The Myriad
Author: R. M. Meluch
Date: 2006-01-03 08:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Fiction; Science Fiction; Space Opera; Action & Adventure; Military
Description: The U.S.S. Merrimack was the finest battleship class spaceship in Earth's fleet, able to stand up against the best the Palatine Empire could throw at them, even able to attack and kill swarms of the seemingly unstoppable Hive. But nothing could have prepared the captain and crew of the Merrimack to face the Myriad-three colonized worlds in the midst of a globular cluster that theHive had somehow overlooked.
Publisher: Penguin

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

PART ONE - Uncertainty Principle

Chapter 1 - Anno Domini 2443

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

PART TWO - Functions of Chaos

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

PART THREE - A Rational Universe

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Raves for
The Myriad:

“Most military SF emphasizes the military, but while Meluch depicts combat and warrior culture as well as any writer in the subgenre, the true joy of this outstanding effort lies in its inspired use of current speculation on the origins of the universe, quantum singularities and even the old chestnut of time travel. Meluch shows particular skill in creating memorable characters while exhibiting a refreshing ruthlessness in subordinating them to the logical ramifications of the plot.”

—Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

“After a 10-years hiatus, a distinguished military SF writer returns to print with a zany adventure that might be considered a PG-13-rated Star Trek. The whole adventure promising a good deal for the future of the series, Tour of the Merrimack, that it inaugurates. Those who make of military SF a religious observance may find it amusingly difficult to take; the more sensible will quite enjoy.”

—Booklist

“R. M. Meluch’s first novel in more than a decade, The
Myriad, begins a series that is an amalgam of subgenres: military science fiction, space opera, time paradox, and alternate history. Vaguely reminiscent of Robert A. Heinlein’s Starship Troopers (specifically, the relentless alien antagonists and the over-the-top, gung-ho characters), The Myriad is lighthearted, fast-paced fun. This novel will prove thoroughly enjoyable to fans of military science fiction authors like David Weber and David Drake.”

—The Barnes & Noble Review

“An action-packed space opera. For readers who like romps through outer space, lots of battles with gooey horrific insects, and character sexplotation, The Myriad delivers. The novel is full of action, tough military talk, and space-opera war.”

—SciFi.com

Copyright © 2004 by R. M. Meluch

All rights reserved.

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First Paperback Printing, January 2006

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To Jim

PART ONE

Uncertainty Principle

1

Anno Domini 2443

A NIGHTMARE RUNS over again and again in a loop. As if rerunning it could make it come out differently. It ends the same every time. Cowboy was dead.

Cowboy had been a split-second stupid and a full-second dead. And dead all the seconds after that. The nightmare reruns. Dead again.

Dead still.

He should have known better. But should’ve, might’ve, could’ve, all mean didn’t. It was done now. Finished. Fixed. Written and could not be rewritten.

Cowboy was dead.

It reruns:

Nothing ever lived inside a globular cluster. Everyone knew that. Globulars were made up of thousands—sometimes millions—of stars, but all them old, population II types, formed back when the galaxy was nothing but primordial hydrogen. All those millions of stars were too metal poor to spawn a single planet. So the crew and the Marine detachment of the battleship Merrimack were surprised to trip a signal beacon upon breaching the perimeter of globular cluster IC9870986.

Merrimack was passing near a clutter of anomalous space debris, when something lurking among the asteroids shrieked an electromagnetic alarm.

“Hive!” the watch called.

Prox alarms blared on board in answer, with an all-stop order and call to battle stations.

The big ship spat out Marine Swifts in a torrent.

Slung clear of the launch bay, Flight Sergeant Kerry Blue glanced back at Merrimack, saw the battleship’s gunports wink open. Merrimack made as grand a gun platform as you could ask to take you into action. Kerry would never admit that to a spaceman; the navvies were already way too smug proud of themselves. Guns bristled—missile launchers, beam cannon, projectile barrels, the whole shop for an unknown enemy. Beam weapons were useless at FTL, but the ship’s stopping brought those into play, too.

The Swifts deployed wide, targeting systems on, everything working at one hundred percent, with no sign of Hive interference in the electrics. No sign of Hive at all.

In a moment a voice in Kerry’s headset spoke her very thought: “Uh, something’s missing here.”

Then Alpha Leader: “Hello, Merrimack. Where’s the gorgons?”

The only thing Kerry saw out here was a company of Marine Swifts streaking the vacuum.

Next she heard Cowboy, in that taunting voice he used to call you an idiot without saying the word: “Hello, Tracking. I don’t got a burr under my saddle. Why is that?”

Merrimack’s tracking officer responded, ever calm: “Keep your zipper up, Cowboy. Do not fire until target acquired.”

“What frogging target!”

The sweat began in pinpricks on Kerry’s clammy skin within her pressure suit as she sat in the tiny cockpit. Tense. Eyes scanning every direction. Instruments showed her nothing. No gorgons. She hated gorgons. Always sick before she saw ’em. Rather be in the thick of it, snarled in a giant burr ball, severed legs flapping everywhere. Actually having a can opener chewing on her hull was easier to take than this searching.

She craned her neck around. Weird, actually, to be able to see. Normally, she depended wholly on the sensor display to show her plots of things in the perfect blackness. But here the combined light of the cluster’s millions of stars shed a weird glow over the interstellar gases. Outside was light.

She could actually see the other Swifts flitting like moths—very fast moths—among the glinting asteroids at the cluster’s perimeter. Her squadron in flight looked like what she used to imagine it would before she actually got out here and discovered that space was really dark.

The stars themselves showed as a bright wall, a solid, luminous backdrop against which she imagined legs—lots of serrated, thrashing, biting legs.

But really there was only one very primitive space buoy tucked amid the asteroids, screaming its alien signal. A contraption that looked like a dragonfly equipped with flimsy antenna arrays and foil solar collectors. The colonel’s voice sounded: “Merrimack. This is Wing Leader. Request confirmation of that Hive sign.”

“Wing Leader. Merrimack. We are checking that.”

Great. Kerry groaned. They don’t know.

“It’s a Roman trap,” someone declared.

“Rome’s our ally now,” someone else countered.

“Oh, yeah, and we all believe that.” Cowboy, in that sarcastic voice again.

Kerry had just let her muscles relax when a spike of laughter in her headset made her flinch.

“Joy, joy! Lookee what’s shooting at us! Nine by nine by five on the grid!”

Kerry didn’t see it. Fumbled for a lock on the coordinates on her sensor display. Located it.

A missile. That silly junk sculpture of a space buoy had launched a missile. At sublight speed.

Kerry heard a nervous yelp of a laugh. Hers.

Others laughed louder. Claimed to be real scared.

“Eyes!” That was Steele. Warning them this could, after all, be a diversion. Gorgons had been known to throw you a bone, make you look.

“Aw, but this is so cute.” Cowboy again. “It’s shootin’ at me!”

“And lookee there. ET’s got a laser gun!” Carly’s voice.

More cackles caromed within Kerry’s helmet.

And Cowboy was off with a whoop. “YeeeeeeeeHA!”

You could tell which Swift was Cowboy’s. The one that hauled straight up to the missile, head on, and dead reversed at the very last possible tick. He sped away from the missile, backward, staying in its face, nose to nose, howling like a jack fool.

And flew flat back into a mine.

Opened his hull right up. You could hear the kaboom over the com—half of it. The sound shut off like a switch in mid-explosion—or implosion—and you didn’t hear the rest of the boom. And you didn’t hear Cowboy any more.

“Cowboy!” someone screamed. Kerry Blue. Didn’t recognize her own voice.

Then it was Colonel Steele on the com: “Alpha Flight, what is your situation?”

“Up screwed!” Kerry cried. “Man down! Man down!”

As Alpha Leader shouted over her: “Alpha Flight! Form up, shut up, maintain radio discipline!”

Colonel Steele demanded: “Life signs on Cowboy’s can?”

“Negs. No life signs,” Alpha Leader responded. “His field’s flat and he’s got a hole in his hull you can throw a yak through.”

The hole by itself was nothing. How it got there—the failure of his deflector field—was the ominous part.

“Cowboy, respond!” Colonel Steele’s authoritative bark could wake the dead. Cowboy had to answer.

Didn’t.

“What got him?” Twitch Fuentes cried, as if Cowboy could be nothing but dead, and Kerry just wanted to reach through the com link and smack him for being so stupid. Cowboy was not dead. Could not, not, not be dead.

“An asteroid!” Dak Shepard answered the stupid question. “A frogging space boulder!”

“What could get through his cowcatcher?” Carly. Not like her to sound so scared.

It was a scary thought, that something could get through the stoutest part of their defenses. The Marines all felt invulnerable behind their cowcatchers—what they called the fat part of their energy deflectors, always turned in the direction of travel. Those fat deflectors kept the space litter from Swiss-cheesing your hull at speed.

What hideous alien weapon could get through a forward field?

The explanation was almost worse. Alpha Leader reported guiltily: “Cowboy’s cowcatcher was . . . facing the wrong way.”

Breathed curses on the link. Sounded like Colonel Steele. Then came his brisk order, “Marine Wing, clear the asteroids. And keep your damn deflectors facing the direction you are going!”

Kerry joined the chorus: “Sir!”

Beam sweeps sliced the asteroid field. Innocuous-looking rocks blew up nicely. Too nicely. Not asteroids after all. This was a minefield. A bloody minefield. One of those highly effective, dirt cheap low-tech traps that don’t read on your scanners as devices. The mines did not look like anything. Because they weren’t anything better than chunks of mineral. A mix of minerals, stable in skinny-digit temperatures in a vacuum. In contact with a beam—or the thin part of a Swift’s force field—they got spectacularly unstable.

Not enough punch to do damage if Cowboy hadn’t sat on one. He took a direct hit through the window in his defensive field and right on the power plant.

A stupid, primitive mine.

The hell of it was that a nineteenth-century bullet or even a Stone Age spear could still kill a twenty-third-century marine. It shouldn’t. It should not be allowed. And that was it—it was your sense of superiority that killed you. Colonel Steele had warned them enough times.

Any jarhead who came out here in a ship that carried swords in its armory should never have sat on a mine.

As the Marine Wing tore into the asteroid field, the battleship Merrimack opened up all she had. Together, they beamed, bombed, displaced, flamed, and detonated mines. Residual dust spread, glowing like a snow-storm in the cluster’s starlight.

Kerry loosed her guns in blind anger, blasting asteroids back to their component elements till her eyes blurred and Lieutenant Colonel Steele’s order banged at her ears: “Cease fire! CEASE FIRE! Wing! Battery! Cease fire! Wing, reel it in. Merrimack, this is Steele. Permission to reboard.”

“Merrimack standing by to receive Marine Wing on port and starboard flight decks.”

Flight Sergeant Kerry Blue rode her beam through Merrimack’s force field and onto her landing spot on the starboard flight deck. Felt heavy again under nominal gravity.

Gear down, clamps locked. She gripped her seat and closed her eyes for the elevator’s stomach-lurching drop inboard to the hangar deck and full gravity. At the abrupt, butt-bruising stop, she disconnected hoses, cables. Popped the canopy, climbed out. “A mine! A stupid dirt ball! Where’s Cowboy?”

She pushed through the maintenance erks who swarmed around the returning combat vessels like dull yellow ants in their mustard-colored coveralls.

Cowboy’s slip remained vacant.

“Where is he?” Kerry roared.

Erks waved her toward the cargo bay where Alpha Leader had come aboard with Cowboy’s wreck in tow.

Kerry ran down the ramp tunnel to the cargo bay. Carly called after her, begging, “No, no, no, chica linda, no!”

Kerry burst onto the cargo deck, dropped her helmet.

Cowboy’s Swift lay canted askew, twisted, its ass torn open like a ragged metal flower. Front didn’t look too bad. The canopy was open, Alpha Leader looking inside, turning away.

Kerry grasped at the faint hope: “Is he—?”

Hazard Sewell turned at the sound of her voice. His fair face turned positively white, looking horrified to see her. Jumped down to the deck.

“Oh, Kerry Blue, don’t look.” He caught her starting forward. “I mean it. Do not look. He—he let the vacuum in.”

She knew that. Must’ve been in denial. The lump in her throat grew near to choking her. Eyes burned. I’m not gonna cry. Mother of God, I am not gonna cry.

That was one of Cowboy’s expressions—to let the vacuum in. He started it. Everyone used it now.

She was gonna cry.

And—oh, no—the Old Man was on deck. Both of ’em. Lieutenant Colonel TR Steele and Captain John Farragut.

“Captain on deck!”

And everyone snapped to, Marines and navvies alike. Captain Farragut entered with a forceful stride. Toe of one of his boots met Kerry’s thrown helmet, sent it skidding. Kerry made an ungainly scramble to retrieve it from the deck. Tucked it under her arm where it belonged.

Farragut had a lot of Cowboy’s qualities—a quick smile, magnetic charm. Damn fine-looking man—which was not to say he was a lean, carrot-torsoed god like Cowboy. Farragut was built like a bull. Between Farragut and Cowboy in an alley fight, you had to go with the captain for sheer mass. That and the fact that John Farragut flat-out loved—loved—to fight. Fearless. Energetic. He drew people to him instantly. Blew into a room like a light going on and woke everyone up. Though, next to Cowboy, Farragut was staid and calm. But, of course, that was because the Old Man was old, like Colonel Steele.

Farragut and Steele were in their thirties.

Blue-eyed, both of them. Farragut like the summer sky. Steele, pale arctic ice. You could cut yourself on Colonel Steele’s eyes. Captain Farragut looked Steele right in the ice and demanded, “What happened?”

Kerry had an answer to that: Those bloody alien bastards killed our best man! So she was astounded to hear Colonel Steele saying something else entirely—apologizing . “We were sloppy, sir. I take full responsibility for the breakdown in discipline.”

The captain’s curt nod told him: You bet you do.

Kerry’s mind reeled with silent shrieks. What? They killed Cowboy!

“You let me down, TR,” Farragut said softly.

Hazard Sewell, standing next to Kerry, physically winced at that one. Captain Farragut knew every man jack and jane on board, even Marines. And he noticed when you did something really right or really wrong. He could make you feel really big or really, really small. His quiet disapproval cut deep. Be easier if he would just yell.

And Steele didn’t explain, or even try to. He just took it. “Yes, sir.”

The captain and the colonel exited the deck, and everybody else exhaled. Turned somberly to Cowboy’s wreck.

Cowboy always said: Live fast and leave a handsome corpse. Cowboy didn’t leave a handsome corpse. They had to hose him out of there and sort out the inorganic stuff with a scanner.

And it ends the same every time. All their rollicking tomorrows stretched ahead in hollow darkness. Kerry retreated to her pod, stuffed her pillow around her ears, trying to make no sound.

Stop thinking. Past was past. Done was done. You can’t change it. You can’t ever change it, so let it go.

And the loop runs through again. . . .

Captain Farragut caught up with Lieutenant Colonel Steele’s quick angry strides. Corridors in the flight wings were wider than in the battleship’s main fuselage, allowing the two big men to walk side by side in the passage. “What did happen out there?”

Steele stopped. Anger, barely held in check, burst free. Hurled his helmet against the bulk, all his taurine mass behind it. He flushed red under his white-blond buzz-cut hair. Arctic eyes blazed. “Sir. We got caught with our dicks hanging out and looking stupid.”

“Anyone out there?” Farragut asked. No blame. No anger.

Steele struggled to bring his temper down for a landing. He wagged his square head no. “Alive? Not that we saw. Did Merrimack pick up anything?”

“No. It doesn’t smell like Hive. The early warnings are quiet.”

“Doesn’t smell like anything that makes sense. And that smells like Hive to me,” said Steele.

The captain demurred. “The Hive is adaptive, but they don’t invent. The burrs have never tripped a mine to know what one is, much less learn how to set one.”

“We don’t know that, Captain. I don’t trust the Romans to tell us everything they tried on the burrs before they palmed the war off on us. And we don’t know how old the Hive is, where they’ve been, who they ate, or what they learned from ’em.”

Farragut gave a sideways nod, allowing the point. “But mines? No one uses mines in outer space. It’s too big. How could anyone know we would be right here? Or that your man would fly backward. He wouldn’t have died head-on, would he?”

Steele shook his head. “No. He wouldn’t. Or if he’d had his cowcatcher turned in the direction of travel.”

“Why didn’t he turn it?” Every speck of dust was a bullet to a ship traveling FTL. The forward fields that swept all particles aside were called cowcatchers, though few hands on board had ever seen their name-sake or stopped to wonder why one would ever need a device to catch a plodding herbivore. Merrimack could, and had, plowed through Saturn’s rings. (Heard about that one from the Joint Chiefs, but no matter now.) A pilot always turned his screens in the direction he was going. “System failure?”

Steele shook his head. “Arrogance. Cock full of it.” Steele’s best guess was that Cowboy had intended to reverse direction again and head butt the missile.

“Did you get any sense out there that that missile or this minefield was meant for us, TR?”

“No,” said Steele. “We stepped in someone else’s trap.”

“Bizarre place for a trap. And accidentally stepping in it? Chances have to be a godzillion to one.”

Steele had never taken probabilities and statistics, and he wasn’t sure if godzillion was a real number, so he just nodded gravely. “So who were the mines meant for? And what are they protecting?”

“And why here?” Farragut added. “Why right here?”

“We gotta be close to something.”

“Have to be,” Farragut agreed. “Have to be. But what? Clue?”

Steele shook his head.

“I’ll have the minefield scanned. Its placement should point us toward what’s being guarded. Have someone retrieve that sentinel buoy so we can analyze it for age. This could be very old news and maybe this is a leftover dragon from a long-gone treasure—what?”

Steele’s face sank deeper and deeper into chagrin. Farragut prompted again, “What?”

Steele spoke tightly. “The sentinel buoy has been ‘secured. ’ ”

Farragut translated, “Your Marines blew it up.”

Steele nodded. “And all of the mines.”

One hand loosely caging his face, Farragut peered through his fingers. “Shit, TR.” Not angry. Resigned to obvious consequences. If you want to preserve evidence, send detectives or scientists, not Marines. “You know, we very likely wiped out a first contact. I’m pretty sure we never met these folk before.”

“My Wing was thorough,” Steele said dryly.

“I helped,” Farragut confessed. Any chance to run the guns. “LEN’s gonna pee the carpet when they read this report.”

Naval diplomacy was an oxymoron. Farragut would have let himself laugh, had a man not died. “Cowboy. Jaime Carver.” He placed the name at last—the late Flight Sergeant Jaime “Cowboy” Carver.

Steele was not surprised that the captain of a battleship carrying a Marine detachment of 720 and crew of 425 should know one of his Marine flight sergeants by full name. Farragut knew everybody.

And everybody knew Cowboy. Though few knew his name was Jaime Carver.

“Popular man, wasn’t he?” Farragut asked.

Lips tight, teeth clenched, Steele answered, “Very.”

Farragut must have sensed the rage. He asked softly, “Friend, TR?”

“Dumb kid. Cocky. Balls to the wall. Hard not to like him.”

Hard not to like him, and Steele hated him. Heard himself go on, “I knew he’d do this to me.”

Cowboy was a funny guy, made everyone laugh. Stellar looks. Always quick to get his shirt off. Girl in every port, and one on board every ship no matter how slim the ratios. Insubordinate. Steele sometimes wished him dead. So startled to get his wish, Steele spoke aloud, “I’m asking if there’s something I could’ve done.”

Farragut glanced aside at Steele as they walked. “Was there?”

“I don’t see it.” And Steele had looked hard. As much as Steele hated Cowboy, sending one of his own men intentionally, and without his knowledge, to his death was against everything Lieutenant Colonel Steele lived for. Steele was first, last, and always a good soldier. He had soul-searched and exonerated himself. Cowboy had killed Cowboy. “It was fast.”

“It’s always fast out here,” said Farragut.

“Man was a walking game of Russian roulette.” Future corpse, the type was called. “Hell, sir, it was inevitable.”

Farragut’s voice turned quietly stern: “You have any more of those on board my boat, TR, ship ’em home today.”

“Sir. Yes, sir.”

Prox alarms blared and quickly silenced. Two sets of blue eyes lifted. “What now?” Farragut murmured, launching into a run.

Space was too vast for chance encounters. Someone crossed your path out here, means you were stalked.

“Ladder up!”

Crew quickly scrambled clear of the vertical passages within the sound of Farragut’s shout, for Captain Farragut made his entrances like a cannon shell. He clambered up the ladder, spry for a big man, and bounded to the control room.

Two MPs flanked the hatch on either side. Within was a compact space, daylit, bustling. Technicians and specialists worked elbow to elbow at their stations-—tactical, com, navigation, targeting—each in direct communication with his attendant department belowdecks. Multiple large display screens above the workstations relayed visuals and ship’s status at a glance. “What’ve we got?” Farragut demanded.

The prox alarm announced someone not given an approach vector was collision close. “Friend or Foe?”

“IFF says Friend,” tactical reported dubiously. And no one was convinced of its friendship from looking at the overhead displays.

The U.S. alliance with Palatine was a brittle one. Merrimack ’s low-band scanner readings, as translated into a visual, displayed the unholy image of a Roman Striker.

Merrimack’s tall, impossibly beautiful XO announced coolly, “Captain Farragut, your new IO is here.” A wry brittleness infected her whole bearing. Commander Calli Carmel had a knowing respect for Roman might and Roman treachery.

The concerned pinch in her brow was in clear view with her dark hair pulled severely back into a braided tail to her waist.

Farragut regarded the painted Striker on the display. A sharp-edged, wicked little craft, faster than the Mack. “Red and black. What gens is that?”

“Flavian,” said Calli. Calli Carmel had attended the prestigious Imperial Military Institute on Palatine during the brief conciliation between worlds. Made her the resident expert on things Roman. “Not the worst,” she interpreted. “But not the conciliatory party either. Gens Flavius voted against the surrender. He’s requesting permission to come aboard.”

“Permission granted.” And to her hesitation, “We’re expecting him, aren’t we?”

Calli lowered her voice, grim. “Not yet. We never sent our location to the repeater. Our operations are classified, but he found us without being given rendezvous coordinates. It appears we have no secrets from this guy.”

“Good quality in an IO, you don’t think? What’s his name?”

“Augustus. They’ve given him the rank of colonel.” Lofty enough. But not a line officer.

“Augustus what?” said Farragut. “What Augustus?”

“Just Augustus.”

“I thought only slaves had only one name.”

“Augustus is not a slave name,” Calli advised.

“Well, he’s not the emperor,” said Farragut. “Let him aboard.” He quit the control room running. “Clear ladder!” He hooked his feet round the rails outside the rungs and slid, fireman style, to the mid-deck. Marched out the starboard dock to greet his new intelligence officer.

He found the deck crowded with the curious, armed with made-up official reasons to be here, anxious for a glimpse of their uneasy ally.

Not just a Roman, this was rumored to be a patterner, one of the Empire’s augmented men designed to interface with a computer and make gestalt sense of the random information within its databases. The Roman Empire valued its patterners highly. Patterners were rare, pricey pieces of equipment. Palatine must think Merrimack had a real chance of locating the Hive home world to be sending a patterner into U.S. service.

The Roman uncoiled from his Striker. Tall. They were all tall. Romans were evolving bigger by every generation, and not, one suspected, by natural selection. Captain Farragut at six foot one was unaccustomed to looking that far up. The Roman stood easily six foot eight—max height allowed on board an American space vessel—all in proportion. He was going to have to duck through the hatches. Age, perhaps mid-forties, perhaps fifties. Face like granite. Hair black, tightly curled, close-cut. Carried himself with a dangerous dignity. A disdain.

Captain Farragut offered an open right hand. Augustus let the hand hang out there in midair. The flight deck stiffened, gripped in a collective breath hold, turning blue.

Captain Farragut cut easily to the point: “I know y’all broke away from Earth a hundred and a half years ago, but you’ve got to know this is a sign of friendship.”

“An open hand shows you hold no weapon,” Augustus corrected. “I do. Ergo.” Still no hand.

Eyes bulged from the breath holders.

The captain’s voice did not vary from its easy Kentucky drawl. “Then let go of it long enough to greet your duly appointed commanding officer.”

The Roman’s hand opened, lifted—saluted, greeting the office, not the man. Bootheels came together sharply. No one had ever heard an ancient Roman salute, but you had to doubt an ancient Roman ever managed a convincing heel rap like that in sandals.

Farragut’s brows lifted. He returned an American salute. And since no pleasantries were to be exchanged, he ordered, “Mr. Juarez, show Colonel Augustus to his quarters.”

“An escort is unnecessary,” Augustus countered. “Tell me which compartment you’ve assigned to me. I am familiar with the layout of a U.S. Merrimack-class battleship.” Unsubtle reminder there, of Palatine’s capture of Merrimack’s sister ship Monitor during the war. The Monitor must have impressed the Romans, because they turned around, gave it back, and offered alliance with the United States against Them, the Hive.

Marauding omnivores from outer space had made strange bedfellows of the United States and the planet Palatine.

Captain Farragut chose to pretend the remark was meant to be helpful. “By all means.” He ordered the new intelligence officer to report to sick bay after he stowed his gear in his quarters. Granted him permission to go, and he was gone.

A nervous titter escaped the personnel on the flight deck.

“I think that might have gone better,” Farragut said.

The tension immediately bled off with a big deck-wide snigger.

One of the ship’s dogs, the bloodhound named Nose, had given the Roman a sniff in passing and immediately sat down—a signal that he smelled something not right about Augustus.

“I’ll put a tag on him,” Steele said, but Farragut belayed that: “I don’t think he’ll get lost.”

That was not the point. Steele plunged ahead, “But he’s—”

“Roman?” Farragut chided mildly.

There were worse things in this galaxy than Romans.

A squad of Marines waited for Colonel Steele in the forecastle on his way to officers’ country.

He felt numbingly cold in recognition:

Dak Shepard. Flew as Alpha Two. A grunt with wings. Big ape. A football washout—too slow for offense, too small for defense at a petite one hundred kilos. Nothing left for Dak but to bash heads for Uncle Sam.

Carly Delgado. Alpha Four. A hard case. All rope and bone. Stick girl. Little pyramid breasts and a wide pointy cradle of hip. Wide face, brutally high cheek-bones, and a sharp little chin. That squint did her no good. Too tough to cry. Carly was crying.

Twitch Fuentes. Alpha Five. The quiet one. Didn’t trust his English.

Little Regina Monroe. Alpha Three. Reg was making those squeaking sobs. Sounded like a mouse.

And hope against hope, she was still there in the back of the knot: Kerry Blue. Alpha Six. Puffy-faced. Eyes rimmed red. Mouth had that fat-lipped look you get from crying hard. Grieving anger knit her brow.

They were all here but Alpha Seven. That asshole.

Steele braced himself in stony dread as Flight Leader Hazard Sewell stepped forward for his squad. The designated mouth. “We’re having a memorial for Cowboy. We’d like you to say a few words, Colonel.”

Heart stuck in his boot.

They waited, expectant. Never expected Colonel Steele to say no.

These soldiers all loved Cowboy. Steele’s throat constricted so tight he didn’t think he could talk.

And then he was talking. Almost without himself. “What I will do for Cowboy’s memory is neglect to record in my report that he was in direct violation of procedure, which violation caused his death. I will not put in the record that he did not die in defense of his world but in the act of being a cowboy. And I am only giving him that much slack because he didn’t take any of you with him!”

Felt the heat in his face. With his fair skin and white-blond buzz-cut hair he may as well have a signal beacon for a head. Knew he was flaming red.

He roared on, louder, “And if any of you do the same, not only will I refuse to say anything at your memorials, I will jettison your carcass out the air lock where your vacuum-bloated remains will drift for all time. DO YOU UNDERSTAND!”

Alpha squad flinched back as a whole in dumb disbelief.

“The rules exist to keep your sorry asses still connected to your thick skulls and your still-beating hearts. You want me to say a few words? Here: Cowboy got what he asked for. Now, someone go sanitize his personal effects before I ship them back to his wife. I have a letter to write!”

As he whirled toward the hatch, someone blurted, “Cowboy had a wife?”

“A pregnant wife,” Steele snarled back. God, how do you write a letter like that? Damn him. Damn him. A pregnant widow. He roared in parting, “Take all his girl-friends’ stuff and space it!”

Kerry Blue, looking ill, mumbled, “I’ll do it.”

It would be mostly her stuff.

Normally, a star cluster offered nothing of interest to a military vessel. The cluster was a beautiful curiosity only, until this one had started shooting.

IC9870986 was a class I globular cluster, meaning, on a scale of I to XII, it was very large, extremely rich, and very much compressed at its center—though “compressed” in cosmic terms meant that the core suns still averaged a quarter light-year apart.

The cluster measured 150 light-years in diameter, encompassing three million stars. At light speed it would take Merrimack 472 years to orbit the cluster once; at the distortion threshold, six days. The whole of it measured 750,351 solar masses.

“That can’t be right,” Steele objected, hearing the statistics read off. Couldn’t bite back the words fast enough. Caught sideways glances from the Navy techs, who were embarrassed for him. Steele had just stepped in something and didn’t know what. Only knew he had revealed some ignorance.

A scanner monitor muttered into his console, “Marines can work division. Wow.”

It was the division that was not working. Steele did not see how three million stars equated to seven hundred fifty thousand solar masses.

Farragut murmured aside to his abashed Marine commander, “Underweight stars. Typical in a glob.”

“I slept through globs,” Steele growled.

“So did everyone,” Farragut assured him. That would be just like Farragut not to leave you out there by yourself. “Globs are of no strategic importance.”

Globular clusters were among the oldest features in the Milky Way. In comparison to Sol, the typical globular star was poorer in elements any heavier than helium by a factor of ten. And no heavy elements meant no planets, no dirt to stand on, no military bases. Nothing for a gorgon to eat, and Merrimack was hunting gorgons.

But somebody was here. Or had been here.

Captain Farragut wondered, passing through the cluster, if he had not been lured in here. But the Hive did not understand humans well enough to know that humans would find this beautiful. Beauty was irrelevant to Hive existence. The Hive did not know beauty. It knew edibility.

In surrounding space, only one in four stars formed singly. Stars in a globular cluster were all singles, unless one considered the whole system of three million as one colossal multiple star system. Though one could not say these stars orbited one another. They milled.

But lying as it did only two degrees off the galactic equator, this cluster had picked up three rider stars not born with the rest of them. Three heavy stars.

“Two M types and an F8,” the monitor reported. “Main sequence.”

“Planets?” Farragut asked.

“Affirmative. All three of ’em. Planets in their hospitable zones.”

“Let’s go look. Take us to the F8 system.” Captain Farragut pointed to the white star, heaviest of the three rider systems. His voice was uncharacteristically tight.

A habitable planet was the last thing Merrimack wanted to find on the path where she was bound. The silence of surrounding space underscored the captain’s misgivings. If the minefield had come from one of those three star systems, then where were the communication signals of its makers? Against what enemy had the mines been set? The cluster lay in direct line with the Hive’s last known trail.

The navigator plotted a course toward the white star system. Captain Farragut did not request any special haste to get there. Afraid Merrimack was flying toward a mass grave.

Space may be silent, but noises carried clearly through the thin bulkheads of Merrimack’s confined world. Crashing. Shrieked curses. Tearing. Kerry Blue was trashing Cowboy’s sleep pod.

“Kerry! What are you doing!”

Kerry tugged, grunting. Fabric of Cowboy’s shirt gave way after two mighty tugs. Ripped. “Colonel said sanitize his effects,” she puffed, getting another grip.

“Sanitize, not annihilate!” her squad mate Reg Monroe cried. “They have to send something home!”

“When I’m done, they can send his shit home in an envelope!” Yarn from a sweater unraveled in curly lengths with each yank. Might’ve been Cowboy’s guts. Kerry whipped the shredded ends at anything left standing of Cowboy’s belongings. Screamed, “He was married! Son of a bitch! Son of a bitch! Son of a BITCH!”

Things flew and shattered. Marines ducked for cover as Kerry Blue raged.

Till an iron grip surrounded her, pinned her arms to her sides, and pulled her off her feet. She knew who had her—didn’t need eyes behind her head, or even in front to see those braided cuffs to figure this one out—though she couldn’t believe it. She went rigid against the hard, hard torso at her back. Like being chained to a boulder. Felt Colonel Steele’s voice vibrate against her. “Marine, what the hell are you doing!”

“He was married! Sir!”

“Yeah?” Steele’s tone said: So?

He set her down on her feet so hard it rattled her teeth, and let her go.

An oddly hurt lump rose to her throat. Her eyes welled, nose thickened. First betrayed by her lover, and now the damned colonel hated her, too.

She turned to face him. “No one told me!”

Rather softly, perhaps mocking, Steele said, “I thought you knew.”

“What do you think I am?” she cried, shocked.

Steele’s answer snapped right back, flat: “Easy.”

She blinked matted lashes, hurt. “No shit, sir.” Of course she was easy. She sniffled indignantly, straightened her back, and fought the wobble out of her voice. “I am not an adulteress.”

Steele’s white-blond brows lifted at the quaint, antique word. Steele looked for a moment as if he might laugh. Didn’t. “You’re just an old-fashioned girl, aren’t you, Blue?”

“What is that supposed to mean, sir?”

An ice-blue flick to the side—quick scan over the wreckage. “You done here?” he asked.

“Yeah. He ain’t worth any more of my time.”

Steele snarled to the others, signaling that this show was over. “All right. Someone else go through Cowboy’s effects! And everyone stay sober at the wake. I remind you we are still under a Hive watch!”

2

“CONTACT! Contact! Contact!”

The Officer of the Deck’s voice broke the captain’s sleep in the middle watch, four days into the cluster.

“What have you got?” Farragut bounded into the control room, still wearing the T-shirt and sweatpants he slept in. Lieutenant Colonel Steele arrived close behind in T-shirt and khakis, but Steele had managed deck boots as well.

Farragut glanced at the monitors. Knew from the lack of alarms and the quiet telltales that the contact was not Hive. He rubbed his eyes to make the images focus. “Where are we?”

“Ninety light-years from the F8 star,” the OOD answered, surrendering her station. Lieutenant Glenn Hamilton—Hamster, they called her. The Hamster, a mellow-voiced, auburn-haired young woman, stood five foot one barefoot. She was all professional, way too cute. Married. Subordinate line officer. Captain Farragut kept her on the middle watch where he never had to look at her. Almost never.

“The second planet in the F8 system is pouring out electromagnetic transmissions,” Hamster reported. “Radio, television, satellite bounces. Video shows a humanoid population.”

Monitor screens lit up with different images broadcast from the planet. They showed a somewhat Earthlike world in terms of terrain and climate, with green vegetation. Lean, lithe, humanoid beings with red-bronze skin and dark equine manes moved under a star-spangled sky. There were tall, willowy elfin-faced females draped in flowing, floor-length clothing. And distinctly shorter, harder, dog-muscled males, less covered, their manes showing through slash-backed shirts and tunics.

Captain Farragut did not remember ever seeing anything like them in the archives. “Is this a new contact?”

“Yes, sir,” said Lieutenant Hamilton. She lifted brown eyes to her captain. “Congratulations, John.”

Grins spread all around the control room. “Sir?” The com tech turned from his station. “If we’re just hitting radio waves now, ninety light-years out, that ought to indicate they just invented radio ninety years ago. But we’re hitting radio, microwave, and television signals all at once.”

“Colony,” said Farragut. “Has to be.”

“With sublight technology, sir?” the tech asked, dubious.

That stopped Farragut short. Could not have heard aright. He gave a quick once over to all the monitors. “All this chatter is sublight?”

“Electromagnetic, all of it. No bouncing bubbles. No res—lucky for them. Nothing in any of the images to suggest they had FTL at the time these signals started. Look. There’s what I mean.”

He punched up on the monitor an image of an archaic spaceship belching fire in its landing, a small cluster of beings greeting the ship’s arrival.

“I guess,” Farragut said faintly, a concession. “No one traveled very far in one of those.”

“Then those people had to be seeded,” Steele pronounced harshly, arms crossed defensively over his broad chest.

“Oh, God, I hate people gardens!” Hamster blurted.

An officer tried to keep an open mind out here, but one could not love a species who grew other intelligent species as food crops. Gave their kind the ironically tender name of “shepherd.”

“All right,” Farragut acknowledged. Made to give the con back to his lieutenant. “Maintain speed. Record everything. Pipe all this to the xenos. See if they can sift the languages apart. TR, send a recon squadron ahead. Full speed, full stealth. Full stealth. I don’t even want those Swifts so much as talking to each other.”

“Mission objective?” Steele requested.

“I need to know if those beings are still on the planet.” Merrimack’s current information was ninety years old. A lot could change in ninety years. “And if they’re alive, what is their present level of technology. Watch for shepherds. Watch for Hive.”

“Watch for mines,” Hamster added.

“Damn the mines,” said Farragut.

A League of Earth Nations exploration vessel would have stopped to make a detailed collection of the signals encountered—catalog them, study them—before moving on an unknown life-form. And Merrimack, a U.S. Navy space battleship, would ordinarily have flown wide and left the unknown civilization alone. But the planet was located on the Hive highway; it was Merrimack ’s business now. If the world was dead, Farragut had to know. It would mean Merrimack was on the right path. If alive, then Farragut had to know why, how, when the Hive had passed so close by.

So the battleship pressed on, flying fast forward through ninety years of video/radio history of the planet, reeling the transmissions in for the computer to unwind, sort, and decompress for playback.

The xeno crew on board studied as fast as they could before the LEN could take over the project, as the LEN invariably did. Yet, not to keep the League of Earth Nations unaware, Merrimack’s crew dutifully assembled a courier missile to report the discovery. A quick call for mail, and the courier missile was on its way to the Fort Eisenhower Repeater.

Courier missiles, like torpedoes, could push through the distortion threshold and arrive at Fort Ike, with its Repeater and its Shotgun, many times faster than a manned vessel could.

Out here in unexplored space, on silent run, Merrimack was on her own, as isolated as a sailing vessel of old. She had no access to her res pulse that could have notified Earth at once. Resonance was instantaneous. It also was, apparently, the Hive’s dinner bell.

Hive seemed able to pick up any resonant pulse, no matter the harmonic. Resonant receivers of human design could not pick up a res pulse not coded to its exact harmonic. The Hive not only detected all resonant pulses, but it could home on them, and eat their source.

From the moment Earth discovered resonance and sent its first pulse—“Watson, come here. I need you!”—Hive swarms had turned toward Earth, and kept coming in multitudes.

The Hive’s invading swarms had to get past Palatine first. So the blockade was there, in Roman space. Roman and U.S. ships patrolled the same zone, holding off the ravenous spaceborne swarms.

John Farragut never fought a defensive war. His Merrimack , in a flanking maneuver, was now headed around the invasion front in search of the Hive’s home world, to take the battle back to its source.

As the battleship moved toward the F8 star, the recorded years folded in. And the crew waited for the sickening inevitability of pictures of the local insectoid life rising in plague swarms—the hideous, consistent, first sign of Hive approach.

The insectoid form, one of the most successful and universal of life-forms in the known galaxy, was apparently resonant-sensitive. Insectoids had an uncanny ability to perceive Hive presence. Insectoid panic was often the first warning humans had of Hive proximity.

But the signals from the F8 system persisted peacefully for an agonizingly long time. Farragut caught a xeno in tears, a sweet, pillowy, “mom-ish” woman with a bottle-red cloud of hair. Farragut asked her what she had found that made her cry.

“Nothing.” The xeno daubed tears from the bags under her eyes. “I’m falling in love with this culture. And they’re dead. They have to be. I don’t want to watch them die. Can’t we speed up, Captain? Just—just get it over with.”

The natives’ clothing changed, their cities spread, with no sign of FTL technology other than their sudden presence. It made no sense. There was no pattern.

“I have a patterner on board,” Farragut said. “Let’s take him for a test drive.” He hailed the ship’s MO, Mohsen “Mo” Shah, on the intercom from the control room. “Is my IO fit for duty?”

“He is being on duty,” said Dr. Shah. “Did he not report?”

Farragut turned to his XO, Calli Carmel. “Did he report to you?”

Calli’s beautiful brown eyes went quizzically blank for an instant, then shared a bemused stare with her captain, as if one of the ship’s engines were now giving itself orders. “No.”

Farragut answered absurdity with absurdity, “I wonder what he assigned himself to.”

Dr. Shah’s voice sounded again from the intercom. “Captain? May I be having a word with you?” Confidentially, Mo Shah’s tone added.

So Farragut strode aft to the medic’s compartment. Detecting the concern in the MO’s voice over the control room intercom, Colonel Steele came along as well.

Images of aliens lit up all of the medical officer’s screens—pictures of innards, things recognizable as lungs, hearts, guts. Dr. Shah followed the captain’s alarmed stare, hurried to interpret the images. “Oh. These are not being signs of slaughter. These are being medical communications. Physicians conferring with each other, I am believing.”

“Human?”

“Humanoid.” Mo clicked off the monitors. Mo was a placid man, a Riverite, with great brown puppy eyes and a calming voice. Mo Shah’s forehead extended halfway up his scalp. He folded his hands and faced his captain. “I am wanting to tell you about your Roman.”

Augustus had become John Farragut’s Roman ever since he had come aboard. No one else wanted him.

“He did not pass the drug scan,” Dr. Shah reported.

Farragut pursed his lips. Spoke at last: “What’s he doing?”

“The whole pharmacy,” Mo answered. “And the R&D lab.”

Captain Farragut took a guess, “Does this drug use have to do with his alterations?”

“I asked him that. He asked in return if I were deferring to Roman medical authority. I said no. So he told me to be making my own diagnosis.”

“He has a chip on his shoulder,” said Farragut.

Mo shrugged. “If you are wanting to call Gibraltar a chip, it is being a chip. I am thinking he wanted me to bust him.”

“Apparently you didn’t.”

“I considered it. I checked what we are knowing of Roman medicine—which is not being much. Palatine are being very tight-lipped about their patterners. They are not sharing that technology. So I checked Roman law, and there is being a specific exemption for patterners regarding use of controlled substances.”

“What kind of exemption?”

“Drug use is being entirely at a patterner’s own discretion. He may be carrying. He may be using. He may not be selling, and Augustus is not doing so. So I cleared him. But it is being your boat, Captain.”

Farragut could still throw Augustus in the brig. “Did he bring drugs aboard?”

The MO nodded. “Quantities consistent with personal use.”

“Is he coherent?”

“Much too coherent, I am thinking.”

Farragut nodded with a slight snort. At their first meeting, Augustus had communicated his thoughts and feelings with great clarity and brevity.

Mo continued, “Augustus’ medical jacket is only going back eight years. In fact, his whole jacket is only going back eight years, which could be when he was augmented. He has filaments in his muscle tissue. I am not knowing how the Roman doctors strung it.”

“What kind of filaments?”

“Some are being reinforcements, I am thinking. Others are being electrical connections for his plugging into patterner mode.”

“Patterner mode?” Farragut had assumed a patterner was a patterner; like John Farragut was a captain. It was not a mode that turned off and on.

Mo explained, “He must be making connections to his augmentations, plugging cables between parts of himself, to be enabling his functions as a patterner.”

Farragut gave his head a quick shake as if to shake the weird idea out. He was not sure he understood. Asked slowly, “So when Augustus is not ‘enabled,’ he’s like the rest of us?”

“No. In ways I am not at all sure of, he is not being like us. His gunsights—these,” Mo Shah lifted a hand to Colonel Steele’s gunsights, black bars implanted on either side of the colonel’s eyes. “Augustus is having these, too.”

Farragut made a motion like a shrug. “So Augustus’ sights are camouflaged better.”

“Augustus’ gunsights are being inside his eyes,” said Mo. “And he is being stronger.”

“How strong?” Colonel Steele crossed his arms. Even in defensive posture, for the size of his arms and breadth of his chest, TR Steele never looked anything but formidable.

“Stronger than any of us,” Mo Shah answered.

“How many of us?” Farragut asked, curious now.

“I am having no idea.”

“Just tell me, Mo,” Steele abandoned subtlety, since he was never good at it. “If I need to take the son of a bitch out, how many Marine guards do I need?”

“I would be suggesting a gun. He is still being human.”

“And he’s still on our side until further notice,” Farragut reminded Steele. “Unless he’s psychotic or suicidal. He isn’t. Is he, Mo?”

Dr. Shah gave a noncommittal shrug. “Bad temper is not necessarily being psychosis. But you cannot be altering a biological organism and not be having side effects. Period. Only God is knowing what got nicked in Augustus’ brain when they did whatever they did to make him a patterner.”

“Meaning what, exactly?”

“Meaning—” Mo considered a moment. “Be watching your ass, Captain Farragut.”

“Captain Farragut and Colonel Steele! Control room.” The XO’s voice projected an urgent sort of calm over the intercom. “The recon patrol is coming in.”

Farragut and Steele glanced to the chronometers to see what they already knew: The recon flight was early.

Steele breathed a vulgarity, met the captain’s eyes, about to apologize for his word choice, but Farragut said benignly, “Let’s go see how deep it is.”

Merrimack’s starboard hangar deck was a wide space, fully three decks high—the entire height of the starboard wing. Elevators brought the Swifts inboard from the flight deck. The Swifts’ distortion fields kept them from coating over with condensing ice.

The Swifts were scarcely inboard and clamped down when canopies popped and the recon team jumped down to the hangar deck, tucked helmets under their arms, at attention. Erks had standing orders to ignore Captain Farragut unless specifically called to attention, so they crawled over the returned fighter craft, industrious as ants. Hoses hissed. Recorders were pulled, air reloaded, flight times logged, systems checked.

“Echo Flight reporting, sir!” the young flight leader spoke in a shout. “The natives are still alive in the F8 system—and they have company, sir!”

“Hive?” Farragut guessed.

“Shepherds.” Steele’s guess.

“No, sir. No, sir.” The flight leader’s face jerked from captain to colonel. “We ran into more signals from two different sources. There are signals coming from the other two rider star systems.”

“What kind of signals?” Farragut asked.

“Same kinds, sir. Videos look like the same humanoids, and we have a computer match on the audio. An exact match on some of them.”

“Exact?” Farragut felt his brows contract in doubt. “You mean the same words?”

“No, sir. Identical audios. All three planets are rebroadcasting the exact same transmissions.”

Farragut believed the young man, but told him what he was struggling with: “Those three solar systems are ten, twenty, and forty-three light-years apart, and they’re sharing messages? You found FTL capability?”

“No, sir. Nothing other than the fact that they’re doing it. Somehow. Sir. We have no clue how those electromagnetic signals are getting planet to planet. We picked up no sign of ships in transit between the stars, and believe me, sir, we looked. They have spaceships, but every one we detected was flying inside one of the solar systems and clocking no better than seventy-nine percent c. We picked up no FTL-capable ships, and no FTL signals.”

“Obviously they do have FTL signals,” said Farragut.

“Yes, sir. But we can’t detect them.”

The captain did not argue with the report merely because it was impossible. “Any evidence of how these beings got to these three planets?”

“None, sir. Absolutely none.”

Farragut turned to a very young, very dark xeno who had come to the hangar deck in curiosity. “No evidence? No historical stories in those videos about the great journey to the globular cluster?”

The apprentice xenologist shook her head. “No, sir.”

“Not even in any of their children’s histories?”

“No, sir. Juvenile broadcasting doesn’t seem to be part of their culture. All the transmissions have—what looks to us to be—an official look. We can’t be sure, since we can’t understand a word. Well, we can understand a few words. Yes, no, and the like.”

All the resources at his command and John Farragut could not get an answer to a question as simple as how three planets separated by ten, twenty, and forty-three light-years were communicating. That was unacceptable.

Merrimack had everything. Provisioned like a small carrier, the space battleship had two compact automated fabrication plants—the technology for which had been lifted from Rome—that could repair the ship’s formidable armament. Above and beyond her strictly military defensive, offensive, communications, detection, propulsion, and navigational equipment, Merrimack housed in its small sick bay all the equipment of a major hospital. The Mack carried a hydroponics garden, raw grain in its two dry storage silos, and stores of meat and milk radiated, microbe-free, and vacuum-sealed. In the spirit of redundancy, the Mack also carried a small breeding group of pygmy cows, goats, quail, and ducks for fresh milk, meat, and eggs, just in case the food stores became contaminated or personnel become stranded on an alien planet in the Deep. The ship’s galley could be programmed to create anything the ship had ingredients for, from full meals to pretzels and popcorn. There were squash courts on board and a running track. The enormous virtual library was updated every time a launch cycled Fleet Marines in and out from their tours of duty. Merrimack had everything.

Merrimack had research labs for the ship’s many xenoscientists to analyze the unexpected.

The xenos weren’t working hard enough.

Farragut collected Echo Flight’s recording bubbles and made straight for the xenolinguist’s lab. Burst in, demanding, “Ham, I need a translation of the dominant language of the F8 planet and I need it now.”

Dr. Patrick Hamilton did not rise. He plucked a module from his console and tossed it to the captain in answer. “Here.” Then, regretting his flippancy, added quickly, “Sir.”

“What is this?” Farragut held the module up to the light. To all appearances it was a standard language module, lightweight, about an inch square, with a three-prong interface.

“From your Roman.”

“Augustus,” Farragut named him.

“That,” Ham confirmed in heavy distaste. “That thing is inhuman. Inhuman. That’s the word for it! Your Roman comes stalking in here like zombie cyborg from the stratosphere, wired and staring as if nobody’s home. Plugs into the main port. Dumps that out five hours later.” Patrick Hamilton jabbed his forefinger at the module in Farragut’s hand. “Five bleeding blinking bloody hours.” The linguist slumped back in his chair and covered his eyes. His hand was long-fingered and soft-skinned, an academic’s hand.

“And what is this?” said Farragut, turning the module over and over, as if he would see what was so remarkable about it.

“Myriadian. The language. Fifty-five thousand words of it with grammar and idioms.” Dr. Hamilton sounded about to cry.

Patrick Hamilton was from Mars. Not Mars the colony, Mars the place where odd people come from. A quirky man of science, Dr. Patrick Hamilton hadn’t the steel in him of his line-officer wife Glenn—Hamster—Hamilton.

Farragut did not know what Glenn saw in him. Patrick Hamilton was a reasonably attractive man, in a boyish way. Boyish in the sense of puerile. Perhaps because Glenn’s career allowed no time or place for a child, she had married one instead.

“Myriadian?” Farragut echoed. “Is that the major language on the planet in the F8 system?”

Patrick Hamilton, PhD, Chief Xenolinguist on board the Merrimack, lolled in his swivel chair, leg hooked over one armrest. “That is the only language on all three worlds.”

Farragut felt his brain knot. “How did you know there were three inhabited worlds?” The captain had only just learned it himself, and Patrick Hamilton had not been on the hangar deck to hear the recon flight’s discovery.

“Oh? Did you find the other two?” Patrick gave a most unhappy, useless laugh. “It’s in the words. There are three inhabited planets in the Myriad—that’s what the locals call this cluster—the Myriad. The planets are called Arra, Rea, and Centro. The three worlds are all one nation. They also talk about a planet called Origin, which is not in the Myriad. Origin is someplace far, far, far, far away.”

Of course there would have to be an Origin. Three planets with only one language among them could be nothing but colonies. So where was Origin? “Do they have a word for FTL?”

“Captain Farragut, everyone has a word for FTL from the moment they discover one hundred eighty-six thousand, two hundred ninety-one miles per second. Doesn’t mean they have FTL. It’s dangerous business trying to piece together a culture from its language. Language comes with a lot of antique baggage; tends to be full of anachronisms and fictions. Elves, emperors, perpetual motion. And a royal furball has nothing to do with royalty or fur. Your Roman says the Myriadians are not flying FTL.”

Patrick Hamilton grew more morose in his envy. The despair of the obsolete and inadequate. “Five frazzin’ hours.”

“And this works?” Farragut held up the language module.

“Plug that in, and all these recordings make sense. It’s—it’s elegant. I could not have made that with seventeen years and a bevy of graduate student slave labor. It’s like I’m sitting here with a bow and arrow and he comes along with a disrupter and a triangulated sight. Where’s the justice?”

Sad to see an educated man whine like that. Sadder still that a man with a strong, pretty, classy wife like Lieutenant Glenn Hamilton should be referring to his graduate students in terms of a bevy. Made the captain want to slap him. Said instead: “Don’t sit there crying in the dust, Ham. I need you.”

Captain Farragut brought many a man back to life with those three words: I need you.

And Farragut did need his xenos. Cluster IC9870986—the Myriad—was turning into one of those upsetting, wholly baffling discoveries like the Xi artifact—a slab of lead five billion years older than the universe itself—existing just to piss people off.

“Where is Augustus?”

“Oh, he turned white, unplugged, and left a few hours ago.”

The quartermaster had billeted Augustus with the spare torpedoes, partly in intentional slight, partly in consideration of Augustus’ height—torpedoes were seven feet long, just four inches better than Augustus—and partly to keep the Roman clear of the American officers, who wanted nothing to do with him.

Captain Farragut found his IO lying half in his pod, half out, looking none too well, nursing a headache with a hand over his eyes. The Roman did not look up at the captain’s entrance into torpedo rack room number six.

Farragut paused. “You look like you’re fighting to hold onto lunch.”

Augustus lifted a three-fingered shrug over his eyes. “Lost that battle.” He lowered his hand and demanded flatly, “What do you want?”

“I’ve been listening to the recordings with this.” Farragut held up the language module. “This is amazing.”

“You are easily amazed.”

“How did you do this?”

That made Augustus laugh. The laugh was neither happy nor kind. “Superior Roman technology. And we surrendered to this?”

Farragut either missed the insult or didn’t care. “The commander of my Marines wants to know how you found us when we never sent coordinates to Fort Ike.”

“When you started blowing up things at the cluster’s perimeter, you were visible for parcs on the low band. You looked like a puffer fish.”

Gravitational murmurs were instant but of limited detectable range, becoming quickly tenuous at an inverse square ratio to distance.

“Puffer fish do it out of fear,” Augustus added.

“I wasn’t afraid. I’m trigger happy.”

“I hear that about you. Are the Myriadians still alive?”

“Yes!” Farragut said happily.

“I was afraid of that.”

Not a sentimental sort, this Roman. And life was not what either of them had come looking for. Where there’s life, there is no Hive—unless the Hive was eating the life. Merrimack was hunting the Hive.

“You lost the gorgon trail,” said Augustus.

“Looks like it.” Farragut returned to the language module, eager as a child on Christmas day to try out his new toy. “If I wanted to say ‘we mean you no harm,’ how would I?”

Augustus stirred his long limbs. “You want to talk?”

Language modules at this stage of alien contact were normally used for listening.

“What would you like to say to the Myriadians? ‘Why aren’t you lunch?’ ”

Farragut ignored him. “I’m pulling up a dozen words for we and two dozen for you. I don’t know which to use.”

Augustus gave a wry smile of disbelief and amusement. “Do you just dive into a pool when you can’t see the bottom, John Farragut?”

“These people talk over distances of light-years without resonance or FTL. I need that technology. Imagine talking over astronomical distances without the Hive picking it up. And I need it before the LEN kicks us off the site.”

Augustus conceded the point, sat up, and became abruptly helpful. “Myriadian yous and wes are very specific. Your choices immediately establish what you are in relation to your addressee.”

“If I say Ila kendi ru nacon di, will they at least know I’m friendly?”

“The moment you say that, they’ll know you’re an idiot. Ila is juvenile feminine. And your choice of yous—intended, no doubt, to be friendly—is insultingly familiar. The road to war is paved with good intentions. And you forgot the significator.”

“The what?”

“That initial click you hear at the beginning of every Myridian phrase. The pitch signals whether the mood is indicative, interrogative, or imperative.”

“Ham says you knew there were three inhabited planets in the cluster before the recon flight knew there were three inhabited planets.”

“When you understand what they’re saying, it becomes obvious.”

“So are there any clues in the words as to how these people are traveling between planets?”

“Only implication by omission,” said Augustus. “The words suggest that the Myriad is an autocracy, which suggests that things of strategic importance will not be broadcast. Knowledge is power. Power is tightly held in an autocracy. The really good stuff is not floating about for just anyone to pick out of empty space. There is a lot not said about interplanetary travel—except that the Myriadians travel between planets regularly. By spaceship.”

“Not the spaceships I’ve been seeing.” Echo Flight’s recordings showed only very primitive vessels.

“The very ones,” Augustus assured him.

“We’re missing something.”

“That’s obvious.”

“How are they sending messages between worlds?”

“Courier ship.”

Farragut made a sound of impatience. “Back to those ships again! Isn’t there any mention of some—I don’t know—extra step that gets the ships from one place to another. Displacement? Boost gate?”

“Of course there must be. But it’s phrased in dubious and alien terms.”

“What terms?”

“I don’t know. You’re the one with the language module. You find it.”

“But you made this,” Farragut gave the language module a shake. “I can’t sift through years of broadcasts. You have to know.”

“I forget.” Augustus lay back down, coiled his long figure, one arm cradling his abdomen, turned his back on his captain, and closed his eyes, leaving Farragut standing in the compartment, as good as alone. Augustus had either gone to sleep or passed out. Outlets for cable connections showed in the base of his skull.

Captain Farragut ordered to his comatose back, so he would not have to bring him up on charges, “Stand down.”

Merrimack had on board a distinguished civilian of immense knowledge and experience, Don Jose Maria Cordillera, a quietly magnetic presence on the space battleship. He was revered, even loved, by the company and crew for his humanity and for his personal mission, which he shared with the Mack: the complete destruction of the Hive.

He rose courteously from his desk as the captain entered his small quarters. A holographic projection had erased the close walls and opened the compartment to vistas of horses running across green-gold pastures, purple mountains on the hazy horizon, and swallows cavorting in the deep blue sky. Chlorophyll scents and a warm zephyr came from unseen vents. Potted plants, real ones, blended the illusion into the reality of Jose Maria’s small living space.

“To what do I owe the honor, young Captain?”

Farragut handed Augustus’ language module to Jose Maria Cordillera. “Can a man, even a Roman patterner, really have decoded an entire alien language in five hours? Or has Rome already been here and Augustus just brought this aboard with him?”

“Augustus can and did create this,” said Jose Maria. Unrejuvenated, he still looked much younger than his fifty-seven years, even with the silver streaks in his long black hair. “I watched him do it. We had to excise parts of this module, actually. Sometimes his mind would digress into interesting patterns until he forced himself back to the translation project.”

“That kind of ability—” Farragut started, searched for the right word. “It’s inhuman.”

“Yes,” said Jose Maria. “It is. What must have been done to Augustus to make him so is also inhuman.” He handed back the module gravely. “I was just reviewing some of his observations now. I have many questions for him.”

“He’s asleep.”

“I shall not try to wake him.”

Farragut doubted he could. Apparently, Augustus slept like a corpse.

A second recon patrol approached within two light-days of the F8 planet, Arra, and immediately spun around and came hying back to Merrimack as if in flames. “They know we’re here!”

