by R. M. Meluch
Steele stopped. Anger, barely held in check, burst free. Hurled his helmet against the bulk, all his taurine mass behind it. He flushed red under his white-blond buzz-cut hair. Arctic eyes blazed. “Sir. We got caught with our dicks hanging out and looking stupid.”
“Anyone out there?” Farragut asked. No blame. No anger.
Steele struggled to bring his temper down for a landing. He wagged his square head no. “Alive? Not that we saw. Did Merrimack pick up anything?”
“No. It doesn’t smell like Hive. The early warnings are quiet.”
“Doesn’t smell like anything that makes sense. And that smells like Hive to me,” said Steele.
The captain demurred. “The Hive is adaptive, but they don’t invent. The burrs have never tripped a mine to know what one is, much less learn how to set one.”
“We don’t know that, Captain. I don’t trust the Romans to tell us everything they tried on the burrs before they palmed the war off on us. And we don’t know how old the Hive is, where they’ve been, who they ate, or what they learned from ’em.”
Farragut gave a sideways nod, allowing the point. “But mines? No one uses mines in outer space. It’s too big. How could anyone know we would be right here? Or that your man would fly backward. He wouldn’t have died head-on, would he?”
Steele shook his head. “No. He wouldn’t. Or if he’d had his cowcatcher turned in the direction of travel.”
“Why didn’t he turn it?” Every speck of dust was a bullet to a ship traveling FTL. The forward fields that swept all particles aside were called cowcatchers, though few hands on board had ever seen their name-sake or stopped to wonder why one would ever need a device to catch a plodding herbivore. Merrimack could, and had, plowed through Saturn’s rings. (Heard about that one from the Joint Chiefs, but no matter now.) A pilot always turned his screens in the direction he was going. “System failure?”
Steele shook his head. “Arrogance. Cock full of it.” Steele’s best guess was that Cowboy had intended to reverse direction again and head butt the missile.
“Did you get any sense out there that that missile or this minefield was meant for us, TR?”
“No,” said Steele. “We stepped in someone else’s trap.”
“Bizarre place for a trap. And accidentally stepping in it? Chances have to be a godzillion to one.”
Steele had never taken probabilities and statistics, and he wasn’t sure if godzillion was a real number, so he just nodded gravely. “So who were the mines meant for? And what are they protecting?”
“And why here?” Farragut added. “Why right here?”
“We gotta be close to something.”
“Have to be,” Farragut agreed. “Have to be. But what? Clue?”
Steele shook his head.
“I’ll have the minefield scanned. Its placement should point us toward what’s being guarded. Have someone retrieve that sentinel buoy so we can analyze it for age. This could be very old news and maybe this is a leftover dragon from a long-gone treasure—what?”
Steele’s face sank deeper and deeper into chagrin. Farragut prompted again, “What?”
Steele spoke tightly. “The sentinel buoy has been ‘secured. ’ ”
Farragut translated, “Your Marines blew it up.”
Steele nodded. “And all of the mines.”
One hand loosely caging his face, Farragut peered through his fingers. “Shit, TR.” Not angry. Resigned to obvious consequences. If you want to preserve evidence, send detectives or scientists, not Marines. “You know, we very likely wiped out a first contact. I’m pretty sure we never met these folk before.”
“My Wing was thorough,” Steele said dryly.
“I helped,” Farragut confessed. Any chance to run the guns. “LEN’s gonna pee the carpet when they read this report.”
Naval diplomacy was an oxymoron. Farragut would have let himself laugh, had a man not died. “Cowboy. Jaime Carver.” He placed the name at last—the late Flight Sergeant Jaime “Cowboy” Carver.
Steele was not surprised that the captain of a battleship carrying a Marine detachment of 720 and crew of 425 should know one of his Marine flight sergeants by full name. Farragut knew everybody.
And everybody knew Cowboy. Though few knew his name was Jaime Carver.
“Popular man, wasn’t he?” Farragut asked.
Lips tight, teeth clenched, Steele answered, “Very.”
