The Twice and Future Caesar (7 page)

Dingo called for running lights.

“Lights, aye.”

The running lights were used on parade or when coming into a space station.

The external lights shone, visible through the ship's portholes. Calli couldn't see anything out there but the ship
Merrimack
herself and the stars flatly shining.

Tactical said, “I'm not detecting anything.”

“Then what is the prox alarm picking up?”

Dingo answered, “It has to be the contact. Something is
on
us. It's touching our inertial field.”

“Systems. Locate the contact point.”

Systems shook his head. “Negative resolution.”

Another alarm sounded. Engineering reported, “Field fault! Enemy is attempting starfish!”

In a starfish maneuver a hostile ship
insinuated
a thin tendril of energy through an enemy ship's solid force field. Once through the field, the energy tendril could be widened. The enemy could send anything in through the created breach.

Marcander Vincent spoke at the tactical station. “We have a dead pirate ship trying to open us up.”

Calli snapped, “Say nothing that is not useful, Mister Vincent. Location of the starfish penetration.”

Systems reported, “Field penetration sternside of the Spit boat SPT 1.”

A loud bang jolted everyone on the command platform. It sounded as though it came from somewhere inside the ship.

Calli: “Identify that.”

Systems: “Unknown event. Source was inside the Spit boat.”

“Status of the Spit boat,” Calli demanded.

Systems: “SPT 1 is hard docked inside
Merrimack
's energy field.”

“Engineering. Reinforce the field at point of starfish assault.”

“Aye, aye, sir!”

Calli turned to her exec. “Commander Ryan. On one mark, this is to happen: Lock the Spit boat's air lock
open—
both hatches. Retract
Merrimack
's force field from the Spit boat. Cast off the Spit boat. Seal our inertial field solid around
Merrimack
. Execute as soon as you have it coordinated. Don't wait for my go ahead.”

Dingo gave a brisk nod and got to it.

Before he could execute, a double crack sounded, like the first sound but louder. Everyone ducked.

Calli: “Is that a hull breach?”

Systems: “Negative. Negative hull breach. But the starfish is progressing. Sixty percent through. I am adding layers at point of assault.”

The energy tendril was insinuating through the ship's shifting energy layers, just as gorgons used to do.

Calli couldn't afford to let the pirates get so much as a hair's width
through the ship's energy shell. Any opening could allow an antimatter insertion. She didn't know if the pirates carried antimatter, but she knew that the leopard
Bagheera
never left survivors on any vessel it attacked.

A third crack sounded. Loud.

The sound affected nothing but made the technicians flinch.

The bangs almost sounded like displacement—the sound of air closing into the void left by matter abruptly ceasing to occupy a space. It was a sound exactly like a thunderclap.

Systems reported, “Sir. If those are actual displacement claps, you know they're screwed.
Merrimack
's displacement jammers are on full strength.”

No. Calli wasn't sure she knew that. Something else was wrong here.

She heard the Dingo give the command, “Execute Severance.”

“Severance, aye. We have separation from SPT 1. Inertial field is solid.”

“Status of starfish!” Calli demanded.

He needed to breathe
now
.

“We shed the starfish with the Spit boat. We have negative starfish.”

Someone cheered.

Not celebrating yet, Captain Carmel ordered, “Helm. FTL. Random vector. Execute.”

“FTL, aye. Random vector.”

The ship jumped to FTL space. Made two more random vector changes. Only then did Calli order a return to normal space and ask for the status of the cast-off Spit boat.

Systems reported happily: “SPT 1's air lock is open. Negative inertial field around SPT 1. Sir, we let the vacuum in.”

Merrimack
returned to the site on high alert, prepared to jump to FTL on an instant's notice.

Calli hailed her drone operator. “Mister Raytheon, confirm that the prisoner on board SPT 1 is dead.”

“Negative confirmation,” Wraith responded.

Calli felt a chill. It wasn't exactly shock. It was a dread come true. “Mister Raytheon, is that negative confirmation because of a detection failure, or are you telling me the prisoner is still alive?”

“Captain. The prisoner is not on board SPT 1.”

“Mister Raytheon, check your detection equipment for malfunction. The prisoner was immobilized in restraints. His body has to be there.”

Dingo suggested, “The pirates could have displaced him out of there. Those bangs had the sound of displacements.”

