The Ninth Circle: A Novel of the U.S.S. Merrimack

by R. M. Meluch

  John Farragut said slowly, “I’m thinking you should be asking His Honor.”

  Catherine looked puzzled. “What has Papa got to do with this?” “He came to see me.”

  “Oh, Lordy.” Catherine looked toward heaven.

  The end of days is upon us.

  And where in hell was John John?

  The smuggler ship Villa Grande was maintaining a lawful sublight velocity on an exit vector from the Phoenix star system when swamplights fell upon it out of the blackness.

  Interpol ship 2186 ordered Villa Grande to halt.

  The smugglers halted and let their vessel be boarded and inspected.

  They had their black market cargo safely cached outside the star system, hidden in the infinite dark.

  The Interpol officers smelled something in Villa Grande’s empty cargo holds, but the something wasn’t here, so the police could not detain them for smelling bad.

  The black marketeers were set free. They waved happy good-bye fingers after the Interpol ship.

  The smuggler ship Villa Grande went dark again and wandered for a while so as not to give away their destination.

  “We have a tail,” said the lookout, a man they called Crow.

  “Again?” the ship’s captain said, annoyed. Spat on the deck. His name was Maurice. “They can’t stop us twice.”

  “It’s not police,” said Crow.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s a Xerxes.”

  “Merde muffins,” said Maurice. Didn’t believe it.

  “It’s a Xerxes, and it’s flying a Jolly Roger,” Crow said.

  “No, it is not,” said Maurice, stalking to the console to check Crow’s readouts.

  The other five smugglers crowded behind him. Last thing you wanted on an outlaw ship was a lookout who was missing his calls.

  But the other ship truly was registering on the instruments as a Xerxes.

  “What’s he doing?” Gaston said.

  “Looks like he wants to come alongside,” said Crow.

  “Let him,” said Maurice.

  Crow slowed the forward velocity of the Villa Grande to let the stranger move up on their port side.

  When the instruments said the Xerxes was directly parallel, Maurice activated full portside swamplights.

  “Ho!” Gaston jerked back from the viewport.

  “Hell of a disguise,” said Etienne.

  The ship really did look like a Xerxes. Its Jolly Roger stood up stiff in the vacuum.

  “Why is it showing a pirate flag?” said Crow.

  “Because it’s stolen,” said Etienne.

  “And they’re advertising?” said Crow.

  “Amateurs,” Gaston said, and the others sniggered.

  Philippe let his head wag, mystified. This was unbelievable luck. Unbelievable stupidity. “Why are they coming to us?”

  “They must need help moving their merchandise,” said Maurice.

  “There’s always a problem with a heist that big. Where do you go with it?”

  “Where would we go with it?” said Philippe.

  “We didn’t steal it,” said Maurice. “We can collect the reward for returning it. Probably get something extra for snagging the lot on board too. I hope they’re wanted dead. I’m not even trying to do this alive.”

  “And they think there’s honor among thieves?” Philippe said. The others cackled like cartoon villains.

  This was just plain unbelievable.

  “Any warrants posted on the open channels?” Maurice asked.

  “No,” said Crow. “But the Xerxes is winking at us.”

  A light blinked on the starboard side of the Xerxes. Not flashing a code any of them knew. But the outer hatch to the air lock on the starboard side was open, as if inviting them to dock.

  “What do you want to do, Cap’n?” Crow asked.

  Maurice’s whole face crinkled up, merrily grinning. “Dock.”

  “I don’t like it.”

  “Change your diaper, Philippe.”

  “Let me out,” said Philippe.

  Etienne already had the weapons locker open. He tossed personal fields and sidearms to his mates. He motioned to throw gear to Philippe, but Philippe made no move to catch.

  “No. I am serious,” said Philippe. “I am leaving. Give me a moment to launch my skiff. You can keep my cut. Let me be—gah!” Philippe cried, holding his bleeding forearm. “What was that for?”

  Maurice closed his butterfly knife. “That is your cut.”

  “Maniac!”

  “You do not want in?” said Maurice. “You are out.”

  Maurice menacingly opened the hatch to the nearest air lock.

