by R. M. Meluch
“Everyone would expect me to escape,” said Cinna. “Patterners have that reputation. And the leopard needed to die.”
That part of the show, the death of the leopard, required a sacrificial lamb, something that could penetrate to the heart of the alien Ark and make an explosion on a magnitude of a Xerxes. Cinna had to sacrifice his Striker for that.
Cinna had controlled his Striker by resonant command from on board the Xerxes Bagheera.
A res signal on a secret harmonic was undetectable, untraceable. Resonance left no trail.
Being at point zero of the antimatter release, the Striker left no debris to tell a different tale.
“If the leopard had to die, why not just send the leopard in?” said Faunus. “Not complaining, mind you.” He was happy to be breathing. Astonished, but happy. He still had his machete too, and that was astounding.
“A Striker is aging technology. This ship,” Cinna knocked on the Xerxes’ control console with a black-gloved hand. “Is the latest. Caesar wants his patterner to have the latest.”
There it is.
So that was why Nox and his brothers were still here. For the moment.
It hadn’t been feasible for Cinna to ballast the brothers along with his doomed Striker. They wouldn’t fit in it. The Striker was a one-man craft.
The brothers had been left in place, on board the Xerxes, for the duration of the show.
Now they were excess mass.
They were all armed. They could try to kill Cinna a third time.
Cinna touched gloved fingers to the vertical slit in his tunic at his midriff. His face looked pinched. He told Nox, “This does not feel good.”
Nox asked, “Do we get the grisly revenge now?”
Cinna’s inhuman eyes moved across each of his brothers in turn. Nox. Pallas. Nicanor. Faunus. Orissus. Leo. Galeo. Cinna answered, “Are we still a squad?”
38
THE DRY PALE SKY was hazy over Sector Primus on the Roman world Phoenix. Small moons stretched overhead from horizon to horizon like a string of broken pearls. Satellites gleamed hard bright white like daystars. Imperial Intelligence could be watching.
One could hope.
But the patterner told the brothers no one was watching. “There will be no deus ex machina,” said Cinna.
Nox waited with his brothers in a level area halfway up the massif. Gray contorted trees hemmed in a circle, and there were flat rocks inside the ring on which to sit.
Cinna was calling them up one by one to the Widow’s Edge. Orissus had gone first.
Orissus had been hard on Cinna when Cinna first joined the squad. Orissus was always hard.
At the snap of twig from the path, Nox, Pallas, Nicanor, Faunus, Leo, and Galeo stood up, expectant.
Cinna came back alone. Orissus was nowhere to be seen.
Cinna stepped into the circle of trees. He called up Nicanor next.
“Where’s Orissus?” Faunus demanded.
Cinna kept his silence; his basilisk glare fixed on Nicanor and waited to be obeyed.
“Well, then,” Nicanor said, stepping forward, chin up, back regal. Nicanor was the lordly one of their number. Nicanor followed Cinna out between the twisted gray trees. He walked with great dignity.
No one sat back down.
The brothers’ talk turned to murmurs. “He’s fucking with our minds,” Faunus said.
“It’s working,” Leo said, nerves unraveling.
“Cinna never liked Orissus,” Pallas whispered.
“You don’t think he really made Orissus jump,” said Galeo.
“I’m trying not to think at all,” said Nox.
Faunus whispered, hardly louder than breathing, “Do we kill Cinna?”
“Already did,” said Nox. “Twice.”
They hushed.
Cinna came back alone. He pronounced the next name. “Galeo.”
Galeo turned a three-sixty, as if there might be another Galeo in the circle. He cast lost looks to his brothers.
And followed Cinna out between the twisted trees.
The brothers stopped talking altogether.
It took longer this time. That was a good sign. Maybe. It took longer to reel up a netted jumper than it did to let one fall. Did Cinna really let Orissus fall?
The net deployment used to be automatic. No one ever dropped.
And where was Nicanor?
Cinna came back alone again.
He regarded each of the four remaining in turn.
