by R. M. Meluch
Kerry and the Marines had made the trip in a standard transport. The majestic battleships Merrimack and Monitor had been bagged and dragged through the Shotgun dark as dead carp. Usually the battleships’ arrival attracted a lot of attention, but Merrimack and Monitor had been smuggled in quiet this time. Most denizens did not even know the big ships were here.
The Marine transport ferried Kerry’s company through the historic district of Fort Ted, past clusters of antique stations that still revolved, past the gaudy districts of Chinatown and Ecstacy, and the blue ocean jewel sphere of Vwakikikik, more often called Squid ville. The Marines stared through cupped hands pressed to the clearports at grand hotels and casinos of the Starry Starry Way and the transparent-sided Eros Hotel where lovers coupled in the starlight. This was a high accident area among ferryboat traffic.
Cowboy and Dak howled to their own transport pilot: Stop, stop, stop, let me out.
Cackled at their cleverness. As if every bunch of Marines to pass Eros did not yell the same thing.
Passing within visual range of a Vwakikikikik ship, Cowboy planted his full moon in the transport porthole. The transport received an immediate message from the Vwakikikikik ship, and the pilot snarled back at Cowboy as he ran the message through the translator, “You get me written up, Marine, and I’ll have you serving with the squid!”
But the Vwakikikikik message only requested the name of the vision of loveliness glimpsed through the U.S. transport’s sixth starboard side porthole.
No one ever saw Cowboy look that shocked. He’d been sent up by a squid.
“Squids got humor!”
He was really, really impressed. Tried to get the pilot to send back, “Her name is Dak,” but the pilot was not playing.
Finally the transport docked at a hybrid station in the old town, a military core that had sprouted a lot of civilian appendages—shops, service centers, ferry docks.
The cavernous arrival concourse was a milling hive of beings coming and going, or just sitting in the middle of the deck.
Reg Monroe, carrying her few belongings, squinted at the thing parked in her path. “Is he doing what I think he’s doing?”
A big hairy musinot had plopped itself in the center of the concourse, just a’strumming on his old banjo.
Cowboy Carver clapped his hand over his eyes as he veered around the musinot. “Oh, jeez, bucko, put on some dignity!”
Kerry was staring in a different direction, pointing, “Arrans!”
Hazard Sewell followed her stare. “Glory be, so they are.”
Recognized them for their very tall willowy females clad to the eyes in soft robes, and the shorter red-brown males with their upright manes.
Knew them from the Myriad.
A cluster of three million stars in the Deep End where Roman expansion pushed into U.S. space. What a Pandora’s box that had been.
Shuddered to remember Merrimack’s hopeless stand against two full Legions and one wicked little Striker. Felt guilty for feeling grateful for the event that spared Merrimack and resulted in this.
Here was a shuffling train of evacuees. The Arrans were to be relocated to the dead Planet Xi. Arran plants and animals were even now being transplanted to Xi with its newly restored atmosphere. The relocation was an insanely huge undertaking. But the project had a certain romantic logic and the kind of humanitarian idealism that money sticks to, so funding had, for once, not been a problem. There had been an opposition by those who did not want the ancient site disturbed, but the detractors had been outshouted by the supporters and by the simple fact that thirty million refugees had to go somewhere.
Cowboy ducked and leaned, trying to see if he could make out any sign of breasts on the females. Dared Twitch to go feel one and find out.
Just because Twitch did not talk well did not mean he was stupid. He suggested Cowboy go back and help the musinot.
The Marines stopped at a cross-course, trying to navigate through all the distractions. Cowboy turned full round to follow the progress of a truly spectacular, tall woman with eleven miles of legs and a curtain of shining chestnut hair, in the company of a sloppy, sort-of attractive, very young man. “Hey! Isn’t that Mr. Carmel’s lawyer?”
Reg Monroe squinted. “Yeah. That’s Rob Roy Buchanan.” Wondering why he’d made the jump from Fort Ike to Fort Ted.
Dak looked, too. “Yeah. That’s Mr. Carmel’s lawyer. And look what he caught! That’s some hot—holy mother—that’s Mr. Carmel!”
