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

by R. M. Meluch

  For now they relaxed on a virtual beach. Bagheera’s antechamber had transformed itself into a deserted seashore at sunset. The ship’s walls had vanished into a wide horizon. A yellow sun sank into the sea, leaving velvet blue darkness behind it. The brothers felt as much as heard the sound of open sky and open water. Gently lapping waves ridged the sand. A slight breeze carried the smell of salt air and exotic flowers. Palm trees nodded behind them.

  “Where is this?” Galeo asked.

  “Don’t know,” said Leo. “The program is called Sunset Beach.”

  “It’s some fantasy place,” said Orissus.

  “It’s Earth,” said Nox.

  Nox was from Earth. He should know.

  “You’ve been to this beach?” Pallas asked.

  “No.”

  “Then how can you tell it’s Earth?” said Orissus.

  “Moon,” said Nox with a backward nod. A luminous orb was rising huge and full behind the palm trees.

  Galeo twisted round to stare. “Look at that!”

  “That’s too big to be a real moon,” said Orissus.

  “No, Best Beloved. That is The Moon,” said Nox.

  Natural evolution of a star system normally resulted in planets forming with several small satellites circling them. Phoenix was typical. The planet Phoenix had a whole necklace of moons in its orbit. All the other planets in the Phoenix star system had multiple small moons around them.

  Earth’s moon was exceptional, even within its own solar system.

  “That is Luna herself,” said Nox of the giant shining disk rising behind the palm trees. “That’s why in the Old Empire the Moon was a goddess, and she was singular.”

  Romans never forgot where they came from.

  The capital of the Roman Empire was currently the planet Palatine. But Rome’s real home, her birth world, was Earth. Her true name was Terra, the place where the she-wolf suckled her sons, Romulus and Remus.

  The Empire failed to recapture Old Rome in the recent war.

  The brothers had been cloned, cultivated, raised, recruited, and trained on the colonial world Phoenix, a long, long way from Palatine. They hadn’t fought in the war.

  Except for Nox, they had never seen Earth.

  This was their first voyage outside the Phoenix system.

  They were never going back.

  “Has anyone else ever been killed at Widow’s Edge?” Nox asked.

  “No,” said Pallas. “Couldn’t happen.”

  “Couldn’t?” said Nicanor. “It rather did.”

  “Because it should have been impossible,” said Pallas. “The net always deploys. There’s a motion sensor in the cliff face.”

  “I didn’t know that when I jumped,” said Nicanor.

  “I knew there was a net,” said Faunus. “I would have been a lot more scared if I’d known it was Russian roulette.”

  “I wouldn’t have let you jump if I’d known it was Russian roulette,” said Nicanor. He shuddered. “I never heard of anyone dying before.”

  “Why did the net fail for Cinna?” Leo wondered aloud.

  Pallas guessed, “Jammed. Broke. We should have checked the equipment before we sent Cinna over.”

  “Don’t ever say ‘should have,’ O Best Beloved,” said Nox. “Never look backward. That river you see in the rearview? That’s the Rubicon.”

  “Did you know there was a net, Nox?” Pallas asked. Then rephrased, “Did you know there was supposed to be a net when you jumped?”

  Nox had to think. He shut out the sounds and images of gentle surf and beautiful moon.

  He was back on that dry desert height. His brothers standing behind him, waiting. Ahead of him, that fatal-appearing drop.

  “Not yes,” Nox answered. Not exactly no either. “I was trying not to think anything. I had a feeling something was going to happen in between my leaving the cliff and the ground smacking my bones out.”

  He had been cocooned in that blessed inability of young men to conceive of a universe without themselves in it.

  Nox opened his eyes to the lovely sunset. The soft sea air from the Xerxes imager brushed his skin. The palms were casting moon shadows across the sand.

  Only close his eyes and he was back on the cliff, facing that jump. He must have thought he was going to live. “But I didn’t know.”

  Awareness.

  His last memory had been of pain. Eyelids were stuck open, unable to blink. Harsh sun. Breath stabbing in crushed lungs. Wetness. Head felt . . . mushy.

