The Myriad: Tour of the Merrimack #1 (25 page)

Apparently the Marines of Team Alpha had a new secret weapon in the form of pretzels. . . .

Colonel Steele walked a waking nightmare through
Merrimack
’s battle-scored corridors. He had lost a team. An entire team. And though he loved all his Marines with a soldier’s passion, still the guilty “Thank God!” stole into his thoughts when he learned it hadn’t been Team Alpha who had been eaten alive in the galley. And still he didn’t know if she was all right.

She. The only she. The center of his universe.

Like being eaten alive by a gorgon from the inside out, needing to know and not being able to ask.
Where is she?

Needed to know. Needed as hard as he needed to breathe.

And then, as if needing could produce her, there she was.

Knew her by her walk, the loose, easy set of her shoulders, that free-jointed, rough and ready way of moving. The coarse fabric of her fatigues, soaked and patched with gorgon guts and neutralizing solution, adhered to her hips, her ass, making her walk a thing of wonder that brought him to full attention.

A bunch of iguana-green leaves huddled in the crook of her arm—her strange Arran pet. And she dragged her sword carelessly at her side, its tip bumping over the deck grates.

Steele’s voice, coarse and dry—what came out at all—could scarcely form one word. “Marine.”

She turned. Pushed back a loose lock of wet hair with a cheery, weary smile. “Hi.” She lowered her lizard plant to the deck. There was no one else in the corridor.

Her sword clattered to the deck as he grabbed her.

Cold fabric quickly warmed between their bodies. He tore himself from her lips only to see her face, her eyes, her smile.

“You’re a gorilla, Thomas.”

It jarred him, his name on her lips. He liked it. Liked it a lot. He held her face in his big, callused hand. It wasn’t right a soldier should have such soft skin.

She laughed under his mesmerized gaze. “I look like hell.”

“No, you don’t,” he rasped. Swallowed her breath. Hands all over her, assuring himself she was whole and real and here. She was astonishingly, achingly real, and soft in all the womanly places.

Too late, he heard the footsteps. Almost upon them. There was no springing apart fast enough, so he held tight. If he must be caught, he would not be caught skulking.

The gallumphing footsteps rounded the corner with Reg Monroe’s jaunty, “Yo ho
HO!
-ly Mary Mother of God!” Clapped a hand over her eyes.

Kerry went from cat-tense to relaxed in the span of a quick heartbeat. “Oh, sheeps. That’s just Reg. She don’t see nothing.”

Reg parted two fingers to peer through her hand at her commanding officer. “Code thirty-three, Mid-deck.”

Code thirty-three. Fire code. Steele knew without her saying so that his fair face had gone flaming red. What idiot ever let women in the Fleet Marine anyway?

He let go of Kerry, squared his powerful shoulders, cleared his throat. Damn tough to look forbidding wearing your career dropped round your ankles. Struggled for an appropriate command.

Reg sounded a retreat on her own. “I gotta go get a bucket of vacuum.” She scooted away down the corridor.

Steele stood rooted, volcanic breaths loud in his chest.

“Reg isn’t a problem.” Kerry’s feminine voice was light. Thawed him. And he wanted her too badly to worry about his career’s dive.

“We should move this out of the corridor,” Steele grumbled.

“You got a private shower, don’t ya?” Kerry gave a foxy wrinkle to her nose.

Dumb idea. Splendid idea. “You’re going to be the death of me, Marine.”

“We need a shower, don’t we?”

There were worse ways to die.

A very clean Kerry Blue blithely hooked up decking grates, clearing the way for maintenance bots to scour the subflooring of blood and neutralizing solution and dissolved gorgons. Her lizard plant crooned jubilantly from its perch on her shoulder.

A belligerent
clank!
signaled the arrival of Reg, letting her patch kit drop. Fists posed on hips and she put on that snottified attitude, that little foot just pattering away against the deck. Reg wasn’t tall enough to make that look at all scary. “You said you didn’t like Colonel Steele. Lie to me, bitch babe?”

“I said he wasn’t cute,” said Kerry. “He’s not cute.”

“Well, how
is
he? Give, sister. How many times?”

“Ssst!” Kerry hissed Reg silent. Someone was coming.

Dak. Whistling. Dumb and happy as a baboon, dragging the refuse wagon behind him. Come to unload the maintenance bots’ reservoirs.

“So, Blue!” he popped a hose into place. “I guess your boyfriend looks pretty good for a ten-billion-year-old man.”

“What? What boyfriend?” Kerry blustered, guiltily quick, face on fire.

“Donner,” said Dak. “The Archon. I hear talk he’s
really
old.”