No one was accustomed to seeing Commander Carmel in mufti. With her hair down and her skirt up, she was nearly unrecognizable.
Cowboy called, “Hey! Mr. Carmel!”
Her head turned. Saw a line of male Marines raising salutes.
You didn’t salute indoors, but they were just impressed as all hell.
Carmel just shook her head, a little annoyed, a little amused. Walked on.
She was no sooner out of sight when you’da sworn someone barked Eyes right! for the way all those jar-heads snapped round in unison whiplash in the other direction.
What spun ’em round was Hot Trixi Allnight, star of the dreambox. The interactive neuron ticklers activated all the appropriate nerve centers and made long black nights passable on deep space runs of months on end. Experiences in the dreambox programs—the expensive ones anyway—were nearly indistinguishable from real encounters. Only “nearly” because a virtual babe never called you a creep and demanded you take her home right now. The Navy provided its deep running battleships with the best.
All these men knew the touch, taste, smell, and weight of Trixi Allnight, the soft buffet of her peppermint breath, the tickle of her blond hair. The timbre of her soprano moans.
And here she was in the flesh.
The male Marines were jumping like crazed rabbits. Cowboy urgled: “It’s Trixi! It’s Trixi! And—” seeing Dak beside him, “—what the hell are you doing in my dreambox!”
Dak grinned stupidly. “We ain’t hooked into no dreambox, Toto. We are in for real Kansas.”
Of course Trixi had never seen any of them before in her life, but she was a consummate professional. She made eye contact, smiled as if delightedly surprised to see them again, and blew kisses. “Oh! Hello!” as if she knew them. Intimately.
She singled out awestruck Twitch Fuentes and gave her kittenish nose a wrinkle. “Oh, and you. You were so good!”
A shining red glow transformed Twitch, as if her saying so made it all real. The others hooted and heckled. Cowboy and Dak pummeled Twitch back to reality.
Carly Delgado and Kerry Blue, whom most of them knew well, really well, stood ignored like a pair of wet muddy boots after a long trek on a dirt world.
Carly curled a hard lip, said to Kerry, “Plastic mama ain’t got nothin’ on you, chica linda.”
Kerry appreciated Carly’s effort there, but still scoffed, comparing herself to the pale-pink, fluffy-blonde confection, “Oh, yeah. Right.”
“Yeah. Right,” someone passing behind her corrected firmly, not scoffing. Sounded like he meant it.
Kerry turned, but the only man back there was Colonel Steele, quick striding away, well down the concourse, and it couldn’t have been him.
Though he wasn’t gawking at Hot Trixi Allnight.
Naval engineers were in a panicked rush to devise a refit that could return Merrimack and Monitor to service as soon as possible, when Admiral Mishindi announced, “We got a break. Palatine has sued for a truce.”
“No!” Calli cried hard on the echoes of John Farragut’s roar, “No!”
The admiral regarded the pair indulgently as a hunter might two favored hounds. “And the president and the JC have accepted.”
Bringing another loud chorus of language, the kind Hazard Sewell did not like.
Admiral Mishindi weathered their outburst mildly. “I sympathize. But we need this.”
“No, we don’t!” said Farragut. “Admiral, we don’t. We just got a hole blown out of our defensive net. They got our codes.
They got my res sig, they turned two RBSs into boat anchors—”
“RBSs?” Mishindi looked to Calli for translation.
“Really Big Ships,” Calli supplied.
“—They’ve got these cyborg patterner things that can drive pea holes through a full force field. And they want a truce? That means they’re hurt worse than we are. We have to press the advantage now!”
“With what, Captain Farragut? You haven’t the Merrimack to fight with. You propose to throw rocks?”
“I’ll throw turnips if I have to.”
“Oh. That could work.”
“Just let me fight! We can’t have a truce now! They’ll use the time to build their Catapult and make copies of Monitor-class battleships to use against us!”
“And they’ve been caught committing war crimes,” Calli added.
