Wolf Star (Tour of the Merrimack #2)

by R. M. Meluch

  And then there was Numa. A big, brawny, upholstered rock. His voice could be deep, bellowing thunder or a quiet, authoritative baritone. Numa was in every way larger than life, a hard-living, caber-tossing, hammer-throwing man’s man, whom Romans loved and Calli loathed. He could be charming as hell. Wielded confidence like a steamroller. Everything out of General Pompeii’s mouth was fact. The man had no opinions. This was the voice of God.

  Admiral Mishindi passed a rhetorical note to Calli during the proceedings. What the hell is he doing here?

  Calli felt like a cheating student, sneaking a glance at the com on the back of her hand under the table to read Mishindi’s note.

  It continued: I know it’s his battleship that brought the ambassadors, but what is a general doing in peace talks? Talking! Any reason he’s not muzzled?

  Admiral Mishindi, Captain Farragut, and Captain Carmel were attending as observers and could say nothing. Numa Pompeii had a speaking role.

  He’s a senator, Calli sent back.

  Not for real? Mishindi returned.

  Calli answered: Really.

  A general AND a senator? And that’s not a conflict?

  Not in Rome.

  Above the table, ambassadors searched for “a common dialogue.” They dug at the philosophical root of the U.S./Roman conflict as if, in it, they would find the basis for lasting peace.

  One emissary called the war a battle with one’s evil clone. He said that part of the dispute was that neither side could agree which was the clone.

  “No question there,” said Amos Curtius Americanus. “Roma Eterna. We have been a state since 776 BCE.”

  “That Rome existed first is not in dispute,” a U.S. diplomat allowed. “But the fall of the Roman Empire is also a documented fact. The United States of America became the host to that dead empire’s parasitic seed. A seed that ate out our hearts and brains, and took, like a cuckoo’s chick takes, our strength and our knowledge for its own ends. In the end the Empire stole our property. The planet Palatine is—and remains—a U.S. colony.”

  “And where do you suppose the United States came from?” said Numa Pompeii. “Accept it or not, your nation was founded by a secret society of Romans to be our government in exile. The United States was founded as a Roman colony. America was, and still is, ours.”

  Farragut sent under the table: Don’t give a skat who was up to bat first. Just give me the final score.

  Calli did not see Farragut’s note. Her gaze was fixed across the wide, wide mahogany table on Numa as he dropped his observations into the proceedings with indolent disdain. Some of his remarks were thinly veiled barbs, the sole purpose of which were to provoke Calli Carmel.

  Calli was an observer and had no leave to speak back.

  Calli did not want to say anything. She just wanted to lunge across the table, grab Numa’s eagles, and beat the smirk off his condescending, self-satisfied, supercilious face. She visualized blood, imagined the sensation of cartilage crunching under her fist. To someone else had already gone the privilege of rearranging his nose, but it could use readjusting. His was not now and probably never had been a handsome face.

  Numa finally said one thing too many—something about Rome not decorating its stalking horses with captain’s stars in reward for being good bait.

  “Oh, that’s it!” Calli, brand new stars and all, was on her chair and launching across the table.

  But the mahogany top was wide, and John Farragut had seen this coming. He got Calli by the back of her jacket and hauled her back into her seat.

  To the staring ambassadors, Farragut said, “What the captain said, I believe, is that it might be a good idea to remove the military presence from these proceedings. Is that an accurate paraphrase, Mr. Carmel?”

  “Something like that,” Calli muttered, tugging her jacket back into a smooth fit.

  They found the door before they could be shown the door.

  Out in the corridor, walking very fast to keep up with Calli’s furious stride, Farragut asked, “Why are you letting him get under your guard like this?”

  Calli stopped, spun on him. “He’s . . . he’s you, John. A swaggering, obnoxious, bullying you. The pack leader. The one men listen to. Men hang on his words. Women lie down for him. He owns the ground. He’s your evil twin.”

  Farragut considered this a silent moment. “I’m better looking.”

  “You’re a lot he’s not. The point is: he’s the man.”

  “So what?”