“Oh.
Oh.
” Kerry’s panic subsided. False alarm. Dak was talking about Donner. Ancient history. Forgot there had ever been anyone before Thomas Ryder Steele. “Oh, him. Yeah. I heard that about him,” Kerry babbled.

“Kerry Blue’s decided she
likes
those older men,” Reg snickered.

“Reg, shut
up!
”

“I didn’t say nothing. Dak, did I say nothing?”

Dak was lost in space. “What did you say?”

“See there?” Reg threw a triumphant grin Kerry’s way. Then under her breath, “Give me a number, bitch babe, and I’ll shut up.”

Kerry hissed, “I lost count.”

Reg squealed into her hands.

Dak, accustomed to conversations going wide or over his head, turned his attention to the deep cargo pockets of his fatigues. Fished out a fistful of pretzels.

“Whoa, babes,” Kerry stopped him. “You allowed to eat our new secret weapon?”

Dak crunched, offered Kerry a pretzel. “
Don
Cordillera says they’re nothing special. The ‘composition’ isn’t special. Thinks it’s the shape that’s tripping the Hive’s jump jets. Thinks the gorgons are mistaking them for something else shaped like this. Move it, mutt.” Dak kneed aside a dog that had parked itself in the middle of the corridor where Dak wanted to park his refuse wagon next.

The dog, a standard poodle named Pooh, barked an objection, moved to the side, and sat back down.

Dak dragged his refuse wagon along, glanced up. “Yo ho ho. Lookit here.” He hooked the overhead latch and pulled down the grate to reveal a glassy black dome clinging like a giant obsidian barnacle between decks.

“It’s a—oh, crap.” Dak dropped the hook, gave Pooh a pretzel. “Good dog.” Pushed the rest of the pretzels into his pocket to free both his hands. “Tell the captain we got a—a thing.”

Kerry dashed to the nearest intercom. “Control Room! Flight Sergeant Blue reporting. We got a—oh, hell. Dak, what
is
it?”

Dak stood on top of a squat, square maintenance bot to get a closer squint at
it
.

Spoke through a mouthful of pretzel. “A gorgon egg. A gorgon turd. Something gorgony.”

Kerry relayed into the com, “—a gorgon thing attached to the overhead, mid-deck, Section Nine A.”

The OOD acknowledged, said she was alerting the xenos and sending a security team.

Dak turned around on his bot to scowl toward the intercom. “Security team? And what are we? The garbage detail?”

“Shhh!” Reg raised forefinger to lips, catching the edge of a sound shivering somewhere down the passageway. “Hear that?”

A scraping of cicada wings.

Hive sign.

The dog barked.

As behind Dak’s head, the solid mass moved, developed features. Pincers sprouted from the shiny black mass. Circled round Dak’s neck. And closed.

“Dak!”
Reg’s scream pierced the ship end to end.

Kerry seized the welding torch from Reg’s patch kit, flamed the gorgon. It let Dak’s body tumble as it melted.

Reg scrambled on hands and knees to catch the rolling head, tried to push it back onto the gushing neck, keening, “
Medic!
Medic! Medic! Man down! Man down!”

Augustus stood at the tableside, an attentive statue, until they zipped up the body bag. He only spoke when prompted, “
What?
” by a vexed medic under the Roman’s oppressive gaze.

“On a Roman ship, he would have lived,” said Augustus.

“I didn’t see you helping put that man’s head back on, Roman,” the medic bristled, pulling off bloody gloves.

“I have never done it. I only know that it is done.” Augustus quit the sick bay.

The dead Marine’s mates gathered round the bag, Reg’s high squeaky sobs the only sound for a long time.

Cole Darby frowned, feeling very old. The other Marines had stopped calling him Peetz halfway through the melee. They called him Darb now. He put an arm round the sobbing little Reg, and she did not shake him off. Cole Darby was in. Hell of a way to get there. Asked, “Dak married?”

“No,” said Reg, sniffling.

“Was,” said Carly.

“Ten billion years ago,” said Reg.

“To a gorgon,” Carly added.

“Her name Greta?” Darb asked.

Reg blinked drowning eyes up at him in amazement. “Now how did you know that, Darb?”

Cole Darby rolled his eyes sadly. “Oh, I’m just frogging psychic.”

Twenty-four hours counted quickly down, in which time the holes in the ship’s hull were sealed, normal pressure restored, gun bays restocked, barrels cleaned and capped, decks swabbed and dried, swords sharpened, personnel either rested or boosted, and computer controls taken back off-line in preparation to meet the second swarm.

Once upon a time, spaceships would tow their morgue behind them with the oxygen bricks. Now that was dragging bait.
Merrimack
carried her dead inboard.

