by R. M. Meluch
Calli surrendered her palmscreen. “Take it to hell.” And marched away.
“Triumphalis!”
Numa Pompeii did not have a visual, but he heard Novo salute the com, fist to chest.
Numa gave a weary growl. “Is Callista Carmel trying to meddle with Monitor’s controls?”
“Yes, Triumphalis.”
“What—” Numa pressed his hand to his forehead, trying to force this inquiry to make sense. He found he could not even phrase a proper question. “What—exactly—is she doing and how?”
“I’m not sure, domni. Shall I put her on the com?”
The general’s silence was brief, stunned, volcanic.
General Numa Pompeii felt he’d been hit in the face with a hammer.
Put her on the com? She was there?
Who knew a woman with looks like that could have such balls on her? He was hard put not to laugh. Decurion Carmel. Did laugh. It was horrible.
Numa Pompeii thundered, “Callista Carmel is a U.S. Naval officer, you bubonic squid! Detain her!”
8
CALLI CARMEL TRIED not to look hurried as she hurried through the passageways of Monitor. At any tick now, Merrimack would summon her sister ship out of soft dock. And Calli’s decurion persona, if not Calli herself, would come apart as Monitor tore free from Daedalus Station.
The air lock in sight, Calli checked her breathing. She must be the picture of calm crossing into Daedalus Station.
Survival instinct howled at her to run. She maintained her purposeful measured march.
Heard running steps behind her. “Decurion! Decurion!” It was the praefect, Rubius Siculus.
Calli kept walking, face forward, cursing inwardly. She shouted up, so her voice would carry behind her, in her most annoyed voice, “What is it, Praefect?”
Her boot sole touched the softer surface of the docking tube. Almost, almost, almost there. But not there. She pictured, very clearly, this tube suddenly flapping like a withering balloon and spitting her into space. She could only imagine that kind of cold. Wondered, chilled, how long she would have to endure it before it killed her.
She was halfway through the soft dock when the tube jerked rigid, straight flat, under her boots. It had started.
Calli caught her balance, swore, broke into an all-out run for her life. Heard Rubius Siculus stumbling after her.
She launched herself into a flying dive at the air lock. Flew through the hatch into Daedalus. She grasped at a handhold as the structural groans shook her throat. Her long hair lifted, fluttering, in the bitter cold. Klaxons blared the decompression warning. Separation was imminent. The tube was tearing. She had to get this hatch shut, now.
The docking tube bucked. The airflow became an outward roar. The praefect was right there. His fingers clawed, white, at the station hatchway.
She might have kicked him back into the tube and shut him out, none the wiser. Instead she whirled, grabbed Rubius Siculus’ gray uniform with her free hand, hauled him in with strength she didn’t have, and slammed the hatch shut with both of them on this side of it as the soft dock tore away and Monitor pulled free.
Calli had fallen to the deck of the small compartment, gasping. Eardrums numb.
Alarms sounded far away and gauze-covered. She touched her wrist to her upper lip. Drew her wrist back bloody. She had blown a sinus.
Calli rasped (sounding alarmed was easy), “Why is that ship moving?”
The praefect pulled himself up to his quaking knees, confused. “I don’t know.”
Calli lifted her com to her mouth and hailed her Accipiter—in Latin—“What is happening?”
The response, keeping character, came back also in Latin: “Domna!” The tech refrained from thanking God Calli was alive. Said instead: “Monitor is moving apart from Daedalus Station. Shall we pursue?”
“Wait for me,” Calli ordered. She rose precariously to her feet. Tried the inside hatch. It was locked.
All the station hatches between her and her Accipiter would now be sealed. Standard procedure in a Roman emergency. The chambered nautilus in action.
She turned to the praefect, “Rubius, can you open this?”
He seemed about to comply when his com shrieked alive: “Breach! Breach! We have a security breach!”
Rubius Siculus checked the caller’s ID on his com. One Rufus Novo. Not sure who that was. The praefect shut him off with a mutter. “Astute bastard.” Alarms banged at his eardrums. Breach was damnably obvious.