  Philippe looked annoyed, pained. “Don’t play stupid games.”

  Maurice seized Philippe, collar and waistband, and heaved him bodily into the air lock. Slammed the hatch and locked it.

  Gaston turned uneasily to Maurice. “You are not—?”

  Shooting Philippe out the air lock, Gaston meant to ask. Couldn’t say it.

  “I want him where he can’t get in the way,” said Maurice. “He may run away to mama after we have the bounty in our own vault.”

  “Well, that’s all right then,” said Gaston.

  Crow maneuvered Villa Grande up against the Xerxes to achieve hard dock with the open lock. Crow remotely opened Villa Grande’s outer hatch and pressurized the joined air locks between the ships.

  Maurice, Gaston, Etienne, Crow, and Raul armed themselves with everything in their arsenal that wouldn’t pierce a ship’s hull or engine compartment.

  At Maurice’s nod, Gaston opened the hatch on their side of the dock. He did not step through.

  The short span across two air locks to the Xerxes’ inner hatch was looking like a kill jar.

  From the far side, no one was opening the Xerxes’ inner hatch to welcome them aboard.

  “She’s all come hither, no put out,” said Maurice.

  “Are we going in?” Gaston asked.

  “You are,” said Maurice.

  “I’m not going in there,” said Gaston.

  “Then you can have a piece of Philippe’s cut,” said Maurice.

  Gaston snarled. He grimaced and stepped into Villa Grande’s air lock. He paused at the join, then stepped through the double hatchways into the Xerxes’ air lock.

  A soft feminine machine voice spoke an intruder warning. Commanded Gaston to exit within five seconds.

  “What do I do?”

  “Give her six seconds,” said Maurice.

  Beam fire flashed off Gaston’s personal field. He fell to the deck kicking, howling.

  It took Gaston a moment to realize that he wasn’t damaged.

  Gaston lay back, laughing himself to tears. “There it is!” he cried. The booby trap they’d been so afraid of. “It’s a dud!”

  Maurice chuckled. He offered a hand down to Gaston and hauled him up into a bear hug. “Good man.”

  Gaston growled unkind words.

  The voice from the air lock repeated its warning for Maurice before it fired its impotent beams at his protective personal field.

  Maurice tapped the inner hatch of the Xerxes with his forefinger, scolding. “Ah, you always say no, but you never mean it, do you.” He gave the lever a tug.

  He’d expected to find the inner hatch locked, but the lever turned. The seal relaxed.

  Maurice pulled his gas mask down over his face. He looked back to his mates. Nodded at them to do the same.

  He nudged the hatch open a grenade’s width. He tossed in a gas canister and a stinger and yanked the hatch back shut. Wrenched the lever to lock it.

  And waited.

  No sounds of scrambling or pain carried from the opposite side. Just the hissing of the gas canister and the clatter of splinters peppering the chamber.

  As the smugglers waited for the gas to degrade, they drew lots to see who took point next.

  Crow got the short end.

  Crow eased the Xerxes’ inner hatch open a sliver.
>
  “Hello?” Crow called into the complete darkness.

  Heard nothing.

  “Hello?” said Maurice behind him. “I give them a smoker and a stinger and you say hello?”

  “Well,” said Crow. A knee in his back sent him stumbling forward through the hatchway.

  Maurice followed Crow aboard. He turned on his headlamp. Saw no one else. No bodies. He called up to the ship, “Hey bitch! Some lights?”

  The Xerxes did not recognize the command.

  Headlamps would have to do.

  Maurice was not sure what kind of chamber this was, but that was a definitely a Persian carpet underfoot. There were flash burns on it. Yellow threads glinted bright under their lamplight.

  “Is that gold?” Crow asked, still on hands and knees.

  “Get it appraised later,” said Maurice. “Pay attention. Don’t get flanked. And don’t tell Philippe, but there is a bit of wrong here.”

  They moved deeper into the ship, trying to find the control room. Maurice kept telling them to spread out, but they kept drawing back into a clutch.

  Something sounded behind them. They looked around, headlamps moving like searchlights.