“We have jammers on. If they tried to displace him out, then he's dead and really gone.”

“They must have done,” Dingo said.

Calli nodded. The pirates were ruthless. She hadn't realized it extended to their own brothers.

Still, she assumed nothing. “Mister Raytheon. Send the transmission from the drone monitor up to the tactical station. I want to see exactly what's inside SPT 1.”

“Aye, aye, sir. Transmission now available.”

Calli and Dingo looked over Marcander Vincent's shoulders at the current readout from inside the Spit boat.

Calli blinked. “Is this real time?”

“Yes, sir.”

“They did it,” Dingo said. “They killed him.”

“There's a landing disk.” Marcander Vincent pointed.

The flimsy metal disk the size of a dinner plate lay on the pallet where the prisoner had been strapped down. The straps were still buckled.

“Rzajhin manufacture,” Marcander Vincent added.

Rzajhin landing disks were cheap, untraceable, and reliable despite the abuse heaped on them. They were the favorite equipment of smugglers.

“How did they get a landing disk through jammers?” Calli said.

“Two of them.”

Dingo pointed. A second landing disk lay on the deck, right next to the pallet.

“They must've missed the first placement,” Marcander Vincent said.

“No. They didn't miss.” Calli tapped her finger on the image.

Dingo saw what troubled her. The landing disks appeared altogether intact, normal. Their lights were on.

“They're
intact
. Those disks got through our jammers
intact
.”

It was tricky enough to get an initial landing disk to a destination without a corresponding disk already in place. Sometimes it took several attempts. The pirates got this one on the first try. Through jammers.

“Mister Vincent, back up this record to the time mark of the first crack we heard. I want to see what happened in there.”

The playback from the drone monitor showed first a landing disk appearing inside the Spit boat with the sound of a thunderclap. The disk dropped from the air and came to rest on the deck next to the restrained prisoner, Nox.

At the second thunderclap a tall man with a red goatee and the number 666 tattooed on his brow appeared—alive and well—atop the landing disk. He carried another landing disk and another displacement collar with him. He snapped the extra collar around Nox's neck and slid the extra landing disk underneath him. Then the pirate stepped back onto the landing disk that brought him. The two of them—Nox and the red-bearded pirate—vanished with a bang, leaving only their two landing disks behind them.

“They did it.” Dingo sounded unhappily astounded. “They displaced through our inertial screen.
With jammers on
. Alive. How in the hell?”

“Patterner,” Calli said.

Cold shock gripped the command platform at the word.

The machine-augmented mind of a patterner could synthesize information to solve complex problems with machine speed and human reason.

Calli felt as if she were exhaling poison. “The pirates of the Ninth Circle are not just alive.
They have a patterner embedded with them
.”

Jaunty Dingo Ryan looked as grim as Calli had ever seen him. “That would mean the pirates are working for Caesar Numa Pompeii.”

Calli nodded. “That is what it means.”

Inwardly she was reeling. She hadn't wanted to believe it.

This patterner had joined in the same charade that made the U.S. and the rest of civilization think that the Ninth Circle were all dead.

The Ninth Circle were known for leaving no witnesses alive behind them. There was a moment back there when
Merrimack
should have died.

The pirates could have killed everyone on board. They hadn't done so. Because someone was holding their leash.

There was only one power with that kind of reach.

Calli had often hated Numa Pompeii, but this was different. Now she hated Numa for not being the man she thought he was. Numa used to mock her, discount her, scorn her. She had weathered his contempt. She'd proved herself a worthy adversary.
Worthy
. As if Numa were someone whose regard mattered.

It
had
mattered. Numa Pompeii had been formidable. As infuriating as the man was, Calli counted on Numa Pompeii to be
Rome—
to embody all its grandeur, strength, honor, intellect, invention, resourcefulness, its limitless ability to conceive and to do, its civilization, daring and cunning, its overweening pride and arrogance. What had happened to the honor?

Here Numa was using that most squalid of space vermin—pirates. It hurt to find the grand, indomitable
triumphalis
, whom Calli thought she
knew, here so desperate that he was rooting in the muck with pirates. Numa Pompeii had been something she wanted to believe in. Disappointment came bitter.

Numa was going to be sorry.

Calli turned her head to the Dingo. “Want to compose my report to the admiralty, Stuart?”

“Not on your life, sir,” said the Dingo.

