The Myriad: Tour of the Merrimack #1 (32 page)

“Don’t give me close. I need it to be there.”

The captain paced, paced huge, as if long steps would speed up his thought process. And the idea came: If optimum launch was fifty-nine minutes off, then why not move the launch platform to the optimum launch point faster? “Redline us.”

Calli, “We’re already redlined, sir.”

“Push.”

“Pushing, aye . . . and we have a balk.” Expected.

The ship would not obey a fatal instruction without asking verification first.
Merrimack
had accelerated to the distortion threshold.

Farragut nodded. “Did we pick up any time at all?”

“Some,” said Jeffrey. Augustus had already recalculated the missile launch and fed the numbers to fire control. “Optimum launch in fifty-five minutes. Deficit to intercept, ten minutes.”

“Load launch sequence,” Farragut ordered. At these speeds, waiting for human orders and acknowledgments to pull the trigger would eat up split seconds that made differences of millions of miles.

“Load launch sequence,” Calli relayed. Then aside, for only Farragut to hear, “The target is a manned ship, John.”

“I know.” And aloud, “Fire Control, confirm that missile course will take the missile
past
the gate and not
into
the gate in case of a failed intercept.”

“Fire Control, aye. Bypass confirmed.”

Augustus gave a vacant nod, seconding that. His eyes flickered slightly, quickly, as if reading inward lists.

“Launch sequence loaded. Sequence engaged. We’re on auto countdown.”

The minutes passed in quiet murmurs, updates, requests, and confirmations.

In fifty-five minutes, the missile whined in its launch tube. The ship’s energy coiled.

The Star Sparrow sprang with a scathing shriek. The deck heaved. The ship rang behind it.

“Missile away.”

Farragut heard a murmured benediction from Jose Maria. Hadn’t known he was on the deck. Farragut demanded, “Tracking.”

“Tracking, aye. We are on course. Accelerating well. Perfect launch, sir.”

Perfect.
Ten minutes too late to achieve intercept. “Take us down from redline.”

Calli relayed orders to back off
Merrimack
’s tearing speed. She brought the ship about on a course toward Centro to retrieve Steele’s Marine detachment from their sortie.

All attention remained on the speeding Star Sparrow. No one on the command deck spoke above a murmur, constantly updating velocities, accelerations, the deficit to intercept. All indicated the attempt to stop the message from reaching Origin was going to fail.

Farragut tried to convince himself that he was wrong, that failure was good. Augustus was right; there was no changing the past. Those innocent beings on board the Arran messenger ship would get away alive. That was the way it would happen. Augustus was never wrong.

Tried to inhale calm.

Augustus was always right.

And still the desperate need to run as if his world depended on it.

Low, professional voices read off dispassionate progress reports of the Star Sparrow, the Arran messenger, the Hive swarms.

Captain Farragut watched the chronometer. Watched the plots creep across the tactical map. The Star Sparrow was dead on with its estimates, accelerating precisely as calculated.

The variable was the target.

“You’re making a race of it, John,” said Calli. “The Arran messenger has not kept a constant speed.”

“What’s our deficit now?”

“Six minutes.”

“Augustus, coordinate a firing sequence with fire control.” At thousands of times the speed of light, the moment of contact would be brief in the idiotic extreme. He could not risk the explosion occurring a million miles after impact. Detonation by resonant command may be instantaneous, but the decision and execution was not.

Augustus nodded vacantly.

Farragut requested an update. Waited for the inevitable deficit.

“Target is twenty minutes from the gate. Missile twenty—Whoa.”

Farragut’s head snapped to the side. “Explain ‘whoa.’ ”

“Target is decelerating! Five-minute deficit. Four! Three!”

“Control Room! Fire Control here. At this rate of closure we may overshoot.”

“I’ve got you, John,” Augustus assured him from the depths of his altered thoughts. “I’m not slowing this bird till we’re there. We aren’t there yet.”

“
Nineteen-second deficit
! Target still decelerating. Eighteen!” Tactical lost his professional monotone. “Arran messenger turning to line up its approach to the
kzachin
.
Ten-second deficit.
Five seconds. Four.”

And a long pause.

“Status,” Farragut barked at the long quiet.