He turned to Calli, locked a meaningful gaze straight into her eyes. He opened his mouth rather helplessly as if searching for words. Calli was horrified that he might be about to thank her for saving his life.
The praefect’s com reactivated. Novo again, overriding the shutoff: “Callista Carmel is a U.S. agent! Detain her!”
Rubius Siculus, stunned, answered softly, “Was that an order, Novo?”
“The Triumphalis Numa Pompeii told me himself! Arrest her! Arrest her!”
Rubius Siculus turned wide, amazed eyes to Calli.
Calli made a droll moue, as if this were all too peculiar for comment.
The praefect clicked the com off, opened another channel. “Security. Brig Rufus Novo.” And to Calli he concluded, “This Novo must be in league with those pirates making off with Monitor.”
She nodded. “That would make sense. Distraction tactics.”
The praefect signaled his station defenses, “Contain Monitor! The ship is in hostile hands!”
Calli spoke low, with a touch to the praefect’s forearm, “Careful, Rubius. They have hostages. Not all those men still on board Monitor can be enemy agents.” It stung her to say so, when she knew that exactly no one aboard Monitor was an enemy agent. They were all loyal to Rome, and they were all dead.
The Praefect nodded, accepting the warning.
Calli tugged at the interior hatch. “Can you override this? I need to get to my Accipiter at once.”
The praefect complied eagerly. He opened all the doors that stood in her way.
Later, when he realized he had been taken, Rubius Siculus would think she had saved his life just so she would have someone to open the doors.
And that should have been the reason. But that was not why she had done it. She had not been thinking that far ahead at the moment. His was simply a life within her reach.
An enemy life, but there.
She had just spaced all the Roman techs left on board Monitor. Death was common in war, and she had killed before, but it was always cleaner when you knew your enemy and he was shooting back at you. This made her feel like a thug. She had done it because she must. She would never brag about this one if she lived to tell about it.
Rubius Siculus opened the last door for her, and Calli escaped from Daedalus Station. Her Accipiter immediately joined the Roman pursuit of Monitor. Calli hailed the dead ship for show: “Those persons controlling Monitor, respond immediately or you will be destroyed.”
Her other four stolen Accipitridae, as if answering a call for reinforcements, took up places in the rear of the pursuit group.
The heavy patrol which Calli had bluffed past on her way to Daedalus Station moved now on an intercept course to head off Monitor’s flight.
Monitor veered ninety degrees to the port and eighty degrees off the horizon. Showed her heels to the patrol.
“Enemy has powered up sternside weapons,” someone in the pursuit group reported.
The Romans had off-loaded all hard ordnance from the U.S. battleship, leaving Monitor with energy weapons only. At speeds faster than light, energy weapons were only good straight back. Aft was the only shot Monitor had.
Which was well. If Monitor had only one shot, no one would wonder at her clumsy aim and, from that, figure out that the fleeing battleship was operating under remote guidance.
As Monitor’s rear firing weapons powered up, the chase ships flared to vacate the direct stern position, losing ground as they did.
The patrol commander orde
red all chase vessels to acquire Monitor.
“They have hostages,” Calli warned, trying to keep the chase ships from opening fire.
“Hostages are forfeit.”
Calli dutifully signaled her Accipitridae, “Target enemy. Stand by to fire.”
“Target acquired,” her Accipitridae acknowledged. “Standing by.”
The patrol commander, just now discovering that he had Accipitridae in the rear of his posse, transmitted in annoyance: “Accipitridae, are you in this?”
Accipitridae were the second fastest ships Rome had. Their speed came at the cost of their armor. The commander must have thought Calli’s fast ships were cowering back there.
“Message received, Domni,” Calli acknowledged. “We shall engage the enemy.”
“At your leisure!” the patrol commander snarled over the com.
Calli signaled her ships: “Accipitridae, fire upon the enemy.”
9
MISSILES FROM THE Accipitridae slammed into the Roman sterns.