A bright flash from the portholes lit the left side of all the faces on the command platform. Specialists hunched over their stations in a useless reflexive cringe.

“Identify that!” Calli demanded as a clattering noise like thrown pebbles buzzed against the ship's inertial shell.

“Explosion,” Marcander Vincent reported from the tactical station. “Our own isolation capsule.”

The isolation capsule was the small craft that had first picked up Nox's life pod. The isolation capsule had contained the prisoner Nox while the drone medic extricated the nanites from him.
Merrimack
had left the isolation capsule out in space, with the life pod and the infestation of nanites inside it.

It seemed Nox's oscillating nanites had just achieved synchronicity.

“What took them so long to sync?” Dingo wondered out loud.

“I imagine they've been synced for a while,” Calli said. “They've been constructing an explosive.”

“Constructing an explosive out of what?”

“Out of the isolation capsule, apparently.”

“Captain, what do you want done with the Spit boat?”

SPT 1 had been boarded by a pirate—a pirate with imperial resources. It could not be trusted. The Spit boat needed a nanoscopic scan and flush before it could be allowed back inside
Merrimack
's inertial shell.

“Take it in tow—half hook only. Initiate a full nano scan on it. Take us at best speed to Indra Shwa Zed.”

Dingo Ryan gave the orders to make it all happen, then spoke low, not to question his captain's orders out loud on her own command deck, “The pirate said Romulus was already gone from the facility at Indra Shwa Zed.”

“No,” Calli said. “What the pirate
said
is he didn't
see
Romulus in the facility.”

Not
seeing didn't need to mean that Romulus wasn't there.

And Indra Shwa Zed was where the pirate had seen TR
Steele.

16 January 2448
U.S. Space Battleship
Merrimack
Asteroid 543
Indra Shwa Zed Star System
Perseid Space

T
HE
ASTEROID
LOOKED
DEAD
. Like any of the millions of other asteroids in the triple star Indra Shwa system. The rock was larger than some planets, irregular, pocked with craters, crusted with ice, and unremarkable until
Merrimack
's active scanners touched it. Then it erupted.

Beam fire lanced up toward the U.S. space battleship.

Impacts against
Merrimack
's inertial field shimmered and splintered into jagged fissures. The sharp cracks faded right back to black except for those red and green blotches left swimming on your retinas.

Flight Sergeant Kerry Blue sat in her cockpit. Her Swift was locked down in its launch slot on the starboard flight deck under the force field. She bayed with the rest of her squadron to be set free.

The Swift pilots were ordered to hold.

Then they were ordered to shut up.

Kerry Blue shut up and watched the flashing lights.

A red serpentine fissure sizzled and healed right above her. A blue-violet one snaked crosswise. Kerry had been through a few dust ups in her
tours of duty. Never seen anything quite like this. Kinda pretty. Now let us the flock out of here to show the lupes something unpretty.

Kerry opened her com. “What's hitting us?”

“Crab crackers,” someone answered. Sounded like the Yurg. “Didn't you read the last bulletin?”

“Yeah,” said Kerry—reading.

The boffins could've just given her a data module to plug in behind her ear—like an extra bit of brain. Then she would know right
now
what a crab cracker was. But no, the boffins didn't like unnecessary add-ons in your head when you were piloting.

Kerry read the briefing.

Okay, crab crackers were new Roman weaponry, designed to assault hard targets.

Targets didn't come any harder than the
Mack
.

Another blaze of red and indigo splintered above Kerry's canopy. Made her glance up.

Great big white flash.

She didn't flinch from those anymore.

She returned to reading the briefing.

The crab cracker was intended to disrupt a ship's energy shell.
Merrimack
's shell was constantly reforming in staggered layers, so the crackers never achieved an actual gap in this crab's shell.

But the one-man fighter Swifts weren't so thickly layered. In the grip of one of these crab crackers, a Swift would be broken to pieces, and Kerry Blue would be breathing vacuum.

And that was why Kerry Blue and Alpha Flight were sitting like a clutch of chicks on mama's wing, waiting for the navvies to take out the crab crackers at the source.

Kerry's monitor showed her the asteroid down there. It was completely black. The Romulid station was underneath that frozen blackness.

The enhanced image on Kerry's tactical display showed her waves of escape craft launching from underground chutes. “They're bugging out!” she yelled to no one.

