Strength and Honor (46 page)

Negotiations with the United States were strained. The United States tried to take advantage of the situation and gouge out terms, which was why Caesar Magnus had surrendered his Empire to Captain Farragut, not to the United States, during the Hive crisis.

The nations were going to be a while pounding out an Armistice. First thing the Roman Senate wanted was to stop the shooting and the sabotage on the ground. Then they wanted to collect their power plants, which had been bounced out of orbit by U.S. warships, and to reestablish communications with their colonies.

The U.S. troop carriers had already withdrawn from the Palatine system. The armies had been confined in their spaceships for months. They would not be landing on Palatine any time soon if ever.

The U.S. permitted a Roman hospital ship to retrieve Caesar Romulus from Earth.

The immediate collapse of the Roman war effort upon Caesar’s incapacitation left John Farragut to wonder how Romulus had ever planned to establish his claim to any part of Earth. Something was missing.

There gaped a giant hole in the available information where something strategic belonged.

Sulla.
She waited in the Abyss. A cenotaph traveling faster than light. Her speed had leveled out at cruising velocity, her direction toward nowhere. She was nearly impossible to find.

And there she was.

She was surprisingly close to Near Space. She would have passed by unseen had no one been intently looking for her. The Vatican ship found her bound on a northerly route that would carry her out of the galaxy.

It appeared that the last act of the crew of
Sulla
had been to take the ship off her homeward course and away from humanity.

Objects traveling faster than light do not fall out of FTL. Passing the light barrier required energy—the same energy to decelerate below the barrier as to accelerate above it.

The Vatican ship had found
Sulla
traveling FTL with a dead engine, no energy emanating from her, no residual heat left about her. Her antimatter in its magnetic container had been blown out the back, magnets and all, somewhere hundreds or thousands of parsecs back.

Without intervention, the dead hull would travel on at this speed forever.

Jagged rents in her hull, as if the metal had been peeled open, confirmed the stories and suspicions.
Sulla
had in fact been humankind’s first Hive victim.

The racing yacht
Mercedes
made rendezvous with
Sulla
and the Vatican research vessel in the Abyss. The Vatican ship had been awaiting the arrival of their patron, Jose Maria de Cordillera, before boarding the wreck.

The
Mercedes
matched speed and attitude with
Sulla
and lined up an air lock opposite one of the large holes in her hull.

As he suited up, Jose Maria felt an irrational desire to carry a sword. But he had given his sword to Captain Farragut upon leaving
Merrimack.

Feeling naked without a weapon while going into the Hive-scarred wreck, Jose Maria slid a short blade into his calf holster, like a diver’s knife. Then, as if he were actually going to Mercedes’ rescue, he strapped on a beam knife and slung a welding torch pack across his back. Part of him felt ridiculous. Another part called out in silence,
My love, I come!

He stood in the air lock of his racer as the air was sucked out and the artificial gravity lifted away.

The Vatican researchers had anticipated the possible state of
Sulla’s
hull, and had come equipped with a polymer spray to blunt the sharp metal edges around the holes in the ship. An exo-suit’s personal field would not protect it against a sharp edge approaching slowly.

The safety coating appeared blue against the ship’s black hull. Jose Maria opened
Mercedes’
air lock and turned on his suit lights.

He crossed the short void between ships with a slow push out of the air lock. He did not need his suit’s directional jets, but gently floated straight across and caught the blunted opening.

Carefully, he ducked inside and looked for something on which to attach the line he had carried from his own ship. He fastened the tether to an overhead conduit, then surveyed the scene around him.

His lamps shed cheerless light that could not push back the black from this space. The cold illumination threw out fanged shadows of torn metal wherever he looked.

His thickly gloved hands propelled him at a floating crawl through the ravaged corridors. He kept his com link open. The researchers in the Vatican ship could hear him breathing. They allowed him his silence. They watched the video feed from his helmet as he progressed through the flying tomb.

He found her chamber. Knew it by her clothes. Her field garb, sand-colored, synthetic, was inedible by gorgons. Those small boots. How tiny her feet had been. He hugged the boots.