Captain Farragut praised his company and crew on their victory, and stirred them up to do it again. We lost some men and women to the bad guys. Here was a chance to make the monsters pay. He told you he wanted a dozen gorgons each to die with the name of one of the fallen on your lips. And he named them, every one. It was a long list.

When he was done, you were mad. You were ready.

Team Alpha beat on the hull, chanting, “Dak! Dak! Dak! Dak! Dak!” as
Merrimack
heeled round to meet the second swarm.

Laws of tactics held that if it works once, do it twice. If it fails once, don’t try it again. If it works twice, don’t try it three times. Ramming a swarm had worked once. It had shattered the first swarm, killing many of its members, and breaking it down to a survivable battle.

There was little doubt of what tactic
Merrimack
would use this time. The crew hunkered down for impact, irrational, but difficult not to when two faster-than-light objects were set to collide.

“Force to the fore,” Calli ordered.

The tac specialist reported, “Impact in five, four—”

You saw it on three. The dead ice ball seemingly hanging in space on the monitor.

“Two—”

“It loomed in enormity, in menace. Icy, cratered, black, frigid death.

Merrimack
hurtled to the countdown’s end. The swarm ballooned to fill the screen, infinite, all-consuming.

Plunged into that hideous grinding roar. The sound shredded the nerves, overloaded the dampers. Resounded in the hollow corridors. Sounds of solids tearing, of absolute zero igniting under searing friction.

Gunners crouched at their weapons, ready to blast the gorgons the moment
Merrimack
broke back into starlight on the other side of hell.

And then the noise stopped, but no star field returned to the monitors.

Gunners hesitated. Where was the target?

And then the realization. They were inside the target.

Merrimack
had not come out the other side of the swarm. She was still moving, but so was the target, on the same trajectory.

Merrimack
sped onward, embedded in the heart of the swarm, her crew entombed alive, miles of solid hunger pushing in on all sides.

13

L
IEUTENANT COMMANDER Glenn Hamilton recognized the power play as soon as she walked into it. The LEN had summoned her urgently from her Spit boat immediately upon her arrival in the Myriad, only to let her wait in an empty chamber, gloomily lit. At last the LEN filed in, taking all the chairs, leaving her standing before a line of them seated behind an imposing slab of judicial desk. A single hot light came on in her face, so she could no longer see theirs.

Then, without greeting, the demand.

“Where is John Farragut! Where is the
Merrimack
!”

Glenn Hamilton did not answer immediately. Waited for them to give away some dominance by insisting. And so they did.

“We specifically ordered
Merrimack’
s return!
You
are not Farragut. Those two little missile-toting shuttles you brought are not
Merrimack
. Why is
Merrimack
not here?”

Glenn Hamilton—the Hamster—took her time composing her answer. Her petite size and doll-like looks had forced her to practice a calm, professional manner for a long time now. Her voice was pleasant, feminine, authoritative.

“You ordered
Merrimack
away,” Hamster stated. “We went.
Merrimack
is out of LEN jurisdiction now. Captain Farragut does not take orders from the LEN in open space. As I recall, you sent to the Pentagon before we left. Have you received the Joint Chiefs’ response? May I please see our orders?” She put out an expectant hand.

Expecting what she got. Nothing.

She pressed the LEN noses into the power shift: “In the name of the
Merrimack
, I respectfully demand to see our orders from the Joint Chiefs.”

That brought one out of his seat, all but pounding on the desk. “Young lady, you do not grasp the seriousness of what you have done!”

Hamster consciously kept her own torpedo tubes capped, and answered calmly, “No, sir.
You
do not recognize the seriousness of what you have done, and I remind the ambassador—” She shaded her eyes against the light. “That
is
the ambassador back there?—that my rank is Lieutenant Commander, not ‘young lady.’ ”

She still could not see him well. He became the single bushy eyebrow that loomed over his deep eyes.

“This inquiry will not devolve into the trivial. Where is
Merrimack
!”

An inquiry now, was it? “
Merrimack
is engaged in defusing the threat caused by the LEN when you emitted a resonant pulse in this stellar neighborhood. By resonating, you have jeopardized not just our mission but the safety of the three inhabited worlds of this star system. This cry of wolf may summon the wolf. The Hive is very good at tracking—”

“Hive, Hive, Hive. All that exists with you military types is your enemy, no thought to the innocents on the battleground. You will undo what you have done!”

“Can you be more specific?” Hamster requested.

“
Don’t
play coy with the world government!”

Could always count on the LEN to wave that about as if the world government had enforcement authority.

