The Ninth Circle (47 page)

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Authors: R. M. Meluch

BOOK: The Ninth Circle
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The hilt of a machete smashed down on the res chamber. Sandy Minyas reared flat back into a pirate. A shriek flew out of her throat.
Then she was rising by her shirt collar.
“Move along,” said the pirate. He steered her around to face the hatchway and gave her a push. She stumbled out to the sunlight and let herself be herded with the others gathered around the fire pit. No one, not even Benet, said anything to her.
 
“Family conference,” Faunus sang to the assembling xenos. “There’s been a little regime change. I’ll wait till we’re all here.”
“Oh, look at that,” Leo pointed suddenly. “I want that!”
Set in the half-ring of uninspired square-built spacecraft, looking entirely out of place among the prosaic boxes, crouched a silvery late-model racing yacht.
Smaller than the other ships, smaller than the Xerxes, the Star Racer was fast, high end, gorgeous. It was too good for these people.
The pirates hadn’t searched that ship yet.
“Let’s take it,” said Nox. He marched up the ramp and tried the hatch. It was locked. Nox rapped on the hatch of the racing yacht with the hilt of his machete.
A dog barked inside. It sounded large.
Nox shouted through the hull, “Don’t try to take off. We’ll shoot you out of the sky and kill all your friends behind you.”
Leo added, “We’ll carve your name into their carcasses.”
The dog barking silenced.
The hatch opened.
Nox blinked at the figure in the hatchway—a trim, elegant, older man with a dignified youthful posture. He wore his long silvering black hair swept back in a tail.
Jose Maria de Cordillera gave a gentle smile and said happily to the pirate standing at his hatchway, “John.”
The other pirates gaped at Nox, their eyes big as full moons.
Jose Maria stepped out through the hatch, arms wide, and greeted the stunned pirate with an embrace and a kiss on either scarred cheek. “John Farragut.”
26
 
C
APTAIN CARMEL SUMMONED her cryptotech.
“Mister Johnson, what can you tell me about the radio transmissions on the planet?”
Merrimack
had detected low-level radio messages on first arriving at Zoe. The staccato patterns were not any signal that would ever occur in nature. Some intelligence on the planet was clicking.
“It’s not a code,” said Qord Johnson. “It’s a language.”
“What’s the signal strength?” Calli asked.
“Weak,” the com tech answered that one. “Less than fifty watts. Frequency five hundred ten kilohertz.”
“That’s near the old Morse range, isn’t it?” said Calli.
“It is,” said Qord Johnson. “But this is not a code, Captain.”
“Is the LEN scientific expedition conducting wildlife radio tagging?” said Calli. “Could this be wildlife telemetry?” In that case she could be chasing literal wild geese.
“No, sir. It’s not ours,” said the com tech. Then specified, “Not human.”
“It’s an alien language,” said the cryptotech. “I’m the wrong man for this job.”
Code breakers did not untangle languages.
Calli paid an in-person visit to the xeno lab where the xenogeneralists Weng and Sidowski had their full cloke specimen spread out on a table.
Calli immediately zeroed in on the wiry filaments that looked like strands of coarse hair protruding from the cloke’s shoulders. “What are those?”
“Antennae,” said Dr. Weng.
“
Radio
antennae?” said Calli.
“Not necessarily,” said Dr. Sidowski.
“
Could
they be?” said Calli.
“Do you want them to be?” said Weng.
“Someone on the planet is talking on the radio,” said Calli.
“These are the radios?” said Ski, staring at his alien.
“Are they?” Calli said back.
“This is dead, sir,” said Dr. Weng of his specimen. “Perhaps if I had more to work with . . . ?”
“Is there such a thing as a biological radio?” said Calli.
“Don’t see why not,” said Ski.
“Because there should be more signals if the clokes are all walking radios,” Weng snapped at Ski. “That’s why not.”
“There are only a few dozen signal sources worldwide,” said Calli. “The signal strength is too low for those sources to be talking to each other.”
“Maybe they’re
listening
,” said Ski. “Maybe only the group captain’s talking.”
Calli’s eyebrows went high. She absorbed that thought.
“Captain?” Weng prompted.
Calli said, “If only the command-and-control cloke talks, do the foot soldiers not talk to each other?”
“Maybe like ants talk.” Ski touched his fingertips together like conversing ants. “Couldn’t begin to tell you what they’re saying.”
Weng said, “Where’s the ship’s xenolinguist when we finally need one?”
“Yeah,” said Ski. “Ham. Where’s Ham?”
Patrick Hamilton.
“Dr. Hamilton is on the planet,” said Calli.
“Need him, sir,” said Weng.
Calli signaled her exec on the ship’s intracom. “Commander Ryan, I need to consult with Dr. Hamilton.”
The XO responded, “Sir, the LEN put up a shield dome ten minutes ago. We can’t see anything in camp. The expedition is not answering hails. And—”
Calli heard a quick exchange of voices before Commander Ryan returned to the com. “They just activated displacement jammers.”
Weng heard that. He looked to Calli. “I know the LEN don’t like us, sir, but what the Fortran?”
“Oh, foxtrot,” Calli said, eyes to the overhead.
We just found our pirates
.
 