He did not find teeth in her sleeping compartment. His Mercedes would not have died hiding under a bed.

He found the control room, a scatter of teeth there. He collected all that he found and tucked them into a sealed pocket in his suit. He pulled data receptacles out of the communications station and fit those inside another pocket.

Then he found an incisor. He knew it immediately. How many times had he gazed at her smile across a table?

There was no gravity here, but still came the impulse to fall to his knees. He curled round one knee, his head bowed, floating. He held the tooth to his chest.

My love. My love. I am taking you home.

The colossus that was the Jupiter Monument was lit up to be visible from Earth. With the naked eye it appeared like a bright pinpoint moon to the planet.

Seen through a scope, dark specks appeared, moving across the face of the monument like black ash. An observer on Luna Station spotted the specks first and asked, “What the hell is that?” The United States and the rest of Earth went on immediate maximum alert.
Wolfhound
turned her scanners toward Jupiter to mutters of “Those treacherous bastards.”

The specks looked like incoming small craft. Thousands upon thousands of them, moving near light speed. Calli Garmel couldn’t believe it. A Roman double cross.

Tactical refined the image. The specks weren’t Roman ships. A cricket in a tiny cage on the command deck, left over from the Sagittarius campaign, chirped madly. “Hive!”

37

^I
MAGES FROM THE JUPITER MONUMENT
reached the U.S. Fleet at Palatine, images of gorgons crawling on the monument in a black mass that all but obscured the bright lights. Images of more gorgons headed toward Earth. Not in spheres. The new generation Hive hadn’t figured out spheres. These monsters were strewn about in gaggles, ribbons, clumps, and nets.

Captain Farragut on the
Merrimack
hailed Admiral Mishindi on Earth. “A Hive emerged on
Jupiter?”
“No,” Mishindi responded, harried. “Jupiter is where the monsters are entering the solar system.” The Jupiter Monument was a resonant source. Naturally it would attract the Hive.

But other than on the planet Thaleia, which was heavily monitored and contained, the Hive had no known presence anywhere near Earth. The Hive had no other history in Near Space at all.

“Their actual point of origin is the 82 Eridani system,” Mishindi told Farragut. “The third planet, Xi.”

“Xi?”

Xi was a dead planet. Long, long, long dead. There was no arguing the improbability of it, since the fact was chewing on the Jupiter Monument even now.

The 82 Eridani system was damned close to Sol in astronomical terms. Which made it close to the Roman worlds of Thaleia and Palatine as well. But so far no gorgons had started in those directions. They were all headed toward the closest resonant target, Earth. And they had arrived, falling from the sky in a spidered rain.

It would take any ship of the attack Fleet a week at best to return to Earth to fight the Hive. Captain Farragut wanted to be there yesterday. Then the side thought struck him.

“He knew,” he said out loud.

Gypsy lifted dark brows toward her captain. “Sir?”

“Romulus knew!
He knew the gorgons were coming. He knew when they would get to Earth. He timed his visit so he could be there when the Hive arrived and the United States Fleet wasn’t!”

Gypsy’s brow furled all the way up to her shaved scalp. “Why would Romulus want to be on Earth when the gorgons came?”

“To be our savior. Romulus meant to collect our surrender under a Hive siege.
God bless America!”

And Farragut guessed how Romulus meant to get weapons to all those unarmed Roman tourists who had come to Earth. He was going to make the United States and the rest of the world arm them for him.

Romulus had not figured on Augustus striking him down from beyond the grave. “But how did Romulus get the gorgons to Xi?” said Gypsy.

“He didn’t.” Farragut spoke it as he realized it himself. “They’ve been there! They’ve been there for three quarters of forever!”

“Since the galaxy’s first civilization? That can’t be. If gorgons were there, why didn’t they eat the archaeological team who found the Xi tablet decades ago?”

“Because the gorgons of the ancient Hive moved on a long long time ago, and the new swarms didn’t hatch until the original swarms died!”

