by R. M. Meluch
“Mister Raytheon, can you salvage the shadow vessel’s res chamber?”
“Not a chance, sir.”
“I have a patterner,” Farragut said. “Just find me the pieces of the res chamber.”
“I got the res chamber, sir,” Wraith said. “It’s a solid melted glob. And I got one big piece of the carrier vessel. Here, this piece has a Pacific Consortium mark.”
Wraith positioned a robotic claw to present the “big piece” for viewing on the Tactical monitor. The big piece was one centimeter long.
Enlarged, the broken bit clearly showed the Trademark kiwi wearing a bubble helmet—the Pacific Consortium’s mark.
“Dead last thing I ever expected,” Farragut said, eyebrows lifted toward the overhead.
Calli leaned in toward the image. She looked betrayed. “I had no idea the Pacifics had any presence out this way at all. Much less planting bait on a U.S. battleship during a galactic crisis.”
Farragut worked up to a full roar. “Get me the embassy! No, get me someone to shoot at! If I had the power to declare war, I would.”
Wraith was squinting, reading the markings from another shard from the scattered remains. “Patent registered in 2446. That explains that.”
It made everything clear as squid ink.
Calli Carmel blinked several times. “Today is June the seventh, 2443,” she said, not sounding too confident about it.
“Yes, sir. Last I looked, sir,” Wraith said. He heard himself sounding disrespectful and stammered, “Sir.”
Farragut leaned toward the display. “This thing was made in the future? You’re not serious.”
Wraith didn’t know if that was a real question. He couldn’t talk anyway.
Augustus said, “It does seem someone is having conjugal relations with your head. Just because a thing has a date on it doesn’t mean it’s actually from that year. I wouldn’t declare war on the Kiwis just yet.”
“You mean they were framed?” Calli said.
Augustus shook his head slowly as if it hurt to move. “As frame-ups go, this is tenuous. It assumes we were meant to find that piece of debris. I don’t believe we were.”
“Then what? What was the intent?” Farragut asked.
“In this case, I’m inclined to follow my idiot’s original thought.”
Augustus’ idiot? “Me,” Farragut said. “You’ve come over to my side.”
Augustus nodded. “When you’ve eliminated the possible, you’re either missing a fact or you’ve misinterpreted the evidence. That is a real patent date.”
Farragut was just absorbing the shock when Tactical sang out, “Hive spheres have changed course.”
“Where? When?”
Tactical: “They changed the moment the stealth object destructed. It wasn’t obvious right away. At these distances the angular differences are next to nothing. But it’s definite. I confirmed it twice.”
“Where are the spheres headed now?”
“Back the way they were. Toward the nearest inhabited planets.”
Augustus announced, “I’m going outside.”
Farragut frowned. He was not accustomed to his officers giving themselves orders. But he ought to expect it from Augustus by now.
Farragut turned to Augustus. His scowl relaxed, and he made a covert gesture. He mumbled, barely audible, “Nose.”
Augustus touched the back of one finger to his nostrils and brought away blood. He muttered. “Foutu. I’m still going outside.”
“Augustus. Something out there is armed.”
“So am I. And I am not an unshielded Kiwi. Let me out, then take your ship to siege stations.”
Augustus had always been spectacularly insubordinate. He wouldn’t be for much longer.
Farragut accompanied Augustus to the dock where the Roman Striker crouched like an angry red and black wasp.
A Roman Striker was a very long range, fast attack craft, tightly constructed around its pilot, a patterner. There was a living compartment in the Striker positioned just aft of the cockpit. The living space was high enough for a six foot eight Roman to lift his arms over his head and wide enough for him to lie down.
The living compartment in Augustus’ Striker was almost empty now. Augustus had moved most of his personal stuff over to the torpedo storage bay on board Merrimack, where he was billeted. In addition to his medical supplies, Augustus had offloaded rich tapestries, climbing plants set in Grecian urns, an elaborately carved Roman couch, a three-legged table, and a full-sized replica of the Winged Victory from the Louvre. John Farragut wasn’t sure how Augustus could ever get all that stuff back into this little ship.
