by R. M. Meluch
The voice of Cain Salvador sounded in her helmet: “Alpha Six. Drop him! Drop him! Drop him! Green Leader, pick up Alpha Six.”
Green Leader was driving Space Torpedo Boat 2. He had the mass for this fight.
Kerry Blue swore. And handed off her catch. “Do I get credit for that?”
Merrimack’s tracking officer gave her the vector for another target closer to her size.
Kerry Blue snagged that one and managed the hand-off to Merrimack. She was getting the hang of this.
The fleeing spacecraft scattered wide. Tracking was giving Kerry Blue the vector of another plot. Way out there. And getting wayer out fast. “Alpha Six you have trade 90 by 35 by 240. Hurry it up, he’s accelerating.”
Kerry Blue took up the chase. The target had a big jump on her, but she was faster.
The gap was closing, but gravitation was getting weak out here. Target was speeding up. Any second he was going to jump out of normal space.
Target was almost in range.
Almost meant not.
Kerry Blue didn’t see how she was going to overtake him. She needed to get him now. Right now. Still not close enough.
Kerry redlined her Swift’s engine.
Overload. The Swift balked.
“No!”
The target vanished.
The Roman had gone FTL. Out of sight. Out of reach.
Tracking calmly assigned her another target. “Alpha Six. You have trade at 90 by 63 by 180. Do try to bring this one back.”
“Can’t I just shoot something?” Kerry cried. “Beams work real well in normal space, ya know!”
“Negative beams, Alpha Six. Secure all targets with lampreys. Take them alive.”
“Why?” Kerry raced after her next target. Just knew she was gonna lose this one too. “Even Caesar Numa says it’s okay to kill Romuliis.”
Lieutenant Cain Salvador answered that one. “We don’t take orders from Caesar.”
Real low blow, that one. She wanted to tell Cain where he could shove what.
Kerry Blue unleashed her lamprey at her target. “All I’m saying is—Got him! Got him! Got him! You Roman brit shick!” Forgot about all she was saying.
“Com protocol,” Control said to no one in particular. Probably meant all of them. Kerry Blue wasn’t the only one yelling out here. Swift pilots were notorious that way.
Someone else, sounded like Dak Shepard, shouted, “I got a bead! I got a bead! I don’t got a bead! Where am I?”
“Alpha Two, this is Tracking. If your intent is not desertion, reverse course.”
“I had a bead,” Dak protested, probably reversing course.
“Alpha Three. This is Tracking. What are you doing?”
“Wish I knew, sir.”
Alpha Three was Geneva Rhine.
Kerry Blue checked her display. Not sure what she was looking at. Looked like Rhino had a lamprey wrapped completely around her own Swift several times and somehow got the barb stuck in her own arresting gear.
Other voices overlapped.
“Mine!”
“Mine!”
“Get off my target!”
“That’s not a target. That’s me you boon!”
“Grettaaaaaaaaa!”
And you could still hear the new guy leaving the solar system, wailing.
Heard Control assuring Shasher Wyatt that the Merrimack would come get him after the fur stopped flying. Mack hadn’t forgotten him.
Merrimack couldn’t possibly forget about him, because Shasher Wyatt was warbling over the open com, a no-breath, “YeeahAHahAHahAHahhhh—”
And because Shasher had a twin in the Battery whose legal name was Dumbell Wyatt. Gunner Wyatt would notice if Flight Sergeant Wyatt failed to return from this sortie.
“—ahhhhyahahahahaaaaaaah—”
Kerry Blue delivered her catch to Merrimack and hied after the next target.
Who knew there could be this many people stupid enough to back Romulus as ruler of the Roman Empire? “Tracking! Gimme a target!”
And, just like that, there were no more targets. Everyone who was going to run from the asteroid was gone.
On the command platform, Captain Carmel gave the go ahead for the next phase of this raid. She pointed to her Exec. “Fast now.”
She needed to get the Marines down there before the remaining enemy could scuttle their equipment.