“Deficit holding at four seconds. No.”

“No, what?”

Tactical made a fist. Opened it. “Five second deficit. Six. Target is reaccelerating.” Dashed beaded sweat from under his nose. “We’re losing it, sir.”

Calli demanded coolly, “ETA of target to the gate?”

“Five minutes.”

At two minutes, Farragut asked again, “Deficit to intercept?”

“Ten seconds,” Jeffrey reported gloomily.

Farragut hesitated, ordered, “Push the missile.”

The resonant control signal went out to the Star Sparrow’s guidance system. “Balk,” Fire control reported.

“Override balk.”

“Overriding, aye—Distortion! Missile flame out! Star Sparrow is running dead.”

There would be no more acceleration from the Star Sparrow, no course correction. The missile sped on inertia.

“Deficit at fifteen seconds. Sixteen. Climbing.” The young specialist turned his eyes up. “We’re not going to make it, sir.”

This is it.

Barring miracles, it was all over. Done is done. Farragut could only watch and wait out the final minute. Wait—for what?

Hopefully, for nothing. John Farragut inhaled deeply. Chest felt full of heavy air, as if a gorgon swarm were sitting on it.

Told himself it would be okay. In fifty-four seconds Augustus would be laughing at him and asking him to explain why he opened fire on an unarmed, manned vessel, and John Farragut would be feeling ridiculous. He never imagined wanting so badly to be ridiculous.

Searched for Jose Maria on deck. Wanted to say to him: Here’s to Augustus laughing.

Felt a presence immediately behind him. A touch, a breath on his hair. A kiss on his neck.

And he was angry. A line crossed and never expected. Farragut’s hair prickled, face burned. Did not appreciate the gesture, and the timing stunk. Pissed him enough to snap around from the face of the imminent Judgment, and demand, “What was
that?
”

Augustus elled his thumb and forefinger against his opposing palm, flipped a quick word in American Sign:
Later.

John Farragut felt himself go wide-eyed. Tough to scare, he was suddenly profoundly terrified.
Later never comes.

He stared into bottomless eyes. Crushing the tremor out of his voice, he commanded quietly, “Now, I think.”

Because he sensed Augustus had no intention of
ever
explaining that. For all Augustus’ talk of the immutability of time, Farragut got the feeling Augustus did not expect one or both of them to be here thirty seconds from now, and
that
had been an end-of-the-world stunt Augustus need not live with for more than thirty seconds.

His eyes were suddenly not blank at all. Always, when plugged in, Augustus’ eyes became vacant hollows, the thoughts racing deep inside. This time they looked back, aware, omniscient. The patterner had taken in all, synthesized all the minutiae, and saw what he had not seen before this moment.

Farragut stared at him.
You just recanted!

Saw the answer in his eyes.

MUNDI TERMINUM ADPROPINQUANTE. Now that we are approaching the end of the world, John Farragut.

Your individual existence is a statistical miracle. We are, each and every one of us, highly improbable, a one-in-a-million event at conception. History turns on a space big enough for angels to dance on. I do stand by inevitability. But inevitability works on a macroscopic scale. Macroscopic events are inevitable. The blizzard will come. But the when, the where, and the unique shape of each snowflake is a function of chaos. One breath out of place, and that one singular snowflake never forms. I mistook us for macroscopic
.
Intuition is subconscious knowledge, and while logic says changing history is impossible, intuition says there are things beyond my ken; and you are a patterner, John Farragut. You know. You
know
. And you’re right. You are chaos. I won’t explain later, because there is no later. There is no earlier. There is no time at all. Simply put, it was miraculous knowing you, and that was good-bye.

So said the eyes. Aloud, Augustus answered with an ironic near smile, “I still think you’re an idiot.”

But Farragut understood him as clearly as if he’d spoken all of it.

I’m right!

The floor of the world kicked out from under him. This was the end of the world he knew.

Did not want to be right.

He faced forward, terrified now. The countdown fell on cotton ears.

“Arran messenger ten seconds from the gate. Nine. Eight.”

There is no later.

“He’s accelerating again.” The count sped up. “We have four seconds. Three. Two. Messenger at the gate—”

Closed his eyes.