She tried to answer. “
Merrimack
made contact with the Myriadians. I cannot erase their memory of that. We gave them no technology. As for what you want undone, I am at a loss, sir.”

“I think you may actually believe what you say, Mrs. Hamilton. Farragut
would
send in a stooge to lie for him in all ignorance. Which is why we demand John Farragut himself. Not you.”

“I assure you this stooge has full authority to speak for Captain Farragut.”

“Authority. Yes, yes, Mrs. Hamilton,” he tut-tutted her. “But not the knowledge. This is a waste of time.”

“I would agree. But I still have my orders to execute—”

“You will not.”

“I am under orders to give you a message, and you shall get it one way or another. It’s a warning—”

“Indeed. A little late in the day, Mrs. Hamilton.”

“You may call me Lieutenant Commander.” Mistake. Heard it coming out of her mouth. Playing their game now.

“Yes, Mrs. Hamilton,” said the Eyebrow. “Do please, give us your warning.”

“You are to stay off the transportation phenomenon which the locals call
kzachin
.”

“The traps,” he retranslated the word more to LEN satisfaction. “And what will we find inside them? Which trap holds the hidden answers to this plot?”

“The
kzachin
are not
hiding
anything. Not in the conspiratorial sense. There is no ‘plot.’ The
kzachin
are dangerous.”

A huff behind the light. A chorus of huffs, actually. Something—perhaps a pen—dropped to the desk in disgust. A new voice, possibly female, breathed like a curse, “You people.” Then, out loud, “What has the U.S. military done here!”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Pardon not granted. Unforgivable.”

“That was just an expression.”

“It always is coming from your kind. What kind of weapon or experiment or
trap
have you inflicted on these innocent beings in your monomaniacal genocidal vendetta against the life-form called Hive?”

Oh. Our monomaniacal genocidal vendetta. Why didn’t you say that in the first place?

Glenn Hamilton decided to steer the narrowest of courses to get out her message. “Use of the
kzachin
appears to be linked with the contraction of the star cluster Myriad. The
kzachin
also exhibit a lack of symmetrical performance. We are concerned that the apparent time distortion observed in travel back and forth on a
kzachin
may be an
actual
time distortion. I warn you, strenuously, of the danger of causal violation.”

“Causal violation is impossible.”

“Well, damn, I hope so,” said Glenn Hamilton. Winced inwardly. Hoped they hadn’t recorded that. “Our xeno team has identified the Myriadian home planet of Origin. It’s Xi. Run the data yourselves.” She surrendered the data bubble she had been charged to deliver, eager to have done with it and wash her hands of these people.

The LEN inquisitors made no move to play back the bubble. She heard it rolling loose on the desk. The low female voice pronounced: “That conclusion is not just wrong, it’s ridiculous.”

“This is just like the U.S. military.” The Eyebrow again. “To piss mines everywhere. And when we are in danger of tripping them, do you clean them up? No. You tell us: Don’t go there. I don’t know what sort of smoke and mirrors you are using to create this apparent time anomaly on these traps of yours—these wormholes—but the constriction of this system is real. Your interference with the stellar environment threatens the orbital stability of three fragile worlds—”

“We did not make the
kzachin
and don’t call them wormholes. Wormholes collapse under the energy of using them.”

“
Precisely
how we know the traps are not naturally occurring phenomena! You tell us to stay out of your traps? No! I tell you:
You
take them away!”

Glenn Hamilton foundered, at a loss for a response. An adult one, anyway. Knew this would never happen to John Farragut.

Okay, so what would John Farragut do?

Could almost hear him:
Choose your battleground, kid.

Lieutenant Glenn Hamilton snugged her officer’s cap on her head, turned briskly as on a parade ground, and walked out.

The balance of power shifted again, right there in the hatchway with their shouts at her back to get back in here. And she would have smiled were she not so angry, were the situation not so perilous. But their impotent outrage had a nice burn to it like strong liquor going down.

She took her warning straight to the Archon.

Donner was not happy about it. He showed her his maned back as he pronounced imperiously, “Lieutenant Commander Glenn Hamilton, I do not deal with subordinates. I do not give audiences to thirds-in-command. I do not speak to stand-ins. And I do not come when summoned. I do, however, answer females who ask for help.” That last explained this private audience, without guards or servants or cameras. “Though you are not what we think of as female.”

At five foot one, Glenn Hamilton must look quite mannish to the Myriadian.

Donner turned to face her as he continued, “I am quit of your LEN. You may tell them so. They are unctuous, overly curious, and wholly useless. They ask questions; they answer nothing. And they seem physically incapable of using the word
no,
when all those roundabout words they stuff in its place
mean
no. Your language has such a word as
no.
Captain Farragut figured out how to say it.”

