Wolf Star (Tour of the Merrimack #2)

by R. M. Meluch

Patrick mumbled sleepily, “That’s just one of the Roman clock bugs. Aldebaran scarab crickets.”

  “I know what it is,” Glenn snapped, shaking.

  Patrick rolled over, forced his eyes open. “You okay, babe?”

  “I—uh. Pavlov’s dogs. I—associated the noise with something else. Sorry I woke you up. It’s nothing.”

  That sound had preceded the gorgons’ attack, so the two events had become entwined in Glenn’s mind. Unconnected, of course.

  Still she did not sleep.

  Listened to the scarab cricket ricochet off the corridor walls.

  The call to general quarters came while the ship was already on high alert. Up ahead lay a field of interstellar debris, which the scanners identified by silhouette as a fleet of dark ships. A rough count of fifty. Some had the size and aspect of transports. Some were unmistakably Roman ships of war.

  Normally ships in a group will orient to a single axis, choosing a collective up and down. These had assumed a chaotic array. No doubt doing their best imitation of an asteroid field.

  “Res scan the lot of them,” said Farragut. “Let’s see who we have and how they lie.”

  “And if they suddenly wake up, we’ll know Rome’s got our new harmonic,” Mr. Vincent muttered.

  But nothing woke up on being scanned.

  The scan synthesis was so long in coming, Farragut demanded of Tactical, “Report.”

  Mr. Vincent gave an un-Vincentlike, heartfelt croak. “Oh, my God. Oh, my God.” Before he went dumb.

  He sent the image to the captain’s display.

  The command crew all moved forward as one, some with hands to mouths, some with mouths gaping uncovered, eyes huge and unblinking, or else blinking very fast against horrified tears.

  Fifty dead ships. Knew they were dead and not playing at it for the ragged holes in their hulls. The sensors showed no shimmering halos of inertial shells. Nothing that might hold in the ships’ atmospheres.

  Farragut heard Jose Maria murmuring in Latin. Alarmed him for a moment, then recognized the words as the Lord’s Prayer.

  Captain Farragut ordered Merrimack to drop out of FTL so he could relay the horrific images to the Joint Chiefs on Earth by res pulse. Res messages at speed got very spotty on the receiving end.

  “Are you getting this?” Farragut encapsulated a voice message and transmitted that.

  Got a terse, single word acknowledgment back: “Receiving.”

  Merrimack wove a grim path through the graveyard of ships. Came upon a huddle of smaller ships, unarmed or lightly armed. Passenger types. All knotted together as if enclosed in a kill jar, surrounded by space buoys.

  “What are these doing here? What is this group?”

  Senior engineer Kit Kittering’s voice shook. “That’s the Far Cat.”

  This space was the Deep End displacement chamber of the Roman Catapult. They had tried to get out.

  “Oh, for Jesus, why didn’t they tell us?”

  The command platform had become deathly quiet. Everyone staring.

  Someone murmured into the silence, “There be monsters here.”

  Merrimack dispatched skiffs to the dead ships. Marine crews boarded the derelicts to pull their black boxes. And collect five thousand, five hundred and three sets of dog tags.

  Oxygen bricks were plentiful, littering the area, abandoned. Whoever had attacked these ships had not been short on breathable air reserves. Or did not need air at all.

  Merrimack did. The battleship had spilled a lot of air in fighting the gorgons off the Fury.

  The Og appropriated a few tons of the solid oxygen, took the bricks under tow, and drew up a due bill payable to Rome. Even at war, Merrimack did not steal from the dead.

  A stillness held the ship. The Merrimack, normally filled with raucous life, sounded like a machine and nothing more. The crew moved through her like ghosts, distracted, stunned or on the verge of tears. Spoke quietly. No one joked. They were preternaturally kind to each other.

  Someone had spaced an Aldebaran scarab cricket, which had gone mad and would not shut up. Now everything hushed.

  Jose Maria de Cordillera wore black.

  “This is the end of the world as we know it,” said Jose Maria, standing at a clearport, watching the Marine skiffs move through the graveyard of ships. “We are here thrown back to the twilight of civilization, when existence could end in a moment. When there were monsters on Earth.”

