Strength and Honor (5 page)

Nevertheless, the Hive whole would have an awareness of what happened at Telecore. They would be aware if the gorgons of Telecore died, and maybe from their dying glean “knowledge” of what killed them.

Knowledge was power. Farragut wanted to keep the new Hives as powerless as possible.

“I need a plan,” Farragut told the xenos. “A viable plan for dealing with the Hive swarms on Telecore in the event we need to leave the planet—because we
will
be leaving the planet. I can’t see the Joint Chiefs parking the
Mack
out here watching baby monsters while Near Space is at war.”

“A plan, sir. Aye, sir,” said Weng.

“Several proposals, sir,” said Ski. “For your approval.”

The effort to maintain Hive ignorance might be futile. The range of the Hive entirety was incalculable, and God alone knew what other beings elsewhere in the universe were teaching the new Hives even at this moment. But John Farragut was never one to stop running until the umpire called him out.

He did recognize that he could expect no help from Rome. Rome lost most of its Deep End colonies to the first Hive.

Hives. There had been two.

Presumably there were two again. It was only a guess— a good guess, but still a guess—that the new monsters were offspring of the old Hives, because the new monsters were popping up in places the old Hives had been like recurrences of Ebola.

That made for a lot of new gorgons on a lot of old Roman colonies in the Deep End of the galaxy.

But the Empire had withdrawn its remaining populations from the Deep End. Rome ceded all their liabilities to their enemy.

Except one.

There had only ever been one occurrence of the Hive in Near Space. That had been on the Roman colony of Thaleia.

No new generation of Hive had erupted on planet Thaleia.

So the new Hive threat was confined to the Deep End. Rome counted on the United States’ self-interest to hold it there.

The Hive was a U.S. problem now.

That placed the United States in a two-front war— fighting the Hive in the Deep and Rome in Near Space.

Captain Farragut turned to his XO and his IO at the briefing table. “We’ve got two Roman ships of war out here in the Deep End and unaccounted for. Do we have anything on their heading?”

Colonel Z shook his head. “Wherever
Gladiator
and
Horatius
are, they’re running dark. They may be headed back to Palatine, but who knows? We can’t ignore the possibility that they could be lining up a strike on Fort Ike. In the first scenario, we don’t need to worry about them for another three months. The other scenario would be ugly.”

Numa Pompeii’s warship
Gladiator
and the legion carrier
Horatius
had been members of Commodore Farragut’s Attack Group One. His comrades in arms were suddenly enemy combatants.

General Numa Pompeii had been a powerful man during the reign of Caesar Magnus. Caesar Romulus had sent Numa to the Deep to get him out of sight and out of popular mind.

Marcus Asinius, astrarch of the
Horatius,
was cousin to the late Legion Commander Herius Asinius, whose teeth were interred down below on the planet Telecore. Legion Draconis was not a favorite of Caesar Romulus either.

Neither Numa Pompeii nor Marcus Asinius were fervent Romulus supporters, but they were staunch Romans. Marcus would not question authority, like it or not. But Farragut would not put it past Numa to play Lucifer and storm the gates of Roman heaven.

Numa was a cagey political animal, arrogant, popular. Farragut could not guess what Numa’s plans were.

Farragut ordered, “Gypsy, contact Fort Ike. Make sure the Fort’s on Condition Watch Two. Advise them to be on the alert for
Gladiator
and
Horatius. And
let them know there is a rogue patterner armed with a Striker out here who could take the left antenna off a mayfly from five light-minutes away.”

Kit Kittering lifted a finger to insert a comment. “Captain, I kinda doubt Augustus’ shooting is gonna be that good. That old Striker was built for someone else and it’s sixty years old. Strikers are custom jobs. He’s just not gonna run as well in someone else’s custom shoes. Patterners don’t just
pilot
Strikers. They kind of
wear
them.”

Kit had crawled through both Strikers. She knew each machine as well as she knew
Merrimack.

“It’s not gonna to be like our last fight with a patterner.” Kit’s hand found its way to her midriff as if she could still feel the hole.

A patterner named Septimus, piloting his own Striker, had fired a shot straight through
Merrimack,
through her force field, through Kit Kittering, and out the stern.

“Can you calculate the best speed of this Striker to make it across the Abyss?” Farragut asked his engineer.