He looked so very young. He looked so very old. His face was line-less, with little expression. The look in his eyes was something between a basilisk gaze and a thousand-yard stare. His black eyes moved from Nox to Pallas to Leo to Faunus. He looked past them, through them.
He nodded at Leo.
Leo threw back his head and howled. Cinna waited like the grim reaper. Leo followed Cinna, still giving voice to raging howls. The sounds diminished as the two climbed away to the heights.
Nox found himself reaching for the sounds. He needed to hear Leo. At last he was listening hard to only the gritty wind.
Nox, Faunus, and Pallas remained.
Faunus sat on a rock. He’d taken up a stick and was jabbing at the dirt with the end of it.
Pallas stood by a tree, its scaly green foliage so dark it was nearly black.
Nox tried to collect his thoughts. Then tried to obliterate them. He needed to make his mind a perfect blank. The universe was unfolding, not perhaps as it should, but the way it was hell-bent on unfolding. It is what it is. It will be what it will be.
Cinna came back—alone—to collect the next brother.
Faunus’ patience tore. He jumped up from his rock, threw his stick aside. He bellowed, “Me! Take me!”
“Very well,” said Cinna and turned to lead Faunus away.
Nox and Pallas clasped hands as if arm wrestling. They squeezed bone-mashingly tight, in case it was the last thing they ever did. They released. And waited.
After a lifetime, footsteps approached. Sounded like a single set.
And so it was.
Cinna appeared between the trees, alone.
He faced the two who remained. “You.”
Cinna pointed at Nox.
Pallas cursed.
Nox advanced to his fate. He looked back to Pallas. “Be seeing you.” Pallas’ face was tight. He gave a single nod.
Nox marched up to the height in Cinna’s footsteps. He did not hear any voices from up there.
Because no one was there.
He arrived to only the wind on the lonely summit.
Winged creatures circled on the air above the hardpan. They were rot-colored carrion eaters. Phoenix’s equivalent of vultures.
Nox looked over the edge. He expected it by now. Funny how that didn’t lessen the sense of shock. Horror still knotted his guts. He swallowed hard and stinging. Rasped, “Oh, you son and heir of a mongrel bitch.”
Cinna had earned his revenge, but Nox could still resent him for actually taking it. Nox blinked fast. Refused to cry. He backed away from the edge.
“It’s still broken,” Nox said, his voice rough.
“What is broken?” said Cinna.
“The net’s automatic deployment is still broken. We didn’t know it was broken when we sent you over.”
“It’s not broken now,” said Cinna. He held up a switch. “It’s manual.”
Manual. And Cinna had let them all drop.
“We didn’t drop you on purpose,” said Nox, resentful.
“End’s the same,” said Cinna.
Yes, the end was the same.
A song started playing in Nox’s head, a gentle Christian hymn, all out of place. It was the wrong damned circle. Nox’s loved ones were not in the glory. The musical loop had started in his brain, and he couldn’t get it out of there.
His voice came out hoarse. “You got a switch, FDG? Don’t net me.”
The patterner looked curious. “FDG? I don’t know that one.”
“
It’s Americanese,” Nox snapped. “Stands for Dead Guy.”
Nox turned toward the brink.
Cinna spoke at his back. “Do you actually want to die, or is this an attempt at reverse psychology?”
“This is no reverse nothing. I’m running away again. Just drop me.”
“If it is reverse psychology, then you lose,” Cinna advised him. “No one disobeys a Farragut.”
Nox took his place on the cliff’s edge. Looked down. Well, yes, there they all are. The bloody carnage below welcomed him. Nox spread his arms. “Oh, my brothers, I am coming.”
Will the circle be unbroken, by and by, Lord, by and by?
He launched himself into a beautiful dive.
The wind rushed at his ears, his nostrils; his heart raced in instinctive terror as the bloody ground came hurtling up.
Then there was a sting of ropes against his skin, pressure on his face and chest, the nauseating reverse and a springy jouncing up and down.
The net had deployed.
Nox screamed in his mother tongue. “Son of a bitch! Son of a bitch!” He thrashed like a cat in a bag.
The bouncing settled, and he felt a tug from above. The other hidden mechanism had deployed to reel him up.
