by R. M. Meluch
A dreadful pause. “We’re dark, sir,” the Marine reminded her. Opening an air lock would betray the ship’s darkness. Hamster ought to know that. Worst luck in the world to get a stupid order from a commanding officer.
Worse still, Captain Farragut happened to be sweet on this particular officer, though the Hamster was the only man jack or jane on board who didn’t seem to know that. And Farragut, who was usually all kinds of smart, thought no one noticed.
I just pointed out stupid to the captain’s Hamster. I’m gonna get skinned twice.
But no skinning was forthcoming. Glenn Hamilton shut her eyes, admitted, “You’re right. Do something with that, soldier.”
The Marine tucked the red bundle under his left arm, very relieved. “Sir.”
He marched out. Hamster could own up to a mistake. Captain had good taste.
“What have we got?” Farragut asked Tactical after he had sounded general quarters.
“Sphere, Captain.”
A sphere was the most energy-conserving shape—having the smallest possible surface area for the volume, offering the least direct exposure to the deep freeze of space.
“LEN golf ball?”
The League of Earth Nations’ round discovery vessels ranged everywhere. Both sides, Roman and U.S., regularly boarded them as suspected spies.
“Too big,” said Mr. Vincent. “Vector out of the deep Deep End.”
The com tech discreetly hand-signaled for the captain’s attention. A request, if the captain chose to notice.
Farragut nodded for the com tech to speak.
“Mo Shah,” said the com tech, apparently having the medical officer on hold. “Wants to know if you ‘are being exceptionally busy.’ ”
The captain took the medical officer’s hail. “Am I busy? Just a little, Mo.” A little irony there. “What do you need?”
“I am observing a coincidence, perhaps being worth noting,” said Dr. Mohsen Shah. “A great agitation among the insectoid life in the lab was preceding the call to general quarters by moments. There is being an appearance of a connection.”
The Riverite doctor professed a creed in the connectivity of all life. “Noted,” said Farragut. “Thanks, Mo. Out.” Clicked off, not about to press the ship’s ant farm into service as the new long-range lookout.
It was not possible that the ship’s insects detected anything thirty light-minutes distant. The coincidence could be nothing but coincidence.
Farragut regarded the orb on his scanner display. He probably ought to simply report the sighting to the Joint Chiefs and plot a course around it. Leave the first contact to the experts in that sort of thing.
But by now his techs could tell him more about the bogey. It was five klicks in radius, moving at one hundred times the speed of light, and sporting a low-level force field.
It was also moving on direct vector from the coordinates identified by Jose Maria as Telecore, the planetary base for the Far Cat.
“Doesn’t look Roman, but it sure as hell smells Roman,” said Mr. Vincent at Tactical.
“Move us into its path,” said Farragut. “Ready to roll out the welcoming mat.”
“Ready Roman welcoming mat, aye,” said Commander Gray, alerting Fire Control.
“And get us a res scan.”
The res scan came back altogether weird. The sphere acted like a vessel but its composition was in no way reflective of a vessel. Dense, solid, dead, and cold.
“Mr. Gray, what do you think?” Captain Farragut asked his new exec.
“I think the Roman is foxing our res scan,” said Commander Gray.
“Me, too,” said Farragut.
“Sir,” Marcander Vincent called out. “The target twitched. Started the moment we scanned it.”
He amplified the image on the display to show the sphere close up. Its surface pocked and moved.
Commander Sebastian Gray blinked. “Did you see that?”
“I’ll be damned,” said Farragut.
It didn’t smell Roman anymore. It smelled truly alien.
“Get Hamster’s husband on deck,” said Farragut. Patrick Hamilton was a xenolinguist. “Have him ask this ETI where it thinks it’s going in such an almighty hurry.”
“ETI, sir?” said Commander Gray. That the thing was extraterrestrial was beyond question. But intelligent?
“If it’s FTL, it’s I,” said Farragut.
Gray looked blank. “Sir?”