Dingo Ryan gave the orders rapid fire, all but flogging the company and crew. “Go drones. Go boarders. Secure the facility. Execute!”
Recon drones took point on the landing, Marines hard after them.
Kerry Blue, with the rest of the Alphas, set her Swift down on the asteroid’s icy surface and climbed down from her cockpit into the wicked cold thin atmo. Her personal heater kicked in. A respirator gave her a couple of breaths for the sprint.
She followed the drones down one of the facility’s emergency escape shafts.
The command crew would be able to watch the boarding through the Marines’ gunsights. The gunsights were implanted either side of the Marines’ eyes. Kerry Blue didn’t even notice the black bars on her temples when she looked in a mirror. The gunsights were just part of her face. The sights followed the focus of the wearer’s eyes. The visual output was displayed on Merrimack’s tactical monitors.
Six pairs of eyes advanced to the chamber where the pirate Nox claimed to have seen TR Steele.
The Marines hadn’t been told about Steele, only that there was a possible hostage situation behind this door, a man suspended in a tank of pink medical gel.
The Marines of Alpha Team burst through the door.
Cursing.
“It’s empty!” Alpha Four, Carly Delgado cried. “Say again: The compartment is empty.”
The command crew could see that.
Even so, Acting WinCo Cain Salvador demanded over the com, “Completely empty?”
The Alphas looked round and round and up and down to show the command crew the completeness of the empty.
“Four walls, floor and ceiling, nothing else,” Carly Delgado reported. “What were we expecting?”
Cain Salvador didn’t answer the Marine. He muted the com and spoke aside for only the XO to hear, “Nox lied.”
According to the pirate, Colonel Steele was supposed to be in that chamber, suspended in a tank of medical gel.
Flight Sergeant Carly Delgado crouched down. She touched her gloved fingers to the wet floor. She lifted her fingertips close to the gunsights bracketing her eyes to show whoever up there was looking through her eyes. “I have pink gunk.”
On the command deck a chill lifted the hair on the back of Captain Carmel’s neck. Nox hadn’t lied. There really had been a pink tank in that chamber.
Steele had been there.
He wasn’t there now. Neither was the pink tank.
TR Steele was like John Farragut in a way. Not that Steele had Farragut’s flash, exuberance, and blinding charisma. He didn’t. TR Steele was earthy, solid, and expressive as granite. Still, he was one of those men whom troops follow eagerly to hell, proud of the privilege. The ship needed him. Captain Carmel would do something about that fraternization skat later, if she ever managed to retrieve him.
Down in the Romulid lair, Alpha Team advanced to a chamber that bore the Roman imperial crest over its lintel. The Marines blasted away the metal door. A point drone pronounced the chamber clear of active booby traps, and the Marines entered.
The life-support equipment was still there. The sheet that Nox had described as “artfully draped” wasn’t artful anymore. It was a soggy mess on the floor along with the oak crown. The floor was wet. Overhead was the ragged hole in the ceiling through which Nox had escaped.
The drone accessed the life-support unit’s database in the soggy royal chamber. Other drones throug
hout the facility were gathering all the intelligence they could access.
Captain Carmel asked, “Are there any humans below?”
“None detected so far, sir,” the drone wrangler reported.
Cain Salvador answered for her Marine units. “None so far.”
None. A feeling like a sudden temperature drop gripped the command deck.
Dingo’s wide eyes met the captain’s gaze. “We’re cactus,” Dingo said.
“Get my Marines out of there, Stuart.”
Wraith, the drone driver, was already yelping, “The facility’s central data bank is erasing itself!”
A self-destruct protocol was underway.
Calli Carmel: “Drones, carry on. Men, out!”
Dingo: “Command to Company. Evac! Evac! Drop everything. Get out of there, yesterday.”
THE COUNTDOWN WAS SILENT. Wraith gave voice to it. “Thirty. Twenty-nine.”
Seconds to the facility’s self-destruction.
Kerry Blue counted her footfalls up the ladder rungs. Everyone’s displacement collar showed red—not functioning. Do not miss a handhold or you kill yourself and everyone below you.