Couldn't stand it anymore. She turned on her com. “Hey! Somebody with a beam gun!
Shoot the rock!
They're getting away! What are you doing!” She kicked her floor plate, trying to wake someone up down there in the battleship.

As near as Kerry could make out
Merrimack
wasn't picking off the runners.
Mack
wasn't even
trying
to shoot at the escaping spaceships.

Someone else, sounded like Rhino, Alpha Seven, clicked on her com too. “Hey! Navvies! What you doin' with your trigger fingers? Shoot something!”

As if the Navy beam gunners on board
Merrimack
would take orders from a couple of Fleet Marine flight sergeants.

Cain Acting-WinCo-No-Fun-Anymore Salvador called for com silence again.

Kerry Blue sat, staring up from her launch slot on the space battleship's wing. She made real sure her com was off and said lots of things.

And watched the enemy getting away.

The weapon on the asteroid surface belched out energy balls—the crab crackers. Their strikes sizzled against
Merrimack
's force field in a constant barrage.

Captain Carmel pointed at the source of the barrage on one of
Merrimack
's tactical displays and ordered, “Take that out.”

She meant take it
out
.

Dingo gave the orders. “Engineering.”

“Engineering, aye.”

“Ready half hook. Target the weapon emplacement.”

“Half hook ready, aye. Ground weapon emplacement targeted.”

“Deploy half hook.”

“Half hook, aye.”

A tendril of energy deployed like a lariat down to the asteroid surface. It stabbed into the rock and under the gun emplacement and burrowed beneath it.

“Target acquired.”

“Helm. Put us somewhere else.”

The space battleship's six engines roared with an abrupt acceleration, sudden enough to physically yank the weapon emplacement out of the rock. The half hook immediately released. The uprooted emplacement flew away in the direction of one of Indra Shwa's suns.

“Status of target,” Captain Carmel demanded. She didn't want to see that coming back.

“Hostile weapon is not functioning,” Tactical advised.

“Does it have any propulsion system to get itself back?” Calli asked.

“Negative,” Tactical reported.

Dingo Ryan added, “That weapon emplacement was never meant to fly. The only way that's ever coming back is if some other spacecraft hooks it and hauls it back.”

“Tactical. Monitor that. Helm, take us back to the asteroid.”

A thumping in the deck had started low. Got louder. Pushed into Calli's awareness.

The fighter pilots, obeying the order for com silence, had taken to stomping their war dance in their cockpits. Sounded like all of them.
BOOM pom pom pom BOOM pom pom pom
. The Swifts were still in physical contact with the ship, so Calli could actually feel the thumps from here on the command platform.

Calli gave the order. “Mister Ryan. Let my dogs out.”

Kerry Blue woulda sang hallelujah except that Kerry Blue couldn't sing.
Merrimack
retracted her energy canopy, and the Swifts were off in four, three, two, YeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeHA!

The fighter craft screamed off the battleship's wings, coms on. Most all of them yelled, slung out at 53 percent of the speed of light. The inertial field only let you feel a fraction of the g's you were actually pulling, but it was still a rush. The inertial field kept the launch from shooting you out your own aft hole.

Kerry Blue yipped and yelled with the rest of them. Remembering that Reg Monroe used to have a screech that only bats could hear, she gave a couple of yips for Reg.

The voice of Cain Salvador sounded in Kerry Blue's helmet. “Deploy lampreys only. Do not damage the targets. Assume the presence of hostages on board all enemy craft.”

Problem with being an instant officer is that your mates forget you aren't one of them anymore, and Kerry Blue sent back, “Been told five times, Cain.”

So the Fleet Marine pilots got told for a sixth time: “Arrest all spacecraft. Do not destroy enemy spacecraft.”

That was
not
Cain Salvador.

That
was the voice of God Almighty this time. Captain Calli Carmel.

Kerry joined in the company choir: “Aye, aye, sir!”

* * *

Far below, Roman spacecraft launched from their underground bunkers and ran for the big empty. Kerry Blue wasn't sure what kind of hostage the brass thought the enemy could be holding out here. She was just glad to be out of the can and in the hunt.

Knew she needed to run down the enemy before it got clear of the star system's gravitational pull.