“If it’s moving faster than light, there’s an intelligence behind it. Res scan it again.”
As the tech took the res shot, the sphere moved again. It definitely moved, its structure changing.
“Target is breaking up,” said Marcander Vincent.
The sphere’s twitches were coincident with Merrimack ’s resonant scans. But the events could not possibly be connected.
The res scan revealed that the sphere was expanding. It was composed of cells in a honeycomb pattern except for the ice layer that coated the whole, which continued to rupture as the inner layers of cells moved underneath, expanded, dislodging the outer layers, changing.
Farragut ordered another snapshot of the new form. “Scan again.”
The sphere became more agitated.
The command crew exchanged glances. What was becoming obvious they still refused to accept. That they could be observing cause and effect here was improbable to the point of impossibility. Harmonics were infinite. Nothing could monitor them all at once. And chances of this sphere just happening to share Merrimack’s particular harmonic by accident were nil.
The crew on the command platform watched the displays in amazement.
Sounds of men shouting and banging on the bulks and ductwork pushed to Farragut’s attention. A battleship was not a soundproof place, but this noise was excessive even for Merrimack. He gave a quick order, “Quiet that unit down.”
“Aye, sir.”
The sphere was breaking up. Its surface crumbled away to the layer below, became ciliate, flailing like a titanic rotifer. Then cells of the honeycomb broke off. Hexagonal shapes became rounded, then sprouted wreaths of whip-thin tentacles and flew, as if floating in water, each cell roughly a meter in diameter, not counting the cilia, expanding in the vacuum.
Alive. They looked alive.
“Move us out of the sphere’s way. Let’s see where it’s going.”
“It’s going toward us,” Marcander Vincent said as soon as the pilot had altered Merrimack’s course. “The plot changed course as we did.”
Farragut moved to the tactical station to look at Mr. Vincent’s tactical array. “How? How did it change? Where’s its power plant?”
“It has nothing,” said Mr. Vincent. “I think our sensors are uffed.”
“Are we sure this isn’t Roman?”
“Captain, we are so unsure of anything about this thing that—look at that!”
The detached cells flitted, swarmed together like fish in a nonexistent current in the vacuum sea. They moved toward Merrimack in a tenuous cloud followed by the crumbling mass of the sphere.
The cells attached themselves to Merrimack’s force field. That, too, should be impossible. The battleship’s inertial screen was frictionless. There was nothing for the things to latch onto.
“Jink,” Farragut ordered.
“Jinking, aye.” The pilot jerked Merrimack on a random jag of a course.
The things—giant spidery, centipede-like things—stuck fast as barnacles. “I think they’ve hooked our field.”
“How the hell—” Farragut stopped, hearing background noise louder than his own voice. “I thought I ordered those men to shut up.”
“It’s the prisoners, sir,” Mr. Gray reported apologetically. Tough to get Romans to obey orders. “They’re screaming.”
“I can hear that. What’s their problem?”
“There’s an insect in their compartment.”
“And?”
Gray felt silly even reporting this. “There’s an insect ‘acting erratically
’ in the prisoners’ hold.”
“Aldebaran scarab cricket?” Farragut held his palms a foot apart.
“Someone’s pet sicalian.” Gray held his thumb and forefinger an inch apart. “For some reason that has them all screaming.”
Farragut did not need to ask what the prisoners were saying. He could hear some of the words from here, some of them in English: “Run! For the love of God, run!”
Farragut looked to his displays, at the disintegrating sphere, the flailing things attaching to his force field. He asked his XO quietly, “How do the prisoners know there is anything out there to run from? Did someone tell them?”
Gray shook his head. “We made sure they knew as little as possible, sir. All they have to go on is our sound to general quarters and a deranged bug.”
“And the chewed-up hull of the Hermione,” Farragut murmured. “I’m thinking we might oughtta listen to the lupes on this one. Let’s get some vacuum between us and Them.”
“Aye, sir.”