  “When was that, Jose Maria?” Farragut asked. He had never believed in monsters.

  “Many times. The Black Death. The great earthquakes. Or even when men become the monsters. Killing without mind or mercy. When there is nowhere to hide. The death that comes suddenly and ends everything you know.

  “We have returned to that elemental time. This universe we have civilized and rewrought in our own image is once again a pitiless place. We see ourselves diminished back to our true tenuous position in it. The unknown horror could strike in the night and obliterate everything we know. Or erase us entirely.”

  Farragut gave Merrimack’s bulkhead the kind of stout thumping pat he gave his dogs. Answered, “Not on my watch.”

  “Good lord, Dak. Don’t lose your head over a little bug.” Kerry ducked—from Dak, not the bee. “It’s not as if it’s got a stinger.”

  Dak swatted madly about his head, boxing his own ears trying to get at the furiously buzzing bee.

  Several of the crew kept hives full of stingless bees. On a normal watch, the bees were rather cheerful, actually, and the honey wasn’t bad as long as you kept them away from Suriya’s murkflowers. You didn’t usually see them attacking people. And not Dak, who did not smell particularly sweet.

  “The bugs!” Dak’s huge hands flailed. “What’s with the fragging bugs on this ship?”

  Concerned over the mood of his ship, Captain Farragut consulted his MO. But he found Dr. Shah as depressed as anyone.

  The last thing Farragut expected. Mohsen Shah was a tranquil, philosophical man. A Riverite by creed, which made him slow to anger, and long of patience. Riverites accepted everything—transgressions, misfortunes—as part of life’s flow.

  “Mo, are you corked?” Farragut asked.

  Mohsen lifted deep brown, red-shot eyes to Captain Farragut. Mo’s looked like the face on the barroom floor. But he shook his head, no. He was not drunk.

  “We of the River are not believing in endings, but I am looking at this.” Mo Shah gestured at the hideous images on all the screens in his dispensary. “And I am—” His voice stalled out. Started over, “This is the end.”

  Abrupt. Stark. So unlike Mo’s ever-flowing speech, the statement brought Farragut up short.

  And Farragut wouldn’t have it. He stalked around the dispensary, clicking off the displays. “Mo, I swear to you—” Click. Click. “Look at me, Mo.” Click. “I swear to you: this is being no such damned thing.”

  He locked gazes with Mo Shah, and meant to stare him down. Would have, but a whiskermoth dove right into his eye.

  Farragut’s one eye screwed shut against the oily sting. Mo Shah became animated, now having a patient to attend.

  Farragut glanced around the lab with his mothless eye. “Your bugs still acting up here, Mo?”

  “Not still. Again. Please be opening your eye.”

  Farragut forced his lids apart to receive a gentle jet of liquid, washing out the moth and its irritant oil.

  Mo continued, “The lab insects were finding peace again, but, as you are seeing—you are seeing?—the insects are being antic again.”

  “When did they stop? When did they start?”

  “Do not be rubbing your eye.”

  “Mo, when did the bugs stop ‘being antic’ and when did they start again?”

  “I am looking and will be telling you when I am finding,” Mo said evenly, opening his file to consult his lab notes. Found the notation. “The time of the insects’ quietude was coinciding with the destruction of the so-called gorgons. The beginning anew was happeni
ng while Merrimack was orbiting Telecore. Why is the captain asking?”

  “The captain is having improbable thoughts, Mo,” Farragut murmured, thinking back on disconnected things—

  I res-scanned Telecore.

  Nothing can pick up a random res harmonic.

  —as he watched the ants clawing at the top of their terrarium in Mo’s lab. His skin crawled right along with them.

  He lunged across the lab table, slapped on the intercom, “Lookout! This is Farragut!”

  “Lookout, aye.”

  “Watch for—” Farragut floundered for words, “What did we call that alien sphere in the ship’s log?”

  “Alien sphere,” said the Lookout.

  Farragut’s brow furrowed in disappointed surprise. “We did?” Could have come up with a better term than that. “Scan for alien spheres.”

  “Aye, sir,” said the lookout, then, much sooner than expected: “Sighted them, sir. Three. Four. Five. Seven . . .”

