by R. M. Meluch
“Deploying hook,” the horizon guard said. “Hook away. And—”
Aemilius caught himself holding his breath. The attaché shifted his weight from foot to foot, almost jogging in place.
“Target acquired.”
Aemilius breathed. He asked, “Is he trying to run?”
“Negative. The load is quiet.”
The load had little choice but to sit quiet. Attempting thrust inside an energy hook was suicide.
“I’m beaming you a satellite view, Governor.”
Aemilius activated his wall monitor to display the satellite image.
The wall vanished into a wide open sea, blustery gray-green under a half-clouded sky.
The view narrowed to where the energy hook from an orbital station was reeling its catch up from the deep. The cable of energy wasn’t visible except for a static circle in the ocean waves.
When at last the energy bubble broke surface, its curved top appeared as a smooth dome of dark water, slightly shimmering. Ocean water slipped off the outer shell of the nearly frictionless energy bubble as it rose.
Suspended above the waves, tons of water churned inside the transparent energy globe.
Murky with algae, plankton, small fish, and particulates, the water appeared to swirl without the encumbrance of the Xerxes within.
Aemilius had to marvel. “Perfect stealth.” He couldn’t make out any sign of the captive spaceship at all. “Perfect.”
The Intelligence agent snarled, “That’s not stealth. That’s an empty hook! There’s nothing in there except a great lot of sea water and that junk at the bottom.”
A cluster of objects sat at the bottom of the energy bubble. The objects were disturbingly orderly. Organized like a misplaced office.
“You’re sure?” the governor said.
Was there a human being alive who hadn’t snatched an annoying insect out of the air only to set it free because he didn’t feel it in his hand?
“He’s sure,” the Italian attaché said, sounding vastly more relieved than he ought.
“We missed?” Aemilius said.
“No, no, no,” said the attaché. “Please, please, please don’t drop the junk. That’s the important part. Domni, my nation owes you.” He fluttered his hand toward the visible objects caught in the bottom of the energy globe. “That is the ambassador’s system.”
Bagheera’s control room stood vacant in the moody brooding half-light of ship’s night. The Xerxes bulleted through the interstellar void.
Leo had adjusted some of the ship’s environmental controls. The ambassador’s original settings had given the Xerxes the feeling of a planet-bound office building. Leo blew those settings away. Gave the ship a sense of motion, like a bullet train rumbling on rails, fast. Long journeys were easier to take if you felt like you were getting somewhere.
Nox paced, wide awake in the gloom.
The consul’s blood was gone from the deck, from the consoles, from the air lock. Leo had activated the ship’s clean-up routine and made that mess go away.
Nox told himself it was a backhanded mercy, killing the consul. This way Camiciarossa would never know what it was like to live with a screw up this big.
Nox had thought killing would be easier. He’d done it often enough in simulators. Except for garrotes. He’d flunked garrotes. He couldn’t get anything around anyone’s neck without telegraphing his intent.
He’d never felt any aftereffects from simulated killings during training.
He lay down in his cabin. Got up. Sat in the control room. Brooded in the dim glow of the instrument lights.
Twitched. Got up. Prowled the ship.
Ghosted into an empty compartment.
The cabin was completely empty. There used to be a full office setup in here. Leo had insisted they tear it out whole, down to the deck grates it stood on, fly it back to Phoenix and sink it in the ocean. Leo had been frantic as a caged rat about it. “That’s got to go! It’s got to go! It’s got to go back! Now! Now! Now!”
He said it made the difference between them being shipjackers or being international spies, and did we ever want to sleep again. Ever?
The ambassador’s office and everything in it was gone now.
Nox drifted. Ended up back in the control room.
He sat on the deck, his back resting against the bulk, elbows on his knees.
Heard someone else moving about.
Pallas leaned into the control room. Saw him. Crossed to where Nox sat and offered something down to him.
Nox looked.
It was an electronic puzzle game, wherein one manipulated moving shapes.