“How can they?” Farragut asked.

“You were seen,” Steele accused his Marines.

“Not us, sir. You were. They’ve seen Merrimack.”

And the recon flight played back a news broadcast from the planet Arra:

“Alpha Flight, what is your situation?”

“Up screwed! Man down! Man down!”

“That’s Colonel Steele and Flight Sergeant Blue.” Farragut recognized the voices. “Where did this recording come from?”

“From the planet,” said the flight leader of the second recon patrol. “Arra. Every channel, every station, every city. They’re playing it over and over like a national disaster. And they’ve got video.”

On the playback, Merrimack appeared as a silhouette of menace, backed by the cluster’s glow. Her shape vaguely approximated an antique spearhead, from the long angular shaft that was her central fuselage, to her flight decks delta-swept back on either side, and her top and bottom sails, also back swept to aid deflection. She made a majestic, cruel profile, half seen in the dark.

Then the Swifts—angry little hornets—bulleted from her wings to score the surrounding space with red tracers. Mines detonated with fiery sprays on all sides. And Merrimack herself opened up and heaved out a broadside. Vapor briefly shrouded her, hissing from her gunports. The halo of it caught the light of her guns, and the battleship seemed to be on fire. Her volleys, like lightning flashes, gave evanescent glimpses of her true dimension. Turrets swiveled like malevolent eyes.

“The natives have seen this?” Farragut asked, aghast. “They’ve gotta be scared to death.”

“They are.”

“This is scaring me, and it’s my Merrimack!”

The transmission went abruptly black. “And right here must be when we took out the space buoy. Camera was in the buoy. The angle fits.”

“So these pictures were taken way back there at the Rim. How did this signal cross the one hundred and ten light-years from the buoy to the F8 system?”

“That’s a hell of a question, sir. Given that even two light-days from Arra, the best they’re sending out is laser and electromag. We don’t have a living clue how they received this.”

Farragut turned to his XO. “Commander Carmel.”

“Captain.”

“Time to step it up. Get me to the planet—Planet name, somebody.” He snapped his fingers.

“Arra,” someone provided.

“Get me to Arra, now.”

“Silent, sir?” Calli asked.

“Lordy, no. Light us up like the Jupiter Monument.”

Swinging into orbit around the white-veiled, tourmaline world Arra, Merrimack was greeted with a salvo of missiles from the planet’s surface.

The XO, Calli Carmel, issued orders for evasion.

Arran fighter spacecraft were scrambling aloft with ridiculous slowness.

Farragut arrived in the control room. “What are they bringing to bear?”

“Sublight missiles, sir. Unknown loads.”

“Speed?”

Calli’s mouth pulled wryly toward one cheek. “Oh, hell, John, I want to get out and help them push.”

“Maybe I should spot them twelve runs and give them a pitcher,” said Farragut. But not to fall victim to overconfidence, he checked, “Tac, do we have anyone sneaking up on us?”

“Negative,” the tac specialist responded. “The only traffic from the planet is moving sublight and that’s all running away.”

“What about the fighters?”

“Arran fighter craft haven’t even cleared the planetary atmosphere.”

“How long till they clear?

“Not for three minutes yet.”

“Three—! I could die and be reincarnated twice in three minutes. Current disposition of the missiles?”

“Distance from Merrimack two hundred klicks. Velocity nine kps,” tac responded, then quickly updated, “Distance two hundred and ten klicks.” Merrimack was moving faster than the missiles.

“All right. Turn the missiles around.”

“Sir?” his XO questioned.

“Flip ’em, Cal. Return to sender.”

Before Calli could express horror, the captain added, “But detonate the warheads before they reenter atmosphere.”

Calli dropped her voice, but the control room was not built for privacy. “That’s not easy to do, Captain.”

“I didn’t ask if it was easy.”

Commander Carmel still hesitated. “The captain is aware we could just keep walkin’ away from these missiles.”

“I am so aware. The order, XO.”

“I don’t want to miss one. If I fail to detonate one, I send a nuke into the Arran atmosphere.”

“Then hit ’em before they reach atmosphere. We have enough guns.”

“Requires precision shooting. We will be shooting toward the planet. If I miss—”

“Don’t miss.”

“Aye, sir.” And from there, Calli issued orders in frosty efficiency to targeting and fire control, her voice sharp with obedient anger.

A reverse tractor pulse gently nudged the missiles about, sending them arcing back down for reentry. Targeting tracked them. Fire control stood by for detonation.

While anyone monitoring the situation from the planet had a view of the business end of their own weapons.

Captain Farragut let the Arrans suffer a minute of blind terror—watching their own monstrous weapons fall back toward their atmosphere—then issued the order for the passover.

“Calli. Be precise.”

“Targeting, do we have a lock?”

“Lock achieved, aye.”

“Fire control. Detonate Arran warheads.”

“Detonating Arran warheads, aye.”

Nuclear fire high above the atmosphere would be visible from the ground.

“Missiles secured,” Calli reported without expression.

The tactical specialist reported the Arran fighter craft turning around and heading back toward base.

“Mr. Carmel, your ship,” Farragut gave way to Calli. “I’m fixin’ to go ashore. All departments, let me know everything I need to know. And somebody, figure out how to say: ‘Take me to your leader.’ ”

Colonel Steele followed the captain from the control room. He had to hurry; John Farragut moved fast. Steele, commander of the ship’s two Marine companies, offered privately, “I think we’re looking too far away for these aliens’ mother world.”

Farragut stopped, turning in the narrow passageway. “Your patrols found something, TR? You know where Origin is?”

But Steele suggested flatly, “Ask the guy who speaks their language.”

“You mean Augustus?”

“He cracked an alien language in five hours?” Steele asked in heavy suspicion. “Sure he did. These colonies are Roman plants, just like him.”

“Wishful thinking, TR?”

So startled, Steele could say nothing more eloquent than, “Huh?”

“You want to shoot him,” Farragut said.

A protest rose, died. Steele confessed, “I do.”

Farragut smiled, clapped the lieutenant colonel on his broad shoulder. “ ’s okay, TR. I talked to Jose Maria. He says the translation feat is well within a Roman patterner’s range. He also agrees that those boys downstairs are from way out of town. This is not a Roman plant.”

Not well educated for his rank, Steele still did not swallow everything the multidegreed civilian experts on board pronounced as truth, trusting instead to his own instincts. But Nobel Laureate Jose Maria Cordillera was not an ordinary xeno. Known on board, reverently, as Don Cordillera, the Terra Rican aristocrat was a sophisticated, gentlemanly, Renaissance man. Don Cordillera knew everything. Smartest man God ever invented. Even TR Steele would not doubt Don Cordillera.

But Steele also knew that nothing good could come from a Roman.

The captain was an idiot.

That stupid, bright smile brightened the hatchway to Augustus’ billet among the torpedoes. “Come down to the planet with me?” Farragut invited.

Augustus hesitated. “In person or VR?”

“In the flesh.”

Augustus rolled his eyes, as if speaking to Heaven. “Why did I even have to ask? And me a patterner.”

“You’re not a patterner when you’re not plugged in,” said Farragut. “I found out you really did forget most of the Myriadian language right after you worked the translation. You wanted me to think you were just being stubborn. But you operate a lot like a computer. Once you unplug, most of the random access memory falls right out of your head.” He waited for comment, idiotically proud of his discovery.

Augustus offered nothing in return. He had not been asked a question, and did not feel like being chatty with idiots.

Augustus’ enigmatic stare could not deflate that bright-eyed buoyancy. The captain retained that doggy look—eager and full of infinite, idiotic goodwill, unasked for and unwanted.

Augustus noticed that Farragut had put no surveillance on him. No watchers. Augustus had scoured his own tracks for shadows, but the incredible truth was that there were none. Trusting to a fault, Farragut took in his enemy and turned around so fast it left nowhere to stab him but in the back.

And backstabbing was beneath Augustus. He wanted Farragut to get it looking him straight in the eyes.

Augustus supposed he was meant to appreciate this grand display of trust, and to resolve not to let his captain down. But Augustus disliked personality cults, and John Farragut led by force of personality. In a culture as deconstructed as that of the U.S., without a Roman sense of duty, their people were lost. Like ducklings, they imprinted on the first strong influence they met. And here they were, all of them quacking after confident, dynamic John Farragut.

“What did you think of my introduction to the Arrans?”

“You mean your stupid, grandstanding stunt with the Arran missiles?”

That only paused him for a moment. Farragut hadn’t thought the stunt stupid. “I thought it would communicate our overwhelming superior force without launching our own weapons against them. I showed them we could destroy them, but that was not why we came. It worked. Monitors say the Arrans are coming out of their shelters to point at the light when we orbit over.”

“They might just as easily have concluded that we like toying with our prey before we eat it. You assume the universe thinks like John Farragut, and I know for a fact that it doesn’t. You are bold, forthright, cheerful—qualities you count on to bluff and charm your way through strange waters—but those qualities are not universally admired, I assure you. A stranger is as likely to see you as loud, undignified, vulgar, ignorant, inappropriately childish, and neglectful of my customs.”

“Your customs? Was that a Freudian slip?”

“No slip. Quite on purpose.”

“Did I do something to offend Rome?”

“Do? You did not do. You are. Your people obey you because they respect—not to mention adore—you.”

“And you have a problem with that?”

“Romans lead by force of law. It doesn’t matter if a Roman loathes his CO. He follows him to hell anyway. A Roman XO does not suggest a better way to deal with the incoming missiles when issued an order.”

Augustus had been monitoring the control room during the encounter.

“Calli asked for clarification,” Farragut excused his XO’s balk.

“Callista Carmel was schooled on Palatine. Mr. Carmel knows that under a Roman captain, she would be in the brig right now. But she also knows she can get away with that yellow snow under John Farragut.”

“You think Calli’s question was a thinly veiled challenge to my authority?”

“Thinly veiled? It was damn near naked.”

“Had more clothes on than your challenges, Augustus.”

“And yet I am not in the brig. Why?”

“Because you want so badly to be there. Well, I’m sorry but it’s going to take something very un-Roman and dishonorable like direct violation of orders for you to get there.”

Augustus fell silent as a stone. Stared. Had not expected that kind of insight from this man. Was surprised to be surprised.

Very well. The captain was a shrewd idiot.

Farragut’s smile returned. “So why are you so jolly eager to get into my brig, Augustus?”

“Frankly?”

“I’m pretty sure you can’t do anything else. Yes, frankly.”

“I believe Earth and Palatine to be natural enemies. Which is to say the U.S. and Palatine are natural enemies, given that the United States is the only military power worth mentioning on Earth. I am sworn to give my life to Rome. And Rome has seen fit to put its neck under the U.S. heel for the duration of the Hive threat. So here I am. I serve. I don’t like it. I don’t pretend to. I don’t question a direct order in your own command center.”

“And that grudge is not getting heavy, Augustus?”

“Can you shut off a hundred and fifty years of hostility as quickly as turning out a light?” Augustus countered.

“Oh, much faster than that,” John said brightly.

Palatine was founded in the late twenty-third century by a private consortium on a planet two hundred light-years away from Earth in the constellation of the Southern Crown under a U.S. flag.

Once Palatine’s infrastructure was in place, its land partially terraformed, the planet self-sufficient, and the government subsidy exhausted, the model colony declared its independence. Palatine, which also called itself Rome, summoned all true Romans from Earth.

And they answered. By the millions. Doctors, lawyers, judges, legislators, philosophers, historians, Catholic clergy, all manner of highly educated people for whom most Earth dwellers assumed the knowledge of Latin was merely a professional necessity or historical interest. Millions left Earth, forswore citizenship in their various nations and pledged allegiance to Eternal Rome.

The Roman Empire had never fallen. It had lived on in secret societies for more than two millennia. The very idea had been a laughable conspiracy theory for those two millennia. Until the Romans of Palatine erected their eagles over the capital of their dictatorial republic and the Senate installed a Caesar for life.

The United States, which had to date never tried to keep a colony by force, declared war on Palatine. The two worlds had remained at war, on and off, for the last one hundred fifty years.

Even during hostilities, Rome/Palatine spread its territory, founding other planetary colonies in its own name. Palatine was not signatory to the League of Earth Nations Convention and did not restrict its colonization only to those planets without sapient natives. Alien civilizations were absorbed into the empire, some even willingly, attracted by Roman order, might, and technology.

Palatine excelled in mechanization and automation, thanks largely to a genius of his age, one Constantine Siculus, whose innovations were so devastating to the balance of power, that the U.S. Central Intelligence considered kidnapping him. Rome killed him first, after he set himself up as King Constantine of one of Palatine’s own colonies. Rome cloned him, of course, but Constantine’s clones hadn’t his inventive genius. The cloners neglected to consider the impact personal experience had on the formation of the human brain; and the clones were simply not the same person.

Still Palatine grew from renegade colony into a rival, then a menace. Roman Legions, both human and robotic, swept across the galactic south of Near space and headed across the Orion Starbridge toward the galaxy’s Sagittarian arm, a territory called the Deep. When Rome claimed the whole of the Sagittarian constellation as a Roman province, to the farthest end of the galaxy, no one could dispute them, even though no human had ever been to the far side of the Milky Way, much less to its far Rim. Just traversing the two thousand parsecs to the Deep took the fastest ship three months.

Then, in AD 2389, the U.S. stunned all the nations of Earth and all the known worlds with the unveiling of a colossal displacement conduit, the Fort Roosevelt/Fort Eisenhower Shotgun. Displacement was known technology; the Shotgun was just bigger. Instead of displacing people and goods from orbiting ships to planet surfaces, the Shotgun displaced whole carriers—U.S. battle carriers—instantaneously from Fort Roosevelt in Near space to Fort Eisenhower in the Deep, deeper than the Romans had ever gone.

And planted American flags in Sagittarius.

Human territory still only comprised a fraction of the galaxy. The unknown was far greater.

In early 2436, Romans ran into something horrible. They did not know it at first. At first they knew only that they had lost a ship, the Sulla, in the Deep.

Searcher after searcher disappeared. Even when Rome found the monsters behind the path of destruction, the Empire kept silent. Deep end colonies were eaten alive. Hive impulses caused a million Roman killer bots to self-destruct, and Rome maintained its swaggering mask of invincibility.

It was not until Captain John Farragut and the space battleship Merrimack met a Hive swarm and lived to tell about it that Rome sued for peace and asked for help.

The U.S.S. Merrimack was the only ship ever to survive a Hive swarm once engaged.

The U.S. agreed to assist, but only on the condition that Rome put its military command under U.S. control. It was a measure of the disaster that Caesar Magnus agreed.

So, in 2443, Rome and the U.S. became locked in an unhappy, unholy alliance, united only in their quest to exterminate the monsters at the edge of the map.

And John Farragut and Augustus became the least likely pair of officers ever to serve aboard the same space battleship.

“During the hostilities I was ordered to suicide before letting myself fall into Earth hands,” said Augustus. “Now here I am ordered to serve a U.S. commander. Not just a U.S. commander, but John Alexander Farragut.” The words said John Alexander Farragut, but the tone clearly said John the flaming idiot Farragut.

John Farragut had dealt Rome one of its few defeats in a battle for ownership of a planet.

“You’re ready to fall on your sword?” Farragut asked lightly. “Take cyanide?”

“That’s a big joke to you, isn’t it?” Augustus pulled the cap off a back tooth, produced a tiny vial. “There’s your joke.” He replaced the vial and the cap.

Farragut’s brows twisted, one perplexedly higher than the other. “Ever hear the line, ‘No son of a bitch ever won a war by dying for his country?’ ”

Augustus replied in irony, “Of course. That’s why there are monuments to the dead at Thermopylae, Masada, the Alamo, and Corindahlor.”

“You don’t suppose the Romans at Corindahlor Bridge would rather have lived?”

Augustus bridled in personal ownership. “Don’t ever presume you know what was in the minds of the Romans at Corindahlor.”

Corindahlor was before Farragut’s time. “And you do?”

“No. Honestly, I don’t.” Augustus sat back, murmured to himself, “What could they have been thinking?”

“You would rather commit suicide than take orders from me? I’d have thought orders to live and serve rather than die and serve would be a relief.”

“Shows your own self-serving priorities. I was assigned to you because John Farragut is where the Hive is. In wide-open space, it’s John Farragut who gets into the furballs. How do you do that?”

Farragut laughed. “I have no idea!”

“I believe that,” Augustus said dryly. The man was clueless. “They gave me to you the sooner to eliminate the Hive. Doesn’t make us lovers.”

“Doesn’t it even make us friends? Civil acquaintances?”

“Earth is next in line if the Hive eats its way past Palatine, so I don’t overestimate Earth’s compassion. And you would be well advised not to overestimate Rome’s gratitude.”

3

MARINES SNAPPED TO ATTENTION at Colonel Steele’s barking entrance into the fighter craft maintenance bay, which doubled as the Marines’ parade deck. “Hallahan!”

“Sir!”

“Jaxon!”

“Sir!”

“Li!”

“Yo! Sir!”

“Blue!”

Kerry Blue straightened, tried to look keen, shocked to be called. “Sir!”

Steele’s pale blue eyes narrowed at her. “You all here, Blue?”

“Yes, sir!” Kerry shouted, spirits rising. She was done crying over that lying, cheating, gorgeous bastard Cowboy. A tear stole down Kerry’s face. She dashed it away. Well, almost done.

The colonel ignored it. Turned away, barking more names.

Nothing like a mission—a big one—to drag you out of yourself. Colonel Steele was taking Kerry Blue down with the captain to meet the aliens. Kerry refrained from gushing thanks.

The names ended. Kerry was peripherally aware of Reg standing at attention next to her, shoulders slightly slumping, not called. Steele was giving orders for the chosen ones to collect weapons from the armory and to kit up in dress whites and dog collars. Steele exited as briskly as he’d come.

He had not ordered exo equipment—Arra had a nitrox atmosphere, hot, heavy, but breathable at sea level—not even sunglasses. It would not be hideously bright down there, even in the starry cluster; it would be nighttime where the Archon’s palace stood when the ship’s party went down. They were calling the leader of the three-world nation an “Archon.”

This was not just a prime mission, a first contact, but Kerry was getting out of the can and breathing real air. And she was not one of those poor sods who were sent on recon to the other two inhabited systems. She could not believe her luck.

At Kerry’s side, Reg hissed, “Hell, Blue! Who’d you go to bed with to pull this duty?”

Kerry could more easily name soldiers she hadn’t slept with, but fraternization with officers never got anyone anywhere but back to Earth with a dishonorable discharge. “Hell if I know. Steele musta drank something that killed the brain cell that knew who I was—and don’t you remind him.”

“Do you think if I trash Cowboy’s pod I can go on a first contact sortie? What’d you lay on Steele anyway?”

“Nothing!” She couldn’t even imagine that. “That man has never liked me. He thinks I’m a fu.”

Carly ganged in from Kerry’s other side: “Yeah, that’s why you’re going planetside. I think he’s hot for you, chica linda.”

“He’s got a hard-on for me, that’s for sure,” Kerry muttered.

“Wish I were on his shit list,” Reg sulked.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Kerry conceded anything they wanted to throw at her. “Just tell me how to get beer stains out of dress whites.”

A snicker sounded behind them—that big baboon, Dak Shepard. “Right. Blue’s gonna try ’n’ tell us those are beer stains. Uh-huh.”

“Shut up, Dak.”

Wrinkled dress whites flashed down the ladder rails between decks, a crushed cap clenched between teeth. Captain Farragut blinked at the fleeting apparition, trying to identify the glimpse. Guessed: “Kerry Blue?”

“I didn’t give her the name, Captain,” said Steele, as if it were the name itself that provoked the captain’s skepticism.

“Cowboy’s Kerry Blue?”

“She does not belong to Cowboy,” Steele said.

Farragut knew who Kerry Blue was. “Your reports on her don’t exactly glow, TR. Why is she coming ashore? She’s not honor guard material.”

“She doesn’t get nitrogen narcosis.” Rapture of the deep, divers called it. Nitrogen at pressure could disorient the susceptible. “When the fur flies, there’s no she-dog I’d rather have at my back. I know she’ll be there. She don’t cross t’s, and she don’t pass inspection. But no combat-ready unit ever passed inspection.”

“You expecting combat?”

“Ready for it.”

Farragut nodded. “Make her pass inspection.”

“Yes, sir.” Steele took the captain’s dismissal.

Didn’t know what he was thinking when he chose Kerry Blue.

Kerry Blue. The tough/pretty girl Marine with the stupid name who had the starring role in all his wet dreams. Likable girl, good looking in a rough and ready sort of way. Better looking since she ran out of eye makeup. Girl-next-door pretty. The next car door. TR Steele had grown up in a trailer park. There was always a Kerry in the back seat of the next car.

Trailer park. An idyllic name for a slum where the landless lived in their mobile shelters stacked three high in the unpretty part of town with hard men, slutty women, and mongrel dogs. And when someone else needed the land, you hitched your gypsy home behind your current mode of transportation, be it pony, ox, automobile, or grid transit car, and moved to another park.

Kerry Blue was trailer trash, indestructible, rangy, loose-jointed. Breasts enough that you knew there was a woman under the uniform, small enough for you to know they weren’t bought. Wide shoulders, little waist, superb ass. A lot of motion in her walk. Kerry Blue wore her brown hair pulled back rather than buzz it off. It probably brushed the tops of her shoulders when she let it down.

TR Steele spent too much time thinking about what Flight Sergeant Kerry Blue would look like with her hair down.

She was a great little dog soldier, but unfortunately there was no way in any conscience he could ever recommend her for a commission. So he could just forget about ever seeing Kerry Blue with her hair down.

“You’re not a lubber, are you?”

Augustus looked up from his headache. His glower through pain-squinted eyelids answered no.

“We have therapy for space sickness,” Farragut offered. And with his saying so, the deck gave a burp, setting them on an eight-degree list. John Farragut put a foot to the bulkhead to stay himself until the deck settled.

A battleship did not rest quiet on the vacuum sea. It heaved and bulged and adjusted within its distortion field. Merrimack was not a passenger liner. Fine-tuning was not worth the expense and maintenance of achieving it on a military vessel. The distortions—which allowed for shipboard gravity, for FTL travel, and for hard turns without fatal load shifts and crushing inertial drag—were tuned within working tolerances only. A semblance of Earthlike gravity was needed for the crew to maintain bone mass on long voyages; but it didn’t have to be pretty.

You could not even say Merrimack rocked. Sway, she might, but having done so, she felt no compulsion to fall back and cant the other way. She swayed and she kept going, drew up short against a damper and left one with an unsettled wanting to tip back upright. Space legs needed acquiring. New hands spent much time in the head.

Augustus roused himself up on one elbow. “I am not space sick. I have a lot on my mind.”

Farragut glanced about the torpedo storage bay, the bunk netting strung kitty-corner. “I’ll get you better quarters.”

“Don’t put yourself out.”

“I wasn’t going to put myself out. I was going to put the quartermaster out.”

Augustus let the issue pass with an indolent wave of his hand.

“I have an audience with the Archon of the Myriad,” said Farragut. “Coming down with us? You feel well enough?”

Augustus slowly uncoiled, rose. “The two questions are unrelated. The answers are yes to the first; the second is irrelevant.”

At the appointed time, John Farragut, captain of the Merrimack; Jose Maria Cordillera, civilian biologist and Nobel Laureate; Lieutenant Colonel TR Steele, commander of the Marine companies; Colonel Augustus, the Intelligence Officer; several of the xenos; and the Marine guard assembled in the ship’s displacement bay, each person posted on a transmitter disk, each with a dog collar snapped round his neck. Without the transmitters, receivers, and collars, the margin of error in displacement was far, far too risky for human transport.

The receivers—landing disks—preceded them down. The LDs arrived like an artillery barrage, banging into thick air and clattering and spinning down to rest on the palace’s gem-encrusted floor. One disk missed low; embedded itself like a bomb with a resounding crack and spray of semiprecious stones. Augustus wondered if anyone had told the Arrans what to expect.

Captain Farragut yawned, popped his ears, as the displacement chamber gradually pressurized to five Earth atmospheres, to prevent the abrupt transition to Arran sea level from hammering the party’s sinuses in.

Augustus, standing with the Marines, muttered aside to Lieutenant Colonel Steele: “It’s a pity your uniforms are so utilitarian. The Archon himself is dressed fairly sedately, but his guard has all the ceremonial gold-trimmed gewgaws that dictators like. Can’t your Marines loop some curtain cords round their armpits and wear big furry hats and hang gold mops on their epaulets? At least put on your medals, Steele. Don’t you have enough ribbons to fill up your chest yet?”

Steele flushed. Kept his icy blue eyes fixed straight ahead. Hissed, “You are so full of it.”

“You make it too easy.”

The Merrimack vanished around them.

At the hour of the Archon’s command, just after sun-down, the beings from outer space thunderclapped into existence on the black disks in the Archon’s audience hall.

Heat enfolded Captain Farragut, air so thick you wore it. His first breath was fragrant, lush, heavy with sea air and living scents.

The landing disks, besides ensuring an intact displacement, bristled with sensors, so John Farragut already knew what would meet his eyes. He was not prepared for the vivid immediacy of it, the astonishing beauty. He could only afford a moment to take it in, the touch of breezes, hot and humid, on his skin; the sound of sea waves rushing softly from somewhere.

Lofty skylights let the starlight in. Wide arches opened to a terrace overlooking an expansive reflecting pool upon which the stars scintillated huge as moons in a deep blue heaven. The moons themselves shone like pale numinous wafers occulting the radiant stars.

Farragut marshaled his attention to the humanoids in the lyrically grand chamber.

Male guards, decked in uncomfortable, showy regalia, regarded him warily with dark, almond eyes.

Tall, deer-eyed, sylphlike women, with flowing manes and elfin faces, clustered along one wall, exchanging glances and private signals, their willowy forms draped to the floor in pastel gauze.

The Archon. The only one who did not gasp or shrink back as the visitors flashed and crackled into existence. Even on an alien face, the Archon’s look of satisfaction was unmistakable. His black eyes gleamed. A contained air of power. In charge and accustomed to it.

The Archon was short. Stately as a handsome animal. He wore a shirt of loose, crisp white linenlike weave, with wide boxy sleeves, and a v-slash down the back to accommodate his neat short mane. His loose black trousers would look quite in place in an Aikido practice.

Behind him towered a monumental inscription—what looked to be an inscription—carved in rose granite over a massive throne, but no translation came to mind as Captain Farragut tried to read it, and he feared his language module had failed him. This first encounter could be very sticky without an accurate translator.

The Archon took a quick survey of the aliens, seemed to be deciding which to address. He dismissed the rank of Marines out of hand. Regarded the scientists briefly, discarded them, too. Did not even glance at Augustus. Quickly narrowed his choices down to Jose Maria Cordillera and Captain Farragut.

The various colors may have confused him. The xeno, Dr. Ling was golden amber; Flight Sergeant Blue was brown; Flight Sergeant Jaxon blacker than the Arran night standing at attention next to Colonel TR Steele, who was as white as humans came.

We look like a litter of Labrador Retrievers, thought Captain Farragut amid the monochromatic Arrans. Farragut wanted to prompt the Archon, but had been advised to let the Archon speak first. And he got the impression that the Archon did not want to be helped. Black eyes flicked between Farragut and Cordillera, searching for signs of leadership.

Dr. Jose Maria Cordillera’s coloring was closest to the Arran red-brown; his bearing that of a diplomat. A striking man in any setting. Slender, cat-muscled. Jose Maria Cordillera made a dignified, aristocratic presence. His long dark hair, cinched with a silver clasp, flowed down his back like a Myriadian’s mane. The Archon wanted it to be Dr. Cordillera.

But he turned to the captain and recited in conclusion, “John Farragut, captain of the U.S.S. Merrimack.”

With a blinding smile, Farragut greeted him in turn: “Archon Donner.”

The Archon returned a very human smile, then corrected his visitor, “Archon. Or Donner. Together is insistent or redundant.”

“Captain Farragut,” Farragut also corrected. “The rest is too long.”

The Archon breathed a light gasp, delighted. “You understood me! You speak my language!” Reciting names was one thing. This alien had just spoken an entire Myriadian sentence.

“Not well,” Farragut warned.

The Archon took two goblets from a waiting server and offered one to Captain Farragut.

Customs varied as widely as the stars, but one stood nearly universal among humanoids as a symbol of unity, trust, and friendship—the sharing of food and drink. It sealed most friendships and just about all unions that could be called marriages.

Hesitation would not wear. There was no doubting the offering’s safety, and safety was not the concern. Protocol was. Farragut asked, “Does one just drink, or are there words to be said?” He did not want to slug back the drink if there was a proper ritual to be observed.

The Archon instructed, “If you choose to accept, you drink first.”

Augustus, his voice a low murmur across the room, like the waves’ rush, footnoted in English, (“The implication being: if you choose not to drink, you are enemies.”)

Farragut lifted his glass in a toast, Earth fashion. “To your health.” And drank.

In deathly silence, the Arrans glared at him. The Archon’s smile vanished.

The cold, sparkling drink went down tastelessly. Something wrong here.

Augustus again, in English: (“The crashing you don’t hear is the sound of a giant brick dropping.”)

(“What did I do?”) John hissed.

(“You ‘you’d’ the Archon as an equal.”)

(“I meant to.”)

(“He doesn’t like it.”)

Farragut lifted his brows in a kind of shrug.

The Archon declared coldly, “I am not accustomed to being talked to so!” Then, suddenly amicable again, declared, “From you, I shall take it.”

Donner had changed his own choice of you. He upgraded Farragut to an equal. The Archon’s glass lifted in imitation. “To your health.” Donner drank, and the room exhaled.

The empty glasses went away so unobtrusively John Farragut did not notice them going. The Archon’s servants were well practiced at being unnoticeable.

Donner introduced no one and asked no names of Captain Farragut’s delegation. There was only Donner and Captain Farragut. Everyone else in the room was furniture.

Ill-mannered furniture. Two of the xenos were whispering together, taking great interest in the floor—a mosaic of precious and semiprecious stones set in lead. Cracks in it and in the marble pillars suggested an unquiet earth. The xenos were discussing seismology; the Archon only saw them eyeing the jewels.

“You came prospecting!” Donner accused Farragut.

“I don’t know how you boys do things on Arra, but where I come from you don’t call your guests thieves,” said Farragut. This encounter was being recorded. Farragut imagined LEN diplomats having seizures at this point in the replay.

“Then you are not claiming my world?” Donner asked, somewhat mollified.

“Of course not. You got here first.”

The whites flared in the Archon’s dark eyes. The room stirred.

(“The discreet approach, hm, John?”)

(“I was just imitating the Archon. He’s blunt.”)

(“Dictators can dish it out, but they don’t usually take it well.”)

And the Archon had had quite enough of the English backchat. He raised his voice, “This is the same as whispering! Thou shalt not whisper in my presence! When you speak, speak to me!”

“I need advice on how to speak to you,” Farragut explained. “I’m new at this language. No disrespect intended. (And, oh shit, Augustus, what did I say now? He’s glaring at me.)”

(“You used the imperial ‘I.’ ”)

But the Archon resumed a magnanimous air and allowed, “You speak my language better than I speak yours.”

“Thank you.”

Augustus: (“He’s not as pissed as he pretends. We’re on camera. A lot of this posturing is for show.”)

The Archon stalked across the vast expanse of jeweled floor to give Augustus a hard look up and down. At five foot seven, the Archon looked absolutely diminutive before the six-foot-eight Roman. Donner asked dubiously, “This is a female?”

Colonel Steele smirked.

(“It’s the height, shrimp,”) Augustus shot back in English to six-foot Steele, who had never been called “shrimp” in his life. (“Look at the women.”)

Farragut answered the Archon, “He is not female. He is tall.”

“Where are you from?” the Archon demanded.

“My planet is called Earth. Augustus’ planet is called Palatine, but his people came originally from Earth.”

The duality surprised Donner. “Where is Earth? Where is Palatine?”

“A long way from here.”

“Outside?” Donner circled the air with a forefinger. He had human hands, four fingers per hand, opposable thumbs. “Outside my Myriad?”

“Outside the globular cluster, yes.”

“Where? How far?”

(“Okay, somebody give me a distance in local units!”) Farragut called to all present.

A xeno fed him the Myriadian translation of six thousand, four hundred parsecs.

The Archon looked profoundly impressed by the reply. The females looked quite vacant, as if they could not count that high.

Donner asked in wonderment, “Where is the kzachin you came by?”

Farragut glanced to Augustus, as all the xenos tapped at the language modules.

(“I’m pulling up ‘hollow,’ for kzachin,”) said Farragut, perplexed. (“Is he saying they travel between planets by ‘hollows’ or did he change the subject again?”)

Augustus answered in Myriadian, “Ask the Archon if his people used the kzachin to travel to this world from Origin.”

Donner reacted as if a chair had spoken. He would not address a minion, so rather than ask Augustus to explain himself, Donner demanded from Farragut, “What do you know of Origin!”

Farragut deferred. “Colonel Augustus, what do we know of Origin?”

Augustus answered immediately, “The sun is orange. The air is thin. The oceans are less than one percent saline. Origin is larger than Arra, but it is sixty percent the density. Native-born T’Arraiet have a much higher bone density than natives of Origin. A day on Origin is thirty percent longer than on Arra. The period of revolution around Origin’s sun is roughly half a T’Arra year. How are we doing?”

Donner looked astonished.

(“I sense a direct hit, Mr. Holmes,”) Farragut commented to his Roman Intelligence Officer in English.

Donner exclaimed, “You have been to Origin!”

Farragut shook his head, then remembered that the gesture did not translate. Spoke, “No. It’s all deduction. From what you are, he can figure back to where you must have come. He is particularly gifted that way.”

“May I have him?”

Refusing a request for a gift was always a dicey thing. Farragut demurred, “Actually, he is on loan to me. He is not mine to give.”

Donner beckoned the captain closer, advised softly, “Then you should give him back. He bears you no good.”

Farragut nodded. Very astute observation from an alien species. But then one would not expect the Archon to be the dimmest star in the cluster.

“Can you tell me, then, where Origin is?” Donner challenged.

Before the captain could answer, a large, collared animal trotted into the chamber. A boxy-headed, muscular dog-thing. It looked up at its adored master, Donner, then veered to the line of Marines along the wall.

The husky dog-thing raised its hackles and growled at Colonel Steele.

The Archon pointed at Steele. “That one bears me ill.” The Archon’s guards stiffened, and the Marines stiffened in response.

“No,” Farragut tried to tell him.

“Oh, he does,” Donner insisted, knowing.

“He does,” Colonel Steele confirmed for him.

And on second look, Farragut agreed that gentle lies were probably a bad approach here. He explained, “My ship tripped a minefield at the perimeter of your Myriad. Colonel Steele lost a man.”

“The minefield was not meant for you,” said Donner. “You must not take it as hostility, Captain Farragut.” Donner offered no apology to Steele.

“Who were the mines meant for?” Farragut asked.

“Not for you.”

His dog-thing growled.

“Oh, sit down!” the Archon commanded.

The dog-thing squared itself like a gargoyle opposite Colonel Steele, sat.

The Arran women tittered behind long, graceful hands, an infectious sound, and in a moment the Earth Marines lost the fight to contain their sniggers. Donner scowled at the women, and Farragut stared at his Marines in confusion. (“What is it?”)

At that, the Marines sputtered, and the Arran women bubbled with giggles.

Flight Sergeant Cole blurted in English, (“They look like bookends, sir!”)

Kerry Blue yelped, stifled a laugh with a whimper. The Arran women tittered, not understanding the words, but the pitch of the voices translated well enough.

“Bookends,” Augustus translated, and the Arran women squealed. The Arran guards’ lips unstiffened, perilously close to cracking their stony faces.

The Archon stalked to the lieutenant colonel, had to look up to study Steele’s dour face—his white-blond hair buzzed flat across the top of his squarish head; his eyes of vivid, piercing blue; his brawny shoulders set straight across.

Donner turned then to his growling, blocky, muscular dog-thing. “I see it.”

The women’s laughter sparkled.

“What happened to him?” Donner asked Farragut.

Farragut puzzled a moment. Donner’s question seemed to refer to Colonel Steele. “Nothing. What do you see that you think is wrong with him?”

“His color.”

Farragut was a loss of how to explain Steele’s fairness. “That is just his color.”

“He has hideous eyes. Yours are merely ugly. His eyes are creepy.”

“The women don’t think so,” Augustus said.

The Archon jerked up short. Partly that the furniture was talking again, and partly from what the furniture said. Donner turned sourly to his women, demanded doubtfully, “Is this so?”

The sylphs dissolved into high, musical Geisha giggles.

The Archon turned away, miffed and mystified. “Well. Blue eyes. Who could have guessed women liked blue eyes?” Donner returned to Colonel Steele, pointed to the black bars bracketing the outer corners of Steele’s eye sockets. “What are those?”

Farragut hesitated, answered, “Cameras.”

“And what more?”

The hesitation had not escaped notice. Donner heard the missing “and.” Surprising, the nuances that the alien could detect.

Bluntness was apparently the wisest course. “And gun sights,” Farragut let the other shoe drop.

“Ah. Is this a gun?” The Archon reached, but Steele’s hand clapped over his side arm first.

The Archon’s guards bridled, but Donner backed them down, and Steele barked his Marines into line.

Farragut maintained a calm, friendly manner. “Yes, those are guns. Colonel Steele, indulge our host.”

Steele briskly unsnapped the flap, unholstered the side arm, and flipped it around, butt end out.

The Archon fit his small hand around the fat grip. “How does this work?”

“It doesn’t,” said Farragut. “It is coded to its issuant. In your hand, it’s a lump of metal.”

Of course, the Archon would have to try it. Testing the truth as much as the weapon, the Archon pointed the weapon at Steele, pulled the trigger.

Nothing happened.

Donner smiled. Steele had not blinked.

“What an excellent idea. You must tell me how it is done.” He was speaking to Farragut. He relinquished the weapon to Colonel Steele. Donner then pointed to Captain Farragut’s sword. “Ceremonial?”

“Actually not. We use them.”

The Archon gave a disbelieving cough. Then guessed, “So that you do not poke holes in your spaceship?”

“Oh, I have put holes in my ship,” Farragut admitted merrily. “The force field keeps the vacuum out. I am more worried about hitting one of my own guys on the other side of the bulk. This is a useful antique, like Morse code.”

“Like . . . ?” Morse code did not translate.

“Don’t ever throw out your old technology, Donner.” Farragut probably ought not advise a new contact, but he had made an instant primitive connection with this alien leader. “Swords are useful.” That and John Farragut liked ’em.

Kerry Blue, standing at attention, lost track of the conversation, distracted by a tickle on the back of her neck. She knew there was a white ledge lined with plants high behind her head. The tickle felt like a leaf from a hanging vine touching her neck hairs. She edged discreetly forward. The touch returned, grazed her cap.

Finally she cranked her head back and up to look at the plants.

The plants looked at her.

Under thick coats of iguana green, nictitating membranes flicked over saurian eyes. A very long sticky tongue flicked experimentally to Kerry’s cheek.

With wooden slowness, Kerry returned to face forward, adamantly ignoring the lizard plants.

The Archon and the Arran women were chuckling at something the captain had just said.

The Archon explained that no one had used that expression in at least ten years. Augustus had made these language modules when the ship was still ten light-years from Arra, so the slang was a little stale.

A plant stepped down and perched on Kerry’s shoulder. Kerry straightened, rigid. Hissed between her teeth: (“Colonel!”)

The tongue flicked into her ear. She shut her eyes. (“Colonel Steele!”)

The Marine nearest Steele nudged the colonel and cocked a head sideways to direct the CO’s attention Kerryward.

The plant hunkered down on Kerry’s shoulder and crooned.

Steele strode out of line, pulled the plant from Kerry’s shoulder, and tossed it back up to its ledge.

(“Thank you, sir,”) Kerry whispered.

The Archon broke off his conversation with the captain and looked quite cross. Kerry assumed that the side chatter had offended him. But Donner’s onyx glare was not for the visitors.

“Why are my plants walking?” The soft anger in the Archon’s voice promised someone would catch hell later.

Cowed servants scurried to fill shallow white bowls on the ledges with water. There followed the soft lapping of froglike tongues.

The contented plants hunched down into their places and turned their green leaves to the starlight. The servants vanished.

And Kerry’s pet dropped back down to her shoulder. Put a webby foot on her cheek. Crooned.

The Archon broke off again and stalked toward her.

The plant squeaked and dived down the back of Kerry’s impeccable white uniform.

The Archon’s jewel-black eyes bored into hers. Kerry scoured her language module for words. “I—I got a plant down my back. Sir.”

The Archon looked her up and down hard. The fugitive plant, huddling against Kerry’s back, pulled her jacket tight across her chest. The Archon’s gaze paused at the suggestion of breasts beneath the dress whites.

Donner turned back to Captain Farragut, hesitated, as if fearing he was about to say something incredibly ignorant, “Is this . . . is this a female?”

“Yes, Flight Sergeant Blue is female.”

“She is pregnant,” Donner surmised.

Kerry blurted earnestly to Steele, to Farragut, (“No, sirs! I’m not!”)

The willowy Arran females looked to be rather flat chested, from what one could see of their figures under all that drapery. Perhaps they only developed breasts when they were pregnant.

Donner looked amazed. “May I have her?”

“No,” said Colonel Steele.

Donner darted Steele a nettled glare. “Captain Farragut, is this one permitted to speak for you?”

“Colonel Steele may answer for his Marines,” said Farragut.

The Archon puzzled over this lack of absolute authority, when suddenly, the soldier nearest to the soaring arches clutched his weapon to the ready, dropped into a crouch facing the terrace, and yelled: (“Hive! Hive! Hive! Hive!”)

All the Marines drew and turned. The Archon’s guards also drew their weapons but did not know which way to point. They saw the aliens brandishing weapons out toward their peaceful lake garden.

Kerry’s plant must have sensed her alarm as she dashed out to take a position on the terrace, because it wrapped its tendrils around her waist and flattened itself to her back, quivering.

Captain Farragut touched his dog collar, spoke into the link, (“Hive sign planetside. Report, Merrimack. Calli, what do you have?”)

Sensors in the planetside landing disks showed the exec aboard Merrimack not just a full view of the Archon’s reception hall, but also the temperature, atmospheric content, and composition of the furnishings. But apparently no view outside, because Calli answered, (“Merrimack, aye. What do you see, John? Tell me where to look. We’re quiet up here. Shipboard telltales are not, repeat NOT, showing Hive sign.”

(“We’ve got a swarm of insects.”)

(“Do you want me to shoot the flare? Come back.”)

(“Negative. Do not resonate. Do NOT resonate. Stand by.”)

(“Merrimack standing by.”)

The Arrans milled about, mildly perplexed, slightly alarmed but only by the aliens’ behavior. The Arran females giggled tentatively.

Farragut turned to the Archon. “Donner, is that swarming normal behavior for those—” Farragut could not locate the Myriadian word, finished in English, (“Butterflies?”)

The Archon said dubiously, “You are afraid of a swarm of iffretiet?” Donner gestured out toward the fluttering swarm across the lake.

“Do they usually swarm like that?” Farragut asked.

“Yes. Is it not well?”

Farragut touched his collar. (“Merrimack. Farragut. False alarm. Mr. Carmel, pretend it’s not. We have native species mimicking Hive sign. Run it down anyway. Assume the Hive has found a way to fox our shipboard early warning.”)

(“Aye, sir.”)

Captain Farragut turned to the Archon. “We will return to our ship now.”

“Because of a cloud of, how did you say it, ‘butterflies’?”

“Before we make ourselves look any more ridiculous.”

The Archon paused, absorbing the words, then laughed out loud, surprised. Still, a guarded look lingered in his alien eyes, as he reflected how strong one needed to be to admit such weakness. “I shall address my people. You must stand with me and give your message of peace.”

Augustus warned in a murmur, (“If you appear on camera with him, you validate his authority.”)

Farragut sidestepped the Archon’s demand without a direct refusal. “We will talk again.”

Donner was about to insist they stay, then seemed to catch sight of the pit into which his authority was about to fall. The Archon could not afford to insist and be refused. He stopped, smiled, commanded his visitors to go. “Your ship needs you. You shall go quickly. You shall come back.”

Captain Farragut nodded, then remembered to interpret his nod for the aliens, “Yes.” And to his party: (“Fall in. Disks all. Blue, lose the plant.”)

Donner pointed to Kerry Blue. “I want her to stay.”

Objection blazed in Colonel Steele’s icy-blue eyes. But I want from the Archon had the force of an imperative. Refusal was hazardous.

Captain Farragut answered, “Flight Sergeant Blue is on duty. She may accept an invitation when she gets off duty. She is allowed to refuse and I cannot make her go. That is our way.”

Donner’s eyes rounded. No telling whether the concept of asking a female or the captain’s inability to contravene her answer was the more shocking.

(“The plant, Blue.”)

(“Tryin’, sir.”) The lizard plant wriggled within Kerry’s jacket. This after she and Reg and Twitch had put so much effort into making her uniform look honor-guard crisp, too. (“Whoa, darlin’. That really tickles. Help!”)

Jose Maria Cordillera came to her rescue, fishing out the plant with a clinical grope. It emerged keening, leaves bristling, bulgy eyes soulful, wide-splayed toes reaching for Kerry.

The eyes, the pitiable sounds melted Kerry’s heart. (“Can I keep it?”)

Cordillera frowned kindly. (“Kerry, look at the light here. And this is what they call dark. It will not like the ship. Let us put your friend back with his mates, shall we?”)

(“Is it a boy?”)

Cordillera hoisted the leafy tail for a quick look. (“I have not the foggiest clue.”) Tail down. (“Come on. Send him home.”) He bundled the plant into her hands.

Kerry had been crying for days. She thought she was done with that, but a tear stole down her cheek. A froggy tongue licked her face.

She gently replaced the creature up on its ledge. It hurt, putting away something that liked her. Kerry Blue felt in sore need of liking.

She took her place on her LD. She just knew Colonel Steele was never going to let her out of the can again.

At the captain’s signal to the ship, the starry, starry sky, the soaring white columns, the reflecting pool, the bright swarming butterflies vanished around her. She did not hear her own parting thunderclap.

4

MERRIMACK’S COMPRESSION CHAMBER formed around the landing party. Chill. Dry.

No sooner had they arrived, and the captain was pulling off his dog collar. “Right. Anyone tell me what I drank down there?” He flipped his landing disk up with his foot, caught it.

“Ever consider to be thinking of asking that question before you are swallowing the alien substance?” Dr. Shah asked through the chamber’s com. “More circumspection concerning what you are ingesting is being in order, I am thinking.”

“ ‘Excuse me while I see if your gift is any good’ doesn’t make for fast friends. Anyway, what can it hurt, Mo? Arran germs are all right-handed. And Donner’s an interstellar colonist, so he knows that, too.”

Earth’s basic genetic code was not universal. The pre-Star Age fear of alien infection had been much ado about nothing. The molecular structure of the Myriadian proteins did not even share an orientation—a handedness—with human proteins, much less a base code.

“Arsenic has no hands,” said Mo Shah.

“You told me these boys were lightweights, Mo. I can hold anything they can. Anyway, I didn’t taste anything bitter. I tasted alcohol.” Robust even among humans, John Farragut ought to be able to drink any Myriadian under the table.

“I am only using arsenic as an example,” said Dr. Shah through the com. “You are assuming your drink was being the same as the Archon’s drink. The Myriadians are being expert poisoners.”

Xenobiologist Dr. Weng added over the intercom, “The Myriadians have some nasty inorganic poisons. Particularly something they call yellow gas. It’s yellow—”

A muttered growl from Dr. Sidowski sounded in the background: “Gee, I wonder why they call it yellow gas.”

As Weng continued: “—and the smell, well, no one knows what it smells like. If you smell it, it’s too late. It enters through the mucus membranes and does serious nerve damage—”

Ski, talking over Weng: “A total brain fry.”

Weng: “—just like that.”

Ski, with an audible finger snap: “Just like that.”

Weng: “Yellow gas is lethal in parts per trillion.”

John Farragut cut the xenos off equably, “I was rather counting on Donner wanting me alive and friendly.” He turned to his IO in the decompression chamber with him. “Augustus, what was that remark you made about my validating the Archon’s authority? Is his authority in question?”

“Opposition must exist,” said Augustus.

Dr. Patrick Hamilton was outside the compression chamber, but you could sense him bristling against the Roman’s all-knowing attitude as he announced with great authority over the com, “We have detected absolutely no evidence of any political dissension, or anything like an opposition party, any civil discontent whatsoever in Myriadian society.”

“Which in itself argues my point,” said Augustus, unruffled, rather bored. “As a true dictator, Donner controls all the media and all the dissemination of information. Given that he has suppressed any breath of criticism, the likelihood of discontent festering appears all the more certain. Totalitarianism may go over smoothly with those compliant muffins who pass for women in this species, but there must be a male somewhere on these three worlds who wants Donner’s job. The Archon has a lot of guards.”

“He does,” Farragut agreed.

Dr. Hamilton fell silent, and the other xenos set to reconsidering in a mutter-fest.

Augustus continued, “Just because you cannot see dissent does not mean dissent is not there. In this case, the complete absence suggests presence.”

Shown ridiculous, Pat Hamilton turned angry. “Leave it to a Roman to know about hidden, antagonistic subcultures working their machinations within an oblivious society!”

“I don’t believe the Archon is oblivious,” Augustus said evenly. “And I don’t believe it’s the subculture who is maintaining T’Arra secrecy in this case.”

“You used that word before, Augustus,” said Farragut. “T’Arra. T’Arraiet. What is all that?”

“The proper way to say Arran and Arrans. Just adding your own endings to words is typical American butchery of a foreign language.”

“Do what?”

“The T’ prefix indicates belonging in the same way an n ending does in English: Terran, Roman, American. The iet is a common plural. If you call yourself a Terran down there, they’ll think you’re from a place called Erran.”

“I don’t usually call myself Terran anyway,” Steele muttered. The Marine had a distaste for all things Roman, especially the Latin language. Terran was too Roman of a word for TR Steele. “Earthling is good enough for me.”

“Then call yourself a T’Earth if you want them to understand you,” said Augustus. And to Farragut, “Or a T’Kentucky. To attempt saying T’Terra does leave oneself prone to spitting.”

“So we are T’Americaiet,” Farragut said, to prove he got it.

“Speak for yourself,” said the Roman.

Farragut smacked the wall of the compression chamber with a flat palm. “Hey, Mo, get me out of here! I got things to do!”

“Be breathing deeply, Captain Farragut. “It will be going faster.”

Even in a quick decompression environment, the nitrogen had to bleed out of the blood before Dr. Shah could release any of the shore party into the ship’s atmosphere of fifteen pounds per square inch.

“I got a better idea, Mo. Reverse the decompression. Squeeze the whole ship up to Arran sea level.” Then, with a side glance to Augustus, amended, “T’Arra sea level.”

“If that is what you are wanting, sir,” said Mohsen Shah.

“I do. And patch me through to the control room.”

Calli’s voice responded in a moment. “Control Room, aye.”

“Calli, have Survey find some deserted real estate where we can put down a baseball diamond.” The population of the entire planet Arra was a mere thirty million. Next to Earth’s trillion, that was no population at all. “Some place the Arrans won’t even know we’re there. I want to get some dirt under our feet.”

“Aye, sir.”

“And a beach?” Steele suggested in a murmur at the captain’s side. “My dogs like water.”

“Mr. Carmel. A beach. And, what the hell, a ski run.”

“Aye, sir.”

The captain clicked off. “Okay, TR, walk your dogs. But when they aren’t playing, they’re flying extra patrols. Something is not right with all this and I won’t be caught flat-footed.”

“Yes, sir.”

The captain could trust TR Steele not to trust aliens.

And to the xeno team: “Gents. The T’Arraiet. I want to know where these boys are from—and what in Creation is a kzachin?” Back into the com. “Mr. Carmel!”

“Control Room, aye.”

“Pipe the Archon’s address to the nation into my quarters.”

“Aye, sir.”

Com off, Farragut turned around, “Flight Sergeant Blue.”

“Sir!” Kerry snapped to startled attention.

“At ease. It seems you may be in a position to gather some information for us.”

The xenos in the decompression chamber started altogether, aghast.

The captain gave a near shrug, answering their protest, “Donner asked for Flight Sergeant Blue.”

“He did not ask,” Jose Maria Cordillera revised.

“I noticed that.”

“Pretty uppity for a being whose empire comprises a population less than Spain.”

Ignoring Augustus, Farragut continued, “Flight Sergeant Blue, you can refuse this order if you don’t feel comfortable with it.”

Colonel Steele interrupted, “Respectfully, sir. I object to using my soldier—”

Kerry mumbled, “I’ll go.”

“—as some sort of Mata Hari. Flight Sergeant Blue is not a diplomat. You have no right—”

“I’ll go.”

“—to put her in jeopardy without advance recon. We know nothing about these beings, what they’ll do to her, what they want her for—”

“I’ll go.”

“Blue?” Steele looked down, as if just now realizing she was there.

“I’ll go, sir.”

Steele felt his mouth open. Mouth shut. Ice-blue eyes turned back to Farragut. “Permission to speak.”

“You’re already speaking, TR.”

“Sir.” The broad shoulders squared off properly. Abashed.

“So keep talking.”

With a soft chime, the panel lights turned green, the air within and without the compression chamber equalized at five atmospheres. Farragut turned his attention aside momentarily. “Open the hatch, Mo!”

The seals parted with a sucking sound. The hatch swung open, and Farragut ducked through first. “Flight Sergeant Blue. Go get some rest. TR, you were saying.”

Steele followed the captain through the corridor, a half-pace behind, for they were both big men and Merrimack ’s passages were not generous. “I was saying, this is a very bad idea, Captain. Flight Sergeant Blue has a ninth-grade education.”

“Only two less than Lieutenant Colonel Steele,” Augustus noted, behind them.

Steele shot a sharp glare over his taurine shoulder. With forced calm, he said, “That’s not true.”

It had been true at one time. True longer than it should have been. TR Steele had belatedly earned a GED instead of a high school diploma. It had then taken him eight years after that to earn a two-year associate degree. The armed services liked their officers degreed.

“Not exactly a Cambridge man, are you?” said Augustus. He knew a sore spot when he had his heel in one.

“Your point?” Steele snarled.

“Let the soldier do her job.”

Captain Farragut stopped, turned full round. “Augustus. You’re agreeing with me. Doesn’t that concern you? I thought you’d be sneering at my idea.”

“No. It’s a time-honored tactic. Use of a female operative actually has a high probability of success against an otherwise guarded male. In any sexual species, males become spectacularly unguarded around a female. They fly into your windowpane, run in front of your car, sing to your cat, bring your daughter home drunk. Donner’s vast intellectual superiority over females of his own species may leave him especially vulnerable to spilling information to Kerry Blue. I have to recommend for the operation.”

“And I recommend against,” said Colonel Steele. “Kerry Blue knows nothing of first contact protocol, diplomatic protocol, or any protocol. She’s not qualified.”

“She’s qualified recon, isn’t she?”

Steele bit on that one hard. Spoke thickly, “Not the kind of training we give our soldiers in recon. For the record, I want to lodge a formal objection.”

“So noted.”

“And off the record, sir, be sure to buy her a red dress for her efforts!”

The captain stared after the Marine’s stormy exit, baffled at the vehemence. Steele’s scalp showed visibly red through his white-blond hair. Farragut cast an appealing glance toward Augustus, and then to Jose Maria Cordillera, who had been following, cat-quiet, after the three of them. “Is he—? Are they—?” he stop-started. “What the hell was that?”

“On or off the record?” said Don Cordillera.

“Either. Both.”

The learned man observed, “On the record, there is nothing to suggest the lieutenant colonel’s objection is not logical, well-considered, for the good of the corps and for the Marine in question.”

“Off the record.”

“Off the record, what I just said lies in steaming piles in the pasture.”

Augustus gave a slight nod with the lifting of his forefinger, as if accepting a bid from the auctioneer. He bought Cordillera’s second assessment.

Farragut frowned, troubled. “Is Kerry going to be all right? What do we know of Arran customs?”

Augustus scolded with a harsh laugh, “You’re a Boy Scout, John Farragut. Customs?”

“All right. What do we know about Arran sex?” he asked the real question.

“It is not violent,” said Jose Maria Cordillera. “Kerry is a seasoned veteran on that front, you must know.”

Kerry Blue. They called her the morale officer. They called her lots of things—oddly mean things, considering how much they all liked her. A good eighth of the Marine company and part of the Merrimack’s crew had liked Kerry Blue.

“I don’t mean that as an insult,” said Jose Maria Cordillera. “She is a coarse, loose, ill-educated young woman. I am personally fond of her. She has great heart. You are scowling, young captain.”

“That red-dress comment torqued me off.” Farragut cast a glower back the way Steele had stalked off.

“It was meant to.”

Still the captain fretted. “Is the Archon going to recognize the word ‘No’ if he hears it?”

“Not to worry,” said Augustus. “From all reports, I don’t think Kerry Blue knows that one.”

The Archon, in his address to the denizens of the Myriad, put his own spin on the encounter with the visitors from outer space. Not to miss the obvious chance for self-glorification, Donner painted the Earthlings in ferocious colors, swaggering marauders tamed by the Archon’s wisdom, his firmness, his fairness.

Captain Farragut watched the address on a monitor in his quarters as he changed clothes and oiled his baseball glove. Some of Donner’s assurances to his people revealed what the Myriadians feared most: Prospectors. As if Arra were the only heavy world in the galaxy, and beings traveled light-years just to come steal their mineral wealth. Donner let the Arrans know that he put a stop to any alien prospecting.

Donner also felt compelled to assure his people that the Earthlings were not agents from Origin. Apparently all was not serene between mother world and colony.

Farragut noticed a glaring lack of reference to any other starfaring race who might have brought the Original colonists to the Myriad. From the speech it was clear that the Earthlings were the first FTL power this species had ever met. Donner assured his people that Merrimack was not a shipload of Arran natives returning to claim their home world. That had apparently been the colonists’ biggest fear—that they had colonized someone else’s home. Someone with big ships and big guns.

Donner declared that the Arra and the whole Myriad belonged to the Myriadians, and by heaven, Donner had made sure all comers knew that. Donner the hero, the defender, the fearless.

All in all, a very human speech.

As eager as Dr. Watson to match his conclusions with Mr. Holmes, Captain Farragut sought out his patterner.

Farragut slid down the ladder to the storage level, tapped on Augustus’ hatch, let himself in.

The Roman was stretched out in his pod among the torpedoes, apparently sleeping. At Farragut’s entrance, Augustus rose swiftly to his full height. It was a long way up, and the motion made Farragut flinch—little more than the turn of an eyelash, but a flinch nonetheless. His eyes flicked down on reflex.

The Roman’s voice was cold, “I am going to take a piss. Did you think I was happy to see you?”

