The Ninth Circle (26 page)

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Authors: R. M. Meluch

BOOK: The Ninth Circle
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Nox opened his eyes to the lovely sunset. The soft sea air from the Xerxes imager brushed his skin. The palms were casting moon shadows across the sand.
Only close his eyes and he was back on the cliff, facing that jump. He must have thought he was going to live. “But I didn’t
know
.”
 
Awareness.
His last memory had been of pain. Eyelids were stuck open, unable to blink. Harsh sun. Breath stabbing in crushed lungs. Wetness. Head felt . . . mushy.
Shooting pain of being lifted, jarring motion.
Pain ceased. Still feeling, but without pain. Grotesque sensations of dripping, crumbling. Like being a bag of sticks. Pulpy.
Woke after a moment; he didn’t remember losing consciousness. Felt different.
Felt.
Different.
Opened his eyes, puzzled. The sky with its pearly moons was gone, the cliff was gone. He was indoors, the air was cool, and he could move. He had no sense at all of time having passed, yet he was not where he had been.
He sat up with an amazing feeling of well-being. Strange things moved in his body. He felt absolutely clearheaded, yet he could not remember how he got here. He did remember jumping. The fall. The landing. His hipbones had hit him in the chin.
Now there were cables protruding from his forearms, and he had no idea how they got there. Must be what he was feeling behind his neck too.
An officer was standing in the room along with several medici.
The officer told him curtly, “The medicus ruled it a suicide attempt.”
So that was all real. The jump. The landing. “Not my intent,
Domni
.”
“Did you think you could fly?”
“No,
Domni
.”
“Then explain how you mistook air for solid ground?”
“I can’t,
Domni
.” Rather, he wouldn’t inform on his brothers.
“Anyone with you?”
“No,
Domni
.” That was a lie. The officer probably knew that. He had to say it anyway.
“Protecting anyone?”
“No,
Domni
.”
“Actually, your last statement is true enough,” said the officer. “The ones you would protect don’t exist anymore. They are no one.”
His brothers. Where were they?
His animal brain still refused to believe what his senses were telling him. His mind concocted a most desperate attempt at denial.
This is still part of the hazing
.
My brothers didn’t drop me. This is an intricate charade to trick me into thinking they dropped me.
He clung to that thought. But even before the medici plugged in his cables, a knowing chill gripped his gut.
This is too elaborate by far
.
These men were real and serious.
The cables connected. His eyes flew wide.
Horizons vanished into infinity. He knew things. Millions of links fit together, effects met with causes, randomness resolved into inevitability, chaos became order.
Against all logic, he knew what he’d become.
They don’t make these anymore
.
These men, his makers, were masking fear. His mind reached through vast data stores, through endless minutiae, found the place in the documentation where one of them had made the notation:
If he’s going to kill you, it will be now
.
He knew the officer had a sidearm. Its serial number was 435-X942AXZ.
The medici looked wary.
This body wasn’t his.
It was.
It wasn’t.
They had cultivated many of this particular Antonian clone. This was not the body that had gone over the cliff. The brain was.
They hadn’t given him a new name.
He remembered his past life. His brothers. Nicanor, Pallas, Faunus, Orissus, Leo, Galeo, and Nox.
They dropped me
.
I died
.
16
 