Accipitridae hadn’t much punch—morning star warheads in this case—but their targets’ defensive fields were concentrated toward the fore, so the morning stars hit hard. The detonations rattled the ships’ systems, and hurled the whole patrol into confusion while the Accipitridae sprinted away as only Accipitridae could and Monitor sprang to threshold acceleration.
At the same time Praefect Rubius Siculus at Daedalus Station called for assistance. “All ships! We are under attack!”
The patrol commander, loathe to let go his quarry, demanded, “Identify your attacker, Daedalus!”
“It’s the Monitor!”
A horrid chill engulfed the Roman patrol. Already flinching from each other, anticipating another shot in the back, now it seemed the enemy held the secret to the unthinkable.
Monitor had been running away from them—fast. For Monitor to be pounding now at Daedalus’ gates far to the rear could only mean that Monitor had displacement capability.
No ship could displace on its own.
Could not be. Must not be.
Was not.
The patrol commander looked at the ominous spearhead image relayed from Daedalus Station’s sensors. The signature shape of a U.S. Monitor class battleship. All its gunports flashing. He shouted the sudden dawning:
“That’s not the Monitor. That’s Merrimack!”
“We need assistance,” Daedalus Station called. “We are under heavy attack! They—oh, God. They have Valerius . Valerius is opening fire on us!”
Valerius was a hollow ship, declawed and down to only one fang. But the Romans did not know that. To those looking up her torpedo tubes, the Roman battleship appeared its redoubtable self.
The patrol commander snapped back, “Lock your damned perimeter, Daedalus! You’re impregnable. The enemy is not trying to take the station, you ass. They can’t! They’re just trying to lure us back so Monitor can escape.”
The patrol commander was right, but it was already too late. It only took a moment’s confusion for a combatant to lose contact with an FTL target in space. You cannot do battle with a faster enemy who won’t stay the field. This had become a battle against a scatter of birds. Monitor had gained an insurmountable lead. And with that, Merrimack and its puppet ship Valerius lifted the siege of Daedalus Station and fled in two different directions.
In the Deep Empty at the fringe of extragalactic space, Monitor and Merrimack met up and traveled side by side. With no backdrop of stars and interstellar matter against which to occult, they were virtually invisible.
Captain Farragut reactivated his ship’s resonator long enough to send a two-word message to the Joint Chiefs on her old harmonic: CODES COMPROMISED.
Anything further Mack might send on her own harmonic, Rome would detect, too, so it was worse than pointless to say more.
Then he shut the resonators back down. Outer space reverted to its primal vastness, leaving them alone and blind as wooden ships in the middle of a merciless sea.
In the captain’s Mess aboard Merrimack, while killing a bottle of Kentucky bourbon, talk turned to fighting sails. “How far could they see, the old ships?” said Calli. “To Earth’s horizon. Eighteen miles?”
“A little farther, I think,” said Farragut. “If they climbed a mast.”
The lower the level of bourbon in the bottle, the stronger gravity got, so they were, both of them, flat on their backs on the deck.
“How far can we see without a res scan?” Calli asked.
“Accurately? No more than a light-second.” 186,000 miles.
“Oh, hell, John. We are out here.”
“Aye, matey.” The glasses were abandoned. They were passing the bottle now. “Ye make a fine pirate, Mr. Carmel. Here’s to ye.”
“To Numa,” Calli countered. “I could not have done it without him.”
“If you say so.” John Farragut passed the bottle. “How did you know this was Numa’s project?”
“Numa Pompous Ass? Had to be. Has his big thumb-prints all over it. Somebody said the word ‘arrogant’ and I suddenly knew. Returning Monitor’s command staff—that was pure Numa.”
The familiarity in her voice raised John Farragut’s eyebrows. “Cal, you mean to tell me General Numa Pompeii himself taught you at the Imperial Institute?”
“No. He didn’t. He was an instructor of several of my classes—the Institute gets the really big guns in peace-time—but I can’t say he taught me. I listened to what he taught the others in the class. Me? He looked over my head. Talked around me. Ignored me. I can’t say Numa ever instructed me.”
“Because you’re Terran?”
