Authors: R. M. Meluch

The Ninth Circle (7 page)

BOOK: The Ninth Circle

2.13Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub

ads

Orissus mouthed words without sound.
Rat. Rat. Rat
.

Then the base praefect stepped forward, his eyes raking the brothers up and down.

The praefect was a grand, austere veteran foot soldier. He wore his battle scars like medals. Breathed as if there were scars in his lungs.

He asked any of them, all of them, “Where is Antonius Cinna?”

Pallas tried to say he didn’t know. The lie stuck in his throat. He said instead, “He is not here,
Domni
.”

“I can see that. You don’t know how he came to be at the bottom of Widow’s Edge?”

The brothers stammered for a response, exchanging glances. Orissus bluffed, “You mean he jumped?”

“Were you there?” the praefect asked back.

Pallas lifted his chin, summoned up a lie. “No,
Domni
.”

“Did you see it?”

“No,
Domni
.”

“
Render aid?
”

Pallas swallowed hard. This one hurt because it was the truth. Pallas’ voice broke, “No,
Domni
.”

“
Abandon your man?
”

The words burned.

“Is that what Nox told you?” Pallas said softly, choking on resentment.

The old praefect’s eyes widened into bulging orbs. He roared, wheezing. “Do you think I haven’t jumped off that cliff myself! Do you think I haven’t pushed ’phebes over myself!” His face purpled, veins stood out, primed to frag. “Do you think—? No. Never mind. No one cares what you think! You’re a waste of oxygen.” He pulled his sidearm and jabbed it at Pallas’ face.

Pallas held his ground, blinking. He said nothing.

The praefect jammed his sidearm back into its holster and stalked out of the hut. The guards marched the brothers outside.

The
Spring Beauty
’s controls gave one last gasp. Her inertials kicked back in to slow her jangled plummeting. The helm had pitch and roll control but not yaw, so she came spinning down like a house out of Kansas.

She hit the treetops, flaming and shredding alien vegetation. At the very end she rallied and touched ground with a gentle
flump
and died.

Halon hissed on the lively flames inside and out. The ship settled with a sigh.

The lifeboat clamps unhooked. The escape craft slid slowly off the
Beauty
’s fuselage and stopped at an angle against a stand of trees. Its parachute deployed in a large plume that draped itself in the branches.

Glenn wiped her face. Her eyebrows crumbled off. The insides of her nostrils felt raw.

She gave the ship’s console a pat. “Good girl.”

Beside her, Patrick looked chalky white. He said, “I knew you could do it.”

Glenn’s hairless eyebrows skewed and arched, skeptical. “‘I love you, Glenn Hull?’”

“I had to get that in there just in case I was wrong,” Patrick said, and he shivered.

His eyes took on a glassy vacancy. Glenn unstrapped herself from her seat, then unstrapped Patrick. His body oozed to the deck.

Glenn kicked open the first aid kit, found an intradermal and gave Patrick a shot for the shock.

Within seconds he blinked back to normality. He looked up at her. “Sorry.”

“You did good,” Glenn said. She helped him sit up.

The lifeboat hatch opened. Its contents staggered out. Glenn closed up the first aid kit and sent Patrick aft with it to dispense to the needy.

Moaning, some screaming, and a blur of talking sounded from back there. Nothing Glenn cared to hear. She had the answer ready when the team leader stomped forward to demand, “Where the hell are we?”

Glenn read out their exact latitude and longitude.

Not the answer he’d expected. Poul Vrba had a righteous rant prepared and couldn’t deliver it. He made his way back to the lifeboat and reported their location to the others.

Sounds of delight rose amid the crying.

“We’re here!”

“The camp is just a klick or two away! That way!”

“How lucky is that!”

Glenn recognized Dr. Minyas’ voice.

Luck
. Glenn pursed her lips, shook her head.
Sure
.
Rhymes with luck
.

Glenn checked the engine core containment field. Found it functioning and stable. She picked up her gear from the deck and tossed it out through the gaping hole where the forward view screen used to be. She didn’t want to walk back among those people to get out.

From the direction of the LEN camp, three hoverskiffs came whipping through the Zoen underbrush. They were laden with first aid supplies and fire suppressants.

Their crews found the fires already out.

They loaded the injured onto one of the hovers. There was a broken rib, a broken wrist, a twisted ankle. A dislocated shoulder. Contusions to go around. Patrick had already treated the shock cases.

Glenn and Patrick were the only ones singed. Glenn waved off the medic. His name was Cecil. Not sure if that was his first or last name. “I’m fine,” Glenn told Cecil. “Go take care of someone screaming.”

The descent had been terrifying enough, but Glenn was not accustomed to the expressiveness of civilians. Glenn served among man jacks and man janes who kept glib lines ready, like
Honey I forgot to duck,
to deploy in case of emergency, so they wouldn’t sound weak or cowardly. Lines like
I love you Glenn Hull
. That had been well done on Patrick’s part.

