by R. M. Meluch
“Did you have to buy yourself back?”
Jose Maria shook his head. “Rome appears to have turned a blind eye to my less-than-neutral behavior.”
“They don’t want to get into it with Terra Rica just now.”
“That would be my take,” Jose Maria agreed. The focus of his black eyes traveled from the captain to the cot back to the captain on the deck. “Penance?”
“Unraveling a bit. How are my crew? Have you seen them?”
“Rebounding better than you,” said Jose Maria.
The captain had lost weight, which he could afford, but without the usual fire, he looked hollow. His blood-shot eyes fixed in a barely open squint.
“They quote you often. The shock is wearing off and they are, as you would say, working up a good mad.”
Farragut scowled a satisfied scowl. The news seemed to cheer him. “Good. That’s good. What ship are they being held in?”
“This one. Gladiator.”
Farragut’s brows lifted, intrigued. Blue eyes traveled the confines, searching for something conductive to rap on.
“Are you eating?”
“Sometimes.”
Farragut made the guard who brought his food taste it first. If delivered by an automaton, he did not touch it.
“General Pompeii is vexed at your refusals of his invitations to his table.”
“Oh, good for Numa.”
“You should go, young Captain. Romans do not invite losers to the commander’s table.”
“I don’t think I could swallow.”
“They say you are not sleeping.”
The question struck him as odd. Brows dropped over squinted eyes. His head tilted. “You working for them now, Jose Maria?”
“Paranoia is a symptom of sleep deprivation.”
“Answer the question.”
Jose Maria touched Farragut’s face. “No, young Captain. I am not in league with Rome.”
“Sorry.” Turned his face away. Breathed into his hands. “I don’t dare close my eyes very long. I don’t want them putting anything in my head.”
“I cannot prevent them from doing as they will,” said Jose Maria. “But to the limit of my ability to do so, I will tell you if that happens.”
Farragut nodded. “Deal.” Then seized the wide sleeve of Jose Maria’s tunic, as he might the robes of a father confessor. “This, this, Jose Maria, is the end of the world. Not the gorgons. This. Surrender.” Tears wet the expensive fabric. “I know how Matty felt.”
“You do?” Jose Maria said, quietly alarmed. After losing the Monitor, Matthew Forshaw had blown his brains out. “Is this a suicide watch, young Captain?”
“No. No. Just—damn, this is tough.” Tears flowed freely now. “I want another shot. Reset. Go back. I want a rematch and it’s not going to happen.” He sat back, sighed. Calmer for the outburst. “And I think—was this what the judge was trying to prepare me for with the choke holds? He used to put a forearm right here and say, ‘You gotta know if you can take it.’ Was this what all that was for? And you know what? That’s a load of jag gerskat, Jose Maria. I can choke just fine without all the rehearsals.”
“You should sleep.”
Farragut closed his eyes and nodded. “I should. Can you stay?”
“I shall. For as long as I can.”
“Wake me when you go.”
“Deal.”
Guilt said he should sleep on the deck. Farragut was not the sort to haul around that kind of load. He followed common sense onto the cot and passed peacefully out.
“I begin to take insult, Captain Farragut.” Numa Pompeii showed up in John Farragut’s detention compartment in person to voice displeasure at the captain’s latest refusal to dine with him.
Numa Pompeii was not missing any meals. The Triumphalis carried a lot of flesh on a very large frame. Farragut was down to his college weight.
“Well, that’s a start,” said Farragut, not bothering to stand.
“There should be respect between officers, even on opposing sides.”
“Yeah, there should be,” said Farragut blazing back to life. “Except that you’re a swine, Numa.”
“I won. You lost. The lack of civility is uncalled for.”
“I had a lot of time in here to hear it calling. What you did to prisoners of war is proscribed by all conventions of war, and you’re talking to me about civility?”
“I don’t know what you are talking about, sir.”
“Matty Forshaw! Napoleon Bright! What you did to them is a war crime.”
Numa looked genuinely puzzled. “I let them go. And I arranged for pickup. It’s not as if I stranded them in outer space. It was simple, elegant, legal. Moral. I even gave Mr. Forshaw a medal.” Then, to Farragut’s homicidal glare, “I admit even I was surprised to learn how hard he took it.”
