The Twice and Future Caesar (24 page)

“LEN's been bitchin' at us to take on refugees. I took one.”

Kerry's lizard plant leaned so far over Kerry's face it teetered and had to set one webby foot on her nose to catch its balance. The lizard plant was quivering. Then it jumped down into the lettuce with the new guy.

Steele had turned stiffly about face and was marching out. He was at the hatch.

Kerry cried at his back. “Sir! Thank you! Thank you so much!”

A snarl. A grunt without looking back. He was out.

The two lizard plants crooned at each other, singing and chortling. And okay,
that
was a giggle. Kerry had to laugh.

She wished Steele had stayed to see this. But what the hell. The man's got a heart of
brick.

9 July 2443
U.S. Space Battleship
Merrimack
Fort Dwight David Eisenhower
Sagittarian Space

Q
UICKER
THAN
ANYONE
EVER
EXPECTED
,
the order came down from the XO for all hands to assume whole ship displacement stations.

No one was sure who Farragut had charmed, threatened, or promised what, but
Merrimack
was given the next space lane into the Shotgun. The ship would be in Near Space in no time.

9 July 2443
U.S. Space Battleship
Merrimack
Fort Theodore Roosevelt
Beta Aurigae star system
Near Space

Merrimack
arrived in Fort Roosevelt the same instant she left Fort Eisenhower.

Unwrapped from her displacement shroud,
Merrimack
made a guided approach into the wide collection of space stations that formed Fort Theodore Roosevelt. The lights were on. The flags were out.

As
Merrimack
traveled the space lanes among the stations, skyrockets, fanfare, and fountains of lights met her. You could see people crowding the clear ports of all the stations to wave and salute the battered space battleship. There was music piping across the Fort's channel.

Merrimack
had her running lights on. The company and crew could see the space battleship's ragged, beaten reflection in the shiny surfaces of the stations' clear ports. People were taking pictures of her. They cheered her and gripped friendly fists like encouraging a champion boxer to get up.

Space stations vied with one another for how many Bulldogs and Merrimackers they could host. Gotta love a place that don't let you buy your own drinks.

Fort Ted had the facilities to repair
Mack
. The station's maintenance hangar had a new engine manufactured, ready and standing by for installation. Senior Engineer Kit Kittering looked as if she'd got a pony for Christmas.

The twin suns of Beta Aurigae were wrapped together tighter than Mercury and the Sun, and they orbited each other a lot faster. All Marines and navvies had filters implanted in their eyes, or they would all be blind from staring at the suns going round and round.

There was a red dwarf component of this star system, too, but at 330 astronomical units out you couldn't see it, even if there hadn't been all the fortress lights washing out the view.

A miasma of escaped air from the many stations gave the Fort a slight atmosphere. It glowed a bit, like a city in fog.

Inside the space stations, the locals made the visiting Marines feel right at home.

Kerry Blue, unleashed, went pub hopping with her team.

Liberty was granted on approved stations. The Marines made the rounds, bar to bar, station to station. They didn't go to Mad Bear O's. Too many officers. The Fleet Marines gathered at places like The Five Chariots, MorePork, and, of course, Boobook's under the sign of a rather astonished looking owl.

Kerry Blue and Team Alpha had to visit Squid Station. Just had to. There was no place to get a drink in Squidville, but the Vwakikikikik—“squids” to their friends—were always good for a laugh. It was always a surprise when funniness translated across alien genomes. Humor didn't
always translate among human tribes, so it was outright weird to connect with absolute aliens.

The squids were even funnier now with the new language module. The patterner Augustus had rewritten the whole interface. Never realized how many shades of meaning were missing in the old one until you listened using the new one.

Merrimack
had a dedicated xenolinguist on board. You would've thought he might have noticed the shortcomings in the old translator. Apparently it was slow work for an unenhanced brain, and Doctor Patrick Hamilton had other things to do. Didn't stop him from trying to find flaws in the new language module.

He didn't find any.

In the Squid Station, more properly Vwakikikikik Station (Yeah, like squids were ever proper), transparent tunnels through the water gave visiting humans dry, oxygenated paths to stroll among the residents. You had to wear the Vwakikikikik language module to understand what the squids were saying. Sometimes it was better not to know.

Vwakikikikik Station was pretty in a blue sort of way. The red, yellow, and white corals were beautiful, but dumb as lava. The long waving lavender, yellow, pink, and green seaweeds were very intelligent. Someone had dubbed those “Sargassons.” The name stuck.

Sargassons insured the survival and spread of their species across the cosmos by being colorful and decorative in countless aquariums of many alien species across Near Space.

Unlike Sargassons, squids didn't have much use for serenity. The squids would sneak up on you in your pedestrian tunnel at a stealthy glide through the veils of purple, blue, and green seaweed and reefs of brilliant coral, then, abruptly, they splatted themselves against the transparent walkway with a loud
thwuck!
of their suckers, which was squidese for “gotcha!”

Squids cackled like crumpling metal when they made people jump.

Squids recognized human faces. In fact, they recognized faces better than Kerry Blue did. So the squids all noticed there was a new guy in Team Alpha, Cole Darby. The Darb was carrying an octopus. He'd bought it from a vendor on the main station of Fort Ted. Now he was lugging it around in a globe.

Well, you'd've thought the Darb had brought a puppy. The squids were all squeaking and bubbling over the adorable little thing.

