by R. M. Meluch
Ski: “No external membrane. No exoskeleton.”
The xenos sounded excited.
Weng: “The rigid structures in their appendages are fibrous alien proteins, similar to chitin.”
Ski: “We’re pretty sure they can regrow their nails.”
Patrick nodded. “Yeah. They’re probably reloading even as we speak.”
Weng: “That would require nourishment. We don’t know what clokes eat.”
“Clokes?” Patrick echoed.
Weng: “That’s what the Marines are calling the extraplanetaries. Cloke. It’s short for cloaca.”
Patrick said, “I thought cloaca was a Roman swear word.”
Ski made a sound of half agreeing. “It’s a Roman vulgarity. It means latrine. But it’s also a scientific term. The aliens are monotremes.”
Patrick rummaged his memory for that term. Came up with something that couldn’t be right, “They’re platypuses?”
Ski said, “So you know what a monotreme is?”
“Not exactly.” Linguist though Patrick was, monotreme was not a word he ever used. “I think it was something I was supposed to know in fifth grade. A platypus and a spiny something-or-other that lays eggs are the only two of whatever a monotreme is. It means egg layer?” He took a guess. “No wait. Mono means they have only one of something. And it can’t be the duckbill because the spiny thing has a long nose. It means they only lay one egg? No. I give up. I don’t know. I wasn’t that jazzed on biology in the fifth grade. But I’m guessing now that it’s something biological you wouldn’t want to go into detail about with a bunch of fifth-grade boys.”
“You bet your eighth planet,” said Weng.
“Monotremes have one anus?” Patrick guessed.
Ski said, “You’re getting very close. Monotreme means ‘one hole.’ All elimination and reproductive functions use one hole.”
“All functions?” said Patrick.
“All.”
“Out and in?” Patrick asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“That would have been marvelously gross to know in the fifth grade,” said Patrick.
“It still is marvelously gross among your Fleet Marines,” Ski said dryly.
The Marines were a young group. They lived hard, fought hard, laughed loud. Patrick supposed the Marines would have fun with that bit of knowledge.
Weng said, “The technical term for the multipurpose hole is cloaca. So your Marines are calling the aliens clokes.”
“So are we,” said Ski.
Patrick had no objection. “I guess for insults that beats asshole all to hell.”
Weng and Ski finally had an approximate age of the alien orb for Captain Carmel.
“One hundred years,” said Weng.
“Give or take some,” said Ski.
“Durable,” Calli commented.
Weng: “Very. If they weren’t hostile, I’d think about buying their stuff.”
Calli asked, “Why didn’t they exhaust their fuel in all that time?”
Ski: “That’s the beauty of using the most common element in the universe as your fuel.”
“Do we know where they’re coming from?” Calli asked.
Weng: “No.”
Ski: “They’re using a sublight powerplant. Wherever they came from has to be in walking distance.”
Walkers or crawlers were terms for sublight vessels.
There were no hospitable worlds within a hundred light-years of Zoe. There was a reason this region of the galaxy was called the Outback.
Weng: “The orbs could have been manufactured in transit on a mobile platform.”
Ski: “That opens up their outer limit to, well, anywhere.”
Weng: “The LEN expedition has been here for seven years. LEN ships have been coming and going for seven years. It took seven years for orbs to intercept an intruding ship. We don’t know how they knew there was something here to intercept.”
“Are we looking too far?” Calli suggested. “Did the clokes come from another planet in this system? They almost have to, don’t they?”
Ski went mute. He could not tell his beautiful captain how wrong she was.
Weng: “There’s no other planet in the habitation zone. No manufacturing facilities on any of them. No sign that any of the other planets ever supported life. And I know you’re going to ask, we did look at the moons. That there is a pretty cloud of ammonia around the moons.”
“I have another question for you,” said Calli. ”How did the clokes get onto the planet?”
“Good question,” said Ski.
Weng agreed. “Clokes can compress pretty small, but we know they didn’t fit inside a space vessel with no oxygen, no heat, no water, and no food. These orbs don’t have landing capability.”
