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

by R. M. Meluch

  The engineers didn’t wrap the ship when it displaced through the Boomer as they did when a ship displaced through the Shotgun. But the experience was the same. The traveler still saw, felt, sensed nothing at all. Departure and arrival were the same moment. The surroundings were identical at each terminus—nothingness. The ship came into existence in a lightless cubic area of vacuum exactly the same as the one it left.

  Only when the port tug pushed the arriving Merrimack out of the pristine nothingness into the light could Merrimack see the port with all its stations. And all the cameras of all the stations of Port Campbell saw her.

  Merrimack was the size of a large freighter, but she didn’t look like one. She glided into camera view as a majestic barbarous spearhead. She had a few light-years on her, but she was still a grand, proud ship.

  Captain Carmel had expected some resentment at the arrival of her belligerent ship in the trading center. But U.S. flags were out all across Port Campbell, and there was a welcoming light show.

  Port Campbell was a new outpost. Its stations had grown up fast as desert blooms, all bright, shiny, beautiful. Expensive.

  The tug guided Merrimack on a procession between stations. Merrimack ran in bright mode, lit up like a minor sun. Proud. Arrogant, some said.

  She passed close enough to the stations for the inhabitants on the observation decks to see her with the naked eye.

  The observation decks were crowded.

  Merrimack was accustomed to hate, fear, and admiration in equal parts. Calli had expected some apprehension and suspicion. But these folks were inordinately happy to see her.

  “They like us,” said Commander Ryan, surprised. “Why do they like us?”

  “They are happy to see us,” Calli had to admit, puzzled. Port Campbell greeted Merrimack like a liberator. “Something’s going on here.”

  Patrick Hamilton presented a mammoth feather to the senior of the two resident physicians in the expedition camp. “I want to run this through the DNA analyzer.”

  “You will not!” said Dr. Cecil and walked away from Patrick.

  “Can you do it for me?” Patrick asked.

  “No!”

  “How about Dr. Wynans?” Patrick asked glancing around the medical hut. “Is WhyNot in here?”

  “No!”

  Dr. Wynans was here. Patrick could hear him in a back room.

  “Did anyone determine the base structure for life on this world?” Patrick said at Cecil’s back.

  Cecil spun round. “Oh, no! No. No. No and no.” He plucked the feather from Patrick’s hand and threw it aside. “You are way out of your specialty, Hamilton, and you will not push your project in front of mine. And you won’t use this analyzer! This is a medical diagnostic tool, and it analyzes DNA-based organics only.”

  “That’s what I’m looking for,” said Patrick. “DNA.”

  “The aliens don’t have DNA!”

  “You are shouting,” said Patrick. “Why are you shouting?”

  “Because you are an imbecile!”

  “Imbecile is an obsolete term and inaccurate, and what has my intelligence quotient to do with the volume of your speech?”

  Dr. Cecil chased Patrick out of the medical hut and threw his mammoth feather out after him.

  Patrick retrieved his feather from the ground.

  Melisandra Minyas overheard the exchange. She couldn’t help but hear it.

  She ran after Patrick and plucked the long skinny feather from his hand. Winked at him. “I’m game.”

  “Thanks,” said Patrick and nodded toward the medical hut. “Don’t get bit.”

  She twirled the long feather, making it flash golden in the light. She said, “You’re looking for DNA? Seriously?”

  “Seriously.”

  Dr. Minyas rolled up on her toes and rocked back down on her heels. “You know you could have picked anything from any animal or plant as a sample for a base code analysis.”

  “I know,” Patrick said. “I just like the idea of bull feathers.”

  Dr. Minyas’ freckles spread in a perky smile. “Around here? Yeah. Everything’s made of bull feathers.”

  “You are here to kill The Ninth Circle.”

  Captain Carmel gave the port governor a blank blink. Afraid she looked clueless. Because she was clueless.

  She stared at the holo image of Zander Kidd, Governor of Port Campbell. Calli didn’t know what he was talking about.

  I’m here to do what?

  Merrimack had picked up some outpost chatter on her way to the main station. All the stations of Port Campbell were buzzing in fear of something called The Ninth Circle. Calli hadn’t paid attention to it.