Augustus returned from the head to find John Farragut sitting on a torpedo. “What the hell do you want?”

“I like it when my crew says, “What the hell do you want, sir,” said Farragut.

“Then dislike me.”

The captain ignored the insubordination. His position of power was such that he could afford to ignore petty battles. If the antagonism escalated, if Augustus harmed so much as the lint on the captain’s braided cuff, there was a boatload of navvies and another two full companies of Marines on board willing—eager—to beat the altered Roman back into his component parts and send him back to Palatine in sorted pieces. Regulations made Captain Farragut sacred. Beyond that, John Farragut was beloved.

Farragut let the barb hang. “What do you make of Donner? It’s just so damned strange that he’s not stranger. I’ve had less comprehensible conversations with the French!”

“Yes, I imagine the French would find you incomprehensible.”

“But these are aliens. They ought to be stranger.”

“You would rather they buzz and clack mandibles at you?”

“No, I appreciate Donner’s not clacking. But he’s so human.”

“Will you be making some point here?” said Augustus.

“The whole thing contradicts chaos.”

“Do I look like a believer in chaos?” Augustus touched the gold pendant at his throat, a Da Vinci intaglio of the Human Body, the famous image of a man described within a circle.

Farragut had noticed the pendant before. “I thought that meant everything circles around your dick.”

Augustus nodded aside, allowing that. “Point of fact, it does. That aside, this is the shape of the intelligent, land-dwelling universe. The base unit is chordate. A trunk. A head with some sort of CPU in it. Symmetrical to the left and right but not up and down or front and back. Two arms, two legs. Dick/no dick, depending. Life comes in infinite, chaotic variety, but this is sovereign intelligence. Insectoids and exoskeletals rule by sheer numbers, but without thought, without creativity. The Hive is your sole agent of chaos, but its crude intelligence is adaptive, not initiative. So no, I do not find it surprising in the least that an intelligence should look like us, think like us, communicate like us, breathe like us, in short, be fashioned in our own image.”

“You’re an anthropist,” said Farragut with some surprise. The anthropic principle was not a very popular view in the scientific community. Not popular with anyone outside of Creationists. The anthropic cosmological principle held that life—intelligent life—was inevitable. That the universe was created for Man. “God, Augustus?” Farragut asked, surprised.

“I don’t know God. I know inevitability. Things that must be.”

“Must? Why must? By fiat? Let it be done?”

“Must, because it is. We are here. Therefore we must be here. Don’t try to speak Latin, John Farragut.”

“Well, the Hive exists, too. And I’m sure the Hive acts as if the universe exists only for it.”

“The Hive is wrong. We must destroy it.”

“No argument there,” said Farragut, though he could get one from a cult back on Earth which believed the Hive was the door to Heaven. And spake the Host: Eat of my flesh. Become one with me, for whom the universe was made.

Augustus continued with his own theory. “The parameters for the existence of life are so small, the universe as we know it so bloody unlikely, that the only rational conclusion is that life exists because it must. I must. And for some unfathomable reason, you must. Things happen the way they are meant to happen. Just as the Roman Empire rose again. It did so because it was inevitable. The time when was uncertain—and much later than anyone anticipated—but the rise was inevitable. The Empire is meant to be.”

“Means you expect it to rise one more time,” said Farragut. “When all this is over.”

“Inevitably,” said Augustus.

“Not if I have anything to say about it,” said Farragut confidently. “So what makes it inevitable?”

“Destiny.”

“You’re implying God again.”

“And I told you, I don’t know God. I do know that I am conscious. Why suppose the force that brought us into being is not likewise conscious?”

“Couldn’t be accidental?”

“I have no problem believing you are an accident, John Farragut, but me? No. I was intentional. Was there something else you wanted?” Augustus asked, dismissal in his tone, though Augustus could not exactly dismiss the captain.

“Mo tells me you’ve been in the personnel medical files.”

“And?”

“Stay out,” Farragut ordered.

“Oh, I don’t care for the trivialities of your crew’s little lives. I went straight for your jacket.”

And the captain’s quills laid back. He was happy enough to draw fire to himself and away from his own. He became cheerful and easy again. “Am I interesting?”

“You have a titanium jaw.”

Farragut hesitated. His face lost animation. His answer expressionless, “I lost a fight.”

“You lost two fights.”

Farragut’s brow creased slightly. He answered, nettled, “If you knew, why are you asking?”

“To see how you would answer the question.”

Farragut answered with only a slight edge of defensiveness in his voice. “I can’t say there weren’t nights I didn’t wake up kicking, but I’m not going to beat myself up for losing a fight sixteen to one. Which was about twelve too many.”

Most men had a severe allergic reaction to the mere mention of such incidents. This man was merely annoyed at having his nose rubbed in it. He had dealt with it, got over it, and set a forward course, full speed ahead. He could look back if he must without hanging his head. Did not like to. Did not go back again and again, picking the scab to see how the wound was healing.

“What’d you do to piss them off?” said Augustus.

“What’d I do to piss you off?”

Augustus gave a crocodilian smile. So Farragut recognized this as a third fight. Remembered what the deck tasted like. But Farragut’s anger remained mild, more irritation. Unthreatened. Augustus had not yet cut to the core of his being.

So John Farragut was not a control addict. He did not need to be master of every moment. That explained how he could be so buoyant. No one is ever happy who craves control, because it is not possible in this universe. John Farragut could let go and roll.

Interesting quality in a man in charge of a battleship with planetary siege capability; plus two Space Patrol Torpedo Boats; two companies of Marines with thirty-six Swifts and a battery of thirty-six multipurpose guns; a formidable arsenal of distortion bombs, torpedoes, and missiles, including Space Darts, Space Slugs, Star Sparrows, and a Continental Knife.

So if control is not what drives you, what are you doing out here, Captain? In a position very like a god.

How did a man get to be this powerful if he did not crave control?

Augustus had misread him again. Hard to interpret what Augustus had never seen. “Your children are not yours.”

Got him! Saw that shot lodge under Farragut’s skin and detonate like a splinter shot. Augustus watched the captain absorb the hit.

Farragut bridled, voice rigid, “Well, Augustus, given that they are two and three years old and I haven’t been home in seven, I don’t think there’s anyone who hasn’t figured that pattern out.”

Farragut could shrug off his physical defeats, when he had fought the good fight and lost. This was bigger than he was. Augustus found the wound that defined the man. All the instincts of a father; but not a father. “Why’d you stay away seven years?”

“I was on my way home when we got the call to the Battle of Eta Cassiopeia.”

“And you decided to become a hero instead.”

Farragut ignored the comment. Heroism wasn’t his goal. It was simply an unconscious quality of his being. “She didn’t understand. Wouldn’t, I guess. She had to know what I was doing out here. By the time I was clear to go home . . . I found out I was going to be a father, so to say. I . . . couldn’t go. I took my leave on Alpha Centauri instead. I was going to make another try at healing whatever had gone wrong there. The second child tore it. I really tried to think of them as adopted. That wouldn’t go down. Stuck right here.” He put a fist to his chest. “Ever swallow a bone?”

“Try chewing, John.”

“Right.” Farragut inhaled deeply. Had been holding his breath. “She didn’t want a divorce. I couldn’t stay married to her.”

Apparently couldn’t even speak her name. It was Laura.

“I told her either sue me for abandonment, keep my name, the house, whatever the court wanted to give to a woman with two children; or else I’d sue her for adultery, cut her off, disown her kids. She sued. I’ve never met John and Lacey Farragut.”

“John Alexander Farragut, Jr.,” said Augustus more precisely.

“Isn’t that just the damnedest kick in the teeth?” Blue eyes lifted, terribly liquid.

“So why did you give her the choice?”

“Because I was afraid if I got into a fight with her, I’d kill her. And hurt two innocent civilians who didn’t ask to be born or named Farragut.” His arms were crossed. “Found what you’re looking for yet, Augustus? ’Cause I’m getting tired of this conversation. I can have Mo perform something invasive without an anesthetic if I want this.” Farragut headed for the hatch.

“Want to know who are the fathers of your children?”

Farragut ran into the hatch without opening it. Leaned there, forehead to fist. It was the plural that did it. Augustus saw that Farragut hadn’t known that part of it. Farragut had assumed a single lover.

Augustus saw the war waging behind the blue eyes. Saw himself reflected in them, the devil in the desert. Farragut did not want to ask. The question was sordid. A carving knife in the heart. He stalled, asked back, “How did you get that information?”

“It was just there. The patterns are there.”

Farragut shook his head, lost. “Augustus, I don’t know what it is you actually do.”

“I see patterns in data. The children were DNA-PRINTED when they started school. That’s in the FBI files, which are on board Merrimack’s database. One father was mapped when he took a position requiring a security clearance. The other was mapped when he was a schoolboy himself. The data is all in there. I saw the matches.”

“Lordy, Augustus. I can look at a game of solitaire and miss a play. You could plug me in to the collective wisdom of the known universe, and I still wouldn’t see to put that red ten on that black jack.”

“I am a patterner.”

“But I thought the information didn’t stay in your head once you unplugged.”

“I retain what interests me.”

“Don’t you need a program to read a database? What about incompatible file formats?”

“All electronic information is, at its most basic, on or off. The patterns are binary. The human mind, properly enabled, can read on and off. The patterns of the data explain themselves. An operating system is just another program. A program is just another pattern. Want the names?”

“No,” John croaked. Then he caved. “Yes.”

“Sure?”

Wouldn’t look at him. Like a surrender: “Tell me.”

Augustus spoke two names.

No change registered on Farragut’s face at first, except perhaps a slackening, a blankness, confusion. Blue eyes blinked. Still blank. No connections. No recognition.

Then he reared up, a smile washing his face clean.

Augustus tilted his head curiously. “You’re going to have them killed?”

Breathing freely, Farragut smiled. “No.”

“Then why did you want their names?”

“So I don’t suspect my friends.” His smile broadened, became positively giddy. “They’re no one I know!” The knives dissolved from his back. He muttered a joyful babble, “Small of me ever to think a friend of mine could ever do that to me! Lordy, John, you’re an ass.”

A truly relieved, enormously happy ass. Sneaking faceless parasites invading his home in his absence were a fact of existence. They could not wound him. Just so long as it wasn’t a friend. Farragut had no armor to his stern.

“Yes, to your original question,” said Augustus.

Farragut had forgotten by then that he’d asked one. “What question was that?”

“You are interesting, John Farragut.”

5

FLIGHT SERGEANT BLUE STOOD at the sentry post outside Sensor Compartment 3. The sign on the hatch at her back read: REDUNDANCY IS GOOD. REDUNDANCY IS GOOD. REDUNDANCY IS GOOD.

Colonel Steele had stationed her under the bottom of the ship, deep in the lower sail with the machines. Wasn’t really sentry duty. It was a stupid waste of time. No one ever came down here.

Footsteps clanging down the ladder made her power up her side arm.

The Navy had issued her a splinter gun. The two-stage weapon was designed for shipboard use. Not powerful enough to penetrate a bulk, it fired a thin dart designed to lodge deep in human flesh. If it hit your intended target, then you could detonate it, or threaten to. The second-stage trigger sent the signal to splinter the dart into lethal shards. The threat was usually enough to stop the sane.

No one was due. And no one ever came down here between watches for any good reason. Kerry took aim up at the hatch.

From the hatchway in the overhead emerged a pair of man-sized deck boots clanging down the ladder rungs, long muscular legs, a long lean torso, long arms, a handsomely shaped Roman head. Face like a granite carving not quite free of the stone.

The Intelligence Officer, Augustus. Kerry wondered if she ought to challenge him. Palatine was an ally now, and this was a full bird colonel. Still, you never knew about Romans. She took aim, inhaled to say halt. Her mouth had gone absolutely dry.

Augustus ignored the weapon pointed at his head. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder in a “let’s go” gesture. “You’re on, Blue.”

Kerry pushed the splinter gun into its holster at her thigh. “Donner called?” Kerry guessed, astonished. Men never called after they said they would. The Archon was truly alien after all.

Augustus turned around in the small space. There was scarcely room enough to do that. He seemed to find it strange. “Why are you here? I thought you were supposed to be resting.”

“Colonel put me under the ship for punching out Dak Shepard.” It wasn’t as if she’d hurt him. Dak was fully twice her size and he’d deserved it. He wouldn’t shut up. Colonel Steele had it in for her, was all. Always had.

That was of no concern to Augustus. Augustus gestured up the ladder. “Move it out, soldier.”

“The captain said I could only go if I wasn’t on duty,” said Kerry. “I’m on duty.”

“That was smoke,” said Augustus. “And point of fact, you’re not on duty.”

“Says who?”

“I.”

Kerry hesitated. “Can you do that?”

She was a little vague on chain of command when it included Romans. Steele was only a light colonel.

“Farragut can,” said Augustus.

“Oh.” Nothing vague there. These orders came from God. “Oh Gawd. Colonel Steele is gonna do a burn.”

“Aside from the amusement value, I do not care.” Augustus tilted his head toward the ladder for her to fall in.

Captain Farragut put an arm around Kerry Blue’s shoulders. It was a brotherly arm. John Farragut was the eldest of a litter of twenty-one; he tucked Kerry under his wing like number twenty-two. Kerry could always tell when a man was interested in her. Despite the captain’s warmth, he was not.

He told her she did not have to do this. He briefed her on what he wanted her to get out of the Archon:

What was a kzachin?

What was the Arrans’ mode of FTL travel and communication?

Where was Origin?

Who was the minefield intended for?

Had another alien species brought the Myriadians to the Myriad?

Did she have any questions?

“Does he have a tail?” asked Kerry.

She had been able to see under the billowy linen shirt a strong back, a sensual curve to Donner’s spine under that short-clipped mane. Where his loose trousers had tugged against his legs, she’d seen the impression of a hard-corded thigh. His bared arms were hard, bronze, human enough. Pretty sexy, really. But she didn’t know if she could deal with a tail.

There was a bit of eye rolling at her question.

“No tail. Any other questions?”

“What does he want?” Kerry asked.

The captain and the IO exchanged glances, surprised that she could actually ask something substantive.

The captain confessed, “You know what, Kerry? I honest-to-God don’t know.”

Augustus spoke past Kerry to the captain, “He may just want to talk.”

Kerry mumbled, “Then we’re in trouble. I’m not smart.”

“Next to the local females, she’s a bloody Einstein,” Augustus said to the captain.

“Hey!” Kerry protested. Then added, “Sir.”

Augustus continued talking past her, “If you’re concerned for her tact, remember the Myriadian females are dumb as hamsters. The Archon may well overlook anything she says wrong.”

The xenos had reported that the females’ brains were physically smaller than the males. It was the land of stupid, complacent women—Troglodyte heaven. Maybe the chief Troglodyte wanted more.

“Kerry called Donner by the wrong ‘you’ back there,” Augustus said. “Did you notice?”

The captain nodded. “Same ‘you’ that upset him when I used it. He didn’t mind when Flight Sergeant Blue said it.”

“Donner seemed to think it was cute. He may just want to hear what she has to say.”

That would be a first, thought Kerry, as the officers talked over her head.

“And if he wants something else, don’t worry about him using force,” Augustus said—to the captain, though Kerry thought she just might be real interested in that comment. “Rape seems to be a creep crime in the Myriad—much like child molestation in our cultures. And Donner is not a creep. And we know he won’t eat her for dinner. He can’t digest her.”

“Oh. Thank you, Colonel Augustus,” Kerry had to speak. “I feel so much safer now.”

That bit of insubordination lifted eyebrows, but neither officer called her on it. Farragut spoke—to Kerry—as if trying to convince himself, “You’ll be okay.”

Kerry tried to ask, “So what if he . . . ? Should I . . . ?” She could not finish. Never used those kinds of words to officers.

The captain, who always struck her as a bit naive in some respects, did not understand the question. Augustus answered her, “When in Rome.”

Kerry understood, nodded. “When in Rome, show ’em how we do it downtown.”

“Try to keep it in the suburbs,” said Farragut, catching up with the intent. “Don’t shock him. Keep your dog collar on. If you get into trouble, bag yourself to an LD, call for displacement and we’ll have you out of there right now.”

“I can take him,” said Kerry.

“I don’t want an interstellar incident, Flight Sergeant.”

“I can take him.” She didn’t say fight him.

Lieutenant Colonel Steele made an uncomfortable presence in sick bay. Steele never came here of his own power unless carrying someone else. The big Marine asked gentle, older Dr. Shah in near mumbles if the doctor had given Flight Sergeant Blue anything in the way of protection.

Mohsen Shah gave a gentle laugh. “Colonel Steele, a shoe fetishist is having a better chance of impregnating the object of his desire than the Archon is having with an Earth woman. Leather is at least having the same genetic base code.”

The lieutenant colonel’s fair face turned flaming scarlet. He growled, “I meant protection against disease.”

“It is being the same question. Kerry Blue is being—how would you be saying?—bulletproof.”

“Are you sure?” Steele shifted in place, recrossed his thick arms. “Viruses mutate.”

A Marine with a little knowledge was an annoying thing. Mo Shah sighed. “Ah. I am seeing—you are not understanding the reason why.” The colonel was one of those people for whom biology was voodoo. Dr. Shah tried to answer him in terms TR Steele might understand. “Have you ever been trying to mount a Centauran wheel on your Harley?”

“That’s a shooting offense where I come from,” Steele growled.

“Yes, yes, of course, it is being so.” Mo Shah smiled indulgently. “But could some godless Centauran be doing it?”

“Hell, no. The Centauran wheel takes only four lug nuts.”

“And they are being metric,” Dr. Shah added.

“And they’re in that dumb metric scale,” Steele confirmed, punching the air with his forefinger.

“So! Even if you could be adjusting the size of the bolts, there is no use drilling out a fifth bore because the other four holes are not going to be lining up. And you cannot exactly be pushing the holes around to be making them space evenly. Are you following me?”

“Follow so far. Hell if I know where you’re going with it.”

Shah explained, “In very much the same way, an alien virus cannot be readjusting its genetic code to be matching up with ours. It will not be happening. It cannot be happening. The Myriadian viruses are being metric with four bores—and their bolts are being threaded the wrong way. Their genetic code is having an opposite orientation to ours. The Myriadian viruses you are fearing will not even be knowing where they are.”

Steele grunted something like thanks, turned red again, and marched stiffly out. Trying not to think about where the Myriadian viruses might be going.

Kerry Blue’s arrival split the air with a loud crack. The displacement tech had put her down on the palace terrace. She stepped off her LD and moved to the white railing. Its marble glowed with numinous beauty under the starlight. She leaned on the cool stone and looked out over the lake, the water bedizened with star reflections. Overhead, the heavens blazed with twinkling lights in indigo velvet. She took off her cap and her hair-band. Moist breezes ruffled her hair. She inhaled green-and-blue smells.

Sensing someone behind her, she turned around.

Donner. Without his guards. Hands behind his back. “Do Earth people give gifts?”

“Of course.”

“Here.” He brought from behind his back—wiggling—the lizard plant that had crawled down her uniform at their first meeting.

A startled cooing cry escaped her. Then, suddenly, tears. She cuddled the leafy creature into her arms. Its webby feet clung to her.

“I do not understand this reaction,” said Donner, distressed.

“I’m happy,” she gushed tearfully.

“This does not appear happy.”

“Oh, yeah, it confuses our guys, too.” Men hated crying women. And they really hated crying Marines. She sniffled. The plant took up a perch on her shoulder. “But I was told these things can’t eat our insects. The molecules are left-handed.”

“And is your sunlight left-handed? This creature is a plant.”

She smiled brightly. “You mean it’s okay?”

“I do not give gifts that die.”

She reached for Donner’s head. The motion startled him, but he held his ground, as she took his face in her hands and kissed his cheek. His skin felt warm to her lips.

He came away flustered. Recovered his composure. “You were listening to my ocean.”

“Oh. Yes. Just now. I was,” she said. “That’s because it sings.”

A smile of pure delight lit Donner’s entire face. “It does. I stopped noticing a long time ago. It is pretty, is it not?” He touched her face, his fingers dry, warm, his touch light. “How came you by this color?”

“I was born with it.”

“It is better than the others.”

The plant moved up to sit on her head. She moved a webby foot off her eyelid.

“What do the colors mean?” Donner asked.

“Mean? What? You mean like rank? They don’t mean nothing. It’s a big planet. This is just the way we are. I got a white grandfather. I mean really white.”

“The grotesque one,” Donner began, “with hair like bleachweed and eyes like holes in the day sky—he is your white grandfather?”

A snigger moved up the back of her nose. “No. Not nearly. That’s Colonel Steele.”

“He owns you?” Donner guessed.

“No. Yes. Sort of. He says die, I die. But he wouldn’t say that unless something big was on the line. He doesn’t spend us like loose change. He’s a lead-from-the-front kind of guy. You’re laughing.”

“The words. The words are . . . oddly chosen. I do not understand what you said. Captain Farragut is not your Archon?”

“Farragut is everybody’s Archon.”

The answer seemed to satisfy Donner.

Kerry giggled, touched the lizard plant on her head. “He’s humming!”

“You have music on Earth?”

“Oh, lots. Doesn’t everybody? They used to think music would be the universal language. But one person’s music is another person’s cat on fire. Anyone thinks music is universal has never been in our forecastle. Men have been beaten shitless over tunes. And me, I’ll Kay-Bar a whistler. Sometimes we sing chanteys—you don’t mind the noise so much if it’s coming out of your own mouth. And if the guy next to you can’t sing—and if it’s Twitch Fuentes, he can’t—you just sing louder and drown him out. Then Commander Carmel, she’s got this operatic screaming fat chick shit she listens to. Splits my head open. And Cowboy has—Cowboy had country western bubbles. Music to throw up by. Lying cheating rat bastard music.”

Donner was laughing.

“Do you understand what I said?”

Enchanted, beaming, Donner confessed, “No.”

A bead of sweat threaded down Kerry’s neck. She almost asked if she could take her jacket off, but then realized Donner wouldn’t know her request was out of order. He might, in fact, be wondering why she was wearing so many clothes in this weather. Donner was lightly dressed, though the females had been covered and draped into shapelessness, neck to bare feet.

Kerry unfastened her uniform jacket—a chore, with its twenty-two chances to say no—and peeled it off. The lizard plant rearranged itself on her shoulder. The breezes felt soft on her wet skin, cool through her T-shirt. Donner’s black eyes went straight for her breasts.

Ha. We’re not so alien as the xenos said, Kerry thought. She sighed aloud to be free of the extra layer of fabric, “That’s better.”

Donner’s onyx eyes agreed. Kerry slung her jacket over the marble railing, spread her arms to the sky, and inhaled. “It’s great to get out of the can. This—this is amazing. It’s so beautiful.” She could fall right into that deep dazzling sky. Diamonds in velvet. Not that Kerry Blue had ever really seen diamonds in velvet.

“My world is new in your eyes,” said Donner, gazing at her, rapt.

“Our sky is dark at night. I mean dark. Stars in our sky are little pinholes compared to this.” She waved her hand across the glory overhead. “And you don’t see the colors in them. And you don’t see any stars at all in the day. Just a big yellow sun.”

“This sounds like Origin,” said Donner.

Origin. Origin! Origin! Kerry’s heart sped up like it did before an FTL jump. Origin! She had just tripped over her mission objective without even trying. She was supposed to find out about Origin. Damn, I’m righteous fine!

And without her even coaxing, Donner continued, “The night sky is dark on Origin. One sun illuminates the day. The sun is not yellow. It is orange. We can see two stars in the day sky, depending on the season and where you are in the world. The day stars are not bright because they are close like these are here. The day stars are distant and we only see them because they are supernovae.”

Kerry tried not to show how excited she was, but her lizard plant changed tune with her drumming heartbeat. Origin was in a galaxy that had two supernovae in it—which was to say not the Milky Way. Her mates were gonna go hyper. She had a real future as an intelligence operative.

“Have you ever been there?” she asked. “To Origin?”

“I was born there. Before the schism, I returned several times.”

Her plant chirped vibrantly.

If Kerry understood him, Donner was saying he had tripped out of this galaxy and back again in a single lifetime. But how long was that? “Long trip?”

“Depends on how you look at it.”

Not informative. Kerry needed a time scale. She asked, “How old are you?” She could ask him anything. She was just a silly female.

“Thirty-five years. T’Arra years.”

She could not remember how Arran years measured against Earth years, but thirty-five was not a huge number of anybody’s years. This meant Donner was traveling faster than Merrimack could even think about.

“How far is Origin from here?”

“I have no idea.”

“Could you take me to see it?”

But Donner had tired of her questions. He reached for the language nodule behind her ear. “Does this come off?”

“Whoa. I need that to talk to you.”

His fingers threaded through her hair as he withdrew his hand. “Speak to me in your own way.”

“But you won’t be able to understand—oh.” She switched into English, her voice husky smooth. (“Yeah, okay. I’m pretty sure where this is going. I can be had on the first date, in case you’re wondering. You can ignore Colonel Steele. He was just being pissy. I am not cheap; I’m free. But I won’t be put in a harem. And, yeah, I think you’re a fox.”)

A voice sounded in Kerry’s ear receiver: (“Oh, by the way, Blue. You’ve got a monitor on you.”)

She jerked. (“Shit!”) Her plant jumped, grabbed a hunk of hair and held on tight.

Even Donner flinched a little, thinking it was something he had done. “What is it?”

“Uh. Feedback.” She turned her com off, smoothed down the lizard’s leaves. “All better now.”

The breeze off the lake billowed Donner’s crisp shirt, giving Kerry a look at his hard shoulder, his skin an even lustrous bronze. He was a pretty man. Short. But that was his only flaw in Kerry’s eyes. The vee slash down the back of his shirt freed his mane, an arrow of short-clipped hair that traced nearly down to his waist. Kerry’s fingers strayed to the short curls fluttering in the wind. His hair felt softer than it looked, slid like silk between her fingers.

Donner turned quickly, fixed her with a weird expression that made her reel her fingers back in. Made her know she touched something she shouldn’t have. “What’d I do?”

He faltered, trying to explain. Blundered into a mumbling logjam.

Kerry smiled, pointed. “Made you blush.”

He went from bronze to red. His teeth looked even whiter within the darkness of that blush, as he smiled—shocked, hopeful, lit-up, dazed—just like an Earthman when he realizes he’s going to hit one home.

She could not figure why he was so delighted. She had been told that all the females of this species were easy. The most powerful man in the world, the Archon could just choose any one of those stupid females he wanted.

And maybe that was it. He sensed here an active mind and full-blown personality inside this female body. One that could judge him, could say no. That added an element of personal danger.

She could hurt him. That vast three-planet pride was on the line.

Kerry Blue never hurt anyone who asked nice.

Donner gazed at her, spoke words, incomprehensible words. She tapped at her module, muttered in English, only to herself, because her com was off, (“Damn, Augustus, this thing don’t work.”)

Donner captured her hand to stop her tapping. He explained, “I switched languages.”

“The xenos told me you only had one language.”

“I spoke to you in an ancient tongue,” said Donner. “We only use it in poetry anymore. It seemed to suit the situation.”

“But I don’t understand the words.”

“You do. Just listen. You will know.”

She didn’t. The words were beautiful noise in his low, distinctly male voice. She heard an ardent wistful yearning, and maybe that was what he asked her to hear.

He switched back to Arran. “Will you come to my home with me? Not this palace. My home.” And at her hesitation he asked, “Or must I ask the male with the creepy eyes?”

“Colonel Steele? He’s my CO. He doesn’t own me.”

“He does not touch you?”

“Steele? No. Oh, no. No.” A bluster of laughter came tumbling out. “No. Oh, boy. No. There are regulations against that kind of thing. It’s called fraternization. Did I say that right?” She never got embarrassed talking sex. But this was Colonel Steele, for the love of God. The lizard plant licked her crimson hot ear.

“If he wanted?”

“He doesn’t. Believe me. He doesn’t. And not even. Doesn’t happen. No.”

“Then I am to ask you?” It seemed to strike him peculiar, asking a female for anything.

“Yes. It’s my decision.”

“And what do you say?” His eyes were velvet black. Starlight glowed on his hair.

Kerry was accustomed to human soldiers, common men, not an alien commander of worlds. Still, males were males. The night was warm and he wanted her.

“I say yes.”

“Blue! We’re losing surveillance!” the technician yelled, smacked the transmitter to force his voice through the dead circuit. “Stay near the LDs! We can’t see you if you don’t have a sight line to a landing disk. Shit.” He swiveled away from the console, yanked off his headset. “Sir, I don’t think she’s receiving.”

“What’s wrong with her com?” Steele demanded, hovering at the tech’s shoulder.

“Nothing, sir,” the tech faltered.

“Nothing and she’s not receiving?” Steele’s impatient anger could stop a man’s heart.

“Yes, sir. I mean no, sir. I think she turned it, well, off.”

“Are you sure she did it?” Steele snarled, reversing the LDs’ recordings to watch the encounter again from all angles.

“Pretty sure, sir. We saw her pull the receiver from her ear. Right there.” The tech pointed at the playback. Then to the live output from the last disk as Kerry Blue left its range. “And there she goes.” She left the palace.

“We don’t have a security scan of anything outside the palace,” said Steele, turned an accusatory glare to Captain Farragut. “We can’t exactly sneak a landing disk down.”

Farragut nodded. The Archon would probably notice the displacing kaboom that accompanied an LD’s arrival. He suggested, “Send someone after her?”

“Oh, yeah, like Blue couldn’t shake a chaperone by the time she was twelve years old.” A muttered comment from an MP on deck, too loud.

“I heard that, Marine.”

“Sorry, sirs.”

“No,” Steele declined the apology, and admitted to Farragut. “He’s right.”

The tech: “We’re losing her. We’re losing her. We lost her.”

A new voice picked up: “I have her.”

Steele, Farragut, and the tech turned as Augustus stepped through the hatchway.

The Roman expanded a flat screen—a typically Roman sort of monitor, incorporating bounce technology. The kind of toy a Roman would have. Even though the surveillance cameras must be fixed on Kerry Blue, the image they transmitted was of Kerry, as if taken from a distance of twelve paces. Augustus must have fixed the bounce transceivers in the gun sights on either side of her eyes, to get this angle of her.

The flat screen showed Kerry Blue climbing into a wheeled vehicle with Donner.

“You put a bug on her.” Steele sounded surprised and offended. He should not have been.

“Want to watch?” said Augusutus.

Steele stood like stone. Augustus left the monitor on the console, an apple tree in the middle of the garden.

Flight Sergeant Reg Monroe heard her own teeth grind, forced herself to relax her jaw.

She lined her Swift up behind Dak Shepard’s and activated her targeting system. Lock and tone.

And soon enough, Dak’s voice sounded inside her helmet, queasy: “Uh, Reg? What are you doing?”

And then the flight leader was on the com: “Yes, Alpha Three, what are you doing?”

“Havin’ a wet dream, Mr. Sewell.” Reg had no real intention of shooting Dak in the ass. Felt like it, though.

“Turn off your targeting, Alpha Three,” Hazard ordered, not amused.

“Yes, sir. But you have to tell Alpha Two to shut up, sir.”

Dak Shepard had kept up a lewd, coarse, obnoxious, pointless stream of ship-to-ship comments spewing into her helmet com ever since the flight left Arra.

“Maintain com discipline, Alpha Two,” Hazard ordered.

“What? What’d I do?” said Dak. So innocent.

Reg bristled. “What’d you—? Oooh, you bust my balls, Dak Shepard!”

Dak answered sweetly, “You don’t have balls, Regi girl.”

“ ’Cause you busted ’em, you stupid boon! Hazard, make him shut up!”

Alpha Leader ordered them both to com silence. It didn’t last. Dak was at it again in no time, on a tight beam, ship-to-ship, where Hazard Sewell couldn’t hear.

Reg ground her teeth.

Back on Arra, under starry, starry skies, Marines were trouncing the navvies eleven to five on a brand-new ball diamond. Marines were splashing in turquoise waters off a white-sand beach; Kerry Blue was on a date with the lord of three planets in his palace with the jewel-studded floor; while Reg, well, Regina Monroe was wedged in this little bitty cockpit, stuck out here on the Rim of the Myriad, on patrol with the king of baboons. Knew she’d had worse days. Couldn’t remember one offhand. Combat was better than this.

Dak didn’t even shut up as they approached target area. No reverence for the scene of Cowboy’s death.

The minefield was gone—Merrimack had exploded all of the mines. The space was a big empty now, and Reg didn’t know what the hell she was supposed to be looking for.

Hive. Her skin felt clammy and crawled at the thought. She uncovered the portable terrarium of insects installed in her console. She knew the Hive was involved in this somehow, but the ants in the jar said otherwise. The creepy crawling things were behaving themselves. Trying to get out. Crawling. Humping. She covered them up again.

“Screw this,” she muttered.

Dak’s voice in her helmet offered to assist. What did she want screwed?

“You, Dak! You! Do it yourself, and shut up!”

She followed Alpha Leader, circled tight around the former location of the space buoy that had fired the missile with which Cowboy played his last game of tag. Reg moaned, “I could be playing shortstop right now.”

She waited for Dak’s return comment. It was too long in coming.

Her navigational indicators fell flat. Galactic horizon. Galactic compass. Attitude. All her digitals black. She glanced up from the control panel. “Dak?”

Silence.

“Dak?”

Dak was gone.

“Alpha Leader? I’ve got a problem, Alpha Leader. I lost coordinates. And—I don’t know if this is a problem, really, but I can’t hear Dak.”

Hazard Sewell did not answer.

“Hazard! Alpha Leader, are you there?”

Alpha Leader was gone.

“Hazard, don’t do this to me. Oh, jeez.”

She smacked her readouts. Shut down her nav system and powered up the backup. Muttered, “Redundancy is good. Redundancy is good.”

But the monitors remained flat. Blank. She requested a systems check. The ship’s computer reported all systems functioning.

“Red Four? Red Five?”

Silence.

Twitch and Carly were gone.

The silence was too perfect.

“Dak—oh, God, I can’t believe I’m saying this—Say something, Dak!”

The perfect silence remained.

She opened her viewport.

The stars were gone. The Myriad was gone.

“Oh, God,” Reg spoke aloud. “I’m gone.”

Swarms of little mothy things rose from fragrant, dew-damp ground. The grasses were coarse, blue-green, and spongy underfoot. All those stars in the soft, deep blue sky made it like playing under the lights. The light came from everywhere, making the colors liquid and shadows few, blended, without edges.

The captain bounded out to the newly packed pitcher’s mound. He dried his hand in the dirt, lifted his cap from his sweaty hair, snugged it back on. Sounds came to him quickly. Deceptively. He panted in the heavy air. It took him several practice pitches to find the plate.

Some men and women came down not to play ball, not to do anything much, just to get out of the ship, to feel hot breezes on their skin and firm ground under their feet. To sit under the weird light, listen to the crack of the bat and ritual shout: Play ball! As if nothing were wrong in the world.

The Archon was shy. It was cute. Here he had a sure thing, and still he tried to impress her. He showed Kerry Blue his house, which was bright and cool. He played music for her. Rather bland and lightweight sounds; she didn’t like it much, but it was a sweet gesture. An Earthman would have got straight to business.

When the room darkened to perfect blackness, she supposed, ah ha, this is it. A little disappointed, because when it came down to yab-yum, Kerry liked to see what she was doing.

Then, gradually, the stars came out, little pinpoints of light dotting the room’s darkness.

Donner’s voice came to her from somewhere in the dark: “What do you think?”

She wondered if he could see her. “I don’t know,” she spoke toward the voice. “What is it?”

“This is my sky. This is the sky over Origin.”

Her heart hied into double time. Ships navigated by the stars. If this recording was accurate, then finding Origin ought to be easy as roll me over.

Her voice vibrated. She hoped he thought her moved by the incredible beauty of it. “This is wonderful. It’s just like home.” As if a black sky full of stars wasn’t something she saw every day, day in, day out. “Can I have this?”

The stars dimmed away as the lights came back up. The room returned around her. Donner smiled at her. He pulled the crystal from the player and pressed it into her hand. “If you want it, I should be very happy to give it.”

“Thank you,” she whispered. The boffins ought to be able to jury-rig something to play this thing back.

Wait till Colonel Steele saw this. Steele thought she was a screwup. She would show him. She made one bitch of a spy.

She tucked the crystal into her bra. Let Donner watch her do it.

Finally—finally—he brought her to the bedchamber. She did not recognize it as such at first. It was big, with an ornamental fishpond sunk in the middle of the floor. The bed was built level with the floor, so she overlooked it on first glance over. Guess she didn’t have to worry about falling out of it.

Donner closed the door.

He touched some switches. Nothing happened. A clearly vexed look crossed his face. Something was not happening that ought to be—probably opening the windows. The air was stuffy in this room. He pressed the switch with more force.

Kerry moved toward the fishpond. Males never liked females watching them when they were experiencing any kind of technical difficulty.

She waved her hand over the water. Jewel-colored fish (well, they looked like fish) rose to the surface and gaped.

Kerry saw her reflection on the water, her lizard plant peering over her shoulder, her own smile flashing back at her with the sudden sense of the fantastical. When she signed on to the corps, she had been told to expect the unexpected. They got that right. Who could have ever predicted she would be here, now?

Cowboy. Lordy, but he seemed a million years ago. Someone from her past life. She wished she could take all her tears back. Wished Cowboy were alive, but only so that lyin’ cheatin’ bastard son of a dead skunk could see her now. Wouldn’t he just die?

She heard a sudden rushing. Air in vents. Guessed Donner got the air conditioner working.

A squeal and a splash made her jerk back with a reflexive yelp, not quite realizing what had happened until the water surface cleared and she saw her plant swimming to the bottom of the pond.

She reached for it—

Her feet left the floor. Her back slammed against the wall, hard. She stood pinned by Donner’s hand clamped over her mouth and nose. His face before her was unrecognizable. His own mouth was shut in a tight line. And with his free hand he held his own nose. His onyx eyes beetled with dire warning: Do not breathe!

She stopped struggling, and he guided her hands to make her hold her own nose and mouth shut, not trusting her to the strongest of living instincts, to inhale.

Then he ran from door to window, finding them all locked. Something yellow breathed from the vents.

Poison.

Kerry hefted a rock out of the fishpond and hurled it at the window.

It bounced. Of course, a head of state would have bulletproof windows.

She was going to have to inhale. Blood pounded in her temples. Head hot. Lungs burned.

She reached for her dog collar. Tried to remember the evac code.

Hell, there were no LDs from which to be picked up!

She met Donner’s stricken eyes.

He strode to her, purposefully, seized her, dragged her to the fishpond and pushed her head under water.

Icy coldness enveloped her, trickled into her ears. Something slimy and finned batted her cheek.

She had to breathe. She fought him.

Like fighting a tree.

Did he have gills that he thought she could breathe down here? She thrashed. Screamed in her throat. Urgently tapped at his arms, as if to signal a sparring partner to let go. Panic crowded in on her. She could not last another second. Writhed wildly.

Inhaled.

Convulsed, gagged. Coughed, and drew in more water. Iciness filled her chest. Floundered. Slapped the water. Her body gave two last spasms of protest, then quieted into a peaceful tingling calm.

Head cottony. Limbs floating away. She settled into darkness and weird serenity. She didn’t even feel cold anymore.

And well, glory be, there was the infamous light.

6

AUGUSTUS’ VOICE INTRUDED in Steele’s earphone without signal or preamble: “Your girl’s in deep sushi.”

Steele’s throw went sailing wild over first base. He nearly collided with the base runner as he sprinted to the nearest landing disk and bellowed for evac.

Because Augustus had reacted the instant his surveillance detected the first miasma of yellow issuing from the vents in the Archon’s locked room, Colonel Steele displaced aboard Merrimack in time to see the Archon on the monitor, shoving Kerry Blue into the fishpond.

The image blurred, refracted through water and bubbles, as Kerry’s head went under.

John Farragut arrived in the displacement bay immediately behind Steele, found the lieutenant colonel parked on a disk and roaring to be displaced down so he could kill Donner.

“Belay that,” Augustus told the displacement specialist.

Colonel Steele barked, “Belay that. Send me now!”

The D-spec offered by way of apology to Steele, “Sir, we don’t have an LD down yet.”

Displacement required the most precise measurements, which required three synchronized readings— one from the sender, one from the receiver, and one from the traveler’s collar. Displacement without an LD was only eighty percent accurate. The only thing you ever displaced without an LD was an LD.

“I’ll take my chances,” Steele growled.

“You shall do no such thing, Lieutenant Colonel,” said Augustus in maddening calm. Lieutenant Colonel. Augustus pushed Steele’s short rank up in his face with that one.

Steele turned to John Farragut, just arrived on the displacement deck, “Sir!” But Farragut silently confirmed Augustus’ order with a slight shake of his head. Didn’t want to cross his Marine out loud, but his frown said, No way, TR.

Augustus continued, indicating the haze on the monitor, “That is poison gas, and you are going to wait.”

“The yellow.” Farragut saw it. “The infamous yellow gas?”

Augustus gave a brisk affirmative with a single nod, while, on the monitor, the image cleared enough for him to make out Kerry Blue’s face, floating, slack, under the water. Her eyelids hovered, corpselike, at half-mast.

Steele roared, “Then get me an exo-suit! What the hell—?”

There was a splash on the monitor. Swirling water. A glimpse of a second face under the water. Donner’s. Contorted, drowning.

“Who got him?” the D-spec cried.

“Donner did,” said Augustus.

Incredibly, the Archon had dived into the pond of his own accord.

Augustus did not seem the least surprised. “He’s buying some breathing room, so to say. No doubt he hit an alarm to summon his security guards. All dictators have them. But he cannot afford to breathe during the time it will take for the cavalry to arrive to rescue him. Even in concentrations measured in parts per billion, yellow gas causes brain damage. And no, our differences in physiology will not protect us. Yellow gas is inorganic.”

“Get me a breather, then!” Steele ordered. “Why aren’t you doing anything!”

“I am,” said Augustus, his voice never changing. “I have ordered you a full suit. Ah, here it comes now. Yellow gas can be absorbed through the eyes or through cuts. You are going to secure all your seals before you go down.” The Roman was giving orders now.

Steele already had two legs into the suit. Kept glancing at the seconds flying off the chronometer.

“I’ve got a read, sirs,” the D-spec announced, trying to imitate the Roman’s dead calm. Failing. The young specialist was nearly jumping out of his seat. “Ready to send a landing disk.”

Farragut signaled affirmative with a closing of his eyes, and Augustus ordered, “Go displacement.”

The disk vanished from the chamber with a clap.

“God bless!” The specialist hissed.

“What?” Steele demanded, testing his seals.

“It’s a miss. It’s a miss.” The D-spec looked up from his console. His upper lip blossomed wet beads. “LD’s buried in the floor. No good.”

“Again,” Augustus ordered without emotion as Steele swore and yelled, “Get it right, you mechanical Roman spy! You’re supposed to be a patterner!”

Augustus spoke dispassionately: “Chaos happens.” And to the feverish young specialist, “Again. When you are ready.”

“Recalibrated,” the D-spec reported.

“Check for jammers,” said Augustus.

“Checking, aye. And . . . negative jammers.”

“Go.”

“And . . . sending.”

The second LD vanished with a hammering rap of converging air.

Dire seconds tripped away. On the monitor Kerry Blue’s image drifted at the bottom of the pond, her brown hair floating around a deathly bluish face.

The specialist: “We are down. And . . .”

“And?” Steele bellowed.

“We were five centimeters high, sir. We are spinning, and . . . we’re . . . we’re down and . . . we’re right side up and. . . . we are functional.” The young specialist’s eyes were glassy bright. “All green.”

Steele closed his eyes, stiffened, motionless on the sending disk, gripping the equipment pack. He felt an extra dog collar bulging in there. He was meant to save the Archon, too.

Heard the trailing end of his booming arrival onto the planet’s surface.

Steele jumped off his LD, hefted it up and tucked it under his arm as he pulled a dog collar out of his pack. He turned full around in the yellow haze. Sighted the ornamental pond sunk in the floor.

Rushed to slide the LD under Kerry Blue’s floating body. Felt/heard his sleeve snag on something, a rock, a twig.

He held his breath, but did not stop to check his suit’s integrity. He swept silken waves of Kerry’s hair aside and snapped the dog collar around her cold, rubbery neck, steadied her limp form over the LD.

“She’s in place. Do you have a read?” Steele’s voice bellowed back at him within the confines of his bubble head helmet. Realized how loud he’d been shouting. “Evac Blue! Evac Blue!”

He glimpsed the flicker of green lights on her collar and in the LD beneath her just before the water smacked in on itself with her vanishing.

Only then did Steele check his sleeve to see if he was about to die.

His suit was still intact.

He attended to the Archon with less urgency, taking great care what his sleeves contacted. He made sure his gloves were clear of the dog collar as he snapped it shut. May have got some of Donner’s skin. Too bad.

As he readied to signal the ship, he spied a familiar set of saurian eyes peering up at him from under a clump of pondweed. Steele grabbed the lizard plant, closed Donner’s arms around it, and ordered the second evac.

Water slapped into the sudden vacuum and sloshed back over the edges of the pond in the recoil.

Steele touched the switch at his collar to transmit. “How’s Blue?”

“Calling geese,” Augustus reported.

Steele could hear Kerry coughing in the background—big, honking coughs, gargled curses. Swearing like a stevedore. That was his girl.

“Your MO says we got her in time,” said Augustus.

Anger dizzied Steele. Fear. More than he could feel for any other of his Marines. And for what? Kerry Blue was just a slut.

A pretty, funny, sexy slut. What Steele tried to pretend was scorn—those black feelings that choked him when he saw her draped on a crewmate—wasn’t scorn. It was jealousy.

Everything about that woman called to him. Rough and ready. That easy smile. Her live-for-the-moment courage. Her crude honesty. Made him hurt. Made him want her for himself.

Made him crazy.

He took big breaths, as if he were the one drowning. Trying to breathe out the anger. She’s okay. She’s okay. Listened to her cough.

A voice in his helmet—the young displacement specialist: “We are ready to bring you up, sir. Take a position on the LD, please.”

“No. I’m staying.”

“Not advisable.” The voice unmistakably Augustus’. “One tear in your suit and your brain is fried. Not that one would notice given that yours is all meat, but I would suggest you evacuate.”

Steele made no move toward the LD. “Just somebody tell me if this yellow shit degrades into something harmless and how long does it take?”

Something this rare and lethal could not be stable.

A moment’s pause for consultation, then Dr. Shah confirmed, sounding some distance from the com, probably kneeling on the deck, tending Kerry: “This is being true, Colonel Steele. Yellow gas is taking forty-five minutes to be degrading.”

Augustus: “What’s on your muscle-bound brain, Lieutenant Colonel?”

“Whoever booby-trapped this room thinks he’s killed the Archon. They’re going to wait till it’s safe, then send someone in here to collect the body. I want to greet whoever comes through that door and beat the living crap out of them.”

“Better idea,” Augustus countered. “Plant a force field down there and cage the perps when they come in, and hand them over to the Archon. He’s breathing up here. He can doubtless do something vastly more cruel and unusual than you are allowed even to think about.”

Dr. Shah looked up from where he knelt on the floor tending to Kerry Blue. Cried, “God, the Roman mind!”

But Steele transmitted: “Wait a minute, Mo. I like that idea.”

There fell another pause. That kind of silence waited on John Farragut to weigh in.

Farragut said, “It’s cruel and sadistic.”

“And?” Augustus prompted.

Steele waited. Heard Kerry’s lung-wrenching coughs over the com.

The captain spoke at last: “And I don’t have a problem with it.”

“Cut your own line of communication and walked into an ambush, didn’t you, Marine.”

Oh, he was all heart, Steele was. Stood there like a marble block at her bedside in sick bay. Kerry had been stupid, and the Old Man was here to tell her about it.

The other patients in sick bay seemed to be all victims of nitrogen narcosis, from when the captain squeezed the ship to five atmospheres. Mo had those all breathing heli-ox in a static-free chamber.

Colonel Augustus ducked through the hatchway behind Steele. “You got a visitor, Blue.” And the tall Roman curtly dropped her lizard plant onto her cot. It scuttled to huddle under her chin, wrapping its tail round her upper arm.

She burst into tears. Not in front of Steele, you idiot. Not in front of Steele. Oh, hell.

She stroked her pet’s leaves, and sniffled. Tried to talk. Her voice croaked out rawly, “Captain Farragut tells me I got you three guys to thank for my life.” Mohsen Shah, the Medical Officer for reviving her, Augustus for keeping an eye on her and sending up the balloon, and Steele for getting her out of there.

“Four guys,” Mo Shah corrected her. “Donner. Without Donner, we would have lost you. He kept you from breathing the gas. And the cold of the water bought us seconds we were really not having. I am seeing how he came to being master of his universe.”

Steele snarled, “Seems to me Donner is who got her into the situation.”

“And I was rather more interested in saving the Archon,” Augustus excused himself. “A grateful dictator is never a bad thing to have.”

“Oh, you gots to know I know a crock when I hear it, sir.” Kerry sat up, dragged Augustus down to her level by his collar, and bussed the Roman’s cheek. “Where’s Donner?”

Donner had already displaced back down to Arra, as soon as he was awake, still coughing, in a tearing haste to punish his would-be assassins and his incompetent guards. When Farragut asked him if Donner knew who his assailants were, Donner had replied tersely, “Criminals. Not your concern.”

“He gave me something,” said Kerry, hands to her chest searching for the crystal.

The crystal was gone. Someone had undressed her and left her in a hospital shift. “It was a recording. Crystal thing. Big as a lipstick. I stuck it in my bra. It’s a recording. Did you get the recording? Can you make it play back?”

“We got it,” said Augustus.

“Is it good? Is it useful? Can you find Origin from it?” she asked, eager for praise. Kerry Blue could go for parsecs on an atta girl.

Augustus’ reply was neutral. “It is in analysis.”

Steele’s reply was a snort.

Kerry slumped back into her cot. She pouted, petting her lizard. Lotta brass here. None of her flight mates had come to see how she was doing. That stung. “Where’s Reg?”

Colonel Steele left abruptly, so she could not see his face.

Captain Farragut waylaid Steele on his exit from sick bay. Beckoned Colonel Steele in close with a jerk of his head.

Here it comes.

It was brief, calm, private. “It’s getting obvious, TR. Handle it.”

And that was all.

The first flash of anger and denial quickly rose and quickly burned out. Steele swallowed the lump of resentment in time to appreciate the lack of sermon or any meddling suggestions of how to fix it. When a bone tumbles out of your closet, Farragut toes it back for you to make it go away.

Steele acknowledged thickly, “Sir.”

Steele stalked to his station. Had his distraction surrounding Kerry Blue caused him to overlook something he should have seen? Cause him to lose track of an entire flight of Swifts? Something that would have let him answer that question: Where’s Reg?

Where was Reg Monroe? Where was Dakota Shepard? Hazard Sewell? Carly Delgado? Twitch Fuentes?

Alpha Flight had gone from late to officially missing.

Steele stared at all the majestic stars on the monitor.

God, if you’re out there, where are my people?

No beginning. No end.

Flight Sergeant Reg Monroe had gone to sleep twice in hopes of waking up from this nightmare. Twice she awoke to utter nothingness beyond the confines of her Swift. A space without form. No light. No stars. No air. No readings. No gravity. No burps in her inertia field, as if there were no inertia here. No motion. Felt as if she were parked.

And where was the rest of Alpha Flight? Reg had been flying right behind Dak. Right behind him. Where was he? Where was Twitch? Where was Carly? They had to be here.

Where was here?

She tried to turn around and go back. Could not find which direction was 180.

No up. No down.

She punched up intership radio, bouncing bubble, tight beam, broadcast, any and every means she had to contact her flight, to contact anyone.

Except the res. The res switch wore a red lockout on her console. Res pulse was instant contact. Res pulse would bring the Hive.

Activating her resonant pulse would get her cashiered. It would get the Myriad eaten alive.

Though she was not sure she was even in the Myriad anymore.

Her Swift would not even tell her how fast she was going. It would tell her what kind of power she was putting out, but it would not clock a velocity for her. There were no referents.

Time. There was time. The chronometer worked. Gauges of internal functions worked. Told her at what rate she was using up her oxygen and her water.

A Swift’s distortion field was not nearly as tight as Merrimack’s. You lost air in these little ships. The air scrubber was not the best either. This wasn’t a pleasure boat. You fought or you did your patrol and you returned to the ship. That’s what you did in a Swift.

You did not get lost.

Time to get methodical about this. She pulled up the diagnostic screen on her computer. Damn thing tried to tell her all systems were functioning. She pulled up the debug screen.

Reg had enlisted in the Fleet Marines to go to college on Uncle Sam’s card. Maybe Kerry Blue was content having no better schooling than the average toaster oven, but Reg did not plan to stay dumb forever. She had not been able to get into the Navy. No spaceman aboard Farragut’s boat didn’t have an associate degree or better. Mostly better.

There’d been no such requirement to get into the Corps. You had to be stupid to take this job (so said the navvies). But the Corps taught her things. Taught her to fly. Taught her how machines worked. And when her tour was up, the Corps was going to pay for her degree. Better than an associate degree. Reg Monroe was going to be an engineer someday, in the Navy, with braid on her sleeve, and she was going to sit at the table with the likes of John Farragut and Calli Carmel and His Fine Self Jose Maria Cordillera.

Reg wanted to marry someone like Don Cordillera. Didn’t see herself bunking forever with belching nematodes like Dak Shepard. This elegant hag was moving up and out, so help her God, and if she had to kill someone to get there, then bring on the gorgons, bring on the Romans. Bring on anything but this.

What was this? She had not signed on for this.

This had to end some time.

Heard the whisper before she knew she was doing it. “Let me out.”

Tried to concentrate on the screen. Assembly language. Might as well be Chinese.

“Let me out.”

She rocked back and forth in her seat. “Let me out. Let me out.”

Screaming soon. Bouncing off the sides of the cockpit. “Let me out! Let me out let me out let me out!”

Didn’t even try to quiet herself.

There was no one around to hear.

Alpha Flight was still missing as Delta and Echo Flights returned from recon missions of the other two inhabited planets of the Myriad, Centro and Rea.

The flights confirmed that Centro and Rea had both already received the Archon’s address to the nation—faster than any Myriadian spaceship could travel, faster than light, faster than even flights of Swifts traveling many times the speed of light had crossed the distance.

“How the blue blazes are they doing that?” Farragut asked anyone within earshot.

No one could answer.

Echo Flight reported Centro to be a struggling little outpost of 900,000 beings, who looked just like Arrans. They were settled in the narrow hospitable zone of an arid world of high winds and a ruddy sun half as luminous as Sol. Most Centrans lived around the spaceport. The heavy elements used in the spaceport’s construction had come from elsewhere, probably Arra, because, as Pilot Officer Jan Karowicz put it: “Molybdenum don’t grow wild on Centro.”

Echo Flight had sighted a Myriadian spaceship in flight in the Centro system, poking along at eighty percent c. The Myriadian ship did not come into Centro’s spaceport. “I didn’t think it could have seen us, but it must have because it just flew on by,” said Pilot Officer Karowicz. “We withdrew from the system so it might feel safe to come home, because it was just running off to nowhere.”

Delta Flight reported the other planet, Rea, to be much the same, a small world, lacking in heavy elements and orbiting close to an M8V sun. There were three million inhabitants on Rea, living on the seacoasts. The oceans were bigger than Centro’s, rotation slower, same ruddy sky. “Didn’t look like any prize, but the Reans seem to like it,” said Delta Leader.

If Augustus’ description of Origin was accurate, then maybe Rea looked like home sweet home.

“Deck three.”

Steele jumped. He had his com open to monitor the control room, waiting for this. Jesus, God, there they are.

He took the rungs by twos up the ladder to the control room deck. Found the Officer of the Watch, little Glenn Hamilton, hovering over the sensor station with an air of guarded alertness.

Steele read the faces on the command platform. His spirits sagged. “It’s not my flight?”

“No, sir,” Lieutenant Hamilton answered. “Big return.” And she snapped impatiently to the tac specialist, “Give me an F, Jeffrey. Which is it?” Friend or Foe?

“Foe,” the specialist, Jeffrey reported, finally resolving the signal. The fresh-scrubbed, big-eared college boy looked up from his readouts. “We got ourselves an effing LEN golf ball.”

“F ’em back.” Hamster crossed her arms. Shortest man jack or jane on board Merrimack, Glenn Hamilton looked like a doll dressed up in a lieutenant’s uniform. “Confirm that ID.”

“Aye, sir.”

The bloody gorgons were preternaturally adaptable. It was only a matter of time before they learned to fox an IFF response.

And Hive swarms traveled tightly bunched into giant spheres, giving them the same big round profile as a peaceful League of Earth Nations exploratory vessel.

And though they were expected, the LEN were not expected yet. Merrimack had sent the notice scant days ago. The LEN were not expected in the Myriad for weeks or months.

“ID confirmed,” said Jeffrey.

Lieutenant Hamilton glanced to the chronometer, murmured, “They didn’t waste any time.”

The LEN had to have been on the frontier already to get here so fast. Just luck.

Bad luck from Merrimack’s end of it.

“Recheck ID.”

“ID confirmed.”

Hamster’s auburn brows drew together. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say they were stalking us.”

“You know better?”

Hamster turned to find the Roman IO on deck. “No. Actually, I don’t. Do you, Colonel Augustus?”

“They lost you at the Sagittan Nebula,” said Augustus. “I did not.”

“But,” Hamster shook her head. “Why would the LEN be on our tail?”

“Digging for conspiracies, dirty military dealings, secret abominations. Things the U.S. Navy are known for.”

“We are not.”

“To paranoid defenders of nature, you are.”

Hamster turned to the tac specialist. “Jeff, what ship is that?”

“Woodland Serenity.”

Steele grunted. When the League of Earth Nations had learned that an American military vessel had tripped over a Class Nine ETI, they would have sped here on fire. “They’re afraid we’ll uf the contact.”

“Wouldn’t want to disappoint them,” Hamster said faintly.

Courtesies were cursory. League of Earth Nations representatives all but stormed through the long flexuous temporary corridor which connected Woodland Serenity and the battleship Merrimack the moment soft dock was achieved. They demanded with undiplomatic haste and candor, “You haven’t contaminated the site, have you?”

When the LEN learned the full extent of the “contamination,” they went hyperbolic, appalled near to rapture at the list of naval transgressions:

Obliterating native defenses (the minefield).

Terrorizing the populace (turning the Arran missiles around on Arra).

Sending a female soldier down for a Mati Hari-style spy mission (Flight Sergeant Blue’s recon).

Displacing a sapient life-form aboard Merrimack without its consent (the rescue of Donner).

Interfering with an alien nation’s internal power struggle (the rescue of Donner).

“I shouldn’t have saved the Archon?” Farragut asked.

“No,” Ambassador Aghani confirmed. “It was an internal matter. You had no right.”