  “Etienne?”

  “I’m right here,” said Etienne.

  “Raul?”

  “I’m here.”

  “Who is watching the hatch?”

  Maurice was aware of sounds—the faintest rustling. He’d thought it was his own crew, but the sounds were on all sides.

  “Shoot! Shoot! Shoot!”

  “Where!”

  “Shoot!”

  They fired all directions. Needn’t worry about hitting each other. Knew their personal fields would protect them from all short beams and splinters. They were bulletproof.

  So were their attackers.

  It took a slow blade to get through a personal field. And Maurice reached for his butterfly too late.

  13

  “YOU WERE NOISY, NOX,” Orissus said.

  Nox had stabbed his man up through the diaphragm into the heart. His victim had got off a scream and some nauseating gurgles. The brothers had done quieter jobs on their victims, but just as bloody.

  Immediately after slaying the smugglers, Nox, Pallas, Nicanor, and Orissus boarded the smugglers’ ship Villa Grande. They searched all the compartments and holds for anyone left behind. There was a personal skiff stowed in internal dock, but no one in it.

  They pronounced the ship clear.

  Still vibrating from the slaughter, his victim’s blood growing cold and sticky on his hands, Nox was not sure if Orissus was really that callous or if he was trying to show an attitude. You were noisy.

  All the brothers had simulated hand-to-hand combat training. Real killing and actual dead bodies here unsettled most of them. They concentrated on their assigned tasks.

  Leo secured the Villa Grande’s control room. Faunus was watching the air lock that joined the ships.

  Orissus, Pallas, Nox, and Nicanor collected the smugglers’ bodies from Bagheera’s deck to carry back to the Villa Grande.

  “They really messed over the Bagh,” said Orissus, passing through the antechamber. Flash burns scorched the Xerxes entryway. Shrapnel dents pocked the walls, the deck, the overhead. The smell of gas residue clung to the Persian carpet. “They didn’t have to do this.”

  “Actually, well, they did,” Nox said. “We made them dead.”

  “Then why did we let them board?” said Orissus. “Why didn’t we just board them?”

  “No surprises on our home field,” said Nicanor. “We controlled the situation.”

  Nox added, “‘Very few mongooses, however wise and old they may be, care to follow a cobra into its hole.’”

  They came to the joined air locks where Bagheera docked to Villa Grande.

  Faunus, guarding the hatch, asked for a password. Orissus and Nox gave him lots of words.

  Orissus, Nox, Pallas, and Nicanor carried the dead smugglers through the air locks and dropped them on their own deck.

  Nox saw Pallas move apart, looking fragile. Nox suggested, “Why don’t you go back and order Bagheera to get himself cleaned off?”

  Pallas’ abdomen moved. He swallowed hard. “Aye,” he said thickly, and returned to the Xerxes. Gave Faunus the impudent digit in passing.

  Nox wiped his sticky hands on Villa Grande’s walls. The smuggler ship was grimy. “Stinks in here.”

  Then the thumping started. Muffled shouts.

  Orissus, Nicanor, and Nox froze in place.

  Nox felt a prickling chill. “I thought we were clear.”

  They listened.

  Faunus called through the air lock. “Is that you?”

  “No!” Nox called back. “Hold your position.”

  “Someone’s still in here,” said Nicanor. The noise carried through the Villa Grande’s decks and bulks. They felt it. Heard it. The definite sound of hammering fists and stomping feet—one set—of someone trying to get out of a confined space.

  “Air locks!” Orissus thundered.

  “We cleared them,” said Nox.

  “Not all of them,” said Orissus charging forward toward the noise.

  Leo reported over the com from Villa Grande’s control room, “We have an unident in the forward starboard side air lock!”

  Nox, Orissus, Nicanor, Leo, and Galeo gathered at the thumping hatch. Someone shouted on the other side.

  Most ships were equipped with visual air lock monitors, so crew could see what was inside the lock before opening the hatch.

  The monitor showed a screaming, thrashing man inside the starboard air lock. He had no visible weapons in there with him. He seemed dizzy, wanting air.