  Calli answered the governor, “What is The Ninth Circle?”

  “Pirates,” said Governor Kidd. “Vicious. Vicious. Vicious. Came out of nowhere very recently. Now they’re the terror of Perseid space.”

  “Merrimack is not here for pirates,” Calli said.

  “It’s true then. The United States is staking colonies in Perseus space.”

  “No, sir. Not that I’ve heard.”

  “Why are you here?”

  “Passing through to the Outback.”

  “Can I talk you into delaying your departure,” the governor asked.

  “I can step on a pirate if he’s here,” said Calli. “You point, I’ll shoot.”

  “That’s the hell of it. The Ninth Circle aren’t here. And it doesn’t make a damn bit of difference.”

  Zander Kidd had bought himself devilish good looks. He had big, white even teeth and a shock of thick dark hair with a rakish wave. His eyes were brightest blue with sunray irises. Even under a conservative business suit the man was obviously muscled like a racehorse and probably quite tall, but he was sitting behind a desk here. His bronze skin had a middle-aged texture to it, so he didn’t look like a beach toy. Records said he was seventy years old.

  The handsome man looked harried.

  “The Ninth Circle are not here. They have never been near here, best I know, or I would have killed them myself. Some bastard in that gang of bastards knows how to play up an image. Not that they are not bad. They’re ghoulish. But it’s one pirate ship, and they’ve paralyzed trade across one tenth of the bloody galaxy! All my stations are hemorrhaging business.

  “Cargo ships are taking wide routes off the standard lanes on approach to my port. Even though—even though—so far, all The Ninth Circle’s victims have come to the Circle. Not one victim was ever caught in a rundown.

  “The Ninth Circle have never jumped a civilian ship, but you try telling that to civilians. Everyone’s holed up like sitting pheasants. Trade is not moving.” The governor took a breath. Folded his hands, forcing himself to a dignified composure. “And the pirates are flying a bloody bleeding Xerxes.”

  That was unexpected. Calli said, “I’m guessing the ship wasn’t lawfully purchased.”

  “You are correct, sir.”

  “Doesn’t say much for the much vaunted security systems of the Xerxes,” said Calli.

  “No, sir. What it says is all about the pirates. The Xerxes is everything it’s supposed to be, which is how the pirates manage to stay at large. It’s not that the Xerxes is performing below spec. It’s that the pirates are performing far beyond spec. You’d think men that clever would be doing something else.”

  “There’s Interpol,” said Calli. “And the League of Earth Nations has some crack pirate hunters. There is your station militia. Does enlisting a battleship not strike anyone as overkill?”

  “Overkill is required,” said the governor as if she’d just made his point for him. “Interpol and the militia can combat pirates. What I need is something to combat fear.”

  “Sir?” said Calli, thrown off course.

  “I hate to confess this, Captain, but when I was a very small child my mother invoked a wizard to banish the monsters from under my bed. There were no monsters under there—I think there weren’t—but the point is reason wasn’t working. The wizard pre
vailed. Captain Carmel, I need a wizard.”

  “We’re not dealing with children,” Calli said.

  “Pardon my Esperanto, Captain: The hell you say. You command soldiers. You don’t know what mass civilian hysteria is.”

  The governor cupped his hands together. “A handful of pirates.” He flung his arms wide. “Big wide galaxy. And still my people are convinced that The Ninth Circle are here. Right here.” His forefinger stabbed down on his desktop. “Under the bed. And I suppose The Ninth Circle actually are as deadly as their reputation. I know they’re killing me.”

  Calli said, “Even if I wanted to, I can’t chase an undetectable ship.” A Xerxes could achieve perfect stealth.

  “Don’t need to, sir,” said the governor. “Just be here. Let people see that.” He moved aside to show Calli the station’s eye view of Merrimack, her titanic, wicked spearhead shape, bulging with massive engines, gun blisters, and torpedo tubes.

  Merrimack had the power of intimidation. Not that she would scare off pirates. But she could give lawful traders a sense of invulnerability.

  Civilian traffic was entrenched, afraid to move. Under Merrimack’s broad, deadly wing, traffic might move again.

