The Myriad: Tour of the Merrimack #1 (24 page)

Cables ran from the base of his skull to the base of his neck, and from arm to weapon, the hand cannon fit to his forearm. He pumped projectiles into target after target with inhuman accuracy, minimal motion, no passion. Farragut felt one projectile whiz past his ear (hoped that was accuracy) to stab into the gorgon before him, and immediately detonate. The gorgon erupted from within, splattering Farragut’s face shield.

On every side, gorgons exploded, disintegrating in death. Naval swordsmen gurgled oaths, astonished to be unhurt amid the close carnage.

No involuntary blinks from Augustus as the gore hit his face shield. The head would tilt in reaction to the trajectory of a splash of blood, calculated to catch the glob on his visor instead of his cheek; but the eyes never left his targets. It was that, the independent motion of body parts which normally moved in concert that was so . . . disconcerting.

He riddled the grasping aliens with projectile charges, detonating them in firecracker strings.

“What if you shoot clean through one?” Farragut asked the question that was on everyone’s mind. Anything that could pierce a soldier’s shell could pierce a bulkhead—that was why no one else was firing projectile weapons.

“I set the depth,” Augustus announced, voice flat, disconnected. He launched another salvo toward the breach, past ears and necks of cursing naval personnel, who felt the shots breeze near. Detonated the shots as they stabbed home. The gorgons died, boarding. Their disintegrating bodies clogged the breach.

“What if you have bad depth perception?”

Augustus pivoted. Shot a gorgon rising between himself and one of
Merrimack
’s Marines. The explosive round bit no deeper than the target’s body. Detonated. The man on the far side was hit with nothing but gore.

“Well, then you’re pretty well screwed, aren’t you,” said Augustus mechanically. “Don’t talk to me.”

Augustus tore off another nine rounds with the speed of thought, machine accurate with human discretion. Blasted clear a path for a patch unit to get through to the rent in the hull.

Farragut’s party advanced to another hot spot.

Met with a closed hatch whose handle would not turn. Farragut rapped with his pommel. “Who closed this hatch?” And into the com, “Calli! What’s going on in the galley?”

“Boarders in the galley at last report,” the XO answered. “Team Echo answered the breach. Team Echo is not reporting.”

Farragut roared back for his patch crew; ordered his troops to gang way to let the mechanics through to the jammed hatch. “Drill it!”

The hatch fell in, edges glowing molten, stench boiling from within, and already Farragut was springing through the opening.

Augustus grabbed him by the scruff of the uniform with one arm, arresting one hundred and ninety pounds of springing Farragut in mid-flight, hauled him back and tossed him behind him, as a soldier’s pincers dropped from the overhead, slicing shut on empty air where the captain’s neck would have been.

Augustus snarled at the captain for an idiot and shot a path clear to the galley.

The stench within was human vomit and human excrement. Gorgons feasted on human entrails, cotton clothing, and shoe leather. John Farragut wielded an angry sword, slashing at the aliens’ serrate mouths, kicking a chair into their ungainly legs, hammering open their shells with his pommel. Projectiles rifled either side of his ears, and gorgons bulged in the detonation. Always maniacal in battle, now with Augustus behind him, Farragut was berserk, invincible.

After an immeasurable time, Farragut paused, chest heaving, mouth twitching, sweat pouring down his face, tears from his wild eyes. He pushed back his spattered face shield, searched for another monster to kill in the dank, smoke-filled galley.

Battle craze ebbed with each panting breath. Upended chairs and disintegrating claws piled in a jagged, unreal tangle in the dimness.

“On your left,” a technician announced his own presence as he came up on Farragut’s flank. “Galley secured.”

“This is Team Echo?” asked Farragut, gingerly moving his foot off of a bone. Could be Abdullah’s. Could be Jan Karowicz.

“We’ll ID ’em all, sir,” the technician assured him, the best he could offer.

The lights flickered, went out.

Someone in the dark: “There go the lights.”

Someone else: “No shit.”

It was the first time the Hive mind had infiltrated the light controls.

The emergency lights came up soon enough, casting a dim, lurid illumination over the massacre.

You could hear Augustus clicking and whirring, moving with deep metal tread about the carnage.

“Whatever the hell
he
is, can we order about twelve of those?” the tech muttered appreciatively.

Sorry as soon as he said it.