Augustus didn’t intend to move it back. He wasn’t going to need it.
Augustus turned in parting. This could be it.
“You look like hell,” Farragut said.
“I am not out here to survive. I already said good-bye to you. So.” Augustus climbed into his Striker and pulled the hatch shut.
Romulus tried to come down from his towering rage. He’d intended to turn Merrimack into a plague ship, dogged by ravening gorgons, unwelcome at any planet or station.
But somehow Merrimack had detected and destroyed Romulus’ resonant tail.
Romulus had burned a serpent’s tooth missile and a res chamber for nothing. Worse than nothing.
Merrimack should not have been able to detect the serpent’s tooth. Merrimack didn’t have stealth technology in the year 2443, much less the technology to see through advanced stealth.
Things were not making sense.
Romulus plugged into patterner mode to sort through the confusing input. He accessed the records of all events that occurred since his arrival, and then he tapped into his younger self’s database, current today.
There he found Augustus.
Augustus was here. In the Myriad.
Romulus felt a hard smile spreading across his face.
Augustus was on Merrimack.
Now, how to get Augustus out of Merrimack without betraying any more information about himself? That was the problem. Merrimack was a fortress.
Then, miraculously, like lamb to slaughter, a small craft launched from Merrimack. It showed red and black—Flavian colors. A wicked little ship, with scarcely enough room inside to change your mind.
Romulus had to laugh out loud.
That was a patterner’s Striker. Augustus was coming to him.
“Captain. Your Roman deserted.”
“Say again.”
Marcander Vincent had replaced Jeffrey at the tactical station. He reported, “Roman Striker is off the grid. Gone. Quit. Out of here.”
“Did the Striker jump to FTL?”
“Negative.”
Farragut had a very high tolerance for his barely competent over-age third-string tactician. But he needed his A team right now.
“Mister Vincent, have Jeffrey report to the command deck. Then confine yourself to quarters. Someone else, locate Colonel Augustus’ Striker.”
Romulus stood, poised in grandeur over his captive. He meant to strike Augustus with awe when he woke up.
But Augustus wasn’t waking up.
Romulus’ Xerxes had absorbed the Striker into an energy hook, shut down its engine, and reeled the little ship inside the Xerxes’ hold. It took up all the available space.
Augustus arrived unconscious in his cockpit. His skin was cold. He was near to death.
Romulus was a superior patterner, so he knew that nothing he’d done had put Augustus into this state.
Augustus was already dying on his own.
Merda. These earlier patterners didn’t last long. They ran hot and needed a pharmacy full of sick-making chemicals to keep them alive—all the things that nanites did for the advanced patterner Romulus. Romulus didn’t have those antique chemicals. Augustus was
end of life. Threat of stroke was imminent. If Augustus stroked out, then he was free. Even Romulus couldn’t mend him. Romulus would be all the king’s horses and all the king’s men.
Augustus looked maddeningly placid.
Romulus shouted at him, “You will live!”
Augustus’ eyelids fluttered. He gave a faint smile, as if at private joke. “Make me.” He exhaled like a sigh.
His heartbeat ebbed.
“Oh, no, you don’t! You do not walk away from your debt. You owe me! You owe me excruciating agony!”
Augustus’ body was not functioning.
“No!”
Romulus could stop the progress of the degeneration if he acted quickly.
Augustus must live and recover just enough to suffer hideously.
Quickly Romulus isolated a batch of his own nanites and configured them to cycle through their restoration routine only once then self-extinguish.
Desperate, Romulus injected the restorative nanites into his worst enemy.
Augustus flatlined.
Romulus kicked him. “Live, you son of a mutant whore!”
CONSCIOUSNESS FLICKERED IN AND OUT. Held. A baritone voice from above sounded sweetly menacing.
