The Ninth Circle (37 page)

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Authors: R. M. Meluch

BOOK: The Ninth Circle
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Captain Carmel snapped her fingers in the direction of the cryptotech. “Qord!”
“On it, sir,” Qord Johnson acknowledged.
The com tech fed the radio transmissions to the cryptotech’s station.
 
Kerry Blue lost count of her kills. Her crate would keep score. The Intelligence ferrets didn’t believe your report anyway. The sum of all pilots’ reported kills always totaled up to something like five times the actual number of enemy dead.
Merrimack
’s sensors located another cluster of orbs on the far side of the world. The hostiles were traveling toward
Merrimack,
but so low-powered that they seemed to be walking.
So the Swifts streaked around the planet to get them. The ship’s gunners cried foul.
A new guy: “Who’s ahead in the kill count?”
“Who cares,” Kerry sent. “This is skeet.”
“I care,” the new guy sent. It was his first time firing his guns in anger. Though this action was more like firing in annoyance.
Kerry found she did better if she moved slowly and let the orbs come to her. She just needed to watch that they didn’t try to fly up her tail.
Kerry sent, “Carly, get over here and watch my six.”
Alpha Four maneuvered alongside Kerry Blue, facing the opposite direction. They sat still and killed all comers.
Twitch: “For why don’t anyone blow up!”
Twitch was right. These colorless, flashless explosions the orbs made on detonating did not make good fireworks.
Asante: “They gotta be packing hydrogen.”
Kerry: “Meaning what, Doctor Science? Anyone see a target? Ho! That one’s mine, mine, mine, son of a she dog!”
Asante: “Hydrogen don’t burn. It explodes.”
Dak: “Where the flash?”
Asante: “It’s invisible.”
Commander Ryan overheard that exchange from
Merrimack
’s command deck. He turned to Captain Carmel. “That confirms there are no oxygen breathers inside the attack craft. Oxygen has a visible burn.”
“Our dogs are running out of targets,” Tactical reported.
Calli ordered, “Bring the birds home, Colonel Steele. The Battery can pick off the stragglers. Have them save me one. I want an intact orb.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
Steele issued the recall order.
Over the com he heard Flight Leader Salvador shouting: “Cease fire! Alpha Two! Cease fire!”
Alpha Two probably didn’t hear the order because he was mashing down his trigger and yelling at the top of his voice, “Grettaaaaah!”
“Alpha Two, cease fire!”
Dak annihilated his target. He ceased fire. Still hungry.
 
It looked like Alpha One had the last target, but Cain wasn’t shooting at it. The orbs explode real easy when you shoot them, but Cain was just batting his around with the stoutest part of his Swift’s energy field.
“Cain?” Dak sent, hopeful. “Are you gonna eat that?”
Cain kept batting the orb but not delivering a fatal shot. He beat it with his forward cowcatcher, circled round to interrupt its flight, then hammered it again, sending it flying another direction. Like playing catch with himself.
“Can I play?” Rhino sent.
“Back off,” Cain ordered. “We need to reserve one. Captain wants a whole one.”
With every hit, the orb reeled away from the impact, then gamely reversed course and came back at Cain’s Swift for another try.
It took several hits to make it stop fighting.
At last the orb hurtled off and kept going.
Cain sped around to catch it and contain it. He nudged it to a near stop.
The battered orb drifted in the direction of the nudge, unresponsive.
“Wing Leader. Wing Leader. Wing Leader. This is Alpha One. Colonel Steele? Hostile neutralized. I think.”
“Return to ship,” Steele sent and turned to the XO. “Your target, sir.”
Commander Ryan spoke over the ship’s intracom: “Engineering. Ready half hook. Target the disabled alien orb.”
“Ready half hook, aye. Target acquired.”
Ryan: “Engineering. Engage force-field hook.”
“Engineering, aye. Hook engaging.”
Merrimack
’s distortion field extended a tendril of energy to loop around the alien spacecraft.
The half hook was a recent variation on a hook. Full containment had its perils. To put out a full hook was to enclose the target inside one’s own inertial field.
A full hook on an enemy was an invitation to die. If a powerplant blew up inside your hook, you were done.
The half hook was easier for an enemy to escape from, but he wouldn’t kill you when he tried it.
This enemy wasn’t fighting. Best guess was it ran out of hydrogen.
Engineering: “Target captured. Alien craft in tow.”
Calli nodded to her exec. “Send a Vee jock out. See what we caught.”
Merrimack
deployed a small unmanned surveillance spacecraft. The drone was piloted from the remote pilot center on board
Merrimack
by a V-jock nicknamed Wraith. The surveillance craft’s readings were fed up to the command deck and to Ops for interpretation.
It was immediately obvious that the orbs were unarmed, unmanned, low-tech, alien-built, and not meteors.
“What jack squid thought they were meteors?” said Tactical.
The XO, who usually ignored anything Marcander Vincent said, answered, “A civilian on the ground tried to tell our Hamster that these were meteors.”
“Is the ship radioactive?” Calli asked.
There was a quick conference with Ops. Tactical answered, “Negative radiation. It’s a hydrogen powerplant. No hydrogen in it now.”
Calli ordered, “Mister Ryan. Have Wraith strip the powerplant out of that. Keep the engine in tow. Bring the rest of the spacecraft inboard for analysis.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
“Commander Ryan, organize a sweep of the debris. None of that makes planetfall.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
Captain Carmel turned to the specialist at the com station. “Mister Dorset. Where is my Hamster?”
Red Dorset had been hailing Lieutenant Glenn Hamilton since
Merrimack
entered the Zoen star system. “Have not been able to make contact, Captain. I can’t get Dr. Hamilton either. I do have a very angry man named Benet. He keeps telling us to go away.”
 