The heavy
chunk
of Augustus’ footsteps had halted. Augustus had stiffened, pivoted mechanically, his dark eyes wholly vacant.

His hand cannon leveled at John Farragut’s head.

12

A
MARINE’S SWORD LIFTED, cocked back to take off Augustus’ cannon at the elbow.

“Nev, don’t do it!” Farragut barked on the upswing, his hand out to stay the downstroke, eyes maintaining a steady gaze over the barrel of Augustus’ hand cannon to the blank eyes behind it.

“Captain!” the Marine urged between clenched teeth. “They’ve
got
him. Kill him!” His sword quivered, ready.

“No friendly hacking on my boat,” the captain said firmly, his sword at his side.

“That’s not Augustus!” the Marine said between a snarl and a cry, begging for permission to strike. Could the captain not see that that hollow-eyed thing was not the Roman they all knew and loathed? That thing was going to shoot the captain. Nev could not disobey an order to save his own life. To save the captain, however—

Right hand still leveling the cannon at Captain Farragut, Augustus’ left hand lifted, dreamlike.

Nev inhaled, tightened his grip, held his breath.

Augustus reached behind his own head and pulled the cables out of his neck.

Nev froze.

By blinks, expression returned to Augustus’ face with a grimace of pain.

“Gorgons in the corridor!” a Marine outside the hatch reported.

“Go get ’em!” Farragut waved his party of Marines out of the galley to meet the enemy. And to Augustus, who was slow moving, waking from a standing sleep, he said, “They got you.”

“I—” Augustus pulled off a glove, squeezed his eyes as if pushing his brains back in. “Suppose.”

The deck heaved and rocked. Augustus caught his balance with a stagger step. Augustus never staggered.

“You all right?”

“Hell, yeah.” Augustus returned to full consciousness with an angry sniff. Anger beyond his normal ill-tempered disdain. Hot anger.

“I thought a swarm couldn’t penetrate bioelectrics,” said Farragut.

“The
bio
part is functioning just fine, thank you. The add-ons are uffed.” Augustus unstrapped his big cannon from his forearm, tossed it aside as worthless. “What else ya got?”

“Ever use a sword?”

“There’s always a first time.”

Farragut snapped to the single Marine left in the galley, who was guarding the captain’s rear at the hatchway. “A sword for the colonel.” Then into his hand com: “I need a triage unit in the galley!”

“No, you don’t,” Augustus commented. “These folks aren’t going anywhere.”

“I will not have them
eaten
,” Farragut snapped back. “Calli, where’s the action? Point me toward something to kill.”

“Gorgons chewing through the sail. Breach topside.”

“Farragut responding.”

The captain gathered his cadre and led the way up the ladders to the sail. Farragut called back over his shoulder to Augustus, “Ever notice gorgons always go for the sail as if it were important? Do you think they think it’s a head?”

“Gorgons don’t have heads,” said Augustus.

“A lot of their dinners do!” Farragut vaulted up to the sail, slashing.

No sooner there, than alarms blared to the accompaniment of a drastic sound shift from the
Merrimack
’s force field.

Into his hand com: “Calli, are they uffing our alarms?”

The XO’s voice crackled in and out in response. The swarm was fouling intraship communications now. “No, Captain. That’s real. Containment Field Engine Three is compromised.” And next, her voice was sounding over the loud com, all decks, “All possible force to Engine Compartment Three. Isolate Engine Three for ejection.”

Farragut was back on the com, point to point, privately, “Calli, why are we fixing to pop an engine?”

“There are gorgons
in
the engine compartment.”

“Understood.” And off the com, “Oh, for Jesus.” He signaled a retreat from the sail, held the hatch open as he hied his men downside, “Go, go, go!” and jumped down the ladder in the rear. The men sealed the inner hatch, abandoning the sail to the Hive.

“Augustus, if your average soldier cell is—say—fifty kilograms, what kind of blast would a gorgon in the antimatter cause?”

“I’m not wired.”

“You can’t figure the size of the blast without plugging in to patterner mode?”

“Precisely? No.”

“Roughly.”

“E equals we’ll die.”

“That
was
the real question,” said Farragut.

Stress fractures sounded through the XO’s normal ice calm: “Why isn’t that compartment isolated?”

“Access air lock is still unsecured,” the tech reported.

“Secure it.”

