The Myriad: Tour of the Merrimack #1 (35 page)

Evacuation was further hampered in that the xenos were having trouble identifying whom to contact on Arra and Rea to organize such an operation.

“I thought you said the whole Myriad had one autocrat,” Farragut confronted Dr. Patrick Hamilton, who had managed what communication they had with the inhabitants of the Myriad.

Dr. Hamilton explained with much mumbling and throat-clearing, “Well, Captain, they may have had. But actually, it seems the Arrans have broken down into a sort of, well, civil war.”

“Oh, for—!” Farragut rounded on the commander of his half brigade of Marines. “Finish it for them, TR!”

Captain Farragut stalked down the corridor, slapped a bulkhead. Felt its reliable solidity under his palm. Thumped it again, fondly.

“I should have been able to do something.”

He’d thought he was alone, thought he’d been talking to himself, but received an unwelcome answer behind him.

“I shouldn’t worry about it,” the little bird woman, Lu Oh, sauntered softly up the corridor. “So beings who should have been dead ten billion years ago manage to implode their future colonies. If we fail to save them from self-destruction, then whose fault is that? And since they destroyed the wormholes, we can be thankful that they kept that secret from falling into Roman hands.”

Farragut gave a weak, unhappy smile. “Well, Colonel Oh, that’s one way to look at it.”

All those life-forms, and a wealth of knowledge, lost, perhaps eradicated entirely. Gone as if they’d never been. The link to an ancient world—perhaps the first sentient world in the universe, gone. Farragut could not even imagine what had been lost here.

And Lu, brave and strong when she was in a soft place, was quite happy with the loss as long as Rome lost it, too.

Lu had strolled to a viewport, open to the spangled heavens. “Craps,” she said. “Thought we found a secret mode of FTL travel and got instead just another globular cluster with a black hole in the middle of it.”

“Another?” Farragut did a double take. “There are
others?
”

“Yes. Globular cluster M 15 has a black hole at its heart. NGC 6624 has one. NGC 6441 has one—”

Farragut broke off her catalog of imploding globular clusters: “How many?”

“Twelve,” said Lu. “The Myriad makes twelve.”

“Really?” He joined her at the viewport to gaze at the stars. “What caused the other eleven?”

Kerry Blue’s patrol displaced up from planetside after a double watch of peacekeeping duty. Double shifts beat the holy hell out of being poked, prodded, and studied by xenos for aftereffects from being inside a black hole. Would have been triple shifts, but Colonel Steele wasn’t letting his people sleep on Arra for fear of hostage-taking, so for eight hours Kerry got to return to a civilized, climate-controlled place, where people understood her when she told them to stick it. She went in search of Cowboy.

She found him with a cigar clenched between his teeth, passing out boxes of more. With the lifting of res silence there had been a mail call. Seems Cowboy had received some news.

Someone shoved one of the brown, smelly rolls of weed at Kerry Blue. “It’s a boy.”

“Him?” she pointed the cigar at Cowboy. “By who?”

Kerry and Cowboy hadn’t been together but a few months, and Kerry didn’t waste jealousy on yesterday’s news. Had to be some past-tense bimbo on the squadron’s last R&R on Earth. Kerry bit off the end of the cigar, spat. “So who is the little mother?”

“His wife.”

The voice went on talking at her, vital statistics, pounds, inches, name—he’d named him Cowboy—as Kerry turned to ash.

Colonel Steele, still wearing the mud and soot from the field, gave his report to Captain Farragut. The populace had been burning the capital, with no idea they were scrapping over carrion. And Steele was ready to leave them to it.

“I’m not,” said Farragut.

Steele admitted soberly, “Neither am I.” He hated police actions. Preferred killing the enemy to trying to quell unruly civilians. Was no good at it. He hated giving the captain a bad report. Hated failing him—and right after disobeying his direct order.

Farragut hadn’t spoken again of a captain’s mast. Steele felt it hanging in the room, unspoken, unseen, but definitely there, like his own reek.

“Permission to ask a question, Captain.”

“TR, you don’t have to ask permission to ask me anything.”

Yes, he did. TR Steele used to be a boot. He would never lose his respect for authority. Would never, no matter how many times invited, ever call the captain John.

Steele spoke stiffly. “I heard what you and the
Mack
went through to get us out of the black hole. I’m not saying I’m not grateful to be alive, Captain—I
am
—but, was I worth it?”

“Didn’t do it for you, TR.”

“I’m glad to hear it.” Steele did not want that burden of debt on him. The ship, all its officers, his two companies of Marines—they had all been on the line. He never wanted his Marines to die on his account. The reverse was acceptable, but those boys and girls weren’t here to defend TR Steele.

“It was for Rome,” said Farragut.

“Rome?”
Steele spat that word out of his mouth like it was shit.

“They think we’re weak. If we can’t stare down the Romans and not blink when the stakes are big, we’ll never get ’em to the bargaining table. I had to show Palatine this is how we do it in the U.S.A.—” He broke off, squinted up at the vent. “Who is
howling
?”

Kerry Blue shredded Cowboy’s pod, the sheets, the pillow, his clothes, his pictures, screaming with every tear.

Cowboy arrived on the scene at a swagger, shirt open to the dimple of his navel in his flat, hard abdomen.

His cigar dropped from between his teeth. “Ho! Blue!”

Kerry spun on him. “You lying, cheating, rat
bastard!
”

She might have shredded him, too, but suddenly she was suspended off her feet, flailing at air.

She stopped struggling when she realized who had her. The braid on the cuff, the breadth of the arms, the hardness of the torso at her back froze her.

“Cheese and rice, Kerry Blue! Are you
insane?
” Cowboy stalked toward her.

“Back off, soldier!”
Steele’s thunder battered Kerry’s eardrum, and he dropped her, hard.

Steele’s blue-eyed glare swept over the wreckage and returned to Kerry Blue. “Explain yourself, Flight Sergeant.”

“Yeah, explain yourself, dick breath!”

“Shut up, Carver!” Steele roared. And again: “Flight Sergeant Blue.”

Kerry shrieked, tears in her eyes, her nose thick. She’d been crying for a while. “He’s
married!
”

And today is Tuesday. What was her point? She didn’t know Cowboy was married? She
cared?
“And that means something to you?” Steele argued, baffled.

“What do you think I
am?
” she keened.

“Easy,” Steele shot back.

“No shit, sir,” Kerry admitted. Declared, “I am
not
an adulteress.”

Tough to keep from laughing. The little tramp had morals. Steele’s spirits lifted, stupidly.

“You’re just an old-fashioned girl, aren’t you, Blue?”

He saw hurt surprise in her eyes. That little lower lip quivered anger. Steele had to get her the hell off this deck before he saluted her.

With the blackest of scowls Colonel Steele posted Kerry Blue down to the underbelly of the ship to stand guard over serious nothing. He dispersed the gaggle of Marines come to gawk at the remains of Cowboy’s spacely belongings.

And to Cowboy, “This pod is a sty, Marine. Clean up your mess.” Then blotted Cowboy’s record for protesting the order. Felt good doing that. TR Steele could not remember ever despising anyone more in his life, and might have considered murdering Cowboy Carver, if Steele were not so sure the jack stud was going to die young. Not that Steele believed in clairvoyance. He simply knew it was going to happen.

Some things were just inevitable.