The Ninth Circle (28 page)

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Authors: R. M. Meluch

BOOK: The Ninth Circle
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“Cargo ships are taking wide routes off the standard lanes on approach to my port. Even though—
even though
—so far, all The Ninth Circle’s victims have come to the Circle. Not one victim was ever caught in a rundown.
“The Ninth Circle have never jumped a civilian ship, but you try telling that to civilians. Everyone’s holed up like sitting pheasants. Trade is
not moving.
” The governor took a breath. Folded his hands, forcing himself to a dignified composure. “And the pirates are flying a bloody bleeding Xerxes.”
That was unexpected. Calli said, “I’m guessing the ship wasn’t lawfully purchased.”
“You are correct, sir.”
“Doesn’t say much for the much vaunted security systems of the Xerxes,” said Calli.
“No, sir. What it says is all about the pirates. The Xerxes is everything it’s supposed to be, which is how the pirates manage to stay at large. It’s not that the Xerxes is performing below spec. It’s that the pirates are performing far beyond spec. You’d think men that clever would be doing something
else
.”
“There’s Interpol,” said Calli. “And the League of Earth Nations has some crack pirate hunters. There is your station militia. Does enlisting a battleship not strike anyone as overkill?”
“Overkill is required,” said the governor as if she’d just made his point for him. “Interpol and the militia can combat pirates. What I need is something to combat
fear
.”
“Sir?” said Calli, thrown off course.
“I hate to confess this, Captain, but when I was a very small child my mother invoked a wizard to banish the monsters from under my bed. There were no monsters under there—I think there weren’t—but the point is
reason wasn’t working
. The wizard prevailed. Captain Carmel, I need a wizard.”
“We’re not dealing with children,” Calli said.
“Pardon my Esperanto, Captain: The hell you say. You command soldiers. You don’t know what mass civilian hysteria is.”
The governor cupped his hands together. “A handful of pirates.” He flung his arms wide. “Big wide galaxy. And still my people are convinced that The Ninth Circle are here. Right here.” His forefinger stabbed down on his desktop. “Under the bed. And I suppose The Ninth Circle actually are as deadly as their reputation. I know they’re killing me.”
Calli said, “Even if I wanted to, I can’t chase an undetectable ship.” A Xerxes could achieve perfect stealth.
“Don’t need to, sir,” said the governor. “Just
be here
. Let people see
that
.” He moved aside to show Calli the station’s eye view of
Merrimack
, her titanic, wicked spearhead shape, bulging with massive engines, gun blisters, and torpedo tubes.
Merrimack
had the power of intimidation. Not that she would scare off pirates. But she could give lawful traders a sense of invulnerability.
Civilian traffic was entrenched, afraid to move. Under
Merrimack
’s broad, deadly wing, traffic might move again.
All
Merrimack
needed to do was unfreeze the terror. Once moving again, perhaps inertia would take over, and traffic would keep moving after
Merrimack
was gone.
Calli was in a rush to get underway. But it would be bad form to bolt when she wasn’t answering a well-defined emergency. So far, the alien hostiles around Zoe had not attacked the planet.
Merrimack
had been riding along at cruising velocity. Captain Carmel supposed she could lay on some acceleration to make up for lost time.
She told the governor, “I can give you forty-eight hours, if you grant access for my Marines to go on liberty at the port stations. And waive their boarding fees and tariffs.”
Everything in the space outpost cost arms and legs her Marines couldn’t part with. Just the boarding fee at any station was beyond a Marine’s budget.
“I don’t want any brawls,” said the governor. That was a yes. “The locals are rowdy enough.”
 
