Strength and Honor (10 page)

A:
And where do you propose to go? JMdeC: Elsewhere.

6

^Y
OU CAN’T DO BATTLE
in space with an enemy who won’t stand.
Merrimack
raced out to the source point of the diversionary fire that had hammered
Wolflhound
but that shooter was long gone. Captain Farragut tried to hail
Gladiator
on the old harmonic, but
Gladiator
was not responding. Anyone listening on the official harmonic had heard Calli’s last words: “Numa, you bastard—” Some doubted her ID of her assailant. But it was not necessarily a
reasonable
doubt.

Numa Pompeii had not stayed in the area to explain, deny, or take credit for the attack, or to find out if Gaius survived it.

Likely Numa was on his way to Palatine. Numa Pompeii had something to offer Romulus now. He had the death of Gaius Americanus.

Still, there were other Romans in the Deep End who could have hit
Wolfhound.

The Roman Legion carrier
Horlatius
was out here somewhere. Marcus Asinius was in command of the ship if not the Legion.

Marcus Asinius and his Legion Draconis had no love for Romulus. They respected John Farragut, but their loyalty lay absolutely with Rome.

Farragut could not see Marcus Asinius participating in an assassination of a Roman Senator. But Marcus could have hit
Wolfhound
without knowing there was a target beyond
Wolfhound
or without knowing the identity of the passenger in the Spit boat.

And Augustus was out there.

“That wasn’t Augustus,” said Farragut, fact.

“Sir?” said Commander Dent, less certain. The Augustus she knew was a first magnitude prick.

“Augustus is still devoted to Magnus. Gaius was Magnus’ chosen heir. If Augustus were anywhere near this neighborhood, Gaius would have made it where he was going.”

Augustus had to be on a spearline to either Palatine or to Caesar’s mobile palace Fortress Aeyrie to kill Romulus.

The U.S. Rattlers of Fort Eisenhower had caught the second shooter immediately, the one who fired the kill shot on the Spit boat—a lone man in a small craft, not a patterner’s Striker. The Rattlers killed him. Killed him a bunch of times. Kept killing him because they could not undo what he did to Captain Carmel.

The burn unit in the main station of Fort Ike smelled like medical gel. “Is Calli—?” Farragut was about to say
all right,
but he knew she was not all right. “—alive?”

The doctor hesitated, looked thoughtful.

“She’s
dead?”
Farragut filled in the silence.

“Those are interesting questions,” said the doctor. Too detached for Farragut’s liking. Doctor Emil Embry. Older guy, not some kid who joined the Navy to learn the trade. Cool and steady. Almost callous. “She lost a major organ. We are regrowing one for her.”

“Which organ?”

“Her skin.”

Farragut knew that Calli had been burned. “How bad?”

“One hundred percent BSA,” said Dr. Embry. “I’m used to Naval acronyms, Doc. I don’t know your alphabet clumps.”

“BSA. Body Surface Area. She has no skin. It was all necrotic, so we had to remove it. We are oxygenating her through medical gel.”

“Will she—?”

Live?

Dr. Embry heard the unspoken word. “If I have anything to say about it, Captain Farragut. And, if may I say so, that counts for a hell of a lot.”

Confidence was a good thing in a physician. Farragut felt the muscles in his neck relax a little. He held his head higher. “What about internal damage?”

“The fire damage was mostly on the surface. She did not inhale, which is a blessing. It was a flash fry. It left her muscles in decent shape. Only the outer layer got cooked. Like fried ice cream.”

Farragut muffled a sound of startled disgust that rose in his throat.

“Or baked Alaska.”

“Oh, for Jesus.”

“Her internal organs are getting assistance. So she’s in remarkably good condition—for a woman without skin.” Farragut cast a glance upward.
God? Sir? Thank you.
And back to the doctor: “What about the Roman Senator, Gaius Americanus?”

“I’m less certain about the prognosis for the Roman. He is a strong man, but he’s working too hard. He won’t come down from the hyperdynamic phase. We’re watching him for acidosis, burn encephalopathy, and renal failure. Mister Carmel’s body is behaving more sensibly.”

“Can I see her?”

“She may not want anyone to see her.”

“Let me see her.”