One arm and one foot sticking out through the thick netted mesh, Nox was rising. The bloody ground moved away from him. He struggled to get all his limbs inboard. He caromed lightly once or twice against the ragged rock face, spun. His breaths heaved. He braced himself.
This is a psych. He’s toying with me before he kills me. He’s going to drop me again. For real this time.
The winch turned. Nox was near the top. As he rose over the edge he met Cinna’s black eyes. Nox glowered back at him.
The winch stopped. Nox dangled there just over the cliff. He would not repeat himself. He silently dared Cinna with all his wrath, Drop me.
Cinna seized the net and swung Nox over to solid ground. Cinna pulled a cord that let him out of the net. “Watch your step.”
Nox stood up and stepped out in a quivering rage, snorting.
Cinna turned blandly and walked down the path that led to the waiting area.
Nox paced, looking for a good rock with which to bash Cinna. Or maybe he should just push him. Maybe he could grab him and jump. Or maybe just jump and be with his brothers. That’s where he was headed anyway.
After an eternity he heard Cinna returning up the path with their last brother, Pallas.
Pallas hiked up with heavy tread over the crest. He met Nox’s gaze. Nox tried to ward off the brightening hope on Pallas’ face to see a brother alive. Nox gave a grim shake of his head.
But Pallas had seen Nox and assumed that Cinna was netting people. Pallas looked around for who else was up here.
There was only Cinna and Nox and Pallas.
Pallas looked over the edge, scuttled back from the mess below. “Ho! Who is that?”
Nox, furious and crying, answered him, “Whom don’t you see up here?” He was past trying to contain his tears.
Pallas seized Nox in a brief pounding hug. Pushed apart hard, wheeled around, and hurled himself over the edge.
Nox thought his own heart would stop. But it continued its merciless hammering inside his chest. He was still cruelly alive with this monster when all his brothers were dead.
He ran to the edge. He didn’t want to watch, but he had to. He needed to see it. He didn’t want Pallas to die alone.
Far below, something shot out from the rock face. A spreading honeycomb blossomed wide, then folded back in on the dropping figure, closing around it. The net stretched down long. Bounced back up.
The net had deployed. Nox could see Pallas moving within it.
Nox gasped, his vision blurred, dizzy between crushing relief and rage.
The retrieval mechanism was drawing Pallas up. Nox stayed on hands and knees, breathing grief and fury.
The net’s arm swung over solid ground. Pallas emerged from the net, shaken, sad, composed.
Pallas’ demeanor made Nox pick up his dignitas.
Nox stood up and faced Cinna. Nox spoke thickly, “It is just us three then.”
Cinna said, “There are eight in a squad.”
Pallas and Nox exchanged puzzled looks. Eight? Where were the other five supposed to come from?
Cinna signaled someone to come.
Gritty footsteps sounded, approaching. Boot soles on sandy rock. Pallas and Nox turned toward the sound.
Cinna didn’t look. He knew who was coming.
Nicanor, Faunus, Leo, Galeo, and Orissus hove into view, hiking up the rocks.
Pallas caught in a breath, astonished.
Nox turned away. He looked over the cliff.
The red pools and broken bodies at the bottom of the cliff vanished before his stinging eyes.
Pallas stared as his brothers returned from the dead. Pallas’ eyes were nearly round, pooling tears. His lower lip quivered. He asked them, his voice shaking, “Are you real?”
Nicanor gave a couple of uncertain blinks with a tentative smile. He didn’t understand the question. “Aye. Why? Aren’t you?”
Pallas threw his arms around Nicanor, hugged him fiercely. His face mashed against his brother’s ear. He pounded his fist against Nicanor’s back. Pallas hugged them all, Leo, Galeo, Orissus, Faunus.
Cinna had netted them. All of them. They were real. They were alive.
Nox stood apart, hugging no one.
His brothers’voices overlapped in a blur of baritone sound, trading stories of their jumps. Their voices trailed to silence as each caught sight of Nox, his face fixed in a gargoyle glare.
Nox turned to Cinna. Spoke, deadly cold. “Your turn.”