Merrimack
’s quartermaster bought red, white, and blue paint from a space station and brought it on board the battleship. Colonel Steele set the Marines to painting Stars and Stripes on their Swifts. The flights were to fly rotating patrols through Port Campbell.
There would be liberty when their patrol was over.
Asante Addai couldn’t wait.
The new Alpha Seven, Flight Sergeant Asante Addai, had been thrilled to death to find himself with three, count ’em, three, lindas in his squad. None of the three were knockouts but they were looking finer the longer he stayed on
Mack
, where testosterone outnumbered estrogen five to one.
But none of his three squad mates were putting out.
Not even Kerry Blue.
What to make of Kerry Blue?
Kerry Blue was easy to like. She used to be easy to like. Nowadays you look at her too long, you got guys giving you the wave-off, like you’re coming in to land with your gear up.
Asante had invited Kerry Blue to a horizontal rumba, and Kerry Blue said no.
He retreated, astonished and a little wounded. He was in the maintenance hangar painting red teeth on his Swift.
Asante Addai thought he was the first man in history to get a no out of Kerry Blue.
“This is not what I expected from everything I heard about Kerry Blue.” Asante confided to Cain Salvador. He sniffed his own armpits, afraid how he’d fare with the civilian lindas in Port Campbell.
“Yeah, well, Blue’s got a deadly disease,” Flight Leader Cain Salvador said, painting red stripes on his Alpha One.
Asante cracked an uncertain grin. “You’re fugging me. There are no deadly diseases.”
Cain answered with silence.
Asante cried, “It’s the twenty-third century! There’s no contagion the MO can’t cure.”
“Well, she’s got one,” said Cain.
“
What?
What’s she got?”
“Brass poisoning,” said Cain.
“Huh?”
“You touch her, and a ton of brass comes down on you.”
Asante’s eyes flicked upward and side to side for some precarious pile of metal about to drop. He gave Cain a blank look. Didn’t understand.
On the upper-level landing of the maintenance hangar, a hatch flew open, banged off its stops. Colonel Steele marched onto the top-level catwalk and came to the rail. He bellowed down for Alpha Flight to finish up and take first patrol.
The hatch slammed behind him before anyone could come to attention.
Cain looked away, whistling an off-key ditty.
Asante looked where Cain was pointedly
not
looking—where the colonel had been. As if it were an answer to a question.
Asante lowered his voice to a whispered shriek. “
Him?”
Couldn’t be. “Steele and Kerry Blue? No. He
rides
her.”
Cain’s face sucked in. Looked as though he’d swallowed his own lips.
Asante said quickly, “No, I mean—I didn’t mean—”
Then he read Cain’s face. Maybe Asante should have meant exactly that.
Asante said, “You’re kidding. He can’t do that. He could lose his fried eggs for that. You’ll have my six, won’t you, frer?”
“Sure,” said Cain. “I’ll dispose of your dead body with great dignity,
frer
.”
Cain would never step in the way of brass. Or steel.
“And he’s not gonna lose eggs or anything else,” Cain warned. “Do you understand what I’m telling you? You don’t fug with what keeps the dead out of you. Got it?”
“I got it,” Asante said, nettled. “I’m not the village idiot.”
I’m the idiot from outer space.
Asante moved his painting gear away from his Swift and made way for the maintenance erks to prep the crate for flight. Asante got into his flight suit.
The colonel looked familiar. Asante finally placed who the Old Man looked like. Asante had been watching Roman vids of gladiatorial contests made during the war. He told Cain, “Know what? The Old Man looks a lot like the gladiator Adamas.”
“Yeah,” Cain said. “A little. I see the resemblance.”
 
Marine Swifts flew in show at speeds at which they could be seen tearing through space just outside the outpost’s traffic lanes. Silent in vacuum, they appeared to be roaring. They jetted white oxygen fires behind them.
The Swifts’ swept-back wings gave them the look of darts. The Marines had painted their crates with star-spangled blue noses and red and white stripes down their fuselages. Navy stars were fixed on their wings. Some of the pilots added more art—paintings of arrows, teeth, claws, bald eagles, girlfriends—under their cockpits. Dak Shepard painted the name
Elegant Hag
on his crate. Geneva Rhine painted dead Romans around her gun ports.
The Swifts were flashy, fast, and fierce.
One of the local constabulary called the Marine pilots gaudy trigger-happy cowboys.
“Eyup,” Lawrence sent over the com, his Swift breathing fire. “We’re here to run the Dalton gang out of town.”
“You know, it’s not like the boys from Oz are the shyest violets in the garden either,” Cain sent.
One of the local kerls flying with them sent, “No. We just don’t blow things up the way you blokes do. We really need to think about invading someone so we can be taken seriously.”
 
The League of Earth Nations scientific expedition camp on Zoe lay quiet within its dirt perimeter. The night forest songs provided a gentle background noise.
A voice howled just before dawn. “Hey! Who interrupted my job?”
Groggy scientists woke unhappily. They stumbled out of their tents.
Dr. Cecil was shouting, angry.
From what any of the annoyed sleepy brains could figure, Dr. Cecil had gone into the medic’s shed and found his job aborted.
“I want a head to roll! This is unprofessional! Unacceptable! Unconscionable!”
Glenn sat up in bed in her tent. She fished about for her shoes.
Patrick reached aside to stop her. “Don’t go out there. Wait until he finds out what ran instead of his job. He’s likely to start screaming.”
“I thought he was screaming now,” Glenn said.
“No. Trust me. He’s not. Not yet. Sandy Minyas ran an analysis on my mammoth feather. She isolated the genetic base code for life on Zoe.”
“What about it?” asked Glenn.
“The discovery. It’s Copernican. It’s Galilean.”
“Didn’t those guys do hard time?”
“Yes, well, Sandy’s going to get put on the rack and roasted.”
“That would be all right,” Glenn said. She had guessed by now what secret the mammoth feather had unearthed.
The base genetic code for life on Zoe, the world at the edge of the galaxy, was DNA.
17
 
M
ERRIMACK’S
INERTIAL SCREENS could withstand planet-killing forces. She carried an arsenal bigger than those of midsized nations. Just her presence lifted Port Campbell’s economy.
Her Marines’ flashy patrols convinced travelers to travel. A flood of trade passed through the outpost. Ships moved among all the stations.
The port governor, Zander Kidd, invited the captain of the
Merrimack
to dinner in his palatial residence within the main station.
At formal dinners, the captain customarily wore dress whites, with trousers and flat shoes. At Port Campbell, her host requested formal civilian attire. “We’re not mad keen on uniforms out here,” said Governor Kidd.
Apparently the governor’s protocol officer failed to advise him that the captain in haute couture was Class One ordnance.
Calli Carmel had been thoroughly disfigured during the war. The medics had restored her all right, slapped a field face on her at the time and sent her back into action. Her artificial jaw gave her headaches. It wasn’t her natural shape, and her muscles kept pretending it was the old one.

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