The Myriad: Tour of the Merrimack #1

by R. M. Meluch

  “What do the colors mean?” Donner asked.

  “Mean? What? You mean like rank? They don’t mean nothing. It’s a big planet. This is just the way we are. I got a white grandfather. I mean really white.”

  “The grotesque one,” Donner began, “with hair like bleachweed and eyes like holes in the day sky—he is your white grandfather?”

  A snigger moved up the back of her nose. “No. Not nearly. That’s Colonel Steele.”

  “He owns you?” Donner guessed.

  “No. Yes. Sort of. He says die, I die. But he wouldn’t say that unless something big was on the line. He doesn’t spend us like loose change. He’s a lead-from-the-front kind of guy. You’re laughing.”

  “The words. The words are . . . oddly chosen. I do not understand what you said. Captain Farragut is not your Archon?”

  “Farragut is everybody’s Archon.”

  The answer seemed to satisfy Donner.

  Kerry giggled, touched the lizard plant on her head. “He’s humming!”

  “You have music on Earth?”

  “Oh, lots. Doesn’t everybody? They used to think music would be the universal language. But one person’s music is another person’s cat on fire. Anyone thinks music is universal has never been in our forecastle. Men have been beaten shitless over tunes. And me, I’ll Kay-Bar a whistler. Sometimes we sing chanteys—you don’t mind the noise so much if it’s coming out of your own mouth. And if the guy next to you can’t sing—and if it’s Twitch Fuentes, he can’t—you just sing louder and drown him out. Then Commander Carmel, she’s got this operatic screaming fat chick shit she listens to. Splits my head open. And Cowboy has—Cowboy had country western bubbles. Music to throw up by. Lying cheating rat bastard music.”

  Donner was laughing.

  “Do you understand what I said?”

  Enchanted, beaming, Donner confessed, “No.”

  A bead of sweat threaded down Kerry’s neck. She almost asked if she could take her jacket off, but then realized Donner wouldn’t know her request was out of order. He might, in fact, be wondering why she was wearing so many clothes in this weather. Donner was lightly dressed, though the females had been covered and draped into shapelessness, neck to bare feet.

  Kerry unfastened her uniform jacket—a chore, with its twenty-two chances to say no—and peeled it off. The lizard plant rearranged itself on her shoulder. The breezes felt soft on her wet skin, cool through her T-shirt. Donner’s black eyes went straight for her breasts.

  Ha. We’re not so alien as the xenos said, Kerry thought. She sighed aloud to be free of the extra layer of fabric, “That’s better.”

  Donner’s onyx eyes agreed. Kerry slung her jacket over the marble railing, spread her arms to the sky, and inhaled. “It’s great to get out of the can. This—this is amazing. It’s so beautiful.” She could fall right into that deep dazzling sky. Diamonds in velvet. Not that Kerry Blue had ever really seen diamonds in velvet.

  “My world is new in your eyes,” said Donner, gazing at her, rapt.

  “Our sky is dark at night. I mean dark. Stars in our sky are little pinholes compared to this.” She waved her hand across the glory overhead. “And you don’t see the colors in them. And you don’t see any stars at all in the day. Just a big yellow sun.”

  “This sounds like Origin,” said Donner.

  Origin. Origin! Origin! Kerry’s heart sped up like it did before an FTL jump. Origin! She had just tripped over her mission objective without even trying. She was supposed to find out about Origin. Damn, I’m righteous fine!

  And without her even coaxing, Donner continued, “The night sky is dark on Origin. One sun illuminates the day. The sun is not yellow. It is orange. We can see two stars in the day sky, depending on the season and where you are in the world. The day stars are not bright because they are close like these are here. The day stars are distant and we only see them because they are supernovae.”

  Kerry tried not to show how excited she was, but her lizard plant changed tune with her drumming heartbeat. Origin was in a galaxy that had two supernovae in it—which was to say not the Milky Way. Her mates were gonna go hyper. She had a real future as an intelligence operative.

  “Have you ever been there?” she asked. “To Origin?”

  “I was born there. Before the schism, I returned several times.”

  Her plant chirped vibrantly.

  If Kerry understood him, Donner was saying he had tripped out of this galaxy and back again in a single lifetime. But how long was that? “Long trip?”