Someone was shrieking like world’s end. The screamer was on her feet, wasn’t wearing any blood, and wasn’t standing over someone else who was bleeding.

Civilian
.

Civilians were allowed to scream.

The medical hover with its wounded took off the way it came, thrashing through the alien greenery.

The crews of the other two skiffs loaded heavy equipment onto their hovers. They promised to come back for the new arrivals’ personal belongings.

Those who could walk set out toward the camp in a loose column, ducking and high-stepping through leafy branches, vines, thorns, fallen logs, dead leaves, and things that looked like dead leaves but hopped out of the way as your foot came down.

Glenn carried her own pack. She took up the ass-end Charlie spot in the column.

Her gear was heavier than when she’d packed it.
She
was heavier.

Bugs with cobweb wings floated on the air. Crawling bugs with lots of legs scrambled up the tree trunks. Jumping bugs she didn’t see—she just felt them—collided with her ankles. Bugs that hid in the green-gold canopy whirred overhead.

The ground under boot sole was soft and fragrant as a pine needle carpet. Forest creatures chirped, piped, whistled, and trilled. The air was easy to breathe.

The expedition camp had been founded in the temperate zone on the currently summer side of the world. The temperature was comfortable. The humidity was comfortable. The barrage of smells and sounds were different but mostly pleasant.

Concepts of beauty only held up among close members of your own genome. Alien concepts of beauty and ugliness differed extremely—if the aliens conceived of beauty at all.

Even so, Zoe was beautiful.

The forest looked strange, but no stranger than life on other continents of Earth must have appeared to ancient explorers.

There was a sweet, rich tang to the forest air.

Glenn swatted something that was biting her leg. Hoped it was not the sapient species here.

Up ahead, the brush was clearing. Sunlight streamed through thinning branches and vines. Voices of happy greetings carried back from the front of the file.

Glenn arrived last in camp. She heard a bleat like a goat.

It was a goat.

The nanny goat was snubbing her hay bag and straining on her tether to tear into some local vegetation with large purple leaves. The nan’s udder was swollen like a four-fingered water balloon.

Patrick eyed the goat and the purple plant. Asked, “How’s the milk taste?”

“A little interesting,” Dr. Rose said. This was Aaron’s second gig here.

The expedition camp comprised a wide clearing bounded by six boxy spacecraft set in a half ring like Conestoga wagons, or like dormitories around a college green. There was a foundation for a seventh craft that was meant to be the
Spring Beauty
’s landing pad.

Within the loose ring of ships were huts to serve as field labs and storage units and tents, which most xenos chose for their living quarters.

And at the very center of camp lay a stone fire pit.

The LEN camp had no common language—not to deny anyone his or her native tongue—so everyone wore language modules behind their ears.

Glenn overheard someone complaining, rather loudly, about the distance she needed to haul her gear. Patrick nudged Glenn. “You should have crashed us closer.”

“Starting to wish,” said Glenn.

Glenn knew from an advance briefing that Zoe had a nitrox atmosphere—heavy on the ox—with a sea level pressure of nineteen psi. The planet tilted twenty-one degrees on its axis. The planetary rotation of twenty-two Terrestrial hours would make sleep cycles tolerable.

Glenn reprogrammed her own chron to synch with Zoen local time.

Hovers transported the last of the equipment from the
Spring Beauty
to the expedition campsite. The resident scientists helped set up huts and tents for the newcomers. They patched up the wounded, calmed the hysterical, and prepared dinner.

Finally Glenn asked the Expedition Director, Dr. Izrael Benet, “Why did no one tell us the local sapience is space capable?”

Izrael Benet was not the typical xeno. He was an administrator and a fund-raiser, which required him to be attractive. Izzy Benet maintained the dashing appearance of an adventurer. He was large-boned and muscular as an outdoorsman with a thick mane of wavy hair and deep brown bedroom eyes. He was the kind of man to whom philanthropists liked to give money.

Director Benet’s deep eyes looked down on Glenn blandly. His baritone voice was mellow and patronizing. “The local sapience is not space capable, Mrs. Hamilton. They are simple beings.”

“Then we are not the only aliens here,” Glenn said. “Someone else wants this planet.”

“Someone wants this planet?” Director Benet’s face took on a befuddled expression. “Where did that notion come from?”

Where didn’t it?
“Everyone told you about our arrival.”

“So they did,” said Izrael Benet. “You’re taking an enormous leap to a melodramatic conclusion from a false premise. ‘Someone
else
wants this planet?’ Someone else? For your edification,
we
do not want to take ownership of this world.”

“
They,”
Glenn said,
“
do.”

That won her an amazed condescending smile. “They?” Izrael Benet asked, disingenuous. “What
they
? Surely you don’t mean the
meteors?
”