“I had a duty. I’m here to defend the U.S., Earth, and her protectorates and allies. My next duty is to my crew and company. The Myriadian opposition party isn’t on that list. I saved the guy who saved my Marine. Local political complications aren’t my concern.”

“I’m sorry if this is too complicated for you, Captain Farragut,” said Ambassador Aghani. “But you’re right: it’s not your concern.” And Aghani ordered Merrimack out of the Myriad immediately.

“We’re gone,” Farragut declared without argument. But Steele advised in a murmur, “Captain, I still have a flight out.”

“—Just as soon as my patrol gets back,” Farragut amended.

“When is your patrol due?” Aghani demanded.

“I am not required to divulge that information,” Farragut answered. He had absolutely no idea.

“We are all allies here, Captain,” Aghani reminded him.

“Information on Naval operations is available on a need-to-know basis. Why do you need to know?”

“We can give your boats hangar.”

Gasps and stifled laughter burst from the Naval personnel on deck; gagging and bristling from the Marines. No one could quite believe the nerve of the LEN suggestion: Just leave. The LEN would pick up the stranded flight.

Farragut answered lightly, “I think not.”

Chagrined at their own overstep, the LEN personnel withdrew to their ship. Farragut turned to Lieutenant Colonel Steele. “So when are your Swifts due back?”

“Two hours ago.”

Farragut frowned. “They didn’t bubble you?”

“No, sir.”

“Bubble them?”

“Can’t see them.”

The captain understood the import. Said anyway: “We’ll wait for them.”

Steele exhaled, grateful. “Yes, sir.”

“Find them, TR.”

The captain had a way of giving an order that made it seem not just possible but expected. John Farragut had faith enough to float a battleship. “Yes, sir!” Steele answered, heartened—while knowing full well when people disappear in outer space they stay gone.

Relations with the LEN regrouped into an edgy, adversarial cordiality, the kind of brittle intercourse once reserved for encounters between Earth and Palatine.

Though the United States was a League nation, LEN assistance in U.S. attempts to retain its colony had never gone beyond harsh words. The LEN, over the objection of one of its members, had long since recognized Palatine as an independent nation.

The LEN representatives were now solicitous of Augustus as a member of a conquered people held under the American heel. Their goodwill oozed with the slime of moral superiority. They invited the Roman to add to the LEN’s list of complaints against Captain Farragut.

Guillame Kapila asked in flawless Latin, “Are you being equitably treated?”

Augustus might have told Kapila that the Navy had billeted him with the spare torpedoes. Instead he gave the LEN representative stone silence, as if Kapila had addressed a robot.

“Colonel Augustus?” Kapila prompted.

Augustus stared elsewhere.

Kapila glanced to the captain. “Why does he not answer?”

“I don’t know. Augustus, why don’t you answer?”

“I was not addressed by a recognized entity,” Augustus told the captain.

“Recognize him and answer him,” said Farragut.

Augustus turned to Kapila and answered frostily, in English, “I am not here to chat with civilians.” And back to Farragut: “Permission to leave the deck.”

The request sounded wholly alien coming from Augustus. Amazed to be the target of Augustus’ courtesy, Farragut let him go.

Augustus loathed people who apologized for their own kind.

And Augustus was not the only one who would not answer the LEN. When Farragut tried to pass the banner to the LEN, Donner would not come to the radio.

The LEN could not get past layer upon layer of intermediaries, secretaries, and toadies that came between them and the Archon, encountering each time lower- and lower-ranking individuals, until the only beings on Arra whom the Earthlings could get to come to the com were juvenile females who recited songs for them.

The League representatives demanded that Captain Farragut assist in making contact, but Donner would not even come to the com for Farragut anymore.

Donner was most displeased to discover that John Farragut was not the Archon of Earth. Donner did not talk to minions.

The LEN, in turn, was convinced that this refusal to communicate was at the Navy’s instigation. After all, all rational beings desired communication.

“You didn’t want us to make contact,” Farragut countered the LEN accusations. “Now you want introductions?”

“The indigenous beings have only heard Earth speak through its belligerents,” said Ambassador Aghani. “Now that the damage is done, they must also hear from the peaceful Earth. You will lift this barrier to understanding. Do you understand me, Captain?”

Since Donner would not come to the com, Farragut, Augustus, and the LEN embassy burst down into the Archon’s presence in the Archon’s own garden.

Donner had been crouched at the lakeside with a little male child, showing him how to skip grains across the water to make winged, scarlet fish leap out and catch them before brilliant azure swallow-tailed birds could swoop down and snap up the grains first.

At the first firecracker arrival of a landing disk, the child ran, keening. The birds scattered, shrieking and flapping. Guards ran to the terrace railing, weapons ready.

Donner rose in annoyance at the Earthlings’ thunderous arrival. He tossed his handful of grain into the water to a thrashing turbulence of fins.

Donner looked only at Farragut. “Because you saved my life, I shall not have you shot. I will speak to your Archon. Now.”

Farragut muttered aside in English, (“I need a pronoun here, Augustus.”) He needed she-supreme.

(“Doesn’t exist.”) No such entity in the Myriad. No such pronoun.

Captain Farragut answered the Archon in Myriadian. “The President of the United States is female. It would take the better part of your year for anyone to get here from Earth. Marisa Johnson’s calendar is always full, but I’ll relay your request on the next courier. It will take a good sixty days to get an answer.”

The alien face assumed the rounded lines of unmistakable shock.

Farragut dropped back into English for a quick consultation. (“Augustus, he’s been using a different ‘you’ to me here. What’s he calling me?”)

(“You have been demoted to a subordinate.”)

(“How do I ‘you’ him back?”)

(“What sort of ‘you’ would you like? You-servant? You-dog? You-child?”)

(“Child. That’s a good one. Give me you-child.”)

Guillame Kapila broke in with grave reservations. (“Captain Farragut, this is not the sort of course I would pursue.”)

(“That’s why I didn’t ask you. Augustus?”)

“Inti,” Augustus supplied the pronoun.

(“Thank you.”) Farragut turned back to the Archon. “And inti, Donner, you may address your questions to me in President Johnson’s absence, or to the duly designated representatives of the League of Earth Nations.”

Donner’s bronze face purpled in mounting rage. The League ambassadors hastily searched their language modules, trying to compose words with which to break into this debacle and smooth over Farragut’s blundering arrogant insults, when suddenly the Archon broke into laughter, and Farragut grinned.

“You,” Donner pointed to Farragut, restoring him to equal status. “Walk with me. Not them.” He waved the LEN behind. “Only you.”

Donner tolerated Augustus trailing behind, perhaps recognizing the effeminately tall Roman’s usefulness.

The LEN balked, tried to follow also, but Donner’s guards blocked their way.

Farragut could hear the LEN representatives calling, (“Don’t think we don’t see what you’re doing here, Captain Farragut! This shall be reported.”)

Augustus caught Farragut’s eye and murmured skeptically, (“Those are Earth’s ambassadors?”)

Farragut shrugged. (“Well.”)

It was fast becoming apparent that these LEN representatives were not the sort of ambassadors that one sends between nations. Not at all like Jose Maria Cordillera, who was a former Terra Rican ambassador to the United States. These were conservationists on a mission to save alien cultures from Earth interference. Edenists. Put simply (and the problem was very simple to them): Man degrades everything he touches. Everything in nature is natural except humankind. Made for less than diplomatic diplomats. The LEN representatives carried the courtesy title “ambassador” to facilitate their contact with alien species.

Could hear them shouting from behind the cordon of the Archon’s guards, (“This is exactly what we sought to avoid, Captain Farragut! Do you see what you have done!”)

Farther up the colonnade, the protests diminished. Farragut heard only alien creatures singing.

The unreal beauty of the star-bright Arran night could make a man forget why he was here.

Up ahead, under the colonnade, servants swept walkingsticks off the cool-shadowed ceiling with an air of evening ritual, shooing the creatures back into the garden.

At the Archon’s approach, the menials gathered up their tools and discreetly vanished between glistening white marble columns.

“Your President,” said Donner, hands clasped behind his back as they strolled. “A figurehead?”

“No.”

Donner coughed, a deep cough like Kerry Blue’s. “You pledged yourself to serve a female?”

“I pledged myself to the Constitution of the United States,” said Farragut.

Donner puzzled over this. Asked, “This President sends you orders?”

“I left with a mission objective, but orders? No. Not at this distance. Circumstances prohibit use of our instant communications system. So I’m on my own out here.”

“Do you mean to say your instant communication system does not work this far away?”

“No. It does work. We don’t dare use it here. There is something else out here that uses resonant pulse, and it can track a signal back to its transmitter. We must not resonate. We’re on silent run.”

Donner gazed up at the blazing host of stars in the indigo sky. Gave a human scowl. The more answers he got, the more questions he had. “And these LEN. What are they?”

“Representatives of the League of Earth Nations. They’re scientists and ambassadors. They mean no harm. In fact, they are here to protect you.”

“They don’t like you.”

“They don’t like my interfering in your world.”

Donner considered this. Liked the recognition that it was his world. Cast a satisfied gaze about his grounds.

Colonies of ambiguous plant/animal things lined the walkway. The xenos called them euglenoids; the Marines called them “land coral.” Fans and antlers and ledges and domes and honeycombs of them in all the colors of a tropical sea lay about in reefs in the garden. Feathery fronds unfolded from tough shells under the gentle light.

Donner’s world.

Then the rest of the implication caught up with him. “You ‘interfered’ with my world.” The only thing Donner knew that Farragut had done was to save Donner’s life. “They would have let me die?”

“You will have to ask them that,” Farragut dodged.

“They can give you orders? They have that power?”

“If I stay here, yes. Unless your worlds come under attack from space, they can do that. In a military situation, I am the archon. In peacetime, they have jurisdiction over any Earth presence in a sovereign system.”

“You must explain your command structure. I do not understand who is in charge. How can it change moment to moment?”

Probably ought not to try to explain about Presidential elections. Farragut said, “The ultimate authority we all answer to is the law. The law doesn’t change. The individual in power does.”

“These LEN. Are they a faction?”

Captain Farragut could see the route the Archon’s mind had taken, filtering information to fit his own situation. The Merrimack had taken Donner’s side against a rebellious faction. Donner would consider doing the same for John Farragut.

“No. We don’t have a world government. The League of Earth Nations is a . . . league.” Farragut could not shave the meaning of the alien words close enough to explain himself.

“There is no one supreme power?”

“No. But you must be familiar with this. Your home planet Origin must have more than one nation.”

“It used to,” said Donner. “It could not remain so.”

“Ours did.”

“How inefficient.”

“Very,” Augustus footnoted from behind them.

Donner cocked his head. Had forgotten Augustus was back there. Asked Farragut, “You let him talk like that? Is he not your subordinate?”

“At the moment he is supposed to be. Augustus’ people are imperial. They have a single government on his world. But my country controls his world right now.”

Donner stopped, turned to face both of them. “You and you are not from one world?” He used you-equal and you-subordinate for Farragut and Augustus.

“Palatine is a breakaway colony,” said Augustus.

“And we are enemies,” Farragut pointed between himself and Augustus.

Augustus made a T’Arra motion of agreement.

Now Donner was completely confused. “But this one is your adviser. He takes orders from you.”

“Palatine came under U.S. protection,” Farragut explained.

“U.S. That is your nation. Palatine came under you how?”

“They begged,” said Farragut.

“We asked,” said Augustus.

“A common enemy,” said Farragut.

“An enemy not like you and you are enemies,” Donner surmised, pointing from Farragut to Augustus.

“No,” Farragut agreed. “Ours was a cold war.”

“That did not translate. I do not understand ‘cold war.’ ”

“Cold war means we are not shooting at each other,” said Farragut.

“At the moment,” said Augustus.

“At the moment,” said Farragut.

“In a rational universe, we are shooting at each other,” said Augustus.

Donner waited for Farragut to counter that. When he did not, Donner asked him, “The universe is not rational?”

Farragut shook his head. “Not since our common enemy showed up.”

Donner’s dark eyes flicked back and forth, weighing the sides. “What kind of enemy is this that drew you together?”

Farragut hesitated. How to explain the Hive? “Monsters,” he said at last. “They eat. That is all you really need to know about them.”

“Which protein structure do they eat?” Donner asked. “Left-handed or right-handed?”

Donner’s own proteins had a different structure than Arran native life. He would be aware of the difference, and the incompatibility of the two. Wanted to know if he were on the menu.

“Both. All. The Hive is a universal omnivore.”

“You think these monsters are here?”

“No. We know they are not.” Farragut had come here on the gorgons’ trail. Lost them somewhere. Couldn’t figure out how.

“And now you will both take orders from those—” Donner made a face of distate, “—those LEN?”

“No. We’re leaving.”

Without the cameras on him, Donner could admit his inferior position; he confessed his own dilemma: “How do I order a being with all those big guns to stay?” Donner very much wanted John Farragut’s Merrimack on his team.

Farragut smiled. “I need to take my big guns away to hunt monsters.”

“Do the LEN have guns?”

“No.”

Augustus added, “You may abuse the LEN as much as you wish. They’ll enjoy it.”

Farragut darted Augustus a glare. (“Belay that.”)

(“Aye, sir.”)

It was the first time Farragut could remember Augustus calling him sir. And in English yet; not for show in front of the Archon. Just between Augustus and Farragut. Sir.

Donner sulked, “The LEN have a ridiculous-looking ship.”

“They do,” Farragut had to agree. The spheroid LEN golf ball lacked the belligerent charm of Merrimack.

“Your vessel commands respect.”

“She’s a brute,” said Farragut with satisfaction.

Farragut had used the pronoun she-beloved. Intentional. Did not escape Donner’s notice.

“You will leave when?”

Farragut demurred. He was not about to tell the alien he had a flight in trouble. Answered only, “Shortly.”

Augustus asked Donner, “Have you ever lost a ship traveling between planets?”

The question—or the poser of it—took Donner aback. The Archon answered, sharply, to Captain Farragut. “No.”

(“He’s lying,”) said Augustus. (“I know.”) Farragut heard it. The answer was too quick, too adamant.

And, seized by a fit of coughing, Donner told Farragut he was done talking. Bade him go now, and take his LEN with him.

Back aboard Merrimack, Farragut turned to his IO and demanded, “How are the Myriadians getting between planets?”

“Transportation is one of Donner’s high cards. He won’t be giving that one away. It’s a tightly guarded government secret. It’s not stored anywhere I can access it.”

“Augustus already has it.” That was Lieutenant Colonel Steele, waiting in the displacement bay for his captain’s return. “He’s just not telling.”

Augustus smiled coldly. “Lieutenant Colonel Steele, you’re not even an educated man, so what is your grudge? You were never forced to learn Latin for your trade. Unless higher education is required for bashing heads these days?”

Farragut ran interference. “Colonel Steele is concerned that you’ll get into Mack’s computer and take over my ship.”

“I can’t do that,” said Augustus.

Farragut looked to Steele for a riposte.

“You can’t be sure,” said Steele.

Farragut’s blue eyes returned to Augustus, like following a tennis volley.

“If it’s so jolly possible, flattop, then you shove your brain in there and make her open fire on Palatine,” Augustus suggested.

Eyes back to Steele. “TR?”

Steele had nothing to answer that.

So Farragut returned to the problem of breaking Donner’s secrets. “Augustus, if I get you access to one of Donner’s military computers, would you be able to find the pattern?”

Augustus frowned. “Those antique computers have no remote access. It would have to be a physical attachment with a cable. And the Myriadian buses are deathly slow. I think it’s a 256-bit data bus. Be like trying to suck Lake Superior through a straw. I can’t stay awake that long.”

“What can you get me?”

“Tac detected a scheduled flight blasting off for the Rea system. The ship is passing the fifth planet of the Arra system as we speak—at a phenomenal seventy-five percent c.” Irony there. The Arran ship was crawling. “I could put a tail on it, see how the Myriadians expect to complete that trip in less than fifty-seven years.”

“Do it.”

“Requires my using one of Steele’s Swift flights.”

Captain Farragut turned to the commander of the Marines. “TR, lend us some dogs?”

Steele balked. “Last soldier that Roman commandeered ended up breathing in a goldfish pond.”

“At least I didn’t lose her,” Augustus returned fire. Drew blood on that one. “I’m pretty sure the Marine I commandeered is the only member of Alpha Flight currently accounted for.”

Farragut teed his palms to break off that discussion before it turned to fists. “Any thoughts on the disappearance of Alpha Flight, Augustus?”

“I think Lieutenant Colonel Steele is having trouble keeping hold of his troops.”

“Something useful, Augustus?”

“All holes in the ground are not trapdoors.”

John Farragut blinked, not making the connection. “What does that mean?”

“Means whatever got you wasn’t necessarily meant for you.”

“It got us.”

“So did Donner’s minefield. The minefield wasn’t meant for you either. Your self-absorbed attitude leads you to interpret everything in terms of self. Your flight’s disappearance has nothing to do with you.”

“It’s my flight,” Steele jerked the Roman’s attention back to him.

“But only for another few hours,” said Augustus evenly. “I looked into the Swifts’ checkout logs. They’re carrying supplies for a short patrol. Their oxygen is running out right now. Dakota Shepard is an air sucker. He’s already out. The women might last two more hours. After that, they’re the sky pilot’s flight.”

Sprung from sick bay, Kerry Blue reported for duty. Lieutenant Colonel Steele told her to find a streetlight and stand under it.

He must have seen the pride fall right out of her face. Disappointment sogged down her insides. She thought the world of this man, and he said that to her? She tried to project her thoughts in case he could read her mind: How dare you? How frogging dare you?

And she must’ve got through somehow, because Steele said next, “For the next five seconds I’m not your CO.”

She had heard about these moments—the colonel’s brief windows of opportunity. They came once in a blue moon. He did it to level the playing field when he stepped on someone’s tail and couldn’t take it back.

Cowboy talked often of what he would do given the chance. If Steele ever told him he had two seconds, Cowboy Carver would piss on Steele’s leg. Dakota tried to tell him two seconds wasn’t enough time to whip out and launch a pee. Kerry remembered saying, “I don’t know, Dak, Cowboy’s real fast with that thing.”

The point would remain forever moot. Colonel Steele never gave Cowboy any magic seconds. These opportunities were rare. And when they come, you better not blink, because they don’t wait and they don’t come back.

Kerry didn’t hesitate. She clopped him hard on the cheek. And with a second to spare, hit him again.

The second one startled him.

The end of five seconds brought Kerry to stiff, decorous attention. “Thank you, sir.”

Steele rubbed his square jaw. “I gave you too long.”

“Yes, sir!” Kerry wanted to jump up and down. Got him! Got him!

Thought she might have spied a hint of humor in the colonel’s ice-blue eye as he barked at her, “Dismissed!”

Kerry danced back to the forecastle. Ha! Got him! Got him! Couldn’t wait to tell Reg.

No Reg.

“Where’s Reg?”

Lots of eyes focused on anything but her. This was bad. This was real bad. “Where’s Reg?” Heard the wobble in her voice. Dread squeezed her chest.

She ran to the pod racks. Banged on the men’s partition. “Dak? Dak! Dak!”

Grabbed the first spaceman to cross her path—physically grabbed him by the front of the tunic and made him face her. “Where is my team!”

And wouldn’t you know it, she had a baby-faced cherry in her fist. Didn’t look old enough to drink. Held a rate above hers. He cowered as if Flight Sergeant Kerry Blue were a fire-breathing general. “Yes, um, I think I heard something about one of the Marine squadrons being, um, somewhat . . . overdue?”

Alice, when she fell down the rabbit hole, had company. An odd collection of chatty things. There was absolutely nothing here.

No sense of motion. And that was possibly the hardest part. If Reg at least had the feeling of going somewhere, then she might hold out the hope that she might at length arrive.

She was going no place but mad.

Crying hysterically had helped a little. Very little. For a time.

Too frightened to sleep, she was now exhausted on top of terrified. Imagining things. At the limit of hope, patience, discipline, all of it. She broke the lockout from the res pulse transmitter. Hesitated over the forbidden button.

She had been told over and over, don’t hit the res, no matter what. It will bring hungry gorgons.

She took a big breath and yelled: “Come and get it!” Brought her palm down flat on the button. She hadn’t even coded a message. Just shot off a res pulse like a flare.

She would be brought up on charges, if she lived. Leavenworth looked like paradise from here. They couldn’t do anything worse to her than this.

She slumped back in her seat, relaxed and relieved enough to try to sleep. Until she glanced over the readouts. Something was desperately wrong.

She wasn’t resonating.

She mashed the button again.

It resonated to the bounds of her force field, and not one step beyond. As if the universe ended at her hull.

Nothing out there. No when. No where. This, this nothingness, this did not exist.

Coffined in hopeless horror, too extreme for screaming or tears. Her last resort had failed.

And that answered that.

She was in hell.

7

THE SHIP’S CHRONOMETERS WOUND UP the days, and still Merrimack haunted the Myriad. Captain Farragut refused to believe his missing Marines were dead. Believed against all sense or fact that they yet lived somehow, though everyone else, even Lieutenant Colonel Steele, now hoped only to recover the bodies.

He wished he might have used drones instead of live patrols. But without resonance and without human discretion, drones were useless for long-range reconnaissance when the operator could not tell the drones exactly what to look for.

The LEN wanted the U.S. battleship gone from Myriadian space. Wanted them gone yesterday, convinced that Donner would be easier to talk to without Merrimack lurking in orbit. Convinced that Farragut was holding a gun to the Archon’s head.

Fed up with the stalling, Ambassador Aghani demanded Farragut inform the LEN of his estimated time of departure. Captain Farragut could not confess that he had a problem. Not to these people. A missing flight was military confidential.

And telling the LEN that he had since dispatched a second flight would torque them off pretty good. Farragut did not want to recall Echo Flight from its surveillance of the Rea-bound Arran ship. He still harbored hopes of uncovering the Myriadian secret of interstellar travel. But he had run out of time.

Aghani repeated the demand. “Captain?”

Farragut inhaled long, a three-second stall in which answers might come to him—and smiled brightly at the end of it.

Captain Farragut invited the LEN diplomats to dinner.

Like Atalanta’s golden apples, a social obligation was a thing the LEN dignitaries could not just run past. They must—must—stop and be civilized. Representatives of the League of Earth Nations held hospitality sacred, especially out here where life was so fragile and tenuous. At any rate, they could not afford to be brusque in comparison to the American military.

Aghani accepted.

The last dogwatch arrived with still no sign of Alpha Flight and no report from Echo Flight. Farragut murmured, awaiting his guests’ arrival at the soft dock, “I’m running out of ideas here.”

“Eat slow,” said Augustus.

The officers’ mess had been transformed into something approaching elegant. That Merrimack was a long-range vessel was no excuse for barbarism. Some thought a formal dinner was high silliness, but John Farragut could play it, could play any situation as it came. Could throw back shooters or savor a Chateau d’Argent with equal ease. Could listen to cellos or harmonicas (though he could, and did, play the harmonica). So he was altogether at home amid the pressed linen, the gold-plated cutlery, the snowy white china edged in gold leaf and navy-blue enamel. Dressed in starched whites and blindingly bright brass, he welcomed the ambassadors to his table.

Augustus was dressed in formal Roman black of sedate design except for the brilliant red flourish across his back—either a wide sash or a narrow cape—draped from left shoulder to right hip. Augustus watched the captain launch his full arsenal of charm, treating the LEN to the full Farragut—greeting each guest in his own language without use of a language module. John Farragut knew bits of many languages, usually massacred the accent, but most people appreciated the effort spent in trying.

The conviviality did not endure past the appetizers. The conversation at the captain’s table quickly took on the dimensions of a battlefield.

Though English was the lingua franca of the League, the League members resented it and seized every opportunity to speak anything else. Aghani used Augustus’ presence as an excuse to commandeer the conversation into Latin.

The language of Earth’s sometime enemy never lost its educated cachet. Aghani spoke Latin flawlessly. The U.S. officers fell into step, until Madame Navarro thought to check, in English, “We do all know Latin here?”

Eyes flicked round the table, Madame Navarro’s quite sincerely concerned. Others searched expectantly for a confession of ignorance from one of the Yanks.

And got it. “No,” John Farragut answered quickly.

But since Farragut obviously did know Latin, he obviously covered for someone else. Would not say who. John Farragut, as usual, drew all the fire upon himself. He bluffed, “I’ve been told I’m really bad at it and I’ve been ordered not to try.” Then proposed cheerily: “English, why don’t we?” And smiled at everyone.

TR Steele avoided his gaze, sat like a stone.

Augustus withheld a smirk. Silently toasted the captain’s smooth flanking maneuver, protecting the dignity of his poorly educated jarhead.

There was no such thing as a classless society. Certainly not on a military spaceship. Captain Farragut might as well be king here. Might as well be God. And TR Steele was a grunt.

Built like a brick wall, broad-shouldered, thick-jawed, CO of the half-brig of Fleet Marines on board, TR Steele was not a picture of refinement—and this book was true to its cover. Steele had come up through the ranks starting as a private, his education all remedial and done late. Physical courage and horse sense he had, with medals to prove it, but no Latin.

The flattop made a stiff, solemn presence at the captain’s table. Would not, even when invited, call Captain Farragut “John.” Probably fearless in the face of a gorgon horde, Steele seemed daunted by the dizzying forest of stemware at his place setting. Fortunately, he need only drink from all those glasses, not know how to fill them appropriately. And there were no kantiku glasses, so he needn’t worry about when to throw it.

Now the utensils, those could be entertaining. Augustus could tell Steele had never seen a bariki hook in his life, or the cracker for the Cassiopeian conch, or the Nisarian skewers for the flaming munsrit.

Augustus wondered if he could get Steele to use the bariki hook to retrieve the creamer from across the table.

Probably not. Someone would rescue him. Either Farragut or Jose Maria Cordillera, who was seated to Augustus’ right—perhaps placed there purposely to head off just such an endeavor.

Jose Maria Cordillera did belong here. Dr. Jose Maria Rafael Meridia de Cordillera was Terra Rican aristocracy.

Terra Rica, a former colony of Spain, was on cordial terms with its mother country, and at war with no one. Jose Maria Cordillera owned roughly one-twenty-fourth of the dry land of that planet.

Urbane. Soft-spoken. Humanitarian, with a strong sense of noblesse oblige. Jose Maria was strikingly handsome at age fifty-seven. His olive-toned skin was still supple over sharply sculpted bones. A man of medicine, he disapproved of cosmetic surgery except in the case of wounds, and did not always endorse it even then. Jose Maria Cordillera bore a scar on his brow, got it when his firstborn bashed him in the eye with her silver mug. You could not pay Jose Maria to repair that one.

Jose Maria Cordillera kept the common touch. A nice man. A good man. Augustus found it easy to read what made Don Cordillera tick. Jose Maria Cordillera carried a Catholic burden of guilt. He had dedicated himself to saving a universe which had been altogether too good to him.

The LEN rolled themselves out for Don Cordillera to walk on. It was such an honor to meet him. They were only surprised to find a man of his caliber and refinement on, well, on the Merrimack, no offense, Captain Farragut.

“Where else should I be?” Jose Maria Cordillera asked.

The ambassadors would not say so at the captain’s own table, but military and intelligence were antonyms in their lexicon. And “Department of Defense” was just too disingenuous. The U.S. ought to call it what it was, the Department of War.

“I like to stay on the front line of discovery,” Cordillera explained. Merrimack operated on the frontier.

“More like the firing line, I would say,” Aghani offered.

“Often,” Cordillera admitted. “A doctor is a good thing to have in those circumstances, you do not think?”

The LEN were appalled. “A doctor? They need a medic with a patch kit and a vat of penicillin. You . . . you, Don Cordillera, are a research legend.”

“A legend. Well.” Cordillera smiled into his Riesling.

“Your work with viruses was pivotal,” said Madame Navarro. “You have saved millions of lives. And if you count posterity, countless lives.”

“And I see the Hive as a disease of galactic proportion,” Don Cordillera continued on that line. “A parasite. A very bad parasite that kills its host, its host being worlds. I am dedicated to curing it.”

Aghani went rigid, chilled. He set his fork down with unsteady care before he should drop it. “You would cure an intelligence? Do we not have a duty to communicate with it?”

The smack of the captain’s palm on the table made all the guests flinch back from their rattling china and rippling wine.

Farragut glanced round with a sheepish grin. Lifted his hand from the table, a squashed ant flattened to his palm heel. “Sorry. I was . . . communicating.”

“Ants on a starship!” Faustino Barron exclaimed, eyeing his food with sudden distaste. An excessively prissy man. Probably should not have seated that one next to Colonel Steele.

“Time to let the aardvark out,” Farragut noted to the Marine orderly. Wiped his communiqué on the linen napkin in his lap, then waggled his fork. “Didn’t mean to interrupt. Carry on.”

The window dressing, strategically stationed next to John Farragut, suddenly gushed in breathy admiration, “How ever did you discover three—three—Class Nine worlds!” Her enthusiasm may even have been sincere. Farragut was a fine looking man, especially in uniform. “That can’t have been luck.”

“Of course it was luck!” Farragut laughed. “Blind, stupid, crash-flat-into-it luck. We were looking for the Hive world.”

“Oh, but aren’t you afraid you’ll find it?”

“Afraid? Ma’am, that’s what we’re here for. We’re hunting the Hive.”

The picturesque one folded her forearms on the edge of the table, and leaned forward to rest her breasts on them. Putting all her cards on the table, apparently. She breathed, “Isn’t it . . . terrifying?”

As he composed an answer, Farragut’s blue eyes took on a gleam that Augustus had never seen before, a look that made Augustus set aside his own drink and observe. An amazing look, a bright, insane enthusiasm. And it was not directed at the young lady either. (Had to wonder about her. For a people who expressed such disapproval of Kerry Blue’s Mata Hari type espionage, this was an interesting choice of guests to send to the captain’s right hand. It was safe to assume her esteemed rank was very lately acquired, and very temporary.)

Farragut’s bright eyes were not for her. He was envisioning the Hive. And that look was . . . battle crazy. It washed over his face, animated his whole being. Battle was a topic he could get excited about.

And then he reined it in just as quickly. Wrong audience here. These people would not appreciate John Farragut’s idea of fun.

The captain forced his enthusiasm back to room temperature, and answered benignly, “I kind of hope the Hive thinks I’m a little scary.”

Aghani seized on that thought. “The Hive thinks. The Hive thinks. You admit the Hive thinks? Are we not then duty bound to make them understand us?”

Don Cordillera came to the captain’s rescue. “ ‘Thinking’ is too strong a term. They react. As one-celled beings to light and heat. The components of the Hive have only the most rudimentary interaction with those not of its own kind—or those not of its own self, for we hypothesize that the Hive is a single, titanic, marauding entity composed of many macroscopic cells.”

Farragut further interpreted for the LEN, “ ‘Rudimentary interaction’ in Hive-talk means if it’s not me, I eat it.”

“Not entirely accurate, young Captain,” said Don Cordillera. “Burrs, gorgons, soldiers—all the Hive cells—have shown cannibalism. So, more precisely: ‘If it is not I, I eat it. If it is I, I may go ahead and eat it anyway. ’ ” And to the LEN, earnestly, “These beings—this being—the Hive is wholly without redemption. When I came out here, I assumed all spacefaring life would be inquisitive and benign and eager to talk. And now I find myself committed to nothing less than genocide. If I find the queen of the Hive, or the nerve center of the being, the single being the murder of which would exterminate the whole, would I do it? I ask myself: could I? And I must answer—yes. In a heartbeat.”

“Even if they adapt quickly and might eventually be taught to share?” Madame Navarro begged for reason.

“Burrs don’t share,” said Farragut.

“They learn,” said Navarro. “They could learn.”

“They learn that engineered metal—though itself inedible—often indicates that edible beings live inside,” said Jose Maria. “They learn that inedible metal spacecraft point the way to and from worlds full of edible beings.

“Adapt they can, but only if it lets them eat—and eat now. They store nothing. They plant nothing. They eat their dead and wounded. They are an engine of entropy.

“They have no higher conscious purpose. They have not the least concept of planning or investing. You would think something that voracious would learn husbandry, conservation. They have not.

“The Hive kills host after host. If ever it asked a question, it would be: what is left to eat? It uses, it throws away. And would you even want to teach gorgons husbandry, so that they might plant people gardens for future harvest?

“Do remember: entropy is a force of nature, too. What is natural need not be benign. The Hive is nothing less than the living, eating incarnation of the Ninth Level of Hell. Your Excellency, you come in peace and I admire that purpose. I am afraid I come to exterminate.”

“Deal me in,” Lieutenant Colonel Steele spoke for the first time.

Farragut lifted a finger to say he wanted a piece of that game.

Commander Carmel lifted her glass. “Well said, sir.” Sir’d him even though Don Cordillera was a civilian.

“Oh. Well. This is unfortunate,” said Aghani, grave.

The delicate Mr. Barron, whose head motions brought to mind a chicken, gave a nervous glance up at the sprinklers in the overhead. His eyes flinched downward. Chin pulled in. Gazed upon his plate with loathing. Asked in great trepidation, “Are we dining in a chemical lab?”

“Oh. Those.” Farragut nodded up at the sprinklers. “Standard equipment. All decks.”

“I’ve never seen that on a Naval vessel,” said Barron, all but calling his host a liar.

“They’re standard on my boat. We’re a Hive hunter. Those sprinklers spray neutralizing solution for that brown caustic goo gorgons melt down into when you kill ’em. Oh, hell.” Turned to the Marine orderly, “Tell the galley we might should skip the French onion soup.”

“Captain,” Madame Navarro cut in on another tack. “Forgive me if I’m wrong or if I give offense for suggesting such a thing, but I’ve been given the impression that you, how should I say, that you like fighting?” And she shrank away from her question as if she had offended herself.

John Farragut bit back the first answer that sprang to mind—probably a cheerful, “Are you nuts?” He said instead, soberly, “Not a good quality in a battleship commander, you don’t think?”

“No!” she cried. The emphatic snap of her head set her earrings to swinging madly. “A man with that much destructive power at his command should have the utmost loathing for violence. The utmost.”

“Then we differ.”

“Oh, dear,” Madame mumbled with the utmost dread and disapproval. The utmost.

“It’s the American way,” the American representative of the LEN commented with heavy irony, an apology for his barbarous kind.

“War does have a purpose,” Augustus proposed, his first offering.

“You mean other than expanding the Roman Empire?” Steele asked Augustus.

Someone had thought to space the entire length of the table between the Marine commander and the Roman intelligence officer when making up this seating chart. It didn’t stop the cold salvos from soaring end to end.

“Keeps you employed,” Augustus returned.

“Colonel Augustus, I beg you to explain.” Ambassador Aghani sat forward, clearly troubled. “I find war senseless. Anathema. The final resort of brute impulse. You see some purpose in it?”

“War trained humankind to survive out here,” said Augustus. “For centuries we were the only formidable enemy we had. There was, for a long time, an assumption among us that any race who could reach the stars would need to overcome internal conflict first. Fallacy, of course. Humankind reached the stars very nicely, still fighting one another. Aggression persists even as intelligence progresses.”

“It’s a throwback,” Madame Navarro broke in. “Baby teeth to be spat out. A diaper to be washed, folded up, and put away forever.”

Augustus ignored her. “Those millennia of internecine warfare prepared us for truly virulent foes. On first contact with the Hive, the LEN would have walked out to meet them, smiled, shown them your periodic table, and been eaten for your trouble. Aren’t you comforted that there persisted those of us belligerents with guns enough to blow each other to kingdom come, guns which, turned in a single direction, might yet stave off this mindless, soulless terror?”

Madame recoiled. “You don’t mean to imply that Earth’s history of horror and bloodshed could be a survival mechanism, the purpose of which was to prepare us to survive a hostile ET contact?”

“I don’t mean to imply any such thing,” Augustus answered. “I’m pretty sure I came flat out and said just that.”

“Oh!” Madame Navarro appealed in the wrong direction, “Captain Farragut! You cannot agree with this hawkish pretext for violence.”

“Well . . .” Farragut demurred.

“No!” Madame Navarro insisted. “War is absurd!”

“Well, yes, it has its bad moments,” Farragut confessed. “But so does the peace.”

The League of Earth Nations considered Palatine’s conflict with the United States a civil war. Even though the League disapproved of a governmental system that allowed euthanasia, cloning, slavery, and colonization of inhabited worlds, those transgressions had never stopped any nation of the League—other than the U.S.—from recognizing Palatine’s government or from carrying on trade with its expanding empire.

From the moment Palatine declared independence, the Romans and the Americans had been locked in a territorial race. When not at open war, the two nations waged a defensive aggression across a quarter of the galaxy. Their zones of influence expanded like rival pancakes, each trying to bubble through or around the other, while spreading ever wider and wider, planet-stabbing all the way—planting their flags in any solid ground, in every dirtball, from Rim to Hub—the object to hoist the colors, hike the leg, piss on every tree and declare “Mine!” and off they go.

While the rest of the civilized world watched in disgust.

“I don’t know about y’all, but our worst enemies have been good for us,” Farragut told his LEN guests. “After the Romans captured the Monitor, right quick we devised all kinds of low-tech and phase-shifting countermeasures to defend Merrimack against the Romans. And it’s those same measures that saved our asses in our first contact with the Hive. The Roman ship Sulla got eaten. We didn’t, and I have Rome to thank that I had a sword on me the first time a gorgon oozed through my force field, shut down my targeting system, and chewed through my hull. So God bless the Roman emperor.”

The captain had only one taker to that toast.

“You’re not drinking, Commander Carmel?” Aghani noted that Merrimack’s XO made no motion toward her wineglass to toast Caesar.

“There is a reason I should?” said Calli. Calli was dressed in formal military whites, but she had done something artistic with all that long shining chestnut hair, and she looked positively imperial at the table, and made the breathy young woman with the plunging neckline next to John Farragut look vulgar.

Captain Farragut intervened, “Mr. Carmel attended the Imperial Military Institute on Palatine. Doesn’t make her a Roman. It’s a good school.”

“It is an excellent school,” Aghani allowed. “The best by some rankings.”

“It was tough,” said Calli.

“The educational system on Palatine is the finest among all the nations and colonies of Earth, bar none,” said Aghani.

“We are not a colony,” said Augustus.

“Palatine began as a colony,” Aghani revised. “I was complimenting your educational system.”

“You were stating fact, Mr. Aghani. Compliments are unnecessary.”

“Colonel Augustus, where did you attend?” Madame Navarro asked solicitously.

“I don’t recall that I did,” said Augustus.

“No school? What? Were you programmed?”

Madame Navarro meant it as a jest, but Augustus answered without humor, “I don’t recall that either.” Offered nothing more.

Another LEN representative, who had had quite enough of his companions’ pandering to Rome, and quite too much to drink, set a fist and forearm on the table and launched into a scold at Augustus, “You don’t seem to realize the catastrophic brain drain planet Earth suffered under the Roman exodus to Palatine. Our world harbored and nurtured you for centuries. You used our societies—controlled many of them. You used our best institutions to perpetuate your language—religion, medicine, law, higher education—and not for the good of the masses. Oh no. All for the elite and for yourselves. Then the whole spiderweb of you packed up your scholars and your scientists and your judges and just left.”

“Good riddance,” said Lieutenant Colonel Steele. “Take ’em. Better they go to Palatine where I can see ’em, than having a secret society sponging off Earth.”

“Whoa, Mr. Steele,” Don Cordillera said with a slight smile. Attempted to drag the talk off in a lighter direction, “I could understand the resentment if you were a doctor, lawyer, or priest, but that’s rather harsh coming from someone who never had to suffer through a Latin class for his profession.”

“You’ll never catch me talking Latin,” Steele vowed.

And there it was. The brick that was bound to drop. Augustus lifted his glass in a toast to the other end of the table. “Semper fi, flattop.” And watched the Marine turn the color of cheap rosé.

“I don’t feel the U.S. is in any way inferior to Palatine,” said Calli Carmel. “I think I’m in a position to know.”

“Thanks for the backup, Mr. Carmel,” said Steele.

Madame Navarro’s glass came down hard. “Mister Carmel. Mister Carmel. I do not understand this conceit of denying the sexuality of your female officers. As if femininity were not command material! You Americans must unsex your female officers in order to respect them?”

“I am not unsexed,” Calli answered for herself without excitement. “The distinction is irrelevant to the position.”

“There are no ladies in the Navy,” said John Farragut with a wink.

Except on Christmas Eve, he thought, when the women pull those dresses from the bottom of their storage lockers, with those little bitty shoes, and transform themselves into amazing, soft, sweet-smelling, civilian-looking creatures, and it hurt. Last year John Farragut saw Hamster in that strappy little dress and those strappy little shoes, and he’d walked straight into a bulkhead. Hard. Carried away a mouse that lasted for days.

Madame Navarro scolded Calli, “Your sex may be irrelevant to your position, but denying its existence makes you irrelevant. Are we no more evolved than we were at the dawn of civilization when Hatshepsut made herself an honorary man, because one must be a man to be Pharaoh? Submerging yourself to a male identity? Really, Miss Carmel.”

“I am not an honorary man,” Calli said. “ ‘One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind’ only includes me if I am a man individually as well as collectively. I am a man. Happen to be a female one, but a man in fact, not honorary, not submerged.”

“Oh, stuff and apology. The distinction cannot be so glibly brushed off. You are a woman. He is a man. The division is there. It’s biology. The U.S. Navy Space Fleet ought to grow up and acknowledge and accept the femininity of its female officers.”

“Separate but equal?” Calli suggested faintly.

The ensuing silence lay like a slab.

Until Calli answered herself, “Not in this man’s Navy.”

In the thick cessation of conversation, the soft music, the thump and hum of the ship, and all the background noises pushed forward.

Through the partition that separated the captain’s mess from the xenos’ mess, shouts, mounting in volume, indicated that the scientific gathering was no more amiable than this one. It sounded like they were throwing things.

Something flew past the open hatchway and rolled down the corridor.

“What was that?” said Farragut.

The Marine guard at the hatchway turned stiffly, shoulders dead square within his uniform of navy blue, eyes barely visible under his smartly centered white cap. Answered, “Muffin, sir. Blueberry.”

“They got muffins?” Farragut lamented, wistful. Sounded like a funner party over there. More sincere at any rate. Still, “I can’t endorse muffin throwing.”

Sounds of the melee grew louder. Shouted name-calling. A clash of a metal platter hitting the deck and spinning to rest.

Jose Maria Cordillera rose, bid everyone else stay seated. He set his snowy napkin on his chair, and smoothed the creases from his square-shouldered charcoal jacket and wide trousers of coarse black Tussah silk. When he turned from the table, you saw his only jewelry, the simple clasp of hand-wrought silver which held back his long black hair.

He exited the mess at a calm, cat-footed walk, his soft-soled shoes making no sound.

The shattering of glass beyond the partition made Farragut worry belatedly if he ought to have given Jose Maria a Marine escort.

And silence descended behind the partition.

Moments passed with no sound but a few muted voices.

Jose Maria reappeared in the hatchway, quietly composed.

“What did you say to them?” Aghani marveled at the doctor’s peacemaking prowess.

“I asked if they had any muffins.” Jose Maria produced a plate, lifted the linen to reveal a stack of them, still warm.

“Muffins? With bariki and munsrit?” Faustino Barron balked at the culinary gaff, and gazed on Don Cordillera as if the esteemed doctor had grown tusks.

“Works for me.” Augustus accepted a warm muffin from the basket, held it up in admiration. “Ah. Like LEN weapons. Like new. Only thrown down once.”

“That was uncalled for,” said Guillame Kapila. “The League of Earth Nations has always accommodated Palatine.”

Augustus gave a cold smile. “Which is why when the real menace showed itself, we allied with our most offensive enemy.”

“Why, yes, they are all that,” Kapila allowed, the U.S. was offensive.

John Farragut signaled foul. “Now how’d I get a two-front campaign going here? I expect that from him.” Him being Augustus. “But Dr. Kapila, what did I do to piss y’all off? You haven’t liked me from your first ‘Permission to come aboard.’ ”

“Sir, I am certain you are well qualified at your profession,” said Kapila, making no attempt to hide his distaste for that profession. “But you stumbled into a Class Nine extraterrestrial intelligence with your battleship, blundered down to the planet’s surface, and started talking. That is not protocol. It is . . . stupidity.”

“Worked at Hispaniola,” Farragut offered.

Kapila’s eyes flared white. “Invoking the image of the earliest act of American imperialism is meant to make us feel better about this botched first contact?”

“It wasn’t American imperialism actually,” said Farragut. “It was a Spanish-funded Genoese imperialism at the time.”

“There were probably Romans aboard,” Steele muttered. Meant it to be snide, but Augustus said serenely, “Did you know Christopher Columbus kept his log in Latin?”

Farragut covered his eyes. “Oh, for Jesus.”

When all the LEN guests had gone back through the flexible walkway to their spheroid ship, John Farragut opened his stiff, stand-up collar and flung down his napkin into a wet burgundy stain in the tablecloth. “Was that hideous or what?” Pulled out his cuff links.

“No vote for ‘or what,’ ” said Calli Carmel, taking the pins out of her hair.

“TR, where are our guys?”

Colonel Steele had already checked with the control room. His square, bulldog head moved slowly from side to side, grim. “Alpha Flight has not reported back. Drones haven’t picked up their IFF anywhere in the Myriad.”

The Swifts of Alpha Flight were long since out of air. Steele was already figuring who he had to compose letters to.

Dak Shepard had only a mom. This was going to kill her.

Tough, mean Carly Delgado had no one but the Corps to call family. Big loss, that little girl was. Could have used a dozen Carlys.

Twitch Fuentes. Steele never knew much about Twitch. Better find someone who spoke native Spanish to write that letter, because Twitch didn’t know too much English beyond lock and load, so Steele guessed his family didn’t know even that.

Hazard Sewell. Military family. They’d understand. Didn’t mean Steele knew what the hell to say.

“They’re not dead,” Farragut said.

“All data to the contrary?” said Augustus.

“I know they’re not dead,” said John Farragut.

“Primary process thinking.” Augustus dismissed his certainty. Little boys and madmen believed that merely thinking things made them so.

“We stay here until I find my guys. Echo Flight making any progress?”

“Still surveilling the Rea shuttle,” Steele reported. “The Rea shuttle is now moving at eighty percent c.”

Echo Flight was following a snail.

“And at that rate they’ll arrive at Rea in . . . ?” Farragut left the blank to be filled.

“Thirty-four years,” Augustus supplied. “Your years.”

Farragut’s blue eyes roamed the overhead. A muscle bulged on his jaw with the clenching of his teeth, silent obscenities trapped within. “Something’s gotta happen.”

“Given that Myriadian ships don’t carry thirty-four years’ worth of air and food, yes, something must. Buy you a drink, John Farragut?”

“Oh, God, yes.”

Though wine aplenty had graced the captain’s table, John Farragut had stayed keen and painfully sober, drinking only at toasts.

“ ‘Have we not the utmost loathing for violence? The utmost?’ ” Farragut repeated his favorite quote of the evening. “I need something to wash this down.”

Colonel Steele returned to the control room as Farragut marched down the narrow corridor, followed by Augustus, and unlocked the bar, and quickly made up for lost time. He pulled a tequila from the rack. Held it up, swishing the worm around the bottom of the bottle. “For Faustino Is-this-okay-to-eat Barron? And how about Madame Save-the-Gorgons Navarro with the strawberry-green lip tint. What was that about?”

“Must be an Earth fashion. It’s not Roman.” Augustus pulled down a shot glass and slid it over for a hit.

Farragut wagged his head as he poured. “I know I’ve been away for a while, but now I’m afraid to go home.”

“What did you make of the twins?” Augustus coiled onto a barstool.

“What twins? I didn’t see—oh. Her. The blonde.”

“She had hair?” said Augustus—and caught a muffin mid-stern. He swiveled his barstool around, hailed his assailant in the hatchway. “Ah. Miss Carmel.”

She’d brought muffins.

Farragut lifted the bottle in toast to Calli. “My sexless XO!”

“Oh, shut up.” Calli pulled up a barstool and rapped down a shot glass, open end up. “The LEN stalking horse was asking for you, O Captain, My Captain.”

“The LEN what?”

“The twins.”

“Oh, for Jesus.”

Command made John Farragut the most attractive man on board. He would have been attractive had he a toad face, which he didn’t. But command also made him inaccessible. Subordinates were off limits to an officer, and every man jack and jane on board Merrimack was John Farragut’s subordinate.

Water water everywhere, but no one to sleep with. The LEN had set a glass of fresh water in front of the very thirsty.

“The sentry reported she was trying to convince him to let her into your quarters,” said Calli.

Farragut shrugged, wondered why he was even being told this. “So, why’d he have to check with you? Did he need help staving her off?”

“He got rid of her all by himself. He was just making sure he’d done the right thing.” The sentry had done it by the book. And to the captain’s lack of comment, Calli said, “Well?”

“Well what?”

“Did he?”

“Calli!”

She shrugged. “Just checking.”

Parched, he might be, but John Farragut would not be herded. Would not be led by his dick. He was feeling singularly trapped, and his kind did not mate in captivity. Preferred to stay with Calli and Augustus at the bar.

And soon the three of them set to addressing their empties by the names of the LEN emissaries, propping the shot glasses up, and knocking them over with muffins at ten paces.

The clearing of a baritone throat broke up the shoot. All three turned.

Ambassador Aghani stood, a rigid dark pillar in the hatchway.

The captain and the XO froze like puppies caught chewing the carpet, muffins burning like guilty brands in their hands. Augustus juggled his, unrepentant.

Aghani let the senior commanders stew in their juvenile poses for a long moment, then pronounced gravely, “I came to apologize for our behavior at your table, Captain. But I see the sentiment would be pearls before an unsuitable audience.”

Farragut drew himself up. “What can I say to something like that?”

“ ‘Pass the muffins,’ ” Calli suggested.

Aghani pronounced soberly, “Sir, I demand, by the authority of the League of Earth Nations and the treaties to which we are bound, that your vessel depart Myriadian space without further delay.”

“No, sir,” said Captain Farragut. The very last answer Aghani expected.

Aghani knew Farragut to be impulsive, belligerent, stubborn, but never insubordinate. Aghani put the situation into words the naval officer might understand, “Given that I am the lawful authority here, what you just said is tantamount to mutiny.”

“Oh, bullshit, sir.” Farragut slung his muffin aside, brushed off his hands. “When you were my guest, I couldn’t speak to you the way I wanted, but you are aboard now without my permission. I have a flight away and there’s no authority in the universe can make me abandon them. Simple disobedience to an illegal order can never be judged mutiny. We stay. Now get off my boat.”

Deep wrathful breaths sounded loud through Aghani’s wide nostrils. His lips worked. He restarted in the voice of forced conciliation. “Very well. Stay. You will strike your colors and accept the LEN flag.”

“No, sir.”

“This is mutiny now.”

“No, it’s not. I’m pretty sure I have to take an oath of loyalty before I can violate it.”

“Law requires you accept the LEN flag while you operate in LEN jurisdiction.”

Had him there. Farragut replied, “Make me.”

Aghani blinked. Calli made a noise in her throat. Augustus shook with silent laughter.

“I beg your pardon?” Aghani tilted one ear forward. Could not possibly have heard that aright.

“I don’t accept your flag. I’m not leaving. You’re going to have to shoot us.”

Aghani stared, airless.

“No, wait,” Farragut revised. “Y’all have no guns. You guys open a dialogue. Send over your negotiation team. Y’all are so good at peaceful resolutions. And there you are.”

Aghani could not speak. He turned, stiffly, mortified, to go. Felt something soft strike him between the shoulder blades, heard it plop softly to the deck.

Did not turn to see who threw it. Walked woodenly away.

Farragut pressed his lips together, nodded. “You know, I might have handled that better.”

“That sound you don’t hear is John Farragut’s career plunging down in flames,” said Augustus.

“Oh, and thanks for the help!” Farragut bent down and retrieved Augustus’ muffin. Gave it back to him. “Nice shot, by the way.”

“Plead the fifth,” said Calli.

“You know you can’t plead the fifth in a court-martial,” Farragut scolded.

“Not that fifth. This fifth.” Clanked an empty bottle on the bar. “Or this one. Or this—”

“Oh, that’s going to make it all right!” Farragut propped himself up between a barstool and the bar.

Calli’s hand beeped softly. She took a report from the officer of the deck: a salvo of courier rockets had just been launched from the LEN. Direction of Earth.

Farragut blew out a breath through narrowed lips. “I gotta be gone before the Presidential order gets here, or Calli, you got yourself a big boat.”

“Don’t want it,” said his second-in-command.

“Bull.” Farragut knew her better.

“Not like that,” said Calli.

“Jesus Christ, where is my flight?” Farragut stared emptily down at the bar, unfocused. “ ‘Make me?’ I told a LEN ambassador ‘Make me?’ ”

“John, you’re drunk.”

“Crapulent. Isn’t that a fine Latin word for you.”

Augustus, who had been matching him drink for drink, managed a perfect vertical on his brief sortie from the bar to unload several rounds.

“You seem to have yourself a Roman,” Calli commented in Augustus’ absence.

“I noticed.” Farragut squinted. “How’d I do that?”

“You’re the finest commander I have ever served, John Farragut. For him being a patterner, it took him long enough to figure that out.” She clapped him on his broad shoulder on rising. “I’m boiled. Good night. Good morning. Good something. Outta here.”

Augustus oozed back onto his barstool in time to catch Calli’s long-legged retreat. A lot of motion in her walk. She let her waist-length hair fall free in its chestnut glory. “And that is not a bad piece of work.”

Farragut turned to regard him in surprise. “Rumor said you were alternating current.”

“I’m AC, I’m not dead.”

Calli had the kind of looks that dismantled men’s knees, emptied their brains, their bank accounts, and yes, it was absurd as hell to call her “Mr.” Carmel.

“You and she?” Augustus asked.

“She’s my XO!” Farragut cried, in the same tone he might say, “She’s my sister!” Then, “And as odd as it is to say, she’s not my type.”

Augustus propped a fist under one sharp cheekbone, amused. “And what is Captain Farragut’s ‘type?’ ”

“Maryann.” Almost a song how he said it. Blue eyes alight and far away, with a smile of memory. “The girl I left behind.”

“Your ex-wife’s name is Laura.” A prompt, that. John would know whom he’d married.

“Maryann is who I should have married.”

“And you didn’t. Why?”

“One of those moments when I let my common sense get the better of me. Talked my heart out of something unwise. Doesn’t work for me. Unwise was the way to go.”

“What made it seem wise to let her go?”

“I knew I wouldn’t be there for her. She was fragile. Gentle. Victorian hearts and flowers and butterflies, four children and a rose garden kind of woman. I married someone who could get along without me. Sure didn’t mean for her to get along quite so damned well.” He peered deep into his glass to see what made him say all that. To Augustus of all people. “Who knew the war would go on so long? And now it’s the Hive instead of y’all.”

“And that is unfortunate.”

Farragut’s brows lifted. “Unfortunate for us not to be fighting each other?”

“I am a soldier, not an exterminator. It is my duty to defend Palatine against the Hive, but there is no glory in it. What warrior does not long to prove himself against a worthy adversary? Who is Achilles without Hector? You are only as strong as your fiercest foe. And tell me truly, John Farragut, in your unwise heart of hearts, wouldn’t you really like to hurl a broadside into a Roman boat? Mine in particular?”

John Farragut seemed to meditate into his glass. At last he lifted liquid-blue eyes to the Roman. “Love to.”

Steele waylaid Augustus in the middle decks corridor. Tautly suggested he consider spelling Echo Flight from its tedious, trudging sortie, ghosting the slow-moving Arran vessel.

The suggestion amused the Roman. “Now that would require sending another flight. You’re offering to put a second flight under my command, Lieutenant Colonel?”

“I’m trading you . . . since you haven’t lost the first one. My dogs are tired. So are you human or what?”

Augustus did not answer the question, but allowed Steele to summon a relief.

Delta Flight had just reported to the flight deck when the call came in.

“Merrimack. Merrimack. Merrimack. This is Echo Two. Echo Leader has vanished! Repeat, Echo Leader has vanished!”

8

FURNITURE NEVER DID MUCH to alter John Farragut’s progress. If sitting at a table, he wanted to get to the hatch beyond it, he was not one for sliding the chair back, standing, and walking around the table. That was not his way. Unless there was food on it, the table was in play as much as the deck. And as for the chair, there was no sliding. He just stood up, and the chair was on its own, and John Farragut was up and over the table, sometimes stepping on it, or, as now, vaulting over it, if he had side clearance, and he was out the hatch before anyone else.

He charged into the control room, reeking a bit, jacketless. He leaned over the com, paused over the speaker to ask the technician, “Who have I got here?”

“Echo Two. Flight Sergeant Khamis, sir,” the tech supplied.

Farragut flicked on the com. “Abdullah! This is Captain Farragut. Talk to me, son.”

Halting, his voice pitched too high, too loud, the Marine pilot Abdullah Khamis reported, “Sir! We are—” Abdullah paused, checking. “—eight light-hours outside the Arran system. Echo Flight was maintaining stealthy pursuit of the target at velocity of eighty percent c, trailing at a distance of five hundred klicks.”

The “target” had been the Arran shuttle with the unlikely destination of Rea.

“Target slowed to submach speed, made some course adjustments as if lining up an approach to something, and then—and then the target vanished. Like down a rabbit hole. Gone. Echo Leader ordered us to hold position. He followed the target’s path, matched it move for move, speed for speed, proceeded to the target’s vanishing point and—vanished. We tried to reestablish communication, but, Captain Farragut, he’s gone. We tried everything except res. No answer. Can’t see him, can’t hear him. He is absolutely not there. We lost him.”

“I got him!” The tac monitor on the other side of the control room reported, quite astonished. He stared at his readouts. Verified, with a startled smile, “I got him!” He flipped on another speaker, from which sounded the voice of Echo Leader.

“Merrimack. Merrimack. Merrimack. Echo Leader requests permission to dock.”

The tac monitor, anticipating the captain’s question, checked his console and reported, “IFF confirmed. It’s Echo Leader. He’s coming in hot on a direct line from the planet Rea!”

Farragut barked into the com. “Echo Leader. Permission granted. Bag your ass to debriefing, now.”

“Aye, aye, sir!”

Farragut reached over the com tech’s shoulder, switched on the other channel and ordered, “Echo Flight, return to Merrimack. Farragut out.” He turned from the com. “Hamster, have Mo meet me in debriefing.”

“You think Echo Leader is hurt, sir?”

“Not for Echo Leader, for me. I need more brain cells for this than I got switched on right now.

John Farragut appeared in the wardroom, in a fresh shirt and clean jacket. Squinted from a banging hangover. Wanted an oxygen mask, but pure oxygen at five atmospheres was toxic, so he suffered.

Echo Leader, Pilot Officer Jan Karowicz, sat, breathing hard as if he had run the forty-three light-years from Rea on foot. Slender, lank, scruffy. Smelled bad. His short, blond hair appeared licked five different directions by a mad cow. The beard was unkempt and not regulation. The captain could not recall ever seeing a bearded Marine.