  “Where?” said Farragut. “What are they doing?”

  “Nearest plot at seven hundred megaklicks. Farthest—we’re still finding them, sir. What they’re doing? They’re all moving FTL, coming right at us.”

  “Battle stations.”

  29

  CAPTAIN FARRAGUT AND HIS SPECIALISTS weighed their options against the oncoming horde. They had the luxury of discussion. The closest sphere was still twenty minutes out at its best speed. And if the specialists needed more time for discussion, Merrimack could outpace the aliens.

  Tactical ran a comparison of the spheres’ vectors. A bit disconcerting, the result. The spheres came from various directions, but all converged on the precise location from where Merrimack had sent her last res signal.

  “You can’t home on a res signal,” said Farragut. “Resonance has no location.”

  “Tell that to Them!” Marcander Vincent snapped.

  That man was going to ride a console for the rest of his career, if he didn’t finish it out in a brig instead. Farragut said only, chiding, “Mr. Vincent.”

  “Sir.” An apology, Vincent-style.

  Farragut resumed his briefing. “Since no one told the gorgons they can’t home on a res pulse, and since I’m not fixin’ to run and hide from those murdering bags of sludge, I need to know the best way to kill them from as far away as possible. We learned the hard way not to let them get close.”

  Jose Maria, who had been invited to this meeting, asked, “Why did not the Romans learn these things? Why did so many Roman ships die the same way?”

  Hamster suggested, “They probably lacked the ammo to take out all the spheres sighted so far. I know we do.”

  “So I’ll shoot us empty, take out as many of the closest ones as I can, then go reload.”

  “Brings the question again,” said Jose Maria. “Why did not the Romans do precisely that?”

  “Dammit, Jose Maria—” said Farragut. A slight frustrated smile crept over his face. “That’s a damned good question.”

  His techs tried to look for answers in the flight recorders from the Hermione, the Fury, and the Roman ships at the Far Cat, but the recorders were encrypted, impenetrable.

  Farragut gathered up the recorders and took them down to the detention hold. He all but threw them at the Roman prisoners. “From your dead buddies at the Far Cat. Let me know if you get in the mood to share anything you learn from these.”

  Turned to storm out.

  “Domni!”

  The captain paused. Turned. Glowered through the hatchway, waiting.

  The Roman spoke, “No one has ever ever survived contact with Them.”

  Merrimack was the unspoken exception.

  The Roman’s face twitched, wrinkled. His chin quivered. Tears fell. “You just watch the transmissions of soldiers dying, until the signals stop.”

  “You’re alive,” said Farragut, an accusation. “How did the Fury survive?”

  A guilty sob. “We ran like hell, Domni.”

  “Are you going to give me the code to unlock these?” He nodded at the black box recorders.

  Saw the man struggle between fear of dying and fear of aiding the enemy. In the end, he was more afraid of committing treason. “I can’t, Domni.”

  Farragut left the recorders with the prisoners. “Watch some more dying.” He stalked away.

  Behind his back he heard Jose Maria speak to the prisoners, in Latin, before the guards could close the hatch. “I have a question.”

  Farragut spun, glaring at him. Jose Maria met the captain’s angry glare. “If I may.”

  Farragut gave Jose Maria a silent, curt go ahead, wondering what in heaven the neutral Terra Rican civilian could have to say to the Romans.

  Jose Maria turned back to the prisoners. “Did you destroy Telecore?”

  “We?” The Roman circled with his finger to indicate we, the imprisoned company. “No. We—Rome—had to. Telecore was infested with Them.”

  Scorched earth was an old tactic. Older than Rome.

  Jose Maria asked, “Is—was—Telecore the gorgon home world?” A hopeful edge in his voice. Perhaps the Romans destroyed the monsters’ nest.

  “No,” said the Roman. “They came from—from out there, and started eating everything. Those things cannot have a home. If those things ever had a home, they ate it.”

  “What became of the people?” Jose Maria asked softly. “Rome had a thriving colony at Telecore.”

  “Evacuated,” said the Roman.

  “To where?”

  The quivers again. With more breath than voice, the Roman answered, “To the Catapult.”