Dr. Embry admitted the captain to Calli’s chamber in the secure area of the burn unit. Even though the doctor had warned him, John Farragut was not quite ready for the sight.

Removal of her skin left her as a piece of Calli-shaped meat suspended in pink gel in a tank. With her drastically reduced vascular volume, she was kept in a literal blood bath. Medical gel supplied the tissues with oxygen and fluids. There were entubated auxiliary organs working outboard of her body to lessen the stress on her own. Farragut recognized a kidney and a liver.

There was a breathing tube down her throat. They must have blocked her nostrils—wherever those were.

Farragut squinted through the gel from several angles.

“Where’s—? Does she—? Does she have a jaw?”

Dr. Embry spoke very softly, “No. Shattered.”

Farragut had a replacement jaw himself, so he supposed the jawbone was the least of her worries. No jaw. That meant she had taken a blow to the face. “How’s her brain?”

“In good condition,” Dr. Embry answered softly. “That’s a hardheaded woman.”

“I can testify to that, sir,” said Captain Farragut.

Over the speakers Pachelbel’s “Canon in D” played soft joy. It made Farragut feel like he ought to be standing at an altar waiting for a bride.

The music and Dr. Embry’s abrupt switch from callous jackass to a soft-spoken bedside manner made Farragut wonder, “Can she hear me?”

“Possibly,” said Dr. Embry. “She’s in an induced coma, but her brain is functioning on the subconscious level and she still has her eardrums. So I thought—” He gave a shrug at the lilting music from the speakers. “Why not?”

Farragut was a tactile person. He would have held Calli’s hand, but she was entirely inside the antiseptic tank, encased with medical gel. And she had no skin. He put his palm to the transparent barrier.

He spoke to her. “Well, hell, Crash. You bent another boat. Gaius is alive.” She would need to know that. “And so are you, just in case you’re wondering. They’ve got you in the pink medical slime. And I gotta tell you it’s not your best color.”

He kept his voice buoyant. Did not want to sound like he was attending her funeral. She looked ghastly. “Gypsy’s coming in to see you after I get back. You know we can’t both leave the boat at the same time.”

Gypsy Dent had been Calli’s XO on the
Wolfhound
before Gypsy came to
Merrimack.
Calli and Gypsy were tight as sisters.

“They got the guy who flamed you. They’re still picking pieces of him out of the vacuum with a sieve. You know him. I’ll tell you who it was when you get out of there.”

Hie kill shot on the Spit boat had come from a small Roman sleeper vessel, which had been trolling in the dark outside Fort Eisenhower for a very long time. It housed a single pilot—a disgraced Roman sent to redeem himself with a long, long, lonely vigil, waiting for a suicide task.

The second shooter’s identity tended to support the idea of Numa Pompeii as the shooter of the diversionary fire.

Farragut quit the chamber, shaken.

He clasped Embry’s hand firmly in leaving. “Take care of her, Doc.”

“I have every faith in Mister Carmel,” said Dr. Embry. “And in me.”

“That’s what I need to hear.”

“Captain,” Dr. Embry caught him on an afterthought. “There is a space lawyer who keeps trying to get in here. I find the persistence of lawyers offensive. I don’t need hyenas and jackals in my hospital. He’s Navy and keeps quoting code at me. I confess I know as much law as he knows medicine, so I have no idea if he’s making a valid legal point or not, and I don’t care. Can you arrange a restraining order on him?”

Farragut was about to agree but hesitated on a second thought. “Is he this tall,” Farragut asked, his hand over his own six-foot-one head, “This big around?” He made a circle with his fingers. “Looks about fifteen years old, and I’m told he’s cute?”

“That about describes him, yes.”

“Make sure his DNA checks to Rob Roy Buchanan and let him in. He’s not her lawyer.” He used to be her lawyer, but Calli had fired him a while back. “Oh, and tell him to get a shave.”

Captain Farragut proceeded from the secure burn unit to the stationmaster’s office.

General Aniston Weld was long past harried. Long past trying to hold everything together. By now he was just watching the pieces fall and adding another note to his list of things that needed addressing.

Things that had been Priority One just a day ago were now somewhere around number eighty-four with a twelve-ton sinker.