  “Depends on how you look at it.”

  Not informative. Kerry needed a time scale. She asked, “How old are you?” She could ask him anything. She was just a silly female.

  “Thirty-five years. T’Arra years.”

  She could not remember how Arran years measured against Earth years, but thirty-five was not a huge number of anybody’s years. This meant Donner was traveling faster than Merrimack could even think about.

  “How far is Origin from here?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Could you take me to see it?”

  But Donner had tired of her questions. He reached for the language nodule behind her ear. “Does this come off?”

  “Whoa. I need that to talk to you.”

  His fingers threaded through her hair as he withdrew his hand. “Speak to me in your own way.”

  “But you won’t be able to understand—oh.” She switched into English, her voice husky smooth. (“Yeah, okay. I’m pretty sure where this is going. I can be had on the first date, in case you’re wondering. You can ignore Colonel Steele. He was just being pissy. I am not cheap; I’m free. But I won’t be put in a harem. And, yeah, I think you’re a fox.”)

  A voice sounded in Kerry’s ear receiver: (“Oh, by the way, Blue. You’ve got a monitor on you.”)

  She jerked. (“Shit!”) Her plant jumped, grabbed a hunk of hair and held on tight.

  Even Donner flinched a little, thinking it was something he had done. “What is it?”

  “Uh. Feedback.” She turned her com off, smoothed down the lizard’s leaves. “All better now.”

  The breeze off the lake billowed Donner’s crisp shirt, giving Kerry a look at his hard shoulder, his skin an even lustrous bronze. He was a pretty man. Short. But that was his only flaw in Kerry’s eyes. The vee slash down the back of his shirt freed his mane, an arrow of short-clipped hair that traced nearly down to his waist. Kerry’s fingers strayed to the short curls fluttering in the wind. His hair felt softer than it looked, slid like silk between her fingers.

  Donner turned quickly, fixed her with a weird expression that made her reel her fingers back in. Made her know she touched something she shouldn’t have. “What’d I do?”

  He faltered, trying to explain. Blundered into a mumbling logjam.

  Kerry smiled, pointed. “Made you blush.”

  He went from bronze to red. His teeth looked even whiter within the darkness of that blush, as he smiled—shocked, hopeful, lit-up, dazed—just like an Earthman when he realizes he’s going to hit one home.

  She could not figure why he was so delighted. She had been told that all the females of this species were easy. The most powerful man in the world, the Archon could just choose any one of those stupid females he wanted.

  And maybe that was it. He sensed here an active mind and full-blown personality inside this female body. One that could judge him, could say no. That added an element of personal danger.

  She could hurt him. That vast three-planet pride was on the line.

  Kerry Blue never hurt anyone who asked nice.

  Donner gazed at her, spoke words, incomprehensible words. She tapped at her module, muttered in English, only to herself, because her com was off, (“Damn, Augustus, this thing don’t work.”)

  Donner captured her hand to stop her tapping. He explained, “I switched languages.”

  “The xenos told me you only had one language.”

  “I spoke to you
in an ancient tongue,” said Donner. “We only use it in poetry anymore. It seemed to suit the situation.”

  “But I don’t understand the words.”

  “You do. Just listen. You will know.”

  She didn’t. The words were beautiful noise in his low, distinctly male voice. She heard an ardent wistful yearning, and maybe that was what he asked her to hear.

  He switched back to Arran. “Will you come to my home with me? Not this palace. My home.” And at her hesitation he asked, “Or must I ask the male with the creepy eyes?”

  “Colonel Steele? He’s my CO. He doesn’t own me.”

  “He does not touch you?”

  “Steele? No. Oh, no. No.” A bluster of laughter came tumbling out. “No. Oh, boy. No. There are regulations against that kind of thing. It’s called fraternization. Did I say that right?” She never got embarrassed talking sex. But this was Colonel Steele, for the love of God. The lizard plant licked her crimson hot ear.

  “If he wanted?”

  “He doesn’t. Believe me. He doesn’t. And not even. Doesn’t happen. No.”

  “Then I am to ask you?” It seemed to strike him peculiar, asking a female for anything.

  “Yes. It’s my decision.”