Nox shook his head, mumbled refusal in the direction of his ankles.
Pallas touched the game to Nox’s shoulder, insisting. “It’s supposed to head off symptoms of post trauma stress.”
“I’m okay.”
“You threw up on my boots,” said Pallas and forced the device into Nox’s hands. “Play the coiens game.”
Glenn hesitantly touched the backs of her fingers to the mane of the nearest fox. She met with no shyness. No objection. And she ended up rubbing the fox behind the ears.
The fox closed its eyes in an earthly expression of contentment, then flopped down and rolled completely over on its back.
His back. The fox was male.
Glenn rubbed the fox’s chest and belly, struck by the absurdity of this first contact.
The fox’s tongue lolled out one side of his mouth.
Glenn decided to call him Brat.
“That is not a very dignified position, my dear,” Glenn told Brat. Her words were gibberish to the alien.
Fox mouths couldn’t form consonants. Apparently foxes couldn’t hear the difference between most consonants either.
The foxes communicated in a whiny humming language, pitched, but mostly without whole notes.
Patrick had perfect pitch. He had already picked up some basic phrases from watching audio-video recordings on the voyage here. Fox grammar was apparently simple. The foxes were a simple species.
They were humming.
“What are they saying?” Glenn asked.
“I’m not getting all of it,” Patrick said. “Mostly they’re saying ‘Funny.’”
“Funny, as in there’s something wrong with us?” Glenn asked.
“Funny, ha ha,” Patrick said. “They think we’re funny.”
Over the next days it became apparent that foxes found most everything funny.
They were carnivores. That was sort of obvious. Sometimes they tanned the hides of their prey to use as cloaks or sunshades or windbreaks.
“This is as advanced as their technology gets,” Patrick told Glenn, inspecting a handsome pelt. The fur was golden-white, patterned with two rows of black spots. It used to belong to an antelope. The other side was cleanly finished.
“Sandy says their cranial capacity is on par with ours. Which means they should be capable of higher learning. They’re just not doing it.”
“Any idea what’s keeping them primitive?” Glenn asked.
Fox whiskers tickled the back of her neck. It was Brat. Pointing out to her that she was slacking.
Glenn resumed petting the fox.
“They’re not primitive,” Patrick said. “They just are. They’re not trying to advance.”
Brat smiled in the grass, eyes shut, not wanting to be anywhere else.
“They have a vague concept of future. I can’t get a word for ‘when’ out of them. I can’t say ‘when the sun goes down,’ or ‘tomorrow,’ or ‘when the snow comes.’ But they must have some idea that it’s going to get cold again if they’re tanning hides.”
“Maybe they just like the hides,” said Glenn. “They’re pretty.”
“Then they’re not preparing for the future at all. And the past isn’t that hot a topic either. They don’t write. They don’t recognize pictures or drawings. And maps? Forget it. They don’t have words for left or right. Directions are where they point their noses
and their eyes. They don’t count on their fingers or toes. They don’t recognize holding up two fingers as meaning the number two.”
He held up two fingers for Brat. Brat just wiggled and shifted to make Glenn move her hand a little to the right.
Patrick took out his omni and played Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.
At the sound, Brat rolled up on all fours. He pivoted his head left and right, confused, or trying to get the music out of first one ear then the other. Brat slunk in on his belly toward the omni. Sniffed it. Then puffed at it, like spitting without the spit, and trotted away.
“Aw, c’mon. Everyone likes Mozart!” Patrick called after Brat.
Patrick tried out a variety of music on the foxes, from Bach to rock to Celtic to dirty blues to Arcturan etudes.
Despite communicating with tones, it turned out that foxes didn’t have a taste for any music, especially chords.
With each song, the foxes made strange gestures at the sounds, holding their heads sideways, their muzzles wrinkled. They hummed short notes and brushed their paws at their ears.
“Don’t tell me,” Glenn said. “They think it’s funny.”