The Abyss was two thousand parsecs of relative dark that separated galactic arms of the Milky Way. The Abyss lay between the Deep End and Near Space.

“Seventy standard days.” Kit said with a head tilt to either side to indicate some give or take. “He might even get there sooner if he pushes it, but then he would arrive dead. Or vegetablized. Can we suggest it to him?”

“He may not live to see the other side of the Abyss anyway,” said Farragut. “He shouldn’t be alive now.”

Life expectancy of a patterner was limited. When Caesar Magnus gave Augustus to Captain Farragut, Augustus had already outlived his expiration date. He had not been expected to live long enough to become the loose cannon he was now.

“Something else to consider,” Colonel Z said. “That Striker Augustus took belonged to Secundus.” Secundus had been the second patterner ever assembled.

“Kit already went through that,” said Farragut.

“Mister Kittering was talking about engines and weapons,” said Colonel Z. “I’m talking about data. Augustus has Secundus’ data bank. Secundus identified the Hive harmonics using that database. When that Striker hits Near Space, Rome will have the secret of how to identify a single harmonic out of infinite possibilities.”

“If Augustus has that information, then we have it,” said Farragut. “Don’t we have a copy of Secundus’ database on
Merrimack!”

“We do,” said Colonel Z. “The secret of isolating harmonics per se is not in the database. Neither is Secundus’ methodology. Secundus didn’t make notes. But some combination of facts in the database together with a patterner’s ability to synthesize data adds up to deep sewage for the United States of America. When Augustus shares that secret with his masters, we have a severe tactical disadvantage.”

“I know. I’m the one who brought the bastard aboard,” said Farragut. “We couldn’t have exterminated the old Hive without Augustus. We needed him.”

“Now we need him dead,” said Colonel Z. Insinuation there.
Someone
had not done his job.

Kit came to Farragut’s defense, “Augustus won’t give Romulus skat. And if Augustus doesn’t recognize Romulus as Caesar, then who gives a rat’s ass? To hell with him.”

Farragut gave Kit’s shoulder a squeeze as his pacing took him past her, appreciating the loyalty. “Can’t afford to get quite that comfortable, Kit,” Farragut said. “Augustus is still Roman. When it comes down to Us versus Them, he is definitely a Them.” And to the misgivings he saw in his officers’ faces, he answered, “And don’t anyone think that if I get a shot, I won’t take it.”

3

^M
Y CRATE!”

That was Kerry circling her Swift in the flight hangar. The Swift’s cockpit was charred.

She lifted her arms up in the air, her fingers curled into claws calling witness to her beloved Alpha’s carnage. “Shit! Oh crap. Oh fugger.”

She glared up at a severed air hose flapping every which way twenty-five feet up in the overhead and she yowled, “Will someone shut that thing off!”

Up went an erk to the catwalk to clamp off the hose.

Kerry Blue was an ordinary sort of unretouched rough-pretty. Her race was purebred mutt. The melting pot had melted right here. Kerry Blue stood on the tall side, slim, loose jointed, with just enough padding on the bow and the stern to know you had a woman under those coveralls. Her easy loose walk really let you know.

She was battle seasoned but never hardened. She rolled with every hit and just got back up. Kerry Blue had a natural ability to ignore anything that didn’t matter at the moment. She was not a deep thinker, which meant she never thought herself into a hole. She was going to be a lifer, and would probably still be a flight sergeant when they pulled her wings off.

Her wings were everywhere at the moment. Pieces of Alpha Six lay scattered all across the flight hangar.

Her Swift’s magnetic antimatter containment field had held fast anyway, the only thing that had. But that thing was real important.

Flight Sergeant Cole Darby was down on the deck, wedged underneath Cain Salvador’s Swift with Cain Salvador, trying to pry pieces of Alpha Six out of Alpha Three’s undercarriage.

Came the roar. It was loud and it echoed round in the hangar:
“What’d you do to your spacecraft, Marine?”

The Old Man. TR Steele.

Colonel Steele stopped in the hatchway, fists on his hips, eyes glowering ice blue fire. Darb sniggered. Someone else cackled. Colonel Steele was always roaring at Kerry Blue. But her Swift’s mess on the deck was so clearly not Kerry Blue’s fault that this roar had to be TR Steele impersonating himself.