“I had my turn,” the patterner said.
Color poured into Nox’s face. Nox breathed fire. “Do you not trust your brothers?” And he thrust out a demanding palm.
Cinna gazed back at him.
Cinna and Nox stood locked in a stare down. Cinna dead calm. Nox vibrating.
Cinna moved first, smoothly. His hand came forward. He lightly placed the net deployment control into Nox’s hand.
Expression blank, Cinna turned and walked off the cliff.
His brothers swarmed to the edge to watch the drop.
Nox stayed where he was, standing perfectly still. He knew what he had to do.
Drop him.
The row of brothers looking down over the cliff reared back like one beast. “Ho!”
And they laughed.
The net had deployed.
They watched as the netted bundle bounced up and down and twisted round one way, unwound, and twisted round the other way.
Orissus cranked his head over his shoulder to see Nox. Orissus snorted. “I wasn’t sure you were going to catch him.”
Nox looked down to his hand, his fingers depressing the control trigger.
“My hand slipped,” Nox said. He passed the control to Pallas. Let someone else reel the cur up.
Pallas moved the switch that activated the retrieval assembly. The mechanical arm lifted up. The winch turned. There was a dry squeak to it.
As the bundle rose above the cliff edge, Nox glared at the patterner balled up in his net, still dangling over the edge. Cinna seemed calm to the point of boredom, resting with his back rounded against the rope bag, his knees folded up against his shoulders. He waited without pleading.
Nox said at last, “Bring him in.”
Pallas turned the control to swing the net over solid ground. Sand in the metal gears squealed.
Cinna disengaged himself from the ropes and stood up before his brothers.
The patterner was a strange being. So very like them. So very not, with eyes that appeared to be looking both inward and out. The cables extending out of his forearms and out the back of his neck made him look alien.
Faunus asked Cinna, “Did you know Nox was going to net you?”
“How could I?” Cinna said. “He didn’t know what he was going to do.” Opaque eyes slid
to Nox.
A motion like a tic tugged at Nox’s mouth. He admitted, “I didn’t.”
Nox had made up his mind while Cinna was falling. Actually, there’d been no mind to it at all. Nox’s hand just squeezed. Some brain cell sent that message, but it wasn’t a conscious one. Nox thought he meant to drop him.
All their rage had guttered out. Each of them felt it. Something thoroughly burned out was settling on the cliff top. The ashes of fear.
“Now,” said Nox. “Now, we are a squad.”
Cinna asked his brothers, with a nod at Nox, “How did he get to be your mouth?”
Pallas shrugged, his head turning slowly side to side. “He just starts talking.”
“I was dropped on purpose,” said Cinna.
“I swear we didn’t mean to,” Nox said wearily.
“I didn’t say it was your purpose,” said Cinna.
Nox’s mouth hung open. He couldn’t speak. Leo and Galeo exchanged glances.
Nicanor spoke, “Whose then?”
“I wish I knew,” said Cinna. “When I returned to the cliff to replace the net’s motion sensor with the handheld switch, I found the net deployment mechanism had been sabotaged. Someone jammed a rock into the works. The simpler a deed is, the harder it is to find its pattern. My death may have been a conspiracy, and I don’t have access to a database that would reveal it to me. It may have been some bored kid with a rock. I don’t know if the failure of the net was specifically targeting me or if I was simply the next sod to jump. Either way, I was murdered.”
A bored kid with a rock would not explain how Cinna got picked up from the bottom of the cliff in time to save his life. Or how he lived at all. The impact from that kind of fall should have sprayed his brains over the whole province.
“You find out who did that to you, Little Brother, you let us know,” said Nox. “We can get real creative on him.”
“I am counting on that.”
“And what about us?” said Nox. “Why are we still alive?”
“You—we—are The Ninth Circle of Hell,” said Cinna. “And we are dead. Never forget that. We don’t exist. We haunt by leave of Caesar Numa.”
“Why?”
“Caesar needs a free hand,” Cinna said.
All became clear.
No one would be hunting them any more. There was no bounty on dead men or on an annihilated spaceship.