Nox was aware of heads whiplashing round his way. He returned Jose Maria’s embrace mechanically, because he couldn’t bring himself to stab the man. “My name is Nox.”
“Nox,” Jose Maria acknowledged. He stepped back from the embrace and somehow managed to turn Nox around so they were both facing the staring camp gathering. “Nox, this is Glenn Hamilton, and her husband, Dr. Patrick Hamilton. That is Dr. Melisandra Minyas. There is Dr. Poul—”
“You are trying to humanize them,” Nox said.
“Of course I am,” said Jose Maria, warm and calm. “And that is Dr. Aaron Rose, who makes excellent wine.”
It was harder to kill people with names.
“It won’t work,” Nox said.
But Jose Maria had already got inside Nox’s guard. Jose Maria had been a houseguest of his father back when Nox was still John Farragut, Junior. Jose Maria had never called him John John. Or worse, John John John. Jose Maria had recognized him through his scars and tats and bones. It meant Jose Maria had looked at him, really looked at him, and remembered him.
Nox felt his brothers’ stares. Felt a physical nudge behind his knee. A snuffling nose.
Jose Maria reached down to the nose’s owner. “This is my dog, Inga. I don’t think I had her when I visited.”
Oh, hell. He’s introduced his dog. He’s throwing the whole arsenal at me.
The bitch’s warm brown eyes, doggie smile, and wagging stub tail dared Nox to kill her.
Nox tried to salvage his authority, his ruthlessness. Had to make an example of someone. He put his hand on his machete hilt and spoke loudly past Jose Maria, “I seem to have everyone’s attention. Who is in charge here?”
Before anyone else could speak, Jose Maria said, “I am.”
He wasn’t. But apparently Jose Maria guessed that Nox had intended to cut off the expedition leader’s head.
Nox couldn’t kill Jose Maria.
We have broken bread
.
“Son of a bitch,” Nox muttered.
Nox needed to keep up his role of vicious killer.
I am evil
.
The thought of killing Jose Maria was making him physically ill. He couldn’t do it.
Nox was agonizingly aware of his brothers stealing looks at him and pretending they weren’t as shocked as anyone else to hear him called John Farragut.
Nox gave up the idea of killing someone for now. He pushed ahead with the rest of the Circle’s plan. “Your presence is required around the campfire,
Don
Cordillera.” Nox motioned Jose Maria out of his elegant ship.
Jose Maria complied. The dog trotted at his heels, stub tail wagging.
Orissus was keeping watch over the flock around the fire pit. Orissus told them that anyone caught with a com would lose his hands. Out came the coms onto the ground. Then Faunus searched everyone. He didn’t find any hidden coms. Orissus, with his black bushy beard, his wild hair, his gold tooth, and his machete, looked just too eager to cut off the hand of a holdout.
The brothers searched all the ships and all the tents and huts for anything that could be used against them. Nicanor acquired a list of all expedition personnel and called roll to make sure no one was AWOL.
“Anabelle,” Nicanor called. “Which of you is Anabelle?”
Met with silence.
Nicanor roared, “Where is Anabelle!”
The scientists were cowed speechless.
A small voice offered, “The goat.”
Orissus’ eyes bulged menacingly.
The voice got smaller. “Really. Anabelle is the goat.”
Nicanor looked to his brothers, “Is there a goat?”
Pallas said, “I saw a goat.”
Pallas left the fireside and walked out between huts and parked ships. He returned within moments suppressing a grin. He waved a feed bowl embossed with flowery letters: Anabelle. “Explains why Anabelle doesn’t have a last name.”
Satisfied now that everyone was seated around the fire pit under Orissus’ guard, Nicanor, Pallas, Faunus, Leo, Galeo, and Nox did a second more thorough search of the camp. Then they closed up the ships and sealed the hatches with nothing more formidable than tape.
The tape might as well have been radioactive iron bars.
The expedition members did not need to be told not to disturb the tape.
Nox noticed a glassy shimmer in the air overhead. Leo had got a defensive energy dome up. There would be no bolts from the blue now. No skyhooks either. If
Merrimack
found them, she would need to put soldiers on the ground to root them out.
We have hostages
.
The civilians were as docile as livestock, hoping they were dairy cows, not beef cattle.
“That was a productive meeting, folks,” said Faunus. “You can go back to your beakers.”
One scientist seemed about to tell him that his “beakers” were inside one of the sealed ships. He thought better of it.
 
Data and pictures had begun streaming in from the drones that
Merrimack
sent to scout the titanic alien ship five light-years out from Zoe.

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