Kerry flew up the shaft. Knew she wasn’t gonna make it. Even if she reached her Swift, she still had to get in it and get spaceborne.
Fifteen. Fourteen. Thirteen.
Kerry Blue reached the top hatch. “I’m gonna die.”
“I ain’t.” Guy below her—Dak Shepard—gave her a boost up and out.
Cold. Her respirator froze up. No air. Not that she was going to do too much more inhaling anyway. Ran.
Ten. Nine.
She found her Swift. Scrambled onto the wing. Dropped into the cockpit.
Five. Four.
Slammed the canopy shut over her. Inhaled.
Engine already running. Lifting off.
Three. Two.
Rising. Not fast enough.
A motion made her look up.
And there was Merrimack, huge, getting huger, like a falling building.
One.
The voice of Control: “All small craft. Go topside. Get yourselves in our blast shadow.”
Kerry Blue rising. The ground was rising with her. The rock surface bulged.
Kerry pushed the stick and hauled her crate up and over the top of Merrimack’s beautiful hulking shielded mass.
The asteroid cracked and exploded. The energy shell around Merrimack’s belly and her bottom sail took the blast.
Kerry Blue and the Marine Swifts clustered around the Merrimack’s towering topsail while boulders the size of Bermuda hurtled up and past them.
17 Ianuarius 2448
Bagheera
Perseid Space
“You did what?”
Caesar Numa, in all his fuming vastness, appeared as a virtual presence across the light-years. He looked and sounded as if he were right here on board the pirate Xerxes Bagheera. Looked ready to murder Cinna and Nox.
Cinna answered, “I went to the Americans.”
“You went to the United States Space Battleship Merrimack!”
“Yes, Caesar,” Cinna said.
Numa menaced the patterner. “Why did I ever think you were a good idea?”
Cinna said, “That information is not in a data bank I can access.”
“If I think for a moment you are trying to be comical—”
Numa let the threat hang unfinished. Don’t promise. Just do.
“It was my idea,” Nox said. “I did it.”
Nox. There was another bad idea. “Of course you did!”
“We couldn’t get to Romulus in the facility,” Nox said. “So we sent in someone who could.”
“You sent the bloody Merrimack!”
“Yes, Caesar.”
Numa had given the pirates orders to hunt down and kill Romulus any way they could. It had been slightly resourceful of them to send Merrimack against the Romulid facility. But the move was not without consequences. “You’re supposed to be dead! You betrayed your existence to the civilized galaxy!”
“There’ve been sightings of us everywhere since we died. Lots of people see us, Caesar. We’re the galactic Big Foot. This is just one more crank sighting.”
“Callista Carmel saw you!” Numa bellowed. “You talked to her!”
“So ‘Empress Calli’ says she saw me. So what? She’s not a credible witness against Caesar. Everyone expects her to accuse you of bad things.”
That was true actually. Anything Calli Carmel said against Caesar Numa Pompeii could easily be dismissed as empty malice. Nox had a point.
This young man was too devious ever to have been a Farragut.
At war’s end Numa Pompeii thought he had Romulus securely in custody. In retrospect, Numa should not have taken Romulus into custody at all. At the time it had been imperative that Numa not be connected with Romulus’ death. The imperative was looking like an Olympian mistake now.
Numa should have just murdered Romulus as soon as the LEN Red Cross delivered him back to Palatine. Caesar Numa should have marched aboard the spaceship, taken a sword to the asp’s neck and walked out with his head.
Should have. Should have. Should have. The idea of Romulus existing in a living hell had been irresistible. Numa should have resisted and taken the political fallout.
“You never actually saw Romulus.”
“No, Caesar,” Nox affirmed.
Numa exhaled a huff. “They let you find the facility.”
Nox’s face went slack for a moment. “Let? With respect, Caesar, you call that letting?”
“You were meant to see the empty chamber.”
“What makes Caesar think so?”
“Because you saw it.”