Gray gave orders to the pilot that took Merrimack up to high acceleration. The ship sprang at all right angles from its former course, five times faster than the sphere had shown ability to travel.
The sphere and the swarm of detached riders sprang along with Merrimack, matching speed and direction.
Mr. Vincent reported, “Looks like we’re dragging them.”
“They have a tractor on us? Unhook ’em.”
“No detectable hook. I can’t detect their propulsion system. Can’t detect their tractor force. Can’t detect what’s keeping them mobile at two point seven degrees Kelvin. So there it is, Captain. This isn’t happening.”
Commander Gray shot Marcander Vincent a scowl, but Captain Farragut was accustomed to overlooking comments like that from his overaged tac specialist. “That’s it,” said Farragut. He’d run out of patience with these aliens. “Planet killer into the heart of that ice ball.”
Said that just as Dr. Jose Maria de Cordillera arrived on the command deck. The doctor wore an expression of shock, not at the incredible scene on the sensor display, but at the captain’s order to destroy a first contact.
Farragut turned away from Jose Maria’s shocked face. Muttered, “Civilians.”
Jose Maria Cordillera pulled back his dismayed expression, and kept his criticism, if he harbored any, to himself. He looked at the displays. “They can’t get in. Can they?” He gestured at the black, ciliate things collecting on Merrimack’s force field.
“They’re not going to,” said Farragut. “Do we have a firing solution on the sphere?”
“Target acquired, sir,” said Commander Gray. “Target is losing integrity fast on its own. It’s going to break apart before we can blast it open.”
“Fire,” said Farragut.
Sebastian Gray ordered Fire Control to launch the planet killer.
“Planet killer away. Contact in three seconds, two, one. Contact. Detonation.”
“Target destroyed, sir,” Marcander Vincent reported.
“Mostly,” Farragut said, watching the nearer of the sphere’s scattered bits break apart further, sprout legs and swim toward Merrimack.
Jose Maria breathed something in Terra Rican in a tone of wonder. Then in English, “They move.”
Farragut demanded, “How many of Them are there?”
“Minimum fifty thousand discrete entities not counting the big pieces. Not sure if some of those aren’t made of multiple units. Sir, what are they?”
The crew tended to ask Captain Farragut impossible questions, as if he knew everything, as if he were God.
Farragut stared at the alien things swimming in literal nothing. He could see them now, without sensors. Could look out a clearport and see their bulbous bodies, their masses of black tentacles clinging to the frictionless energy field. Each of their dozens of tentacles opened and closed at the ends like sucking mouths, serrated at the openings, like teeth.
They had the appearance of living beings, though they had to be machines. Nothing could live out there, motile and mobile in the extreme cold. No natural being could achieve FTL by biological means.
The things were expanding. Free of their sphere, they bloated in the vacuum but did not burst.
A hum, becoming a growl, sounded from all directions at once. It was the force field under siege.
One of the ciliate things looked to have inserted one cilia into the force field.
No one bothered to say that was impossible. Mr. Vincent said only, “They’re coming in.”
25
CAPTAIN FARRAGUT ORDERED COLONEL Steele to launch his fighter wing. “Have your dogs burn those barnacles off my boat.”
But the Swifts never even got out of dock. The fighter lifts stalled in their shafts as all ship’s controls began to fail.
“Not again!”
“How did the Romans get our new codes!” Steele bellowed.
“I don’t think this is Roman,” Mr. Gray advised the captain.
“Romans are very good at not looking Roman,” said Steele, who trusted Romans only to stab him where he wasn’t looking.
“They’ve outdone themselves this time, TR,” Farragut murmured, dubious.
He didn’t believe it, because the Roman prisoners were scared. Beyond scared, screaming in a very un-Roman panic.
Someone said, “Kali!”
Farragut felt his skin prickle, gone chill.
He barked over the com to the Fury. “Hamster, displace your crew back on board Mack, stat!”
On receiving no response from the Fury, he notified the com tech, “Get ahold of her. Get the Fury crew back here yesterday.”