  “He acts like I’m not even in the war. Like I’m a dance club hostess tripped onto the battlefield.”

  “His problem. You can’t be offended if you don’t respect the one judging you.”

  “I do respect him. I wish to God I didn’t, but he’s the man. Spits farther, pisses farther. Oh, how could you know. The outfield backs up when you step in the batter’s box.”

  “That’s because they know I can’t bunt.”

  “Won’t bunt, John. There could be a man on third and we only need one run to clinch it; John Farragut would still be swinging for the fences. They respect you.”

  “That kind of respect will kill me. Captain Carmel, you brought the Monitor home. And if he don’t respect that, well damn, take your base. We both read Five Rings of Power, ‘If the stratagem works once—’ ”

  “Do it again.” Calli finished the text for him. She had used Numa’s terrific arrogance once to her advantage at Daedalus. “Problem is, I can’t do anything. We’re at peace.”

  “Not for long. You know what’s behind this.”

  She did. “Palatine’s building their Catapulta, their Shotgun. They’re stalling to get it done. But there’s something else.”

  Farragut cocked his head, curious.

  “It’s been bothering me, John. Monitor should have been under much heavier guard. Even considering that the Roman Catapult would demand a heavy guard at two widely separated stations. They shouldn’t be spread that thin. Rome doesn’t have our population, but the Roman military outnumbers us. Bad.”

  “You think we were meant to recapture Monitor?”

  “No. I don’t think that. I think—” Hesitated to finish the thought. Did so anyway, “I think someone back doored them.”

  A third combatant? Farragut hadn’t considered it. “Kali?”

  “Who knows. I don’t know. You know what, John? I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about. It’s all gut guesswork. Come on. I’ll let you buy me a beer.”

  “I thought your drink was Scotch these days.” Meant it as inane banter. Her boyfriend Rob Roy Buchanan always ordered Scotch for her.

  Shocked the hell out of him when Calli started to cry. Girl tears.

  Farragut guessed he’d better buy her a beer.

  17

  THE SIGHT OF AMERICA from space expanded the chest and thickened the throat every time. It had been seven years this time, by his mother’s chron. Only slightly less by John Farragut’s.

  On the approach up the long, long drive to the sprawling white plantation house, one of his sister Amanda’s mares cantered alongside the split-rail fence in the bright sunshine. Mockingbirds sang in the century oaks. A kingfisher cackled in the weeping willow alongside the creek.

  Mama welcomed him as if he had returned from the dead. He was not very surprised, but disappointed, that his father was not here. Justice of the State Supreme Court, the elder John K. Farragut had business in Frankfurt.

  Captain John A. Farragut had made the judge wait seven years. It was a measure of power how long you could make others wait for you. Judge Farragut was never on time, and he waited for no one. His Honor was not going to drop everything and run out like one of the family dogs simply because the boy finally decided to pay his old man a call.

  The dogs did—assorted coonhounds, bloodhounds, foxhounds, and beagles came running to flog his legs with their tails. There was also an ancient African gray parrot, who remembered him; a collection of uppity cats, who really could care less; and a lustrous, golde
n Xanthin serpent, who rose up like a cobra in delight.

  There were half a dozen underage siblings still in residence at the homestead, and John knew from his mother’s messages that sister Lily’s marriage busted up last year and she and her seven kids were home again, so you can just forget about getting your old room back, John Farragut.

  His other fourteen sisters and brothers flocked home at the eldest’s return with a flotilla of their children to take over the coach house.

  Congress was in session, so Catherine flew in from D.C. for dinners and jetted back every morning.

  There was also in temporary residence a houseguest of His Honor’s, a man called Jose Maria many-many-middle-names de Cordillera, a cultured Terra Rican aristocrat, charming, and warm enough to thaw a frozen hell.

  Guests were sacred around here, and Mama just collected Don Cordillera in with the rest of the brood.

  Family dinners had always been warm and lively. With this many Farraguts at the tables, it was a party every evening. The old dinner table only seated thirty-two with the insert, so Mama had another brought in.