Numa watched the dawn come to Cinna’s face—a little slow on the uptake for a patterner, Numa thought. But then Cinna wasn’t plugged into patterner mode right now.
“We were meant to be the first witnesses,” Cinna explained to Nox. “We’re the Marys.”
“We’re the what?” Nox still didn’t get it.
Cinna said, “The sheet, half-dragged off the pallet, was draped like an artist’s depiction of the shroud left behind at Christ’s tomb. We’re meant to believe Romulus walked. The Romulii left the life support behind. That’s supposed to tell us that Romulus doesn’t need it. The Romulii want us to think he is risen without actually showing him to us.”
“Not showing him could mean they actually failed,” Nox said.
“They didn’t fail,” Caesar said. “You are wearing a sword.”
“Yes, Caesar,” Nox said. Sounded confused.
“Fall on it.”
There was the briefest pause. One couldn’t truly call it a hesitation. It was an instant just long enough for Nox to absorb the command. His eyes went dead. He drew his sword. He set the hilt against a bulkhead, the sword point angled up. He positioned the point, gauging the angle to his midriff. One of those things you need to get right on the first attempt. His face was pasty.
“Stop.”
Nox’s hand fluttered. The sword clattered to the pirate ship’s deck. Nox came to pale attention. His voice lacked strength. “I am yours to command, Caesar.”
Numa’s voice reverberated. “Yes, you are.”
Numa pointed a stout, heavily ringed forefinger at Cinna’s image. “Find Romulus. Kill him. Bring me his head.”
17 January 2448
U.S. Space Battleship Merrimack
Perseid Space
All the Fleet Marines and their spacecraft and all the drones returning to Merrimack from the Romulid installation needed to be scanned down to the molecule.
The Swift pilots bided their time in an outboard isolation chamber by tallying up their scores from the raid.
They were blowing raspberries at Alpha Three, the
Rhino.
Geneva Rhine was the most rabid Roman hater in the whole Wing. Her score for that sortie was zero.
“Zee Roh.” The Yurg used his whole mouth to pronounce the number. He used his whole body too. The Yurg was a long, tall white guy with orangutan arms. Yurg circled his long arms into a great hoop. “A big empty round nothing.”
Rhino sat with her head hanging low. She’d been a crack shot against the alien attack orbs back at Planet Zoe. Here, against her most detested enemy, the Romans? Nothin’. She stunk.
Her hair was held back in a stubby ponytail that stuck straight up now. She talked at her feet. “Yeah, I got it. I got it.”
“A ROUND number,” said Shasher Wyatt.
“Yeah. That one. Right.” Rhino nodded. Her ponytail bobbed.
She’d got her lamprey wrapped around her own Swift and needed rescuing herself. She could not have done worse if she’d tried.
Not if she’d tried.
2 February 2448
U.S. Space Battleship Merrimack
Perseid Space
“Captain Carmel,” the com tech said. “The Self is on your harmonic.”
Calli was motionless for several long moments. The com tech was about to repeat himself.
Calli tuned her resonator to the exclusive harmonic that linked her to the ruler of half the known galaxy. “Numa.”
Without salutation, Caesar Numa Pompeii said, “Where is Jose Maria de Cordillera?”
Of all things Caesar might have said to her, she hadn’t expected that. She tried not to show surprise. “I don’t know.”
“Did you part ways after you left the Zoen system?”
“I don’t know where Don Cordillera is,” Calli said.
She shut off the resonator and turned to her exec. “Where is Jose Maria?”
“In his cabin, I should think,” Dingo Ryan said.
Doctor Jose Maria Rafael Meridia de Cordillera was not in his cabin. His dog was there, but Calli found Don Cordillera in the lab with the xenobiologists, Doctors Weng and Sidowski.
Weng and Ski came to sloppy attention. The captain waved them back to as they were.
Rome no longer recognized Jose Maria as a political neutral. He had taken refuge with the U.S. battleship. His racing ship Mercedes was hangared inside Merrimack’s port side cargo hold.