The Myriad: Tour of the Merrimack #1

by R. M. Meluch

  It did not stop the cells from physically insinuating themselves through the field.

  Should a Hive cell breach an engine’s containment field, Merrimack’s own power plant would become a bomb in enemy hands; and Hive cells did not fear suicide.

  Augustus presented himself on the bridge in his flight suit, helmet under arm. “Permission to launch Striker.”

  “Denied,” Farragut dismissed him.

  Augustus quirked a small smile. “You don’t trust me, John?”

  “We don’t launch small ships around a level-five soldier swarm. The swarms emit a hell of an interference field. All they have to do is fox your IFF and then I’m explaining to your emperor why I shot you. My Swifts don’t go; you don’t go.”

  “You’re telling me the Hive swarm doesn’t fox your systems?”

  “They can. But Rome was always partial to sending false signals to our equipment, so we got lots of fail-safes.”

  “I know,” said Augustus. “What about your systems?”

  “Mine? I don’t understand.”

  Augustus pointed between Farragut’s eyes. “That’s an electrical system in there.”

  “Bioelectrics are tougher for them.”

  “But not impervious.”

  “No. These big swarms can muddle your concentration, make you sleepy, make you think you can’t breathe. So far they haven’t shut us down.”

  Oh, great. Colonel Steele popped an inspection right here at battle stations. If one of those leering MP side-kicks of his flicked honey on your face shield, it damn well better slide right off. Kerry Blue didn’t fancy licking honey off the deck. Fancied less not being able to see through a smear of burr guts. Her face shield passed inspection.

  Then came the weapons inspection. If you got caught with a sanctioned weapon—like something that could shoot through bulkheads—it was a blot on your whole team. This part of the inspection was a waste of time, big bore. As if anyone one would be stupid enough to smuggle a secured weapon from the armory and take it to station.

  “Peetz!” Reg cried in anger, as an MP discovered an armor-piercing projectile launcher holstered in the rookie’s boot.

  Carly cried: “Frogging hell!” Looked like she was about to knife Cole Darby.

  You could hear Hazard Sewell’s teeth grind as he accepted the blot on Team Alpha.

  The inspectors moved on without Colonel Steele once looking at Kerry Blue. She understood the icy snub now. Had to smile.

  Small woofing noises escaped from the peetz, Cole Darby, as elbows accidentally connected with his rib cage. Hard.

  A last briefing came over the loud com, explaining the game plan. It was simple: take the swarms out one at a time. Merrimack was running out at a fast intercept with the closer of the swarms before the two could combine forces or wake up more reinforcements.

  “Why don’t we get reinforcements?”

  Everyone glared at the peetz, and he knew he’d said something stupid again.

  Carly Delgado crouched over her short-range blaster, polishing, polishing. Answered flatly, “This is our job.”

  “Opa!” Dak sang out. “Here comes the Old Man.”

  “Which?”

  “Which,” Kerry’s mocking echo. “That one.”

  You could hear Farragut coming, bellowing a pirate song.

  “Oh, Gawd,” Carly growled. But smiling. You had to.

  They said you could tell how bad the battle would be by the exuberance of Captain Farragut’s mood.

  “Oh, hell,” said Reg. “We’re gonna die.”

  Farragut strutted through the ranks, spreading his own brand of buoyant courage, leaving a wide swathe of devastating enthusiasm in his wake. The mood on board turned festive. There wasn’t another commander in the fleet could pull it off. When Farragut got done with you, the tense dread vanished and you couldn’t wait for battle. The navvies were singing pirate shanties. The Marine Wing was barking, the Battery hissing and meowing.

  Fear, there was no fear. It wasn’t a brush with death coming, it was a title shot. If you wanted stoic, grim readiness, you looked to the XO or to Colonel Steele. Captain Farragut was Christmas morning.

  He stuck a one-ounce golden eagle to the mizzen-mast for first ooze on Farragut’s deck. He probably ought to have stabbed it there with a dagger, but he stuck it up with chewing gum. Brandished his sword at it. “Look alive, maties, I mean to win that back myself.”

  His crew howled at him, told him he was dreaming. Each man jack and jane on board meant to have that eagle for himself.