But that was Steele’s problem. Farragut said nothing of it.

Young Jan Karowicz held a glass of water in a quaking hand. Pale. Might have been hungover, but that alcohol smell was all from Farragut. This boy merely stank.

Colonel Steele’s eyes rounded on seeing his Marine, evidently finding something shocking in the boy’s appearance.

One of the medical department’s dogs, a soulful-eyed Golden, laid its silky head sympathetically on Karowicz’s knee.

Farragut was ready to begin. “Where’s Augustus?”

“Plugged into Echo Leader’s flight recorder.”

Farragut nodded. “Okay. Pilot Officer Karowicz—Jan—let’s have it in your words. What happened out there?”

Karowicz trembled quite a lot. His report matched Echo Two’s account exactly up to the point where Echo Leader had vanished. In Karowicz’s version, everything else vanished.

“And you displaced to Rea,” Steele filled in.

“Displaced?” A hard laugh. Karowicz wagged his head. “No, sir.”

“You did end up in the Rean system,” said Steele.

“Well, yes, sir. Eventually.” The pilot officer poured himself another glass of water from the pitcher on the table.

Eventually. The word lifted brows all round the chamber.

Eventually, Farragut asked, “Pilot Officer? Just how long do you estimate your journey took?”

“Fifty-four hours, thirty-two minutes. Give or take.” The Marine gulped his water. “Sir.”

Farragut looked to the maintenance rate, who confirmed, “His Swift’s chron confirms that, Captain. He’s real low on air.”

“No shit. Sorry, sirs.” Echo Leader’s glass rattled against the table as he set it down. He became aware of the consternation around him, having nothing to do with his word choice. He patted the dog at his knee for moral support, and asked guardedly. “How—may I ask, sir—how long do you think I was gone?”

Tight-lipped, bug-eyed glances surrounded him.

Farragut answered faintly—eventually—“Not long.”

Steele made the Marine describe his journey. Karowicz could scarcely call it a journey. Motionless. Directionless. No stars, no referents, no communication. Nothingness for fifty-four hours and thirty-two minutes, after which he emerged as abruptly as he’d gone in, nearly ass-ending the Arran shuttle, which magically reappeared before him, but now in Rean space.

“I have no idea how I got there, or where I was in between.”

“He was in a kzachin,” said Augustus, ducking through the hatchway.

Farragut turned full around in his chair. “Translation, Augustus?”

The captain would have known without being told that Augustus had been plugged into something. The tall Roman looked cadaverous. Eyes hollow, cheeks sunken. The IO answered: “A kzachin is a hollow of sorts. Something empty into which one falls. But I like ‘bridge’ better now. Starbridge. Stargate. Pick one. Wormhole. I don’t like that one.”

“No? What’s wrong with ‘wormhole?’ ”

“Sending a mass through a wormhole collapses the wormhole.”

“The Arrans are reusing their wormholes,” said Farragut. “So what’s holding them open?”

“Worms. Hell, I don’t know.” Augustus squeezed his eyes.

The interrogation soon ended with Farragut sending the bedraggled pilot officer to sick bay, the dog in gentle escort.

The captain conferred alone with his IO. “Why couldn’t you translate kzachin before?”

“I did. Try to translate ‘rabbit hole’ into Myriadian. Oh, they’ll understand the words reasonably well—a hole for an animal. But they won’t know it’s what Alice fell down to get to Wonderland.”

“How are the Myriadians seeing these kzachin when we can’t?”

“Actually, we can.” Augustus produced a global projector from his pocket, and activated the imager, transforming the wardroom into a starfield on all sides.

“This is the Myriad.” Farragut recognized the dense cluster all round him. “Where are the kzachin?”

“We’ve been detecting them all along. But when you’re dealing with a ship’s sensors, what goes onto your screen is a computer program’s interpretation of the data, not the raw data itself. The ship’s computer misinterpreted the data.”

“What’s the computer been doing to the data?”

“The raw input from a kzachin mimics certain aspects of a distant black hole. So the program filters pigeonholed the data into that known slot without regard for the extraneous, nonconforming data, and said: It’s a black hole. A kzachin registers no distance, so the filters interpreted that to mean ‘immeasurably distant,’ as in ‘too far away to clutter up the tactical display with.’ And another thing—kzachin are two-dimensional. Look at them sideways, they aren’t there at all. Could also be why the filters tossed the data. But now that we can recognize the data for what they are, we can plot the locations of the kzachin. They’re transparent to the human eye, so I’ve ascribed to them the image of a colored light.”

“Show me.”

“Hope you like international orange.” Augustus activated the locator program on his projector. The Myriad broke out in garish orange dots.

John Farragut turned full circle, looked up, looked down. “Lordy.”

The cluster was riddled with kzachin. “Where do they all lead?”

“We know definitely that two of them connect. This one, eight hours outside of the Arran system, leads to this one, forty-three light years away, in the Rean system.”

“Does it lead back the other way?”

A slight shrug. Augustus didn’t know. He did say, “There is a Janus element to the word kzachin.”

“A what?”

“Janus, the god of gates, for gates have two faces. There is an implication of duality within the word kzachin. A coming and going. Cross-referencing spaceport flight schedules for Arra, Rea, and Centro ought to fill in some more connections, but I have no interest in doing that.”

Farragut nodded. “Right now I just want to know where that one goes.” His forefinger found the orange blot in the vicinity of Alpha Flight’s last known location. “This is what the minefield that killed Cowboy was guarding. This kzachin.”

“Probable. But the question then follows: was the minefield guarding against a coming or a going?”

Farragut did not like the possibilities that sprang to mind. The unknown beyond the gate.

“I wouldn’t send anything after them except a drone,” Augustus went on. “And if you do, be advised, it will not be able to transmit any data back to you until and if it finds its way out again. And there’s one more thing. The traveler’s time distortion is not the alarming part of this.”

“I know,” said Farragut. “Ours is. I did the math.”

Immediately after Echo Flight reported Echo Leader’s disappearance from Arran space, Echo Leader was announcing his return to Arran space after a fourteen-hour flight from Rea.

Augustus summed it up: “Echo Leader got to Rea fourteen hours before he left Arran space.”

“Oh, well this is unacceptable behavior in a wormhole. Hell, Augustus, maybe the wormholes are all shut and we just don’t know it yet.”

“Maybe they are.”

Farragut scowled. “I meant that as a joke.”

“I didn’t.”

The captain turned a troubled gaze to the glowing orange points on the star field. “Space and time are two sides of the same coin. Mass bends space. Why are the bends so severe here? The Myriad is dense, but is it dense enough for this?”

Augustus rubbed his haggard face, shook his head, spoke into his hands, “No.”

“The Myriadians don’t have FTL capability, so they can’t know of the time distortion. And they can’t fly fast enough without the kzachin to see themselves return before they’ve left. But we can. Do you know what this means?”

“Yes. It’s a disappointing waste of a seismic migraine.” Plugging into patterner mode cost Augustus dearly. “I thought I was going to report to the emperor the discovery of quick, easy travel over vast distances. What I’ve got instead are fixed-point aberrant wormholes. All the termini are confined to this glob of stars somewhere off the Hive highway, which, by the way, we’ve managed to misplace.”

That wasn’t the implication Farragut meant, but it raised yet another question, surprising and disturbing. “All the termini?” said Farragut, unable to believe such an extraordinary phenomenon could be unique to this globular cluster. “Are there no kzachin outside the Myriad?”

“Haven’t detected any.” Augustus rubbed his haggard face. Spoke through his hands, “Though we know there is at least one more.”

“Origin,” said Farragut, feeling cold.

“There is a kzachin at Origin,” Augustus confirmed. “Your Alpha Flight could have fallen down a very long, furry rabbit hole.”

“Do we have any idea yet where Origin is?”

“We know where it is not.”

“Where isn’t it?”

“The Milky Way.”

“Good God Almighty. Are you serious? Doesn’t Kerry Blue’s recording of Origin’s night sky line up to anywhere we can identify?”

“Kerry’s star map doesn’t line up at all.”

“Well, then, is her map necessarily accurate? Maybe it’s just a bunch of pretty lights Donner gave to Kerry, and it doesn’t indicate anything.”

“No. Donner gave Kerry a very fine recording. Fine enough to pull the spectra off the stars and do some distance /brightness calculations. Distance to the recorder, of course. Even if some of the readings are contaminated—and they are—the relative brightnesses and distances are good enough to draw a rough map.”

“So what’s to say Origin is not on the far side of the galactic hub? Our maps of the far side are suspect.”

“Because Kerry’s recording was not made inside a spiral galaxy.”

Farragut stared at the stars dotting his feet, absorbing that one. Glanced up. “You’re sure?”

Met certain silence.

Farragut exhaled. “That’s a long, furry rabbit hole, Alice.”

“Donner’s sky exists inside an irregular galaxy,” Augustus told him. “Matter rich, metal poor, full of hot, bright stars. Very young. Very active. Very far from here.”

“One of the Magellenic Clouds?” Farragut suggested, trying to keep it in the neighborhood.

“Not sure. What we see of the Magellenic Clouds is one hundred seventy thousand years old, so our information on that place is a little stale. There are no less than two supernovae in Origin’s sky, but supernovae are so short-lived, there’s no matching them up at this distance. The Large Magellenic Cloud shows the beginnings of barred spiral arms and there’s no hint of that in what I have to work with, so I’m inclined to dismiss the Large Cloud as a possibility. As to the Small Cloud, it’s like trying to recognize a man from his baby picture.”

“Could you?” Farragut asked his patterner.

“With a better baby picture, maybe. But to what purpose? You can’t get there in real time. We can’t even travel to the other side of this galaxy in reasonable time, let alone voyage to another one.”

Farragut brooded so solemnly that Augustus added, “And if you have any idea about flying this boat through a kzachin, you let me out first. I am not leaving the galaxy.”

Farragut paced the small confines of the wardroom. “I need to find my Marines before a LEN rocket comes back and hands me my commission in a shoebox.”

“Your Marines are dead, John Farragut.”

“My Swifts have homing instructions. If my people are dead, their Swifts will find their way back, and I’ll bury my dead.”

Augustus gazed round at the vast sea of projected stars, trillions of years deep. “Presupposes they are anywhere they can find their way back from.”

Flight Sergeant Reg Monroe watched her air reservoir dwindle to the point of no return. Swifts did not have air scrubbers like Merrimack’s. Swifts were short-range vessels. Even if Reg could figure out which way was back so she could turn that way and go there, she would run out of breathable air before she could reach the Merrimack.

Reg had, on sleepless nights, already gone over what she would do if ever stranded in space. She thought she was out of tears, but they welled up one last time as she faced the fact that it was time to do it.

She disconnected her environmental alarm, and poked a hole in her heat exchanger, disconnected her carbon monoxide monitor and the control overrides.

She’d always heard carbon monoxide was odorless, but still she sniffed, expecting to smell something.

Did not think this was working. She felt vaguely sickish, her throat sore, probably from all that screaming.

Could not keep her eyes open. There was nothing to take a last look at anyway, she thought, drifting from final consciousness.

Scarcely even heard the proximity alarms blaring imminent collision.

Dak Shepard jinked hard to avoid Alpha Three come bulleting up his tail. “Hey! Reg! Wake up!”

How had Dak known she was sleeping? Dak?

Dak!

Reg forced her eyes open, stuffed an oxygen mask over her face and inhaled huge gulps. Wrapped her hand round the hole in her heat exchanger and fumbled for duct tape.

“Reg, where the hell are you going?”

Crying just to be anywhere, Reg choked. Her viewport was full of stars. Not nearly enough of them, but there were stars and there was Dak.

She taped up the hole in her heat exchanger. Breathed. Breathed. Flushed her cabin of carbon monoxide. Halted her Swift’s wild course and steered back toward the others.

“Dak! You magnificent baboon! I have never been so happy to hear anyone’s voice in my life!”

And the other voices filled her headset with beautiful noise. Twitch. Carly. They were all here. Her headphone clamored with relieved chatter and exclamations. And Hazard Sewell barking, “Alpha Flight! Form up! Call in, by the numbers! Alpha Two!”

“Alpha Two, aye.”

“Alpha Three!”

“Alpha Three. I’m gonna throw up. I mean aye.” Breathing. Trying to clear her head.

Heard the rest of them call in. All here. All amazed to have arrived together, when each told of losing direction and going different speeds. Carly Delgado had red-walled her thrusters. Twitch Fuentes had come to a dead stop for several hours. Yet here they all were in a bunch, spat from the maw of the same beast.

They were all here. Here. A place where none of the stars matched anything in their spectral catalog. Their catalog contained billions of star prints. Twitch: “Anybody got a star match yet?”

“Not a one. Where are we?”

“Not in Kansas, sir.”

An orange star lay thirty-nine astronomical units off. They set their bearings by that. Called it North, for the lack of any other referent.

Reg, who really needed to restock her air, did a quick survey. “Hazard, we’re inside the solar system of this orange star here. From the planetary spread, I think there could be a planet in the hospitable zone on the far side of it.”

“I’m not wasting time planet hunting,” Hazard sent back. “Alpha Flight, plot a course back to the precise coordinates where you first reentered real space. What are you reading at that point?”

“Nothing. I got serious nothing,” said Reg.

“I got a black hole way in the background,” said Carly. “Nothing at that point.”

“That’s not a black hole in the background,” Hazard cried in sudden realizaton. “That’s the hole we came through and it’s right there.”

“I see it, Hazard,” Carly sent back. “I think you’re right. That is the hole. It’s closer—a lot closer—than the sensors say it is.”

“What the hell are all you looking at?” Dak squawked over the com. “That? That’s a—that’s not there.”

“Alpha Flight, form up. We are going back.”

“We are not!” Reg shrieked. Her brain shut off. Primal terror controlled this vessel.

“Suck it up, Flight Sergeant Monroe. Fall in.”

Hazard ordered his Flight to lock all their Swifts’ force fields together into a single shell. They had each noticed in transit that reality ended at the perimeter of their force fields. If they joined within a single field, they might not have to go through the return voyage alone.

“Might? Might? You don’t know! I know I can’t go back there! You don’t know how much I can’t go back in there! You don’t even know if that thing has a back to go to!”

“Chica, chica,” Carly said, in the voice she used to calm snarling dogs.

Hazard reasoned, “There used to be a minefield guarding the other side of the trapdoor we fell down. That means this thing has to go two ways.”

“It does NOT!” Reg shrieked. “It doesn’t have to ANYTHING! You go back, Hazard Sewell! I am not going in there!”

“Flight Sergeant!”

“What! What? What you got, Hazard! You got nothing to scare me with! Court-martial? Sounds like heaven, sir! But it ain’t gonna happen ’cause I ain’t going in there. You gonna shoot me? Then shoot me. Just you do it this side of that fucking hole ’cause this elegant hag AIN’T GOING IN! Do you read me, SIR?”

That struck him dumb. Hazard felt he was holding on by his fingernails, lost like no one had ever been lost, and now he’d lost control of his flight. Never could deal with an upset female. Damn whoever let women in the U.S. Fleet Marine Corps.

“Mr. Monroe—”

“No!”

“I got her, sir.” That was Dak. “It’s okay, Hazard, I got her. Reg, honey, come here and dock with me. Get in here. I ain’t doin’ so good myself.” No innuendoes in the invitation. Just fear. “Don’t make me go in there by myself, babe. Semper fi. I ain’t gonna make it without you.”

Human need vibrated in his warm muddy voice.

Crying so hard she couldn’t talk, Reg docked with Dak’s Swift, crawled through the emergency coupler and squeezed into the one-man cockpit with Dak—the smelly, clammy, sweet, scared ape. She held onto him tight.

With force fields interlocked, Alpha Flight jumped back into nowhere.

Donner granted Captain Farragut’s request for an audience, but kept him waiting in his audience hall long enough to make it clear who needed whom.

Captain Farragut and Colonel Augustus displaced into the dark. A storm wind blew rain through the palace’s wide, white archways to puddle on the jeweled floor. Outside, rubbery trees tossed wildly, bowing all the way to the ground. The coral plants shrank into hard shells and became spiny brown rocks. Waves in stone-gray rollers crashed at the foot of the terrace walls. Lightning in great purpled trees of fire lanced the furious sky.

Within the Archon’s gloomy audience hall, frosted globes faded up to a soft glow. Farragut had wondered at the globes earlier, wondered what they could be. They looked like lamps, but he’d wondered what possible use the Myriadians would have for artificial lighting in a globular cluster. But of course there were clouds, and probably basements, and he knew there were mines.

The lizard plants strayed off their shelves and huddled over rain puddles blown onto the mosaic floor. They lapped water off the beryl and sapphires, tourmaline and emeralds.

Augustus bided the time studying the walls in the lamplight. “Did you notice this?” He nodded up at the monumental inscription over the Archon’s grand throne.

“I saw it,” said Farragut. “I can’t read it. You didn’t include that script in the language module.”

“Because it’s not Myriadian. It’s Original.”

“Can you translate it?”

“No. I don’t have enough samples of Original.”

“So what pattern do you see?”

“The script is boustrophedon.”

“That’s Greek to me, Augustus.”

“It’s Greek to everyone else, too. Boustrophedon is a Greek word.”

“Then speak English.”

“There is no equivalent English word,” said Augustus. “Boustrophedon means back and forth, as an ox hitched to a plow treads the rows, this way, then that way. The Myriadians have engraved these lines sinistrorsum, then they turned around and wrote back dextrorsum.”

Sinistrorsum? Dextrorsum? “Are you speaking Greek again, Augustus?”

“Latin. Left to right. Right to left.”

Wind howled through the colonnade, ruffled all the lights. Rain fell in splattered sheets across the precious stones.

Farragut stopped his agitated pacing (sinistrorsum and dextrorsum) to scan the engraved symbols above the Archon’s throne. “I see it.” Certain symbols appeared backward when they appeared in contiguous rows. “What’s it got to do with anything?”

“We were looking for a language match for these folk.”

“Augustus, you expect to find a known language match when we have evidence that these people come from another galaxy?”

“I didn’t expect to find it,” said Augustus. “I just found it.”

A lightning flash froze the moment. The air sizzled, left an ozone tang in Farragut’s nostrils. Thunder crashed. The boom rolled out in a rumbling that reached up from the floor and shook his throat.

The Archon chose this moment to make his entrance without greeting. The lizard plants shrank back into their beds.

“What did you bring me?” Donner demanded.

“The kzachin,” Farragut countered.

“I already control them,” said the Archon.

“Then tell me where the kzachin at the edge of the Myriad leads,” said Farragut.

Donner chose to be coy. Turned his maned back toward his visitors, looking more like a handsome animal than a man from this angle. Still an authoritative figure. “There are so many kzachin. I do not know where they all go.”

Farragut glanced aside. Augustus’ slow blink confirmed: Lie.

(“I’m not getting anywhere here, Augustus. Assistance.”)

Augustus produced pen and paper, drew a set of symbols—boustrophedon—and gave it to the captain. (“Ask your buddy what this says.”)

Farragut offered the paper to Donner. “Do you know what this says?”

Donner would not take it from Farragut’s hand. Farragut set the paper down on a polished granite ledge and stepped away from it.

The Archon took his time strolling over to glance at it. Surprise made him pick up the paper and carry it closer to a lamp. His dark eyes flickered back and forth across the symbols, then up to Farragut. “You are missing several lines. And these are cut off.”

“But you can read it,” said Augustus.

“Of course I can read it,” Donner told Farragut, as if Farragut, not Augustus, had asked the question. “This is my name.”

Donner’s forefinger traced a circle around three symbols:

He gave the paper back to Farragut. “I hope you did not touch the actual engraving.”

“Why?”

“It is radioactive.”

“It is inscribed in lead,” said Augustus.

“Then you saw a copy,” said Donner. “What you have there is the inscription from the inner back plate of a reliquary. The plate is solid thorium. The whole reliquary was made of heavy and rare elements. I suspected they would take it apart.” The last part was spoken in an agitated mutter, more to himself, in bitterness.

“They?”

“I sent the reliquary to Origin. A gift. Apparently, they do not hold my gifts in as much regard as they hold the box.”

“What was in it?”

“Things with meaning. The box, the box is merely priceless. There is no thorium on Origin. As your man said, Origin has virtually no elements heavier than iron.”

“You sent the reliquary to Origin,” said Augustus, using a polite you spoken to a superior. “Did it get there?”

Donner glanced angrily, one alien to the other. Asked Farragut, indignant, “Does your man mean to tell me the reliquary was stolen?”

“Not stolen. Lost in transit,” said Augustus. “Does everything you send into the kzachin come out of the kzachin?”

Donner paused, seemed about to lie again, then admitted crossly, a dismissal, “As you said, it is a long, long way from here.”

Donner’s bare feet whispered a brisk retreat across the jeweled floor with his leaving.

Captain Farragut displaced back to Merrimack with his IO in defeat. Donner was not going to give away his transportation secrets any more than John Farragut would give Donner guns.

“Well, Augustus, did you get anything from that? Does that wormhole go to Origin?”

“It may,” Augustus allowed. “But it may have branches or other hazards. We already know that kzachin can distort time. And now I know that some of them may distort it severely. Catastrophically, in fact.”

“Based on what? Where did you get that pattern?”

“From this.” He held up the paper, between forefinger and impudent digit.

Farragut snatched it from him and regarded the alien inscription. Upside down. “What is this? Where did this text come from?”

“From your own computer’s data bank.”

“We have this?” Farragut kept staring at the alien signs as if staring would make sense fall into them. “And it matches Original? Then why didn’t it come up during our language search?”

“Why?” Augustus picked up a book someone had left in the wardroom, a picture book of fairy tales. It was a popular book on Merrimack. The crew made video recordings of themselves reading from it to send home to their children. Augustus opened the book to a drawing. “Here. Search this. Where’s Little Red Riding Hood.”

Farragut pointed her out right away, asking, “Where is this taking me, Augustus?”

“Child’s play, isn’t it? But without this specific picture inputted along with a precise set of instructions, your most powerful computer could not have found her if you gave it all year to search. First you would have to instruct the machine that these two-dimensional lines represent storybook characters and that Lil Red is a storybook character. Then there’s the matter of color. This picture is black and white, so how can there be a Little Red Riding Hood in there? But you knew the color of her cloak because there’s a wolf in the bed wearing Granny’s cap and glasses, and the little girl carries a basket of goodies. You didn’t need to sift through all these images, checking for parameters, and I don’t need color to find Little Red Riding Hood.”

“So where is she?”

“Grandma’s house.” Augustus righted the inscription in the captain’s hands. “Planet Xi.”

Farragut blinked, all the connections gone blank behind his blue eyes.

Augustus continued, “Your computer checked the Myriadian languages against all known living languages. This is a dead one.”

“Oh, no, don’t tell me it’s Latin.”

“Deader than that.” Latin had, in fact, been thoroughly resuscitated. “You are holding the inscription from the Xi Tablet.”

“The Xi Tablet. The Xi Tablet,” Farragut murmured. “I know what that is. I . . . used to know what the Xi Tablet is. What’s the Xi Tablet?”

“Oldest known artifact anywhere. It’s a twenty-billion-year-old hunk of lead in a fifteen-billion-year-old universe. And it has an inscription on it.”

“Why didn’t the computer match the symbols?”

“Because the symbols they have in common appear dextrorsum on the Xi Tablet and sinistrorsum on Donner’s wall. I told you, the Myriadians write their monumental inscriptions back and forth. The computer did not recognize the inversion. I did.”

“If it’s got Donner’s name on it, then that tablet can’t be twenty billion years old.”

“Oh, but it is,” said Augustus, something like malice, something like enjoyment glinting in his eye.

“Donner’s reliquary was solid thorium,” Farragut reminded him. “The Xi Tablet is lead.”

“Lead 208 to be precise,” Augustus confirmed. “With traces of radium 224 and radon 220. Garden-variety lead is lead 206, which is the end product of uranium 238. Lead 207 is the end product of uranium 235. When you find lead 206 or 207, you know you have very old uranium. You know by the isotope of lead what element it used to be.”

“And lead 208 is the end product of . . . ?”

“Thorium 232.”

“The Xi Tablet is old thorium,” said Farragut.

“Very, very old thorium,” said Augustus. “Older than the planet it was found on. The Xi system coalesced about five billion years after the Big Bang, at the same time you and I were hydrogen and helium atoms inside stars that no longer exist.”

“We are stardust, we are golden.”

“We are so lost. So here is a lump of very old lead that has no business being on that planet, or anywhere else in this universe. The assumption has been that the Xi Tablet was on Xi a long time, given that it was buried quite deep. But the Xi Tablet has Donner’s name on it, and Donner is not that old, so we may have to rethink that conclusion. Donner sent his reliquary to Origin—through a kzachin. We know that kzachin can bend time. Echo Leader came out the other end of his kzachin aged five days more than the rest of us. Perhaps there’s one other rabbit hole you don’t ever want to fall down, Alice.”

Farragut’s eyes widened. “Donner’s reliquary stumbled through the wrong wormhole and came out aged twenty billion years?”

“Best theory I’ve got at the moment,” said Augustus. “Watch that last step.”

Farragut hushed in horror. “Alpha Flight,” he breathed.

Augustus nodded. “They may already be back. If they aged twenty billion years, would we even know what they were if we saw them?”

PART TWO

Functions of Chaos

9

JOHN FARRAGUT BARRELED THROUGH the causeway that joined his ship to the LEN vessel, the impact of his footfalls making the flexible connection undulate. The deck bowed up, nearly tripping him. Ambassador Aghani cut him off at the soft dock’s end and launched a tirade before Farragut could begin to warn him of the Myriad’s wormholes.

“Captain Farragut, you have gone behind the League’s back to contact the Arran despite our explicit orders to cease all contact. Must I explain chain of command to you? Furthermore, I don’t believe you have a squadron out. That is a deliberate fiction to subvert League authority. I demand—”

“Captain Farragut!” Calli’s voice sounded loud from the com on Farragut’s hand, overriding the mute.

“Not now,” Farragut growled into the back of his fist.

“Now, sir,” Calli’s voice was quietly insistent.

“What is it?” Farragut asked. His XO had an infallible sense of priority.

“Deck there.”

Aghani smiled coldly. “That will be the courier from Earth, conveying your dismissal from your President.”

That was not possible—though the bounds of possibility had become extremely spongy of late. No courier could arrive from Earth so quickly.

“IFF?” Farragut asked Calli.

“Friendly! It’s Alpha Flight!”

John Farragut rocked up on the balls of his feet and smiled back at Aghani, too happy for his smile to be anything less than purely joyful. “There’s my flight,” he said innocently, as if his fighters had been out for a little jaunt. He started away, at a brisk march at first, then running through the madly undulating causeway, back to Merrimack, roaring as he came. “Get this hose off my boat. Seal the lock. Calli! Take us out to meet Alpha Flight. Get those Swifts on board now! Go! Go! Go!”

Hatches banged shut and sealed behind the Captain’s bulleting return from the LEN vessel. The soft dock retracted, link severed. The breach in Merrimack’s force field healed over.

John Farragut paused a moment, knuckle to teeth, eyes tight shut, alone in the corridor. Sir? Thy will be done. But if it’s not too much trouble, will them still alive, okay?

Merrimack’s six engines gave a low subliminal growl, and he felt his ship’s power bunch under him like a tiger’s muscles preparing for a spring.

Farragut opened his eyes, shouted into his com, “Calli! Do you have radio contact with Alpha Flight?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Voice or auto?”

“Voice, sir. They’re alive!”

Eyes up. Thank you.

Merrimack sped out to meet the long-missing Swifts. Her tractors guided the little ships to the flight deck. You could hear the banging through the hull as the Swifts touched down, then locked down; the whir and clank of the elevators hauling them inboard to the hangar deck.

Farragut ran to the access corridor that led to the starboard hangar deck. Crewmen dived out of his path as he charged down tight passageways and ducked through the hatchways. He slid down the ladder rails to the hangar deck.

Someone with the same imperative came sliding down from the top deck after him, fast, skimmed Farragut’s hands off the rails, landing him on his back, her on top of him, on the hangar deck in a sprawl. Not too weighty. Kerry Blue.

Flat on his back with an armful of gyrene green on him, Farragut asked, “Am I not moving fast enough for you, Flight Sergeant?”

“Oh, shit!” She scrambled to get off of him. Too fast for comfort. Kerry Blue had way too many elbows.

The OOD barked, “Captain on deck!”

Heels cracked to attention all over the hangar deck. Still on his ass, Farragut took their salutes. “As you were.” And, pulling himself off the deck, “Why aren’t those Swifts open yet?”

Forbidding red lights answered from the deck monitors. “Still pressurizing, Cap’n,” the chief said. “They’re running their Swifts thin. Cutting their oxygen consumption is my guess. We open ’em now, we’d hammer their ears in. No telling what kind of shape they’re in.”

Mo Shah arrived on deck with his medic team.

Kerry Blue hovered, sobbing. A voice at her back snarled, “What have you got to blubber about, Marine?”

Steele, of course.

He shouldered past her to join the medics clustered around the Swifts. “Stay out of the way.”

Deck monitors turned green with a soft tone.

“Are we there?” Steele demanded.

“Close enough,” the chief answered and ordered his erks: “Pop ’em!”

Cockpits hissed open. Steele tore the canopy off the nearest ship, reached in, and lifted out the ashen, limp figure of little Regina Monroe. He set her down on the deck. She teetered on her feet like something just born. Looked just as wet.

Steele reached back into the cockpit, clasped arms with Dak Shepard and hauled the big guy out of the same little ship.

Other shaken, stinking Marines oozed from their vessels to form up at less-than-rigid attention before Captain Farragut.

Farragut asked, “Colonel Steele, who do we have?”

Steele barked names, “Lieutenant Hazard Sewell!”

“Sir!”

“Flight Sergeant Monroe!”

“Sir!”

“Flight Sergeant Shepard!”

“Sir!”

“Flight Sergeant Fuentes!”

“Here. Oh, God, sir. I’m here. Sir!”

“Flight Sergeant Delgado!”

“Sir!”

Steele turned smartly, his face flushed ruddy, breath drawn deep, voice husky. “Alpha Flight present and accounted for, sir.”

“Thank you, Colonel Steele.” Farragut’s eyes beamed. He strolled to the flight leader. “Rough trip, Mr. Sewell?”

“You cannot imagine, sir.”

Farragut clasped Alpha Leader’s shoulder. The Marine swayed under his hand. “Could be worse,” Farragut said warmly. “By our clocks, you guys died last week.”

Hazard Sewell tilted his head, made a speculative moue. “May have done, sir.”

“Chief! I want the brains sucked out of these Swifts’ black boxes. I want to know where they’ve been.” And to Hazard Sewell, “ ’Cause I’m pretty sure y’all don’t know.”

“No, sir,” Hazard verified, relieved. He had been wondering how he would ever explain what he’d been through. Had to love the captain for already knowing. Should’ve expected it. “Thank you, sir.”

Farragut turned to the medical officer. “Mo. Your flight.”

“Aye, sir.” Mo Shah took the weary Marines in hand.

Farragut bounded back up to his control room, his steps springing, spirit flying. “We’re whole. We’re done here. We’re out of here. Calli! Make us go away!”

The battleship Merrimack backtracked out of the Myriad the way she had come, until the cluster’s dazzling millions of suns dwindled to a single light.

Somewhere back here Captain Farragut had lost the trail of the Hive. He needed Jose Maria Cordillera and Colonel Augustus to help him pick up the hunt again.

He found the two together in Augustus’ makeshift quarters in the torpedo storage bay. Cordillera, being a civilian, nodded at the captain’s entrance but did not stand, so as not to interrupt Augustus.

Augustus, being Augustus, ignored the captain entirely, intent on playing Jose Maria’s guitar—Augustus’ guitar now, for Jose Maria had given it to him.

“Because he can play it,” Jose Maria Cordillera explained the gift.

Jose Maria Cordillera could play, but not like this. Augustus drew amazing sounds from the acoustic guitar—plaintive chords and rills of passionate sadness that found expression nowhere else in the caustic, detached Roman’s stony being. No one guessed Augustus had it in him.

“Where’ve you been hiding that?” said Farragut at song’s end, marveling. Music tamed the obnoxious beast.

“I don’t remember learning,” said Augustus.

Augustus had moved some of his belongings from his Striker, altering the torpedo storage bay into an aristocratic Roman chamber—furnished now with rich tapestries of somber hues, a few small pieces of distinctly Roman furniture, climbing plants springing from heavy Grecian urns, a statue, being a copy of the Winged Victory from the Louvre, and a hammock, stretched diagonally between torpedo racks.

“Picked a hell of a time to redecorate, Augustus,” said Farragut. “I hope to need these torpedoes soon.”

“We are back in the hunt?”

“Tryin’ to be. I need you to get me there. Stop that.” Augustus had started to play again, and John Farragut was finding it difficult to stay aggressive with those lovely Spanish strains haunting the air.

The pretty melody ceased. From the background, the pounding bass of the young Marines’ raucous music pushed itself into notice. Augustus lifted his head to listen. “I think I used to like that in my past life.” He tilted his head to listen, as if trying to find the part of himself that responded to the raw noise. Shook his head. “It’s gone now.”

“How can I help you, young Captain?” Jose Maria Cordillera asked.

“The Hive,” said Farragut. “We were on its trail until we stumbled into the Myriad. If we ran into the Myriad, why didn’t the Hive run through it? Hive swarms travel in straight lines.”

“The Hive did not come this way,” Jose Maria Cordillera concluded.

“But a swarm came close. And it didn’t go in. What could cause the Myriad to get passed over?”

“A mezuzah on the door,” said Augustus, loosening the strings of his guitar.

“And what would constitute a mezuzah to the Hive?” Farragut wondered aloud. “Can you think like a gorgon?”

“I can think like a machine, which the Hive does. And Dr. Cordillera can think like a virus, which the Hive does.”

Farragut glanced from Augustus to Jose Maria. He opened both empty palms. “So? Why aren’t there gorgons here?”

“Something made the swarm turn,” said Cordillera. “All things being equal, the Hive moves according to inertia. Something here made the swarm turn. They would have had reason. But I do not see it.”

“Augustus?” Farragut prompted a second opinion.

“What do you know about the types of planets found in globular clusters?” Augustus answered with a quiz, as he replaced his guitar in its case.

“There usually aren’t any,” Farragut answered.

“And there you are,” said Augustus.

Jose Maria Cordillera nodded. Of course, why had he not seen that?

Farragut shook his head, still not seeing it. “Where am I?”

“A globular cluster normally has no planets,” said Augustus. “Which means no food. Its mass makes it a gravity well. A Hive swarm would steer wide of the gravitational drag. The Hive does not like to expend energy unless it’s running to the dinner table.”

“But the table is set,” said Farragut. “There are three living solar systems inside the Myriad. That’s a lot to eat.”

“Think flat, John Farragut,” said Augustus. “Stay in the box. Globular clusters have no planets. The Hive won’t look for exceptions to a long-established pattern.”

Jose Maria nodded agreement.

Farragut shook his head. “How can they be so stupid?”

“How can you be so human? You are an intuitive creature, John Farragut. For the flat mind, data gets sifted through logic gates and Boolean choke points. Things either are or they are not. ‘Sort of’ is a powerful concept. The Hive doesn’t have it.”

“So the swarm turned before it got here. Which way did they go? Or should I ask: from which way did they come?”

“I have not figured that part yet,” said Augustus.

“Do it. I don’t care how you do it, gentlemen, find me a target.”

Farragut left Jose Maria Cordillera and Augustus to their task, while he joined Colonel Steele in the wardroom for the debriefing of Alpha Flight.

Steele came to attention before the captain, then glanced guardedly past him. “I hope you haven’t brought that thing with you. I won’t have a Roman grilling my Marines.”

“I have Augustus gorgon tracking,” said Farragut.

“Should be easy for him. Birds of a feather.”

Farragut waved off the comment. He surveyed the somewhat guilty-looking pilots of Alpha Flight. “Where have your boys and girls been, TR?”

Steele frowned. The frown became a scowl. He hated being asked questions he could not answer. Made him look stupid. TR Steele hated looking stupid. The Roman, Augustus, had made a campaign of making Steele look stupid, and Steele had had enough of it.

But Steele’s Marines were only able to tell of nothingness, a spaceless space responsive to nothing, in which there was no speed, no acceleration, no direction. No communication.

Out of the void they had, each and all, emerged together, no matter what each had tried to do in transit, in a place not on any map. They returned the way they came, a vastly shorter journey than the going, with scarcely a breath left to breathe.

“That matches what Echo Leader reported on his voyage to Rea,” Farragut said.

“Not quite,” said Steele. He stepped aside to let his Marines confess to the captain for themselves.

And the reason for the guilty looks came out.

The Marines of Alpha Flight had resonated.

Farragut ducked his head in a double take. “On our harmonic? You resonated on our harmonic? And we didn’t receive it? That’s not possible.”

The Swifts’ black boxes confirmed it. Alpha Leader and Alpha Three had each shot the flare.

“Severe breach of discipline, sir. I’ll take care of it,” Steele assured him.

It was the worst breach. Merrimack was on silent run.

Resonance summoned the Hive.

“There’s another real alarming part of this, TR.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Both their resonators failed,” said Farragut. “We’ve got a serious equipment problem with our Swifts.”

“No, sir,” Steele said. Felt clunky. Farragut wasn’t getting it. Easy to see why he wasn’t getting it. “Both resonators worked. The black boxes of both Swifts say they resonated.”

“How can that be?” said Farragut.

Resonance had no frequency, no speed, it just was. The signature harmonic to which it resonated existed within the receiver. Without the receiver, the resonance was not there. Resonance did not travel like starlight or sound. It existed everywhere at the moment of resonance, then ceased.

And to Steele’s confounded silence, Farragut guessed, “Merrimack’s receivers aren’t functional?” Still trying to stay within the realm of the possible.

“Mack’s res chambers are functional. All of them.”

“Then?” Farragut waited for answers. None came. Steele’s iceberg eyes bulged with impossibility. Farragut argued at him, “But we didn’t receive their res pulses!”

“Sir. The Swifts didn’t even receive each other as long as they were in the . . . that place. They weren’t anywhere. Wherever they were between here and where they went, they did not exist.”

Farragut was a moment absorbing that one. Murmured at last: “So where did they go?”

MEMORANDUM

To: J.A. Farragut

From: C.H. Wells / Astrogation

Re: Preliminary Summary

Recorders from all five Swifts are functionally normal.

Recordings from all five Swifts are consistent with one another.

Recordings are remarkable for their lack of data.

Of the transit zone, provisionally called “wormhole,” the Swifts’ recorders register nothing. Data recorders registered only the internal functions of the individual craft. There is no other direct data to be had on the nature of the “wormhole.” Of indirect data, it is significant that the Swifts’ power output varied widely, yet all five Swifts arrived at the same destination at the same time.

Journey to destination (elapsed time by Swifts’ chronometers): 61 hours 18 minutes.

Return journey (Swifts’ chronometers): 64 minutes. Total time elapsed on Swifts’ chronometers: 71 hr 22 m.

Total elapsed time R/T (Merrimack chronometer): 149 hours.

Of the destination at the far side of the “wormhole,” the location cannot be placed. The destination is, without a doubt, extragalactic. The recordings describe an irregular galaxy which has no match in astrogation files. It is a young galaxy, possibly so young and so far away that no light from it has had time to reach the Milky Way. This theory does great violence to our current understanding of the formation of the universe. Astrogation Department requests a drone be sent through the wormhole to gather more data. [Denied. JF]

Merrimack’s data bank contains a partial match for the Swifts’ destination. Flight Sergeant Kerry Blue acquired a stellar recording from the planet Arra, purported to be a recording of the night sky of a planet outside the Myriad. Allowing for the Arran recording’s inferior quality, it presents a 94% match with the Swifts’ recordings taken at the far side of the wormhole.

The Swifts’ recordings of destination are noisy. Background radiation is remarkably elevated beyond ambient 2.7 degrees Kelvin. Source of background radiation still under investigation. (See Technical Report, attached).

The foreground star is population I, one of the few such stars in the recordings. K type, singly formed, with planets in regular orbit.

Preliminary identification of destination: Origin.

Farragut passed the memo to his XO. “Send the full report to the Joint Chiefs.” Then, with a resigned sigh: “Copy the LEN at Arra. Warn them to stay off the kzachin.”

“Copy to Palatine?” Calli asked.

“I don’t report to Rome.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Calli,” Farragut said after a moment, prelude to a question just thought of.

“Sir.” Calli waited.

“Augustus’ Striker wears Flavian colors. Why isn’t he called Augustus Flavius or Flavius Augustus, whichever?”

“I asked him that,” said Calli thoughtfully. She parked her gracefully-shaped rear end on the edge of a console and crossed one very long leg over the other. When she cocked her head, her long braid fell forward over her shoulder. Her brow was creased, perplexed. “Augustus said . . . he was Flavian once removed.”

Farragut pulled his chin back. “What does that mean?”

Calli was the expert in things Roman.

Her braid swayed with the shaking of her head. “John, I haven’t an Earthly clue.”

Captain Farragut got rowdy that evening, in the first watch. You could hear him singing—roaring really—from the officers’ mess. The Marines took their cue from that and started drumming. And soon they were all trying to rock the ship within its inertial field.

Kerry Blue stood watch in the depths of the lower sail. First watch was the only time the whole ship was awake at one time. Parties, when they happened, happened in the first watch.

The rest of Alpha Flight partied as if returned from the dead. Kerry recognized Dak’s lag beat clanging against the bulkhead. Uffing baboon could not keep a tempo.

She beat on the bulkhead with the butt of her splinter gun, yelling up, “Step it up, you boon!” But no one could hear her.

Kerry was not sure what she had done to deserve separation and exile from her mates. The laughter rolled down here to the bowels of the ship. Anger leaked out her eyes.

When she was spelled at middle watch, she took the ladder rungs at a ringing stomp. Stalked to Steele’s quarters, requested permission to enter, stormed in before he could answer.

She demanded to know the reason for this reprimand, and don’t pretend it’s not a rep. She hadn’t hit the res sender. Why was she stationed under the ship while someone else who shall go unnamed is partying her brains out? Demanded she be restored to rotation with her flight mates, or you can just damn well show cause, sir.

TR Steele turned to her quite slowly, ominously. Eyes narrowed at her. Had not been sleeping, but was undressed, ready for the rack. Barefoot, in boxers and tank top. A dauntingly big man. Boulder-muscled. Looked like something tossed up from a volcano and still smoldering.

His voice, always a bark, came out disturbingly soft. “Flight Sergeant, I don’t need my orders questioned by the company joyride.”

Aborted words stuck in her throat. Her fists closed, opened, arms searching for somewhere to be. “And just how do you get off calling me that?”

“Flight Sergeant, where are you and what time is it?”

“It’s the middle of bloody middle watch—Don’t I know it! I’m awake and fragging nobody else is!”

She didn’t get it.

He felt absolutely naked. Just the two of them in the dim light of his cabin. Would feel more naked still grabbing for clothes. It was nothing she hadn’t seen in the gym. Didn’t bother her. Bothered him.

And her carrying on like an idiot down damnation road. Her small breasts lifting with each angry breath.

“So what did I do to deserve the Hamster watch with the screwups?”

Glenn Hamilton commanded the ship in the quiet hours.

“Hamster is not a screwup,” said Steele. That was beside any point, but he didn’t have a good reason for the exile. He simply could not bear to be near her anymore. Afraid of touching her hair in an unguarded moment, or smiling at the sound of her laughter, or gazing at her too long.

And he didn’t want her loose at first watch to party and fall into the rack with any target of opportunity who caught her drunken eye. He wished her stray-cat ways would disgust him. It only made him ache not to be the one.

“Yeah, but Hamster’s only got the graveyard watch because Farragut’s sweet on her and he’s keeping her out of his sight. Everybody knows that.”

“Oh, really?” blistering irony. Might have laughed at her, but he was too terrified that she was about to connect the dots. Hamster is on night watch because Farragut likes her too much. And Kerry Blue is on night watch why?

Felt himself turning color. Steele blushed like a flare. Hoped the lights were too dim for her to see it.

“I will not be thrown under the ship just because you think you’re too good for me.”

“If that’s what you think, Blue, you’re a box of rocks.” She was yelling at a man in his skivvies in his cabin. Did it ever cross her randy little mind that he was even male? She was talking to him like he was her father or a gelding.

And—oh, hell—it sure wasn’t dim enough for her not to see that.

Never more afraid than he was in this moment. She was going to notice. Laughter or horror. Either would hollow him right out.

But she was oblivious. Completely.

“Sir, can I go on the record—”

“No.” He cut her off. “Because none of this is being recorded.”

His big hand closed round the back of her neck, drew her in. His other arm crushed her to him, and he covered her mouth with his, kissed her, rude, deep, and out of control.

Then, just as suddenly, he wrenched her away from him so she stood on her own two feet, swaying, one hand floundering to catch the bulk as if the deck were pitching. It wasn’t. He thrust her at the hatch. “You have four seconds to go if you’re going.”

She hesitated, and he grabbed her back on the count of two. Made the mistake last time of giving her too much time. Needed her—hot, hard, and now.

She squeaked against his teeth. His tongue bludgeoned its way into her mouth. Her next squeak came muffled. This could not feel like love from her end. His either. Felt like drowning.

Then, miraculously, the rigid tree in his arms transformed into a woman. Her stiff muscles relaxed, body softened to him. Her arms draped round his shoulders, and she yielded to everything.

Women could forgive a lot if you needed them. Kerry Blue had forgiven a lot of men. He felt a primitive need to replace them all.

He pulled the band out of her hair and let it tumble.

Kerry Blue with her hair down.

Sleepy voice mumbled against his chest in the dark hours, as slender fingers toyed at the damp, springy hairs there, “Been in space a long time, soldier?”

He growled. “I have been in space longer than this—younger—and have never mauled a girl like you just got.” He stopped short of an apology, because he was not truly sorry. He was not even done.

Kerry slunk back to her pod, a scant stroke before eight bells. The usual graffiti defacing her place in the rack: 0010 0101

She didn’t know binary, but she thought those ones and zeros said 69 somehow. Boffin humor.

She climbed unsteadily onto the rack, snapped up the netting. Stupid reg, that. Made you feel like a baby in a crib. But any grunt injured on account of falling out of the rack would be brought up on charges. Destruction of government property.

Secured, she curled into her pod. From below came a hiss. Reg: “Where have you been? Are you okay?”

Kerry nodded on her pillow, even though Reg couldn’t see. Kerry sniffled. Whispered back, “Had it out with the colonel for reassigning me.” That was close to true.

“Prick.”

“Well. Yeah.”

Kerry snugged her covers around her, her body singing aftershocks. Sorted a torrent of thoughts.

His name. She didn’t know his name! Ran through the possibilities of TR. Better not be Theodore Roosevelt. Theodore? Gak. Teddy? Toooo cute. She would laugh. Thomas? Tom? Terrence? Terry? Oh, Kerry and Terry. Oh, no, no, no, no. Trent? Gag. Tiberius? Utter retching. Travis?

Beginning to panic. Did not want to know. Had to know. Whispered, “Reg?”

“Yo, babe.”

“What’s the colonel’s name?”

“TR.”

Opened the netting to flap her pillow over the side. Hissed, “What’s it stand for?”

“Tyrannosaurus Rex?”

Reg was no help.

“Fits.”

Kerry remembered all the times she had caught him scowling at her. Hot, black looks. She had to go back and rethink those glares. And there had been a holy lot of them. She had assumed he thought her an uf.

Oh, yeah, that’s what he’d been thinking. How wrong could a woman be?

She rolled over, hugging her pillow, reliving moments too hot to think on. Flinched at a remembered touch. Sensations and emotions too intense. Sex which was not a game. That was new. The sense of a soul breaking over her, pouring out naked. He had touched her. Touched her.

“Yows, Blue, your weed is singing up a blue streak!”

Kerry became guiltily aware that her lizard plant, perched at the end of her pod, was humming to the tune of her madly gyrating emotions.

“Uh. Maybe it needs some light,” Kerry mumbled. She scooped up her pet and gently hustled it out of the forecastle.

Barefoot, in her skivvies, she padded to hydroponics, there to deposit her jubilantly singing weed with the lettuce under the lights.

She crept back to the rack in the half-light of middle watch. The ship was quiet, as quiet as it ever got. There were always the rhythmic footfalls of joggers circling the outer belt. And the thwapping of a squash ball at any hour. Tough to get court time, and it was a popular sport, to practice wielding a hard object in close quarters without cracking your partner—before you had to do it in anger with a honed edge.

She returned to the rack, reality setting in. This was a career ender. And it would be her career, for sure. Him, they would frown at indulgently, slap his broad wrists with a secret wink and a nudge, and out she goes.

Damn you, Colonel. Damn you.

But she found her anger slippery. Couldn’t hold it. He’d come to her like a dam breaking. A big, blundering, wounded moose. Love like a train wreck. That kind of passion was a force of its own. An endearing need one must love in return.

Reg’s whisper from below made her jump. “Do you think the colonel is cute?”

Kerry clutched her pillow, holding in panic. Why was Reg asking her that? Did she know?

No. This was slumber-party chat. Just talking. Kerry dodged the question, “You know blonds aren’t my first choice.”

A yawn. Sound of stretching. A sigh. “You don’t think he’s cute?”

Overwhelming. Magnificent. Breathtaking. Cute? “No!”

From the other side of the partition: “I’m cute.”

“Shut up, Dak.”

Steele put a foot on the first ladder rung, felt the vibration of someone climbing up. He looked down, primed to challenge some space swabbie for right of way. Instead his jaw clenched as he recognized the close-cropped, tight, dark curls on the top of the ascending head. He stepped aside to give way to Colonel Augustus. Hated getting close to him. Could never get past him without comment.

This time it was an arch smile. “Ah. Flattop. Here.” Augustus offered him a record bubble.

Steele eyed it suspiciously. He did not want anything Augustus had to offer. Still, the undercurrent of smug, malicious glee put him on guard. “What is it?”

“There are no copies, so you can erase it if you want.” Augustus was blithe. “But I wouldn’t. It’s really impressive.”

A horrible prickle stung Steele’s mouth at the sound of Augustus’ diabolical chuckle. And in case there was any doubt:

“The part where you told her this is not being recorded was not accurate.”

White-blonds could not contain a blush. Steele knew he was flaming red. Ears on fire. “You are spying on me!”

Augustus was serene, almost congenial. “You knew I had a rover on Flight Sergeant Blue.”

The color drained right out. He had known. He forgot. Or just assumed the recorder had been removed after Kerry’s rescue from the poison gas.

Augustus held the bubble in the flat of his palm. “You owe me.”

Steele snatched the recording. “You are such a dick.”

“You’re welcome.”

Middle watch took forever coming round again. Kerry waited for the corridors to clear, then furtively scampered up the ladder to the officers’ deck, let herself into Steele’s cabin, heart in her throat. Never felt like this. Afraid she was in love with the moose.

Came in as he was dragging on a shirt, his back toward her. Brawny shoulders flexed, great power in the motion. Her mouth opened, but words clogged, choked. She blurted, “Your name better be Thomas.”

He turned, a smile on his lips. Then his brow furled and he stalked the two steps toward her, scowling darkly. He took her face in his hands, tilted her face this way and that to study her side bars.

Satisfied the recorders were gone, he relaxed. The smile returned. “It is. Why?”

“Oh, thank God. I was sure it was Theodore. Is it Tom or Thomas?”

“My friends call me TR.”

“I’m not your friends. And when it gets down to the short strokes, ‘Oh, TR! Oh, TR!’ ain’t gonna fly. And ‘Oh, Colonel!’ is just too queer.”

“Thomas, then. No one who ever mattered ever called me Tom. And you better be whispering.” He rapped a big fist against the paper-thin bulk.

“That’s gonna be tough. I’m a natural screamer.”

“I know,” he said, grim. Had heard many a name cried in ecstasy from the lower deck, like a stab in the gut.

“Thomas,” she tried out the sound. Whispering. “I’m just Kerry.”

“I know, Marine.”

“Oh.” Disappointed. “You’re one of those guys who never calls a girl by name so you don’t call the old girlfriend’s name by mistake?”

“So I don’t call yours by mistake, unless you mean to quit the Corps, which I wouldn’t mind. But that’s your choice.”

“Oh.” Very considerate. She wasn’t used to consideration. “You’re the oldest man I’ve ever been with.”

“Screw you.”

Why had she said that? You’re an idiot, Blue. But he knows that. “Any time. What I meant was, you know how they say men are horniest when they’re seventeen? I mean, how come you didn’t kill someone when you were seventeen?”

“Did I hurt you?”

There was that consideration thing again. Not an acquired taste. She liked it immediately. “No. But you gots to know I’m not Snow White.”

“That was to make you forget everyone who knows you’re not Snow White.”

“You’re jealous.”

“Shit.” That was a yes.

“So, um, where do we go from here? I mean, is there . . . ?” This meant too much and she was getting scared to finish the question. Afraid to assume. She’d assumed a lot with Cowboy. What in hell had she ever seen in that boy? “Are we going somewhere? I mean, if that was it, that’s okay, but—”

“That was not IT.”

She could see through his snarls now. Felt a big smile sprawl all over her face. “So where does that . . . go?”

“Hell, Marine. I am so far out of bounds I can’t see the bounds. I have no authority in this situation. You got an idea, I’ll listen to it.”

Steele never ever asked for suggestions. But they were in never ever land, so why not. “When can I see you again?”

“That’s my girl. All tactical. No strategy.”

“I’m waiting for you to kiss me. Now works for me.”

She was not used to his smiles. Looked kind of sappy, kind of boyish on his face. Made her twinge inside. Felt the heat between them as he took her face in his hands again.

The hatch lock at her back scraped with a soft, experimental turn. She whirled, grabbed the handle, and fought the bar’s stealthy turn. Steele’s tree limb of an arm reached over her shoulder to add his strength to hers. She craned around to look up at him wide-eyed, mouthed the words: Who is that?

His head shook, unknowing.

The intruder fought the stiffness, gave the handle a yank, then knocked. “Sir?” Young voice. Male.

“What?” Steele roared.

“You awake, sir?”

“I am now. What is it?”

“Mr. Carmel’s compliments, sir.”

Kerry muttered. “I can take her. I’ll take that beauty queen right out.”

The voice went on, “Captain’s on the bridge, sir.”

“Thank you. Beat it.”

“Sir.”

Footsteps retreated.

Steele’s arms enclosed Kerry, kissed her neck.

And let her go. When she turned around, he had turned back into the granite man she had long known, that dour battle mask engraved into his face. She demanded, “What? What happened?”

He reached for his combat uniform. “Hit the rack, Marine. Sleep in your acid fatigues.”

Acid-resistant fatigues were for fighting the Hive.

Gorgons.

But the telltales were still. She didn’t understand. “What’s happening?”

He said only: “Farragut.”

Captain Farragut made an unexpected appearance on the command deck. One of his quieter entrances, in part because he was barefoot, and in part in consequence of the cup of coffee from the muscular end of the pot he nursed. He was supposed to be asleep, and part of him still was. Still in the olive drab T-shirt and sweatpants that he customarily wore to bed.

And Hamster, accustomed to having the bridge to herself in middle watch, inhaled to announce him, but his open hand signaled her to ignore him.

The lieutenant settled guardedly back into the captain’s chair. Farragut prowled to the sensor monitors. Ran a hand through his tousled hair. Sharp smell from the cup in his other hand burned the air in his wake.

Hamster sat rigid, as if at attention. She sent a discreet message to the XO’s quarters. “Captain’s on the bridge.” And in no time, Calli Carmel appeared, in uniform. Her long hair, tied back, was still wet from an interrupted shower.

The whole ship quietly stirred.

Hands clasped behind her, Calli stood at the captain’s side. “What’ve you got, John?”

“We’re close.”

Calli sniffed his cup, wrinkled her nose. “Are you sure you’re not smelling that?”

“They’re out here,” he murmured. Lifted his cup to his lips. Made the mistake of looking into it. Looked like a melted burr. He lowered the cup.

Augustus was next on the bridge. Roman chemical-resistant fatigues were black, not the fetching mustard yellow of U.S. issue. Someone must have told him what it meant when John Farragut went sleepwalking to the bridge in middle watch. All of Merrimack tiptoed around him.

Augustus placed no credence in prescience in the mystic sense; and the expectancy, which Augustus would pass off in another man, in John Farragut was something else. He trusted it as an elemental perception. Perception of exactly what, he could not name. Chaos, perhaps. John Farragut had a fine sense of chaos. Like the dog that barks before the earthquake, howling at he knows not what. A natural creature-sense for something not yet measured. John Farragut was on the bridge.

So Augustus was not the least surprised to hear the lookout chime: “Occultation at thirty-five by nine on a ninety-degree line.”

Hamster: “Stationary or moving?”

“Boogying, sir. Two hundred c.”

“Dog it.” Hamster’s last command as she surrendered command.

“Kill the running lights and fall in behind the bogey,” Calli relayed the order as John Farragut slid into his chair.

The captain seemed to increase in stature. The man could probably look commanding bare-ass naked, but he ordered anyway, “Somebody bring me some pants. And a sword.”

10

AUGUSTUS TOOK UP A POSITION at the captain’s shoulder. “Hell, you’re a patterner, John Farragut.”

Blue eyes glanced up. “You think?”

Lord of illogic. He was pulling a pattern out of the ether. Augustus muttered. “I wish I could get inside your head and see what you’re taking your cues from.”

“You can’t,” Farragut said, confident that a patterner was not a mind reader. Then, less sure, “Can you?”

“If I could, I would not be wishing.”

“Not big on asking permission, are you?”

“From you? Pfff.” A derisive breath sounded through his lips.

Farragut consulted his monitors. “What are the telltales saying?”

“Silent, sir.”

“Tell me about our bogey.”

“Maintaining constant velocity,” said the tactical monitor. “No energy output. It’s coasting.”

“It’s not an asteroid.” An obvious comment.

“Not at two hundred and fifty times the speed of light. No, sir.”

“What’s our time of intercept?”

“We can head it off in three minutes.”

“No. Don’t get in front of it. Close the gunports. Shut us up tight.”

Merrimack’s guns leaked air and heat where they projected through the force field’s shell.

“Bring us in easy on the flank.”

“Aye, sir.”

“We could plant a bomb in its path, sir,” Colonel Steele suggested.

“Not without a positive ID.” He might take out an innocent ETI. And a frontal attack on an intact swarm was seldom effective anyway. Though a man could easily chop the legs off an individual burr, a united swarm was nearly invincible from the front. No one knew how they did it, but a solid swarm generated a cowcatcher much like Merrimack’s.

Closer in, the tac monitor reported, “Getting a reading. It’s an infrared source. Leaving a heat trail. If you can call one hundred fifty degrees Kelvin heat. Profile is—” Paused in dread. Made certain. “It’s round, sir.”