“T
HIS IS REALLY RATHER grotesque,” said Nicanor, observing the blood spots daubed on the deck of their latest kill.
“I Tknow.”
Nox was not retching anymore. He would never enjoy killing. Didn’t intend to try.
Pallas stood apart, arms tight around himself. He didn’t take part in desecration. A quick kill, and he was done.
Orissus’ face fissured. He nudged Pallas. “Problem,
frater
?”
Pallas lifted his chin up. “I understand what you’re doing. I do. But I can’t do it anymore.”
“You don’t need to,” said Nox. “As long as the Circle is feared, no one is going to check our individual resumes. Stay the way you are.”
Leo was doing worse. He couldn’t sleep without a sleep program. Couldn’t keep his food down without an antiemetic program. Couldn’t pick up a dagger. His hand locked up when he tried.
Leo stared at his hand, horrified. Insisted, “I can do this.” But his hand fixed into a claw and wouldn’t move.
“No, you can’t,” Nox said. He put his hands to Leo’s shoulders. Giving Leo a shoulder rub was like trying to massage an elm tree. “Take care of the ship’s systems. You’re the only one who’s good at that. Someone’s gotta do supply and support.”
The elm tree started to shake under Nox’s hands. Leo looked desperately to his brothers. “Really? Is that all right? Are you sure?”
Faunus gave Leo a light kick in the shin. “We got this part.”
“How many killers do we have?” Orissus polled. Lifted his own hand.
Faunus signaled he was in.
Galeo lifted a finger.
Nox had started them down this road. He put up his hand. “
Ego
.”
“And you’re still noisy,” Orissus said.
Nicanor nodded.
Pallas said, “I can kill. I can’t mess them up.”
Nox said, “We shouldn’t need to do that much longer. The point is to establish the Leopard as the king of the jungle. We only kill what chases us, and we kill horribly. When the hunters stop chasing us and bow to the Leopard without us needing to demand it, then we can go anywhere. People will give us what we want and thank us for the privilege.”
Nox hadn’t thrown up after killing since the first one. The bad feeling he got after an atrocity was lessening. He was trying to become ruthless. He hadn’t known he’d had that much ruth in him.
“Actually, our kills are quick and simple,” said Galeo. “Even Nox’s daisycutter in the air lock was quick.”
“Are you afraid we’re not gross enough!” Nox cried.
“Just saying.” Galeo shrugged.
“It’ll have to do,” said Nox. “I just hope no one else figures out that messing up the dead doesn’t cause pain. I can carve meat, but I can’t do torture.”
The horror caught up with Nox later, in the middle of the next sleep cycle. The ship was dark, and he was alone with what he’d done. He dove into a dream box that promised to weave fantasies of your deepest desires.
It started well with a dream of a woman. It turned into a nightmare of him stabbing her.
He tore off the V-helmet and leaped out bed raging. “
No no no
! That is not what I want!” He smashed the thing, stomped it, threw it, cursed it. Woke the whole ship.
Pallas calmly cleaned up after Nox’s rampage and offered him another brand of dream box. The program was
Hot Trixi Allnight
. “You can’t go wrong with Trixi.”
 
It was gently drizzling in camp when Izrael Benet beckoned Glenn to a table under one of the pavilions to join him in a game of poker.
Glenn climbed onto the bench opposite Benet. Benet pushed a stack of chips across the table to her.
“What are the stakes?” Glenn asked.
“Shall we play for worlds,” Benet said.
So this was one of those games wherein you sound out the character of your opponent by how he plays. “No. I don’t play with worlds,” said Glenn.
“That’s interesting.” As if to say he thought she did.
Glenn tossed in one chip for her ante. “That’s my morning bagel.”
Benet matched her bagel, shuffled the cards, and offered the deck for her to cut. She gave the deck a tap. “Just deal.”
Benet dealt. Glenn picked up her five cards. Gave them a quick glance.
Benet studied his own hand, then asked, “How many?”
Cards he meant.
“None,” said Glenn.
Benet took one card for himself, then said, “Your bet, Lieutenant. You must be holding all the big guns.”
Glenn literally laid all her cards out on the table. “Director Benet. You want to know me, just ask me questions. Talk to me.”
Benet folded his own hand without showing it. “Fair enough. You see, I think I already know you. You are a military officer. You have people under you who must obey you without thought. You military types abdicate your personal will and conscience to a superior. Dissent is essential to living free.”
“Living is essential to living free,” said Glenn. “The military makes sacrifices so that civilians can live free.”
“How can you talk of living while you, your Admiral Farragut, your Empress Calli, and your battleship
Merrimack
are a galactic marauding genocidal ecological catastrophe?”
The extremity of that speech set Glenn back. Her stubbly eyebrows lifted high. “You think we should have let the Hive live?”
“No. The Hive wasn’t life. It was death incarnate. It had to be eradicated. But since you mention it, Jose Maria de Cordillera and the rogue patterner Augustus were the ones who figured out how to destroy the Hive. And here you’re actually claiming to have destroyed the Hive? How can you presume?”
Because we did the actual destruction, that’s how. She wasn’t going to argue with him about that. She returned to Benet’s original accusation, “Then what genocidal eco-disaster are you talking about?”
“The Myriad.”
Made her blink.
Years ago the
Merrimack
had discovered a three-world nation inside a globular cluster. The core of the colossal star system collapsed. The system was still collapsing to this day. Two of the planets were gone now. Even now the relocation of the intelligent species from the remaining planet was ongoing. The LEN was also attempting to preserve specimens of all the flora and fauna on the last world before it too fell into the singularity. It really had been a disaster.
“We tried to stop it,” Glenn said.
“Only after you caused it,” Benet said.
“That’s what you think?”
“The Myriad was a stable system before
Merrimack
’s arrival. And then suddenly—bang—it wasn’t. Do you know what it’s like to organize a rescue on that scale? And to lose an entire world under your charge. A world!”

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