Doing a good job too. Because if he’d been serious, Kerry Blue would be in the brig for kicking him in the butt.

Cain Salvador whispered aside to Cole Darby, lying on the creeper next to his underneath Cain’s Swift. “Did I just see Kerry Blue kick the Old Man in the butt?”

“Nope.” Darb kept his eyes on his work. “Didn’t happen. You saw nothing. Gimme the torch.”

“Colonel’s here,” Cain whispered. “Do we stand up?”

“Keep welding.”

It had taken Kerry Blue over two years to see what Darb had noticed in his first months on board
Merrimack.
Colonel Steele was always an ogre to Kerry Blue, always yelling at her. She noticed that part. The colonel did everything he could to keep her out of his sight, like he couldn’t stand the sight of her.

Well, he really
really
couldn’t stand the sight of her.

Blue never figured that part out until Darb hit her in the head with it:
He can’t stand to be near you.
That had woken her up. She’d been wide awake ever since. Steele came stalking around the husk of Kerry’s Swift, his eyes hard as arctic ice, as if looking for something to criticize in the heap.

Darb cringed in hiding under Cain’s Swift. It felt like the whole hangar could just go up in flames right now.

A small movement broke up the Old Man’s frown, like a flicker in an image that quickly repairs itself. There was some kind of strong current in here. A sparking. Something was going to ignite. Smelled like someone’s career.

Darb heard Kerry Blue talking too fast, too loud: “Look what he did! Augustus torched my crate! Why mine? I was nice to that son of a bitch!”

Kerry Blue had been nice to men beyond count.

Steele’s face turned blood red.

Kerry railed on, “Why couldn’t he torch
your
crate instead?” Steele said, “He knew the way to get at me.” Darb tried to reel his legs in all the way under the Swift, cringing.

Kerry brought her voice way down quiet for just Steele—and the two guys trying to disappear under Alpha Three—to hear. “Yeah?”

Darb tried to will his ears shut.

I’m not hearing this. I am not hearing this. Anyone asks, I got no idea. La la la la la—

And praise the Lord, Steele growled at Kerry, “Clean up this mess.” He stalked away. Kerry Blue’s voice sailed after him, too cheery: “Aye, aye, sir.”

Colonel TR Steele turned his back on Kerry Blue and retreated to his side of that vast chasm that separated officer from enlisted man.
Man,
for Kerry Blue was a man by military definition. A she-man instead of a he-man, but a man as far as the Navy was concerned.

Except that was all bullskat to Colonel Steele, and Kerry Blue was all woman and what the hell was she doing on his battleship?
Enlisted!

He could not have her. He could not breathe without her. He got all tongue-tied and stupid around her. He could not afford to mess this up.

What
this?
He caught himself thinking. There was no
this. This
could not happen. There could be no
this!
Steele prowled across the hangar to Flight Leader Ranza Espinoza, a big woman, with broad shoulders, boy hips, and fine gray eyes. Her fat shock of coarse, light brown hair was tied back into a ponytail as thick as Steele’s fist.

Ranza was a tough soldier, but she was not terrific with details. Unfortunately, the Divorce Protocol was nothing but details.

Steele looked over Ranza’s rounded shoulder at the instructions which she kept reading and rereading. “Got it in hand, Flight Leader?”

“No, sir,” said Ranza. “This has got me by the short hairs. And I thought I knew everything there was to know about divorce too.”

Ranza had three children with three different last names, all back home on Earth with their maternal grandmother. “You have a brain, Flight Leader,” said Colonel Steele.

“Use it.” Ranza anguished over the instructions that may as well have been written in Turkish. “Sir, Fm tryin’—” Steele snatched the instructions from her. “Cole Darby!”

“Sir!” Darb’s voice sounded along with a clunk. That was Flight Sergeant Cole Darby bumping his head on the belly of Cain Salvador’s crate.

Cole Darby was an overeducated white suburban boy, who enlisted in the Fleet Marine looking for purpose in his life.

The Darb wanted a purpose? Colonel Steele would give him a foxtrotting purpose. He jammed the instructions for the Divorce Protocol into Cole Darby’s hands. “Make this happen.”
Find your meaning in that.