Thunder cracked under a cloudless evening sky. The claps erupted at ground level like shelling.
Xenos poured out of their work huts and tents. Explosions sounded all around them, but nothing fell from the sky. No dirt sprayed up from the ground.
Director Benet had not shared with his colleagues
Merrimack
’s intent to send a landing team down. He’d thought his refusal was enough to keep them away.
Now the displacement disks came blasting out of thin air in preparation for the Marines’ arrival.
The thin metal disks split the air with a bang and settled to the ground.
Benet ran about, shouting at the sky, “No! No!” and to his team,” Get that! Get that!” while he gathered up landing disks as quickly as he could. He carried six of them like a stack of dinner plates. “Throw them out!” He ran toward the annihilator.
Most of the expedition team—those who weren’t hiding in the storm shelter—didn’t want to touch the things.
Manny the pilot picked up a disk. Lights on the disk’s rim turned green. Instantly a hundred-kilo Marine materialized with a
bang
on top of the disk.
Marine and disk fell hard. An oof and a snap from underneath the disk was probably a rib of the man under him. The Marine scrambled to his feet.
Other bangs sounded as Marines appeared on other landing disks.
The disks in Benet’s stack showed red lights. He shoved his stack into the annihilator. He came stalking out of the recycling hut, head aggressively forward, shoulders back, lower teeth bared, indignant. The whites of his eyes flared at the Marines.
The medical doctor, Cecil, knelt on the ground, tending to Manny, who lay gaping and gasping like a landed carp.
Benet pointed down at Manny and shouted at the Marines, “What did you do to this man!”
The nearest Marine answered, contrite. “Sat on him, sir. He was under my LD.”
Director Izrael Benet turned round and round, seeking the ranking officer among the invaders who materialized inside his camp.
He singled out Commander Ryan, the only formal one in the group. The one in Navy blue. The rest were in mud green and rigged like an assault team.
Commander Ryan looked rakish even in dress blues. Maybe it was his off-center mouth and inverted crescent eyes that always seemed to be smiling. He had a wide, high brow, wayward hair, no earlobes. His ears were set so close to his head it gave him a feral look.
Director Benet advanced on Ryan and demanded, “Why is there a ship of death on my roof?”
Commander Ryan said, as if it were obvious, “This world is under extraplanetary attack.”
“Mrs. Hamilton’s mythical attack ships?” Benet said, dripping contempt. His eyes raked the XO up and down, taking in the commander’s braid on his cuffs and shoulder boards.
Izrael Benet was an imposing, forceful man. He was not accustomed to facing down so many men taller, bigger, more forceful than he. Even the women Marines looked like attack dogs. Still, Director Izrael Benet had his position of superior authority.
“You planted those spaceships here to give you a pretext to come to Zoe. There are no extraplanetaries here!”
Commander Ryan’s wolf-brown eyes flicked skyward. “Not upstairs,” he agreed. “Not anymore, thank you very much.”
Izrael Benet didn’t understand, but he wouldn’t touch the bait. He played his ace. “In peacetime the League of Earth Nations has jurisdiction over any Earth presence in a LEN protectorate. Since you are here, your ship of war will accept the LEN flag.”
“I’m not giving odds on that happening,” said Commander Ryan. “Where is Glenn Hamilton?”
“I want green armbands on all these people,” said Director Benet. “Now.”
“Glenn Hamilton?” Commander Ryan repeated.
“They were contaminating the environment,” said Benet.
With the kind of stillness that falls just before you need to run to the cellar, Commander Ryan asked, “Where are Dr. and Lieutenant Hamilton?”
“We had to confine them,” said Director Benet.
Colonel Steele had his sidearm out in an instant. His Marines followed his lead.
Most of the civilian expedition members had never been in the presence of drawn weapons. They flinched, moaned, froze, backed away toward cover.
Commander Ryan said, “Right, then. Who’s going to show me where my officers are?”
A xeno came running, shied at all the drawn splinter guns. He hissed at the expedition director, “Izzy! They escaped!”
“They—?” Benet started.
Commander Ryan asked, deadly gentle, “Escaped from what?” He guessed
they
were Glenn and Patrick Hamilton.
Steele gave a hand signal. Weapons cocked in brute unison.
Benet bellowed to everyone cringing around him, “Stand your ground! They are not going to open fire on unarmed civilians. Who let the prisoners out?”
Benet looked around for a guilty face. It was tough to tell the difference between terror and guilt.
A serene, cultured voice sounded from behind him. “I did.”
Director Benet and Commander Ryan turned toward where the racing yacht
Mercedes
sat in the half ring of boxy expedition spaceships.
A slender, dignified figure holding a wineglass advanced from the yacht’s open hatch. He presented an elegant silhouette, taut and sleek as the black and tan Doberman bitch at his heels.

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