“Augustus. How do you feel?”
Augustus didn’t answer.
“You feel well,” Romulus answered for him. “Except hungry, I expect.”
Thirsty actually. Augustus was trembling with dehydration. Would not confirm hunger. Did not want to imagine what Romulus would feed him. He couldn’t move.
Augustus didn’t want to show attention to Romulus, but he needed input. He opened his eyes.
Romulus was setting out medieval instruments, none too clean. Not what Augustus ever thought to bring on an interstellar voyage.
Romulus looked older, filled out. And cabled. He means for me to believe someone made him into a patterner.
That was unthinkable. Yet here he was thinking it. Romulus a patterner? Preposterous—that was a word that had waited a long time for someone to fit into it so perfectly. Romulus and recent events were preposterous.
Augustus had caught glimpses of extraordinary things while the Xerxes’ medical equipment dragged him back to life. Augustus had thought it a wild dream while it was happening.
Medical monitors displayed his vital signs. They betrayed his low-level apprehension. Romulus didn’t appear to like the readings.
Of course, Romulus didn’t want apprehension. He would want fear. Romulus would want blind horror.
This Romulus was a handsome man. Beautiful actually, with thick dark locks, full lips, athletic build. He was older than he ought to be by a handful of years at an age when a year mattered. He wore a high collar and gauntlets.
“They say the waiting is the worst part,” Romulus said. “No. It is not. But it’s part. Where there’s life, there’s horror.”
Romulus was manufacturing blood. He made a show of the transparent bags filling up. “You’re going to need a lot of it.”
Romulus had cut Augustus’ cable connections to prevent him from going into patterner mode. A little late, perhaps. Augustus’ own background processes had recorded what he’d missed while he was unconscious. He retained only a fraction of the information he’d been exposed to. Just what was most startling and most necessary.
He could tell that Romulus was picking up a wrongness here. Augustus was too calm, too interested in something other than Romulus.
Augustus forced his heart to speed up. He drew shallow breaths in an imitation of terror.
Romulus should be able to detect the charade. But he didn’t. Romulus’ strengths had always been his magnetism, cunning, and creativity. Not his power of reason. He was calculating, for sure. But he forced answers to suit his wants.
Augustus needed to keep himself from falling into the same trap, underestimating his opponent. He acknowledged that his opponent was powerful. Augustus had an inferior situation. He must outplay a determined, dangerous man with a superior arsenal.
“Striker! Back on the grid!” Jeffery announced at Tactical. “Five by thirty by eight!”
Commander Carmel took a step forward, mouth open, staring at the Tactical display. There was Augustus’ black and red Striker, suddenly in sensor view.
Captain Farragut was already barking, “FTL jump! Random destination. Execute yesterday. Displacement jammers—”
Just as a bang like a displacement thunderclap sounded from down decks.
Merrimack jumped. Calli got on the intercom. “Displacement Department. This is Command. Engage displacement jammers. Identify that sound.”
The displacement specialist answered, “Displacement Department, aye. I heard it, Commander. Didn’t come from the D department. The sound came from down decks. In the direction of the torpedo storage bays.”
“You’re telling me a torpedo blew inboard?”
Even as she said it, she knew it couldn’t be true. The sound had been a simple crack, not a ship-gutting explosion.
The displacement tech said, “I have no information on the arsenal, sir.”
The arsenal weighed in: “Negative detonation of onboard ordnance.”
“Command. This is Displacement. That noise definitely had the sound of a displacement event. But we did not initiate any displacement action.”
“Displacement. This is Command. Do we have jammers on?”
“Negative jammers in effect at the time of the event. Jammers are engaged now.”
Calli looked at the captain. “John, that sounded like a displacement event.”
Farragut ordered, “Sapper protocol.”
Calli on the loud com: “Sapper protocol. All hands, Sapper protocol.”
Sapper protocol meant bomb on board.