Squids did a large import trade in terrestrial octopi. (That's
octopuses
if you're a red-blooded American who refuses to use Latin plurals, thank you very much.) Most humans assumed the Vwakikikikik were eating the octopuses. Not so. The octopuses were beloved pets to the squids, like dogs to man. On the watery planet Vwakikikikikkk, octopus was squid's best friend. And while the octopuses were edible, the Vwakikikikik found the very suggestion heinous.

The Vwakikikikik asked after Cowboy Carver. Everybody loved Cowboy, and the squids were really sad to learn of his passing. Then some large mouth went and let drop that Flight Sergeant Cole Darby was Cowboy Carver's replacement.

Thick moment.

Darb—who turned out to be a real smart guy though not the bravest—handed over the puppy. Okay it was the octopus. Darb pushed the globe through the tunnel membrane and into the water for the squids to hold.

The squids were charmed. They ballasted the globe and passed the octopus around, bubbling. They were thrilled pink—literally—that they were allowed to keep it.

Cole Darby was no Cowboy Carver, but he was okay.

The Alphas got to reminiscing with the squids about Cowboy Carver.

There was the time Cowboy had done a male stripper act in the pedestrian tunnel. One squid turned vivid pink and curled its tentacles into quivering loops on the watery side of the tunnel membrane. Then a squid official came jetting over. The officious one informed Cowboy that his courtship had been accepted. The official had Cowboy—hell, it had all of them—convinced that the betrothal was a binding Vwakikikikik contract and that Vwakikikikik station had the sovereign status of an embassy, so squid law was THE law here.

Cowboy had gone and got himself married.

A junior squid pushed scuba gear through the passageway's membrane and into the dry pedestrian tunnel. Told Cowboy he could gear up and pass through the membrane to consummate the union.

Cowboy ran screaming to the nearest displacement facility and back to
Merrimack
. Never saw any man move that fast and that loud.

Old Man Steele threw Cowboy in the brig, and Cowboy was happy to be there.

The squids, who knew how to run a prank all the way home, signaled
Merrimack
and offered to post Cowboy's bail. Steele had very woodenly
informed the Vwakikikikik that there was no bail in the military. The squids told the Old Man to “unstuff.” No one ever saw TR Steele turn so red.

Kerry Blue's belly hurt from laughing. She returned to the
Merrimack
at the last possible moment, nicely buzzed. She didn't hate Cowboy so much anymore.

She went to the forecastle. The Old Man was right there, waiting for her. Glowering.

“What?” Kerry Blue said.

Steele's eyes bugged out fit to explode.

Kerry rephrased, “What,
sir?
”

Then she remembered what she'd done. She'd really done it too.

Lieutenant Colonel Steele and Lieutenant Glenn Hamilton were sanitizing the lockers of the dead company and crew before sending the contents home to their grieving families.

Cowboy's locker hung open.

There was some money in there, intact, but everything else was ash.

“What happened here?” Steele's ears were some kind of crimson.

Kerry Blue said, “It's sanitized, ain't it?”

“This wasn't yours!”

Kerry Blue choked. “
No?
”

That red teddy for sure didn't fit Cowboy. Kerry Blue said, “You'da done it if I hadn't. Sir.”

Kerry Blue was pretty sure that Steele didn't want Cowboy's family to see the stuff she'd burned.

Kerry Blue pulled a photo chit from one of her pockets. She'd been carrying it around. Wanted to trash it real bad. Kept trying to but hadn't been able to go through with it. She gave it to Steele now, glad to be rid of it. “
This
ain't mine.”

When you squeezed the chit, it gave you a life-sized holo of a pregnant woman, beaming as though she'd done something really important.

Steele looked as if he were about to atomize Kerry Blue. He probably would have, but the Hamster spoke first, like the final word. “Thank you, Flight Sergeant.”

The Hamster was all right. No wonder the captain was sweet on her.

Captain Farragut informed his Intelligence Officer that he needed a way to counter the perfect stealth of Romulus' spacecraft.

Augustus found few leads. “That ship type is currently under development by the Pacific Consortium.”

“Under development?” Farragut said.

“It hasn't been built yet.”

“Romulus is piloting one now. Did he steal the prototype?”

“The prototype hasn't been built yet. The ship in development is not even called Xerxes yet.”

Augustus only knew it would be called Xerxes because he'd been aboard it.

The Pacific Consortium's actual manufacturing facility was way out in Perseid space, but the Pacifics had a presence here in Fort Roosevelt.

Captain Farragut took a shuttle to the Pacific Consortium's station to advise the local representatives of a credible threat to their development facility in Perseid space.

“There's a terrorist using Pacific research against the United States.”

Consortium officials demanded that Farragut identify the terrorist.

Farragut told them he couldn't provide that. The truth would sound like a perverse joke. He requested that the Pacific Rim coalition accept U.S. assistance in defending against attempts to steal Pacific technology.

The interview turned from frosty to bitter arctic.

Farragut guessed he couldn't blame them. He heard himself talking a fine line between lunatic and very bad industrial spy.

“Exactly what do you suppose we are developing, Captain Farragut?”

“Y'all are manufacturing a full-stealth spacecraft. You're fixing to call it a Xerxes. It can't be seen for lookin' at it. It won't register on sensors. It's the fastest ship of its mass. It's meant to be an ambassadorial craft.”

Farragut was briskly escorted to the air lock.

At least they didn't space him. He was pretty sure they wanted to.

Immediately following that episode, the U.S. State Department contacted Captain Farragut, demanding to know what he'd said to so piss off America's closest allies. And had Captain Farragut ever heard of “chain of command.”

Farragut was not a secretive man. He was a “see the target, acquire the target, secure the target” kind of guy. He supposed it sounded bad, his asking for information on trade secrets.