Farragut must have sensed the rage. He asked softly, “Friend, TR?”
“Dumb kid. Cocky. Balls to the wall. Hard not to like him.”
Hard not to like him, and Steele hated him. Heard himself go on, “I knew he’d do this to me.”
Cowboy was a funny guy, made everyone laugh. Stellar looks. Always quick to get his shirt off. Girl in every port, and one on board every ship no matter how slim the ratios. Insubordinate. Steele sometimes wished him dead. So startled to get his wish, Steele spoke aloud, “I’m asking if there’s something I could’ve done.”
Farragut glanced aside at Steele as they walked. “Was there?”
“I don’t see it.” And Steele had looked hard. As much as Steele hated Cowboy, sending one of his own men intentionally, and without his knowledge, to his death was against everything Lieutenant Colonel Steele lived for. Steele was first, last, and always a good soldier. He had soul-searched and exonerated himself. Cowboy had killed Cowboy. “It was fast.”
“It’s always fast out here,” said Farragut.
“Man was a walking game of Russian roulette.” Future corpse, the type was called. “Hell, sir, it was inevitable.”
Farragut’s voice turned quietly stern: “You have any more of those on board my boat, TR, ship ’em home today.”
“Sir. Yes, sir.”
Prox alarms blared and quickly silenced. Two sets of blue eyes lifted. “What now?” Farragut murmured, launching into a run.
Space was too vast for chance encounters. Someone crossed your path out here, means you were stalked.
“Ladder up!”
Crew quickly scrambled clear of the vertical passages within the sound of Farragut’s shout, for Captain Farragut made his entrances like a cannon shell. He clambered up the ladder, spry for a big man, and bounded to the control room.
Two MPs flanked the hatch on either side. Within was a compact space, daylit, bustling. Technicians and specialists worked elbow to elbow at their stations-—tactical, com, navigation, targeting—each in direct communication with his attendant department belowdecks. Multiple large display screens above the workstations relayed visuals and ship’s status at a glance. “What’ve we got?” Farragut demanded.
The prox alarm announced someone not given an approach vector was collision close. “Friend or Foe?”
“IFF says Friend,” tactical reported dubiously. And no one was convinced of its friendship from looking at the overhead displays.
The U.S. alliance with Palatine was a brittle one. Merrimack ’s low-band scanner readings, as translated into a visual, displayed the unholy image of a Roman Striker.
Merrimack’s tall, impossibly beautiful XO announced coolly, “Captain Farragut, your new IO is here.” A wry brittleness infected her whole bearing. Commander Calli Carmel had a knowing respect for Roman might and Roman treachery.
The concerned pinch in her brow was in clear view with her dark hair pulled severely back into a braided tail to her waist.
Farragut regarded the painted Striker on the display. A sharp-edged, wicked little craft, faster than the Mack. “Red and black. What gens is that?”
“Flavian,” said Calli. Calli Carmel had attended the prestigious Imperial Military Institute on Palatine during the brief conciliation between worlds. Made her the resident expert on things Roman. “Not the worst,” she interpreted. “But not the conciliatory party either. Gens Flavius voted against the surrender. He’s requesting permission to come aboard.”
“Permission granted.” And to her hesitation, “We’re expecting him, aren’t we?”
“Good quality in an IO, you don’t think? What’s his name?”
“Augustus. They’ve given him the rank of colonel.” Lofty enough. But not a line officer.
“Augustus what?” said Farragut. “What Augustus?”
“Just Augustus.”
“I thought only slaves had only one name.”
“Augustus is not a slave name,” Calli advised.
“Well, he’s not the emperor,” said Farragut. “Let him aboard.” He quit the control room running. “Clear ladder!” He hooked his feet round the rails outside the rungs and slid, fireman style, to the mid-deck. Marched out the starboard dock to greet his new intelligence officer.
He found the deck crowded with the curious, armed with made-up official reasons to be here, anxious for a glimpse of their uneasy ally.