Lieutenant Colonel Steele deployed his Marines shipwide. Alpha Team charged to the lower decks, where the displacement sound had originated.
First thing necessary to effect displacement was to establish a working landing disk at the destination point. The displacement event on board Merrimack had to be the insertion of that initial landing disk. And you had to assume the payload was going to be a bomb. Getting an initial landing disk in place failed a lot. You could hope this one failed to arrive functional.
You never counted on it.
The Fleet Marines needed to find the landing disk and neutralize it. Yesterday.
Flight Sergeant Twitch Fuentes hauled open hatches as Flight Sergeants Kerry Blue and Carly Delgado scrambled through compartments in the arsenal. Lieutenant Hazard Sewell, who was tall, yanked the covers off high vents and checked the overhead ducts. Little Reg Monroe hooked up deck grates, and the new guy, Cole Darby, got stuck fishing underneath them.
This was when you found out just how big Merrimack was.
Scary that the Old Man wasn’t bellowing at them to move faster. Meant he knew his dogs were moving flat out.
Means we’re gonna die.
Kerry Blue pulled up a round dish from under a rack. It didn’t look like any standard LD, but it might be some foreign make. She held it up high. Yelled, “What’s this?”
“That’s a dogfood bowl, chica.”
The dog itself was out somewhere searching for the LD.
Hazard Sewell barked, “We’re clear here. Move. Move. Move.”
The team piled out through the hatchway, tagged the compartment as clear, and they ran to the next area, eyes up, looking at the overhead piping, the air returns, the water and waste conduits, the bunches of power cables. A hostile landing disk might end up anywhere. Sometimes these things displaced into a solid bulk, but that made a completely different sound. This displacement crack had a horribly clean sound to it. The payload could arrive on it at any next heartbeat.
It was well known that the true proper position for the Sapper protocol was on your knees, eyes tight sh
ut, holding your breath, fingers in your ears, braced for the blast. It was every bit as effective as what they were doing now.
Captain Farragut was down decks with the rest of the hands searching for an LD. Commander Carmel, on the command deck, relayed a report from Systems. “Captain! I am advised that Merrimack is ninety kilos more massive than she was before the displacement event.”
Farragut yelled into his wrist com. “Roger that, Cal!” And he changed direction, charging toward the torpedo storage bay.
Ninety kilos sounded about right for a very tall, solidly built Roman strung with cables.
Augustus, overly tall for a U.S. space battleship’s accommodations, was billeted in a torpedo rack room. Farragut yanked open the hatch to torpedo rack room six.
The rack room looked bigger without torpedoes. The ordnance had all been spent. Left were Augustus’ personal belongings—elegant carpets and tapestries, the Roman canopy, the marble winged victory. And Augustus.
Augustus stood there, without a landing disk, clear-eyed, intact, and giving orders. “Captain Farragut, adjust your jammers. Mix them up. Yesterday. You’re not safe. And jump to FTL. Change vector.”
Farragut, not too proud to comply with a reasonable idea insubordinately expressed, relayed the instructions to his XO before he demanded, “How did you get here?”
“I displaced. Readjust your jammers. Again. I don’t trust your lackeys to get it right.”
Farragut gave the orders to his XO over his wrist com, then faced Augustus. “Will there be anything else, Colonel?”
“John Farragut, you don’t know what you’re up against.”
“Follow me to the command deck and enlighten me.” Captain Farragut led the way, running.
Augustus’ voice sounded behind him, “You are nostril deep in merda.”
“And you?”
“Way over my head in it. Do you know what came out of that wormhole?”
John Farragut. Impatient. “Worm?”
“Big one. Romulus. Caesar Romulus.”
Farragut glanced back over his shoulder, scowling at Augustus.
Augustus looked rested. There was a clarity to this being’s eyes that Augustus never had. The Augustus whom Farragut knew had the haggard face of a terminal drunk. This could not possibly be Augustus.