  And the carnival mood did not break until the prox alarm blared. Revved and ready, everyone snapped to the task at hand.

  They were left waiting for no longer than racehorses in the gate. Immediately after the order to drop oxygen bricks, the first swarm hove into view, a speck, looming in a split-second into a colossus, into a mountain, into a world.

  “Almighty God.”

  The enormity staggered. Dirty ice, pocked and clawed, filled the screens.

  “God bless it, Captain Farragut! He’s ramming!” Reg screamed and ducked, bracing for impact. An utterly absurd gesture. Should the inertial fields fail, there would be no shelter, no bracing that would keep any of them whole.

  Farragut hadn’t told them this part of the plan.

  Merrimack, shaped like a cruel and ancient spearhead, plunged into the writhing mountain, a solid mass of armored bodies and grasping claws. Metallic screeching raked the force field—a raw, hideous tearing sheet-metal cacophony that sounded like the ship breaking up. Through the din came Calli Carmel’s steady bark at the naval battery to fire nukes.

  The ship bulleted out the other side of the packed swarm, and the unearthly scraping abruptly silenced. In Merrimack’s wake, flailing chunks of swarm spewed in all directions.

  Merrimack spun around, racing back to meet her own nuclear flashes, the blinding brightness dimmed in her viewports. The ship resounded with the drumfire of her guns hammering at the splintered swarm, which was re-forming with Merrimack at its heart.

  The swarm was everywhere, biblical in its vastness. Each grotesque member a hellish abomination. Monsters formed without gravity or atmospheric pressure, their shapes flowed without logic, a mouth over here, three legs over there, shell plates shifting over amorphous bodies.

  Soon, the alien soldiers blotted out the stars, coated the force field inside the range of the naval guns.

  The Marine Battery took over from the ship’s guns, firing as fast as they could reload, fragmentation shells at close range. Hive soldiers massed thick on the force field. The energy barrier sounded a sickening weird groan as the Hive cells wheedled, clawed, and insinuated themselves through it.

  Merrimack joggled within its force field to the beat of its pounding guns and Dak’s yelling. “Come on, greta! Come on! YeeeeHA! Frag ’em, bag ’em, and tag ’em! You’re mine, greta! You’re mine! Yeah! Crap!”

  A muffled whomp bluntly snagged his rhythm.

  “Can opener in the barrel,” Reg interpreted the blunt sound as Dak beat his impatience against the firing mechanism.

  “Not again,” Kerry moaned.

  “It happened ’cause you’re so slow reloading me.”

  “Oh, frog you, Dak.”

  You could hear the thing in there, armor plates and razor claws scuffling inside the barrel.

  “Are we capped?” Hazard asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Gimme a harpoon.” Hazard flipped his face shield down into place.

  Dak seized a long shaft, equipped with an evilly pronged head, from the rack. Slapped the stout black grip into Hazard’s hand. “Wild Turkey,” said Dak.

  Hazard looped the sling round his wrist.

  “Beer,” said Kerry Blue fixing the gauntlets on her gloves.

  “Canadian beer,” said Reg.

  “J ’n’ B straight up,” said Twitch.

  “Jose Cuervo,” said Carly.

  “I’ll do it,” Cole Darby offered to take the harpoon
. Thought he was being brave and helpful. To his surprise, the rest of the team sputtered scorn and caustic laughter.

  “Oh, fat chance, Peetz! Stand aside.”

  The dawn came slowly, as Hazard Sewell lined up his harpoon on the gun breech. This was first ooze. The golden eagle went to the man who spilled the first gorgon blood on John Farragut’s deck. The team had put in their drink orders, because Hazard Sewell would be buying the next round.

  Cole supposed it was too late to order vodka.

  A clack before Cole’s face startled him—Kerry Blue slapping his face shield down for him. A soft hiss between her lips might’ve been calling him by one of his body parts, but he did not really hear her. He mumbled thanks.

  “Ready breech!” Hazard reared back with his harpoon.

  “Ready!” Twitch and Carly crouched at the cords.

  “Let me have it!”

  A yell. Dak flipped the safety. Twitch and Carly yanked for all they were worth. The rear plate flew wide. Hazard’s harpoon stabbed straight and deep down the barrel.

