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

by R. M. Meluch

  And Nox. Nox was flash-tempered and unpredictable and too interested in Patrick’s wife.

  Something about my wife attracts Farraguts.

  After Faunus got his panpipe tuned, he made himself a crown out of local vines and broke into Aaron Rose’s wine cellar. Faunus came out waggling four bottles. “They’re holding out on us, frateri!”

  The brothers gathered where Faunus led, to a long table under a tarp where Glenn, Patrick, Jose Maria, and Aaron Rose were sitting.

  Faunus thumped down the bottles and leaned in to Aaron’s face. “Aren’t you?”

  Aaron Rose, the amateur vintner, warned nervously, “Uh, that batch is an experiment. I really can’t promise that’s even drinkable.”

  It looked as though Dr. Rose feared the pirates would kill him if the wine was bad. It was a reasonable fear.

  “Where’s the corkscrew?” Faunus boomed.

  Nox reached for one of the bottles. “I’ll open it. Let’s see what happened to Schroedinger’s cat.”

  Patrick was unclear on the details of Schroedinger’s famous experiment except for the part everyone knew. Dr. Rose said it, looking ill, “That experiment sometimes ends with a dead cat.”

  “Yes, it does,” said Nox, ominous.

  “I believe the experiment was theoretical,” Jose Maria offered.

  “I prefer the practical,” said Faunus, grinning.

  “Physics are fun,” said Nox. He set the wine bottle on the table edge. He checked it for level. Then he took all the rings off his right hand.

  Nox gave the rings to Glenn to hold. Then he lined up a knifehand strike on the bottle neck below the cork.

  His torso moved in a slow twist through a couple practice passes. The brothers’ chuckles rumbled.

  They started up a low chant: “Nox! Nox! Nox!”

  Ready, Nox put up his hand for silence.

  His body coiled back, his right hand cocked behind his head. Then he unleashed his massed power. His leading arm flew round first as a counterweight, his right hip thrust the momentum through the turn of his body, like a major leaguer swinging mightily for the fences. The bottle’s neck sheared clean before the edge of his right hand. The bottle mouth, with the cork still in it, bulleted out of the pavilion. Nox’s lips pulled back in a white snarling grin.

  His hand was unscathed.

  The brothers thumped the tables, hailing his success.

  Nox put out his hand to Glenn for his rings. She spilled them into his palm.

  Nox held up the opened bottle toward Dr. Rose, softly menacing. “Here, kitty.”

  Apparently the life or death of the vintner hung on the quality of the contents.

  Olive-skinned Aaron Rose turned ghastly pale. Couldn’t move.

  Jose Maria stepped forward in Aaron’s stead. “Are you a physicist, Nox?”

  Nox said, “I know enough to be dangerous.”

  Jose Maria leaned his nose over the cutting edge of the bottleneck. He sniffed. “The cat lives.”

  It wasn’t until Nox threw back his head, poured wine into his own mouth, and confirmed the verdict that Aaron Rose passed out with relief.

  The brothers collected more bottles of the wine and took their party elsewhere.

  Left behind under the tarp, Patrick, Glenn, and Jose Maria revived Dr. Rose. They had only water to offer him, which was probably a good thing.

  Dr. Rose asked, “Would they have killed me if the wine was bad?”

  “Don’t ever want to know,” said Patrick.

  Trying to push past his terror, Aaron Rose told Jose Maria conversationally, “I never understood Shroedinger’s cat.”

  “The problem is the cat,” said Jose Maria.

  Glenn blinked up at him. “You’re serious?”

  “The cat is too big.”

  “You’re not serious.”

  “I am. At issue is decoherence. A cat is a complex system, subject to interference from its surroundings and even from itself. It is not an isolated quantum object, and the premise that a cat can exist in two states at once, both living and dead, is wrong.”

  “You don’t know cats,” said Glenn.

  “Apparently not,” Jose Maria admitted.

  Inga lifted her head from her paws, looking around for cats. Glenn hadn’t noticed her under the table.

  “I suppose that is why it is not Schroedinger’s dog,” Jose Maria said. “One always knows where one stands with dogs. Ah, there’s the sun.”