Farragut, stonily ironic: “You were.”
“Matthew Forshaw killed Matthew Forshaw. And your people killed Napoleon Bright.”
“I’ll be damned if I let you do to me what you did to Matty and Brighty.”
“Oh, no. You’re too big a fish to throw back, Captain Farragut.”
“I meant the brain alterations, you smug baboon.”
“What alterations?”
“Ingenuousness doesn’t look good on you, Numa.”
“I am—” the general chose the next word carefully, “ignorant.” Could not ever call himself innocent. “What alterations?”
“You had foreign cells inserted into those men’s brains.”
“No, sir. I did not. I believe that you believe what you say, Captain Farragut. But you are wrong. Do I play mind games? Of course I do. But not like that. If you know your enemy at all, then you know that is not my style of warfare.”
“I thought I knew you. But I know for a fact you put something in Matty and Napoleon, you lying sack—”
“DO not shout at me, Captain Farragut. No. I did nothing to Mr. Forshaw and Mr. Bright. Someone is lying to you. Your CIA is not above slandering me to you.”
“The CIA had nothing to do with it.” Farragut did not tell Numa Pompeii that the autopsy had been at Calli Carmel’s order. “And it’s not slander. I saw the Sargasson autopsy.”
Numa took an unconscious step back. Face betrayed little, but the concern that escaped looked real. He resumed, guarded, “Troubling, if true. If true, I had no knowledge of it.”
Unlikely. And Farragut did not believe it. Just who could do something like that to Numa Pompeii’s prisoners without the Triumphalis’ knowledge? There was no way.
And then the thought.
Oh, for Jesus. Could it be that Imperial Intelligence was every bit as honorable and law-abiding as the CIA?
“Snakes?” said Farragut. Spies.
“Snakes,” Numa Pompeii muttered.
Numa Pompeii had his own Lu Oh? Farragut almost felt sorry for his opponent. Not really. But he stopped trying to figure out how to kill him with his bare hands.
Numa continued, displeased: “Whatever your seaweedy allies found in Mr. Forshaw and Mr. Bright would have been the work of someone with less faith in my simple ploy than I. Someone saw fit to gild my lily.”
“Your lily was a piss in the eye.”
“Yes, it was,” Numa admitted. Had meant it to be. “I trust Mr. Medina was not ‘altered.’ ”
“No,” said Farragut before he could wonder at the question.
Numa nodded, seemed satisfied, relieved.
Farragut spoke aloud, realizing only as he was speaking it, “Jorge Medina was a Roman mole.”
Numa nodded as if the news were very old news. “For a moment I was afraid whoever gilded my lily might have butchered my own man. I do loathe snafus on that scale.”
Numa Pompeii did not notice Farragut’s struggle to contain his shock. Jorge Medina. Red, white, and true blue Jorge Medina who wouldn’t speak Latin to save his life. Quiet, devoted lieutenant commander of the Monitor . It had been Jorge Medina who betrayed Monitor’s and Merrimack’
s codes and harmonics to Rome.
Numa mused aloud, half to Farragut, half to himself, “I’m told that Medina never broke cover, so I’ll be damned if I can figure how your CIA smoked him out.”
We didn’t smoke him. Farragut’s mind all but whited out from all the lights going on. It was all a huge mistake. Lord Almighty, Paxton Pike accidentally executed the right man! It was hideous. Farragut fought down graveyard laughter, said tenuously, “Sometimes our intelligence staggers even me.”
“Why the trumped-up mutiny charge, though? Why did you not simply execute Medina as a spy?”
“I—” Farragut couldn’t lie. “—Have no earthly idea what they were thinking when they executed Jorge.”
“Useful creatures, moles. I dislike them. I am fortunate not to have been born during the Long Silence. I would have made a very bad mole.”
“A very, very large mole,” said Farragut.
“And you were no Cinderella before you stopped eating.” Numa dropped a fresh uniform and a pair of spit-shined dress shoes—size large—on him. “You will join me for dinner.”