O God, it’s done. If it happens, it will be this instant. I won’t even know. Either I’m here or I’m not, and I never was.

Breathed.

PART THREE

A Rational Universe

17

B
REATHED.

“Arran ship is off the screen.”

Still here. Still breathing.
Breathing as if he’d been running.
Slow it down, John.

Fire Control was requesting instruction regarding the Star Sparrow. Now bereft of a target, the missile barreled off hotfoot to nowhere.

Captain Farragut opened his eyes. “Detonate that damn thing.”

“Detonating, aye.” Fire Control sent the res signal. “Detonation achieved.”

We’re still here,
thought Farragut, calming down. Feeling ridiculous, embarrassed by his fear. Time to face his all-seeing, all-knowing intelligence officer and collect the inevitable told-you-so. He knew those smug black eyes and superior expression waited behind him. He turned around to take it.

“Well, Lu. You were right.”

Colonel Oh’s amygdaloid eyes flickered, annoyed, her little bird voice brittle. “Told you so.”

Lu Oh was a grating, unlovely presence. With her wide, wide brow, and tiny, pointed chin, her reedy body far too delicate for that outsized head, her enormous, black, slanted eyes, Colonel Oh looked like a twentieth-century caricature of an alien. And John Farragut did believe she would kidnap Kentucky farm boys and do diabolical tests upon them. Though the colonel wore the uniform of a Naval Intelligence officer, John Farragut knew in his heart of hearts that Lu Oh was CIA.

Of all the things he had hoped and feared would change when the Arran crossed the
kzachin
, Lu Oh had fallen solidly in the “hope to disappear” list.

But nothing had changed.

Things happen once. They cannot happen any other way. Everything was the same and where he should have felt relief sat instead a soggy sense of disappointment. Everything was the same.

Earth was still at war with Palatine. The Romans were as imperialistic as ever, still claiming the whole of the constellation Sagittarius as their sovereign space.

Marisa Johnson was still President. Farragut had kinda hoped that might have changed. He had not voted for her either time.

John Farragut’s sweet wife, Maryann was still dead. His wife’s suicide still weighed on him after seven years.
God in heaven, couldn’t you have made that change, Sir?

Unchanged also were the Roman Legions closing implacably on the Myriad to challenge
Merrimack
for the right to flag the three inhabited worlds in the Sagittarian globular cluster.

Merrimack
could not flag any of the three planets in the name of the United States, because the sapient beings who had come through that
kzachin
from the distant past had already claimed them.
Merrimack
had claimed them as LEN protectorates.

The messenger’s journey through the
kzachin
back ten billion years to tell the people of Origin of aliens and FTL travel had changed absolutely nothing.

I could have used some help here,
Farragut silently suggested to God.

Rome wanted the planets. Rome wanted the
kzachin.
And only the
Merrimack
stood in Rome’s way. Great as
Merrimack
was, she was no match for two Legions.

Merrimack
. His constant.
Merrimack
was still his, unchanged. Farragut was grateful for that.

Also unchanged was his exec, a diamond in a brilliant cut, Calli Carmel.

Calli was demanding of a technician, “Why aren’t those two sensor monitors on-line?”

The screen that ought to be showing the plot of all the
kzachin
in the Myriad was vacant of orange plots; and the low-band monitor, which was meant to register gravitational disturbances, showed only blank white.

“Both monitors are functioning normally,” the baby-faced tech attending the sensors protested.

“Then where is the Rim gate?” said Calli. “Where are all the rest of the
kzachin
?” She was pretty sure
kzachin
was what the locals called the wormholes that riddled the stellar cluster. “And what the hell is that?”

That
was the blank white low-band monitor.

Impatient with young Mr. Emerson’s attempts at fine-tuning the instruments, Captain Farragut stalked to the errant monitor, and tuned the low-band screen his way, with the heel of his hand. Didn’t fix it.

“Please, sir, don’t hit the equipment. It’s not broken. The low band is working,” the tech labored to explain, making ineffectual efforts to place himself between these ham-handed command officers and his defense-less instruments. “The low band is registering overload. Happened when the messenger ship went through the
kzachin
. These readings are off the scale. That’s why the screen is full. There’s something big out there.”