  The sun had come out from behind the clouds.

  “What makes Schroedinger’s illustration unworkable is that the state of the cat inside the box is either alive or dead before Schroedinger lifts the lid and observes it. Even though he is leaving the fate of the animal to a subatomic event, the only uncertainty here is in Schroedinger’s mind, not in the state of the cat. This is not the case with quantum objects, which exist in two states at once. Is a photon a particle or is it a wave? The answer is yes. It is a particle. It is a wave. It is both until one observes it; and then the observation itself forces the decision. What the quantum object is depends quite literally on how you look at it.

  “The observation of one aspect renders the other aspect unknown and unknowable. There is no equivalent of quantum behavior in the macroscopic world.”

  Oh, yes there is. Glenn turned her head in the direction Nox had gone. She could hear a panpipe playing. There is.

  The clokes came out that evening. Clokes only ever came out at night or when the day was overcast. They didn’t like sunlight.

  The pirates had demanded to be notified next time the clokes showed up at the edge of camp. The xenos sent Jose Maria to be the messenger.

  When the brothers followed Jose Maria out to see, the xenos returned to their tents. They left a red light aimed out toward the forest. The clokes didn’t seem to notice the red light.

  The pirates moved silently.

  “You need not be quiet,” Jose Maria said at a conversational volume. “Only do not move quickly.”

  “They can’t hear us?” Leo asked, oddly compelled to whisper.

  “No ears,” said Patrick Hamilton.

  Faunus squinted between the trees. Scowled. “I’ve seen prettier cases of gangrene.”

  “What do the clokes want here?” Nox asked.

  “They want us dead,” said Glenn.

  And it was too easy feel the same way about them.

  Drone surveillance craft had been streaming sensor data from the distant cloke generational ship back to Merrimack continuously. Computer programs sifted through the mass of data to flag readings of interest.

  Commander Ryan brought Captain Carmel the status report.

  “Life on board?” Captain Carmel asked.

  “No, sir. Not yet. And it’s not looking likely. The drones detected a lot of dead cloke bodies. The major find is the presence of res chambers.”

  “That is major,” Calli agreed.

  One never expects a sublight culture to have resonant communications.

  “Are we sure that’s what we found?” said Calli.

  “Yes, sir,” said Ryan. “The res chambers aren’t sending and they’re not receiving. But they’re functional.”

  “What’s the harmonic?”

  “Undetermined. We can see the designation of the harmonic loaded into the cloke res chamber, but we can’t translate those alien symbols into anything we can dial into from one of our own res chambers. The boffins did get the drones to send a ping from one cloke chamber on one of our own harmonics. The other cloke chambers picked it up. So we know the units really are res chambers, and we know they work. The boffins have a drone monitoring the chambers for any incoming messages, but so far, except for our ping, they’re silent. Looks like everyone’s dead and nobody from the hometown is trying to reach them.”

  On the long trek toward the LEN expedition camp, the Marines advanced to a dying bog. It was a sunken area of gray-white pillars of dead tree trunks spiraling up from black ground. It might have been a once-upon-a-time
lake. It was just damp and dead now. Dried algae mats and layers of fallen reeds made the walking soft, like on a bed of pine needles but not as good smelling.

  Their entourage of foxes sniffed the brackish air. They hummed and tried to lead the Marines off in another direction. The foxes didn’t want to go there. They wouldn’t follow.

  “Should we pay attention to our scouts?” Cain asked Colonel Steele.

  Steele marched back to where the foxes were. The animals had sat down, watching their friends go. They looked confused. The white fox, Fluffy, stood on her hind legs, her head down, her muzzle on her chest, her paws folded over her pouch.

  “What do you think got into the fur heads?” said the Yurg. “Do you think there’s something bad here?”

  “They think so,” said Cain. “And they know the place better than we do.”

  “It can’t be scyllas,” said Steele.

  Scyllas were water monsters. And the foxes didn’t look near as frantic as they had when the scyllas or the cave monsters were around. But they were scared.

  “I don’t like that they’re scared,” said Steele.

  “I don’t see anything,” said Asante. “There’s nowhere for any monsters to hide really.”