“But most of the second generation swarms woke up months ago. What took these so long to hatch?”

“I’m getting the idea they don’t hatch until there’s something they can eat. Remember Telecore was clear when we went there. The gorgons only woke on Telecore when we brought edible things down to the surface. Something edible came to Xi. And I would stake anything that Romulus sent it.”

Gypsy followed the argument. “Whatever Romulus sent to Xi got eaten, and Romulus didn’t tell anyone. He’s worse than Calli said he was, and she had nothing good to say about that man ever.”

“It’s looking like a new Hive can pop up
anywhere
the last Hive ever was. I need to ask Jose Maria—” He stopped. Cold. “Oh, for Jesus.”

Sulla.

Inertia carried Jose Maria up—which was the same as down, which was the same as sideways in this weightless place—into the ship’s overhead.

His lamplight fell on a very large, black lump like a charcoal mass crusted on the conduit.

Jose Maria uncurled in panic reflex. He bounced off the deck, clutched a grate to stop his motion. He spoke into his helmet com with restrained urgency, “Get clear of the
Sulla
immediately. I have Hive presence.”

He tucked Mercedes’ tooth into the pocket at his chest. He planted his feet to take a stand on a wall, anchoring himself against the hatchway, and drew his knife from its sheath at his calf. He faced the uncurling mass of tentacles emerging in the overhead.

Captain Farragut fought down the impulse to signal a warning to Jose Maria’s little ship
Mercedes.
The Hive had the ability to home on any reception point of a res pulse. If the Hive did not already know where Jose Maria was, Farragut’s signal would give his location away.

Farragut sent an urgent message to the Vatican Observatory, warning them, “Do
not
contact the research ship that found
Sulla.
When is the last time you heard from the crew?”

“You cannot know how much I welcome this communication, Captain Farragut,” said the monsignor who took his call. “You are a Godsend. We have lost contact with our research vessel. I pray to God that He did not send you to us too late.” The monsignor provided Captain Farragut with the Vatican ship’s last known vector.

Farragut hailed Admiral Mishindi again. He did not need to beg to be cut out from the Fleet and assigned to the rescue mission.
“Sulla
has been classified as a plague ship,” said Mishindi. “It must not be allowed to advance into Near Space.
Merrimack,
you are clear to separate from the Fleet to stop the Hive incursion and attempt a rescue of the Vatican vessel and Doctor Cordillera.”

Merrimack
blazed out to the Abyss at threshold speed.

“We should be able to see her,” said Gypsy as
Merrimack
closed on the projected course of the Vatican ship.

Tactical sang out. “Occultation! Dead ahead! Got him!”

The plot turned out to be a solo ship. Not the
Mercedes.
Not the
Sulla.
It was the Vatican ship, alone, running Earthward.

Merrimack
veered to make intercept. The Vatican ship appeared intact.
Merrimack
hailed her on a tight beam instead of resonating so not to alert the Hive of their location.

“Is Jose Maria with you?” Farragut demanded.

The Vatican personnel told him that the Hive had emerged on
Sulla.
Jose Maria had ordered the Vatican ship to run.

“Where is he!” The Vatican pilot gave
Merrimack
Jose Maria’s vector. It led galactic north, fastest route out of the galaxy. As
Merrimack
blazed away, the pilot’s benediction followed, “May God be with you.”

After a chase that took far too long, with John Farragut stalking the corridors of his ship as if he were pushing her along,
Merrimack
caught up with another solo ship.

It wasn’t Jose Maria’s
Mercedes.

It was
Sulla.

She was an image out of a nightmare, a mass of torn metal, riddled with jagged holes, cold as space. Dead. “Where is Jose Maria?”

“No other ships detected, Captain,” Tactical reported. “Did we cross a heat trail?”

“No, sir.There’s no one else out here except
them”

Alongside the ghost ship
Sulla,
a Hive sphere traveled on a parallel course at matched speed. The swarm was a small one, the sphere only about three quarters the size of
Merrimack.

“The new Hive has learned spheres,” Gypsy noted gravely.