  “And what do you say?” His eyes were velvet black. Starlight glowed on his hair.

  Kerry was accustomed to human soldiers, common men, not an alien commander of worlds. Still, males were males. The night was warm and he wanted her.

  “I say yes.”

  “Blue! We’re losing surveillance!” the technician yelled, smacked the transmitter to force his voice through the dead circuit. “Stay near the LDs! We can’t see you if you don’t have a sight line to a landing disk. Shit.” He swiveled away from the console, yanked off his headset. “Sir, I don’t think she’s receiving.”

  “What’s wrong with her com?” Steele demanded, hovering at the tech’s shoulder.

  “Nothing, sir,” the tech faltered.

  “Nothing and she’s not receiving?” Steele’s impatient anger could stop a man’s heart.

  “Yes, sir. I mean no, sir. I think she turned it, well, off.”

  “Are you sure she did it?” Steele snarled, reversing the LDs’ recordings to watch the encounter again from all angles.

  “Pretty sure, sir. We saw her pull the receiver from her ear. Right there.” The tech pointed at the playback. Then to the live output from the last disk as Kerry Blue left its range. “And there she goes.” She left the palace.

  “We don’t have a security scan of anything outside the palace,” said Steele, turned an accusatory glare to Captain Farragut. “We can’t exactly sneak a landing disk down.”

  Farragut nodded. The Archon would probably notice the displacing kaboom that accompanied an LD’s arrival. He suggested, “Send someone after her?”

  “Oh, yeah, like Blue couldn’t shake a chaperone by the time she was twelve years old.” A muttered comment from an MP on deck, too loud.

  “I heard that, Marine.”

  “Sorry, sirs.”

  “No,” Steele declined the apology, and admitted to Farragut. “He’s right.”

  The tech: “We’re losing her. We’re losing her. We lost her.”

  A new voice picked up: “I have her.”

  Steele, Farragut, and the tech turned as Augustus stepped through the hatchway.

  The Roman expanded a flat screen—a typically Roman sort of monitor, incorporating bounce technology. The kind of toy a Roman would have. Even though the surveillance cameras must be fixed on Kerry Blue, the image they transmitted was of Kerry, as if taken from a distance of twelve paces. Augustus must have fixed the bounce transceivers in the gun sights on either side of her eyes, to get this angle of her.

  The flat screen showed Kerry Blue climbing into a wheeled vehicle with Donner.

  “You put a bug on her.” Steele sounded surprised and offended. He should not have been.

  “Want to watch?” said Augusutus.

  Steele stood like stone. Augustus left the monitor on the console, an apple tree in the middle of the garden.

  Flight Sergeant Reg Monroe heard her own teeth grind, forced herself to relax her jaw.

  She lined her Swift up behind Dak Shepard’s and activated her targeting system. Lock and tone.

  And soon enough, Dak’s voice sounded inside her helmet, queasy: “Uh, Reg? What are you doing?”

  And then the flight leader was on the com: “Yes, Alpha Three, what are you doing?”

  “Havin’ a wet dream, Mr. Sewell.” Reg had no real intention of shooting Dak in the ass. Felt like it, though.

  “Turn off your targeting, Alpha Three,” Hazard ordered, not amused.

  “Yes, sir. But you have to tell Alpha Two to shut up, sir.”

  Dak Shepard had kept up a lewd, coarse, obnoxious, pointless stream of ship-to-ship comments spewing into her helmet com ever since the flight left Arra.

  “Maintain com discipline, Alpha Two,” Hazard ordered.

  “What? What’d I do?” said Dak. So innocent.

  Reg bristled. “What’d you—? Oooh, you bust my balls, Dak Shepard!”

  Dak answered sweetly, “You don’t have balls, Regi girl.”

  “ ’Cause you busted ’em, you stupid boon! Hazard, make him shut up!”

  Alpha Leader ordered them both to com silence. It didn’t last. Dak was at it again in no time, on a tight beam, ship-to-ship, where Hazard Sewell couldn’t hear.

  Reg ground her teeth.