Ski hedged. “Well.”
Weng: “Fine. They have the landing capability of asteroids.”
Ski: “We’ve found no evidence of FTL capability, except for the obvious fact that they are here.”
“Wormholes?” Calli offered.
“No wormholes out here,” said Weng.
“We looked,” said Ski.
“Collapsed wormholes?” Calli revised.
“Then we wouldn’t know about them,” said Weng.
“And we can never know,” said Ski.
“How else could they get here?” Calli asked.
“A very slow boat,” said Weng.
“Well, that’s it then,” said Calli. “There has to be a carrier.”
Captain Carmel set Tactical to searching for something large. Large was a relative term. Looking for anything in space was searching for one specific microbe in an ocean.
Within the hour, Tactical sang out, “Occultation. Forty-five by twelve by nine.”
The Targeting specialist checked the plot. “I have it. It’s—” he turned around to look at Captain Carmel. “It’s round, sir.”
A chill tension gripped the command deck.
Guardedly, Calli requested, “Mister Vincent, what do you have?”
Tactical reported, “Plot is large. Moving too fast to be natural and too big to be a LEN golf ball.”
Calli asked the immediate question, “Is it Hive?”
The Hives were dead. No one ever wanted to face those monsters again.
“Can’t tell. If it is a Hive sphere, it’s a magnitude eight.”
There was never a magnitude eight Hive sphere. There was never even a seven.
Targeting added, “Diameter of target is seven hundred kilometers.”
Calli felt the nerves of every man jack and jane on deck sparking. The air felt explosive.
Captain Carmel ordered in the voice of perfect calm, “Confirm Hive.” Then thought to add, “Do not ping.”
If the target really was a Hive sphere, bouncing anything off it would wake up a billion cubic kilometers of ravenous aliens.
Targeting asked, “Can I get a parallax, sir?”
Calli responded quickly. “Helm.”
“Helm. Aye.”
“Take us out a few light-minutes.”
“Speed, sir?”
“I don’t want to walk.”
Merrimack left orbit and jumped to FTL for a moment then jumped back down to space normal to give the ship’s instruments another angle on the plot.
Fear instantly vanished from Tactical and Tracking.
“We were looking at the plot on end, sir,” said Tactical.
Targeting added, “Target is a cylinder.”
Not Hive. All hands stepped down from alarm.
“Take us back to Zoe,” Calli ordered the Helm.
“Aye, aye, sir.”
“Mister Vincent. Tell me about my plot,” said Calli.
“It’s rotating,” said Marcander Vincent.
That would suggest a habitable vessel, using centripetal force for artificial gravity.
“Size?”
“Can’t get an exact dimension on the length. It’s a whole lot longer than it is wide.”
�
��Is it as big as Caesar’s ego?”
“Not that big, sir. It’s only the size of a minor continent.”
Targeting advised, “Captain, I don’t think that’s your carrier.”
“It’s big enough to be a generational ship,” said Calli. “ETA?”
“Never, sir,” said Targeting. “The vessel is moving away from the planet. If its destination was ever Zoe, it missed.”
“Distance,” Calli demanded.
“Five light-years.”
“Did it pass through the Zoen system? How close?”
Targeting and Tactical were both shaking their heads. “Current vector is not informative,” said Targeting. “Assuming no course correction, target did not enter the star system.”
“Then assume a course correction,” said Calli.
Marcander Vincent said, “Then—assuming constant current velocity—it could have been here five hundred years ago.”
“Can’t make that assumption,” said Calli. “Target could have changed speed and direction since then.”
The XO, Stuart Ryan, spoke up, “You’re thinking that carrier dropped off Captain Bligh and the orbs?”
Targeting spoke, “If that’s the case, sir, then they used to be traveling faster than they are now.”
Calli had gone quiet. Dingo Ryan prompted, “What are you thinking, Captain?”