The tech hit all the controls for her to see, all to a red light and no go. The tech explained, “The ship won’t let both hatches secure while an animate entity is inside the air lock.”

“We are going to blow to kingdom come because the
ship
won’t hurt a gorgon?”

“That’s about the size of it, sir.”

The tech minding the internal systems monitors reported in a shrill hiccup, “Containment field is fluctu—” Broke off and ducked as the containment field reading all but vanished from the board.

Calli darted the systems tech an evil glare.

He recovered immediately, finished, “—fluctuating. It could go any moment.”

Calli got on the loud com again. “All units near Engine Compartment Three, I cannot overstate the need for haste. Clear and secure the compartment for ejection now.”

John Farragut, en route, on the tight link again: “Calli, what’s the holdup?”

When she explained the problem with the air lock, he suggested, “Since each engine compartment is already surrounded in its own discrete field, why can’t we just chunk the son of a bitch out as is?”

“
Your
ship, John, won’t
let
me. And even if we could, without the second field, the antimatter would detonate the instant it was out of our control.”

“Can anyone tell us if we can withstand an engine explosion at close range?”

“Without a complete force field? It has been suggested that when it goes, one should hold on to the body part dearest to you.”

“Understood.”

He had come to where the corridors were thick with crew and Marines trying to assist. Men squeezed to make way for the captain.

He could see the air lock up ahead. It was a short one, no more than a meter-and-a-half hatch to hatch, pincers and claws holding both hatches open.

All Hive cells were vulnerable to heat, but this was an engine accessway, a place you don’t dare bring welding torches or grenades or anything certain to dislodge a gorgon. The hacking was all by hand here.

The gorgon soldier bodies shone black and glossy, hardening the longer they stayed under pressure. They had wedged themselves in and clung to the air lock like warriors holding some narrow pass in an ancient war.

Farragut felt a push—a domino effect of shoving from the rear—someone in the back yelling, “Gang way! Gang way!”

“Captain here!” someone scolded the pushing Marine.

“Gang way,
sir!
” the Marine continued shoving. And, as the man seemed on a mission, Farragut ganged way.

The big Marine barreled at the hatches, slinging a bag, “Heyaaa, gretaaaaaa!” The bag broke open in flight, scattering its contents into the engine room—pretzels.

The gorgons blocking both hatches turned to follow the motion. And, all together, abandoned their hard-held posts to scrabble after the pretzels.

Marines dived into the air lock, heaved the inner hatch to. “Secure hatch!” their lieutenant ordered.

“Hatch secured!” one cried, slamming the locking bolt in place, and the team lunged back out through the shipside hatchway, shouting to their comrades: “Shut it! Shut it!”

The hatch thunked neatly shut.

The lieutenant barked: “Secure hatch!”

An impotent clanking.

The lieutenant, insistent: “Lock it! Lock it!”

A vulgarity, near screamed.

“Lock it!” the lieutenant raged, hauling the man out of the way for someone else to do the job.

The next men did no better. “
Can’t!
The buggers
bent
it!”

Farragut hailed the control room: “Commander Carmel! Both hatches are closed. Can we eject?”

“Negative. We are showing red on the shipside seal. What’s wrong, boys?”

“Override.”

“Can’t, sir. Your ship—”

Marines made way for Captain Farragut. He rammed the bent mechanism. It was his ship; it ought obey him.

It didn’t.

“Let’s get some equipment up here!” Farragut shouted.

Augustus advanced, shouldered Farragut aside, took the torqued bolt in his hands and, tendons bulging from his temples and neck, bent the bolt back into shape. Palm-heeled it home with a loud clang. “Secured,” said Augustus.

Farragut shouted into the back of his hand: “Clear! Control Room, this is Farragut. We are clear to eject!”

Green lights showed on the systems monitors in the control room.

Calli sent the order: “Engineering. Eject Engine Three.”

As the systems tech reported: “Engine containment fluctuating—”

“Control Room. This is Engineering. Ej ecting Engine Three, aye.”

Calli: “Helm! Spin our bow toward the ejection. Now!”

“Redirecting attitude—” the helmsman acknowledged, wagging the coordinates, to spin the stoutest part of the force field at the blast.

Systems tech: “Engine containment flatlined.”

The Noise.