The Triumphalis’ table was on a par with that of the White House, decked in Roman splendor. The French doors opening onto a formal garden were perfect in the depth of their illusion, even to the movement of the air, and the scents of greenery and hyacinth. The cutlery was gold and had the heft to be solid throughout.
Farragut struggled through the appetizer. Finally dropped his gold fork and took up his wine goblet. “Oh, fuck it, Numa. Just keep this topped.”
The general’s deep rumbling chuckle sounded sympathetic. He lifted a wine decanter, but Farragut said, “What else you got back there?”
Numa Pompeii poured him Kentucky bourbon instead.
Farragut approved. “Well, that’s better.” Felt the burning comfort go down. “Is this my stash?”
Numa nodded. “We liberated it.”
Farragut lifted a toast with his bourbon, “Here’s to you being in this seat next go round.”
“You threw some pretty hard language at me back there, Captain Farragut. War criminal. Lying sack.”
“Baboon,” Farragut added. “I called you a smug baboon.”
“And you have an apology for me now?”
“No.”
“You’re a sore loser.”
“I’m a piss-poor loser, Numa.”
“Now tell me truthfully, Captain Farragut, were you actually boarded by Them? What do you call Them?”
“We call them gorgons. Among other things.”
“Odd. So do we.”
Not so odd. Earth and Palatine might be Cain and Abel, but underneath it all still brothers.”
“And you’re honestly telling me the gorgons boarded you?”
Farragut tired of the question. “Ask the crew of the Fury.” He had no need to insist to this man.
“You’ve brainwashed the crew of the Fury.”
Farragut gave a little jerk of surprise, then said, “I get it. They never saw a live gorgon. They saw a lot of sewage-looking stuff we claimed was gorgon remains. We made it all up.”
“You made them swab your decks, threatened them, ignored their salutes. And they love you.”
“Do they?”
“Merrimack would be the only ship ever to survive boarding.”
“I’ve been told.”
“The troubling thing is that the boarding does, as you say, ‘taint the meat.’ Whatever you did to combat them won’t work twice.”
“The gorgons that boarded the Mack are all dead. Who are they going to tell?”
“They’re all connected somehow—which is why we call the gorgons collectively the Hive. They have a colonial intelligence.”
“Across parsecs of empty space?”
“It would appear so.”
Farragut was not accustomed to sharing intelligence with the enemy, and did not intend to start now. He only fished for confirmation of some of his own suspicions.
He offered a lot of nothing that could be news to the Roman general. Told him that Merrimack had not observed a Hive sphere travel faster than two hundred times light speed. That gorgons had no apparent means of propulsion, no apparent means of cohesion. That gorgons fall apart when they die.
Numa asked, “Ever seen an individual gorgon travel FTL without latching onto something else?”
“Haven’t seen it,” said Farragut. “On shipboard they don’t move any quicker than a diamondback.”
“Which?”
“Which what?”
Farragut learned then that the monsters came in not two, but three different forms—most common being the bundles of legs, which Farragut had assumed was the only flavor gorgons came in. Another, which must be what Colonel Steele and Cowboy met on the hull, a variety the Romans called soldiers—bigger, harder, fewer legs, viciously barbed, and they traveled in bigger spheres. And a disgusting third form Numa called gluies.
“Gluies. What’s that in English?” Farragut asked.
“That is English,” said Numa. He described white, revolting, sluglike things with nubby little teeth, and a paralytic poison. “Are you going to bring anything useful to this table, Captain?”
“Ask your patterner,” Farragut said, feeling uncooperative. Surely the pilot of that infernal little Striker with its barrel stuck inside Merrimack could tell Numa Pompeii everything Merrimack knew about gorgons.
Numa Pompeii said, “The emperor’s patterner is an obnoxious Flavian. I talk to him as little as possible. How do you kill them?”
“I outran one,” said Farragut. “He self-destructed.”
“How do you kill the gorgons,” said Numa, irritated. “Not patterners.”
“It’s like this,” said Farragut. “You can develop all kinds of fancy poisons, but in any battle with a cockroach, a shoe always has the last word.”
“Gorgons don’t squash,” Numa argued, a momentary lapse into stupid literalism.