“The continental ship is moving away from the planet. I don’t know how much of our resources I want to commit to chasing down old news,” Calli said.
The XO offered, “I can organize a couple rovers to reconnoiter the continental ship.”
Drone scouts were a minimal investment of resources.
Calli nodded. “Let’s do that.”
The drones had barely disappeared into FTL when a new ship popped into existence inside the Zoen system.
Tactical’s first thought was that drones had bounced back.
But this was a new plot arriving hot and slowing abruptly on approach to Zoe.
Tac reported, “Occultation four by eighty-nine by ten.”
“Friend or foe,” asked Captain Carmel.
“Negative IFF, and it’s a bloody Xerxes! Foe! Foe! Foe!” Marcander Vincent turned around at his station to look at her. “It’s The Ninth Circle. They’re here!”
23
“SECURE XERXES!” Captain Carmel ordered.
“Lost him!” said Targeting.
“We only had him for three seconds when he sublighted,” Tactical said. “He’s gone to stealth now.”
“Find him,” said Calli. “Assume he will try to enter the atmosphere. You’ll get three more seconds. Mister Ryan, scramble everything.”
The XO got on the loud com: “Battle stations. Pilots to Swifts. Scramble. Scramble.”
The summons to stations caught Kerry Blue playing basketball in the maintenance hangar. She hadn’t far to run to get to her Swift. She was sticky, sweaty, and thirsty. Her flight suit clung to her skin as she dragged it on. She climbed up to the cockpit speaking every foreign word she knew.
Her erk tossed a water bottle up to her as she was strapping into the cockpit. Loved that guy.
Kerry snapped on her dog collar. Made sure her landing disk was under her ass. Got the briefing through the speaker inside her helmet.
Target was a pirate Xerxes. Target was operating at full stealth. Target would be visible for seconds while attempting entry into atmo. Objective: space the pirate. Do not fire in the direction of the planet. A skimming shot along the horizon was required. Spread out.
The elevator jerked upward. Kerry was never ready for it. Bit her tongue. “Aw, c’mon, you’d think!” She rode her Swift up to the flight deck.
TR was going out with them. She heard him on the com: “Merrimack . This is Wing Leader. Confirm order, we are not trying to retrieve the Xerxes intact.”
Voice of the captain herself: “Do not preserve the Xerxes. I’m only interested in dead pirates.”
Kerry joined in the round of barking. That was an 89th Bat cheer for the captain.
And Kerry Blue’s Swift went screaming off the flight deck with her squadron.
She watched her sensors interpreting data into visual images on her monitors. When the pirate showed up, it would be on her instruments. She could guarantee it wouldn’t be a visual. The watch zone was immense.
Traveling through space, she always forgot how fu-normous planets were.
An advisory was coming over the com. Target will be harder to tag, harder to crack than usual. And Control reminded everyone—Wing, Battery, ship’s gunners—no stray shots in the atmo.
TR’s voice sounded over the com. Damn, his voice never failed to wake her up, heels to eyelashes. “Wing. This is Wing Leader. Stay low to the air. The only place target will appear is breaching outer atmo.”
“Wing Leader. This is Alpha One. What are we calling the top of the atmosphere?”
The line between space and atmosphere was enormously wide and about as fuzzy as lines ever got.
Control answered that one. “Wing. This is Merrimack. Set your minimum altitude at four hundred klicks above sea level.”
“Target sighted!”
Merrimack’s targeting system automatically fed the plot to all fighters. Any fighter in the southwest quadrant of the globe pulled the trigger.
“Mine!”
“Mine!”
“Got him! Got him! No, I don’t.”
“Grettaaaaaaah!”
Kerry Blue hadn’t even got off a tag. “Where’d he go? Did someone get him?”
“Wing. This is Merrimack. Target has jumped to FTL. Stay alert. He will make another attempt.”
Captain Carmel turned around on the command deck. “Tactical, talk to me.”
“Target is a real bastard to detect, sir,” said Marcander Vincent. “He’s scattering even his visual image. If he weren’t trying to enter atmo, none of our instruments would be picking him up at all.”