“That. And.” She pressed her full, perfect lips into a hard, perturbed line. “I actually asked him that. I caught him in the hall. I think I had to grab him to make him stop and face me.”
Farragut broke in, merrily dubious, “He’s pretty big, isn’t he?”
“He’s very big. I was pissed. I had smoke coming out of my ears. Don’t laugh at me, John.”
Farragut hid his smile, but crinkles of mirth betrayed him round his blue eyes. “I’ve never seen you this torqued.”
“You’ve never seen me this drunk. And I was mad. The man would not teach me. I finally made him tell me why.”
“And Numa said?”
“Numa gave me this slow once-over look, head to ass, and with this pissy smile said, ‘You will never need to know anything.’ ”
“He has a point.”
“John!” She smacked him on the arm, calling him traitor with his own name.
“Oh, for Jesus, Cal, do you own a mirror?” He had to stop her from emptying the bottle on his head. “Whoa, that’s good bourbon. I never said you weren’t the best exec ever to run a battleship. But he’s right. You never needed to know how to tie your shoes. Much less how to steal a battleship out of a secure Roman installation in the Deep End.”
Calli lay back. The compartment had become blissfully fuzzy. “I only got away with it because Lu Oh was right.”
Farragut shook his head, puzzled. Lu Oh? Right? “That you’re a Roman spy?”
“That my plan was lunatic. We just caught Daedalus with their trousers round their knees. They should have been better defended.”
Farragut agreed. “So where are all their big guns?”
“They’re busy elsewhere. On something more important.”
They both let the silence gather in. Afraid to think.
What could be more important than defending Daedalus Station?
“Shotgun,” said Farragut at last.
Calli nodded. “Rome’s building a Catapult. You know they are. Somewhere other than where we were looking for it.”
“We’ve got to get ourselves refit before that project goes operational, or it’ll be us caught with our trousers round our knees.”
They sobered as they drank, facing the peril of getting home. “The Romans have our codes,” said Calli. “They have the schematics for our ships. They’ve forced us off our regula
tion harmonic and our IFF. They’ve got all of Monitor’s hard ordnance. And we made them look stupid. It would be a mistake to assume that they are stupid. They’re going to hunt us down, John. And if they can’t catch us alive, they will kill us. You know there’s got to be a decree out there now that Monitor and Merrimack shall not see home again.”
“Never paid much never mind to Roman decrees,” said Farragut. Gave a leonine yawn.
As long as Monitor and Merrimack stayed out here in open space, they were safe from any hunter. They were also useless.
Their hunters would need a pinch point to make intercept.
“They’ll be looking to jump us on approach to Fort Ike,” said Farragut.
Fort Eisenhower was the only installation in the Deep End big enough, secure enough, to hold the battleships. The only other suitable installations lay a three-month journey across the Abyss.
Farragut nodded to himself, sure he was right: “They think we’ll head for Fort Ike.”
“So what we’re really going to do is . . . ?” Calli left the blank for Farragut to fill in.
“We’re going to Fort Ike.”
Their trail split in three.
Monitor would continue on under dead tow of the Marine LRS under command of Calli Carmel. With her went Monitor’s two surviving officers—Commander Napoleon Bright and Lieutenant Commander Jorge Medina—and two squads of Marines. Undermanned and feebly armed, Monitor would be an easy target if found, but for most of the journey Monitor would be running where she would be impossible to find, up here in the extragalactic dark above the disk of the Milky Way. The LRS would drag Monitor the long way around, overshooting Fort Ike, to make their approach from the Abyss side of the fortress.
By then, Captain John Farragut with Merrimack, carrying all the Roman prisoners, should have reached Fort Ike on a tortuous course. Upon arrival, he would send armed chase ships into the Abyss to meet up with Monitor and escort her in to the fortress.
On the third path would travel hollow Valerius and all the captured Roman Stigs and Accipiters, unmanned, under control of a computer program. If that flotilla made it to Fort Ike, good. If they were recaptured, then at least they would not take Merrimack or Monitor down with them.