“Then lower the sensitivity,” said Calli. “And get the
kzachin
map back on here.”

The tech’s ears were red as portside lights. A man that young could not bear for a woman that beautiful to think him inept. “Uhm . . . They’re not there. The
kzachin.
The wormholes. The gates. Whatever you call them. I can’t get them on the map because they’re not—”

A sudden surge overloaded the force field’s damper settings. The deck heaved, pitched the command deck over twenty-two degrees, rocking the specialists at their stations, throwing Calli Carmel into the monitors and knocking the little IO, Lu Oh, to the deck.

The inertial dampers quickly restored balance. Captain Farragut took Colonel Lu Oh’s tiny hands and helped her to her feet.

“Are you okay, Lu?” Farragut steadied the IO on her frail-looking legs, and guided a long, straight strand of black hair from her praying mantis face. To everyone else he barked: “What was that? I need a report. Mr. Carmel, what’s happening to my boat?”

Calli came up blank. Blank didn’t look right on her.

“Gentlemen,” Lu Oh announced, readjusting the low-band monitor for the technician. “We have a singularity.”

With the monitor’s sensitivity crushed down to utter numbness, the low band showed distortion lines running through the points where all the
kzachin
used to be. Farragut had seen such an image before, the Myriad looking like a string bag. Only now someone had pulled the strings.

The core of the Myriad was collapsing—almost fast enough to see. The stars smeared inward on the screen.

“Told you the
kzachin
were wormholes,” said Lu. “Sending a mass through a wormhole collapses the wormhole. Now whether there’s a threshold mass to these wormholes, or reality finally caught up with them with that last transit, there they go.”

“What’s happening?” said Farragut. “What am I looking at?”

Lu Oh loved being the One with all the answers. But, in her fashion, she fed out only clues, “If nature abhors a vacuum, it loathes, abominates, and despises a naked singularity. This one is clothing itself.”

Clothed singularity.
John Farragut had heard that term before. Remembered the more popular term. “Black hole.”

“As you see, the universe heals itself,” said Lu Oh. “Paradoxes are not allowed. And
that
is what happens when someone tries to go back ten billion years and change history. I told you nothing could change—historically speaking. This, of course, is new.” She nodded at the forming black hole.

Farragut stared at the stars’ blurry streaks. “Are we safe at this distance?”

“We are safe at any distance outside of the event horizon. Actually, the
Merrimack
’s force field might even protect us
inside
the event horizon, but we would be in there forever. Not where I care to retire.”

“Not exactly accurate,”
Merrimack
’s chief engineer, Kit Kittering, had entered the control room as Lu Oh was speaking. “
Mack
’s engines would have nowhere to vent if we got stuck in a black hole. We’d overheat in no time trying to maintain a distortion field against that. Colonel Oh’s retirement would be pretty brief.”

And maybe
Merrimack
could withstand the force inside a black hole—briefly—but her smaller craft definitely could not.

SPT 1 was still outboard.

“Centro!” Farragut cried.

“Is doomed,” Lu Oh finished for him.

Centro. That arid little outpost closest to the heart of the collapsing Myriad, where 900,000 alien beings lived. Where Captain Farragut had sent Colonel Steele, SPT 1, and a full squadron of Marines on recon.

Farragut shouted into the ship’s res com, “Colonel Steele! This is
Merrimack
! Get the hell out of the Centro system. Get all boats back inboard
Merrimack
, and do it
yesterday!
”

Steele acknowledged receiving the order. Reported that he still had Swifts on the planet’s surface.

“Evac, TR. The planet is slipping into a black hole.”

“Understood. How long have I got?”

Centro’s system pulled perilously toward the stellar cluster’s dying core. Uncertain, the captain looked to Lu Oh. “How long does he have?”

Lu Oh’s hairless brows lifted, dubious. “On the planet’s surface? Outside of a distortion field? Not long at all.”

“Won’t he have nine minutes after the sun dies at least? The light distance of Centro from its sun?”

“Oh,” the IO gave a nasty little smile as if the captain had just said something naive, “Light is not the issue. Gravity is. Gravity was once thought to be a force, but it’s not. It’s a fundamental property of space-time. The tides are stretching the planet and everyone on it apart even now. The tide will tear them apart before they know the light has died.”