The man in putative control of Fort Eisenhower was not even sure what he was dealing with—an act of war or an internal assassination within the Roman Empire. He knew it happened in his fort and it took out a U.S. Navy captain with it. Captain Carmel may have been the real target for all General Weld knew.

General Weld listened in an odd state of defeated calm as an animated Captain Farragut rattled off rapid fire:

“The Romans have someone inside Fort Eisenhower. He’s probably inside the main station.
Someone
had to let the shooters know that Gaius Americanus was leaving the station,
when
he was leaving, and which ship he was on. The mole is likely communicating to the outside by resonance. Resonance leaves no trace. This is a huge fort here, so instead of screening everyone, we should pull the recordings from the surveillance monitors on the burn unit. The mole will follow up to see if Gaius lives. Identify all visitors or loiterers at the burn unit since the attack. Our mole might be one of them.”

The stationmaster listened until Farragut came up for a breath, then watched him for another minute like he was observing some energetic alien creature. Weld spoke at last, “You a control addict, Captain Farragut?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Hm.” It was a satisfied hm. The admission was disarming. “I suppose you’ll want all those ‘visitors and loiterers’ smelled too.”

“Please,” said Farragut. He wanted them all investigated. “Sniff hard.”

“I suppose that’s reasonable,” General Weld said, riffling through his contact list. “I’ll hand it over to my Intelligence unit.”

“How’s your intelligence here?”

“Not as good as I thought, now, is it?” Weld said dryly. He paged his Chief Intelligence officer and gave him the burn unit surveillance assignment.

General Weld clicked off the com, returned to Farragut. “Interesting that you bring up the burn unit visitors. There has already been one suspicious character in and out of the burn unit. He hasn’t been able to get in, but I’ve been told—repeatedly—that he’s persistent. Space lawyer, name—” He snapped his fingers, couldn’t place it, leafed through his handwritten notes for something way down below eighty-fourth on the priority list.

“Rob Roy Buchanan,” said Farragut.

“That’s the one. Your man?”

“No. But I’d bet my eyeteeth he’s clean. Go ahead and check him anyway. We can’t overlook anything.”

“Oh we
can”
Weld sighed. “We just
mustn’t.”

John Farragut strode through the station to the shuttle dock for his return to
Merrimack.
Security was tight on all shuttles now. There used to be dozens of them launching any given minute throughout the space fort. Now interstation traffic was a backlogged mess.

Someone is pulling off my wings.
Farragut was not thinking about the shuttles.

Thinking of Calli in the bloody tank.

Missing Jose Maria, his father figure. The kind and wise way his father had never been. Jose Maria was gone, homeward bound on a space yacht named
Mercedes.
And Augustus. Missing—of all people to miss— Augustus. And that thought almost made him laugh.

Alarms sounded. Hatches shut. Red lights flashed. A lot of sounds rose from the travelers—gasps, murmurs, shouts, demands, cries, questions.

A soothing female voice over the loud com announced that the dock was under lockdown and thanked the travelers, some of them shrieking now, for their patience.

The bells sounded an unfamiliar alarm sequence. Farragut knew all of Ike’s codes, and he had never heard this particular one.

It had never happened.

Fort Ike was under attack.

Roman attack craft winked in, on all sides of the space fortress, as they dropped from FTL. One of them was the Legion carrier
Horatius.

Perimeter sentinels had detected the unauthorized approach to the fortress. Barriers went up, energized grids meshed and locked tight, enclosing all the stations of the fortress in a planetary-sized energy shell. No ships, no ordnance could pass in or out without the controller creating an opening.

Nothing was getting through right now.

Roman fire, Roman drones, a Roman destroyer, all caromed off the adamant barrier.

You could see the Roman barrage visually from here, through the wide viewports—flash after flash against their solid sky.

People rushed around Farragut, who stood at the dock with a finger in one ear to block out the noise as he shouted into his wrist com: “Gypsy, I’m not getting out of here. She’s your boat.” And to let Gypsy get on with her job, he said, “Let me talk to Hamster.”

Lieutenant Hamilton took over com contact with the captain. “Hamilton, aye.”

“Where are y’all? In or out?”

“We’re inside the grid,” Hamster answered.

That was more bad than good. Good that
Merrimack
was safe, but very much not good that she could not fire on the attackers unless the controller made a window in the titanic energy shell—or if the attackers breached the perimeter.