“Aye, sir.”
Farragut took in a deep breath—as if he could not draw enough air. As if there were not enough oxygen in it. A quick check of the meters showed the ship’s atmospherics reading at normal levels.
He exhaled hard to rid his lungs of carbon dioxide. Inhaled again. It hadn’t helped.
Sebastian Gray, who was inhaling hard, hand to his chest, caught the captain looking at him, asked, “Is it just me?”
“No,” said Farragut. He looked to the displays, at the spidery things encasing his ship with their bodies. He felt like a fly being wrapped in silk. “They’re doing this.”
He ordered his thunderstruck crew: “Prepare to repel boarders.”
Boarders? Below decks crew and company traded mystified grimaces. There were no other ships in the area. Boarders?
Jose Maria watched the creatures on the force field oozing—insinuating—their way in.
Jose Maria murmured with a scientist’s fascination. “This is fantastical. I wish my Mercedes could see—”
The sudden silence, the unfinished thought, made John Farragut look aside to see what had happened to Jose Maria.
Jose Maria had turned gravestone white. He resumed, voice dead flat, “She did. She saw this. The last thing she ever saw.”
Farragut’s gaze snapped back to the squashed looking things in his force field. This?
“They can’t get in,” Sebastian Gray echoed Jose Maria’s earlier thought, with little conviction. “Can they?”
The chief, who had just arrived on deck, scoffed, fists on his fleshy flanks, “Without the codes? Impossible. Even God can’t crack the Mack’s shell.”
“Oh, for Jesus, Og, I wish you hadn’t put it that way,” said Farragut, who had a deep faith in an old-fashioned God, the jealous one.
A metallic scritching sounded from somewhere, everywhere. “What is that?”
“That’s your impossibility on the hull, Chief.”
“How the hell—” Og let the question hang. A display showed one of the things emerge from the force field and fall under Merrimack’s artificial gravity onto the hull.
An alarm sounded. The crew didn’t need it. The pressure in their ears told them what happened. Hull breach.
“I hate that,” Farragut said. Opened his jaws wide with the sudden dip in air pressure.
The ship’s air rushed o
ut the hole in the hull to fill the space between the ship’s exterior and its force field—a space that varied from five to twenty feet in width. Merrimack was a big ship with a lot of surface area, so it was a significant, though not deadly, event.
“They’re in,” said Mr. Vincent.
From the Romans in their detention hold came screams such as one might imagine from men being eaten alive. But the prisoners were in an interior hold. None of the intruders scratching at the hull could have got to them. At least not yet.
But the prisoners felt the pressure change, and they knew what it meant. This ship was about to turn into the Hermione.
Farragut listened for weapons’ fire. Hearing none, he signaled the deck where hull breach was located. Tried several times. Then: “Hey down there. Report.” The intercom was dead.
Farragut roared for the whole ship to hear: “All hands to swords! Destroy all—” hitched on the word—“monsters!”
Flight Sergeant Kerry Blue was still in her cockpit, waiting on the stalled lift stuck between decks. She heard nothing from outside. Had not felt the pressure drop.
She tried to get a read on the ambient atmosphere to see if the erks had opened the flight deck to let the vacuum in yet. She got no readings at all. Damn. Did not want to go out there in an uffed crate. She let out a string of language, then asked into her com, “Did anybody hear that?”
Her com was dead.
She unbuckled quickly. Had to get out of here before they launched her.
She pulled off her glove and lay a palm to the canopy. It was not cold, so she popped the canopy, using the manual spring. She climbed onto her Swift’s fuselage, looked up the shaft.
Having trouble breathing. Damn space suit was uffed, too. She took off her helmet, inhaled. Wasn’t any better out here. But now she could hear an awful lot of shouting. Something was wrong, wrong, wrong.
She dropped her helmet into the cockpit, put her gloves back on, and had at the lift cables, feeling like she was back in boot camp. She clambered like a monkey, up the dark shaft, swearing.