  The area was flat decaying ground with tall gray spikes in it.

  “The foxes just don’t like the smell,” said the Yurg.

  “Neither do I,” said Cain.

  “We need to get closer to the LEN camp,” said Steele. “A lot closer.” He didn’t want to detour around the stinking ground without a good reason. He signaled Merrimack to get their view of the terrain.

  Merrimack could detect nothing menacing in the area. Steele ordered the squad forward.

  “It smells clokey,” said Carly Delgado, shouldering her field pack.

  “You think there’s something bad here?” said Dak, sniffing.

  “Where?” asked Rhino.

  And Dak dropped. Straight down.

  He’d stepped in a hole, and his leg was in it now, up to his groin.

  “Man down!” Carly cried. “Dak’s in a hole!”

  Asante ran forward. “Dak! How deep is it?”

  “How should I know! Longer than my leg!” Dak yelped. “Just glad I didn’t land on my boys!”

  Twitch and Rhino moved in, took hold of Dak’s beefy arms, and hauled him out of there.

  Asante shone a light down the hole.

  The squad gathered round.

  Cain Salvador said, “What’s it look like?”

  “It’s a hole, Cain,” said Asante.

  Steele barked, “Spread out.”

  And the ground gave way under all of them.

  Suddenly Marines were scrabbling, scurrying up the sliding dirt, falling in. Earthen walls collapsed as men clawed at them.

  Steele planted a boot in the ground, and it kept going down and got stuck. An air pocket broke underneath him. He dropped. Black clods filled in from above. He couldn’t move his legs. Soil dropped on his head, spilled in his face. He shook his head. Spat. Couldn’t lift his com to call for rapture. He didn’t have his displacement collar on, but some of his squad might. He could get some of them out of here.

  He couldn’t. He couldn’t open his mouth. Couldn’t open his eyes. Losing the light.

  Knew someone had got clear of the sinking ground. Voices called to those going under.

  He heard his name in Kerry Blue’s voice.

  Thought as the light died, Don’t never say, Till death do us part.

  Kerry Blue found the solid rim. Watched the alien earth consume her squad. She lay down flat as if on the edge of a breaking ice floe. She clawed at the dirt with her hands. Her hands never looked so small. Even the pitiful amount of soil she did move immediately slid back down from where she dragged it.

  Hurry, hurry, hurry. It didn’t take much earth to crush a man. She leaned farther over the edge. Hauled armfuls of soil up toward her. Reached down for more. Balance shifted forward onto her hands. The ground gave way under her hands. Air pocket! She fell in, hands and head first, hips following over the rim.

  The ground packed in around her.

  29

  SOMETHING TORE KERRY’S pant legs. Hands that were not quite hands closed hard on her hips and pulled. Made her grunt. Scarcely moved her. Her field pack anchored her in the ground.

  Something slicing like box cutters at the straps. Another tug at her hips. Her teeth scooped up dirt. Filled her mouth. Stuffed her nostrils. She was moving up and backward, chest squeezed.

  She broke to open air. Exhaled hard, expelling earthen plugs. She coughed, snorted. Inhaled. Coughed again. Spat. Tears washed her eyes. She blinked and blinked.

  Through a blur of tears she saw dirt flying in arcing sprays. Rooster tails of it rose up from the sinkhole. Furry tails, held straight up like flags, marked the source of each fountain. The foxes were digging like sons of vixens.

  Kerry moved around the rim of solid ground to see where the white fox, Fluffy, was working like a machine. Kerry wanted to get down in there with her but knew she would just be in the way.

  She watched, helpless. Seconds passed in lifetimes, like an approach to light speed. Please please please.

  White paws unearthed a broad white hand. Springy blond hair lifted off the skin that looked bluish pale.

  Kerry jumped down into the pit, stumbled toward him.

  The white fox was scooping dirt away from his chest. Kerry Blue uncovered his face. It was pasty, his brow pinched, eyes shut hard, lips a hard line.

  Eyelids flickered without opening. His mouth opened, his chest rose inhaling. He snorted dirt from nostrils.

  Cursed.