A roaring, rending screech of an earthquake, like boulders crashing and metal cracking and sheering. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!” Could scarcely hear whoever said that as the lights died. Crew hunched in the dark, an instinctive motion that could not save them from the roar.

“We’re tearing apart!”

Even as the man said it, the lights returned, the raking din diminishing fast.

Shaking, absorbing the surprise of being whole, the helmsman laughed. “No. That sound’s not us. It’s the gorgons!” He stood up. He had been crouched under the console. “That was the gorgons tearing off the force field!”

A moment of disbelief held the control room. It was true. All that grinding shrieking was the thick layer of gorgons tearing away from
Merrimack
’s force field under the engine’s annihilating blast, the raking of gorgon against gorgon, bodies igniting from the friction. The gorgons insinuating through the field conducted the sound.

“I’ll be damned,” said Calli.

The noise died away. In its place, throughout the ship came the first cackles of irony, a smattering of cheers.

“Interesting tactic,” Augustus commented to Farragut. “And you still have five more engines.”

“Not habit-forming.” John Farragut cleared sweat from his eyes with the sweaty back of his wrist. Blinked against the salt sting. He regarded Augustus standing at the secured air lock to the now extinct Engine Three. Sized him up the long expanse from head to foot. “They augmented more than your brain.”

Augustus did not deign to comment.

Farragut gave the shipside hatch’s bolt a pat, feeling its unyielding solidity.

Marines and crewmen in the corridor eyed the Roman patterner diffidently, assessing. Superman? Cyborg? Satan?

Augustus said only, casting about, “I dropped a sword somewhere around here.”

The sword was quickly retrieved, respectfully produced, hilt first, and the crowd of Marines parted for the captain and his tame Roman monster to pass.

As they walked, Augustus put the sword through an experimental range of motion with a swivel of his wrist.

“Pretty good for a beginner,” said Farragut, bald understatement.

Like a duck to water, Augustus with a sword. Augustus had mowed down gorgons and slashed off pincers with the ease of an old hand. “I must have done this in my past life,” he said seriously, as if he’d actually had one.

The operation was all mop-up now. Calli ordered a search for remaining Hive cells. Due diligence that, as stranded gorgons tended to dissolve of their own accord. With too few of them remaining to form a swarm, Calli gave clearance to reactivate computer controls, enable sensors, maintenance robots, and lifts.

Farragut hailed the control room. “Calli, where’s the second swarm?”

“Fifty light-hours on an intercept course, traveling three hundred c. They’ll be here in ten minutes.”

“I didn’t think swarms could travel that fast.”

“It does rewrite the upper limit on swarm speed. It’s a big swarm, John. Permission to evade.”

“Run it,” Farragut allowed. “I want twenty-four hours before we engage again.”

“Aye, sir.”

“You mean to battle the second swarm?” Augustus asked.

“Why not?”

“Because, statistically you should not have won the first round.”

“Shows you how much statistics know.” The shakes of dehydration quivered his cooling muscles. Farragut patted the bulk. “My
Merrimack
. She’s been used harshly.” He kissed his palm and pressed it to the bulkhead. “Nobody can say the
Mack
can’t take some
hits
.”

He continued down the corridor to the dark outer deck, where the chief stood scowling at the weird ragged gaps in the hull, open to black space and starlight twinkle, only the force field in between.

He turned at Farragut’s approach, crossed his beefy arms, becoming the image of an irate father-in-law, who ought to pound that no-good bum who ruined his darling little girl. “Well, sir. I hope you’re proud of yourself. I am, sir,” the chief said, his sweat-soaked sleeves rolled up. An anchor tattoo expanded on his flexing bicep.

“Patch her up, Chief. We’re in it again in twenty-four.”

The chief stalked away, muttering.

“I have never heard some of those words,” Augustus said, impressed.

“I think he makes ’em up. I’m fixin’ to walk a dog. Come with?”

Augustus assented quizzically. He thought Farragut had given all, but after downing a liter of water and a bag of cookies, he was spry enough to tuck a small shepherd dog under his arm and slide down a ladder to downbelow levels.

The captain’s walk involved prowling through the remote compartments of the ship where the dog sniffed for the wounded and incapacitated man and the fugitive gorgon. Paused along the way to greet his crew and Marines by name, ask if all their mates were accounted for, praise them, listen to their bragging, their observations, their battle stories.