Not just a Roman, this was rumored to be a patterner, one of the Empire’s augmented men designed to interface with a computer and make gestalt sense of the random information within its databases. The Roman Empire valued its patterners highly. Patterners were rare, pricey pieces of equipment. Palatine must think Merrimack had a real chance of locating the Hive home world to be sending a patterner into U.S. service.
The Roman uncoiled from his Striker. Tall. They were all tall. Romans were evolving bigger by every generation, and not, one suspected, by natural selection. Captain Farragut at six foot one was unaccustomed to looking that far up. The Roman stood easily six foot eight—max height allowed on board an American space vessel—all in proportion. He was going to have to duck through the hatches. Age, perhaps mid-forties, perhaps fifties. Face like granite. Hair black, tightly curled, close-cut. Carried himself with a dangerous dignity. A disdain.
Captain Farragut offered an open right hand. Augustus let the hand hang out there in midair. The flight deck stiffened, gripped in a collective breath hold, turning blue.
Captain Farragut cut easily to the point: “I know y’all broke away from Earth a hundred and a half years ago, but you’ve got to know this is a sign of friendship.”
“An open hand shows you hold no weapon,” Augustus corrected. “I do. Ergo.” Still no hand.
Eyes bulged from the breath holders.
The captain’s voice did not vary from its easy Kentucky drawl. “Then let go of it long enough to greet your duly appointed commanding officer.”
The Roman’s hand opened, lifted—saluted, greeting the office, not the man. Bootheels came together sharply. No one had ever heard an ancient Roman salute, but you had to doubt an ancient Roman ever managed a convincing heel rap like that in sandals.
Farragut’s brows lifted. He returned an American salute. And since no pleasantries were to be exchanged, he ordered, “Mr. Juarez, show Colonel Augustus to his quarters.”
“An escort is unnecessary,” Augustus countered. “Tell me which compartment you’ve assigned to me. I am familiar with the layout of a U.S. Merrimack-class battleship.” Unsubtle reminder there, of Palatine’s capture of Merrimack’s sister ship Monitor during the war. The Monitor must have impressed the Romans, because they turned around, gave it back, and offered alliance with the United States against Them, the Hive.
Marauding omnivores from outer space had made strange bedfellows of the United States and the planet Palatine.
Captain Farragut chose to pretend the remark was meant to be helpful. “By all means.” He ordered the new intelligence officer to report to sick bay after he stowed his gear in his quarters. Granted him permission to go, and he was gone.
A nervous titter escaped the personnel on the flight deck.
“I think that might have gone better,” Farragut said.
The tension immediately bled off with a big deck-wide snigger.
One of the ship’s dogs, the bloodhound named Nose, had given the Roman a sniff in passing and immediately sat down—a signal that he smelled something not right about Augustus.
“I’ll put a tag on him,” Steele said, but Farragut belayed that: “I don’t think he’ll get lost.”
That was not the point. Steele plunged ahead, “But he’s—”
“Roman?” Farragut chided mildly.
There were worse things in this galaxy than Romans.
A squad of Marines waited for Colonel Steele in the forecastle on his way to officers’ country.
He felt numbingly cold in recognition:
Dak Shepard. Flew as Alpha Two. A grunt with wings. Big ape. A football washout—too slow for offense, too small for defense at a petite one hundred kilos. Nothing left for Dak but to bash heads for Uncle Sam.
Carly Delgado. Alpha Four. A hard case. All rope and bone. Stick girl. Little pyramid breasts and a wide pointy cradle of hip. Wide face, brutally high cheek-bones, and a sharp little chin. That squint did her no good. Too tough to cry. Carly was crying.
Twitch Fuentes. Alpha Five. The quiet one. Didn’t trust his English.
Little Regina Monroe. Alpha Three. Reg was making those squeaking sobs. Sounded like a mouse.
And hope against hope, she was still there in the back of the knot: Kerry Blue. Alpha Six. Puffy-faced. Eyes rimmed red. Mouth had that fat-lipped look you get from crying hard. Grieving anger knit her brow.