  Farragut landed on the command deck. “Let’s keep this simple. Here’s our strategy. Don’t let them get close. We’re going to shoot really big skeet. Mr. Gray, do we have a firing solution?”

  “Star Sparrows lined up on the nearest eight spheres,” Commander Sebastian Gray reported. “Awaiting your order.”

  “Warheads?”

  “Incendiaries and nukes.”

  Farragut nodded approval. The gorgons could withstand vacuum and near absolute zero cold. They could not withstand high heat.

  “Let ’em have it.”

  Mr. Gray spoke into the com. “Fire Control. Command Deck. You have permission to fire Star Sparrows.”

  “Firing Star Sparrows, aye.” That was Hamster, OOD in fire control. She sent again: “Star Sparrows away.”

  First impact came in eight minutes. Savage cheers burst on deck as the gorgon sphere blew into burning pieces.

  The second impact should have come thirty-two seconds later, but the second sphere dodged the Star Sparrow.

  Farragut jumped at the display screen, not sure what he’d just seen there. “Targeting. Farragut. Course correct that missile.”

  “Correcting, aye. Target acquired.”

  But the sphere twitched again before Targeting was done speaking.

  Mr. Gray, got on the com immediately. “Targeting. We have an evading target. Ride the Star Sparrow in.”

  A difficult task, given the speed discrepancy. The Star Sparrow was moving much faster than Merrimack. But, unfazed, a gangly V-jockey named Raytheon—called Wraith—pulled on a visor to take resonant remote control of the missile.

  Relativity made for a disorienting picture in the visor. The Star Sparrow’s instants were much closer together than those of its pilot back on Merrimack. But Wraith loved this stuff. Rode the Star Sparrow like a madman, and plunged the nuke into the gorgon sphere’s black frozen heart. “Yeah!”

  The horde swelled, burning like a nova.

  Farragut blew out a breath. Exchanged glances with his XO. “We had to work for that one.”

  Gray nodded.

  The third missile was due for contact by now, but its target had altered course also.

  Wraith took over remote control of the third Star Sparrow and redirected the missile toward the target. The Star Sparrow drew nearer and near. Tactical counted down time to impact.

  “Six, five, four—”
<
br />   The gorgon sphere blew apart like a dull Fourth of July rocket, without burning lights, but with a wide, wide spray of black bits. What would have sparkled on the Fourth, here sprouted legs and wriggled.

  Farragut lost a step there. An effect without a cause. “Did I blink?” He’d missed three, two, one.

  “Mr. Vincent, did you count three, two, one?”

  “No, sir.”

  The Star Sparrow and its warhead still showed intact on the tactical display.

  “What did we hit that gorgon ball with?”

  Tactical just looked baffled.

  Wraith reported up: “Didn’t touch it, sir. Unless you count a res sounder.”

  “The sphere blew up itself?”

  “Looks that way, sir,” said Wraith, and Tactical nodded, concurring.

  “They can’t have our harmonic,” said Senior Engineer Kit Kittering.

  “I would say they do,” said Tactical.

  “Change harmonic,” said Farragut. “Synch up Targeting.”

  With the new harmonic established, Targeting took a res sounding to locate the target.

  The target moved the instant the res signal pulsed.

  “Oh, for Jesus. Is there anyone in the Milky Way who doesn’t have our harmonics!”

  “Captain, we didn’t even have that one,” said Mr. Vincent. “I fed in my GRE scores.”

  “Then we must be sending out our code as we log it into the targeting system.” Farragut stalked over, jabbed a bunch of numbers into the res sounder manually, and slapped it home.

  Mr. Vincent hesitated. “Sir, we don’t know what harmonic you loaded. We can’t target on it.”

  “Good. Scan with that one.”

  Mr. Vincent did. Of course, no reading appeared on the targeting system. Targeting had no idea what harmonic to monitor.

  But when Tactical took yet another sounding with yet another harmonic, it was clear that the sphere had, in fact, changed course in between soundings, apparently in reaction to the resonant scan sent on Farragut’s mystery harmonic.

  “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” someone said.

  At Hamster’s suggestion, the erks turned the Hermione ’s res sounder back on and gave the hulk an FTL shove on a tangential course as a decoy.