An intake of breath chorused the command deck.

“Sphere?” Farragut asked.

“Yes, sir.”

Farragut spilled his coffee into the trash. “Wake up the boat.”

Alarms blared, with Calli calling battle stations.

Little of Merrimack was, in fact, left asleep. Most personnel had shuffled to battle stations and dozed in their gear by their guns, or sat up polishing their face shields.

From here they knew the drill; they ran it once a week. Disconnected all implants—their personal gunsights, their language modules, anything vulnerable to Hive interference. They isolated and detached all electronic detonators, detached power packs from computerized hovercarts, pulled the cables off the lifts. You never realized how much of the ship was computer driven until you prepared to meet a swarm. But Merrimack ran cleaner than most ships, so this was not a major operation.

“You clear your things out of the torpedo bay, Augustus?” Farragut asked.

“I had assistance.”

Farragut could picture his Marines dumping all of Augustus’ things into that gold-threaded Roman carpet, rolling it up and hauling it to the Striker. “They break anything?”

“Probably. Didn’t look.”

The captain’s pants and the rest of his uniform arrived on the command platform. He dragged on his boots, eyes on the monitors.

Merrimack closed to within passive sensor range. There was no “seeing” while you were running faster than light. But the sensor interpreters could conjure up a visual image on a monitor. They showed a solid ball of ice, a kilometer in diameter, of preternatural roundness.

A dead swarm, it was called, though the company and crew knew by now these were seldom dead, except for the outer layer. This ball would have been traveling for years, maybe centuries. Even as voracious as they were, it was damned hard to starve a gorgon.

The round shape offered the smallest surface area for its volume, for the conservation of heat. Not that you could freeze a gorgon either.

Calli ordered the ship cautiously nearer. A ship the size of Merrimack produced a gravitational effect—infinitesimal in astronomical terms or even in macroscopic terms, but there was no telling the sensitivity of a swarm. If Merrimack put a perceptible drag on the ball, it could wake up.

The officers on deck stared at the inert frozen sphere. Nothing crawling but the hair up the backs of their necks.

Calli turned to Farragut, “How do you do that?”

He shook his head. He could not say how he found his enemy. Even the telltales were quiet.

“Uh-oh.” From a tech.

“Talk to me, Uh-oh,” Farragut demanded evenly, belting his hanger.

“Uh, sir. Sorry. I just plotted the swarm’s trajectory.”

Augustus was already ahead of him: “It’s headed to Palatine.”

“Yes, sir. It’ll be there in one hundred years.”

“Oh, no, it won’t.” Farragut.

Hamster squinted at the bleak, ice-encrusted image. “Is it dead?”

“It will be,” said Farragut. Turned to his Roman. “Well, Augustus. Here’s what you came for.”

“You do not disappoint.”

Augustus gazed upon his nemesis. At matched speed, the swarm sphere hung in the center of the screen in ugly dead menace.

“Are you sure it’s not dead?” the tech asked.

“There’s a trickle charge in there,” said Farragut. To Augustus. “Here’s my problem. Every time you cross a gorgon, you teach the Hive.”

Augustus nodded. “Like playing chess with a computer.”

“Just so. And the Hive would be very predictable if we only knew who else was teaching it. Unfortunately, space is vast and who knows who else it’s been chewing on. What I don’t want happening here is it getting any new knowledge before it dies. I want to kill this swarm in its sleep. One shot. Lights out. I don’t want them to even know they’re dying. I don’t want the Hive Overmind to know we’re here, only that it lost a swarm here.”

Augustus nodded to all that. “I like it.”

Hamster offered, “Do you think there’s a chance it knows we’re here, and the gorgons are having this same conversation in there?”

“Trap? Never known ’em to lie doggo. Anyway, if they were talking, the telltales would show it.”

Hive resonance either irritated or frightened insect life. Made bugs a good, cheap early warning of Hive presence. Only dormant gorgons did not resonate.

“That’s the other thing,” Farragut told Augustus. “As soon as they wake up, they split into hundreds of quick, hungry targets.”

“Can you estimate the number in this swarm?”

“Not really. Depends on type. If those are burrs, there’s a couple hundred thousand in there. Soldiers are bigger, so there would be less of them, but soldier balls are usually huge. This is a small ball. And gluies—I’ve never seen dormant gluies, doesn’t mean this isn’t a glue ball. And we can’t tell how deep the dead layer is without an active scan. You scan, you wake ’em up. And round we go. I want to take ’em all out without exploding any of the individuals clear. Can we implode that?”

“That would require ramming a charge inside the mass before detonation.”

“That would wake them up.”

“Has that effect, yes. And without knowing the internal architecture, it may not work.”

“Damn.”

“I seem to recall you had mixed results with molten magnesium. There’s a certain symmetry in using a weapon that eats.”

“Works great on burrs, but it takes too long to eat a soldier. And if they get through your force field, you’ve got flaming guts stuck to your hull.”

“Then I would suggest nukes are still your best bet for a flash fry. Impact trigger. Passive sighting. No guidance system.”

The technicians nodded at their stations despite their loathing for the source of the suggestion. A nuclear projectile was the only option.

Energy weapons were useless at FTL for everything except a shot straight backward. If Merrimack moved into the swarm’s path to line up such a shot, the swarm would detect her heat trail and wake up.

Sighting on passive input was no one’s first choice, but a tag would wake the swarm. Anyway, with matched speed, both moving in a straight line, it should be easy enough to calculate the angle off to dispatch a dumb missile.

Using no tracking system would leave nothing for the Hive to skew or bounce back to its source. An impact trigger offered nothing the Hive could deactivate “Mr. Carmel?” Farragut looked to his XO.

“That would be my choice, sir,” Calli confirmed.

The techs were already at work calculating and recalculating the angle off. At two hundred times the speed of light, it was spitting into the wind.

“Do it. Three warheads.”

As Calli called for three torpedoes, Augustus frowned ever so slightly. “Overkill, don’t you think?”

“I like overkill,” said Farragut. “Redundancy is good. Redundancy is good.” And while he was being redundant, he ordered the Marine Battery to stand by the guns, but do not open the ports.

“Loads, sir?” Steele requested.

“Keep it simple. Exploding shells. No use showing them our whole bag of tricks if it comes to that.”

Calli Carmel assumed a mechanical, square-shouldered calm. Might have been an android speaking orders:

“Match speed and vector. Keep us rock steady, Chief.”

“Speed and vector, one hundred percent, aye.”

“Fire Control.”

“Fire Control, aye.”

“Acquire target.”

“Target acquired. Aye.”

“Firing solution.”

“Solution acquired and loaded, aye. We have tone.”

“Captain?” Calli waited.

“Kill them all.”

“Open torpedo bays and fire.”

“Shit!” That was Fire Control.

“Fire Control, report!”

The tone changed pitch. And now a shivering sound rattled throughout the ship. Cicada songs.

The telltales had awakened.

“Hive sign!”

“Oh, for Jesus.”

“Command. Fire Control. We lost tone.”

“Then what’s that sound?”

“Res pulse on our harmonic!” Communications cried. The tone had not changed pitch. It had stopped immediately as the resonance started. “Somebody pinged us!”

Farragut pointed to the resonance sounder. “Turn that thing off. Where’d the swarm go?”

“All stop,” Calli ordered, then answered the captain, “It didn’t go anywhere, sir. We did. It stopped. We overshot.”

A united swarm could do things with physics a battleship could not dream of.

“Get us back, Mr. Carmel.”

“Aye, aye, sir.” Already doing so. Could feel the engines buck and whine.

With nothing on the screen but stars, Calli prodded, “Chief, why aren’t we there?”

“You want me to answer that, Mr. Carmel?”

At two hundred times the speed of light, Merrimack had overshot big. The ship kicked in sudden reverse. Engines rumbled in the race to reacquire the target.

A sensor technician reported with professional calm. “Target sighted. Ball’s gone hairy.”

He restored the gruesome image to the screen. The giant sphere’s surface pitted and cracked, the ice pocked. Legs, flailing like cilia, breached the crust, legs by the hundred, the thousand—gorgons eating their way out through a layer of their own dead.

“Fire those missiles.”

“Command. Fire Control. We’ve lost our lock. Gorgons have put up a wobble.”

The target was rapidly disintegrating, opening to a writhing mass of maggoty tentacles, the crawling, flailing nightmare, peeling off in clotted mats, and breaking into individuals like baby spiders.

“Burrs. We have burrs.”

Clear of the dead layer, some ate each other, still wiggling. Drifting out of the solidity of the swarm, they ballooned in the vacuum, wriggling, astonishingly fluid in the cold, colder than hell. A mystery how they did that. One of the things that made them come to you in night-mares.

“Get a lock. Light ’em up! We are out of time, gentlemen.”

And the target exploded on its own, like a pustule bursting, dispersing gorgons all directions. Thousands of small creatures, bloating in the vacuum swell, flocked toward Merrimack.

Fire Control cursed. Apologized.

“Mr. Carmel, drop our bricks.”

Merrimack carried solid oxygen along with her, outboard, in the deep freeze of space. Before entering any firefight, it was customary to jettison the oxygen bricks and retrieve them later. Not being edible, the Hive ignored them.

“Mark and drop. Bricks away.”

“Open the gunports. Mr. Steele, at your discretion. Fire Control, fire at will. Blast ’em to kingdom come,” Farragut barked his own orders. Then turned to his tactical monitors. “What dickhead pinged us?”

“Palatine.” That was a guess, but Steele was sure of it.

All eyes on the bridge turned to the Roman who said, “Not I.”

And the com tech confirmed, not Palatine. “It’s a LEN signature. It’s an SOS.”

The ship’s guns boomed. Her decks shuddered underfoot.

The ship hummed and lurched with the deep repetitive clunk of manual loads firing from the big guns. The engines changed tone in charging up the beam guns and changing phase to avoid takeover by the closing Hive mind. Shouts of Marines echoed through the corridors on all decks. Every monitor, each showing a different angle from Merrimack, clouded over with black round bodies flexing their legs, each leg terminating in a mouth.

“Come on, greta! You hungry, ain’t ya? Come and get it! Eat this!” Dak Shepard pulled the firing lever in gun bay twenty-four. Alpha Flight, serving as gun crew, ducked from the sparks and noise of the great barrel’s heave and recoil. Sonic filters dampened the thunder in their ears.

Outside, the shell fragmented into a million shards, cutting the legs off gorgons. Still the gorgons came in limitless hordes.

Immediately, the gun crew straightened to cap and retract the barrel, slide open the breech, and ratchet in another shell.

“Adjust range,” Flight Leader Hazard Sewell ordered. “They’re getting closer.”

“Keep ’em off! Keep ’em off! I hate those things.”

“Ain’t in love with ’em myself,” said Dak. “Load!”

The shell dropped into the chamber.

“Close and lock.”

“I’m locked,” said Carly, stepping away.

A nervous rookie—Cowboy’s replacement—watched the black clouds on the monitor. “They can get in?” Had heard that they could. Wanted someone to laugh at him for believing that one.

Dak grunted, cranking the firing mechanism. “You bet your favorite body part they can. Ready! Gimme a range! Gimme a range!”

Regi adjusted the mechanical dial for the shifting swarm. Fed out a measured length of chemical fuse. “Consider this a tone,” she said. “FRAG ’EM!”

“Clear gun! Come and get it, greta!” Dak pulled the lever as everyone jumped clear. The barrel bucked, sent the fragmentation shell on its way with roar.

Reg rose cautiously. “Listen.”

The six Marines in gun bay twenty-four listened to a tonal change in the force field’s hum.

“Gretas.” Dak pronounced grimly.

“Wh-who?” the rookie demanded from the knowing looks of the rest of the gun crew, who listened to the sound and nodded at the name.

“They’re on us,” said Carly.

Fresh off the last reinforcement boat, the rookie had never trained for this. He was a flier, not a gunner. But when the Battery was forced to manual loads and the Wing was grounded by Hive interference, everyone became a gunner. This was warfare according to John Farragut.

“How can they get through the force field?” the rookie’s voice shot up to a girlish range.

“Dak! Gimme a shell here, you baboon,” Carly demanded.

Dak complied, cranking the lever that hefted the giant shell to the breech while he answered the rookie, “It’s called—” grunt “ ‘insinuation.’ ” The shell dropped in place. He patted the barrel with a gloved hand. “You got it, bitch.”

“Shouldn’t we oughta clean this barrel?” Kerry Blue spat on the fat, black barrel. The glob sizzled away clean.

“On a roll here, babe,” Reg said quickly. “Come on, come on, we only got time for one more, I think.”

The rookie helped Dak ratchet the barrel back. “What’s insinuation?”

“Gretas wiggle,” Dak grunted. “Lock and load! Reg, take it! Range!”

“Range is can’t miss.” Reg cranked the mechanism as close as it would go. “They’re here! Fire!” She dived out of the way.

“Everybody clear! GRETAAAAAA!”

The gun leaped. The force field sizzled with shrapnel and gorgon parts.

The force field hum was erratic now. Gorgons caked the battleship’s energy shell.

Came the expected call: Secure the guns. Wing report to the Swifts—except Alpha Flight.

“What!”

“Whoa, Regi! Watch the pitch!” Dak shook a finger in the ear that received Reg’s shriek. “Help me, here. The barrel’s stuck.”

Reg leaned on the lever with Dak, trying to haul the extended barrel back inboard. She grunted, a high-pitched girly grunt, “Why everybody but Alpha Flight? Why not us? What’s wrong with us?”

“Why you asking me? Push! Put your weight in it. Aw, nuts. Can I get somebody fat on here?”

Carly, not fat, jumped on the canted lever; then Twitch, then Kerry.

The lever gave way suddenly with a tumbled pile of Marines.

With all the ship’s barrels locked inboard, the ship’s force field smoothed over and intensified against the gorgons’ assault.

There were fewer of them now—the gorgons—and it was safe to launch small ships to gun down the remains.

The Marines of Alpha Flight sat useless as the rest of Red Squadron and the whole of Blue Squadron stampeded for the port and starboard flight decks to take the battle outside.

To add insult to injury, Colonel Augustus was receiving clearance to launch his Roman Striker into the fray.

Hazard Sewell took in all the doleful eyes around him, his grounded, insulted flight looking to their leader for help. “Come on,” Hazard said, and his flight followed him to the command platform.

Flight Leader Hazard Sewell halted just outside the open hatch, at attention. He waited some moments, ignored. Inside, the control room operated like a living machine, Naval officers and specialists attentive to their stations, conferring in quick, cool efficiency.

Hazard cleared his throat in the hatchway.

At last, Lieutenant Colonel Steele turned.

“Sir,” Flight Leader Hazard Sewell spoke for the rest of his flight. “With respect, sir. Why not us?”

Kerry Blue’s eyes silently added exploding shells to that question. Glared at Thomas Ryder Steele. Her lips trembled. She thought the moose was protecting her. Pissed her off. She was a United States Fleet Marine, for God’s sake.

Steele spoke lightly, too indulgently, eyes on Kerry. “Alpha Flight, report to your Swifts.”

And they did, running, only to find their fighters in pieces all over the starboard maintenance deck.

The boffins had dragged out any part of the Swifts that might give a clue about Alpha Flight’s journey through the kzachin to nowhere. Even Kerry Blue’s Swift was disassembled. She recognized her pieces, all coded 0045—hexidecimal for sixty-nine. More boffin humor. “Why my crate!” Kerry cried. “I didn’t go into the frogging wormhole!”

“Yours is the control specimen,” Reg told her glumly. “They take a normal one to compare the weird ones against. Cinderella, we ain’t going to the ball.”

The monitor screens gave the control room a view of what was happening outside. Displayed the unlikely picture of Fleet Marine Swifts firing upon Merrimack. They scorched the gorgons off the force field shell with flaming gas before the wriggling monsters could insinuate their way through the ship’s distortion field.

More eerie still was the sight of a Roman Striker among the Marines, blazoned in Flavian red and black, picking off burrs with surgical precision.

“Captain, you have to see this.”

Everyone who could see it gawked. The Striker spat pulse pellets, ten rounds per second, one gorgon per round. He did not miss. He did not touch the force field.

“Sir, he’s not even grazing our shell.”

Neither did Augustus hit the Swifts that strayed into his firing path. Missed them by literal hair’s breadths.

The tac specialist could not close his mouth. “This is impossible.”

Farragut gazed in amazement. “I’m glad he’s on our side.”

“For now,” said Calli.

“For now,” said Farragut.

The little fighters quickly scoured Merrimack’s hide free of burrs. Then the sortie turned into a game, with Swifts vying with each other to bag the strays, but Farragut sent the recall. “We have an SOS to answer.”

The stray gorgons were too few to form up into a viable ball to survive an interstellar voyage. Gorgons needed to swarm in order to achieve FTL. Solo, they were thousands of years from anywhere. These lost monsters would eat each other or disintegrate before they ever made planetfall.

The LEN’s resonant message had been a brief one, instructing Merrimack where to pick up a courier rocket, which would carry the full message of dire import. The LEN at least had the sense not to resonate from within the Myriad, but this decoy was a bald one.

“The Hive will figure this one out,” Jose Maria Cordillera said. “A swarm will follow the rocket trail. Or it will go to the nearest yellow star. And that is Arra.”

Nine hundred light-years must have seemed like a safe distance from the true source of the message. But it was only six times the diameter of the Myriad. The Hive would figure it out.

On top of that, there was every indication that the Hive would recognize the sender from the harmonic. There were infinite discreet harmonics. The Hive would know from this particular harmonic who was out here.

Farragut marveled. “For a bunch of learned people, the LEN can be hanged stupid. This had better be important. If Donner’s taken hostages, I’m going to let him keep them.”

As soon as Merrimack gathered all her own aboard, Farragut gave the order to pick up their coal cars—the oxygen bricks—and proceed on an intercept course with the courier rocket, flank.

Calli advised, “Captain, the telltale is still active. We have Hive sign.”

“Run. Random vector.”

“Running sir. Eight hundred c. Still singing.”

“Bad words. Foul language.” Farragut slapped the arm of his chair, rising. “We got a clinger.”

One of the aliens must have insinuated through the force field and now rode along between the force field and the hull.

“Get it out.”

But the systems tech reported, “Negative burrs on the hull. Repeat, we have no burrs.”

The com tech reported, “Well, it’s somewhere close enough to bother the telltales. And it’s got to be pinging up a bloody storm.” The tech put the telltales on audio, a chittering scream of crickets and cicadas. You couldn’t hear the gorgon itself, but you could almost put words to it, shrieking to swarms far and wide: I got the Merrimack ! It’s here! It’s here!

“Turn that off.” Farragut turned to Calli. “When you’ve looked everywhere and can’t find it—”

“It’s in you,” Calli finished for him.

Farragut spoke to anyone within earshot: “Somebody find that squealing maggot and squish it.”

“Aye, aye, sir!” Calli opened the loud com to broadcast: “All hands, all hands, we have an intruder on board. Look for a gorgon. Systems, clear the vents. Battery, blow the guns clear.”

“What’s happening?” the rookie asked as Alpha Flight returned to gun bay twenty-four.

“Bug up our nose,” said Dak, ratcheting down another shell, big as his chest, and Dak was a big man. “Force field is thinnest over the guns. You gonna open that thing, Reg, or do I gotta talk dirty to it first?”

Reg pulled at the breech lever, muttering. “Piece of frogging fripping low bid crap is stuck.”

Dak joined her on the lever, grunting.

The rookie hung back, scowling. “Why do you guys talk so prissy? Why can’t any of you just speak Anglo Saxon?”

“Hazard don’t like it,” said Kerry Blue, trying to push at the lever with her foot.

“So what’s that got to do with it?”

“Two stripes on his sleeve says we frogging do as he says. You gonna help here?”

“What are we doing?” The rookie was accustomed to auto loads. He had never seen anything like Merrimack ’s manual loading system.

“Wasting energy—Cheese and rice, Reg, what’d you do to this thing?” Dak dropped off the lever, sweating.

“Ick, Dak, stop dripping on me.” Reg wiped her arm. She stopped on a sudden thought. “Force field goes away at the barrel. Barrel’s an air lock. You can’t open the breech if the barrel is uncapped.”

“We capped it,” said Dak dully, sweating like a shower wall.

“Did we?” said Carly.

Dak looked at Kerry. Kerry looked at Reg. No one could remember doing it.

“I bet you didn’t.” Reg turned the crank. Came a muffled thunk of a tampon snugging home. “You didn’t, you baboon!” Reg slapped the barrel. “Try the breech now!”

Dak turned to the rookie as if this had all been an instructional show. “Like that, you see? The barrel sticks out through the force field, so the easiest way for anything to get into the ship is through the barrel.”

“Provided no one fires the gun,” the rookie filled in.

“Which is just what we’re gonna do,” said Dak, pulling open the breech. “Fuck!”

Dak’s jump knocked Reg backward onto the deck. She crab-skittered away as lashing tentacles, wide and black as bullwhips, blossomed from the breech.

Terminal sucker mouths latched onto Dakota Shepard’s cheek, tore at his uniform.

More legs sprouted from the breech as a fat alien struggled to squeeze its blobby body through the barrel.

Dak screamed in pain. And Kerry Blue was there with a sword, hacking off ravenous stalks. The severed pieces fell, thrashing, stumps spurting caustic brown dry/wet sludge from the cut ends, mouth end still grasping. Kerry danced over the biting pieces, shrieked at the stinging acid seeping through her uniform. She kept slashing till Dak staggered free, and Reg hit the sprinkler. The compartment rained neutralizing solution, slicking the deck.

The full gorgon emerged like a balloon, its bulbous, space-black body filling out and rounding, freeing more tentacles.

Quick. They were more than quick. But you didn’t have to chase them. Gorgons came to you.

Reg stood still, shut her eyes, and whipped her sword in a lemniscate in front of her and let the burr reach for her. She felt the resistance of impact, the squirt of caustic blood, the flapping of severed ends at her ankles. She slashed harder.

Face shields, all polished and ready, hung within reach if only Reg could afford the two seconds to put one on.

Reg cried, “Don’t you be flapping all them sucky mouthy legs in my face, you frag bag. Suck my steel, space squid!”

Dak seized a face shield, skated on the slick wet deck to the stumpy side of the wounded alien to stab at its bloated body. “Die, greta, die!” For they were all gretas to Dak Shepard.

Brown acid spurted. Dak twisted his blade in the wound. Gretas self-sealed a simple puncture wound. The thoroughly ruptured alien emitted a grosteque noise, like a balloon sputtering air.

And it died. Dissolving into a brown puddle of neutralized sludge. The heat shut your eyes. The stink stopped your breath.

Carly yapped, “Catch that! Catch that!” chasing a severed tentacle thrashing across the deck.

The xenos had yet to get a gorgon part into stasis to study it intact.

Twitch hurried to fetch a container to collect Carly’s prize.

“Oh, you know it’s just gonna die,” said Kerry, not moving to help, even as the tentacle dissolved in Carly’s hands. “See?”

Carly screeched at the melted crap in her hands. “Oh, futon!”

There was money in it, a viable gorgon biopsy. Even though no one was even sure gorgons qualified as a bio.

Dak turned his face up at the sprinklers, letting the soothing solution pour over his face. When he blinked his eyes clear, he screwed up his face at Reg. “ ‘Suck my steel, space squid?’ ”

The rookie stood in the pool of brown slime. “Is—is it dead?”

“Does it look dead?” Carly said, hands under the sprinklers.

Kerry Blue rubbed stinging brown slime off the back of her hand to reach her caller. “Commander Carmel. Gun crew twenty-four. We got the singer. Waxed it.”

The XO acknowledged.

“Lab, are we quiet?”

The telltale cicadas had stopped their shivering.

“Ants are going back into the sand. Looks like we’re clear, sir.”

Farragut nodded. “Let’s go pick up the LEN’s rocket.” And, under his breath, “Dumb shits.”

“Their message was spectacularly ill-advised,” Jose Maria Cordillera rephrased.

Hazard Sewell asked Team Alpha, “How’d the new guy do?”

“Who? The frozen pizza?” Carly shot back, daubing Dak’s facial burns with salve.

“Oh, no,” Hazard moaned. “The new guy froze?”

“He . . .” Twitch had a tough time saying anything bad about anybody. Had a tough time saying anything. “Did a fine job of staying out of the way.”

“Oh,” said Hazard.

Said Kerry Blue: “He’s no Cowboy.”

The day’s journey to intercept the message rocket gave Augustus time to sleep off the ordeal of plugging in to patterner mode. By that time John Farragut had worked up a fine anger at the LEN.

“They thought that just sending a courier rocket out of the Myriad would keep the Hive from tracing that res pulse’s origin back to Arra? The LEN have badly underestimated our vermin!”

Intercept and retrieval landed two messages from the LEN. One message, for John Farragut, ordered the immediate return of Merrimack to the Myriad.

“Can they do that?” Calli asked doubtfully. She knew the LEN had jurisdiction over Earth business in the Myriad, but she did not think their arms were long enough to haul Merrimack back on just their say so.

“They think so,” said Farragut.

The second message was for Don Jose Maria Cordillera. It contained a lot of data quite outside Cordillera’s fields of expertise. He passed it on to the appropriate xenos.

The xenos were not long in formulating a report.

“So where’s the fire?” Farragut asked the xenos, assembled in one of the labs. The looks on the scientists’ faces did seem to indicate a genuine emergency.

Dr. Linley, head of the astrogation team, stammered a bit. “The kzachin—the wormholes. They’re multiplying.”

“And?” Farragut prompted.

Dr. Linley stammered himself into incoherence.

“And the Myriad is shrinking,” Augustus answered for Linley.

“And it’s bloody shrinking!” The xeno gripped a console to stop his hands from shaking.

The laws of physics said the globular cluster must degenerate, grow diffuse, torn apart by tidal forces. Instead, the Myriad was contracting, minutely, definitely. At an accelerating rate.

The astrogator lit up the image brought by the courier. It was of the Myriad. Then he overlaid the image with glowing lines that mapped all the connections between the kzachin inside the Myraid. Collectively, the lines curved toward the center, making the cluster look like a string bag. One need only pull a string to close the whole thing.

And according to Linley’s calculations, the aberration must have started nearly ninety years ago—coinciding with the arrival of the first colonists from Origin to the Myriad. It was then that the globular cluster’s natural expansion began to slow, then stop, then slowly, minutely, eventually reverse into contraction.

“The Myriad is not fixing to collapse in our lifetime at that rate,” said Farragut. “This was worth betraying Merrimack’s position to the Hive?”

“It’s the acceleration, sir,” the xeno’s voice shook. “It’s geometric.”

In geometric progressions, minuscule effects could get rapidly out of hand.

Farragut glanced across all his xenos’ frantic faces. “What’s causing it?”

“No idea. No idea with any hard science behind it. Except everyone on the team hypothesizes it ties in with the kzachin—because of the curvature of the connections.” Linley fluttered a quaking hand at the string bag image. “And because it began when the Myriadians started using the kzachin.”

Of all the kzachin, only the kzachin through which Alpha Flight took its journey had no connecting point. That wormhole, the one everyone now called the Rim gate, showed as a solitary dot at the outer perimeter of the cluster.

“Well, hell, there it is,” said Augustus.

“There is what?” said Farragut.

Augustus pointed at the dot. “I’ve found Origin.”

“You mean the gateway to Origin,” said Farragut. “We already suspected that.”

“No,” said Augustus. “I found Origin.”

“Where is it?” Farragut saw only an empty point in space.

“It’s ten billion years away.”

“Ten billion light-years?”

“John Farragut, I speaka ze English better than that. I said years, not light-years.”

Farragut was still lost. “Something you chose not to communicate earlier, Colonel?”

“I said nothing, because I didn’t believe it. Still don’t. As Arthur Conan Doyle said via Sherlock Holmes: when you eliminate the impossible, what’s left, however improbable, must be the truth. So I reconsidered. But there’s nothing left except the impossible. So I reconsidered again. Dismissing any idea as obviously impossible is certainly bad science.”

A buzzing, shiver, and chirp inside the lab made all the xenos inhale.

A dropped glass crashed, shattered.

One of the xenos sobbed.

The flutter of moths, the scrape of cicada wings. The desperate plop of insect bodies beating against glass confines.

Farragut turned slowly to one of the lab’s terraria.

Ants poured from their tunnels.

Hive sign.

“Augustus, I’m going to make you explain whatever it is you just said—Hold that thought,” said Farragut, and into his caller: “Calli. We have Hive sign.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Find it. Get it off.”

“It’s not a gorgon hanging on this time. The last one must have ratted us out. Long-range res scan shows two swarms converging on us.”

“Anything headed toward Arra?”

“Negative. They seem intent on the Mack.”

“Good. Got a type on those swarms?”

“They’re soldiers.”

“Soldier” was the old name for the Hive type which the xenos now called “antibodies.” The crew of Merrimack still called them soldiers, tanks, or can openers.

“Hive’s sending a hit squad?”

“I think so, John.”

“Size?”

“Magnitude five and six.”

“What in blazes is a six?”

The Navy’s scale of swarm strengths had no upper limit. Magnitude five was the biggest anyone had ever seen.

Calli came back, wry: “Bigger than a five, sir.”

Farragut guessed he had that one coming.

“They’re getting bigger, John. Did you notice that? The closer we get to the Hub.”

“Let’s run ’em, Cal. Launch wild geese.”

“Wild geese, aye.”

Two Naval Space Patrol Torpedo boats, SPT boats—“Spit boats” to the crew—readied on the hangar deck to lead off the voracious swarms. Marine Swifts were too short-winded to give a convincing chase. Wild geese had to fly for days.

Calli sent the SPT boats out, resonating on an off harmonic, with orders to rendezvous at the planet Arra after they had lost the swarms.

“Don’t lose them too soon,” Farragut added last orders. “If the Hive finds out they overlooked three whole edible planets in this neighborhood, I don’t want to see what kind of sleeping dogs wake up.”

The wild geese took off, honking.

Farragut watched them go till their running lights vanished into the star field. He turned off his screen and summoned Augustus into a wardroom. “Talk to me.”

“Origin is ten billion years distant,” said Augustus.

“You been withholding information or you just figured this out?”

“Based on new information. When I hooked into Merrimack’s system during the Hive battle, I found the flight recordings from Alpha Flight’s sortie in the ship’s database. The missing pieces were there.” Augustus pulled a projector from his pocket, and filled the wardroom with stars. Not the Myriad this time. This was darker space. Bluer, whiter stars. “This is where Alpha Flight went.”

“The xenos say Alpha Flight’s readings match Kerry Blue’s recording,” said Farragut. “You already had these pictures.”

“Oh, but Alpha’s recordings are far and away more sophisticated and informative than Kerry’s. Alpha’s recordings picked up the background radio noise. Kerry’s picture didn’t. And that’s the smoking gun.”

“The xenos said the neighborhood was hot,” Farragut recalled. “Is that significant?”

“A background residual temperature way over three degrees Kelvin is significant.”

“So it means there’s a big event in the region that put out a lot of energy.”

“It does. And so there is. There’s a quasar in Origin’s backyard.”

“What are you calling the backyard?”

“Five hundred million light-years.”

“Close as I ever want to get to a quasar. If Origin is that close to a quasar, that means Origin is at the very edge of the universe.”

“It means no such thing, John Farragut. You are assuming that because all the quasars we can see are three billion light-years away or better, that all quasars are far away.”

Farragut had so assumed. “It doesn’t mean that?”

“Did you pass astrophysics, John Farragut?”

“I thought I did.”

“The fact that we can see the light from no quasar younger than three billion years means that all the quasars are gone. Long gone. What we see is three-billion-year-old light from an entity that no longer exists. Yet here in Alpha Flight’s recordings is a quasar billions of years younger than any quasar has a right to be. And then there is the redshift of all the stars in this recording. These stars are moving at astonishing speeds.”

“The recording is fubared?” Farragut suggested. “GIGO. This is full of G?”

“Too internally consistent. Too patterned. This redshift is real. These stars were recently—astronomically speaking—shot out of a cannon. The Big one.”

“Big Bang.”

Augustus nodded. “These recordings have all the markings of a very, very, very young picture of the universe. This is a young galaxy with a young irregular shape, young quasars nearby, young stellar spectra, young speed, young background temperature, and a youthful dearth of heavy elements.”

“If this galaxy is that young and that far away, then it’s younger than it is distant,” said Farragut. “Its light is not here yet and we can’t see it at all.”

“No, John Farragut. We are looking right at it. This galaxy isn’t far, far away. It’s long, long ago. This is the Milky Way.”

And to John Farragut’s silence Augustus added, “Which is why Alpha Flight’s res pulse did not reach us, though resonance exists everywhere at once. It was not that Alpha Flight was nowhere to be found; it was no when.”

“No. Wait,” Farragut could not accept this. “If this mess of stars is the Milky Way, why didn’t you recognize it before? You’re a patterner.”

“No one can predict with any precision what an irregular galaxy will grow up to look like. I could give you possibilities, but there are too many dynamics, too many variables, too much data that I don’t have to make an accurate prediction. I can, however, look at the beginning point and the end point and tell you if they connect. And these do. This is our galaxy.”

Farragut stared disbelievingly at the projection of Origin’s stellar neighborhood. “Where is Earth in this picture?”

“It’s not born yet. Neither is Palatine. Sol’s formation is still five or six billion years off. But you know this place.” He pointed at the bright blot of a globular cluster. “The oldest extant features in any mature galaxy are its globular clusters. This is the Myriad.”

“This is a much brighter, denser cluster than the Myriad,” Farragut argued. “Look at all these blue stars.”

Augustus was condescending. “Of course it is. This is the baby picture.”

“Where’s Arra in here?”

“Arra’s star is not a cluster star. It’s a population I star that got stuck in here. It’s not born yet either at the time of this recording.”

Farragut turned to the star burning large and orange in the foreground of Alpha Flight’s recording. Origin’s star. “Does this star still exist?” he asked, throat gone dry.

“Origin? Thought you’d never ask. Yes, it does. Orange stars are slow burners. They last damn near forever.”

Farragut sucked in a breath, trying to inhale patience. Augustus was making him ask for every single thing he needed to know. “Do you know where this star is now?” He stuck his finger on the large orange image.

Augustus nodded.

“What star is this? Does it have a name in any of our catalogs?”

“Oh, John Farragut, can’t you connect the dots yet?” said Augustus. “It’s Xi.”

11

“OH, FOR JESUS,” John Farragut murmured.

Disorienting, the concept that the impossibly distant Arran home world, Origin, could be the same planet as a local, long-known, long-dead world, on which no trace of life or civilization remained beyond a lump of lead.

Augustus explained his own delayed recognition. “You see, I uffed the logic gates. It is not that Donner’s thorium-lined reliquary failed to reach Origin and landed on Xi instead. It reached Origin and landed on Xi. The two are not mutually exclusive. Donner’s thorium did not age billions of years in the time distortion of the wormhole. It aged all those billions of years in real time. And that is how you get a twenty-billion-year-old hunk of spent thorium in a fifteen-billion-year-old universe. The Xi tablet did the last ten twice.”

“You said that with a perfectly straight face.”

“When you have eliminated the possible, whatever is left, even if it’s impossible, means you failed to grasp the situation. The Myriad is sitting on a paradox.”

“Does this have anything to do with the cluster’s shrinking?”

“How could I know? I can’t find patterns if cause and effect can play backward. We’re not just down the rabbit hole, Alice. This is the wrong side of the looking glass.”

Farragut recited what everyone knew and never questioned: “The arrow of time flies in one direction and one direction only.”

Augustus nodded. “And if nature abhors a vacuum, nature loathes, abominates, and despises a paradox, and I haven’t much stomach for them myself. Paradoxes are self-healing.”

“We should stop the Myriadians from sending anything more through the kzachin,” said Farragut. “Now.”

“Yesterday,” said Augustus.

Dak Shepard started it. The rest of Team Alpha picked it up right away and soon all of Red Squadron was calling him Peetz, and the infection spread to Blue Squadron.

Afraid to ask anyone in the company, because it seemed to be something a dog soldier ought to know, the rookie Cole Darby furtively approached one of the less snottified spacers.

“Uhm . . .”

The Naval com specialist waited in quizzical irony while Cole Darby struggled to properly couch his question. The com spec’s open fresh face showed a near smirk now. Might have underestimated this navy bean’s snottifaction. No turning back now. Cole Darby forced the question out. “Um, is, uh, what’s peetz? Is that like putz?”

“No.” The com spec grinned. Didn’t look so friendly now. Looked predatory. “So you’re a peetz, hm.” The navvy’s red brows bobbed up and down.

“No! No. No. Not me. It’s, uh, someone else. I was curious is all. My squadron calls this guy Peetz. But his name isn’t Peter.”

“Don’t bulsh me, Peetz,” the com spec said easily. “You’re the only toad in Red Squadron.”

First peetz, now toad? Worse and worse. “What the hell is a toad?” Cole Darby cried.

“The green guy! Who else is going to turn into a frozen pizza in a furball? The rest of your squadron is blooded and gutted. It has to be you.”

“I—” Cole started, realized he had nothing to follow that.

The spacer clapped him on the shoulder, gave him a jostle, friendly-like. “Work it off next furball, Peetz. It’s easy: you get scared, you just figure out who you’d rather have eat you alive—the Hive or your squadron.”

Captain Farragut prowled side to side of the control room, goaded by the urgency of the LEN’s message, maddened by his inability to answer it.

Merrimack could not go near the Myriad so long as the Hive Overmind knew where the battleship was. Merrimack had been biding its time in pointless circles, waiting for the wild geese to lead off the two huge swarms and silence the infernal buzzing and humming that was Hive sign. Once it stopped, Merrimack would be clear to travel.

Only it wasn’t stopping.

“Calli. Are you sure we don’t have a clinger on us?”

Burrs could hook onto the ship’s force field and drag a full klick behind her.

“I’m sure, Captain. And that’s not coming from a singer. It’s a sounding. Those two soldier swarms are pinging us.”

“Shut down our res chamber.”

“Already done.”

The lookout sang abruptly, “Wild geese coming in hot and light.” Hot and light meant fast with all ammo spent. “Requesting permission to dock.”

John Farragut grabbed up the caller, hailed the wild goose leader. “Shooey! What are you doing to me?”

“Captain! Sir! Sorry, sir. They’re not buying it.”

“Get in here and talk to me.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

Captain Farragut met the wild geese on the hangar deck. Lieutenant Schumacher—Shooey—sweating like a fevered pig, pulled his helmet, dripping, from his head, dragged a sleeve across his wet, plump face, squinted. “Sorry, Cap’n. They wouldn’t chase.”

Farragut cocked his head in surprise. “This is new.” He found Jose Maria Cordillera on the deck with him. Asked, “Is this new? Why didn’t they take the bait?”

Jose Maria Cordillera shook his head. “I have never seen this behavior. It may have to do with cell specialization. The kind of swarm members which we call ‘gorgons’ exist to eat. What we call ‘soldiers’ tend to pursue hard targets. These two swarms may be purposely sent to destroy Merrimack. This is all guesswork, based on a statistical field of one.”

Jose Maria followed Farragut, who paced a slow circuit around the Swifts in the hangar. The captain touched the empty hardpoints. Shooey answered the motion, “We shot the whole load, sir.”

Farragut brushed off his fingers. “What were you packing?”

“Frags and nukes. All ordnance found the target, sir.”

That stopped Farragut’s pacing. “Did they eat the nukes?”

“A chunk of the soldiers detached from the main swarm and snagged our field. We spaced them. After our nukes were spent, the main swarm came at us. We kept ahead of it for a while. Then it broke pursuit and resumed its original course.”

Captain Farragut glanced to Jose Maria Cordillera. “They don’t do that. Gorgons never walk away from food.”

“If they have no hope of catching it, apparently they can,” Jose Maria observed. “We may have taught the Hive the real meaning of a wild goose chase.”

“Not good. Shooey, what then?”

“We poked ’em. Achieved no critical damage. When the burrs are all balled together big like that, their field is too tight. It’s a big swarm. They just ate their dead and stayed on course. We got ahead of them and veered away. They didn’t pursue us. They didn’t even wobble. We shot everything we had.” Shooey shrugged empty, soaked arms.

“They’re looking for our base.” Farragut spoke that as a certainty. “Planets can’t run.”

Once the Hive located an edible planet, combat was no longer a battle. It was a siege. And Earth’s defenses were already stretched too thin to assist out here on the distant frontier.

The Hive must not locate Arra.

John Farragut was better suited to an offensive fight. He was not about to add another fixed target to his war.

He summoned his senior lieutenant.

“Hamster. See to the Spit boats. Refuel, restock, rearm. Then pick a team. I have an urgent message to go to the Myriad. Invite Jose Maria to go with you. Take both boats. Depart within the hour.”

Upon the captain’s return to the control room, Calli rose, clasped her hands behind her back. Assumed, “We’re going to lead off the swarms with the Mack?”

“I’ll take care of them,” said Captain Farragut.

Jose Maria Cordillera stood at the wide viewport, watching the SPT boats launch. There was a brute elegance in the snub, blocky vehicles. They wore their armament outboard on racks.

The civilian, Jose Maria, was always a striking figure, trim and elegant against the siege of years. His home on Terra Rica was not a democracy, and Jose Maria did not dress like a democrat. His bolero jacket and gray trousers were of expensive cloth. He stood like a brooding stallion.

The voice intruded at his shoulder. “Not joining the rats, Don Cordillera?”

Jose Maria Cordillera turned to the Roman, Augustus. “Rats? I do not understand ‘rats.’ ”

Augustus’ gaze remained fixed, over Cordillera’s head, on the departing vessels. “Rata. The ones leaving the ship.”

Lieutenant Glenn Hamilton’s SPT boats cleared Merrimack’s field, arced away, and vanished on a quick line to the star cluster Myriad.

“That would imply that Merrimack is sinking,” said Jose Maria Cordillera.

“And are we not going to our deaths?”

Cordillera hesitated, dropped his voice quite low, lest someone overhear this conversation. “Why would you say so?”

“And you the expert on things Hive,” Augustus chided. “Level-five and -six soldier swarms. Biggest swarm ever seen and one bigger still? We are overmatched.”

Cordillera turned away from the viewport.

Augustus prodded his silence. “I thought suicide was against your religion. You are traditional Catholic?”

Catholics did not call themselves “Roman Catholics” anymore. Not since the exodus.

Jose Maria would only say, “You have cold statistics, Colonel Augustus. I have hope and faith.”

“Your God takes a laissez-faire approach to human emergency. In your battle against human disease and misery, Doctor, you must have noticed the innocent and faithful die as quickly and needlessly as the rest of us.”

“I have to believe not.”

And on second consideration, Augustus noted the doctor had not specified his hope and faith in whom.

“Even the god of Merrimack has lost hope in this one,” said Augustus. “Our gallant captain is sending the pretty Mrs. Hamilton out of harm’s way and offered you a place in her lifeboat. I know your Captain Farragut. He’s not taking Merrimack to lead off the swarms. We’re going into battle. Hopeless battle. Please don’t pretend you don’t see that pattern.”

“Very well,” said Jose Maria. “We are overmatched. We are going to die. Why are you still aboard, Colonel?”

“This is what I came for. Living or dying has little or nothing to do with it. I didn’t come for anything involving me. I came to fight the Hive. And live. Or die. I have to be there.”

“And so,” said Jose Maria Cordillera, “have I.”

The crew and company of the Merrimack prepped for battle, cleaning and loading weapons, polishing face shields to perfect slickness. Deck crews locked down the Marine Swifts in their hangar bays. Computerized controls were disconnected and stowed.

Jose Maria’s long glossy black hair was braided and bound up tight so that he looked for all the world like a matador. Though Jose Maria only ever killed to save lives.

The Naval engineers reconfigured the containment fields around the ship’s six engines. Not that the Hive could interfere with such a basic reaction as matter/antimatter annihilation, but the mix controls to the containment fields themselves could be vulnerable.

Merrimack’s six engines functioned within six discrete containment fields, protected by the most complex phase-shifting security codes on board, constantly changing at quick, random intervals, which prevented the Hive mind from deactivating the force field.

It did not stop the cells from physically insinuating themselves through the field.

Should a Hive cell breach an engine’s containment field, Merrimack’s own power plant would become a bomb in enemy hands; and Hive cells did not fear suicide.

Augustus presented himself on the bridge in his flight suit, helmet under arm. “Permission to launch Striker.”

“Denied,” Farragut dismissed him.

Augustus quirked a small smile. “You don’t trust me, John?”

“We don’t launch small ships around a level-five soldier swarm. The swarms emit a hell of an interference field. All they have to do is fox your IFF and then I’m explaining to your emperor why I shot you. My Swifts don’t go; you don’t go.”

“You’re telling me the Hive swarm doesn’t fox your systems?”

“They can. But Rome was always partial to sending false signals to our equipment, so we got lots of fail-safes.”

“I know,” said Augustus. “What about your systems?”

“Mine? I don’t understand.”

Augustus pointed between Farragut’s eyes. “That’s an electrical system in there.”

“Bioelectrics are tougher for them.”

“But not impervious.”

“No. These big swarms can muddle your concentration, make you sleepy, make you think you can’t breathe. So far they haven’t shut us down.”

Oh, great. Colonel Steele popped an inspection right here at battle stations. If one of those leering MP side-kicks of his flicked honey on your face shield, it damn well better slide right off. Kerry Blue didn’t fancy licking honey off the deck. Fancied less not being able to see through a smear of burr guts. Her face shield passed inspection.

Then came the weapons inspection. If you got caught with a sanctioned weapon—like something that could shoot through bulkheads—it was a blot on your whole team. This part of the inspection was a waste of time, big bore. As if anyone one would be stupid enough to smuggle a secured weapon from the armory and take it to station.

“Peetz!” Reg cried in anger, as an MP discovered an armor-piercing projectile launcher holstered in the rookie’s boot.

Carly cried: “Frogging hell!” Looked like she was about to knife Cole Darby.

You could hear Hazard Sewell’s teeth grind as he accepted the blot on Team Alpha.

The inspectors moved on without Colonel Steele once looking at Kerry Blue. She understood the icy snub now. Had to smile.

Small woofing noises escaped from the peetz, Cole Darby, as elbows accidentally connected with his rib cage. Hard.

A last briefing came over the loud com, explaining the game plan. It was simple: take the swarms out one at a time. Merrimack was running out at a fast intercept with the closer of the swarms before the two could combine forces or wake up more reinforcements.

“Why don’t we get reinforcements?”

Everyone glared at the peetz, and he knew he’d said something stupid again.

Carly Delgado crouched over her short-range blaster, polishing, polishing. Answered flatly, “This is our job.”

“Opa!” Dak sang out. “Here comes the Old Man.”

“Which?”

“Which,” Kerry’s mocking echo. “That one.”

You could hear Farragut coming, bellowing a pirate song.

“Oh, Gawd,” Carly growled. But smiling. You had to.

They said you could tell how bad the battle would be by the exuberance of Captain Farragut’s mood.

“Oh, hell,” said Reg. “We’re gonna die.”

Farragut strutted through the ranks, spreading his own brand of buoyant courage, leaving a wide swathe of devastating enthusiasm in his wake. The mood on board turned festive. There wasn’t another commander in the fleet could pull it off. When Farragut got done with you, the tense dread vanished and you couldn’t wait for battle. The navvies were singing pirate shanties. The Marine Wing was barking, the Battery hissing and meowing.

Fear, there was no fear. It wasn’t a brush with death coming, it was a title shot. If you wanted stoic, grim readiness, you looked to the XO or to Colonel Steele. Captain Farragut was Christmas morning.

He stuck a one-ounce golden eagle to the mizzen-mast for first ooze on Farragut’s deck. He probably ought to have stabbed it there with a dagger, but he stuck it up with chewing gum. Brandished his sword at it. “Look alive, maties, I mean to win that back myself.”

His crew howled at him, told him he was dreaming. Each man jack and jane on board meant to have that eagle for himself.

And the carnival mood did not break until the prox alarm blared. Revved and ready, everyone snapped to the task at hand.

They were left waiting for no longer than racehorses in the gate. Immediately after the order to drop oxygen bricks, the first swarm hove into view, a speck, looming in a split-second into a colossus, into a mountain, into a world.

“Almighty God.”

The enormity staggered. Dirty ice, pocked and clawed, filled the screens.

“God bless it, Captain Farragut! He’s ramming!” Reg screamed and ducked, bracing for impact. An utterly absurd gesture. Should the inertial fields fail, there would be no shelter, no bracing that would keep any of them whole.

Farragut hadn’t told them this part of the plan.

Merrimack, shaped like a cruel and ancient spearhead, plunged into the writhing mountain, a solid mass of armored bodies and grasping claws. Metallic screeching raked the force field—a raw, hideous tearing sheet-metal cacophony that sounded like the ship breaking up. Through the din came Calli Carmel’s steady bark at the naval battery to fire nukes.

The ship bulleted out the other side of the packed swarm, and the unearthly scraping abruptly silenced. In Merrimack’s wake, flailing chunks of swarm spewed in all directions.

Merrimack spun around, racing back to meet her own nuclear flashes, the blinding brightness dimmed in her viewports. The ship resounded with the drumfire of her guns hammering at the splintered swarm, which was re-forming with Merrimack at its heart.

The swarm was everywhere, biblical in its vastness. Each grotesque member a hellish abomination. Monsters formed without gravity or atmospheric pressure, their shapes flowed without logic, a mouth over here, three legs over there, shell plates shifting over amorphous bodies.

Soon, the alien soldiers blotted out the stars, coated the force field inside the range of the naval guns.

The Marine Battery took over from the ship’s guns, firing as fast as they could reload, fragmentation shells at close range. Hive soldiers massed thick on the force field. The energy barrier sounded a sickening weird groan as the Hive cells wheedled, clawed, and insinuated themselves through it.

Merrimack joggled within its force field to the beat of its pounding guns and Dak’s yelling. “Come on, greta! Come on! YeeeeHA! Frag ’em, bag ’em, and tag ’em! You’re mine, greta! You’re mine! Yeah! Crap!”

A muffled whomp bluntly snagged his rhythm.

“Can opener in the barrel,” Reg interpreted the blunt sound as Dak beat his impatience against the firing mechanism.

“Not again,” Kerry moaned.

“It happened ’cause you’re so slow reloading me.”

“Oh, frog you, Dak.”

You could hear the thing in there, armor plates and razor claws scuffling inside the barrel.

“Are we capped?” Hazard asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“Gimme a harpoon.” Hazard flipped his face shield down into place.

Dak seized a long shaft, equipped with an evilly pronged head, from the rack. Slapped the stout black grip into Hazard’s hand. “Wild Turkey,” said Dak.

Hazard looped the sling round his wrist.

“Beer,” said Kerry Blue fixing the gauntlets on her gloves.

“Canadian beer,” said Reg.

“J ’n’ B straight up,” said Twitch.

“Jose Cuervo,” said Carly.

“I’ll do it,” Cole Darby offered to take the harpoon. Thought he was being brave and helpful. To his surprise, the rest of the team sputtered scorn and caustic laughter.

“Oh, fat chance, Peetz! Stand aside.”

The dawn came slowly, as Hazard Sewell lined up his harpoon on the gun breech. This was first ooze. The golden eagle went to the man who spilled the first gorgon blood on John Farragut’s deck. The team had put in their drink orders, because Hazard Sewell would be buying the next round.

Cole supposed it was too late to order vodka.

A clack before Cole’s face startled him—Kerry Blue slapping his face shield down for him. A soft hiss between her lips might’ve been calling him by one of his body parts, but he did not really hear her. He mumbled thanks.

“Ready breech!” Hazard reared back with his harpoon.

“Ready!” Twitch and Carly crouched at the cords.

“Let me have it!”

A yell. Dak flipped the safety. Twitch and Carly yanked for all they were worth. The rear plate flew wide. Hazard’s harpoon stabbed straight and deep down the barrel.

With a sickening crunching sound, brown sludge jetted back at Hazard, spilled down his glassy face shield and splattered his deck boots.

“Mark time! I got the son of a pimp!” Hazard crowed, rammed a few more times. Twisted. He pulled out severed bits of claw and armor plating on the wicked tines. Shiny obsidian-black pieces dissolved as Hazard shook them off the harpoon. The heat radiated up. You felt it under your face shield.

Hazard gave another stab, another turn, to be sure the thing was dead. Pulled out the alien gore. “Purge barrel.”

The team reloaded. Shut the breech. Uncapped, and blasted the barrel clean.

Peetz poised with his sword to stab at something. He hovered over a claw, but it had already stopped wiggling and had begun to dissolve.

Felt the sword whisked out of his grip from behind.

Cole turned. Kerry Blue had his sword. She pushed another handle into his empty hand. A mop.

“Swab up this crap,” she said. And before he could protest, she was cranking up a reload for the gun, and Dak was yelling, “Die, greta, die!” and all the guns were pounding again.

The gravitational backwash bucked the deck. Brown sludge that lately was a gorgon slithered back and forth at Cole’s feet. His stomach roller-coastered with it.

He paused over his mop. So would he be an idiot to obey Kerry Blue? Or should he reclaim his sword?

She could hurt him.

Sounds altered. Louder even than the tonal moans of the force field, an unholy scritching, like metal-on-metal, filled the ship.

“What’s that?” Cole heard his own voice gone flat. He tried to wipe his upper lip. Hand hit against his face shield.

“Gorgons on the hull,” said Reg.

“You mean on the force field,” Cole corrected her. Along with the scritchings came a clatter like hail.

“No,” Reg corrected back. “They’re through the force field. They’re on the hull now.”

Sudden pressure flux opened Cole’s ears. The air stirred. Kerry Blue’s ponytail fluttered. Dak brushed his hand over his shaved scalp at the breeze.

“I stand corrected,” said Reg. “They’re through the hull.”

It was the force field, not the hull, that kept the vacuum out, so the effect of a hole in the hull was not severe—a slight depressurization as air from the ship escaped to fill the near vacuum layer that normally existed between the hull and the force field. The hole in the hull was not the problem. The meaning was horrific.

An alarm clanged, all decks, and Captain Farragut’s voice over the loud com: “Swords, all hands. We have boarders.”

“Oh, you love this part, John Farragut.”

The captain turned from the com. Looked up at Augustus. Admitted with a sheepish smile. “I do, you know.”

Augustus withdrew from the control room.

Farragut pulled on chemical-resistant gloves. Opened and closed his fists. Tested the slide of his sword in its hanger. Grabbed a face shield. “Mr. Carmel, your boat.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

And Captain Farragut quit the control room to join the fighting at the breach.

The sudden snapping and crunching directly behind her iced Reg’s blood, made her stomach flutter and her mouth sting. She spun, rearing, her sword lifted.

And lowered. Heaved out the name with a lot of wind and little voice: “Dak!”

Dak answered, wide-eyed, cheeks bulging, voice muffled. “What?”

Kerry turned toward her chomping teammate. “Dak!” Dak Shepard looked like a giant chipmunk.

Dak shrugged his big shoulders, clutched his bag of pretzels. “What! I’m hungry!” Then suddenly commanded silence with a spray of salt crumbs: “Shhhh!”

Came the unmistakable clack clack clack from the corridor. Only hear it once, and the sound is branded on your nerves forever.

Reg stole a glance through the hatch, danced back inside behind her sword. “It’s a ripe one! Swing hard!”

Soldiers tended to shrink once inside a pressurized atmosphere and they kept shrinking. From their amorphous vacuum-dwelling state they compressed and solidified into misshapen hideousness. Their parts migrated across their bodies, adapting to upness and downness of gravity, trying to get all their legs under them, all their mouth parts into a position to feed.

The smaller and more agile the soldier, the shinier, the blacker, the longer it had been aboard, the harder and denser its shell, the harder to kill.

Well-hardened mandibles clacked in the hatchway. Twitch Fuentes hollered bloody murder, hammered down a mighty stroke on the neckish thing behind the mandibles.

His sword bounced off. Twitch roared. Reg bounced a second stroke off a twisted, serrate leg that sprouted from the thing’s back. “God bless!”

Dak ditched his bag of pretzels—stuffing it into the nearest opening, which happened to be the torpedo tube—gave his hand a quick rub on his trousers, the better to grip his sword for a huge swing—

But the compact soldier skittered into the torpedo tube.

Reg and Kerry exchanged only the briefest of startled glances before they were ratcheting a torpedo into the tube. Slammed the breach shut. “Fire!”

“Fire!”

The torpedo exited the ship with a boom.

“I’ll be damned,” said Dak, staring, astonished. “Gretas like carbos better’n raw meat.”

“Who doesn’t?” Reg wrinkled up her nose. “Got any more pretzels?”

The peetz nudged Kerry. “How do you kill those things?”

“Any way you can.”

“I mean—you cut off their arms, they keep wiggling. Swords bounce. What kills them?”

“They die when the Overmind says they’re dead.”

“How do you know when they’re really dead?”

“You know it’s dead when you’re wading in it.”

Commander Carmel’s voice on the loud com relayed more locations of Hive penetrations. “Breach, deck five. Boarders in hydroponics.”

Kerry sheathed her sword and dashed for the hatch. “We gotta go to hydroponics!”

“That’s not our deck!” Reg yelled after her. Running. The rest of Team Alpha stampeding after Kerry Blue.

A bulbous soldier waited at the head of the ladder.

“Blue! Look out!”

Kerry paused on the fifth rung to flip down her face shield and draw her sword. “Fresh one! Mine!” She stabbed up at gaping mandibles.

Twitch, below her, cursed at the brown acid rain on his head. Kerry Blue had disappeared, up and over the top to deck five.

Cole Darby stabbed at a still snapping claw as it hit deck four.

“Yeah, you sure showed that one,” Carly snarled and bolted up the ladder.

Cole brought up the rear. Slashed into hydroponics with his team. Found aliens, maybe twenty of them, big as Dak, in all their weird shapes, still coalescing under pressure. Bloated brown bags with legs migrating across their formless forms. Mist beading on their still hardening shells. Pincers tore vegetables from their reservoirs, stuffed them into as many mouths as the monsters had.

No time for thought. No time for cowardice. Cole Darby just hacked them out of his face, away from his feet until hydroponics was secured. The humid compartment was still again.

Reg let her sword drag on the wet deck, pushed back her face shield. “Blue! Bitch babe, you are crazed!”

Kerry shrugged. A saurian eye peered over the edge of her collar. Webby feet hugged her ponytail.

Carly pointed at the lizard plant on Kerry’s back, cried, “That’s what this was about! We rescued a salad?”

Dak hooted, big, knee-slapping laughter. Kerry pushed past him, out of hydroponics as the misters started to rain on them again. “Shut up, Dak.”

Calli reported multiple entry points, multiple decks.