  With a sickening crunching sound, brown sludge jetted back at Hazard, spilled down his glassy face shield and splattered his deck boots.

  “Mark time! I got the son of a pimp!” Hazard crowed, rammed a few more times. Twisted. He pulled out severed bits of claw and armor plating on the wicked tines. Shiny obsidian-black pieces dissolved as Hazard shook them off the harpoon. The heat radiated up. You felt it under your face shield.

  Hazard gave another stab, another turn, to be sure the thing was dead. Pulled out the alien gore. “Purge barrel.”

  The team reloaded. Shut the breech. Uncapped, and blasted the barrel clean.

  Peetz poised with his sword to stab at something. He hovered over a claw, but it had already stopped wiggling and had begun to dissolve.

  Felt the sword whisked out of his grip from behind.

  Cole turned. Kerry Blue had his sword. She pushed another handle into his empty hand. A mop.

  “Swab up this crap,” she said. And before he could protest, she was cranking up a reload for the gun, and Dak was yelling, “Die, greta, die!” and all the guns were pounding again.

  The gravitational backwash bucked the deck. Brown sludge that lately was a gorgon slithered back and forth at Cole’s feet. His stomach roller-coastered with it.

  He paused over his mop. So would he be an idiot to obey Kerry Blue? Or should he reclaim his sword?

  She could hurt him.

  Sounds altered. Louder even than the tonal moans of the force field, an unholy scritching, like metal-on-metal, filled the ship.

  “What’s that?” Cole heard his own voice gone flat. He tried to wipe his upper lip. Hand hit against his face shield.

  “Gorgons on the hull,” said Reg.

  “You mean on the force field,” Cole corrected her. Along with the scritchings came a clatter like hail.

  “No,” Reg corrected back. “They’re through the force field. They’re on the hull now.”

  Sudden pressure flux opened Cole’s ears. The air stirred. Kerry Blue’s ponytail fluttered. Dak brushed his hand over his shaved scalp at the breeze.

  “I stand corrected,” said Reg. “They’re through the hull.”

  It was the force field, not the hull, that kept the vacuum out, so the effect of a hole in the hull was not severe—a slight depressurization as air from the ship escaped to fill the near vacuum layer that normally existed between the hull and the force field. The hole in the hull was not the problem. The meaning was horrific.

  An alarm clanged, all decks, and Captain Farragut’s voice over the loud com: “Swords, all hands. We have boarders.”

  “Oh, you love this part, John Farragut.”

  The captain turned from the com. Looked up at Augustus. Admitted with a sheepish smile. “I do, you know.”

  Augustus withdrew from the control room.

  Farragut pulled on chemical-resistant gloves. Opened and closed his fists. Tested the slide of his sword in its hanger. Grabbed a face shield. “Mr. Carmel, your boat.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  And Captain Farragut quit the control room to join the fighting at the breach.

  The sudden snapping and crunching directly behind her iced Reg’s blood, made her stomach flutter and her mouth sting. She spun, rearing, her sword lifted.

  And lowered. Heaved out the name with a lot of wind and little voice: “Dak!”

  Dak answered, wide-eyed, cheeks bulging, voice muffled. “What?”

  Kerry turned toward her chomping teammate. “Dak!” Dak Shepard looked like a giant chipmunk.

  Dak shrugged his big shoulders, clutched his bag of pretzels. “What! I’m hungry!” Then suddenly commanded silence with a spray of salt crumbs: “Shhhh!”

  Came the unmistakable clack clack clack from the corridor. Only hear it once, and the sound is branded on your nerves forever.

  Reg stole a glance through the hatch, danced back inside behind her sword. “It’s a ripe one! Swing hard!”

  Soldiers tended to shrink once inside a pressurized atmosphere and they kept shrinking. From their amorphous vacuum-dwelling state they compressed and solidified into misshapen hideousness. Their parts migrated across their bodies, adapting to upness and downness of gravity, trying to get all their legs under them, all their mouth parts into a position to feed.

  The smaller and more agile the soldier, the shinier, the blacker, the longer it had been aboard, the harder and denser its shell, the harder to kill.

  Well-hardened mandibles clacked in the hatchway. Twitch Fuentes hollered bloody murder, hammered down a mighty stroke on the neckish thing behind the mandibles.

