The Twice and Future Caesar (32 page)

Kerry Blue was all offense out here. The gorgons were gonna die. It was Darb's duty to keep Kerry Blue alive while she made that happen.

Gorgons swarmed around the leaking squid ship as if there was nothing else to eat in the whole wide ocean.

Control warned the pilots not to fire any ordnance that could ricochet. The moving planes of the ocean surface could take your shots anywhere. And there's an old saying, probably started by archers in the Trojan War: Friendly fire isn't.

So a Swift's guns will balk if you try to fire something that is doomed to ricochet. Your Swift keeps a firing record. Means your crate will rat you out if you try to fire at something you shouldn't.

At last
Merrimack
got a clean skyhook around the Vwakikikikik ship. Made sure there were no gorgons inside the inertial field, then recalled her Swifts and limped the punctured, leaking squid ship to the nearest wet dock on Iceland.

The Spanish navy sent in heavy amphibious craft to hunt down the monsters under the sea.

5 October 2443
U.S. Space Battleship
Merrimack
Earth orbit
Near Space

The new President, Sampson Reed, was known as the Continental Shelf for his lantern jaw and Jurassic-scale chin. His thick shock of honey-colored hair and his blindingly white teeth of equine proportions made him a favorite among political cartoonists. President Sampson Reed issued a stern message to Romulus, publically scolding him. “Releasing the Hive on civilians is total war.”

Romulus scolded back via broadcast media: “Then why did you do it? Why did you bring the monsters home? This emergency is your most grievous fault. Clean up your own mess.”

Captain Farragut turned away from the news display. “Romulus is saying we did this to ourselves.”

“That's what I heard,” Calli said.

“He's lying, of course,” Farragut said.

“Is he?” Calli asked. “Of course?”

“He's not,” Augustus said. “Lying. Not entirely. You, the United States, had a hand in bringing this infection to Earth.”

“How do you figure that?”

“Your nation is a member of the LEN.”

“We are?” a specialist muttered a little too loudly into her console.

Farragut demanded of Augustus, “What has the LEN to do with the arrival of the Hive on Earth?”

“The LEN rescue mission to the Myriad has been displacing Arran biologics to Earth.”

John Farragut never displaced anything while in the presence of gorgons. He'd been afraid of the gorgons fouling the displacement. And he'd been afraid of exactly this: teaching the gorgons how to displace. He remembered saying it back in the Deep End:
If the gorgons learn how to displace, this war is over
.

The LEN had taught the Hive the possibility of displacement.

The LEN taught the Hive the location of Earth.

“The Hive followed the evacuees,” Augustus said.

“No.” Farragut rejected the idea. He didn't even want to think it. It wasn't possible. “These gorgons can't be coming from Arra. There's no safe displacement over that kind of distance. The LEN can't be displacing life from Arra to Earth. It's
two thousand parsecs
.”

“The LEN
are
displacing over distance. Not safely. They lose most of their biologics in transit. Given a choice between probable death in transit and certain death on Arra, the LEN apparently chose desperation measures, without thinking of the consequences.”

Farragut cried, “How could even the LEN be stupid enough to let the gorgons get at their displacement equipment!”

“There's no sign that the gorgons are using LEN equipment,” Augustus said. “It doesn't look as though the Hive is using equipment at all. They're following the displacement event. One successful displacement in their midst, and they all know how it's done. And they know where to go. They don't need to report back. When one gorgon knows a thing, the entire Hive knows it. The entire Hive knows where Earth is. There's still a very high mortality rate when they displace. But there is an inexhaustible supply of gorgons.”

The gorgons were arriving in badly damaged swarms. Even so, too many of them lived.

“I want one hundred percent mortality.”

“How does it feel to want, John Farragut?”

The Hive adjusted tactics again.

All at once the gorgons stopped displacing into Earth's ocean. Now they were displacing into the vacuum outside Earth's atmosphere. Now that they weren't displacing into a competing mass of ocean water, more of the gorgons arrived in the Solar System intact. From the vacuum they descended to the planet.

The first swarms to enter Earth's atmosphere from space burned up as bright meteors.