“Numa, you’re disappointing me. You don’t deserve this.” Farragut reached across the table to grab his bottle of bourbon.
The general quickly caught up. “Low tech. Your swords. Your damn swords.”
“Which I owe to you and Jorge Medina. Thank you, Numa, for forcing me to arm my crew with swords. I think I will apologize now for everything I called you.”
Numa had a lot of words for Farragut’s apology.
“And gorgons burn,” Farragut offered.
Numa shook his head. “Flash point is too high and they burn dirty. You kill yourself trying to fight them off a ship that way.”
A sudden brassy chirruping and a frantic buzz made Farragut’s skin roughen and prickle. Aldebaran scarab crickets fled their heraldic perches flanking the archway. They flew away, screeching.
Numa set down his glass, laid his linen napkin on the table. “You’ll have to excuse me, Captain.”
Numa rose, offering no explanation. Saw that Farragut knew the signs.
Farragut rose without prompting. “Put me in with my crew?” he asked as the guards stepped forward to collect him.
Numa nodded to the guards, granting that.
Bored stiff in captivity—Kerry Blue figuratively, the guys literally. Kerry was randy, too, but yab-yum was not a spectator sport and there was zero privacy in detention except for that curtained area, and Kerry Blue did not do toilets. Showers, yes, but there were no showers in here, and everyone stank.
She had to settle for kicking butt at poker to pass the time. They used banana chips for coin. Had nothing else. For clothes they were down to tanks, T-shirts, sweats, and deck mocs. Anything with buttons, zippers, hooks, or heels had not made it into detention. Not exactly Red Cross-approved quarters either, this meat box.
Then someone—the Hamster—heard bug noises through the partition—Aldebaran scarab crickets—which she claimed meant gorgons were stalking the ship.
Oh, good, what we need. A little panic in here. Kerry took one card. Didn’t get the flush.
The hatch opened and Captai
n Farragut came in like daybreak. It was always good to see him. He looked good slimmed down like that, even though he was way too old for Kerry Blue. And he was the only one in this tank clean, shaved, and in uniform. Maybe thirty-eight wasn’t so old.
Kerry tossed down her cards, uncrossed her legs, and jumped up from the deck. “Hey, Captain!”
And suddenly there were a lot of people talking at once. Most asking the captain if there were gorgons. It shocked Kerry when Farragut nodded, “I think we have gorgons on our tail.”
Someone asked: “We’re running, right?”
“I wasn’t told.” And the captain went round talking to everyone. Took his time getting to the Hamster, as if she were nothing to him but another officer. How the woman could be that blind to a man’s interest was beyond Kerry Blue—but hel-lo. This time was different. Somebody woke up Sleeping Beauty. The Hamster was blushing, and doing little eye things, and little almost-smile things.
Kerry moved closer to listen. The captain’s and the Hamster’s words were all business, but the body language was saying “I want you bad and there are way too many people in here.”
“Gladiator can easily outrun a gorgon sphere,” Glenn Hamilton was telling Farragut. “Numa will run.”
“Unless he’s been ordered to turn and fight,” Farragut said, very softly. “If Caesar orders it, the Romans will stand and die like the three hundred at Corindahlor.”
“No. He wouldn’t,” said Hamster, dropping the flirty bit. Didn’t sound like she believed herself. “Romans have never won against the gorgons. He has to run.”
A ship within an inertia field gave no sense of its true motion, so Kerry couldn’t guess which way Gladiator was taking her.
But she could hear the ship’s guns erupt.
That was when Captain Farragut slapped the bulk and roared, “Dammit, Numa, run!”
Lots of pounding of outgoing ordnance. Hissing beam fire. Gladiator was unloading the whole rock pile on something out there.
Could be our guys coming to the rescue.
Kerry didn’t believe herself either.
The lights flickered. Flickered off. Everyone looked ghastly in the yellow-green chemical glow of the emergency lamps, like they were dead already. On the deck overhead, someone’s smart snappy Roman march step gave way to running footfalls. The ship’s force field mooed like a dying gurzn. Kerry only ever heard a field urgle like that once before.