“No,” Patrick said. “They’re calling it ‘noise.’”
His playlist came to Farouq’s Percussive Symphony No. 3.
All ears perked up.
“Ah! We have a hit.”
Foxes leaned in, ears cocked forward, interested. Bodies moved to the beat, claw tips tapping.
“They’re ’cussers!” Glenn cried.
Merrimack’s company and crew were great ’cussers.
Patrick turned up the volume.
The fox whom Glenn called Mama-san stood up on her hind legs to dance. Foxes hooked elbows, and the dance became a line.
The mature male dubbed Conan thumped on a hollow log with his paws and claws. Others stamped their feet, clapped sticks together, and shook shells within cages of their claws, improvising on Farouq’s beat.
The female foxes shook their western ends and swished their lush tails at the males.
Glenn, who didn’t have a tail, broke off a leafy branch and swished that behind her as she joined the dance. The young foxes Brat, Tanner, Banshee, and Princess rolled on the ground laughing—actual rolling on the literal ground—barking hilarity.
Winded, Glenn quit her place in the line. She tossed her tail aside and dropped to sit on the ground next to her husband. Her cheeks felt flushed. She huffed out a big breath. Said, a bit astonished, “I am having a great time.”
Patrick kissed her temple. “Me too.”
The ’cuss jam ended as the sun was going down.
A red-orange glow striped the horizon.
Foxes frolicked in the gloaming. Chased each other. Jumped and snapped at bioluminescent moths.
The evening was cool. The first stars came out.
Foxes were not modest but they were not as brazen as dogs either. Glenn and Patrick heard trills of fox loving in the thick brush under the trees.
They got up and walked away to find an unoccupied thicket.
Senator Catherine Mays came to Base Carolina to see Admiral John Farragut.
She found him on the baseball diamond, fielding for the team’s batting practice. She tried to call him out of the diamond to talk to her.
Instead, Admiral Farragut told someone to toss the Senator a glove and made her come out in center field with him.
Senator Mays took off her suit jacket, left it folded on the bench. She pulled the fielder’s glove on and walked out onto the grass. She knew to wear flat shoes when visiting her brother.
The players tipped their caps to the Senator.
Catherine took a position beside her brother John in the outfield. She squinted. Admiral Farragut passed her his ball cap. She snugged it on.
John Farragut had the energy of an overgrown boy. There was a true sparkle in his blue eyes, and he was always smiling unless you gave him a reason not to.
Team Carolina had lost its last game. Apparently that was unacceptable and the admiral was making sure it didn’t happen again. Any excuse to get onto a ball field.
The crack of the bat sent a grounder sizzling off to right field, scorching all the worms.
“Cat, you’re acting like you’ve come to a funeral.” John nudged her. A big, solid man, John Farragut nudged like an ox. “They’re not that bad.” He was talking about the batters. “That first game against Norfolk was a fluke.”
Catherine opened her mouth, but John spoke first.
“Oh, for Jesus. You didn’t get a strange visit from His Honor, did you?”
“What? No. I’m looking for sublegal military operations being conducted outside of the knowledge of Congress.”
“Not from my base, they’re not,” Admiral Farragut assured her.
“I don’t know whose operation it is,” said Catherine. “But if the room smells like decomp, it’s time to tear up the floorboards.”
“What do you think is under the floorboards?”
A high fly ball skied to left field. Landed neatly in the left fielder’s glove. John booed the batter.
The batter shouted back from the plate, “Up your nose, sir!”
John pointed at his nose. “Put it here.” Farragut hunkered down, expectant, in a mobile stance ready to sprint for a grounder his way. But he hadn’t lost his place in the conversation. “You’ve stopped talking, Catherine.”
Catherine blurted the question, “Is John John running black ops for your boys?”
“No, ma’am,” said Admiral Farragut.
Crack.
The ball whistled out their way. Got stopped short by the shortstop.