  “The smugglers forgot to put out their trash,” said Orissus.

  Leo said, “The enemy of my enemy is—” he paused, leaving a blank to be filled in. “My what?”

  “Not my friend,” said Nicanor. “I would space him.”

  “No,” said Nox.

  “We’re not going to keep him,” said Nicanor. “And we’re not letting him go.”

  “No,” Nox agreed.

  “What do we do with him?”

  “Is this thing recording?” Nox tapped at the air lock monitor.

  “Could be,” said Orissus. He clicked it on. “It’s recording now.”

  Nox opened the hatch wide enough to toss in a miniature daisycutter, slammed the hatch shut, and locked it. Turned away from the monitor and tried not to listen.

  Heard a wet sound like a heavy gust of hard sleet slapping against the hatch.

  “Shit!” said Orissus, eyes round.

  “Deus!” said Nicanor.

  Leo made a noise of disgust.

  When Nox opened his eyes, there was more space between him and his brothers than normal. They were afraid of him.

  Nox removed the recording slip from the monitor. Held it in his fist. His voice came out low and vibrating. “This is not a home movie. It is a warning to anyone who thinks to collect us.”

  His brothers drifted back in. A hand landed on his shoulder. It felt like approval. Orissus said, “Let me do the next one.”

  Nox nodded. “I only have one of those in me, O Best Beloved.”

  Nicanor briskly moved past the grisly horror. He shouted like a commanding officer, “All right, men. Are we quite sure now that we have secured all the hostiles!”

  The brothers conducted a swift but thorough second search. Nicanor had the right idea. Stay in motion.

  Pretend we’re not horrified.

  With the Villa Grande secured—for certain this time—the brothers scavenged the ship for anything useful.

  “They have personal fields,” said Galeo.

  “Ours are better,” said Leo.

  The brothers were wearing PFs from Bagheera’s stores. The Xerxes’ defensive equipment was best of the moment.

  The smugglers’ personal fields had only held against Bagheera’s energy barrier because Leo had dialed the power way down in order to make t
he smugglers feel invincible and grow careless.

  “They have food!” said Orissus.

  “Huzzah. Need that.”

  The Xerxes hadn’t been stocked for an interstellar journey when Nox jacked it. They needed food stores if they were ever to get away from the Phoenix star system.

  “We have booze!” Faunus sang.

  “Great,” said Galeo, sounding sour. “I got nothing. Cargo hold is empty. They must have ditched their load before Interpol flagged them down.”

  “No,” Nox said. “They parked their cargo somewhere.”

  “All the same. How are we supposed to find it?”

  Space was a vast place in which to hide things. You could hide mountain ranges in that haystack.

  “Interpol’s not allowed to search a ship like we can.”

  Leo took a data drill to the Villa Grande’s computer banks. He reported in short order, “I have their drop coordinates.”

  Eager to get out of the smuggler ship, the brothers stacked the food and alcohol stores on lifts and hovered them back to their Xerxes. Nox told Faunus what to do with his password at the air lock.

  As the brothers crossed into Bagheera’s antechamber, they paused there, amazed.

  The chamber stood pristine and gleaming, its walls smooth, the air cool and sweet, the Persian rug’s vivid scarlets, golds, and ambers unsullied. Crystal fixtures sparkled.

  Pallas had gotten the Xerxes to run its clean-up routine.

  Orissus called to the air, “Bagheera! Good kitty!”

  “Command not understood,” said the ship.

  “That’s all right, Bags,” said Orissus. “You’re all right.”

  While the others stored the food and cleaned the blood off themselves and their clothes, Pallas piloted Bagheera toward the site of the smugglers’ dropped cargo.

  They circled wide of the drop site for a watchful while in full stealth mode.

  Finally Pallas arrowed the ship in, snagged the smugglers’ container and jumped to FTL.

  Safe at speed, they reeled the container into the Xerxes’ cargo bay. They scanned for booby traps and let the container come up to temperature before venturing into the hold to rip it open.

  “Drugs,” said Nicanor, disgusted, opening carton after carton.

  “Anything medicinal?” Pallas asked.

  “No.”