  All Merrimack needed to do was unfreeze the terror. Once moving again, perhaps inertia would take over, and traffic would keep moving after Merrimack was gone.

  Calli was in a rush to get underway. But it would be bad form to bolt when she wasn’t answering a well-defined emergency. So far, the alien hostiles around Zoe had not attacked the planet.

  Merrimack had been riding along at cruising velocity. Captain Carmel supposed she could lay on some acceleration to make up for lost time.

  She told the governor, “I can give you forty-eight hours, if you grant access for my Marines to go on liberty at the port stations. And waive their boarding fees and tariffs.”

  Everything in the space outpost cost arms and legs her Marines couldn’t part with. Just the boarding fee at any station was beyond a Marine’s budget.

  “I don’t want any brawls,” said the governor. That was a yes. “The locals are rowdy enough.”

  Merrimack’s quartermaster bought red, white, and blue paint from a space station and brought it on board the battleship. Colonel Steele set the Marines to painting Stars and Stripes on their Swifts. The flights were to fly rotating patrols through Port Campbell.

  There would be liberty when their patrol was over.

  Asante Addai couldn’t wait.

  The new Alpha Seven, Flight Sergeant Asante Addai, had been thrilled to death to find himself with three, count ’em, three, lindas in his squad. None of the three were knockouts but they were looking finer the longer he stayed on Mack, where testosterone outnumbered estrogen five to one.

  But none of his three squad mates were putting out.

  Not even Kerry Blue.

  What to make of Kerry Blue?

  Kerry Blue was easy to like. She used to be easy to like. Nowadays you look at her too long, you got guys giving you the wave-off, like you’re coming in to land with your gear up.

  Asante had invited Kerry Blue to a horizontal rumba, and Kerry Blue said no.

  He retreated, astonished and a little wounded. He was in the maintenance hangar painting red teeth on his Swift.

  Asante Addai thought he was the first man in history to get a no out of Kerry Blue.

  “This is not what I expected from everything I heard about Kerry Blue.” Asante confided to Cain Salvador. He sniffed his own armpits, afraid how he’d fare with the civilian lindas in Port Campbell.

  “Yeah, well, Blue’s got a deadly disease,” Flight Leader Cain Salvador said, painting red stripes on his Alpha One.

  Asante cracked an uncertain grin. “You’re fugging me. There are no deadly diseases.”

  Cain answered with silence.

  Asante cried, “It’s the twenty-third century! There’s no contagion the MO can’t cure.”

  “Well, she’s got one,” said Cain.

  “What? What’s she got?”

  “Brass poisoning,” said Cain.

  “Huh?”

  “You touch her, and a ton of brass comes down on you.”

  Asante’s eyes flicked upward and side to side for some precarious pile of metal about to drop. He gave Cain a blank look. Didn’t understand.

  On the upper-level landing of the maintenance hangar, a hatch flew open, banged off its stops. Colonel Steele marched onto the top-level catwalk and came to the rail. He bellowed down for Alpha Flight to finish up and take first patrol.

  The hatch slammed behind him before anyone could come to attention.

  Cain looked away, whistling an off-key ditty.

  Asante looked where Cain was pointedly not looking—where the colonel had been. As if it were an answer to a question.

  Asante lowered his voice to a whispered shriek. “Him?” Couldn’t be. “Steele and Kerry Blue? No. He rides her.”

  Cain’s face sucked in. Looked as though he’d swallowed his own lips.

  Asante said quickly, “No, I mean—I didn’t mean—”

  Then he read Cain’s face. Maybe Asante should have meant exactly that.

  Asante said, “You’re kidding. He can’t do that. He could lose his fried eggs for that. You’ll have my six, won’t you, frer?”

  “Sure,” said Cain. “I’ll dispose of your dead body with great dignity, frer.”

  Cain would never step in the way of brass. Or steel.

  “And he’s not gonna lose eggs or anything else,” Cain warned. “Do you understand what I’m telling you? You don’t fug with what keeps the dead out of you. Got it?”

  “I got it,” Asante said, nettled. “I’m not the village idiot.” I’m the idiot from outer space.