Calli was on the com before Lu finished her explanation, “Colonel Steele, get your Swifts spaceborne. Evac. Evac. You are out of time.”

Steele acknowledged, and
Merrimack
heeled round to make all possible speed to the planet Centro for dust off.

The Swifts of Red Squadron lifted from the planet surface to dock with the orbiting SPT 1, covering it like an infestation of ticks. One dock remained free. Missing was Alpha Three.

Steele snarled over the link, “Flight Sergeant Blue, where the hell are you?”

“Too frogging far from my frogging Swift, sir! But I got an LD here. Get me the frogs out of here.”

Steele swore. Growled at the Marine nearest the displacement controls, “Get her.”

In the long, long silence in which the Marine struggled to acquire a green line on the displacement chamber and the world continued to crumble below them, Kerry Blue transmitted again, “I’m three klicks from my Swift, okay? I’ll
pay
for the frogging Swift! Take it out of my lunch money! Can’t you displace me?”

Steele snapped around to the young stud fumbling at the displacement console. “Flight Sergeant Carver, you got a problem there?”

Cowboy Carver beat on the controls. “Something’s wrong. The sun’s uffed and I can’t get a green light on this fubared piece of Ganchar meat.” Cowboy kicked the console with his nonregulation snakeskin boot.

Little Reg Monroe, who fancied herself an engineer, elbowed herself in for a look at the displacement readouts. “What’s not happening for you, Cowboy?”

“The LD and the collar won’t jibe. I can get receiver confirmation on one or the other, but not both at the same frickin’ time, and the displacer won’t go without three reads!”

“It’s the tidal distortion,” said Reg. “This ain’t normal space. Kerry’s head’s too far from her feet here to get correspondence.”

Cowboy called over the link, “Hey, Blue, crouch!”

But
Merrimack
must have been monitoring the link, because Calli Carmel transmitted: “Do not displace.
Do not
attempt displacement of a human being.”

Colonel Steele swore purple maggots.

“We can’t leave Kerry behind!” Cowboy declared.

Steele stabbed him with a icy glare.
Only because you say so, jack piss.
Hated that man.

Colonel Steele ordered his squadron back into their Swifts. Once the Marines were secure in their cockpits, Steele dropped the Spit boat’s force field and ordered the Swifts, “Get off me. Return to
Merrimack
best speed, and don’t look back.”

The Swifts disconnected and shot away.

Merrimack
raced to meet them. Received the spent fighters on her flight decks, and hauled them inboard. The fighters had used up all the antimatter in their reservoirs just to drag themselves out of the gravity well.

But the returned squadron was one Swift light. And where was the Spit boat? The com tech could not raise SPT 1 on the com.

“TR?” Captain Farragut tried. “Are you out there?” And to the com tech, “Is he out there?”

“Can’t tell, Captain.”

Marcander Vincent, at Tactical, answered for him, “Found him, sir. SPT 1 has descended into Centro’s atmosphere.”

“Oh, hell, he can’t,” Farragut breathed, reached over the com tech’s shoulder to transmit, “Steele, get out of there. Can he hear me? Is he flying that thing, or falling?”

“Flying, sir,” said Tactical. “Spit boats glide like rocks. SPT 1 is moving like it’s making descent using its distortion field.”

Farragut yelled into the caller, “TR, you answer me now or I will have you at my mast when you do get back here!”

The com link opened with a sound like static. There was no such thing as resonant static. The noise was the clattering of debris against SPT 1’s force field. “I’m here, Captain.”

“Where are you going, TR?”

“Retrieving a soldier separated from her ship.”

“The boffins are telling me you have to wear off right now—right now—if you are going to achieve escape velocity. And in case you forgot, we have a Roman Legion moving in here and due within the hour. Wear off. Acknowledge!”

Received nothing but clatter from the com.

“You are receiving me, TR! Get up here now.” Farragut slapped off the com and stalked away with a loud oath.

Colonel Oh presented the navigator with an optimum course to get
Merrimack
clear of the rapidly forming accretion disk and to use the black hole to cloak the battleship’s movement from the approaching Legion.