  On the first evening Mama just had to have an image record taken of the family all together. Sixteen-year-old John John went AWOL for that. Upstairs to his bedroom in a loyal sulk. Family image indeed. Not without his father!

  Mama’s “Get yourself down here right now John Knox Farragut Junior!” went ignored. As did the: “Don’t make me come up there!”

  It was Captain John Alexander Farragut who went up there. “Put it aside, John,” he advised quietly, leaning in the doorway. “It’s just not helpful.”

  John John glared at his brother—the eldest, the best loved, the captain, the hero. The one who could make Father madder than anyone on the planet. “I don’t take orders from you!”

  “No one’s askin’ you to. There’s a higher power talkin’ here. Honor thy mother.” He turned to go. Added: “There’s a ‘Thou shalt’ that goes with that, and it’s not comin’ from me.”

  When reason fails, there was always the chain of command to fall back on. Mama got her image.

  She sent it to the judge, who displayed it proudly in his chambers. Messaged his wife back that he had a fine brood, and he sure wished the boy had picked a better time to come calling.

  Jose Maria de Cordillera accompanied John Farragut outside after dinner one evening to walk off the meal. It insulted Mama if you didn’t overeat, and both men had done their duty.

  The Terra Rican was trim, wasp-waisted (Mama would take care of that), in his late fifties. He wore his glossy black hair long as a horse’s tail, held back in a silver clasp.

  Farragut noted his Spanish-style riding boots and asked if he would like to see the horses. “My sister Amy’s got some decent nags here.”

  Amanda’s Triple Crown champion, a venerable stud now, held court in the upper pasture.

  John Farragut and Jose Maria de Cordillera saddled up a pair of the stables’ lesser lights and rode in the pinewood, the earth deep beneath them, the sky soaring above. A blanket of brown needles muffled the horses’ hooves and gave a softness to the ground, a piquancy to the forest scents—pine resin, humus, horse-hide, leather tack. Grackles squawked in the green canopy.

  Jose Maria de Cordillera rode a thoroughbred. John Farragut, a big man whom horses thanked to stay off them, sat astride a hulking majestic black Belgian with hooves the size of dinner plates. It put him very high, but fortunately the trees’ lower limbs had atrophied in the shade of the canopy; otherwise his head would be in the branches.

  “Tell me, Captain Farragut, are you related to David Farragut of the Saratoga?”

  “No. I’m a direct descendant of Michael Farragut of the Abraham Lincoln.”

  “I hear you are doing interesting things to your battleship, young captain.”

  Interesting was the subtlest term for it Farragut had heard. “Most people say I’m an idiot.”

  On how the refit of the Merrimack was to be done, John Farragut had some definite ideas. He wanted mechanical and manual backups for everything—for all stages of delivering ordnance—sighting, loading, arming, launching, triggering. He wanted dumb switches and chemical fuses—nothing that could be jammed by outside signals. He wanted backup oxygen canisters with demand regulators.

  The Og had asked him, “How you gonna move this boat, Cap’n? You want we should install pedals?”

  Senior Engineer Kit Kittering had been interested in the answer to that one as well.

  Merrimack’s engines were shrouded in six discrete phase-shifting barriers. Any one power plant could muscle the ship home. If all six were compromised, John Farragut would just have to get out and push.

  No, he had answered. No pedals. He would trust the engines.

  He did, however, want a backup switch to initiate or override the antimatter jettison system.

  It was all very interesting.

  “You think I’m an idiot, Jose Maria?”

  Dr. Cordillera had a Nobel Prize to add to his curriculum vitae. His was an opinion worth considering.

  “You are a battleship commander,” said Jose Maria. “I am a mere microbiologist. I assume there is a method behind the madness.”

  “There is. I’ll tell you. When I was fourteen, the judge dropped me in the middle of Cumberland Forest with nothing but the clothes on my back and said, ‘See you in two weeks.’ ”

  Properly, John K. Farragut was a justice rather than a judge. But he had been “the judge” to John A. Farragut since he could remember, so there was no changing now.

  “Those two weeks taught me the value of really low tech.”

  “Your father has a sadistic streak, I think.”