  His sword bounced off. Twitch roared. Reg bounced a second stroke off a twisted, serrate leg that sprouted from the thing’s back. “God bless!”

  Dak ditched his bag of pretzels—stuffing it into the nearest opening, which happened to be the torpedo tube—gave his hand a quick rub on his trousers, the better to grip his sword for a huge swing—

  But the compact soldier skittered into the torpedo tube.

  Reg and Kerry exchanged only the briefest of startled glances before they were ratcheting a torpedo into the tube. Slammed the breach shut. “Fire!”

  “Fire!”

  The torpedo exited the ship with a boom.

  “I’ll be damned,” said Dak, staring, astonished. “Gretas like carbos better’n raw meat.”

  “Who doesn’t?” Reg wrinkled up her nose. “Got any more pretzels?”

  The peetz nudged Kerry. “How do you kill those things?”

  “Any way you can.”

  “I mean—you cut off their arms, they keep wiggling. Swords bounce. What kills them?”

  “They die when the Overmind says they’re dead.”

  “How do you know when they’re really dead?”

  “You know it’s dead when you’re wading in it.”

  Commander Carmel’s voice on the loud com relayed more locations of Hive penetrations. “Breach, deck five. Boarders in hydroponics.”

  Kerry sheathed her sword and dashed for the hatch. “We gotta go to hydroponics!”

  “That’s not our deck!” Reg yelled after her. Running. The rest of Team Alpha stampeding after Kerry Blue.

  A bulbous soldier waited at the head of the ladder.

  “Blue! Look out!”

  Kerry paused on the fifth rung to flip down her face shield and draw her sword. “Fresh one! Mine!” She stabbed up at gaping mandibles.

  Twitch, below her, cursed at the brown acid rain on his head. Kerry Blue had disappeared, up and over the top to deck five.

  Cole Darby stabbed at a still snapping claw as it hit deck four.

  “Yeah, you sure showed that one,” Carly snarled and bolted up the ladder.

  Cole brought up the rear. Slashed into hydroponics with his team. Found aliens, maybe twenty of them, big as Dak, in all their weird shapes, still coalescing under pressure. Bloated brown bags with legs migrating across their formless forms. Mist
beading on their still hardening shells. Pincers tore vegetables from their reservoirs, stuffed them into as many mouths as the monsters had.

  No time for thought. No time for cowardice. Cole Darby just hacked them out of his face, away from his feet until hydroponics was secured. The humid compartment was still again.

  Reg let her sword drag on the wet deck, pushed back her face shield. “Blue! Bitch babe, you are crazed!”

  Kerry shrugged. A saurian eye peered over the edge of her collar. Webby feet hugged her ponytail.

  Carly pointed at the lizard plant on Kerry’s back, cried, “That’s what this was about! We rescued a salad?”

  Dak hooted, big, knee-slapping laughter. Kerry pushed past him, out of hydroponics as the misters started to rain on them again. “Shut up, Dak.”

  Calli reported multiple entry points, multiple decks.

  At the deck where John Farragut and his naval gunners hacked against an inrush of gorgons from a gaping rent in the hull, Augustus joined the melee, wired and armored, as alien as anything clawing through the hull. A tall, weird figure in black, his eye movements too rapid in an expressionless face, his blinks deliberate. His footfalls rang with metal clanks, his deck boots bladed like an old-time street fighter’s. His motions were not exactly robotic—too smooth—but not human either—too efficient.

  Cables ran from the base of his skull to the base of his neck, and from arm to weapon, the hand cannon fit to his forearm. He pumped projectiles into target after target with inhuman accuracy, minimal motion, no passion. Farragut felt one projectile whiz past his ear (hoped that was accuracy) to stab into the gorgon before him, and immediately detonate. The gorgon erupted from within, splattering Farragut’s face shield.

  On every side, gorgons exploded, disintegrating in death. Naval swordsmen gurgled oaths, astonished to be unhurt amid the close carnage.

  No involuntary blinks from Augustus as the gore hit his face shield. The head would tilt in reaction to the trajectory of a splash of blood, calculated to catch the glob on his visor instead of his cheek; but the eyes never left his targets. It was that, the independent motion of body parts which normally moved in concert that was so . . . disconcerting.