  Shooting pain of being lifted, jarring motion.

  Pain ceased. Still feeling, but without pain. Grotesque sensations of dripping, crumbling. Like being a bag of sticks. Pulpy.

  Woke after a moment; he didn’t remember losing consciousness. Felt different.

  Felt.

  Different.

  Opened his eyes, puzzled. The sky with its pearly moons was gone, the cliff was gone. He was indoors, the air was cool, and he could move. He had no sense at all of time having passed, yet he was not where he had been.

  He sat up with an amazing feeling of well-being. Strange things moved in his body. He felt absolutely clearheaded, yet he could not remember how he got here. He did remember jumping. The fall. The landing. His hipbones had hit him in the chin.

  Now there were cables protruding from his forearms, and he had no idea how they got there. Must be what he was feeling behind his neck too.

  An officer was standing in the room along with several medici.

  The officer told him curtly, “The medicus ruled it a suicide attempt.”

  So that was all real. The jump. The landing. “Not my intent, Domni.”

  “Did you think you could fly?”

  “No, Domni.”

  “Then explain how you mistook air for solid ground?”

  “I can’t, Domni.” Rather, he wouldn’t inform on his brothers.

  “Anyone with you?”

  “No, Domni.” That was a lie. The officer probably knew that. He had to say it anyway.

  “Protecting anyone?”

  “No, Domni.”

  “Actually, your last statement is true enough,” said the officer. “The ones you would protect don’t exist anymore. They are no one.”

  His brothers. Where were they?

  His animal brain still refused to believe what his senses were telling him. His mind concocted a most desperate attempt at denial.

  This is still part of the hazing. My brothers didn’t drop me. This is an intricate charade to trick me into thinking they dropped me.

  He clung to that thought. But even before the medici plugged in his cables, a knowing chill gripped his gut.

  This is too elaborate by far.

  These men were real and serious.

  The cables connected. His eyes flew wide.

  Horizons vanished into infinity. He knew things. Millions of links fit together, effects met with causes, randomness resolved into inevitability, chaos became order.

  Against all logic, he knew what he’d become. They don’t make these anymore.

  These men, his makers, were masking fear. His mind reached through vast data stores, through endless minutiae, found the place in the documentation where one of them had made the notation: If he’s going to kill you, it will be now.

  He knew the officer had a sidearm. Its serial number was 435-X942AXZ.

  The medici looked wary.

  This body wasn’t his.

  It was.

  It wasn’t.

  They had cultivated many of this particular Antonian clone. This was not the body that had gone over the cliff. The brain was.

  They hadn’t given him a new name.

  He remembered his past life. His brothers. Nicanor, Pallas, Faunus, Orissus, Leo, Galeo, and Nox.

  They dropped me.

  I died.

  16

  “THIS IS REALLY RATHER grotesque,” said Nicanor, observing the blood spots daubed on the deck of their latest kill.

  “I Tknow.”


  Nox was not retching anymore. He would never enjoy killing. Didn’t intend to try.

  Pallas stood apart, arms tight around himself. He didn’t take part in desecration. A quick kill, and he was done.

  Orissus’ face fissured. He nudged Pallas. “Problem, frater?”

  Pallas lifted his chin up. “I understand what you’re doing. I do. But I can’t do it anymore.”

  “You don’t need to,” said Nox. “As long as the Circle is feared, no one is going to check our individual resumes. Stay the way you are.”

  Leo was doing worse. He couldn’t sleep without a sleep program. Couldn’t keep his food down without an antiemetic program. Couldn’t pick up a dagger. His hand locked up when he tried.

  Leo stared at his hand, horrified. Insisted, “I can do this.” But his hand fixed into a claw and wouldn’t move.

  “No, you can’t,” Nox said. He put his hands to Leo’s shoulders. Giving Leo a shoulder rub was like trying to massage an elm tree. “Take care of the ship’s systems. You’re the only one who’s good at that. Someone’s gotta do supply and support.”