At the deck where John Farragut and his naval gunners hacked against an inrush of gorgons from a gaping rent in the hull, Augustus joined the melee, wired and armored, as alien as anything clawing through the hull. A tall, weird figure in black, his eye movements too rapid in an expressionless face, his blinks deliberate. His footfalls rang with metal clanks, his deck boots bladed like an old-time street fighter’s. His motions were not exactly robotic—too smooth—but not human either—too efficient.

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.

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

LIEUTENANT 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.”

“In theory,” Donner qualified.

“Can we at least proceed carefully?” she begged. “Please don’t launch a ship to Origin telling them what you know now. Not without a plan for containment. You could erase us all.”

“I do not give promises.”

He’s going to bring them here. Fast as he can. She knew it. He had seen the past and found it unacceptable. The people of his home world were all dead, and this must not be. Donner forbade it.

The wrong ship formed around Glenn Hamilton as she displaced shipboard from the planet. Disoriented, she knew at once that this was not her SPT 1. This had to be the LEN vessel Woodland Serenity.

Doubly disturbing, in that she had requested retrieval to her own vessel, and she really did not trust the LEN’s French-built displacement chambers to transport snot.

To the first face she met, Lieutenant Commander Hamilton demanded, “Why am I here? Is my boat all right?”

The Eyebrow stormed into the displacement bay, a swarthy man wearing green fatigues as if he were military personnel. Deep brown eyes glowered from under that single bushy brow. “Mrs. Hamilton. Mrs. Hamilton,” he scolded her with her name. “This is criminal.”

“Yes, this is kidnapping. You had no right to intercept me.” She gingerly jumped off the displacement disk lest they opt to send her elsewhere in that frogified death trap. “You will dock with my SPT boat and restore me to my intended destination immediately.”

“This way, Mrs. Hamilton.”

“We are docked with my SPT boat?” she asked, somewhat mollified.

“This way, please.”

She strode briskly after the Eyebrow, her heels clicking a light angry cadence. Her thoughts raced and tumbled. She had made a mess of this. She had not succeeded in warning Donner off the kzachin. No, in fact, she was pretty sure she had just spurred him in quite the opposite direction.

Damage control, then. How to contain the consequences? Minimize the damage. Needed to devise a course of action.

Her escort stepped aside, gentlemanly, making way for her to proceed ahead of him through a hatchway to a long corridor. “Mrs. Hamilton.”

She tried not to wince. Not that she did not love Dr. Patrick Hamilton, she did. But first thing she did once this was all over was going to be changing her name back to Glenn Hull.

She marched briskly ahead—

Toe hit. Not enough warning to put on the brakes. She slammed full face into a bulk. Nose, brow, chin.

The holographic corridor vanished around her. Now she saw the bulk through teary eyes. Nose swelled.

Language unbecoming an officer.

She spun to face the hatch as it slammed shut, caging her in this small compartment. She announced with level authority, using her command voice: “This is piracy.”

She received no response. She paced—carefully—the cell’s true dimensions that were visible now. Two meters by two meters by two and a half meters. Slow fear threatened to close in on her. She pushed it away. It was not useful.

Neither was self-blame, though she had a great stockpile of that to face later. She had let herself—and probably her two SPT boats—fall into unauthorized hands. She could not sit here and await rescue. John Farragut would go extragalactic if he saw this.

She did not know how far Captain Farragut intended to run those two swarms, but she could not let him return to this. He would take a baseball bat to the Eyebrow.

Entertaining as that might be, it would not advance her career.

She was shaking. She had lost control of her independent command.

She steeled herself, forced the quaking down. She would just have to regain control.

And when the Merrimack returned, she would crack the Eyebrow with John’s baseball bat.

Her eyes roamed the blank walls. This would never happen to John Farragut.

John, where are you?

Merrimack hurtled onward, shrouded in weird quiet. No scritching. No off-tune hum of insinuation. Everything touching Merrimack’s field was dead.

The normal wobble and pitch of the deck was gone. The ship ran rock steady. You could not know from within her that she even moved. The ship felt still as the grave.

With a sudden muffled explosion, the ship lurched severely. Captain Farragut lost his footing. In catching himself, his hand mashed into a control board. Calli fell into him. A technician pitched forward, nose into the console. Came up with a bloody mouth.

Shouts erupted from below. A rumbling shuddered underfoot. Acrid smell of burning plastic laced the air.

“That was inside,” said Calli. She crawled to the central com and demanded a report.

The answer came: “We have fire, mid-deck, gun bay twenty.”

As Calli received the report, Farragut consulted a systems technician, “Did we take the fire-fighting system off-line?”

They had taken most systems off line in preparation to meet the swarm.

“Yes, sir.”

“Put it back on-line, please.” Farragut tended to sound casual in a disaster.

The report from mid-deck was unclear. They thought the gun crew had tried to fire an exploding projectile from bay twenty. Best guess was the shell had not made it clear of the barrel. The barrel ruptured on board, leaving a holy holocaust down below.

Smoke roiled too thick for anyone to withstand. They could not extinguish the blaze by isolating the section and opening it to the deep airless freeze of space. They could not even vent the smoke. The ship was buried deep in a solidity of compressed gorgons. There was no way out.

Calli commanded over the loud com, “Battery, hold your fire! No one fire! All units, do not fire. Triage to gun bay twenty. Fire containment crew report to mid-deck.” She turned off the com to murmur, “God almighty.”

“Why don’t I hear the engines?” Farragut asked.

“The engines shut themselves down to nominal,” Systems reported. “All vents are blocked. We are overheating.”

The engines cooled by cycling coolant past the near zero of surrounding space.

Farragut turned to Tactical: “Are we moving?”

“Yes, sir.”

“How fast and which way?”

“Sublight. The collision dropped us out of FTL. We are on the same vector as before contact. The swarm came with us.”

“They learn quick.”

The navigation specialist with the bloody lip muttered at his console, “Sublight. At least someone will be able to find our dead hull.”

“Belay that. Can we steer?”

“We can steer, sir. But we’ll lose speed.”

To which Systems added, “We can’t accelerate without cooking ourselves.

Farragut looked to Calli. His XO concluded, “The battleground is right here.”

“We aren’t the only ones hurt,” said Farragut. “Get me a sounding. How bad off are they?”

At the very least Merrimack had incinerated a thick layer around her force field and left at a minimum a fifty-meter-diameter path of destruction directly behind her.

“They are dead to a thickness of nine meters all sides except to the stern, which is dead straight back to the surface.”

That gave Merrimack a few moments in which to think while the enemy ate its way through its dead. But, “We’re going to burn up if we don’t get some of them off us quick.”

“Take the force field down to nominal until the live ones close in,” Farragut ordered. The force field was the single biggest draw on the engines. “Are any of the guns functional?”

“Not the projectiles, sir. The pressure on the force field is off the scale. We’re buried alive. The dead mass has pushed in through the gun barrels.”

“Can we displace anything into the mass?”

“Negative!” Systems was quick with the answer. “The displacement unit is tricky at the best of times. It uffs itself without Hive help. If we turn on the chamber, the Hive’s likely to displace gorgons aboard.”

Farragut nodded. “If the Hive learns how to displace, this war is over.” He took in a breath, chest tight. Exhaled hard to expel excess carbon dioxide. Could not seem to get enough air. “Status atmospherics.”

“All green,” said Calli. She had already checked atmospherics. Twice. “I feel it, too.”

“Swarm,” Farragut murmured. Uffing their senses.

“Yes, sir,” Systems confirmed. “We’re not really suffocating. Yet.”

“Belay that.”

“Aye, sir.”

“Stand by to bring the beam cannons back on-line.”

“They’ll expect that,” said Calli.

“No, Mr. Carmel. You expect that. We haven’t used beams against the Hive in a long, long time.”

“Because the Hive always overloads the controls.”

“And for all they know, we have learned our lesson and quit using beams.”

“You don’t think they’re waiting for this move?”

“No. I don’t think they have it in them to anticipate our moves in a new situation. They learn by precedent, like computers. Computers count patterns back through the most recent choices. We haven’t used beams in a long time. They won’t expect us to restart now. To react, they’ll have to see the threat, evaluate the threat, then neutralize the threat. And I have to hope the time between steps one, two, and three takes more time than it does us to drill a vent to the surface.” He turned to Augustus for comment. “That’s Plan A.”

“I like it,” said the intelligence officer. “Given that I don’t see a Plan B. Be quick.”

“Fire Control, how long will it take to burn through to the surface?”

The weapons specialist pulled his lips tight across his teeth. “More time than we’ll have. These are can openers out there. Not soft bodies. They’re armored and they’re dense.”

“How about shooting through the dead?”

“Why would we shoot the dead?”

“I need vents for the engines. Everything behind us is dead. We came in that way. It’s got to be pretty soft back there. Can we cut a tunnel back out the back?”

The specialist heaved a useless breath. “It’s our best and only shot.”

“Line ’em up. Straight shot out the back. Drill me a vent.”

“How many cannons are we bringing on-line?”

“All of ’em. Aim anything out the back that can be aimed out the back. For the rest, rake, drill, blast, shoot until we redline.”

“And if we redline before we break through to the surface in the back?” Calli asked quietly.

“Then push the line. There is no choice here. We do this or we die here. So we do this.”

“Yes, sir.”

Captain Farragut picked up the loud caller to brief the ship. Heard himself talking, but no echo of his voice through the corridors. “And God bless, there goes the loud com.” He tossed the caller over his shoulder. “I’m going to tell the crew in person. Set it up, Calli. Wait till the gorgons eat through to our force field, then give it all we’ve got.”

“You want to wait that long, Captain?”

“I don’t want to waste a single erg shooting dead gorgons I don’t have to.”

Augustus followed him off the bridge. “Don’t shoot until you see the blacks of their pincers?”

“Don’t swing at the first pitch,” said Farragut.

He bounded through his ship, informing his people of the situation and the plan. Arrived on mid-deck, where smoke still rolled in a thick gray cloud from the ruptured hatch of gun bay twenty, its fire wall bowed in, gore spattered on the corridor’s inner bulk.

Farragut waved through the smoke to peer through the hatchway to the carnage within. A blasted rent in the hull left a clear view to dead gorgons mashed against the force field’s invisible barrier.

“Holy God.”

Farragut knelt to pick up a button still sewn to a shred of fabric. He held the button between his palms as he might hold the hand of the dying. Spoke with deep tremolo, “Who is this?”

Augustus watched the fire-suited Marines around him. All in John Farragut’s hands. That button might have been—might still be—any one of them. The captain held them in his hands, asked their names. John Farragut owned these people.

A flap-eared youth asked, “We gonna buy it, Captain?”

“Hell no,” Farragut answered in a big voice, with a smile and a wink. “It’s a piss-poor day to die!”

The Farragut magic that Augustus so loathed infused hope and heart into those despairing faces, when he knew even John Farragut could not get them out of this one.

The captain made his rounds, spreading his idiotic hope through his doomed ship, until the familiar sick hum of gorgons trying to insinuate through the force field surrounded them. He raced back to the bridge. “Stand by!”

“Standing by.”

“Do it, Mr. Carmel.”

“Fire Control!”

“Fire Control, aye.”

“Bring beam cannons on-line.”

“Cannons on-line. Aye.”

The lights dimmed. The beam chargers cycled to full power.

“And we are charged and green, sir.”

Calli gave the order: “Fire. Fire all banks.”

“Firing, aye.”

The lights dipped again. Sound razored in the confines, a raking sizzle and burn with a closing wall of heat. A ghastly unhealthy warble permeated the beleaguered force field.

Calli and the systems tech looked to Farragut. “More power to the force field?” Calli asked.

“Negative.”

“Aye, sir.” They needed everything for the guns. If the guns did not cut through, then the force field would only prolong the dying.

An alarm sounded. A red light flashed on the console. Systems reported: “We’re cooking. Guns turning to auto-shutdown.”

“Override that,” Calli ordered.

“Aye, sir.” The tech switched to manual.

“Someone give me a depth,” Farragut demanded.

“Nine meters to the surface.”

“We’re getting power spikes!” said Systems.

The swarm interference had reached the beam controls. The firing system fluctuated between shut off and overload.

“Shut down all but the rear-firing cannons,” Farragut ordered. “Maintain fire to the stern.”

“Maintaining stern fire, aye. Five meters to surface.”

Beam chargers whined high revs, then drooped, then screamed.

“Engines redlined! Engines shutting down!”

“Override!”

“Override. Aye, sir.”

“One meter to surface. And clear! We are clear to vacuum!”

“Shut down beam cannons! Shut down! Shut down! Take ’em off-line!”

Sounds wound down, the singed smell already clearing with a sudden influx of vacuum-cooled air.

Farragut had thought the vent would stay open only briefly, but the swarm did not collapse in on the burned tunnel, perhaps by virtue of its deadly heat, or perhaps the beams had cauterized the dead into a hard pipe.

The sense of relief was short-lived. The ship could breathe. Now what? You could hear the gorgons wheedling through the force field.

“How many did we kill?” Farragut demanded.

“Thousands.” But before anyone could cheer, the tech reported, “We are still badly outnumbered.”

Augustus specified, “From one thousand to one, we stand now a much improved five hundred to one—counting our dead, and I don’t believe those are up to the task. We’ll end up looking like the Sulla.”

“Stow that, Augustus. Can we still steer?”

“Yes, Captain,” Calli answered. “But we still can’t achieve FTL. By the time we get anywhere, we will be the Sulla.”

“Can we push another engine out?”

“If you can push a pig through a pitot tube.”

What Augustus’ answer lacked in respect, it made up for in clarity.

“I see.”

A replay of gun bay twenty on a nuclear scale.

“If we try that, the swarm will be dead, but so will we,” said Calli. “Has it come to suicide?”

“No, it has not. Nobody die till I say so. And not today. That is an order!”

Augustus saw the MP at the hatch roll his eyes, could read the skewed eyebrows: Right, sir. Whatever you say, sir. But also saw the men grow heartened in spite of themselves.

Farragut prowled his control room like a bear wanting a back-scratch and not a tree in sight. “I just want to scrape them off. And there’s nothing out here. What’s out here?”

“Nearest solar system is four light-years off,” said Tactical. “We don’t have that long. No comets of any size on the scan.”

The force field groaned. Five hundred to one.

“I don’t want to be eaten alive, John,” said Calli quietly, statement of fact.

“How about our engine?” Farragut directed the question to Tactical, not to Systems.

“We can’t get one out,” Tactical reported, confused. He thought they’d already made that clear. “We’ll die, too. And that’s against my orders today, sir.”

“I mean Engine Three.”

“It blew up,” said Tactical, feeling peculiar in stating the obvious.

But Augustus saw where this was going. “The antimatter.”

Farragut nodded. “The antimatter from Engine Three can’t have achieved one hundred percent annihilation. The containment chamber would have blown something clear.”

Calli snapped fingers toward Tactical. “Res scan. Antimatter. Look for it in the area where we jettisoned Engine Three.” Then turned to the captain. “You’re right. There must be something left. But it will be only particles and they’re flying every which way, fast.”

“Particles will do,” said Farragut. “Particles are all we want. We get too much antimatter, we’ll blow ourselves up.”

Tactical located the antimatter ejected from the explosion of Engine Three. A tenuous, expanding bubble of it.

And Merrimack, cocooned within its ravenous living asteroid, executed a lumbering turn into the path of the nearest, largest cluster of it.

Reg Monroe gripped and regripped her sword hilt like a batter waiting for the pitch. Watched the dead layer visible through the tear in the hull over the galley, a brown mass smashed against the force field.

The dead began to move.

Carly breathed, “There they are.”

Mandibles appeared first, moving, sucking up the remains of their own kind. The force field shimmered and whined as the living monsters began to ooze through the distortion barrier.

Mesmerizing, grotesque, gorgons contorted themselves, flattened, elongated, slithered. And then the first pointed black claw pierced clear to atmosphere. A long serrated leg pushed free, stretched, then another, the thing laboring to pull its body out of the force field, as from thick mud. It expanded as it emerged, forming a shape, organizing a mouth, till it dangled by a single claw, spiderlike, seven meters above the deck, weightless in the limbo zone between the force field and ship’s gravity well. Legs waved, searching for purchase, trying to acquire up and down; the body reshaping, shell hardening.

Cole Darby hissed, “Can’t we shoot it?”

“Don’t you dare,” said Reg. “Hive mind’s got the computerized sights fubared. And even if you gots a dead eye, you see where’s he’s at? He’s outside the gravity. That’s worse than shooting into water. Refracts your shot. And you miss and you hit the force field? One of us be eating your shot. Got it?”

Cole Darby bowed his head. “Got it.”

The ship’s loud com clicked. The boffins must’ve got the calibration recoded. The XO announced shipwide to ready swords, prepare for boarders, and stand by for impact, Merrimack was about to ram antimatter.

Reg glared back at the loud com. “We are ramming what? We are ramming what? What did that woman just say?”

“Eyes up, Marine.”

“I gots my eyeballs on your boarders, Mister Hazard Sewell.” Reg regripped her sword. “I see them crawly things hanging up there like the eensty weensty big ass spider. You just tell me: we are ramming what?”

Merrimack lost speed in the turn that put her in the path of the antimatter.

“Just as long as we make contact,” said Farragut.

“We’ll make contact, sir,” the navigator assured him.

“How much antimatter are we facing, all told?”

The sensor technicians conferred over the readings. “Between a centigram and a decagram.”

“What kind of explosion can we expect from that?”

“You want to know if we can survive it, sir? I don’t know.”

The ship’s engines fed antimatter into the annihilation chamber in precise amounts, measured down to the atom. This mixture would not be precise.

“We’re in for somewhere between a twenty- to a two-hundred-megaton blast.”

The captain exchanged glances with his XO. Said, “Choose your poison. Fire or chewing.”

“I’ll take fire,” said Calli.

“Fire, it is.”

“Fifteen seconds to intercept with the antimatter,” Tactical reported. “Thirteen. Twelve.”

An abrupt change in the ship’s ambient sounds silenced his countdown. The moan of fluctuating energy fields now overlayed with a physical metallic scratch and scrape of hard claws on hull. “They’re through the outer perimeter.”

And a report from below: “They have gorgons in the galley. Requesting permission to use flamethrowers.”

“Negative,” said Farragut. “We are low on oxygen. I want to be able to breathe when this is over.”

Augustus lifted his brows, said nothing. Optimistic order, that.

“Five seconds to impact. Four.”

The specialists tensed. You had to resist the instinct to brace yourself against something. Grabbing hold of something only makes you look silly if you live through it, or sends you to your Maker cringing if you don’t.

A glance to the commanders showed Calli Carmel, tall, trim, picturesque, masked in cool dignity, standing in easy posture. Her hands, clasped behind her back were white fists.

John Farragut, alert, bright-eyed, ready to spring into his next action upon impact. Expecting to live.

The Roman colonel, Augustus, behind him, laconic, expecting to die. Going to do it with his eyes open.

“Two, One. Contact.”

And nothing. Nothing more than the continued sickening moan of insinuation, and the escalating scritching on the hull.

A curse from the helm.

John Farragut turned, looking like the boy in the Kentucky field when his M-100 didn’t go off. “What happened? Did we miss?”

“Force field, sir,” Tactical groaned. “Theirs.”

A coherent swarm—and this one was entirely too coherent—maintained a weak forward screen against particles in its path.

“We’re not going fast enough,” Tactical issued the postmortem. “The antimatter particles didn’t pierce the swarm’s force field.”

The clashing of sword-on-pincer carried from below. Calli reported quietly, “They’re in.”

Five hundred to one.

14

SOMEONE SPOKE AN EPITAPH: “That’s it.”

Farragut thundered, “No, that is not it! Where is that antimatter? Did it bounce?”

“No, sir. We have it.” Tactical struggled to explain quickly, “A swarm’s force field follows the contours of the swarm shape. So there are pits and pockets in it. We caught the antimatter in those pockets. It’s coming with us. It’s just not contacting any matter.”

“Good. There has to be some matter out there,” said Farragut. “We push the antimatter into the matter—” He gave a loud clap to explain the finish. “We don’t have to be going fast. We just have to touch it.”

“Particles, Captain,” Tactical reported somberly. “There are particles of matter out there. We are light-years from anything substantial. Annihilating two particles at a time isn’t going to produce force enough to pierce the swarm field and kill a significant number of gorgons—assuming we can even line up our approach to collide one matter particle into one antimatter particle. It’s going to be like throwing one grain of sand into a beach and targeting one specific grain of sand—while moving at near light speed.”

“Makes hitting a hundred-and-three-mile-per-hour Kyle Norton fastball look easy,” Farragut offered.

“You got it, Captain.”

“Need a bigger bat,” Calli muttered.

“I need a brick,” said John Farragut.

“The oxygen!” Couldn’t be sure who all in the control room shouted that.

Merrimack had dropped her oxygen reserves before battle. Bricks of matter as big as coal cars.

“Res scan,” Calli barked.

“Oxygen bricks located,” Tactical reported. Fed the coordinates to the navigator.

“Calli, can you steer us—and our antimatter—on a collision course with our oxygen bricks?”

“I’ll make it happen, John.” Looked to the helm who nodded, “Happening, sirs.”

“Just how low are we on oxygen?” Farragut thought to ask.

“We’ll pull it out of our water if we have to,” said the XO. “If I get eaten alive, I’m not going to feel much like breathing.”

“My thoughts.” Farragut nodded. “Somebody give me an estimated time of impact?”

Calli deferred to the helm, who answered, “Ten minutes, sir. Maybe nine if I can squeeze some acceleration without cooking us.”

“Calli, your boat. I’m going below.” Farragut exited the control room, sword drawn.

“He loves this part,” said Augustus, and followed him.

The gorgons had chewed a flanking route around Team Alpha where they were holding the galley breach. Kerry Blue sliced gorgon limbs off as fast as they emerged from the ductwork into the corridor outside the galley, while her team held off the main onslaught within. She grunted a song to herself:

Five hundred bundles of legs on the wall
Five hundred bundles of legs.
You take one down
And hack it around
Four hundred ninety-nine bundles of legs on the
wall.

Her sword dragged heavily as if pulling from a gravity sink. Her arms became elastic bands that had lost their snap. She should never have started counting bundles of legs on the wall. Zero was so very far away.

She was hacking number four hundred and eighty-nine when a crashing and peripheral motion told her a gorgon had dropped from the overhead behind her. And she could not afford to turn.

She sliced mandibles out of her face, the muscles in her back tensing into a knot of primal terror, awaiting the pain, any moment expecting the jaws to pierce her spine. She whirled—

To a splat of gorgon innards hitting her face shield.

The offal slid off to reveal John Farragut cutting down the flanker.

“Ho! Shitska! The high-priced talent is on deck!” Kerry blurted.

The Roman, Augustus, darted past both of them in two long strides to cut down number four hundred eighty-eight coming out of the wall.

Captain Farragut nodded to Kerry. “As you were. Hold out, Flight Sergeant. We’re almost out of this.”

Sweat streamed through her scalp, soaked her sides. Her muscles quivered. Eyes burned. “Really, sir?”

“Yes. Really.”

It was so easy to believe him that she didn’t. But a nod from the Roman told her it was really so. She could trust Augustus to put a rosy outlook on nothing.

He didn’t tell her that getting out of this might involve sudden death. But they were almost out of this one way or the other.

Came a sound like an ocean roar in a hurricane, like a thunder roll on a mountain, as loud a noise as Merrimack ’s dampers allowed to sound.

The end-of-the-world roar shook the ship. Kerry crouched to the shuddering deck.

John Farragut winked and was on his way down the corridor, quick as Santa Claus.

“God provides for drunks, fools, and John Farragut. Or did I just repeat myself?” Augustus followed him.

Kerry scarcely heard him for the din. She pulled herself up from the quaking deck, holding onto the bulk. “This is good?” Her words were swallowed up by the roar. She shouted, “Is this good?”

But the officers were gone. And so were the gorgons, which had been clawing out of the duct. Number four hundred eighty-seven never came.

Kerry staggered to the galley hatch. She clutched at the frame and hung onto it with sudden vertigo upon the sight of the gorgons, pressing against the force field over the galley, suddenly tearing away in a blur of living, writhing sludge. They scraped across the energy barrier, shredding, with a noise between a scream and an avalanche. A pelting river of them raked across the energy field.

And abruptly cleared to a light as bright as Merrimack permitted to shine through its screen. It shut the eyes.

When the stabbing brightness gave way to cool darkness against her lids, Kerry opened her eyes to beautiful midnight. Green clouds of afterimage floated on her retinae, as she blinked at the peaceful stars showing through the rent in the hull.

She inhaled deeply, able to breathe again with the death shroud’s lifting. As if the swarm had been pressing on her chest.

The air stank.

The roaring subsided, and Reg’s screech pierced her eardrums, calling God by very familiar names.

Twitch and Carly were doing an elaborate gloat ritual, part flamenco, part chicken dance. “Now you see ’em, now they’re frogging spaced!” Cowboy used to be very good at that dance.

Hazard Sewell muttered to his God.

Kerry pointed up with her sword to the very peculiar sight of some remaining gorgons caught in the act of insinuation. The few, the squashed, hung within the force field like insects preserved in invisible amber.

And preserved they were. Still alive, the monsters pressed inward, relentlessly, toward food.

“So which one’s gonna drop first? I got a dime on that one.” Kerry wagged her sword. “Squiggy there.”

“I got the runt,” said Cole Darby. “The one with the fire in his eye.”

“That’s not an eye,” said Carly. “I think that’s an asshole. I got Gimpy there.” She picked out a gorgon, which was oozing through the field, leaving one of its legs behind.

“I think mine’s dead,” said Darb. “I want a new one.”

“Cost you.”

They fell to arguing about it, till the Navy gunners showed up to relieve them. “Orders from Lieutenant Colonel Steele. Team Alpha report to the hangar deck. Get some space under your butts, Marines.”

Flight Leader Hazard Sewell put up his sword, barking. “Come on, dogs, let’s go walk ourselves!”

Renewed, awake, alive, Kerry jumped at the chance to fly again. She gave her sword over to a navvy. “Here, spaceman.” She yelled back to him as she ran: “Just let me know which one of those buggers drops out of the overhead first! There’s money on it!”

Jose Maria Cordillera appeared at the captain’s table, impeccably groomed. His long hair was clean, glossy, neatly parted and held back with a silver clasp. Only the slightest bulge of an elbow wrap under one brushed sleeve hinted that he had been in a fight for his life or suffered any strain from it. That and when he seated himself slowly, as if he might break, his back aristocratically straight, “I am too old for this.”

John Farragut poured a stiff one for his friend. Alcohol flowed freely throughout the ship with the captain’s blessing in the wake of desperate battle, to reward the living and mourn the dead.

“Mo tells me you got a reading on a dissolving gorgon,” Farragut prompted.

“I did,” Jose Maria confirmed. “Our valiant young Marines endeavored to corral one into my scanning chamber, where it promptly expired for the recorders.” He did not sound happy. “I do not know what to make of it. I should like Augustus to review it.” His dark eyes found the empty place at the table.

“He’s dead asleep,” Farragut answered the absence.

Augustus, who had been chemically jacked awake for forty-eight hours, had fallen asleep, hard, directly after the second battle was won.

Jose Maria lamented, “I am not even sure our patterner can help. I just want a second opinion.”

“You have a theory?”

“I have a weak hypothesis based upon an unrecognizable agglomeration of molecules. Their form? It is like trying to reverse engineer a human being from a pool of sixty-five percent oxygen, eighteen percent carbon, ten percent hydrogen, three percent nitrogen, two percent calcium, one percent phosphorus, and two percent sixty-odd other elements. Even in my snapshot of its living form, what is missing is apparent cohesion. What holds this being together? The normal molecular bonds—they are not here. I cannot make sense of its digestive process. A Hive cell eats left- and right-handed proteins alike, though I could not isolate a single protein in its own makeup. It converts organics to energy, but can this process be more akin to combustion than digestion? I should like to hear Augustus laugh at me for that one.”

“They convert organics to what kind of energy?”

“I fear Augustus shall laugh. I fear more that he will not.”

Farragut pressed, “What kind of energy, Jose Maria?”

“Resonance.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“In an insane way, it makes perfect sense. What else could give them fluidity and cohesion in vacuum at temperatures at near absolute zero? It must be resonance.” Jose Maria took a long, fortifying drink, set down his glass. “And I shall venture further out on this most precarious limb and postulate that resonance is Hive.”

Farragut gave his head a quick shake as if he had water in his ears. “Resonance is a by-product of Hive existence?”

Jose Maria shook his head slowly, eyes on the amber dregs in his glass. “Resonance is Hive existence. The Hive and all its swarms and all its cells—what we call gorgons—are a titanic resonant being, and we the parasites within it.”

“Oh. So we kill the enemy, we cut our own line of communication.”

Cordillera had to smile. The captain had no awe for the vastness of such a being, no compunction at the prospect of being a parasite within it. Only keep his lines of communication intact, and that was all right with Captain Farragut. “If I am right, there is that risk.”

“How weak is this hypothesis of yours?” asked Farragut, not liking the sound of this.

“Feeble enough. Here.” Jose Maria Cordillera refilled their glasses to propose a toast. “To Augustus laughing.”

Augustus woke in a depleted torpedo storage bay, his mouth cotton and dust, his eyelids stuck together. Faint scent of wood spice in his nostrils. He spoke to the scented air. “I heard Spanish music.” And he rolled his head, cracked an eye to see who was with him.

Jose Maria Cordillera, sitting on one of the few remaining torpedoes, lifted a finger from the guitar to claim responsibility.

“How long have you been here?”

“A while.” Jose Maria produced a computer bubble. “Can you sort this?”

Augustus held the bubble up, squinted at it. Tossed it to the deck, where it rolled through the grating to the metal. “No.” He covered his eyes.

“Shall I leave?”

“No. Play. Order coffee.”

Augustus did not stir again until the hatch thumped open and shut and the smell of coffee filled the torpedo bay. He smirked at the bearer. “You’ve been busted down to orderly?”

Captain Farragut set down the coffee service. “I want in on this discussion.”

“No, you are running away from your recorder,” Augustus saw through him. “You don’t want to record any more of those letters.”

“There’s that,” Farragut admitted.

He had lost a lot of crew. Made for a lot of anguishing letters home to Mom, Dad, spouse, sweetheart, and—God forbid—child.

Jose Maria set aside the guitar to pour the coffee.

“Don’t give Farragut the guitar, whatever you do. He’ll play that country western caterwauling.”

“It’s bluegrass caterwauling,” Farragut corrected, stung.

Augustus rolled over the edge of his pod and, whether at the prospect of bluegrass music or from the pounding within his head, retched. He had little to bring up.

“Is that from wiring up into patterner mode or from . . .” considered what to call his encounter with the Hive mind. “The interference.”

“How would I know?” Augustus sat up, reached for the coffee. A tic moved his gaunt cheek.

“They scared you,” Farragut guessed.

Augustus replied tersely in scatological Latin.

“They got to him,” Farragut told Jose Maria.

“I . . . am so pissed I can’t see straight,” Augustus breathed in strong emotion he had not felt in this lifetime.

“Did you touch the Overmind?” Jose Maria asked.

“If you can call it that.”

“Does it—do they—think of itself as singular or plural?”

“The questions assumes a fact not in evidence.”

“Which fact is . . . ?”

“That it thinks. It doesn’t think. It’s all gut instinct. In fact, that’s it: it’s a gut. Your alimentary canal can function without a brain, and so does it. When I was connected to the Hive, I had no knowledge of the whole, any more than one lung would know the existence of another. I got only impulse, not thought.”

“So what ‘impulse’ did it send to you?”

Augustus scowled in thought, trying to recall, or to interpret, what he had received when the Hive had taken over his connections. Farragut and Cordillera waited.

At last. “This is filtered through my interpretation, mind you. I . . .” Augustus started over in robotic monotone: “Destroy anomalous entity.”

“Me?” John Farragut asked. “ ‘Anomalous entity.’ Was that me?”

Augustus gave a hard, thin smile. “You didn’t look like the rest of us.”

For a moment Augustus had been one with all those crawling ravenous things. Anger twitched again under his eye.

“How close did you come?” asked Farragut. “To shooting me?”

“Not.” Augustus turned his attention to his coffee, held the cup in both hands, let the steam thread up his nostrils. “I have my own fail-safe.”

Of course he would. To keep him from being turned against Palatine.

“I forgot,” said Farragut. “You’re programmed to self-terminate.”

Augustus snorted. “I am not programmed. I am not a cyborg. The organism governs here. I am in control.” A little too insistent there. “And anyway, who could shoot those blue eyes.”

The blue eyes blinked. “You could.”

“Well, yes. But not because some thing told me to. What’s your body count?”

Farragut demurred, not liking to reduce his losses to a number. They numbered eighty-one. “It’s what we call a Pyrrhic victory.”

“Pyrrhic is good. Statistically, you should not have won at all.”

“Told you, I don’t do statistics.”

“I know. Here is the statistical curve,” Augustus drew the curve in the air. “And way out here is John Farragut, one of those outliers we throw out of the calculation.”

“That’s why you’re on my boat.”

“That’s why I am where John Farragut is,” Augustus admitted. He took Jose Maria’s hand, turned it over to check his chronometer, an antique Jose Maria wore on his wrist. August 5th. “Is this right?”

“Some hangover you had, Augustus,” said Farragut. The patterner had slept the clock round twice.

“You throw a hell of a party, John Farragut. Where are we?”

“Twenty parcs out of the Myriad.”

Augustus lifted his brows. Merrimack was a lot closer to the Myriad than when Augustus had passed out. “The reason for this incautious haste?”

“A ‘singular’ haste, Colonel Augustus,” said Jose Maria. “Donner threatens to change history. We must stop him.”

“Or maybe I want to do it myself,” said Farragut. And to Don Cordillera’s appalled expression said, “It’s a thought.”

“A much-thought thought, Captain Farragut,” Jose Maria said sternly. “A dangerous thought. The old question comes to mind: If you could go back to 1938 and kill Hitler, would you? Let us say you do. Let us say in doing so you also escape the classic paradox of erasing your own birth, which would, of course, mean there would be no you to go back and kill Hitler. Let us leave that loop alone arguendo. Let us say you go back. You kill Hitler. You save the lives of six million Jews and you prevent World War II.

“Without their Axis allies, Japan fails to bomb Pearl Harbor. You save Hiroshima and Nagasaki. So then all those farm boys and coal miners who left the plow and the pick to enlist on Monday morning, December 8, 1941, never left your country. They never married their French and English and Italian brides. They never attended university on your GI Bill. All the encounters that led to your end-of-the-millennium Baby Boom never happen. The children and grandchildren of those uncreated people are never born.

“In short, you have just erased the lives of millions of people who would otherwise be alive today. How do you justify it? Because your motives were pure? Because the six million lived? Because Hiroshima and Nagasaki lived? How do you trade lives?”

“I am not going back to kill Hitler,” said Farragut. “I’m thinking about going back ten billion years and sixty-odd klarcs away to try to mess up the Hive’s history.”

Never one to let things just happen, if he believed history could be altered, as John Farragut did, then he was all for taking the offensive. “There’s a time portal. What’s to stop us from going back and trying to exterminate the Hive before it can be born?”

“We do not know when the Hive came into being. Ten billion years is a long time in which to hold onto a plan.”

“So we don’t wait. If we can identify the Hive home world, then go back and identify the plasma and dust that will coalesce into the Hive home star, blast the holy peaches out of it and interfere with its formation . . . ?” He trailed off, inquiringly.

“Assume it is possible,” said Cordillera. “Assume you try. What if you get it wrong? Multibody dynamics are complex. In erasing the Hive we could erase humanity.”

“Thousands of light-years across the galaxy?” said Farragut, dubious.

“Ten billion years is a long time in which stars may move. It may be that we and the Hive sprang from the same dust from the same supernova. We destroy them, we destroy us. Or perhaps the Hive ate some other invader who otherwise would make landfall in 1099,” Jose Maria pulled the date out of the air. “Some time before we could defend Earth. Or perhaps in your meddling you redirect the comet that brings the first amino acids to Earth. There are too many variables. Too much time. The moment of intersection is critical—that instant when events you change intersect the history of Earth, no matter how minutely. Everything after that moment is in peril.”

“And you really think events sixty klarcs and ten billion years away can affect Earth? I mean realistically, not wild long shot.”

“They have done,” said Jose Maria. “They do. The Hive is upon us now. The Hive crossed humanity’s path eight years ago. So let us imagine you succeed in your quest. You erase the Hive from Earth history—take away that intersection—then anyone born after it, will not be.”

“Will not be what?”

“Born. Events are interdependent. History is a tower of cards. Remove one card, and this particular structure ceases to exist. The smallest change will have vast consequences. How much does it take to alter the path of one sperm? A missed transport? A second beer? Roll left instead of right? A mote of dust? A sneeze? You take away humanity’s intersection with the Hive eight years ago, then everything from the wreck of the Sulla forward is vulnerable to change, beginning with the children. After that? Who knows. Perhaps we are subjects of the Roman Empire. The possibilities are myriad, so to say.”

Farragut looked quite deflated.

“I do hope I have discouraged you,” said Jose Maria.

Farragut nodded, conceding, reluctantly, the point. He spoke a lingering regret, “I took an oath to defend the United States.”

“And I took an oath to do no harm. The past is Pandora’s box. It behooves us to keep what is in there in.”

“Then Donner is in a very dangerous position.”

“Very. We have taught him that faster-than-light travel is possible. We have told him his home world, Origin, is doomed to die. Donner has the ability to transport that knowledge back to a time when such things cannot exist. If he preserves Origin from its disaster, then those beings of ten billion years ago will expand across the stars, changing worlds—”

“Killing Hitler.”

“So to say.”

“Then we have to stop Donner from telling Origin about us. Augustus?” Farragut turned to his Intelligence Officer for his take on it.

While John Farragut and Jose Maria were talking, Augustus had lain back down and closed his eyes. He looked dead. His gray lips moved: “Let him go.”

“Let him go?” Not the answer Farragut expected. “Donner could erase us all.”

One eye opened a crack. Augustus spoke condescendingly, “We are here, are we not? Which means he didn’t, now doesn’t it? This is basic. This is entropy. The arrow of time flies one way. You know this stuff. You sound like a pair of self-important college students having a weighty dorm chat—which doesn’t surprise me coming out of you, but you, Don Cordillera, I mistook for a grown-up. The ability to alter the past remains what it has always been, a silly romantic notion and beneath you.”

Jose Maria spoke earnestly, hand over heart, “I am Spanish.”

“Makes you a silly romantic?”

“Romance is never silly.” Jose Maria picked up the guitar again.

“You are disappointing.” And to Farragut, “You are at least predictable. Before you get too power drunk on this most urgent and desperate mission of yours to save human history and planet Earth, do remember that compliance with physical law is not optional. It’s self-enforced. Your philosophizing is nothing but warmed-over sophomoric hash. That you are sitting here in my torpedo bay, talking, means you were created and no one went back and changed what is. God won’t allow it. Creation won’t stand for it.”

Jose Maria fumbled on the guitar strings, stopped playing. “Augustus, you surprise me. Are you being facetious or do you believe in God?”

“For me to suppose myself the pinnacle of intelligence in existence would be a bit parochial, not to mention arrogant.”

“But you are arrogant,” said Farragut.

“I am also here. I have faith that Donner will fail to change the history of the universe.”

“Because he must?”

“Because he did. You are more arrogant than I, John Farragut. You just wear it well.”

“You’re awfully sure of yourself when we’re talking about things for which there is no pattern.”

“Of course there is a pattern. It’s called the universe.”

“And there is a twenty-billion-year-old piece of lead 208 that says there is a hole in the big pattern,” Farragut countered. “Donner is importing into the past elements that don’t yet exist.”

“He is, John? You mean he did. It’s done. Whatever damage he will do is done—done ten billion years ago.”

“Done once implies it can be done again. Your course of action appears to entail closing our eyes, crossing our fingers and hoping. Never an option I was comfortable with.”

“I am not here to give you comfort.” Augustus closed his eye.

“You said Donner was courting a paradox and must be stopped.”

Augustus spoke to the insides of his eyelids, “I believe I overreacted. The danger is all to the Myriad. The Myriad is collapsing, nothing more. The Myriad is not a Roman province; so I do not care. The LEN claimed jurisdiction; let the LEN save it. For Donner’s courtship with paradox, what is the effect of paradox? Ever seen one? I shall file paradoxes away with purple cows and not give them another thought.” And he was soon snoring.

Upon leaving the torpedo bay, Farragut conferred alone with Don Cordillera. “What do you think?”

“He’s wrong.”

“A patterner? Wrong?”

If anyone could tell a patterner he was mistaken, it would be Jose Maria Cordillera.

“I know. In my heart. And so do you, young captain. His argument that he has never seen a paradox, therefore they do not exist, is feeble. Unawareness is not an argument. The dead are unaware. Though it is the knowing that is the danger.”

“You lost me.”

“Do you know the tale of Adam and Eve in the Garden?”

People of the Book were become less and less common. But Farragut answered, “My dad still brings a Bible into his courtroom. And uses a Colt forty-five for a gavel.”

“Then you know this story. It is the knowing, the knowing that changes everything. From the moment you know, return to the Garden is impossible.”

“And you’re still losing me.”

“Once you become aware of the light, you move toward it. Knowing that FTL is possible, the beings on Origin will try to achieve it. Nothing will stop them. The knowing of the possibility makes the achieving imperative. They cannot do as they would have done in ignorance. If Donner tells them of us, we will have thrown an apple back ten billion years. I believe we must get back to the Myriad. No time to spare.”

“I’m with you.” And into his com, “Calli, best speed.”

“Already at it, Captain.”

“Then make it better.”

And then the captain fell uncharacteristically silent, introspective. Not the ground-down sadness of all the deaths. Rather a wistfulness. “Captain Farragut, I sense you are no longer with me. You are perhaps traveling down the road not taken?”

Farragut smiled. Direct hit. Looked a little embarrassed. “It gets the mind running that way, doesn’t it?”

“It is not like you to second-guess yourself. The captain’s sights are forever forward. You do not spend your life looking back.”

“For her, I do.”

“Ah. A woman. I begin to see.” The older man smiled indulgently. “All rules disappear.”

“Ever think, God, if I could only do it again, I’d do things different?”

Jose Maria shook his head. “Do not we all? Tell me what you would do that you did not.”

“In an alternate life, I married Maryann.”

Jose Maria’s smile was bright white in his olive-bronze face. “Maryann. You should hear how that common name becomes so rare and exotic and precious in your voice. How it sings. Maryann.”

“My first love. My only love, really.”

“And so why did you not marry Maryann the first time around?”

“She’s a fragile soul. I knew I wouldn’t be there for her. I married a tougher gal, who could do without me. And she did.” His mouth tightened into a chagrined line. “Maryann was sweet. Pretty. Gentle. Funny.”

“Did she marry another?”

“Not last I looked. I try not to look.”

“What are you afraid of?”

“That she found someone. That she didn’t. I’m still not in any position to do anything about it. Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve seen Earth?”

“That is a choice, young Captain. I think you could find your way home again for a pretty, gentle, sweet, funny wife.”

“Afraid she still loves me. We get married. I go back to war and get eaten by a gorgon. And where does that leave Maryann?”

“Alone. As you left her the first time. Except this time, she knows she was loved.”

Blue eyes turned up to the overhead. “Ah, shit, Jose Maria. Next chance. As soon as we get out of this one. I’m going home and stealing that gal away from whoever’s got her.”

Kerry toyed with the short springy hairs of Steele’s chest. Trapped a few golden coils between her fingers. “I’m coming back as a blonde in my next life,” she said.

The blond meadow heaved under her hand with Steele’s snort. He didn’t open his eyes. “Just don’t do it in this life. I like your hair.”

Kerry grinned, parked her chin on his chest, peered across the meadow to his face. He looked younger with his eyes shut, all his facial muscles relaxed.

The two lay in a pleasantly tired tangle, enjoying the press of damp skin. Steele’s heart thudded slowly under her chin. Sounds from the rest of the ship were noisily peaceful, engines, voices, the whap of balls on the squash court—probably Farragut because there was a whole lot of spectator noise. Men hooting like a baboon troop. There were always plenty of side bets when the captain was on the court, lots of money on the table, lucky pieces changing hands, someone drinking out of a shoe. Voices rose expectantly, fell away laughing. All was right aboard Merrimack.

Except that Flight Sergeant Blue was sleeping with her CO. And that seemed right, too, at the moment.

The ship’s spirits had bounced after the memorial service for the dead. John Farragut had been amazing. Could keep his dignity in tears. He sent their comrades on their way with words of glory, words for each by name. The service took four hours. You didn’t notice the time passing. He had you laughing and crying. And at the end of it, Merrimack felt whole.

“Everybody’s talking about what they’d do differently. You know, if we can go back in time and change what we did.”

Steele’s eyes stayed shut. Voice sleepy. Not so much interested in what was being said as the simple act of talking to her. “So what are you thinking of changing, Marine? And it better not be your hair.”

“I’d tell Dak not to turn his back on that gorgon. I’d tell Cowboy not to be such a dick and just fly his Swift forward.”

That opened his eyes. “You would bring him back to life?”

“Yeah. So I could kick his balls inboard. I’ll never get to do that now. That lying, cheating, rat bastard. How ’bout you?”

“How ’bout me what?” He was not going to wish Cowboy back for any reason. Liked Cowboy fine as he was. Dead.

“What would you do different?”

He grunted, didn’t answer.

Kerry changed topic, quick as a butterfly changing flowers. “Did that count as one furball or two?”

“Did what count? Those two swarms we just hit? That was two. Why?”

Kerry gave a merry wiggle against him. “I just ticked over lucky thirteen.”

Thirteen. The magic number of hand-to-hand encounters with the Hive, after which your survival rate takes an enormous leap.

Steele snugged her closer to him. “Good. Don’t get careless.”

“Yes, sir.” Kissed him. “How many have you been in?”

“How many what?”

“Furballs.”

“Thirty. Forty. I don’t know.”

“Well, hell, Thomas! You’re gonna live forever.”

“Workin’ on it.”

She suddenly remembered, and for the first time understood, one of the xenos trying to explain mocking-birds to her. That the boy mockingbird with the most stolen songs gets the girl. Because if he can sing the song of a hawk, it means he’s met the hawk and lived to tell about it.

She loved Thomas Ryder Steele for all his hawk songs.

Then he was asking her, “Got any interest in propulsion systems?”

“Me?”

“You see anybody else here?”

“I’m too dumb. Why?”

“You’re not dumb, Kerry Blue. Navvies lost most of their propulsion department.”

Marines were pretty much interchangeable. They all had the same basic head-bashing, straight-shooting skill sets. They’d all been trained in twenty-one different scenarios, and were making up more all the time. On top of that, Kerry was a Swift pilot. But if she pranged, they’d just bring another up from the Battery.

Navvies, on the other hand, navvies were smart. They were all excessively educated specialists. They held lofty-sounding ranks, but most of ’em were outside the chain of command. Civilians in uniform—that’s what they were. But they knew things. They were engineers.

Merrimack was a long way from home, and there were no replacement engineers to be taken out of a box somewhere on board. If they wanted a trained engineer, they had to haul all the way back to Fort Ike and put in a request, or else they had to educate one right here.

“Sounds like what Reg wants,” said Kerry. Reg Monroe had only ever enlisted so she could go to college.

“I already got Monroe.” The bodies hadn’t been cold when Colonel Steele was surrendering Reg to the navvies. “I’m talking about you here.”

She gushed a giggle. “You see me as a navvy?”

No. He didn’t. But, “Like to get you out of my chain of command. Think you could be interested in engineering?”

“I’m a Marine. Why don’t you do it?”

“Too dumb,” said Steele.

“Then I guess we’re screwed.” Kerry laid her cheek to his chest.

He closed his eyes again, ran his hand down her smooth back. “Yeah.”

Shrieks cheered from somewhere in the ship. A resounding hoo ra! together with a falling groan. Taunts and laughter. Steele guessed the squash game was over.

Kerry lifted her head at the sounds. “Hey. We beat Farragut.”

The chant took form: “Serge! Serge! Serge!” Serge Olivero. Big ox of a gunner from the Battery. Any time the Fleet Marines beat Navy was cause for celebration. And winning against Captain Farragut, well that was cause for a near riot.

After a while Kerry asked again, “What would you do different. If you could go back in time?”

“Nothing,” Steele said.

“No, really,” she coaxed. “Would you . . .” she broke off, afraid to finish. Touched his face as if fearing it would vanish. “Us. Would you . . . not . . . if you had it to do again?”

He dropped his chin to his chest, the better to glare at her.

Her hand retreated. “I just get the idea you don’t think this is the brightest idea you ever had.”

He coiled her hair around his big hand, imprisoning her head in his grip. Growled at her. “You think I’d have come this way if I had a choice? You’re with me, Marine, no matter where this goes. So just get used to it.”

She nipped his scowling lips. “Yes, sir.”

As Merrimack approached the Arran system within the Myriad, the ship’s low band sensors picked up the LEN’s giant spherical ship in orbit around the planet, with Merrimack’s two space patrol torpedo boats near it at the Trojan points.

The LEN sent a message demanding John Farragut’s presence aboard Woodland Serenity immediately.

“Captain!” the tac specialist started in alarm. “The SPT boats are transmitting the wrong IFF!”

His report silenced all chatter in the control room and brought Farragut to the tactical station. “So what are they sending?”

“There’s an embedded code within the normal recognition signals. It’s—” Jeffrey paused, double-checking, nodded, finished, “Yeah. It’s code beta twelve.”

Farragut looked to his control room officers. “What’s beta twelve?” Emergency code, he knew that much. But beta twelve was not one he had ever used in his seventeen-year career.

“Hostage situation, sir.”

“Oh, for Jesus,” Farragut breathed. “Mister Carmel!”

Calli took up the loud com: “Battle stations.”

15

LIGHTS FLASHED. The klaxon blared.

Colonel Steele reported to the control room. Squeaky clean and flush red. His Marines were at their stations, the Battery at their gun blisters; the Wing sitting in their cockpits in the drop decks.

“What’s the LEN ship transmitting?” Farragut demanded.

“Normal IFF. The LEN doesn’t seem to see the problem.”

“Strongly suggests that they are the problem,” said Farragut. Looked to his officers for confirmation. “Anyone?”

“That would be my take on it, Captain,” Calli concurred.

“Mr. Steele?”

“I agree, sir. Never trusted ’em.”

And the LEN wanted Farragut aboard their ship immediately.

“TR, let’s see how clean your dogs got their gun barrels. Open all ports. Uncap all guns. Load torpedo tubes. Mr. Carmel, bring us in angry.”

Steele saw to the running out of the guns, as Calli barked orders to the helm and the engine room.

When Merrimack closed within one light-minute, Farragut moved to the com tech’s station to hail his SPT boats on a tight beam. “SPT 1, SPT 1, SPT 1. Merrimack. Glenn, this is John Farragut. Respond.”

Listened to dead air. Repeated the hail. More dead air. Then, finally, a voice. Not Glenn’s, on SPT 1’s tight beam: “This is Ambassador Aghani, LEN envoy. You are showing guns, Merrimack. May I assist you, Captain Farragut?”

Farragut clicked off the caller, demanded of the com tech, “Where’s that signal coming from?”

“SPT 1, sir.”

“Aghani’s on my Spit boat?”

“Affirmative, sir.”

Anger coalesced in John Farragut’s face. You heard it in his breathing. He began to get an idea of the nature of this hostage situation.

Farragut clicked the caller on. “Aghani, this is a military channel. Put Captain Hamilton on the caller.”

Until the lieutenant commander was back aboard Merrimack, Glenn Hamilton was captain of her Spit boat.

“Mrs. Hamilton is not available. May I help you, Captain Farragut?”

Farragut did not ask anything more. Shut the caller off. Too white hot angry even to sound angry, he ordered softly, “Mr. Carmel. Start shooting.”

“Fire Control. Wake up five starsparrows,” Calli ordered. “Plot some near misses around the LEN vessel Woodland Serenity.”

“Fire Control here. How ‘near’ a miss, sir?”

Calli glanced to Farragut who answered, “Near enough they can hear the birds. And slow enough for them to see them coming.”

“Loads, sir?”

“Shipkillers.”

“Shipkillers, aye. Firing solution plotted. Fire Control standing by.”

The XO looked to the captain. At his nod, Calli ordered, “Fire shipkillers.”

“Fire Control, aye. Shipkillers away.”

Farragut hailed Woodland Serenity again. “Mr. Aghani, put Captain Hamilton on the caller.”

“Captain Farragut,” Aghani began condescendingly, broke off in a squawk, “What are you doing!”

Shipkillers ringed the LEN ship. The LEN sphere hung trapped into stillness like a knife thrower’s assistant, death brushing all sides.

“I am attempting to establish contact with my officer. You must believe I will do so, no matter your cost.” Farragut shut off the caller. To his XO: “Status.”

“Star Sparrows clear of Woodland Serenity. Not quite a clean miss, sir. We ticked a solar vane. Warheads still live.”

“Bring ’em back for another pass.”

“Fire Control.”

“Fire Control, aye.”

“Bring the Star Sparrows about, Davy. Do it again.”

“Fire Control, aye.”

As the missiles turned a one-eighty, the com tech reported, “Sir, it’s Woodland Serenity. They are speaking in tongues. Demanding to talk to you.”

The missiles headed back for another ringing pass around Woodland Serenity.

The com tech yanked off his headset. Reported: “Sir. They are screaming.”

Farragut turned to the tactical specialist. “Is Woodland Serenity showing arms?”

“No, sir.”

“I hope they don’t think I’m bluffing.”

Colonel Steele assured him, “The Mack does not look like she’s bluffing. They know they can’t take us.”

“They don’t have much to bring to bear, Captain,” said Tactical. “Couple asteroid sweepers.”

“Are they showing?”

“No, sir.”

Fire control reported the Star Sparrows clear of Woodland Serenity.

Calli turned to Farragut. “Sir?” Awaited direction.

Farragut took up the caller. “SPT 1. SPT 1. SPT 1. This is Merrimack. Captain Hamilton, respond.”

Aghani’s voice again, indignant. “If Woodland Serenity ’s auto avoidance had reacted to one of those missiles and twitched it into the path of another, you would have the murder of five hundred civilian lives to answer for!”

“They’re not dead, though, are they?” Farragut replied.

“More’s the pity.” A murmur from behind.

“Not now, Augustus.”

The tac specialist reported sharply, “Sir! Both Spit boats have left Trojan points and are moving toward the LEN ship!”

“Aghani, cease the progress of my boats toward Woodland Serenity or I will space Woodland Serenity.”

Calli’s brows flew high, but she did not protest the threat.

“Calli. Line it up.”

Calli opened the com link. “Fire control. Target Woodland Serenity and stand by shipkillers to go hot.”

“Fire Control. Targeting, aye. Standing by.”

Farragut looked to the com tech. “Any acknowledgment from the LEN?”

“The captain of Woodland Serenity is calling you a terrorist. That’s an acknowledgment, I guess, sir.”

“Calli, are we close enough to hook our Spit boats with our force field?”

Calli relayed the question to Tactical. Received the answer, “Momentarily.”

Calli put Engineering on standby.

Tactical reported, “Sir, both SPT boats have stopped progress toward the LEN vessel Woodland Serenity.”

“Don’t care. Calli.”

“Range,” Calli demanded of Tactical.

“One boat, aye. Now both. Aye.”

A glance to Farragut.

“Hook ’em.”

Calli: “Engineering. Engage force field hook.”

“Engineering, aye. Hook engaging.”

Merrimack’s distortion field extended like a pseudo-pod to enclose SPTs 1 and 2.

“Command. Engineering here. Targets acquired. We got ’em, sir.”

The com tech reported, “Sir, the LEN captain says our force field is preventing them from displacing their people off our spit boats.”

“Well, glory be. How ’bout that?” Farragut breathed, as if the thought never occurred to him before. “Advise Woodland Serenity that I will restore their people to their ship as soon as all of my people are restored to Merrimack.”

The whole command deck could hear the LEN captain’s voice through the com tech’s headset as he pulled it away from his ears: “This is piracy!”

Farragut took up the caller. “I am towing U.S. boats aboard a U.S. ship. What is the basis of your charge?”

“There are LEN personnel on board those spacecraft!”

“Why, yes, there are. They did not ask my permission to board my boats, but there they are. I shall have to ask them why they’re there.”

“You will return my people now.”

“You will be free to collect your personnel pending a head count of my personnel aboard my boats.”

And listened to dead space again.

Import descended in a horrid chill. They can’t deliver. The LEN could not comply, because someone is missing .

Merrimack reeled in her extended force field to bring the patrol boats back to the flight decks, where they were captured, clamped, and hauled inboard to the hangar deck.

When the deck pressurized, the SPT boat hatches opened to a gunpoint welcome by a Marine detachment armed with splinter weapons.

First to disembark down the ramps were the LEN personnel. Stiff. Trying to show umbrage, but could not disguise their fear in the face of all the guns and the determined, angry faces glaring squint-eyed down the barrels. “There has been a misunderstanding.”

“Someone for sure misunderstood something,” a Marine muttered, cheek mashed to his splinter gun’s stock, keeping a bead on the speaker’s forehead. Kept the visitors pinned for the captain’s arrival.

The MPs sent a cadre of dogs aboard the returned SPT boats to sniff for booby traps. Dogs had an uncanny sense for rooting out wrongness.

The captain arrived on deck. Said immediately, “Where is Glenn Hamilton?”

Met silence from the LEN, from his own recovered personnel, who stood at embarrassed, blank-faced attention.

Surprising how a face so open and friendly could turn so frightening so fast. The LEN got a gorgon’s eye view of John Farragut, the ferocity, the deadly energy. He became someone who threw lightning bolts. He roared into the silence: “Where is she?”

Everyone recoiled from the force of it, even his own Marines.

Ambassador Aghani took a breath as if he might speak. But his eyes only searched for somewhere to look other than at the captain’s face. Found only guns and growling dogs.

Glenn Hamilton’s second-in-command, Ensign Kenyon Kent, whom everyone called “Ken Ken,” filled in at last: “We think she escaped, sir.”

Aghani abruptly found his voice. “It’s not like that.”

“Shut up. Brig ’em.” The captain waved an arm at the lot of them.

“Yes, sir,” Colonel Steele acknowledged. “With pleasure.”

As Marines ringed the LEN boarders, Aghani protested, “We are free citizens of Earth!”

“When Glenn Hamilton is free, you’re free. Till then, you’re in my brig. And if that’s the rest of your natural life, then you know where you’re going to die.”

And the deep terror in their eyes struck John Farragut with a fear he did not know he could feel.

They can’t free her. She’s dead.

“You,” Farragut barked at his rescued crew, none too gently. “Proceed to ops and await debriefing.”

He detained Ken Ken out of the unhappy group. “Talk to me. Where’s Glenn?”

“Not sure, Captain,” said Ensign Kent. “When Hamster went planetside to deliver your message to Donner, the LEN came in and took over both boats.”

“How? How did they get aboard?”