They were all here but Alpha Seven. That asshole.
Steele braced himself in stony dread as Flight Leader Hazard Sewell stepped forward for his squad. The designated mouth. “We’re having a memorial for Cowboy. We’d like you to say a few words, Colonel.”
Heart stuck in his boot.
They waited, expectant. Never expected Colonel Steele to say no.
These soldiers all loved Cowboy. Steele’s throat constricted so tight he didn’t think he could talk.
And then he was talking. Almost without himself. “What I will do for Cowboy’s memory is neglect to record in my report that he was in direct violation of procedure, which violation caused his death. I will not put in the record that he did not die in defense of his world but in the act of being a cowboy. And I am only giving him that much slack because he didn’t take any of you with him!”
Felt the heat in his face. With his fair skin and white-blond buzz-cut hair he may as well have a signal beacon for a head. Knew he was flaming red.
He roared on, louder, “And if any of you do the same, not only will I refuse to say anything at your memorials, I will jettison your carcass out the air lock where your vacuum-bloated remains will drift for all time. DO YOU UNDERSTAND!”
Alpha squad flinched back as a whole in dumb disbelief.
“The rules exist to keep your sorry asses still connected to your thick skulls and your still-beating hearts. You want me to say a few words? Here: Cowboy got what he asked for. Now, someone go sanitize his personal effects before I ship them back to his wife. I have a letter to write!”
As he whirled toward the hatch, someone blurted, “Cowboy had a wife?”
“A pregnant wife,” Steele snarled back. God, how do you write a letter like that? Damn him. Damn him. A pregnant widow. He roared in parting, “Take all his girl-friends’ stuff and space it!”
Kerry Blue, looking ill, mumbled, “I’ll do it.”
It would be mostly her stuff.
Normally, a star cluster offered nothing of interest to a military vessel. The cluster was a beautiful curiosity only, until this one had started shooting.
IC9870986 was a class I globular cluster, meaning, on a scale of I to XII, it was very large, extremely rich, and very much compressed at its center—though “compressed” in cosmic terms meant that the core suns still averaged a quarter light-year apart.
The cluster measured 150 light-years in diameter, encompassing three million stars. At light speed it would take Merrimack 472 years to orbit the cluster once; at the distortion threshold, six days. The whole of it measured 7
50,351 solar masses.
“That can’t be right,” Steele objected, hearing the statistics read off. Couldn’t bite back the words fast enough. Caught sideways glances from the Navy techs, who were embarrassed for him. Steele had just stepped in something and didn’t know what. Only knew he had revealed some ignorance.
A scanner monitor muttered into his console, “Marines can work division. Wow.”
It was the division that was not working. Steele did not see how three million stars equated to seven hundred fifty thousand solar masses.
Farragut murmured aside to his abashed Marine commander, “Underweight stars. Typical in a glob.”
“I slept through globs,” Steele growled.
“So did everyone,” Farragut assured him. That would be just like Farragut not to leave you out there by yourself. “Globs are of no strategic importance.”
Globular clusters were among the oldest features in the Milky Way. In comparison to Sol, the typical globular star was poorer in elements any heavier than helium by a factor of ten. And no heavy elements meant no planets, no dirt to stand on, no military bases. Nothing for a gorgon to eat, and Merrimack was hunting gorgons.
But somebody was here. Or had been here.
Captain Farragut wondered, passing through the cluster, if he had not been lured in here. But the Hive did not understand humans well enough to know that humans would find this beautiful. Beauty was irrelevant to Hive existence. The Hive did not know beauty. It knew edibility.
In surrounding space, only one in four stars formed singly. Stars in a globular cluster were all singles, unless one considered the whole system of three million as one colossal multiple star system. Though one could not say these stars orbited one another. They milled.
But lying as it did only two degrees off the galactic equator, this cluster had picked up three rider stars not born with the rest of them. Three heavy stars.
“Two M types and an F8,” the monitor reported. “Main sequence.”
“Planets?” Farragut asked.