“The LEN fear offending you,” Glenn Hamilton explained. “I can say no.”

“You do not fear offending me?” He used the you-subordinate.

Glenn answered with the I-subordinate. “I fear it, but I will do it if I have to.”

“Yet the LEN offend me and you do not. If they fear offending me, why do they not give me what I want?”

“The LEN is a league of democracies,” Glenn tried to explain. “They cannot make major decisions quickly even if they want to.”

“Ah.” Understanding and disapproval in the
Ah
.

She could see him trying to cut through their layers and layers of red tape, when he had scant experience with red tape, and probably no word for it. It was nothing dictators ever had to deal with. Donner reacted with dictatorial impatience.

The Archon had got a glimpse of Earth’s incredible technological wealth and immediately wanted it. Nothing could be more natural. Glenn Hamilton understood that.

The LEN understood that, too, which was one reason they were so furious at Farragut for giving Donner the glimpse.

We show Donner the candy box, then the LEN comes along and slams the lid.

Donner thinks I have candy to give.

The floor tremored under Glenn’s feet. So accustomed she was to the deck’s burbles that she didn’t think to take alarm right away. Then she did. Earthquake.

Briskly, but without fear, Donner took her arm and guided her to a structural archway between stout marble pillars, still talking, explaining his unhappiness with the LEN representatives. A groan rose from the ground. The chamber shook. Plaster clattered to the jeweled floor.

Donner glanced up to the ceiling as the tremors subsided, white holes showing in the elaborate mural. He gave an inward sigh. “I liked that picture.” And to Glenn, “I do not like your LEN.”

“Archon, you are going to like me even less.”

“You offend me,” he warned.

“A soldier does what a soldier must.”

“Speak, then. If you must.”

He listened without interruption as she told him that Origin had been found.

That it was here, in the Milky Way Galaxy.

That it was dead, an airless, waterless rock with no remains of civilization except the twenty billion-year-old back of the reliquary with Donner’s name on it.

That Donner’s only means of interstellar transportation, the
kzachin,
defied the laws of physics.

That the
kzachin
distorted time. That use of the
kzachin
most likely was causing the constriction of the Myriad.

That the threat of paradox was real.

That Donner’s ships should stay off the
kzachin
and especially not go to Origin, so as not to spread the threat of paradox.

When Donner broke the hideous silence that stretched long after Glenn had finished, it was to ask, “Where did my people go?”

The question startled her. What should be the uppermost thing on the dictator’s mind. Not his transportation system, not his immediate danger, not the erosion of his power. “Sir?” She fell in love with him on the spot.

Donner’s voice trembled like the ground. “Origin is a world of one billion people.”

Glenn Hamilton’s answer burned her mouth. She felt like the LEN, spewing poisoned gentleness. “That place you know is ten billion years in the past. Those people are dead now, of course.”

The side step did not get past him. Might as well have called him stupid. Donner answered brittlely, “I know that.” And he called her stupid back: “Where are their descendants?”

One billion beings breed billions of offspring. And over billions of years, trillions of billions.

Where were they?

Hamster contrived the nicest guess she could. “They may have migrated before your planet lost its angular momentum and drifted out of the habitable zone. Your people had time to see it coming. Stellar decay takes millions of years.”

Donner’s voice smoldered. “Origin has not the elements for that kind of migration. And if heavy elements could be found or created, where did my people go?”

“Anywhere. Ten billion years blurs a trail.”

“Ten billion ‘years’ balloons a population, if it lives at all. Someone should be left somewhere. Someone ten billion ‘years’ more advanced than
you!
”

“They could be so advanced they don’t recognize you as kin anymore.”

“They
died.
” Donner answered his own question, since she would not speak it. “Simple answers are often the true ones.”

Glenn Hamilton caught herself about to lie to spare his feelings. Said instead: “True.”

“Then I shall bring my people here. I must have done so. This is the only place they could have gone.”

“But I thought you didn’t want them here,” she countered. “The sentinel buoy, the minefield
Merrimack
tripped at the Rim gate at the edge of the Myriad—that was set for
them
!” Realization came even as she said it. “The mines were a border guard! You set that minefield by the
kzachin
to keep the people of Origin from coming here!”

“I did not want them here,” Donner confessed. Past tense. She caught that. “I
do
not want them to die out even to their children’s children.”

Difficult to argue with someone you’ve fallen in love with, when he had every right to his stand. She tried. “In theory bringing people forward in time is not dangerous. But going back is terribly dangerous. Even if it’s just the knowledge of this time. Prescience can be catastrophic.”