The report from the autopsy Calli ordered on Napoleon Bright had come in. The exam had been a Sargasson one, the kind that found things that instruments of human make could miss. The seaweedy alien race had a gift for sensing wrongness, even among beings as altogether different as humans were to them.
The Sargasson had detected cells within Brighty’s brain that were “not right.” A DNA analysis of the identified cells produced a near match to Brighty’s code.
“Near?” Calli had said.
Near was another word for not. What the Sargasson found turned out to be cloned matter within Brighty’s head. Dead and decaying, the cells’ function could not be divined.
Calli had then ordered a Sargasson autopsy of Matthew Forshaw, but the area of Forshaw’s brain that corresponded to the area of Brighty’s corrupted cells was gone. It was the part of the head which the late captain’s suicidal shot had blown away.
And Calli had to wonder if some subconscious part of Matthew Forshaw had known this and moved his hand.
“How did you know?” the human medical examiner had then demanded of Calli.
“Brighty was XO of a Monitor-class battleship,” said Commander Carmel. “We don’t snap.”
The genetic tampering, the biological warfare, was a crime against humanity and a violation of the conventions of space warfare.
“They can’t call a truce,” Calli told Admiral Mishindi. “Not when I want to shoot the first one I see.”
“That will have to wait, Captain Carmel,” Mishindi said. “We’ll listen to their talk and rebuild as fast as we can.”
“Captain who?” said Calli.
“Oh, don’t look shocked, Cal,” said Farragut. “It’s in the bag.”
Promotion. The big one.
Calli had served as captain of ships since she was a lieutenant, but captain in fact—not a field rank—was something else. It was crossing the kind of crevasse that put you up where angels sing.
“No one announced it,” said Calli.
“The formal announcement is only waiting on your assignment,” said Mishindi. “And since it’s now out of the bag, I may as well tell you it’s hung between two—Monitor and Wolfhound. Monitor is, of course, the prestigious assignment—would be, if she were in any shape to go anywhere. The old wolf hunter is a bit long of tooth, but she’s a tough ship and ready to go now and I want you on board her as soon as you’re done here.”
“I’m ready to go right now,” said Calli. “What do I have left to do here?” She had no business in Fort Roosevelt.
“I’d like you to sit in on the first round of peace talks, Captain Carmel. As someone who knows Romans.”
“Here?” Farragut cried. “They’re coming here? That maxes it. Admiral!” he beseeched, all but on his knees. “Don’t agree to this. They have no interest in talking peace!”
“Neither do I, Captain Farragut. It remains—we need the time.”
Alarms blared fortress-wide: Roman ships at the perimeter.
Fighters and sentry Rattlers scrambled to intercept, launching with an amazing spray of hot trails that painted fortress space in Fourth-of-July-colored fire.
Fortress sentinels ordered the Roman ships to stop and they had done so.
By the time Farragut careered into fortress Ops, the Roman flagship had identified itself.
There was really no need. There was only one ship of that make.
“Oh, for Jesus, it’s the Gladiator.”
Not dark. Not trying to hide its presence. It was lit to proper menace, a dark lustrous bronze, big as the Colos seum, with the same blocky architectural lines designed to evoke awe. Romans had always a sense of style, which carried to the brute grandeur of their battleships. Even out there on a scale by which we are all puny, it intimidated.
Sentinels warned: Gladiator gets no closer, or we burn her.
The Romans objected to the rough treatment when they had come invited with peaceful intent.
“Peaceful intent? In that? They brought that here?”
“It’s not getting in,” Admiral Mishindi said matter-of-factly.
Even gunships of the United States’ closest allies could not approach Fort Ted without high-level clearance.
And over the com Mishindi said, “Park the gunboat, Triumphalis. Do not attempt to approach the star city, or you will be destroyed.”
You could hear amusement in the imperious voice as the Roman general pointed out that he was, in fact, stopped and waiting instruction.
Numa Pompeii was notified that ferries would bring the Roman diplomats into a secure station within the Fortress.
With that, the Fortress stepped down from full alert. That left a swarm of fighters on patrol around the Roman ships, but sent back to the rack anyone whose sleep cycle was now.
