The Twice and Future Caesar (39 page)

“Glory, glory!” Farragut breathed. Didn't matter now if Rome was in the fight.

Calli murmured, “This is the Alamo. It's the Corindahlor Bridge.”

Farragut looked to the rear of the command platform. “Augustus, why are you laughing?”

Augustus wore a bright graveyard smile. “Why the hell
not?”

10 March 2444
U.S. Space Battleship
Merrimack
Solar System
Near Space

T
HE
FIGHTING
WAS
NONSTOP
NOW
.
Kerry Blue dosed herself to sleep at mid watch, then hopped herself awake at reveille. She killed gorgons with a sword. Then she did the whole drill again.

Didn't get to eat. Wore her food pack plugged in. Hydrator too. She thought her hydrator must be spent. She was shaking.

The monster spheres kept arriving, splitting open, raining a million more gorgons down on Earth and throwing a million more razors against
Merrimack
. They clotted thick on
Mack's
inertial shell. When the coating of monsters got so thick that the engine containment fields burbled,
Merrimack
tore off to the sun again.

Close to Mercury's orbit, it took only a few minutes to burn the burrs off. Still, every time
Mack
ran for the sun, it felt as if they were abandoning Earth.

You gotta be alive to fight.

The ship got hot fast. The surface of the sun looked grainy and crawly through the filters. Gorgons either jumped ship on the way here or they burned here.

Each time the Hive interference lifted,
Merrimack
's atmospheric
controls returned. Kerry Blue felt her thoughts making connections. She could breathe. Inhaled hugely. She smelled gorgons. Coughed.

She didn't know what brimstone smelled like. Figured this was it.

The boffins said people couldn't detect resonance. Bull skat. When the gorgons got thick on the ship's hull, Kerry Blue felt like she was drunk or missing three nights sleep. She had orders to sleep through the mid watch, and she did. It wasn't doing any good. She was pretty sure something about the gorgon mass scrambled everything her—her what? What was she just thinking?

Wasn't just her. No one was all right.

And here we go charging back into it again. Left the sun behind. The ship cooled down on the way back into battle.

She didn't know what keep her fighting. She just did it.

A pincer punched through the bulkhead right at Kerry Blue's eye level. She jerked back, sliced the pincer off. The hard black claw melted before it could hit the platform.

Another claw point poked through the bulk. Kerry shaved it off.

She'd lost contact with Cole Darby. Heard him yelling somewhere. “One two! One Two! And through and through! His vorpal blade went snicker snack!” Darb must've gone mad.

One level down from Kerry Blue, a whole cluster of pincers punched through the bulk. Kerry slid down the ladder to the lower landing. Mowed off the claws.

The claws clattered all the way down the hundred-foot fall to the bottom of the lower sail. They splashed down. Gorgons and razors and their severed parts melted into brown sludge on dying.

There was lot of sloshing down below. A lot of oily brown rain coming from above.

Another claw punched through the bulkhead. Kerry swung at it. Connected. It was reflex by now.

The whole shaft was sprouting appendages.

Kerry Blue slashed off pieces of pincers as they stuck through the metal. She kept swinging.

Heard her mates calling her name. Sounded farther away than they ought to be. They ought to be right here. Or she should be right there. She'd gone and got herself separated. Her adrenaline rush dribbled away. What was she thinking?

Thinking was hard. She was out of hoppers, and she'd waited too long to reload. She hauled herself up the ladder a couple of rungs. Felt like she was carrying Dak. Her limbs felt thick. What was she even doing down here?

A deep metallic groan sounded from above. She looked up dully. Something wide and metal up there—a platform or a hatch—gave way with a tumbling clatter. It was on her before she could move. Swept her down with it. She landed flat. Chest, chin hit with a woof.

Trouble breathing. No idea what happened to her sword.

It was dark down here. Chemical lights were spotty. She couldn't call. Couldn't whimper. Couldn't move her rib cage. Breathing felt like folding daggers. She could only sip in shallow breaths. Her wrist com was fugged. She whispered, “Help?”

I'm going to die here
.

How had she let herself get separated from her team?

This is reallio trulio all ucked fup
.

Sounds of battle boomed throughout the ship.

She thought she was suffocating. Not sure. Could be the platform crushing her, or the gorgons making her think she wasn't breathing. Not sure of anything. Couldn't string two thoughts together. Couldn't hold one thought for more than a panicked heartbeat.

She wiggled her toes to find out if she still had a spine. Right toes, okay. Left toes? Left leg not responding. Couldn't see what was happening back there.

A shadow fell over her, darker in darkness. She knew, just knew, it was a can opener come to finish her. She stayed still. Didn't have much choice.

A scritching of claws. Then a clang of something dropping down a level. Shuffling. Another clang, it dropped closer. More scritching. Another drop.

Clang
. It dropped closer still. Claws clicking at every drop.

The thing descended, snuffling.

Hive razors don't snuffle.

Clunk
. The dog landed on her shaky perch. Rapid panting breaths drew near.

A tickle of whiskers and a fuzzy muzzle as she managed to turn her head. A damp canine nose. It was God—Godzilla, the rat terrier—licking her cheek in between salvos of yips. The dog couldn't talk, but it was smart enough to sound off specific calls for different scenarios. Godzilla
recognized this situation and sang out the call to indicate man down critical. It sounded like
here here here here here here!
Not the words. The tone told you to get a medic down here here here here! Now now now now!

Godzilla paused to give Kerry's face more licks. She was crying. Didn't want anyone to see her tears.

Thank you, God
.

The rat terrier was back to barking its big doggie heart out.
Here here here!

Rapidly moving shapes made the light flicker up above. Something way up there made an unhealthy creak.