  The judge was a loud, earthy, opinionated man with a great horselaugh and coarse charm. Had a generous streak as wide as the mean one. He kept a Bible at his bench and had been known to use a Colt .45 for a gavel.

  “The judge has his own way of doing things,” Captain Farragut allowed.

  It was several days before Captain Farragut got around to asking his father’s guest, “What brings you to the judge’s house?”

  “You, Captain Farragut,” said Jose Maria. “Your Merrimack. I need to get to the Deep End.”

  “What makes you think Merrimack’s fixing to go to the Deep End?”

  “You are,” said Jose Maria, statement of fact.

  “I hate it when civilians know more about my next mission than I do.”

  “I do not know your next mission. I merely related some of my observations to certain members of your Joint Chiefs, and they suggested I might like to go as an observer aboard Merrimack when she sets spaceward again.”

  Farragut bridled. Did not like being saddled with passengers. Especially unasked.

  “Are you going to tell me these observations of yours?”

  “I shall tell you everything,” Jose Maria said, his smile becoming benignly cagey, “When I am in the Deep End aboard Merrimack.”

  Brought Farragut’s head right round, eyes big. Jose Maria de Cordillera knew Captain Farragut intended to leave him behind.

  John Farragut broke into a grin. Muttered, “Damn civilians. Can’t order ’em around. Can’t shoot ’em.”

  Jose Maria’s smile remained.

  “I don’t travel with civilians,” said Farragut.

  “The Joint Chiefs said it was all right.”

  “The Joint Chiefs need talking to. If we get boarded and you’re not in uniform, the Romans will sell you.”

  “Then I shall buy myself.”

  Farragut was about to point out the costliness of that proposal, when he took another hard look at the man. A crisp, understated air of extreme wealth dwelled in every detail, in the fiber of his coat, the simple styling of his clothes, the spare elegance of his jewelry. Jose Maria de Cordillera lived in a rarified tax bracket beyond even the Farraguts’.

  John Farragut and Jose Maria Cordillera were in the judge’s study by now, an Old Boy sort of room done in leather, scented of cigars, brandy
, and gunpowder. Handsome portraits of Amanda’s racehorses wearing wreaths of roses decorated the walls, along with antique fowling pieces, leather-bound law books, and other manly artifacts.

  Jose Maria stood before a rack of swords. He gestured toward a single-edged Chinese blade on the rack. “May I?”

  John Farragut gave a sideways nod to say he was his guest, and kept talking, “The whole idea of taking a civilian—a civilian of a neutral planet yet!—on a mission to the—”

  The whole idea fell to pieces as the sword moved in Jose Maria’s hand. The blade became a living extension of the man, disappeared into a flashing blur. The man himself moved like a great lean cat—smooth, fluid, aggressive—his stops so clean, instant, and complete, they defied inertia. He turned with a light, balanced pivot. Brought the sword about in the wink of an eye, as if it had displaced rather than moved through the space in between there and here.

  When Farragut’s eyebrows could lift no farther, he found his voice, “Jose Maria, you sure you’re not a warrior?”

  Terra Rica was a neutral world, and Jose Maria de Cordillera a man of medicine. He was a grandfather sixteen times over, a number rapidly multiplying as happens in devout Catholic families.

  “This is not warfare,” said Jose Maria, bringing the sword in from a flashing lemniscate to tuck up behind his arm at rest. “It is an art. If you want to kill someone, use a Colt .45. Or a disruptor.”

  “There are drawbacks to having weapons with that kind of punch and range on board a spaceship.” Farragut pulled a pair of dueling sabers from the rack, scooped up a pair of V masks on the blade of one, and invited, “Have a go?”

  They withdrew outdoors to stake out places at far sides of a wide, empty corral, synched their V masks, and registered themselves and their swords with the program.

  The blind, dusty darkness of the mask was replaced by a large hall, occupied only by the two of them. They adjusted the mask settings until the images of each other stood within sword’s length.

  “Test. Test.”

  They extended blades to their counterimages, touched swords. Heard the tinny clank, felt the light pressure of the contact.