  Back on Arra, under starry, starry skies, Marines were trouncing the navvies eleven to five on a brand-new ball diamond. Marines were splashing in turquoise waters off a white-sand beach; Kerry Blue was on a date with the lord of three planets in his palace with the jewel-studded floor; while Reg, well, Regina Monroe was wedged in this little bitty cockpit, stuck out here on the Rim of the Myriad, on patrol with the king of baboons. Knew she’d had worse days. Couldn’t remember one offhand. Combat was better than this.

  Dak didn’t even shut up as they approached target area. No reverence for the scene of Cowboy’s death.

  The minefield was gone—Merrimack had exploded all of the mines. The space was a big empty now, and Reg didn’t know what the hell she was supposed to be looking for.

  Hive. Her skin felt clammy and crawled at the thought. She uncovered the portable terrarium of insects installed in her console. She knew the Hive was involved in this somehow, but the ants in the jar said otherwise. The creepy crawling things were behaving themselves. Trying to get out. Crawling. Humping. She covered them up again.

  “Screw this,” she muttered.

  Dak’s voice in her helmet offered to assist. What did she want screwed?

  “You, Dak! You! Do it yourself, and shut up!”

  She followed Alpha Leader, circled tight around the former location of the space buoy that had fired the missile with which Cowboy played his last game of tag. Reg moaned, “I could be playing shortstop right now.”

  She waited for Dak’s return comment. It was too long in coming.

  Her navigational indicators fell flat. Galactic horizon. Galactic compass. Attitude. All her digitals black. She glanced up from the control panel. “Dak?”

  Silence.

  “Dak?”

  Dak was gone.

  “Alpha Leader? I’ve got a problem, Alpha Leader. I lost coordinates. And—I don’t know if this is a problem, really, but I can’t hear Dak.”

  Hazard Sewell did not answer.

  “Hazard! Alpha Leader, are you there?”

  Alpha Leader was gone.

  “Hazard, don’t do this to me. Oh, jeez.”

  She smacked her readouts. Shut down her nav system and powered up the backup. Muttered, “Redundancy is good. Redundancy is good.”

  But the monitors remained flat. Blank. She requested a systems check. The ship’s computer reported all systems functioning.

  “Red Four? Red Five?”

  Silence.

  Twitch and Carly were
gone.

  The silence was too perfect.

  “Dak—oh, God, I can’t believe I’m saying this—Say something, Dak!”

  The perfect silence remained.

  She opened her viewport.

  The stars were gone. The Myriad was gone.

  “Oh, God,” Reg spoke aloud. “I’m gone.”

  Swarms of little mothy things rose from fragrant, dew-damp ground. The grasses were coarse, blue-green, and spongy underfoot. All those stars in the soft, deep blue sky made it like playing under the lights. The light came from everywhere, making the colors liquid and shadows few, blended, without edges.

  The captain bounded out to the newly packed pitcher’s mound. He dried his hand in the dirt, lifted his cap from his sweaty hair, snugged it back on. Sounds came to him quickly. Deceptively. He panted in the heavy air. It took him several practice pitches to find the plate.

  Some men and women came down not to play ball, not to do anything much, just to get out of the ship, to feel hot breezes on their skin and firm ground under their feet. To sit under the weird light, listen to the crack of the bat and ritual shout: Play ball! As if nothing were wrong in the world.

  The Archon was shy. It was cute. Here he had a sure thing, and still he tried to impress her. He showed Kerry Blue his house, which was bright and cool. He played music for her. Rather bland and lightweight sounds; she didn’t like it much, but it was a sweet gesture. An Earthman would have got straight to business.

  When the room darkened to perfect blackness, she supposed, ah ha, this is it. A little disappointed, because when it came down to yab-yum, Kerry liked to see what she was doing.

  Then, gradually, the stars came out, little pinpoints of light dotting the room’s darkness.

  Donner’s voice came to her from somewhere in the dark: “What do you think?”

  She wondered if he could see her. “I don’t know,” she spoke toward the voice. “What is it?”

  “This is my sky. This is the sky over Origin.”

  Her heart hied into double time. Ships navigated by the stars. If this recording was accurate, then finding Origin ought to be easy as roll me over.

  Her voice vibrated. She hoped he thought her moved by the incredible beauty of it. “This is wonderful. It’s just like home.” As if a black sky full of stars wasn’t something she saw every day, day in, day out. “Can I have this?”