But the Hive adapted again. Too soon the gorgons figured out how to control their descent. Weather satellites picked them up as particulate clouds, until the weather satellites went dark.

“How are they doing that?” Farragut roared at the tactical display of gently descending gorgon swarms. “It's bolognium physics.”

“Bolognium holds the universe together,” Augustus said.

18 October 2443
U.S. Space Battleship
Merrimack
Earth orbit
Near Space

The Hive had come to Earth. It didn't seem real. It was the end of the world.

Merrimack
deployed her Swifts in constant rotation.

Flight Sergeant Cole Darby listened to the beam generator winding up all through the middle watch, ship's night, when he was supposed to be sleeping. The forecastle was dark. The pounding of the guns heaving out fragmentation rounds never stopped. The sizzle of God knows what hitting the space battleship's inertial shell hissed and spat at unexpected intervals. Darby was starting to get used to it.

He could hear livestock down in the hold. He'd expected the farm animals to be offloaded now that
Merrimack
was home. But they were still here. It was nice to hear them shuffle and bleat and moo through the
middle watch. For no reason that made sense, the animal sounds were calming.

The hatch to the forecastle opened. Cole Darby heard the soft padding of paws and the sound of doggy breathing. Probably one of the hospital's two goldens.

Darb wasn't sure, but he suspected that the MO had the dogs doing rounds, sniffing out stress cases.

Darb unsnapped part of his netting and stuck an arm outside his sleep pod. The padding footfalls quickened, drew near. A velvet muzzle and a cool nose found its way into Darb's palm.

He fell asleep as the guns pounded.

23 October 2443
U.S. Space Battleship
Merrimack
Earth orbit
Near Space

F
LIGHT
S
ERGEANT
R
ANZA
E
SPINOZA
hadn't gone into the Myriad with the rest of her company. She'd been beached for being pregnant.

She would've incubated the kid if she'd known the tour was going to be that exciting. She'd missed all the gorgon battles. She got her linebacker figure back in no time and learned how to use a sword.

She was on
Merrimack
now. She'd brought pictures.

The she-men passed the imager around in the forecastle. The imager came around to Kerry Blue.

“Hm,” Kerry Blue said.

Ranza had a squid.

Okay, it was a baby boy. That's what Ranza said. The pictures said it was a squid. The child was now in the care of Ranza's mom.

Ranza's mom was already raising Ranza's first two children.

Flight Sergeant Reg Monroe frowned at the photos, dubious. “You figure out what's causing this, Ranza?”

“I'm done,” Ranza said. She'd said that the last time. “This is the last one.”

Kerry Blue tilted her head to look at a picture sideways. Didn't help. The baby was still kind of squashed looking.

Carly Delgado gave Kerry a shoulder shove. “You ever think about having kids,
chica linda
?”

Kerry gave a snort. “Who would raise them?”

“Ranza's mom.”

Ranza had to ask, “So whose chair did I take?”

A pause. Reg Monroe looked as if she were trying to inhale her lips.

Ranza had moved into Alun Cochcrys' spot. Baker Four.

“FNG,” Kerry Blue told her. “Gone light speed.”

“Aw, fungus,” Ranza said. Spat for luck.

New guy. It's always a new guy.

At midrats in the Mess, the Fleet Marines who were not on patrol toasted Alun Cochcrys and all the FNGs. It was a toast to themselves, really. They were all new guys once, and one day—some time in the way, way, way distant future—they would all go light speed.

“What's that mean?” Cole Darby asked. “Gone light speed?”

“Means you're dead, squid for brains,” Carly said.

“I know it means you're dead.
Why
does it mean that?”

“Because we never go light speed.”

“Got it,” Darb said.

Dak Shepard's brow got tight. Said, “Uh. Yeah we do. All the time.”

It was Lieutenant Hazard Sewell who had to explain it to Dak. “No. We pass from a state slower than light directly to a state faster than light, but we never exist at the speed of light. If you're traveling at the speed of light, you're drinking your beer with Alun Cochcrys.”