  Asante moved his painting gear away from his Swift and made way for the maintenance erks to prep the crate for flight. Asante got into his flight suit.

  The colonel looked familiar. Asante finally placed who the Old Man looked like. Asante had been watching Roman vids of gladiatorial contests made during the war. He told Cain, “Know what? The Old Man looks a lot like the gladiator Adamas.”

  “Yeah,” Cain said. “A little. I see the resemblance.”

  Marine Swifts flew in show at speeds at which they could be seen tearing through space just outside the outpost’s traffic lanes. Silent in vacuum, they appeared to be roaring. They jetted white oxygen fires behind them.

  The Swifts’ swept-back wings gave them the look of darts. The Marines had painted their crates with star-spangled blue noses and red and white stripes down their fuselages. Navy stars were fixed on their wings. Some of the pilots added more art—paintings of arrows, teeth, claws, bald eagles, girlfriends—under their cockpits. Dak Shepard painted the name Elegant Hag on his crate. Geneva Rhine painted dead Romans around her gun ports.

  The Swifts were flashy, fast, and fierce.

  One of the local constabulary called the Marine pilots gaudy trigger-happy cowboys.

  “Eyup,” Lawrence sent over the com, his Swift breathing fire. “We’re here to run the Dalton gang out of town.”

  “You know, it’s not like the boys from Oz are the shyest violets in the garden either,” Cain sent.

  One of the local kerls flying with them sent, “No. We just don’t blow things up the way you blokes do. We really need to think about invading someone so we can be taken seriously.”

  The League of Earth Nations scientific expedition camp on Zoe lay quiet within its dirt perimeter. The night forest songs provided a gentle background noise.

  A voice howled just before dawn. “Hey! Who interrupted my job?”

  Groggy scientists woke unhappily. They stumbled out of their tents.

  Dr. Cecil was shouting, angry.

  From what any of the annoyed sleepy brains could figure, Dr. Cecil had gone into the medic’s shed and found his job aborted.

  “I want a head to roll! This is unprofessional! Unacceptable! Unconscionable!”

  Glenn sat up i
n bed in her tent. She fished about for her shoes.

  Patrick reached aside to stop her. “Don’t go out there. Wait until he finds out what ran instead of his job. He’s likely to start screaming.”

  “I thought he was screaming now,” Glenn said.

  “No. Trust me. He’s not. Not yet. Sandy Minyas ran an analysis on my mammoth feather. She isolated the genetic base code for life on Zoe.”

  “What about it?” asked Glenn.

  “The discovery. It’s Copernican. It’s Galilean.”

  “Didn’t those guys do hard time?”

  “Yes, well, Sandy’s going to get put on the rack and roasted.”

  “That would be all right,” Glenn said. She had guessed by now what secret the mammoth feather had unearthed.

  The base genetic code for life on Zoe, the world at the edge of the galaxy, was DNA.

  17

  MERRIMACK’S INERTIAL SCREENS could withstand planet-killing forces. She carried an arsenal bigger than those of midsized nations. Just her presence lifted Port Campbell’s economy.

  Her Marines’ flashy patrols convinced travelers to travel. A flood of trade passed through the outpost. Ships moved among all the stations.

  The port governor, Zander Kidd, invited the captain of the Merrimack to dinner in his palatial residence within the main station.

  At formal dinners, the captain customarily wore dress whites, with trousers and flat shoes. At Port Campbell, her host requested formal civilian attire. “We’re not mad keen on uniforms out here,” said Governor Kidd.

  Apparently the governor’s protocol officer failed to advise him that the captain in haute couture was Class One ordnance.

  Calli Carmel had been thoroughly disfigured during the war. The medics had restored her all right, slapped a field face on her at the time and sent her back into action. Her artificial jaw gave her headaches. It wasn’t her natural shape, and her muscles kept pretending it was the old one.

  Fleet officers usually got rejuv on Uncle Sam’s tab when they hit age thirty-nine, to reverse natural entropy. This officer had undergone trauma, so the Navy pretty much insisted she have the work done. So when her mileage rolled around for rejuv during peacetime, she received facial bones and eyes cultivated from her own cells. The medics also restored her scalp and hair to their natural state.