Even the slightest gravitational pull got huge when a ship was trying to jump out of normal spacetime. Inside the gravitation of Indra Shwa's three suns and all their orbital crap, the enemy could only run at sublight velocity. But once out of the gravity sink, your Roman target could jump to FTL. And anything achieving FTL has escaped—gone, you'll never see that fugger again, you lost that one, bucko.

So ram your stick through the gate and catch him before he can get there.

The Swifts carried lampreys for this sortie. The right tool for this job.

Kerry had trained on lampreys. Well, not really. She'd trained in a dream box. Never actually used a real lamprey. But the simulators were usually good for teaching you to get it right the first time.

The lamprey was an energy half hook with an additional physical barb on the end of it. How it was supposed to go: The energy tendril loops the target, inserts microbarbs through the weakest part of the target's energy field and into the hull—not enough to breach the hull and let the vacuum in—just enough to snag and hold and reel him in alive.

Someone who wasn't Kerry Blue wanted these lupes alive.

Problem with lampreys was they had a range just about as long as your nose. You needed to get close to your target. Close enough to sniff him.

And if that don't get your heart pumping, you should report yourself in dead.

Then you haul your catch in—your live catch—and hand off the energy tether to
Merrimack
.

That was how it was supposed to go.

Someone on the com was heeing and hawing like riding a wild bronc. The new guy. Shasher Wyatt. Sounded as though Shasher had snagged something a lot bigger than he was, and it was dragging him around the park. “Yeeaaaaaahhahaha.”

Kerry Blue closed on her own target and launched her first lamprey.
Felt like she was roping a steer—something else she'd never done. “Hooks away!”

Her lamprey stabbed through the transport's shield and latched onto its hull.

“Got him!” she cried, proud of herself for one nanosecond.

The son of a bullfrogger didn't fight the energy tendril. It reversed attitude and rammed her. Head on. She actually
saw
it bounce off the energy field right over her canopy. And then it was swinging around on its tether for another hit. On her stern this time.

Not letting that happen. Kerry jinked. She took the hit on her cowcatcher, the stoutest part of her energy field.

The voice of Cain Salvador sounded in her helmet: “Alpha Six. Drop him! Drop him! Drop him! Green Leader, pick up Alpha Six.”

Green Leader was driving Space Torpedo Boat 2. He had the mass for this fight.

Kerry Blue swore. And handed off her catch. “Do I get credit for that?”

Merrimack
's tracking officer gave her the vector for another target closer to her size.

Kerry Blue snagged that one and managed the hand-off to
Merrimack
. She was getting the hang of this.

The fleeing spacecraft scattered wide. Tracking was giving Kerry Blue the vector of another plot. Way out there. And getting wayer out fast. “Alpha Six you have trade 90 by 35 by 240. Hurry it up, he's accelerating.”

Kerry Blue took up the chase. The target had a big jump on her, but she was faster.

The gap was closing, but gravitation was getting weak out here. Target was speeding up. Any second he was going to jump out of normal space.

Target was almost in range.

Almost
meant
not
.

Kerry Blue didn't see how she was going to overtake him. She needed to get him now. Right now. Still not close enough.

Kerry redlined her Swift's engine.

Overload. The Swift balked.

“
No!
”

The target vanished.

The Roman had gone FTL. Out of sight. Out of reach.

Tracking calmly assigned her another target. “Alpha Six. You have trade at 90 by 63 by 180. Do try to bring this one back.”

“Can't I just shoot something?” Kerry cried. “Beams work real well in normal space, ya know!”

“Negative beams, Alpha Six. Secure all targets with lampreys. Take them alive.”

“
Why?
” Kerry raced after her next target. Just knew she was gonna lose this one too. “Even Caesar Numa says it's okay to kill Romuliis.”

Lieutenant Cain Salvador answered that one. “We don't take orders from Caesar.”

Real low blow, that one. She wanted to tell Cain where he could shove what.

Kerry Blue unleashed her lamprey at her target. “All I'm saying is—
Got him! Got him! Got him! You Roman brit shick!
” Forgot about all she was saying.

“Com protocol,” Control said to no one in particular. Probably meant all of them. Kerry Blue wasn't the only one yelling out here. Swift pilots were notorious that way.

Someone else, sounded like Dak Shepard, shouted, “I got a bead! I got a bead! I don't got a bead! Where am I?”

“Alpha Two, this is Tracking. If your intent is not desertion, reverse course.”