Mishindi allowed himself a relieved slouch in his seat. “No shooting. Thank God.”
“Amen,” said Farragut. “I’d’ve hated to miss it if this had turned into a real party.”
16
“CAPTAIN CARMEL, HOW do you say podexes?”
Calli looked to the Marine who had stepped forward. Others hung back, listening expectantly for the answer.
“It’s podices,” said Calli.
“Told you,” one of the hangers-back hissed to another.
Calli caught the look of alarm on Colonel Steele at his Marines’ sudden interest in Latin plurals. She told him, “They just want to make sure the Romans understand them when they call them assholes.”
Steele grunted, reassured, order restored to his universe. And in a moment, “What was that word again?”
Calli strode up the curving corridor of the old station, conversing with Captain Farragut and Rob Roy. A squad of Marine guards, which Colonel Steele had attached to her, marched behind.
Clearing the bend, she came face-to-face with the great, medaled boulder that was Numa Pompeii.
Everyone stopped, very still, very surprised.
The Roman general’s eyes flared with momentary startlement. Narrowed. He advanced on Calli slowly, a fuming bulk, as if he might scare her from her stance. Calli held her ground.
General Pompeii reached across his body, a motion like reaching for a sword hilt at his opposite hip, but with a slight bow as if the sword had stuck.
Abruptly, he straightened up, throwing his arm wide, the weight of his body behind it, backhanding Calli off her feet and into the bulkhead. She slid to the deck, and all guns behind her pointed at Numa Pompeii.
From her sprawl on the deck, Calli lifted a staying hand to her Marines. “I earned that one.” She rolled, groggily, to hands and knees, crawled to her feet. “Put the hardware away, boys.”
John Farragut passed her a handkerchief. She touched it to her nose. Blood.
Numa Pompeii’s heavy breaths in his massive chest exploded into thunderous speech. “You! Presumptuous little bitch! Don’t you ever think to use—”
“Hey!” she cut him off with a sharp, light-toned bark. Surprised him to silence. “You get either the slug or the sermon. You don’t get both. We are square. You keep talking, mister, I let them shoot.”
The Marines’ facial muscles ticked. Watched Numa’s m
outh. Wanted his lips to move so they could shoot him. Please, please, please, let us shoot him.
Farragut murmured aside, “Nose, Cal.”
She touched the handkerchief to the drop of blood about to fall from the tip of her nose.
Numa afforded the Marine squad a contemptuous glance. No fear in it. Asked Calli, “Are you laying all of them or just him?” A sideways nod to Farragut.
“Hey!” Farragut this time. “You. Me. Outside.”
Outside would be anywhere without military witnesses.
Farragut’s bright blue eyes took on an eager gleam. Numa had half again John Farragut’s considerable mass, but Farragut was ten years younger. And John Farragut could be crazy.
Then Numa drew back with a near smile and courtly apology—to John Farragut. “I overstepped. I have no off-field quarrel with you, Captain Farragut.”
Numa Pompeii stepped around the Marine squad and continued on his way.
Rob Roy, who was quite white, standing flat to the bulkhead, blurted, “What was that about!”
“I, uh—” Calli sniffed. Daubed her upper lip to see if the bleeding had stopped. “Took his name in vain.”
Her slender, intellectual boyfriend—and all the other males present—were taking measure of themselves against the Roman mountain. Coming up short. Calli overheard the edge of daunted admiration from one of the Marines, “That was one big—”
“Hey, Cal, couldn’t you have found someone bigger to torque off?”
“Be careful, John,” said Calli. “They don’t just feed those boys vitamins on Palatine. He would have taken you.”
Farragut drew up in insult. “You have so little faith in me?”
“I know Numa.”
“I can take him,” said Farragut. Had to. John Farragut did not readily hold a grudge, but he had one against Numa Pompeii. Owed him for Matty Forshaw. “Get those Red Crosses and white flags out of here; I’ll take him.”
Palatine had sent a number of eloquent ambassadors to Fort Theodore Roosevelt for the talks. Some of them sounded as if they earnestly believed they were here to negotiate a lasting peace.