  Tears splashed down on his cheek.

  TR Steele cracked an eyelid. Saw Kerry and the fox.

  He croaked at Kerry, “Everyone else out of here?”

  Kerry immediately moved over to help uncover someone else, who turned out to be Dak.

  Kerry knew Fluffy would get Thomas out of here. Tears streamed from her eyes, not just from the grit.

  When all the Marines were standing, sitting, or lying on solid ground around the sinkhole, and the foxes stopped digging, Colonel Steele drew himself up to attention. Tried to. Fluffy stood up, planted her paws on his chest and licked his face. “Yeah, okay,” he growled, gave her a quick scratch behind the ears, and pushed her off of him. “Good dog. Marines! By the numbers!”

  “Alpha One, here!” Cain yelled, then, nudging Dak, “You’re up, you boon!”

  “Oh. Yeah. Alpha Two, here!”

  Rhino: “Alpha Three, here! My pack’s not.”

  Carly: “Alpha Four, here.”

  Twitch: “Alpha Five, here.”

  Kerry Blue: “Alpha Six, here.” And because Asante was still gagging and spitting, Kerry said, “Alpha Seven’s here too.”

  The Yurg: “Baker Team all here, sir!” Added, “Some of our stuff is not.”

  “Like my shovel,” said Big Richard.

  “How the hell do you bury a shovel?”

  TR Steele contained his internal tremors and mentally beat himself up. He’d almost lost his squad. His men could have been crushed. Easily.

  He relied too much on personal fields to keep his Marines safe. PF’s deflected beams and projectiles only. There was a lot more out here that could kill you than beams and projectiles. The pirates of The Ninth Circle showed everyone that.

  And then there was Kerry Blue. TR Steele was trying not to think about Kerry Blue. He felt stark terror when he thought about Kerry Blue. He never used to feel fear.

  So here he was pretending he hadn’t felt as if he’d had a rib torn out back there when he’d heard her screaming for him. He was not looking at Kerry Blue. Knew where she was. He always needed to know where she was. He really should beach her.

  Yet he felt he couldn’t breathe if she weren’t here.

  He looked down into the sinkhole. The bottom had dropped at least two meters. The skeletal trees were still in place, the tops of their roots exposed. The w
alls of the crater were pocked with holes the diameter of basketballs.

  “Tunnels!” said Cain.

  “This place is shot with cloke tunnels!” said Icky Iverson.

  “Explains why we never see them,” said the Yurg.

  “They’re underground!”

  “There’s no conduit. Those are just naked tunnels,” said Taher.

  “Sure those aren’t wormholes?” said Kerry Blue. “I mean for really big worms?”

  Rhino said, “Why do we think these are cloke tunnels?”

  “Are you breathing the same skat I am?” said Asante with his shirt collar pulled up over his mouth and nose.

  “Delgado said it when we first got here,” said Cain. “It smells clokey.”

  “If it’s clokes, they’ve come a long way from their spaceship,” said Colonel Steele. “They had to cover the same distance we did. Addai! How many clicks out are we?”

  Asante checked. “About a buck and a quarter, sir.”

  Steele wondered how many clokes there really were. Their spaceship wasn’t that big, yet there were a lot of openings in the dirt walls.

  The Marines stood around the rim of the sinkhole, wondering if it was safe to climb down into the crater to search for their gear.

  Steele hailed Merrimack to get a sounding of the solidity of the crater floor and the location of all tunnels that could undermine their path.

  Merrimack sent the map. Tracking also sent Asante the precise coordinates of the Marines’ buried equipment.

  Retrieving their stuff was easy. All a Marine had to do was start digging at a spot, and a fox jumped down to take over. They retrieved field packs, landing disks, swords, canteens. A shovel.

  Fluffy ate a package of C-Rats.

  The foxes leaped back out of the crater. They cleaned their fur and their claws, then started back the way they’d come at a dogtrot.

  Finding themselves not being followed, the foxes circled back round to the Marines. The looks on their alien faces clearly said, Can we GO now?

  Steele ordered his squad, “Wear your LDs on your backs. D-collars around your necks. D-gear will be turned on at all times.”