John stood up straight, faced his sister, “And just what in the wide black yonder grew that notion?”
Catherine watched another grounder go foul. She spoke low behind her glove, as if she were being surveilled and someone might be reading her lips. “Someone posing as John John stole an ambassadorial Xerxes from the Italians on Phoenix.”
John Farragut absorbed that shock. Said, “That is one ballsy pirate.”
Crack. The ball soared up.
“I got it,” said John, crowding Catherine.
“Back off,” Catherine pushed back. She caught the ball and threw it to the shortstop.
John said, “On Phoenix. You’re not talking Arizona. Is Phoenix a planet?”
“Phoenix is a Roman colonial world in the Perseid Arm. And don’t tell me you didn’t just dispatch Merrimack to Perseid space. You’re out of your theater of operations, John. Are the events related?”
“No, ma’am. You know I am not dispatching a space battleship to the edge of the galaxy to run down a stolen Italian spaceship.”
“So why are you sending your battleship to the edge of the galaxy?”
Your battleship. Merrimack would forever be John Farragut’s.
“Rescuing two of Mack’s officers. You want this one?”
Another ball came soaring their way. Catherine backed up to catch it. She flipped it to John, who threw it home.
“Your officers are a little far from deck,” said Catherine, suspicious.
“They’re on leave with a LEN research expedition. They ran into some trouble. Did you ever meet Hamster?”
Catherine thought for a moment. “Little redhead? Sharp gal. Married to a gwerb.”
“That’s the one,” said John. “Hamster and her man reported alien invaders on a planet in the Outback. I also asked Jose Maria to look in on them. He’s closer.”
“No half measures with you, are there, John?”
“No, ma’am—and hold on. Replay the audio. Someone posing as who stole a Xerxes?” The idea was so bizarre it had taken until now to register in his brain.
“Our kid brother,” said Catherine. “John John.”
“Someone posed as our brother to steal a ship?”
Repeating it didn’t help it make sense. Just made it a farther fetch.
“Yes.”
“Is he insane?”
/> “He got away with the ship.”
“Are you insane?”
“The hijack hasn’t been made public. It has been authenticated.”
“How can that happen? Didn’t anybody check this guy’s ID before he got anywhere close to an ambassadorial ship?”
“There are indications that the consulate did run some checks. Now there are warrants out for John John’s arrest. I’m trying to back them off and bring John John home before someone can kill him, but I don’t even know where he is.”
Farragut’s brows went way up. His first impulse was to protest. Catherine saw the protest stick in his throat.
“Your mouth is open,” said Catherine. “You know something.”
Admiral Farragut said, as if to himself, “I don’t.”
Catherine pressed. “I couldn’t help but notice on the way in—as your guards checked my identity—that your base is on elevated alert status.”
“Just one level above green,” said the admiral. “It’s not just Carolina. It’s a Fleet-wide caution. Just means we don’t know where Caesar is.”
“You lost him?”
“I asked Numa to file an itinerary, but he won’t do it. Last time we misplaced a Caesar, you remember where he showed up. We’re just not happy unless we know what planet he’s on. That’s all.”
“John, that is so not all. Fact is, either someone posing as John John stole the Xerxes or John John did it. I need to ask you. Is John John working black ops for the military?”
The admiral stared at her.
A ball came out of the sky. Landed in the grass at their feet with a thud.
Boos and raspberries hailed from the infield.
Admiral Farragut picked up the ball. He called back to the hecklers, “That was the Senator’s ball.” He threw it to the pitcher.
Admiral Farragut signaled himself out. Tossed his mitt to the man who came trotting out to take his place in center field.
The admiral escorted Senator Mays off the diamond.
Catherine said, “There’s an international warrant out for John John’s arrest. They could kill him. I need to find him first. But I need to know: Is he working for the military, or did someone steal his identity?” She placed her borrowed glove on the bench. Retrieved her suit coat. “Answer the question, John.”