Kenyon’s baby smooth cheeks blotched ruddy. “We let ’em aboard. Bagging us was like hunting cows. Come this way? Yeah, sure. Hatch locks. There we are. We were stupid, sir.”

“I see that. What about Glenn?”

“We were locked up, but you know these bulks.” He rapped a thin partition with a bottom-fist. “We overheard them receive Captain Hamilton’s request for displacement back to SPT 1. They signaled Woodland Serenity to yank her up there.”

“They displaced her to the LEN ship?”

“I thought they did, sir. But later—hours later—more LEN came storming aboard SPT 2, ransacked every centimeter, pulled on our faces to make sure we were real. We guessed that meant she got away. And since she’s not here, she’s either doing a really good job of hiding on board the LEN golf ball, or she’s planetside. But, sir, I’m pretty sure they don’t have her.”

“Who turned on the beta twelve code?”

“I did, sir.”

“Then you don’t walk the plank.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Calli!” Farragut called into his com while climbing up the ladder.

“Captain.”

“Scan the planet for Hamster’s com signature.”

“Scan initiated, aye.”

“And have Mo do a full physical workup on our guests. Look for contaminants. Any possible physiological cause for paranoia and delusion. Tell him to make it uncomfortable. And if he finds something, make sure we don’t have it.”

“Understood, sir.”

Farragut arrived in the control room to receive Calli’s report on the search for Hamster. “Her com is not reading. She may have turned off her link to avoid LEN detection.”

But there were other ways to track a crewman. “Locate all displacement collars.”

Calli signaled the supply officer to punch up the inventory. He reported one collar unaccounted for, logged out to the Hamster.

“Where is the collar now?” Farragut demanded.

“It’s . . . not functioning,” Calli reported guardedly.

“You mean she’s not wearing it?”

“No.” That would be a void reading. “We have no reading on it.”

It went without saying that you can’t turn a collar off. To destroy a displacement collar’s locator was to destroy the collar.

“Run the history,” Farragut ordered, pale.

“Running it,” said Calli.

Given that the collars never turned off, the ship’s sensor log would have a continuous record of the activity of all collars at every moment. It did not take long to isolate the moment that Hamster’s collar ceased to function.

“Last successful displacement logged on collar P240H was from the LEN ship Woodland Serenity to the planet surface forty-two hours ago.”

So Ken Ken had guessed right. Lieutenant Commander Hamilton had managed to escape LEN captivity.

“Last intact location of the collar was on the Arran surface.”

“When did it flat line?”

“Forty-one hours ago.” Calli sounded quite hollow. “In transit.”

Farragut grabbed the signal log to read for himself. The signal for the final abortive displacement had originated from Woodland Serenity. The LEN had tried to retrieve the escapee using only the signal from her collar. They had initiated displacement without a corresponding signal from an LD.

You never, ever displaced a human being without three matching signal sets. The LEN tried to displace Hamster with only two.

“Was Hamster in the collar at the time?” Farragut spoke so quietly Calli scarcely heard him.

“Can’t know, John. Not without the LD confirmation.” Except that no one ever took his collar off while on a planetside mission. It violated procedure.

The LEN had attempted retrieval knowing they had a very poor chance of transporting a human completely intact. And they had failed.

It was a hideous image. Did not help that it had probably been painless.

“Realign Star Sparrows. Arm shipkillers.”

“Positioning missiles, aye.”

“Tag Woodland Serenity.”

Calli relayed the order to fire control. The tags would give Merrimack’s missiles a homing signal. No matter how the target attempted evasion, the missiles would follow the tags. And there was no outrunning Star Sparrows. Star Sparrows were faster than any manned ship and good for light-years.

“Tags away.”

Tactical announced, “Woodland Serenity opening gunports.”

What Woodland Serenity showed was a total of four of the most basic low-bid lances, useful for clearing debris from its path. The LEN had been better shielded in defenselessness. Nothing could save it, should Merrimack fire in anger.

Closed gunports would at least have insured a murder conviction when it was done.

“Target acquired. We have tag lock.”

The com tech: “Sir. The LEN is demanding to know our intentions.”

“Transmit tag signature to Star Sparrows.”

“Fire Control, load firing solution.”

“Firing solution loaded. Fire Control standing by.”

All the officers in the control room looked to Captain Farragut, as the civilian vessel of five hundred souls sat under Merrimack’s guns. Only Calli dared speak.

“Sir? What are our intentions?”

The captain’s blue eyes were white all round, his thoughts loud enough to hear. He raised his hand—like wielding a gavel—and the officers on deck feared what order would come down when the hand should drop.

A nervous pronouncement from the com tech: “I have a com sig.” And to the captain’s white-hot glare, he clarified, “Com signature from planetside.”

Farragut’s voice came out strangled, “Glenn’s?”

The tech answered carefully, “It’s Lieutenant Commander Hamilton’s com. Someone just switched it on.”

And immediately followed a hail on the captain’s direct link. Farragut yelled into the back of his hand, “Glenn!”

For a moment the world stood still. Waiting for whom he would hear on the other end of this link.

Glenn Hamilton’s clear soprano, “Captain! Lieutenant Commander Hamilton. Beta twelve. Repeat, beta twelve.” Hostage code.

“Beta twelve secured here. I have both Spits,” Farragut assured her quickly, still shouting. “Do you have beta twelve?” Are you a hostage?

“No, sir. Not me. The Spit boats are beta twelve.”

“We’ve secured them. Are you in danger?”

“No, sir. I’m fine, sir. Hungry. I can’t eat the food.”

At last Farragut remembered to breathe. “Is there an LD near you?”

“Yes. I’m in Donner’s shack.” The Archon’s palace. “But I don’t have a collar. I took mine off so the LEN couldn’t trace me. Now I can’t find it anywhere. . . .”

The Star Sparrows were recalled, the tags extinguished.

John Farragut logged out a displacement collar for himself and one with which to retrieve Glenn Hamilton from the planet surface. He issued orders for his LEN detainees to be restored to Woodland Serenity without standing trial for piracy, though he still insisted on a full physical examination, unable to believe that such insanity could be naturally occurring.

He gave orders to the chief to resupply Merrimack’s oxygen from the planet’s atmosphere, and to bring the ship’s pressure back up to Arran sea level.

As he collected food from the ruins of the galley, the blue-white planet Arra hung overhead in the starry space that showed through the chewed-out hull. The bright image twinkled through the force field.

And to his shadow, Augustus, Farragut asked, “Why aren’t you debriefing my Spit crews with Colonel Steele?”

Augustus snapped a displacement collar around his own neck. “I will review the flattop’s inquiry when he is done.”

The patterner could plug into the data bank and take in the whole session in the blink of an eye. “Sitting through a Q and A in real time is like sucking a frozen milkshake through a coffee stirrer. And it was vastly more interesting watching you skewer your dignity over another man’s wife.”

No pretending not to understand. The captain looked chagrined. His big shoulders hunched a bit. “Wouldn’t be the first man to do that.”

“First one to threaten to blow up a civilian vessel with five hundred live bodies on board.”

Farragut offered no comment.

“A question for the captain.”

As if refusal would shut Augustus up. Farragut waved him to go ahead.

“Were you bluffing?”

“You tell me, Augustus.”

“Either you are a much better poker player than I ever imagined, or else you’re psychotic.”

When Augustus did not continue that thought to a final conclusion, Farragut demanded, “Well?”

“I don’t want to play poker with you,” said Augustus.

Farragut frowned. Confessed, “I wanted them dead.”

Augustus dismissed that lightly. “Of course you did. But fantasy is fantasy and reality is reality. You would not have killed five hundred people to avenge one. You won’t even break honor and orders to sleep with your girlfriend.”

“She’s not my girlfriend.”

“But it was embarrassingly obvious to all hands in the control room that that detail had nothing to do with the wanting of it.”

Till now, John Farragut naively thought he had kept that card close to his chest.

Once upon a time he had talked to Glenn a lot. Back when she was a lieutenant on his watch. She and he had bounced ideas off each other, argued, laughed. Hamster had a sneaky sense of humor and she could rope you in before you knew you’d been had. Because little Glenn Hamilton was married, Captain Farragut had not felt that primitive need to impress her, and she was not his type anyway. She was just a guy.

Then one day he’d been out here in the Deep End too long and he had to remind himself that she was just a guy. A really pretty, good-smelling guy.

And that day Hamster came into command of the middle watch.

“You did manage to make a complete idiot of yourself over a married woman,” said Augustus. “A subordinate, no less. A Mrs. Hamilton, no less.”

Farragut gave a kind of pout. Lifted blue eyes in appeal, “A complete idiot?”

“Absolute.”

The grin was boyish. “No use doing anything halfway, hey?”

They were in the displacement chamber by now. They took places over two disks. The tech coordinated signals among collar and displacement disk and landing disk. Green lights.

Farragut gave the nod to the technician. “Let’s do this.” And the ship vanished before his eyes.

A wilted Hamster greeted her captain with a smart salute, giving way to a wilted smile when he bid her stand down and presented her with two fragrant bags of food.

“Mo said you should eat this.” The first bag held a carton of nutrient broth with harmless crackers on the side. “I brought you this.”

Hamster melted around the smell of the second warm bag. Trembling hands unwrapped a big sloppy burger. “Marry me,” said Glenn and bit into the burger. Groaned in ecstacy.

“Um . . . aren’t you married?”

“Actually, here, I’m not.” She talked with her mouth full. “I learned a couple of Myriadian customs. I am ‘committed’ but not ‘married’ because I haven’t consummated the pairing.”

“This is probably not information I ought to have,” said Farragut.

Hamster covered her mouth and laughed. “It’s not a consummated Myriadian marriage without offspring.”

“Ah.”

They were outside, under the clouded stars, in a park-like area planted with flowering trees and laced with flat stone walkways that meandered around ornamental ponds and little oases of stone carvings—votives or gravestones or art, who could tell?

Though they need not fear Myriadian surveillance—the Myriadians did not know English—Augustus made a quick sweep of the garden for LEN devices.

When he pronounced the area clear, Hamster lost her smile. “I’m sorry, John. I lost it. I never saw it coming. I—Break me.” She pulled off her lieutanant commander’s pips and offered them.

Farragut would not take her insignia. “Save it till after the inquiry. I don’t think anyone will sanction you for being taken in by insane allies. Just tell me—if I hadn’t showed up when I did, what were you going to do?”

She shrugged. “I was putting one foot in front of the other. I only got as far as step one—escape. I was going to be back in control of the Spit boats by the time you returned. And it was going to be brilliant. Really.”

“Should I go away and come back?”

Glenn gave an abashed smile, “If you don’t mind.”

“How did you escape?” Farragut asked.

Glenn started, stopped, a conspiratorial gleam in her eyes. She asked, “John, do you know how to get a ferret into a bag?”

“Is this a joke?”

“It’s kind of funny, but no, it’s God’s truth.”

“Okay. How do you get a ferret into a bag.”

“You open the bag and the ferret climbs right in.”

“And that works?”

“Ninety-nine times out of ninety-nine,” said Glenn, hand over her heart.

“You opened a bag and the LEN walked in?” Farragut asked, not quite following.

“Just about. And it’s pretty much how they caught me first, actually. They had a cell rigged with hologram projectors so the cell looked like a corridor. They opened the hatch for me, and I walked right in. Hit the wall. They turned off the projectors and locked me in.

“But here’s the ferret-brained part. They left the projectors in there. I rerouted the power from the overhead light to the projectors and turned them back on.”

“And the hologram corridor was narrower than the real cell,” Farragut guessed.

“Yes it was. About this much narrower.” Glenn set down her burger to hold one palm flat against her back, the other palm flat across her breasts. “Now, John,” she quickly retrieved her food. “If you were holding someone prisoner and you opened her cell and saw an empty holographic corridor instead of a cell, what would you think?”

“I’d look for a Hamster in the wall.”

“And you wouldn’t walk right in with a stunner in your thigh holster! Zap. Zap. I’m free. I ran back to the displacement chamber—not locked, not guarded, didn’t have to zap anyone else. Displaced here. That’s about as far as I got. But I was working on it.” She took a big bite.

The ground murmured. The ponds rippled. Fish jumped from the water. Birds took flight.

Farragut started like an alert dog, but Glenn kept eating. “That happens all the time here.” She caught tomato juice dripping down her chin. “Most people sleep outdoors.”

Even with the tremors, it was pleasant here. Warm. Sitting in the alien grass with a pretty woman under the brilliant, starry sky.

But sense of urgency nagged like a bad tooth. Farragut asked, “What about Donner? Did you deliver my warning about using the kzachin?”

“Yes, sir. I did accomplish that much of my mission.”

“How did he receive it?”

“Badly.” She put down half of her burger. Heaved a sigh, stuffed. “I believe Donner fully understood everything I told him. Too fully, really. He did not agree to withhold information from Origin.”

“Then he’s risking paradox.”

“Yes, sir. He is.”

“Did you explain that to him? He’s a reasonable being.”

“How reasonable can anyone be when he learns his home world—the cradle of his kind—is a dead ball of dust and he must never go back to see it alive again? He made all the connections, John. He figured out that a billions-year-old civilization ought to have lots of starfaring descendants by now—especially the way his people breed. And he cares. He’s a dictator—he’s a good one. How do you tell him he must not change the complete death of his homeland?”

Farragut rose. “I’ll tell him. Now. You feeling up to it, Lieutenant Commander?”

“Yes, sir.” She cleaned off her hands, stood up. She cautioned, “It’s not going to turn him, sir.”

“Probably not.” He could not ignore the human element in human history—and Donner was human enough. Whether on a personal level or on the species level, everyone wanted to live. Your name, your children, your world, your self, your love. And hates and jealousies and sorrows were all human and all part of history, the drops of water that wear the canyon into the mountain. Human tears counted.

Into his link Farragut sent shore to ship, “Colonel Steele.”

Augustus muttered, “We need the flattop for this?”

Farragut paused to answer Augustus. “Say a super-race comes along and tells us we must not use the Fort Ike shotgun ever again, so it’s going to take us a year to get back to Earth—or to Palatine—with only FTL normal. What is the proper response to an edict like that?”

“A one-digit salute?” Hamster suggested.

“I would expect something with more lead content,” said Farragut. And into his link, “Mr. Steele, a Marine guard if you will.”

Dr. Patrick Hamilton had been sedated since the second swarm battle, in which he had been parted from his right foot. A bit of a crybaby, Patrick Hamilton did not want to endure the pain and ick factor involved in reattaching his appendage while conscious.

When finally he rose from his sick bay cot, he was dismayed to learn that, though the ship was in orbit around Arra, he was not permitted to displace to the surface to try out his reconnected foot in the starshine on the green Arran meadows.

Since Merrimack was back in the Myriad, Patrick figured that Glenn must be back on board. And since it was mid watch, his wife would be OOD. Dr. Pat would just see who was allowed to go where.

As he made his way to the control room, people looked at him as if he’d grown four eyes—or an extra foot. They whispered behind his back, glanced away when he turned round.

He overhead one furtive exchange: “That’s Hamster’s husband.”

“Oh. Him?”

Patrick Hamilton arrived at the control room to find Commander Calli Carmel on watch. He double-checked his chron. It was definitely the Hamster watch. “Where’s Glenn?”

The whole control room turned around to stare. More of those weird looks. Embarrassed. Pained.

Finally someone clued him in: While you were sedated, your wife was kidnapped by the LEN, escaped, was presumed killed in a capture attempt, but turned up alive on the planet Arra.

“Oh, is that all?” Patrick said, customarily flippant. Wondered when someone had intended to wake him up to let him know. “Where is she now?”

“Planetside with Captain Farragut.”

Someone hissed the speaker quiet, as if he’d said something he shouldn’t. Patrick Hamilton glanced at all the eyes that quickly averted in numbing silence.

Feeling as if he was waking up much later than he had thought, Patrick Hamilton asked, “Is there something else I should know . . . ?”

Donner had a monitor screen illuminated in his audience hall, the screen filled with Merrimack’s mauled hulk.

The Archon turned from the horrific image to Captain Farragut. “You found your monsters.”

“We did,” said Farragut, then told Donner in the most exigent terms he could find in the Myriadian language that Donner must not—must not—go to Origin ever again. Must not even let the beings of Origin learn of the existence of starfaring peoples this side of the kzachin or of the possibility of true FTL travel. “You cannot tell them anything about us. It will change history.”

“How simply you can say so.” Donner’s tone was tempered, but his mane stood up along his spine in fighting set. “It is not your world. It is not your history.”

“It is my now and you must not change it,” said Farragut.

“Very well.”

The dictator’s acquiescence took them all by surprise, left Farragut off balance. He had been braced for a storm. Got instead a quick easy okay. Captain Farragut looked to Colonel Augustus and Lieutenant Colonel Steele to make sure he had not mistranslated Donner’s answer.

And to their startled stares, Donner insisted, “If I must, I must.”

Steele breathed a sudden obscenity. Farragut turned sharply. Found Augustus nodding in agreement with the Marine’s comment. Augustus spoke in English, (“Even the musclehead figured that one out.”)

Farragut caught on. (“Donner already sent the message.”)

(“Weeks ago,”) Augustus guessed. (“Probably the moment we arrived in the Myriad.”)

(“Then it’s all done,”) said Steele. (“It’s all over and nothing happened.”)

(“Maybe not,”) said Farragut. Hoped so. But would not bet on it. (“It’s not like he could just displace a ship to the Rim gate. It would take an Arran ship a while to travel from Arra to the kzachin that leads to Origin.”)

(“How long of a while?”) Steele directed that to Augustus.

A hint of a smile lurked in Augustus’ dark eyes. Black humor there. (“Weeks.”)

Farragut’s heart sped. (“Augustus! Assume Donner sent a messenger ship to Origin when we first appeared—Do we still have time to stop that messenger?”)

(“I’m not plugged in, so I can’t run the numbers, but given that Donner is stalling us with this agreeable bullshit, I would have to say yes.”)

All eyes returned to Donner. Though the Archon could not understand their words, he must have guessed what they were saying, because he now held a projectile weapon trained on John Farragut’s head.

Farragut’s posture deflated a little with an impatient sigh. Never appreciated that view of a firearm. He implored, “Donner, logic dictates—”

“No, Captain Farragut. I dictate.”

The Archon gave his weapon a small lift to draw attention to it. “Primitive enough by your standards, but it’s lethal enough for my purposes.”

Of course Donner would not be able to see the energy wall Colonel Steele had activated, LD to LD. Charged with security, Steele had been entirely ready for this reaction. Donner might detect only the slightest refraction in the air between him and his target. The greater giveaway was Farragut’s lack of concern at having a weapon pointed at his face.

Farragut’s steady gaze met the eyes behind the gun. “What is your purpose, Archon?”

“To save my home world. This planet—Xi, you call it. Lieutenant Commander Glenn Hamilton tells me it is Origin and it is dead. Tell me, what killed my world?”

“Any number of natural forces could have done it,” said Farragut. “Entropy is a basic condition of the universe. My home world will be dead in ten billion years.”

Donner spoke thickly, deeply felt. “But your descendants will not be dead. Your people travel far. I know my people did not go elsewhere. They have not the means. And if I sent them heavy elements with which to build thousands of ships, then you would find something of them still on this planet Xi, even after ten billion ‘years.’ Something left besides the back of a reliquary . . .” He broke off with a quaver in the voice, a glistening in the coal-black eyes.

Myriadians cry. Human tears.

Donner snarled, “It means I did not help them. I did not help them yet. I see there is a God, and God sent you to show me my error. I am destined to save them. I will change my history.”

Farragut suppressed a groan.

The heavy air shimmered with sound. A chorus of cricking, the fluttering of myriad wings, the scraping of serrate legs. The bluster of swarms of insectoid life.

Farragut shivered in the Arran heat, his hair pricking up like Donner’s mane at the sound, the sound that stirred only the most elemental dread.

And saw everywhere—from the sponge bushes, from the lake, from the vine trees and coral gardens, from the water and the rock faces—insects rising.

“Hive sign!”

16

DONNER FROWNED, perplexed. Not accustomed to losing the attention of those he held at gunpoint. Might as well be holding a toy for all the regard it won him.

Captain Farragut yelled into the back of his hand, (“Calli. We have Hive sign. What’ve you got?”)

(“Nothing. Negative Hive sign. We are quiet. Are you sure it’s not another mimic?”)

“Dead sure. This planet is being pinged.”

The Hive often sent scouts ahead, which always betrayed their presence this way. The scouts’ signals back to the Overmind set the local insectoid life to panic. With a being as unified as the Hive, in which the Overmind had instantaneous knowledge of every one of its cells, the concept of stealth was so alien to the Hive as never to occur to it. There were no sneak attacks.

Even Donner, who had never witnessed Hive sign, was instinctively disturbed by the sight of Arran creatures swarming and flapping and creeping out of the ground.

(“They haven’t found the ship yet. We’re all quiet here,”) Calli sent. (“Do you want some bugs down there for confirmation?”)

(“Do it.”)

In moments, a terrarium of telltales blasted into existence on an LD. Immediately ants poured out of their tunnels and pawed at their glass confines.

(“Hive sign confirmed,”) Farragut reported.

Donner stared at the shiny black bodies beetling out of the sand. Listened to the eerie noise all around them. Spoke to Farragut, “Your monsters. They are here.”

“They’re not here quite yet,” said Farragut. “That’s the point singer—somewhere on planet. He’s calling the monsters to dinner. (Calli! Break res silence. Gimme a res scan. Get an idea who this creep is singing to. Any swarms in the immediate neighborhood?”)

(“Initiating scan.”) And, quickly, (“Got ’em. Two hundred light-years out.”)

(“ETA?”)

(“Five—whoa. Stand by. We have another sighting, closer.”)

(“Where?”)

(“Stand by. We’ve got another hit. Another. They are waking up on all sides. This stellar neighborhood is lousy with dormant swarms. They’re not dormant anymore.”) She read off multiple plots, converging on the Myriad. (“Nearest swarm so far is one month out.”)

The Overmind woke its dormant swarms in proportion to the size of the bait.

“You will drive away these monsters you have summoned,” Donner commanded.

Eyes of alien blue told Donner he couldn’t. If John Farragut wanted to, if it were Earth itself, he could not. One month was not enough time for Merrimack to reach Fort Eisenhower for a refit, reload, reman. With five engines, dwindling projectiles, nine-tenths of a crew, and great holes in her physical hull, the Mack could not do battle again.

“Donner, you cannot bring your people here from Origin. You’ll all be eaten alive.”

“It’s too late. I told them to come.”

(“Oh, for Jesus. Calli, get us out of here. Displace now.”)

The look of betrayal on Donner’s face branded his memory as he vanished from Arra. He honestly believed he would never forget it.

John Farragut hit the deck barking. Ordered a res message be sent to Earth. Update the Joint Chiefs of our—oh, for Jesus—our status.

Ordered a res message to Fort Ike. Tell ’em we’re coming in hot. Give ’em our laundry list.

Ordered displacement of the LEN detainees back to Woodland Serenity. Advised the LEN they would have a rescue operation on their hands in one month.

Ordered a computation: Given the transit times between kzachin, what was the best time a vessel dispatched from Arra could arrive at the Rim gate at the Myriad’s perimeter?

“Best time?” young Jeffrey, manning the tactical station, said. “Best time is through a connecting kzachin in the Centro system. If the Arran messenger left Arran space the moment that Merrimack’s first image was seen on Arra and didn’t stop at Centro, Donner’s messenger ship could be closing on the Rim gate now.”

“Ping the Rim gate.”

The sensor technician executed a resonant sounding of the vicinity surrounding the Rim gate and its connecting kzachin. Reported: “No vessels in transit between the kzachin connecting Arra to the Rim and the kzachin that leads to Origin.”

Which was not to say a messenger ship could not pop out of the connecting kzachin at any moment, because there was no way of knowing anything about a ship inside a kzachin.

Farragut leaned over the stellar plot. “So if the Arran messenger were to come out of that kzachin right now,” he pointed at the kzachin that connected Centro to the edge of Myriad. “How long would it take him to get from there to the Rim gate—the kzachin that goes to Origin?”

“That would depend on how fast he’s traveling, sir. We haven’t seen Myriadian ships do much better than eighty percent c. Eighty percent c gives him a minimum transit time of two hours.”

“Then get us to the Rim right now. We’re going to head him off.”

“We’re a day and a half from the Rim, best speed,” Calli reminded him. “Unless it took Donner a day and a half to figure out what he was going to say and launch that messenger, or the messenger stopped off at Centro, he’ll be coming out of that connecting kzachin any time now. We’ve already lost this race.”

“The messenger has not reached the Rim gate,” Farragut said, like a command. “Get me there first.”

Racing toward the edge of the Myriad took Merrimack within five light-years of the planet Centro. In passing, Merrimack launched an SPT boat and a squadron of Swifts in a flying drop. The Marines had orders to proceed to the planet in silent mode and discover whether Centro was showing Hive sign or if the world lay still hidden from the Hive’s ravenous eye. The Marines were also charged with repulsing any space traffic which might try to make the local connection to the Rim gate. Though most of the company suspected that Echo Flight had already seen the messenger during early recon sortie.

Steele suggested in parting that if the planet Centro lay dark, it could yet serve in the coming siege. Steele would look for a suitable base while there. But Farragut told him, “One battle at a time, TR. We lose this one, the rest of them won’t matter.”

“Augustus—” Farragut blew into the torpedo storage bay. “I have to ask you to plug in. I’m going to need precise calculations coming up here, and I can’t afford to overlook any variables.”

Augustus turned slowly, lowered, and lifted his lids slowly. “If that is a request, the answer is no. How bad do you want it?”

“It’s an order,” Farragut rephrased. He looked at Augustus, really looked at him only now, taking in his tired, sour expression, the whole of his makeshift quarters—the sword propped, hilt-down, point angled up at midriff height. Farragut’s glance shifted uneasily from sword, to Roman, and back. “You look like you’re fixing to fall on that.”

“Not now. Eventually. However—” Augustus plucked up the sword in disgust. “This is not the tool for the job.” Tossed it aside. “It ought to be longer and straighter. This is a gorgon slicer.”

Farragut became quite troubled. His voice came out more plaintive than he wanted. “But why will the job need doing? Eventually. At all?”

Suicide, the very idea of it, was alien to John Farragut. He could see himself dying by throwing himself between harm and a beloved, but never an act wherein the whole point of the endeavor was to die.

“Later,” Augustus dismissed the question, and before Farragut could press it, the captain’s link crackled to life on the back of his hand. It was Calli: “Captain! Res-read ! We have the Arran messenger. Just appeared from the connecting kzachin. Heading toward the Rim gate at seventy percent c.”

“ETA?”

“At present rate, the Arran will reach the Rim gate in three hours.”

“And our ETA?”

“Nine hours.”

“If we can’t catch it, then shoot it down. Arm a Star Sparrow.”

“Aye, sir. Load, sir?”

“A fast one.”

An Arran courier vessel would not require much punch. A simple collision might take it out. But a Star Sparrow at that speed might just poke a neat hole in the flimsy ship without detonating.

“Can a Star Sparrow make intercept?”

The specialists had been conferring over just that question. “Negative. Even at optimum launch time, which will be coming up in about one hour—we’re coming up short.”

“Arm the bird. I’m coming up,” Farragut sent, clicked off, turned to Augustus. “Here’s where I need a patterner. Get me the precise optimum launch time for a T five forty one Star Sparrow. You’ll find the exact specs in the data bank.”

Augustus would need to factor in the speed of the Merrimack, fuel consumption and acceleration of the Star Sparrow, and the gravitational drag of the Myriad’s stars. Merrimack was passing through the thickest part of the cluster now.

“You can’t catch the Arran,” Augustus could tell him without plugging in.

“Get the ordnance there in the best possible time. Can you do that?”

“I will give you the optimum launch time, but it won’t do the job, so why are you hurrying to an intercept you cannot make?”

“Because if you give up running out a bad hit and the shortstop just happens to overthrow base, and you get tagged out because you didn’t hustle, your own mama will boo you out of the park.”

“Ever happen to you?”

“Not to me!” said Farragut with some pride. “You run on what you hit. You may get tagged out, but you don’t ever quit. Unless it’s to the enemy, never say die.” And, confiscating Augustus’ sword, “And that’s not what this is for either. You don’t quit.”

“You have no idea what this is about.”

“You got that right. So tell me.”

“Later.”

“It’s always later with you. But later never comes.”

Augustus plugged cables into his neck. His eyes extinguished. His face slackened and his voice went hollow. “Don’t talk to me.”

Clambering up the ladder to the command deck level, Farragut caught himself playing the ifs, looking for every turn he might have played differently, each second he had squandered, all the moments he might have saved so as not to be running against a time deficit toward an impossible intercept.

If he had not paused to return the LEN pirates to their ship.

If he had simply ordered Hamster to blockade the Rim gate rather than have her try to talk to Donner.

If he hadn’t paused to restock his oxygen. Could have done that afterward. Now there might not be an afterward.

If. If. Not a question he normally asked. But faced with a real possibility of everything he knew coming to an end, the ifs came in a barrage.

How much of his life would vanish because of any of those wasted moments? All of his own history? His world. His nation. His self. Was I killed at EtaCas?

It wasn’t his life that flashed before his eyes—it was the people in it. From his too beautiful, slender and stately, Roman-educated XO, Callista Carmel, to his surly chief, who kept the Mack a ship to make you proud, to that obnoxious Roman IO who somehow made himself indispensable, to the unattainable Glenn Hamilton, to that big-eared kid Jeffrey at the tac station, to his civilian Nobel Laureate passenger Jose Maria Cordillera who had become more like a father to him than his own father.

All the people on board. He knew them all. Wanted to keep them.

They were his. He would not let them go.

He could not control what was already done, so he threw off the ifs and charged straight ahead.

He exploded into the control room. “Augustus, feed your numbers to fire control.”

The tactical specialist reviewed the firing solution. Shook his head. “Best isn’t good enough. The Arran ship will be at the Rim gate in one hundred twenty-one minutes. Star Sparrow will get there in one hundred thirty-five minutes. We can’t make intercept.” He craned round in his seat to add, “Unless you mean to shoot through the kzachin and catch him on the other side.”

“No. Under no circumstances send anything through the kzachin.”

All evidence suggested that no object could overtake any other object inside a kzachin, and energy weapons did not exist at all inside the kzachin. Once on the far side of the kzachin, the race was over.

“Why?” Jeffrey asked. “We still have nineteen minutes on the far side of the gate to make intercept. The kzachin spits you out on the other side of the sun and nineteen light-minutes from Origin.”

“Don’t forget, as soon as that messenger ship is through the gate, it will be transmitting its little heart out. We can’t corral electromagnetic waves. Once that messenger gets through the gate, the genie is out of the bottle. And there’s no way I’m sending a Star Sparrow back ten billion years to become the instrument of our own destruction. We catch him on this side of the gate or—we catch him on this side of the gate.

“Can’t, sir.”

Not a word to use to John Farragut. He turned to Augustus. “Why aren’t we launching the Star Sparrow yet? It accelerates a hell of a lot faster than the Mack.”

Augustus remained withdrawn into his data storm, not hearing, or more likely, ignoring the ignorant question.

The tactical specialist responded for him. “These look like real good numbers Colonel Augustus gave us, Captain. The Mack is passing through the core of the Myriad. If we launch now, the Star Sparrow would spend all its energy fighting tidal drag and making course corrections. Course corrections will rob its forward capability in a big way, probably crack it up. Sparrow’s kind of speed needs a straight-line path. Optimum launch really is in fifty-nine minutes. We’re going to be close.” Heard how feeble that last part sounded as it came out of his mouth. Wanted that one back.

“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

BREATHED.

“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.

But instead of ordering Merrimack out of the Myriad, Farragut told his exec: “Take us to Centro.”

Calli relayed orders to navigation. Lu Oh squawked as the helm steered them straight toward a force that could suck Merrimack through the eye of a number six needle.

Kerry Blue ran for her Swift. Three klicks away. She could do that. Piece of cake. She could run three klicks carrying a twenty-five-kaygee field pack.

But she felt as if she were wearing fifty-kaygee shoes, and someone was pulling her head up on a noose. The sky—the sky was not. A lurid dark bruise of a storm sky. Purple light lanced off coagulated clouds. The ground poked up and hit her. Her head banged from within. She wanted to pull her own skin off, open her skull, and let her brain out.

She ran on, swearing. They left me. They left me. She was going to reach her Swift, by hell, make it back to the Mack and piss on Colonel Steele for leaving her here. Had to stay angry, else she would cry.

Semper fi. Oh, yeah, sure, semper frogging fi. That must be for somebody else. Nobody was fi to Kerry Blue. Why wouldn’t Steele displace her? She wasn’t the first Marine to lose a Swift.

Okay, so he was making her run to her Swift. She would run to her Swift. And just you see where I park it, sir!

It had to be just over the next hill. Hill? She didn’t remember a hill. She mounted the crest on all fours, clawing at the spongy weeds to pull herself up, gasping, throat raw. Squinted through the gritty wind, water spray, and tears. Heart dropped through the bedrock.

She had taken a wrong turn.

She was sure she had been running toward her Swift, but here she had ended up on the waterfront somehow. Shit. She swayed on the thundering ground, shaking. Savage voice within ordered: Get up.

Never say die. That’s what Captain Farragut always said. Unless it’s to the enemy, never say die. Get up and get to your damned Swift, Marine!

Which way was her Swift? She thought she’d left it at the end of this road. Wrong road. But there were no other roads.

Did not know where the hell she could be.

A long lightning flash. Froze a picture of hard blue clarity. The cracked road led into the jagged water. And in a trough between frozen gray waves: the peak of a silver fin blazoned red, white, and blue.

Her Swift. Washing away.

“No!” she tried to scream. Got out only a squeak.

The sky roared. A tearing sand wind pulled up the ground. A shadow fell across her with heat, thunder, and noise. She thought a house was falling on her.

The blocky structure fell hard, close, a scant five-meter miss. A hiss of air. A slash of light in the outline of a hatchway.

SPT 1 was here.

A gangway slapped down with a thunder crack.

Kerry pulled herself up, stagger-ran up the ramp, dove through the circle of light.

“Cowboy!” she cried, rolling on the deck under cool lights. He had come for her. She should have known Cowboy would come back for her. Steele would have his hide on the bulkhead for this.

The hatch’s shutting cuffed her eardrums. The activation of the ship’s distortion field brought instant relief, took the rack from her limbs, the bomb from her skull. Rejoined body to soul. She blinked gritty tears from her eyes to find her savior in the pilot’s seat.

Not Cowboy.

“Get your ass off the deck, and man the overrides, Marine.”

“Sir!”

Would it kill that man ever to use a normal tone of voice to her? It was always a snarl or a bark like she was a galactic fu. So she wondered bitterly why Steele wanted the likes of oh-so-stupid her at his right, then realized it was because there was absolutely no one else aboard.

Everyone else had gone ahead. It was she and Steele and no one else.

Kerry scrambled for the copilot’s chair. Couldn’t see anything out the front viewport but storming mud. The monitors looked worse.

The singularity. You couldn’t see it exactly. You saw what it consumed—whirling gases catching fire as they rushed and collided at speeds of millions of klicks per hour, all swirling into the vast void.

Kerry wrenched her attention away from the screens to her flight controls. Her instruments were telling that the power to achieve escape velocity from this little berg of a planetoid was a magnitude normally reserved for an FTL jump. Couldn’t be right.

She stole a glance to the man at her side. Colonel Steele breathed like a bull in a fight, his square jaw clenched.

The engine whined. The Spit boat waddled aloft. Climbed like a slug. A view out the port showed Kerry the buck and wallow that the force field would not let her feel. Heard a quiet grunt at her side. Stole another look.

The muscles in Steele’s arms stood out, tensed hard as stone, as if he were physically pulling the boat up.

“Are we going to make it, sir?”

“They tell me no.” Steele slapped the monitors off to conserve power, brought the life systems down to nominal, channeling all available power to the distortion field and the thrusters.

The blocky spacecraft tore clear of the atmosphere—or else the atmosphere ripped away from the Spit boat. Down below, the planet fell away; up above, the stars soared away. Kerry shut her eyes against the conflicting images. Opened her eyes to focus on the instruments. Always trust your instruments.

Her instruments said the Spit boat was not climbing. The spacecraft peaked, stalled. Hung on a breath—

Steele’s face was inexpressive as granite, those ice-chip eyes determinedly cold, his big hands steady. But a sweat sheen broke on his white skin. Kerry was not sure what that meant. She never could tell what that man was thinking or feeling.

Red lines striped Kerry’s board; the Spit boat’s force field had maxed. Velocity showed negative. They were slipping back toward the singularity.

“Punch overrides,” Steele commanded, and Kerry batted down the switches.

“Balk,” she reported, reading the red lights. The Spit boat would not let her push the engines without compromising the distortion field.

The engine screamed. Distortion field status monitor flickered red. One or the other had to give. “Kill thrusters!” Steele shouted.

Kerry obeyed, quickly, unquestioningly. Would have jumped off a cliff if he told her to. Probably just had.

With the thrusters shut down, engine readings fell briefly back to safe levels, but soon recommenced a climb toward the redlines.

The river of fire about them darkened, thickened, carrying the Spit boat along with it into a well of infinite depth and unimaginable density. The crash and scrape and searing rain grew loud as the distortion field monitors all flickered red. Kerry looked to the colonel. “What now?”

Those pale blue eyes met hers. She couldn’t remember him ever looking into her eyes. He always glared straight over her head, as if there was nothing in her face worth looking at. He had really amazing eyes. But she found no rescue there. All he had to offer was not to let her die alone.

He answered, “Semper fi.”

“SPT 1 sighted,” Tactical reported. “He’s spaceborne!”

“Yippee yo kay yay! Punch it, Kemo Sabe!” That was Cowboy. You could hear him yell from two levels down.

But SPT 1 had not achieved escape velocity so much as the planet Centro had been torn from under it.

The event horizon seemed to grow and approach, though truth was space was shrinking and the SPT boat was going into the singularity, Merrimack not far behind it.

Captain Farragut beheld the maelstrom through the viewports and the images on the monitors of an all consuming blackness, blotting out space and time. It looked like the end of the world.

God, who created such an unholy holocaust? It eats. It eats everything.

“He’s not going to make it,” Calli advised. “His field is losing integrity.”

Farragut turned to the sensor technician. “Do we have a res fix on him?”

“Sure do, sir. Not precise enough to displace him.”

“Then hook him!”

Calli barked orders to engineering. Merrimack heaved out a distortion field extension in the shape of a frog tongue to snag and surround the failing craft.

“Hook away,” Tactical reported. “And . . . Got him!”

As the event horizon swallowed SPT 1.

Captain Farragut had long since become accustomed to not seeing anything in normal space; still, he counted on having a visual image provided by the sensors. The monitors did not show the Spit boat. They showed a monstrous wall of oblivion, a titanic cascade of flaming gases falling into it and vanishing. Merrimack’s own distortion field showed on the screen like a vitreous thread in the inferno, extending for kilometers, breaking off at the maw of the bottomless pit.

“Engineering! Control Room. Status! Do we have him?”

“Got him, Mr. Carmel!” Engineering reported over the com. “Hook holding.”

To the sensor tech, “Can you get a reading beyond the event horizon?”

“Not exactly, sir. We can read inside our own distortion field. We can tell the Spit boat’s in there. Problem is we can’t use our exterior sensor array to read within our own field. But we got him. Can’t tell you too much else about him, but we got him.”

“Then get us the hell out of here,” said Farragut.

His XO, the navigator, tactical, chief engineer, and the helm were already conferring over escape coordinates. Conferring too long.

“Mr. Carmel, why aren’t we moving?”

Calli’s brown eyes lifted in a brief, dire glance, then back to the helm’s console, muttering over the readouts.

Merrimack maintained its distance from the event horizon, but that meager distance was not increasing. The thing out there was feeding, sucking in dust, with a horrific hiss and flash. And under it all, Merrimack’s six engines bellowed, the great ship straining at the edge of all her strength.

It fell to Calli to report, “Can’t, sir. We can maintain the integrity of our force field and our hook, and that’s a max. We cannot escape. We’ve got nothing else to give.”

Farragut turned to the viewport, astonished. Insulted.

That? That is going to defeat me?

He could not accept it. Said to his XO, “A black hole by definition is where escape velocity exceeds the speed of light. We regularly travel a thousand times that. What is the holdup?”

“It’s not the velocity, John. It’s the acceleration that’s always been the trick to FTL. We travel faster than light, but we never actually travel at light speed. Moving a mass at light speed takes infinite force, and that is exactly what it’s going to take to drag the Spit boat through the event horizon.”

“Break the hook off now,” said Colonel Oh. Might’ve been advice, but it came out a command. “Break off, or we’ll be sucked in with it.”

Merrimack maintained, steadfast within the torrent of matter raging into the abyss. The atomized debris spilling round the ship might have been the planet Centro with its 900,000 lives. Dead long before they went in, but Lord Almighty, 900,000 of them.

“Did you hear me, Captain?” Lu cried over the swelling din. “Break off!”

“Not without my men.”

“You’ve already lost them! They’re inside the singularity!”

Farragut consulted the specialists at the tactical station. “Can Steele possibly be alive in there?”

“Not exactly charted territory, sir,” Mr. Vincent answered apologetically. Oldest man on deck. Forty-two. Unflinching. “Theory says the laws of physics break down inside a singularity, but the colonel is not exactly in the singularity. He’s inside the Mack’s distortion field.”

“But it’s going to take infinite power to pull him out of it,” said Colonel Oh. “So here you sit like the boy with his fist stuck in the candy jar. The little idiot can’t figure out that the only way to get his hand out of the jar is to let go of the candy. Let go of the candy, sir, or we’ll die in this jar!”

“We’re not talking about candy, Mr. Oh,” said Captain Farragut.

“No. No, we’re not. We’re talking about a corpse! Let go!”

Merrimack’s six engines groaned. Farragut addressed the personnel on his command deck, “Someone—someone besides Colonel Oh—plot me the shape of this monstrosity.”

The suns at the core of the Myriad had been rotating when they collapsed into the singularity, dragging bent space-time around them, spinning. The event horizon had to describe a moving torus.

“Compute any point that might be more vulnerable to escape than any other point. Black holes give off X rays. Get us out the way the X rays are getting out.”

“Aye, sir!” Calli responded for everyone, her vehemence directed toward the spindly CIA spook.

“Your Marines are dead,” said Lu.

Farragut faced her. Made her look him right in the eyes. “Do you know that, Colonel, or is that an opinion?”

“It is obvious,” said Lu, staring back, unwavering.

“Not to me,” said Farragut.

Mr. Vincent at the tactical station sang out. “We have company. Roman point is on the grid.”

Farragut moved to the tactical station, looked over Vincent’s shoulder to survey the monitors. “What is he?”

“Striker,” Mr. Vincent answered. Small craft. Wickedly fast. Toting some heavy weaponry. “Approaching on the eights at threshold velocity.”

Lu Oh vibrated reedy indignation. “This is an inappropriate risk to take to recover a pair of corpses, Captain Farragut. The singularity is as good a grave as any. Let go.”

“Striker in range,” said Mr. Vincent.

Calli called Fire Control. “Icky, what can you give me?”

“Nothing, sir. We have no weapons. We can’t breach the distortion field without breaking up. Gunports are capped fast and barrels secured inboard. We keep sealed or we are string.”

“Do we have beam weapons?”

“Not really, sir. Moment they leave the barrels, they’ll torque round the event horizon. Might even shoot ourselves in the foot.”

Tactical: “Roman showing gunports.”

Com: “Roman signaling. Says he’s ready to accept our surrender.”

“Tell him to call back later,” Farragut told the com. “Tell him I’m busy.”

“Those words, sir?”

“Sure. Fine.”

Lu cried, “Cut hook and hit him!”

None of the command deck officers moved without a word from the captain or the exec, so John Farragut did not bother to countermand Colonel Oh.

“Sir!” Lu insisted—and crouched down at the sound of the Roman Striker rushing past. You could actually hear him, so close he came, so thick were the gases surrounding the ship.

The Striker shot by on a near tangent, swirling the dying gases behind it.

An explosion, muffled, reverberated low through the decks.

“Report!” Farragut demanded. “What was that?”

“Distortion bomb,” said Mr. Vincent.

“Penetrate our field?”

“Apparently not.”

Without calibrating the distortion precisely to Merrimack ’s ever-shifting phases, penetration was a trillion-to-one chance. But that shot was not meant to penetrate. “Target finder,” Vincent clarified. “He took a sounding. He’s got a map of our field now. Depth. Orientation. Right now he’s studying it to find if we’re open to a fatal blow.”

“Are we?”

“Yes, sir,” Mr. Vincent said, as Mr. Emerson at the sensors nodded emphatic agreement. “Singularity has pulled us thin fore and aft. A hit anywhere in the stern takes us right out.”

“Then figure out how to reel in my Spit boat before this Striker shoots me in the ass.”

“Let go of SPT 1,” Lu answered.

“Not an option.”

“I remind the captain it is not just your ass about to be shot. It’s our collective ass.”

Below the rising crash and thunder, the helm could be heard muttering into his board, “Thank you, Colonel. I am sure he forgot that.”

Farragut spoke over him, “Did someone pull the colors off that Striker?”

“Red and black,” Emerson consulted the sensors. “And his sail is peppered with kill badges.”

“Red and black. What gens is that?”

Before Emerson could look it up, Calli answered directly, “Flavian.”

Tactical: “Roman turning wide.”

“Flavian,” Farragut echoed. “Is that Republican or Imperialist? Where do the Flavians stand on the Peace?”

“Imperial,” said Calli. “Right, honor, and the glory of Rome. Hawk to the bone.”

“Good,” said Farragut.

“Oh, hell,” said Lu.

Tactical: “Striker lining up a kill run.” Mr. Vincent turned from his board, earnest. “Sir. We can take this guy. Awaiting your orders.”

“You have my orders.”

Vincent turned back to his console, scarlet flush creeping back to his distant hairline.

“Steele is dead!” Lu shouted, fists clenched.

Again: “Do you know this, Lu?” Farragut asked quietly, right in the enormous eyes, not an argument, a solemn question.

“Yes!”

At the same time, the com tech sang out, “Res message on our harmonic.” And he put it on the speaker:

“Merrimack. Merrimack. Merrimack. This is SPT 1. Do you read?”

Calli stepped out of the way of the captain’s lunge for the res caller. “TR! Status!”

“SPT 1 here. We are intact and shouldn’t be. I can’t tell what’s holding us together. I think we’re inside the black hole. Instruments read garbage.”

Unmanned probes sent into black holes gave back the same result. The old saying remained true—black holes have no hair.

“I shut down the thrusters,” Steele continued. “I have power enough now to bring the thrusters back on-line, but I don’t know which way to fly. Advise.”

“I’ve got you, TR. Do NOT activate your thrusters. You are inside Merrimack’s field.”

“And sucking us down with you.”

“Colonel Oh, shut up,” Calli ordered.

Colonel Oh ignored her. “Captain, the Roman has us! We are sitting ducks!”

“Not much sport in it, is there?” Farragut murmured.

Lu wailed heavenward. “Oh, God. We are acting according to John Farragut’s sense of fair play against a goddamn Roman point man with a high score and an easy shot—”

Tactical: “Here he comes.”

Calli advised, very low and personal, “John, if you’re counting on the Roman’s sense of honor not to shoot you in the back, I should tell you that honor regularly only extends to other Romans. It’s dangerous to second-guess the Wolf Star.”

Farragut nodded. Murmured back, “I know that wolves kill what runs.”

“Yes, sir.” Calli assumed a posture of cool readiness, hands clasped behind her back, head imperially high.

Tactical: “Striker charging up his disrupters!”

Exec: “Thank you, Mr. Vincent.”

Flashes from the Striker’s ports drew red, severely arcing lines through the storming gases around Merrimack, bounced off her field.

Tactical: “Tracers! Dead on.”

Lu shrieking: “Let go of the Spit!”

Tactical: “Roman firing.”

18

DID NOT HEAR the shot. Disrupters were point specific. Whether they hit or missed, you never heard the shot.

Did feel the deck heave.

He missed!

The Striker’s shot must have hit the singularity, because the black hole’s tidal warp dipped and undulated. And, in the trough in the event horizon, SPT 1 appeared—

And instantly catapulted free to tumble end over end with Merrimack like a lopsided bolo, with a force that might have jumped them FTL were they in normal space.

“We’re loose!”

The stars showed through the viewport as solid lines as the ship whirled round and round, the kind of spin that would splatter all hands through the bulks if not for Merrimack’s force field.

“Stabilize ship,” Calli ordered.

Helm: “Stabilizing, aye.”

Tactical: “Striker tracking us.”

“Open fire on Striker,” said Farragut. “Shoot from the hip.”

“Without acquiring target?” Lu was appalled. “The singularity will foul any attempt—”

Calli: “Fire Control. Full broadside at the Striker. Fire. Fire now.”

The ship’s power coiled. You felt it coming up through the deck. The battleship unleashed a storm like a solar flare in the vague direction of the Roman point.

Tactical: “Clean miss.”

“Line up another round,” Farragut ordered.

“Striker wearing off.”

Lu Oh scoffed. “You don’t get a second shot! You weren’t even close! Like he’s going to wait around with Merrimack at full strength! What an e-jack!”

“Colonel Oh, remove yourself from the control room,” Captain Farragut said evenly.

“Fine.” Colonel Oh jerked off her headset. “Next time you feel the need to play chicken with a Roman, let me out of the car.”

Farragut murmured after her, “You break the jar.”

Calli cocked her head the better to hear. “Sir?”

“Talkin’ to myself.”

A crew of erks locked down SPT 1 upon the boat’s docking in Merrimack’s port wing.

Cowboy’s whoop rang off the metal bulks, his boot-falls clanging on the deck grates with his charge to greet the Spit’s return.

Kerry Blue tottered down the ramp like a fragile drunk.

“Ho! Doll!” Cowboy bowled her off her feet into his arms. “Sheeps, I thought you bought the bowling alley back there!” Cowboy stuck a yard of tongue down her throat, then broke off to crow, “You should have seen your rescue! Captain did balls with the Roman point! He’s a wild man! And you!” over Kerry’s head to the spit boat’s hatchway. “Old Man! And they call me cowboy! You are crazed! Fly right into a black hole! You’re the Man of Steel for sure!” Winked at Kerry, “At least part of him is!” He grabbed his own part in case anyone missed the reference.

Steele spoke with arctic reserve. “Flight Sergeant Carver. Last I was aware, we had a Roman Legion converging on this position. Has that situation changed?”

“No, sir. They’re coming.”

“Then get back to your station.”

Cowboy gave Kerry a wink and pinch on the ass in parting.

“Captain on deck!”

Steele snapped to along with everyone else.

Farragut waved down the salutes. The maintenance crew returned to their work on the Spit boat. Kerry Blue slumped from attention.

“Welcome aboard, Flight Sergeant Blue,” said Farragut with some irony, but mostly it was a real welcome.

“Thank you, sir,” Kerry said, breathless.

“And you.” The captain gave Steele an unconvincing scowl. He did not finish. The rest could be said later.

“Situation?” Steele requested.

“We’re about to get lousy with Romans. I set your Wing to back up the Battery. I’m not launching anybody with that out there.”

“Yes, sir.” Steele was in no mood to take on the black hole ever again.

“You two get your butts to sick bay,” Farragut dismissed Steele and Blue.

“Sir,” Steele stiffened, at attention. “Permission to obey that order after we take care of the Romans.”

Farragut looked at both of them critically. Looked pretty good for having been crushed by infinite gravity. “If you know you’re up to it, I can use you.”

Steele immediately sent Kerry Blue to join the gunners. Then he said to the captain, “Thank you, sir. How are we going to play this?”

Farragut shook his head. “Let’s see what the Romans throw at us before we swing.”

“Hey, chica linda, I saved a place for you.” Carly patted the seat next to her as Kerry ducked into her gun turret. “What’s it like inside a black hole?”

Kerry hunkered down next to her gun. “For something that’s supposed to have no hair, it was hairy.”

“Glad you could join us,” Reg muttered. Not like Reg to gush, but she sounded actually angry. “You got any idea what went on in this barge to get you back?”

“Not really,” Kerry said uneasily. She was getting terrible inklings.

Carly and Reg told her.

“Shit.” No wonder Reg was mad. Nobody risked that much for a girl they called the welcome mat. Farragut must have done it for Colonel Steele.

But then, who had Colonel Steele put it all on the line for?

“I feel like Lois Lane,” Kerry said shakily.

And funny, now that she thought of it, the man who had come flying to her rescue, flouting orders, had not been Cowboy.

Man of Steel, Cowboy had called him. Colonel Steele as her Superman. Right.

“You are lobster red, soldier girl. You okay?”

“Yeah.” Let go of thoughts so insanely unbelievable they pushed themselves away. “Yeah.” Kerry shoved nonexistent bangs from her brow. “I need a target. Where’s the frogging Romans?”

Orders came over the loud com for all hands to stand down from battle stations. Target was withdrawing from the system.

Kerry slapped her gun, rising. “Aw nuts!” She was in the mood to shoot something. “Frogging Romans.”

“Hey, if you want frogging, I’m here for you, Kerry.”

Kerry shrugged off the heavy ape arm that draped across her shoulders. “Shut up, Dak.”

Merrimack remained on low alert, monitoring both of the Roman Legions’ retreat, in case it turn out to be a ruse.

But the battleground had changed. There was nothing here anymore that Palatine wanted, and a lot that it didn’t. Farragut did not expect the Romans to challenge him for the Myriad again. This earth was pretty well scorched.

“Captain!” the com tech reported, startled. “There’s a sleeper message in your cache.”

“From who?”

“It’s a res message—untraceable. And it’s not signed. But it’s in Latin.”

All hands in the control room paused at their stations and fell silent.

Farragut said at last, “Well, let’s have it.”

“It’s in Latin,” the tech repeated, unable to comply and rather proud of it. He printed off the message and surrendered it to the captain.

“So what’s this say—whose Latin is better than mine.” Farragut passed the printout to Calli.

Calli translated aloud, “ ‘Next time, when I have a clear shot at something other than your back, prepare to yield to Rome as my prize of honor, or else die for the glory of the Roman Empire.’ ” She handed the printout back. “ Standard Imperial bullshit.”

“That’s from the Striker!” someone whispered.

And Farragut shouted as if he could make himself heard through the hull across the lengthening light-years that lay between his ship and the Striker. “I’ll be waiting for you, asshole!” He turned sheepishly to Calli, with a shrug of his big shoulders. “Standard U.S. bullshit. He let us go.”

The crew on the command deck bridled at that suggestion, except for Calli, who said, “No, sir. He let you go. That message is talking to a singular you. There’s a difference in Latin.”

“Sirs?” the young sensor tech broke in, mystified. “Wasn’t that a miss?”

“He didn’t miss,” said Farragut. “He was perfect.”

And Calli countered the tech’s question with another question, “What are the odds of a miss that close accidentally being at the precise angle, depth, and strength to disturb the event horizon at the exact location which would free our SPT boat?”

“It was a million-to-one shot—” Mr. Emerson started, broke off as he heard what he was saying. Asked incredulously, “He can do that on purpose?”

Calli turned back to the captain. “That was a patterner, John.”

“A what?”

“An augmented man. I’ve never actually seen one, and Rome swears they don’t exist. A patterner is a kind of Frankenstein monster/secret weapon/cyborg kind of man. Admitting the existence of patterners would be admitting that Rome is playing with brain experiments on live subjects.”

“Violates the Cygnus Convention,” said Farragut. “Not to mention any Earthly sense of decency.”

Calli gave a sideways nod, allowing the truth of what he said. “Palatine denies it here to hell, but patterners have to exist because that had to be one. It was an inhuman shot. It was too perfect to be accident and too complicated and unique a task to ask of a targeting computer without preprogramming for these bizarre conditions.”

Farragut gazed out the port as if he could see which way the Striker had gone. “I wonder how he’s going to explain this back at Palatine. Letting a battleship go. Not just letting us go—he sprang the Merri-Mother-of-God- Mack from a black hole. I hope they don’t crucify him.”

“Don’t worry about him,” said Calli. “The record shows he fired on Merrimack, and Merrimack returned fire. Even if Imperial Command sees through that charade, they’ll reprimand him for failure to deliver a victory and that will be the end of it. The Empire understands standard bullshit. It’s a Roman invention.”

Merrimack returned to the F8 system within the Myriad. The doomed planet Arra hung in a tranquil sea of stars, its clouds reflecting brilliant white into space. To look at the starry, starry sky you would have no idea what had just happened. How to tell the Arrans their world would be dead in less than ten years? The distorted orbit would kill most of the planet’s life before the neutrino barrage arrived to blast whatever survived the wintry hell.

The stars looked the same in the Arran sky. Captain Farragut did not know how to make the Arrans understand that quite of few of those stars were gone.

He supposed the Arrans would get an inkling once messages from Rea and Centro stopped coming, and when their interplanetary shuttles discovered the kzachin entirely missing. But they might just as easily conclude Merrimack was responsible for that breakdown.

“If only we could communicate better,” Farragut mourned. “If we had had time to decode their language. Maybe we could have made the Arran leader understand he must not go through the Rim gate. I could have stopped him. Damn the language barrier.”

And because of it, 900,000 intelligent beings and an entire ecosphere was gone. Just like that. Thousands of unique life-forms native to the planet Centro, extinct.

Nine hundred thousand dead. A number too big to absorb. Beings he had never met. Without faces, without names, they became a blank, hideous statistic, with numbing power. The mind’s defensive inability to take in numbers that large when spoken in the same breath as “dead” kept him from wrapping his mind around it. Captain Farragut could scarcely get his arms round his own eighty-one dead.

“I could have done something. If I could have talked to the Arrans, this would all be different.”

No need to communicate the danger to the Romans. A long-range res scan confirmed all Roman vessels exiting the Myriad, in a tearing hurry to cede the poisoned ground to Earth. In abandoning the field, Palatine had just saddled Merrimack with thirty million refugees. The planet Arra would need evacuating. And perhaps in more dire need, three million Reans—their colony remote, cut off from their government, from supplies, from communication—the Reans faced shortages, famine, anarchy.

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.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

PART ONE - Uncertainty Principle

Chapter 1 - Anno Domini 2443

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

PART TWO - Functions of Chaos

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

PART THREE - A Rational Universe

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Table of Contents

- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Dedication
- PART ONE - Uncertainty Principle
- Chapter 1 - Anno Domini 2443
- Chapter 2
- Chapter 3
- Chapter 4
- Chapter 5
- Chapter 6
- Chapter 7
- Chapter 8
- PART TWO - Functions of Chaos
- Chapter 9
- Chapter 10
- Chapter 11
- Chapter 12
- Chapter 13
- Chapter 14
- Chapter 15
- Chapter 16
- PART THREE - A Rational Universe
- Chapter 17
- Chapter 18