zoe when Tactical reported, “Captain. I have multiple displacements appearing on the planet. Gladiator is putting legionaries on the ground.”
“Not while I’m here.”
Calli Carmel crossed the command deck to look over Tactical’s shoulder. She looked to the com tech. “Mister Dorset. Get me the Self.”
Caesar did not deign to take her hail.
On a public resonant link a Roman broadcast from the planet showed the Praetorian Guard stabbing imperial eagles into the ground and claiming the world in the name of the Senate and People of Rome.
Numa Pompeii asserted his right to the planet with great bluster and authority. He cited international law.
Calli glared at the monitor. “That’s not right,” she said. “He has no right.”
“Are you sure?” said Commander Ryan.
“No. That’s why I’m checking his sources.” On the intracom, “Mister Buchanan!”
Rob Roy, the Legal Officer, was already checking Numa’s citations. He told Calli, “Short answer. He’s wrong. Flagging this planet is against international convention.”
“What’s my legal remedy?”
“You have a legal and moral obligation to defend the convention, Captain Carmel.”
“In plain Americanese, Mist
er Buchanan?”
“Shoot him.”
36
STANDING AT THE REAR of the command deck, Colonel Steele visibly brightened, a hard kind of brightness. TR Steele hated the peace.
Calli asked her Legal Officer, “Under which flag am I shooting?”
“Ours. This world is under extraplanetary assault. You have jurisdiction.”
Someone in the control room muttered low, “Hot damn!”
Calli was shouting. “Commander Ryan! Change out the flags.”
“Aye, aye, sir!”
“Get this green shit off of me!” Calli tore off her LEN armband. The green LEN flag came down from the command deck and from the ship’s external mast. The Stars and Stripes flew alone.
“Battle stations.”
Merrimack launched all her Swifts, both of the SPTs, and the long-range shuttle, and sent them into Zoe’s atmosphere.
Caesar would not fire on an antimatter engine in the atmosphere of a world he wanted to own.
Calli ordered displacement jammers activated planet-wide to prevent Gladiator from displacing down any more men and equipment than he already had on the ground. The jammers also prevented Numa from retrieving the soldiers he already had deployed on world.
Then Calli ordered, “Mister Ryan. Fire on Gladiator. Fire everything.”
Captain Carmel had no expectation of damaging Gladiator with the barrage, but it would keep Numa’s troop carriers and fighter craft inboard and away from her Marines.
Merrimack’s Swifts were safe from Roman fire as long as they remained in Zoe’s atmosphere.
The Swifts still needed to guard against an energy hook from Gladiator . A hook could snuff them.
Merrimack’s guns hammered at Gladiator to keep its energy locked up on itself.
Gladiator didn’t even try to deploy a hook. It didn’t need to. The Swifts’ weakness was their very short range in atmosphere. Without the cold of space around them, the small fighters rapidly overheated.
Surfacing out of the atmosphere would leave the Swifts vulnerable to Gladiator’s guns.