It was unlucky to fly in a dead man's crate. And even though Ranza Espinoza was a veteran Swift pilot, she'd never flown against this enemy. Hive wasn't like Romans. She got training in a dreambox. Next morning she would be flying against gorgons for real. In a dead man's Swift.

Her mates were afraid for her. They made sure to trip her, spill coffee on her, drop things on her, push unwary navvies into her, anything to spend all her bad luck before she made her first flight against the Hive.

At reveille on the day of Ranza's first gorgon fight, her wingman, Big Richard, even came over from the xy-chromosome side of the forecastle to pee on her sleep pod.

Ranza was touched. “Aw, you guys are the best.”

24 October 2443
U.S. Space Battleship
Merrimack
Earth orbit
Near Space

The Swifts of Red Squadron made strafing runs over amber waves of grain. They mowed down gorgons with fragmentation rounds.

Gorgons leaped up from the fields and clutched at the Swifts. Cole Darby, flying ass-end Charlie for Alpha Flight, called for help. “I've got a clinger! Somebody hose me off.”

“I got you,
hermano
.” Kerry Blue, Alpha Six, pulled up and dropped back down behind Cole Darby. Shredded the gorgon off Darb's inertial shell.

Then Alpha Flight sped out of the atmosphere to shed some heat as Baker Flight dove in to their place, screaming and blasting gorgons from the fields.

They heard Ranza yelling over the com, having a good day. “And one! And two! Feed the frags! Come
on!
Hey!”

Baker Three had gone vertical.

Ranza, Baker Four, dutifully stuck to Big Richard's tail, but she squawked all the way. “Where you taking us? Targets are all back down that way!”

“Aren't you a little
warm
, Ranza?” Big Richard asked.

“Oh. Yeah.”

Swifts were notoriously short-winded in atmosphere. All Ranza's instruments were redlined, and now that Big Richard mentioned it, she was sweating like pig iron. She followed Baker Three to the roof of the world to cool off.

When the Swifts had spent all their fragmentation rounds, they withdrew to the vacuum. Lieutenant Sewell requested approach vectors to
Merrimack
.

Got the wave off. “Negative approach. Wing, tread water. We have gorgons on board.”

“Roger that.” Hazard Sewell led his squadrons into high orbit, wide of the civilian lanes.

Merrimack
descended into atmo, rolling hot. The gorgons clinging to her energy shell must either bale or burn.

Most of the gorgons clung unto death. They could levitate, but flying in air was not their long suit. It wasn't
Merrimack
's best feature either. She
flew like a building but with less grace. She came down fast. Gorgons stripped off and ignited as
Merrimack
plunged, tumbling and toppling. Fiery gorgon pieces dragged off her.

Chase planes from Earth's Horizon Guard finished off anything that dropped away still intact.

Looking out
Merrimack
's portholes could get a body nauseated, if one's body was prone to that sort of thing. The deck felt more or less steady underfoot, but the black and yellow-orange view outside revealed that she was spinning and jerking, making instant reversals, and flaming a lot of gorgons.

The ship's six mammoth engines hummed. Gravitation fluctuated.

In the Mess, Jose Maria's wine jumped out of his glass.

“I probably did not need that anyway,” he told Augustus as the wine found its way through the deck grates.

Gravitation steadied. As
Merrimack
climbed out of the atmosphere, the stars returned to the portholes, not spinning.

But
Merrimack
's inertial screen gave a sickening hum. It was the unmistakable sound of gorgons inside the distortion field. Over the loud com the XO announced gorgon insinuation. Swords. All hands. Swords.

Gorgons that had already insinuated into the ship's energy shell before
Mack
's plunge into atmo escaped the burning. They continued to squeeze themselves through the energy barrier to get at the ship's hull.

Merrimack
's Marines were all outboard, either in Swifts or on the ground.

Over the loud com, Captain Farragut called on all available crew to suit up, grab a handheld flamethrower, and step outside to clear the ship's hull of intruders.