  The elm tree started to shake under Nox’s hands. Leo looked desperately to his brothers. “Really? Is that all right? Are you sure?”

  Faunus gave Leo a light kick in the shin. “We got this part.”

  “How many killers do we have?” Orissus polled. Lifted his own hand.

  Faunus signaled he was in.

  Galeo lifted a finger.

  Nox had started them down this road. He put up his hand. “Ego.”

  “And you’re still noisy,” Orissus said.

  Nicanor nodded.

  Pallas said, “I can kill. I can’t mess them up.”

  Nox said, “We shouldn’t need to do that much longer. The point is to establish the Leopard as the king of the jungle. We only kill what chases us, and we kill horribly. When the hunters stop chasing us and bow to the Leopard without us needing to demand it, then we can go anywhere. People will give us what we want and thank us for the privilege.”

  Nox hadn’t thrown up after killing since the first one. The bad feeling he got after an atrocity was lessening. He was trying to become ruthless. He hadn’t known he’d had that much ruth in him.

  “Actually, our kills are quick and simple,” said Galeo. “Even Nox’s daisycutter in the air lock was quick.”

  “Are you afraid we’re not gross enough!” Nox cried.

  “Just saying.” Galeo shrugged.

  “It’ll have to do,” said Nox. “I just hope no one else figures out that messing up the dead doesn’t cause pain. I can carve meat, but I can’t do torture.”

  The horror caught up with Nox later, in the middle of the next sleep cycle. The ship was dark, and he was alone with what he’d done. He dove into a dream box that promised to weave fantasies of your deepest desires.

  It started well with a dream of a woman. It turned into a nightmare of him stabbing her.

  He tore off the V-helmet and leaped out bed raging. “No no no! That is not what I want!” He smashed the thing, stomped it, threw it, cursed it. Woke the whole ship.

  Pallas calmly cleaned up after Nox’s rampage and offered him another brand of dream box. The program was Hot Trixi Allnight. “You can’t go wrong with Trixi.”

  It was gently drizzling in camp when Izrael Benet beckoned Glenn to a table under one of the pavilions to join him in a game of poker.

  Glenn climbed onto the bench opposite Benet. Benet pushed a stack of chips across the table to her.

  “What are the stakes?” Glenn asked.

  “Shall we play for worlds,” Benet said.

  So this was one of those games wherein you sound out the character of your opponent by how he plays. “No. I don’t play with worlds,” said Glenn.

  “That’s interesting.” As if to say he thought she did.

  Glenn tossed in one chip for her ante. “That’s my morning bagel.”

  Benet matched her bagel, shuffled the cards, and offered the deck for her to cut. She gave the deck a tap. “Just deal.”

  Benet dealt. Glenn picked up her five cards. Gave them a quick glance.

  Benet studied his own hand, then asked, “How many?”

  Cards he meant.

  “None,” said Glenn.

  Benet took one card for himself, then said, “Your bet, Lieutenant. You must be holding all the big guns.”

  Glenn literally laid all her cards out on the table. “Director Benet. You want to know me, just ask me questions. Talk to me.”

  Benet folded his own hand without showing it. “Fair enough. You see, I think I already know you. You are a military officer. You have people under you who must obey you without thought. You military types abdicate your personal will and conscience to a superior. Dissent is essential to living free.”

  “Living is essential to living free,” said Glenn. “The military makes sacrifices so that civilians can live free.”

  “How can you talk of living while you, your Admiral Farragut, your Empress Calli, and your battleship Merrimack are a galactic marauding genocidal ecological catastrophe?”

  The extremity of that speech set Glenn back. Her stubbly eyebrows lifted high. “You think we should have let the Hive live?”

  “No. The Hive wasn’t life. It was death incarnate. It had to be eradicated. But since you mention it, Jose Maria de Cordillera and the rogue patterner Augustus were the ones who figured out how to destroy the Hive. And here you’re actually claiming to have destroyed the Hive? How can you presume?”