Everything that fell from the upper sail dropped through the main fuselage and picked up a holy hell of a lot of momentum by the time it dropped into the lower sail.

Something way up there let go and came falling, bashing and tumbling. It halted. Stayed that way for a long minute, hung up on something.

Kerry grimaced as a rain of debris pattered on top of her. She tried to shut her nostrils. Closed her one working eye. Opened it. Blinked grit clear.

O God, don't make me cough
. She thought a cough would kill her.

She heard God, speaking for her. A different bark this time. No words, but the meaning of the barks sounded pretty clear.
Watch it! Watch it!

A structural groan.

A snap. The thing in the overhead lurched, dropped downward, fast. Kerry squinted her face shut. As if that would stop anything from falling on her.

Heard a slam, a flexing screel of metal hung up on metal, and opened her eye. Above her head, a piece of shorn sheet metal dangled edgewise by a shredding cable. From this angle it looked exactly like a guillotine blade.

The dog huddled against her face. Godzilla's warm side moved against her cheek with his quick panting breaths.

Was this a death vigil?

This can't really be it
.

She tried not to cry. It was painful—crying, trying not to. She kissed the dog. Shut her eye.

Sense of floating. Was this death?

She still hurt. And the dog was still there, his mouth holding her sleeve so he didn't float away from her.

Her hair, her clothes lifted slightly.

The ship had lost artificial gravity.

The platform on top of her chest wasn't floating. It was jammed. She was stuck. Her leg was a solid mass of pain.

The guillotine blade was still there, hovering lazily, more or less over her neck, deciding where exactly to fall.

Artificial gravity could reengage at any instant. She had to get out from under that blade.

She lost the light above her. A big living shape descended. She knew that silhouette, knew the way he moved.

It's the Old Man. Lieutenant Colonel Steele. Moved as easily as if he were swimming. He pushed the floating blade out of his way. Descended. Moved the dog out of the way, kinda gently actually. He gave it an upward push. The dog rose straight up the shaft, stubby legs moving as if paddling.

Steele took hold of the metal platform that had Kerry pinned down, and he pulled. It was jammed in place.

Steele regripped, crouched, and lifted. The metal gave a tooth-shredding scream as he peeled it back.

Kerry felt air on her back. Didn't feel any less crushed.

Steele crouched down close to her. His arms slid under her, carefully. He knew better than to squeeze.

His hands—they were real warm, and she was real real cold—his hands closed on her carefully. She melted into his warmth. He smelled good. She'd smelled a lot of men. Liked this one a whole lot more than she was allowed.

“Gonna hurt.”

“Huh?” she said, thick.

Then she saw it. She had a fixed stanchion harpooned through her thigh. No wonder that ached so bad. Must've missed the femoral artery. That woulda been a geyser.

The stanchion was fixed in place. Steele got a grip on her, positioned to lift her off it. “You ready?”

She answered with no breath, “Yep.”

She braced for the pain. Tried to leave her body. Be somewhere else as
Fargo! Frodo! Fuck! That hurt!

She came free.

There could have been a whole lot more blood.

Feeling queasy, heavy, she looked up. Her guillotine blade was back.
The sheer metal sheet had lazily caromed off another piece of wreckage and drifted back right over her head. She tried to talk. Couldn't find a word. The thing—! Look out! Heads!

Gravity abruptly returned.

The blade dropped.

A sudden wrench yanked her to the side with a stab of pain. Steele had jerked her hard against him. The blade chopped down. It split the platform and kept going, then stabbed into a lower platform and stuck. The scaffolding of the entire sail sang with the reverberation. The blade had opened up the side of Steele's deck boot.

His hands loosened their hold on her. Her eyes watered with pain. She didn't want him to think she was crying.

Steele snarled, trying to get a grip on her that wouldn't cause more damage while he carried her up the ladder. He lurched up the ladder, one lumbering rung at a time, like King Kong.

He had to stop. Set her down and drew his sword to cut down the razors that came for them.

He sheathed his sword and crouched to pick her up again, muttering.

She said, “Colonel, I know you don't think much of me, but—”

The look on his face stopped her. Blond brows rose in jagged arches. His mouth hung open, angry or astonished or both. She stared into his eyes for an eternal moment. They were ice blue and burning. A lethal growling whisper started somewhere way down deep in his broad chest. “I
what?
”

Kerry opened her mouth. Shut it before something stupid could come out of it.

Oh
.

The intensity in his gaze made her writhe inside.

Steele's breath seethed. He snarled a whisper, “You are
all
I think about.”

His face got real red.

She stared at him, amazed. Then afraid.

She touched his cheek. It was rough, bristled. She lifted her fingertips to his lips. “Are we dying?”

“
No!
” he bellowed, like an order.

Gravity quit as if he'd startled it.

Quickly, Steele made her grab onto the back of his suit. She grasped his suit and held tight in case gravity kicked in again. Steele stormed up the ladder.

They made it to the main fuselage and onto a firm deck. Hospital level. A triage bot came out to assess her.

Kerry felt a change in the air. She could think. The sickening sounds of insinuation tapered off. “Are we running to the sun?” Kerry asked.

“Must be,” Steele said.

But they weren't. The lights returned. The engines didn't sound to be straining.

Kerry heard some cheering, then a triumphant screeching “
Yeah!
”

Word came around quickly. The enemy were jumping ship. It was a retreat—the Hive's.

“Are we
winning?
” Kerry asked.

Steele's face looked grim. He wasn't a trusting man. He didn't look ready to celebrate. Something was wrong here.

News spread through the space battleship. The Hive spheres were changing direction, all of them, lifting away from Earth. The gorgons were running.