Kitted up in bright orange atmospheric suits fitted with rebreathers and headlamps, Colonel Augustus and Jose Maria de Cordillera climbed out an air lock to join the other hull walkers on the hunt for gorgons that had squeezed in through
Merrimack
's energy shell.

Artificial gravity was slight out here. Walking on the hull was tricky. Space appeared glassy and deep through the energy barrier. The stars twinkled.

The height of the energy shell varied. A layer of attenuated air filled the space between the energy shell and the ship's hull. The thin air would soon be smoky with burning gorgons.

It was difficult to spot the black gorgons against the blackness of space as the impossible creatures contorted and threaded their bodies through the defensive energy layers.

The gorgons took an excruciatingly long time to emerge into the air where you could burn them up or cut them down.

Waiting for a gorgon to drop, Augustus asked Jose Maria de Cordillera via their suit-to-suit link in a conversational voice, “Do you know what a tachyon clicker is?”

Jose Maria answered at once, his focus not leaving the emerging gorgon. “An obsolete, inefficient method of faster than light communication.”

“Tachyon messaging does have one virtue that resonance does not,” Augustus said.

Jose Maria agreed. “The Hive takes no notice of tachyon clicks. But a tachyon clicker is a relic. No one carries tachyon clickers these days. Whom could you hope to contact, Augustus?”

“Patterners carried clickers in their Strikers.”

“Aside from yourself, the only other living patterner is Romulus.”

“I don't want to talk to a living patterner. I certainly don't want Romulus. He doesn't have a tachyon clicker.”

“Then whom do you hope to contact?”

“My Striker.”

Jose Maria hesitated a long time. The ship's lights drew a bright nimbus around his head within his bubble helmet, like a halo of an angel or a martyred saint.

“I must know to whom are you loyal, Augustus.”

“Caesar Magnus.”

“Magnus is no longer Caesar,” Jose Maria said.

Augustus knew that. “Magnus is a broken shell. I resent him. He put me under American command. But he is a good Roman. There is my loyalty. Do you have a tachyon clicker, Doctor Cordillera?”

“A tachyon clicker is appallingly slow and terribly directional, and we left your Striker in the Deep End. It is in the Myriad, is it not?”

“We assume it is there. I should like to know for certain.”

“Can you not contact your Striker another way?”

“Not without incurring Hive interest.”

Resonance on any harmonic attracted the Hive.

“
Merrimack
may have a tachyon clicker,” Jose Maria said. “It would be redundant.”

“I know. She has one.”

“Then I misunderstand your purpose in asking.”

“My purpose is redundance. I have a secret I don't want to die with me.”

“Will you be dying soon?”

“Likely. Can you work
Merrimack
's tachyon clicker?”

“Why do you not just ask our young captain for yourself?”

“I don't want your young captain to know that I want it. You are the sword master on a space battleship. No one will question your interest in antiques.”

“There is a reason not to tell the young captain?” Jose Maria asked.

“There is. Here comes a runner. Do you want it?”

A gorgon had insinuated completely through the ship's inertial shell, unnoticed by anyone else, and now moved like a mad shadow across the hull on its many legs.

“Too fast for me. Take it,” Jose Maria said. “Here is one more my speed.”

Gorgons continued to arrive in the Solar System out of nowhere. Most of them winked into existence high above Earth's ionosphere, then headed down. Many of them arrived dead. Those were eaten by other gorgons who survived the displacement. Others burned in descent through the atmosphere. Ground fire and Swift patrols picked off some of the survivors. That was like tagging individual raindrops.

Too many of the monsters lived to touch Earth and eat whatever was in front of their mouths.

25 October 2443
Xerxes
Earth orbit
Near Space

Romulus had been beating down so many unexpected challenges that it was a surprise when something actually went precisely according to plan. The assassin missile that Cinna had prepared to take out Constantine in the Deep End had finally connected with its target. Constantine was dead.

The resonant verification of the deed drew the immediate attention of the Hive to Romulus' Xerxes. But a quick jump to FTL shook the gorgons off, and Romulus could take a moment to relish his success. That one gnawing concern was finally put to rest.

With Constantine dead, Romulus now had sole knowledge of both Hive harmonics.