“And he’s slippery,” said Targeting. “Tags are sliding off. Dead shots are deflecting.”
“My Marines hit him?” Calli asked, surprised.
“Yes, sir. Yes, they did. No effect.”
Calli got on the ship’s intracom. “Engineering.”
“Engineering, aye.”
“Stand by energy hook to catch the wreckage if any starts to drop into atmo.”
Engineering: “Gimme wreckage, sir. I’ll catch it. Aye.”
“Merrimack to all ships, all gunners. We have trade.”
The Xerxes had made another appearance over the southern pole.
“Mine!” The Yurg, shooting. Shot deflected.
“Mine!” Big Richard got a tag on the target. The tag immediately slithered off.
“Mine!” Menendez fired without getting a tone. Hit nothing.
Icarus Iverson: “Cain! IFF just came on! Says that’s a civilian craft!”
Cain: “It’s a Xerxes, Icky.” Of course it had a civilian ident. “That’s the Ninth Bloody Circle! Take the shot!”
Many voices. Sounding on top of one another.
“Where’d he go? Where’d he go?”
“A dondé va?”
“Did he get through to atmo?”
“Wing. This is Merrimack. Negative escape to atmo. Target is still out here somewhere in full stealth. Keep watch on the atmospheric horizon.”
“Watch the horizon. Watch the horizon,” Kerry muttered, her send-com off. It was a whole frogging planet. The Swifts might as well be a handful of gnats guarding an elephant.
Leo, seated at Bagheera’s control console, wiped sweat from his upper lip. He jerked his fingers back through his dark hair. He had jumped the leopard back to FTL to take a breath. “We have a lot of company.”
It had all happened so fast. Leo didn’t like his performance back there. That truly snorted squids. But he and his brothers were still alive. That was something.
“How did this place get to be so popular?” asked Pallas, watching the monitor draw lines around the plane
t where the enemy plots were moving.
The fighters were traveling at sublight speeds. Still, they were a lot faster than bullets and just as easy to see. And their beam shots moved at speed of light. The fighters had converged on Bagheera in a heartbeat with a hail of tags and great flashes of beam fire.
The brothers couldn’t count them. The ship’s system was counting only thirty-seven discrete plots.
“They’re good shots,” said Leo, feeling as if he’d been physically pummeled. Fortunately, the Xerxes’ energy field was everything it was supposed to be.
“They’ve done this before,” said Nox, standing behind him.
“I’ve done all the simulations,” said Leo. “There wasn’t anything like this.” Ran the back of his hand across his upper lip again.
“That’s because the Xerxes is meant to repel pirates, not be the pirates,” said Nox. “You’re doing fine, Leo.” Gave his left shoulder a quick squeeze.
Leo replayed the computer record of the encounter, slower and illuminated, to show the brothers what the human eye could not see.
One of the attackers, a small one-man attack craft, crossed the leopard’s bow.
“Freeze that,” said Nox.
The image froze.
Nox felt cold. “Those are Swifts.”
“Significant of what?” Nicanor said testily.
“It’s a U.S. Fleet Marine attack craft. That model is carried by only two ships. Merrimack and Monitor.”
All eyes turned upward, as if the brothers might see the space battleship through the overhead.
Caesar did mention there might be a space battleship.
“Merrimack is here,” Nox said.
“Not Monitor?” Leo said, puzzled. How would Nox know the ship was one and not the other?
“It’s Merrimack,” Nox said.
“Find her,” said Nicanor.
It wasn’t hard. One plot was much larger than the other thirty-six. That ship was running dark on the night side of the world. Leo brought the image up on the monitor.
The ship’s upper and lower sails and her swept-back wings gave her the aspect of a barbaric spearhead. Her gun turrets swiveled, hunting. Her gun blisters were all open. Six huge engines gave her steroidal bulges. The Stars and Stripes were painted on her hull, alongside her name, Merrimack.