  Because we did the actual destruction, that’s how. She wasn’t going to argue with him about that. She returned to Benet’s original accusation, “Then what genocidal eco-disaster are you talking about?”

  “The Myriad.”

  Made her blink.

  Years ago the Merrimack had discovered a three-world nation inside a globular cluster. The core of the colossal star system collapsed. The system was still collapsing to this day. Two of the planets were gone now. Even now the relocation of the intelligent species from the remaining planet was ongoing. The LEN was also attempting to preserve specimens of all the flora and fauna on the last world before it too fell into the singularity. It really had been a disaster.

  “We tried to stop it,” Glenn said.

  “Only after you caused it,” Benet said.

  “That’s what you think?”

  “The Myriad was a stable system before Merrimack’s arrival. And then suddenly—bang—it wasn’t. Do you know what it’s like to organize a rescue on that scale? And to lose an entire world under your charge. A world!”

  Glenn felt the hairs on the back of her neck standing on end. “I’m going to guess that you do know.”

  “The Myriad rescue was my project for three years,” said Benet. “Trying to save all those beings. All those species. When Rea went into the singularity, I broke down. I admit it. Then, for my next project I was given paradise. Zoe. This is an extraordinary, beautiful world. I have been conservator and administrator of the LEN expedition here for five years now. And now the damned Merrimack is coming here. Forgive me if I react with hostility. No. Don’t forgive me. I don’t need your forgiveness.”

  “Here I thought you wanted to play this game to get to know me.”

  Benet seemed to reconsider his approach. He asked, “Tell me. Are you sorry?”

  “For anything I did at the Myriad? No.”

  “Then I was right about you and your Merrimack in the first place. You come in peace and shoot to kill.”

  That’s not true. We’re a space battleship. We rarely come in peace, Glenn thought. Said, “We only shoot if something wants shooting.”

  “To kill,” Benet specified. “You shoot to kill.”

  “Always,” said Glenn.

  The United States space battleship Merrimack passed through the Boomer in literally no time at all.

  “Boomerang” was the Pacific consortium’s term for its long-distance displacement system between Earth local
space and the outer arm of the galaxy.

  One moment the battleship was in Port Chalai in the Orion arm of the galaxy, the next instant she was two thousand parsecs away, in Port Campbell in the Perseus arm of the galaxy.

  “Shotgun” was the U.S. term for the instantaneous connection between their two space forts. The Shotgun displaced ships in the opposite direction from the Boomerang. The Shotgun displaced ships from Earth local space toward the heart of the galaxy.

  But the major difference between the Pacific Boomerang and the U.S. Shotgun in Captain Carmel’s mind was that the Pacific internationals allowed Romans to use their Boomer.

  The United States had originally protested the construction of the Boomerang. The Pacific nations ignored the protest.

  And wish all she wanted, Calli just wasn’t allowed to shoot allies.

  The U.S. had a thin presence in the Perseid arm, and no military presence at all before Merrimack’s arrival. During the colonial frenzy of the last century the U.S. had expanded toward the galactic center. Asian nations had dominated human exploration outward into Perseid space.

  More recently, just before the war, Rome had spread into the Perseid arm. Rome secretly rebuilt her legions on far-flung colonial planets during the Subjugation. Mad Caesar Romulus had been behind that project.

  Romulus, the former Caesar, existed now in an induced coma, racked by crazed nightmares.

  A disturbing number of people called him Romulus the Great.

  Calli Carmel resented America’s so-called allies granting passage to the Legions of a belligerent Empire that to this day claimed the United States as a Roman colony.

  The gatekeepers of the Boomerang never checked the contents of Rome’s so-called freighters, which looked a lot like Roman troop carriers. The consortium just collected the high tariff and sent the Roman ships through.

  The Boomerang’s displacement terminal in Port Campbell was a titanic cubical region of space scoured clear of particles of any size. Photons and cosmic rays were deflected away from it, leaving the purest black nothingness in which to displace entire spaceships across the kiloparsecs between Port Chalai and Port Campbell.