Where was here?
She tried to turn around and go back. Could not find which direction was 180.
No up. No down.
She punched up intership radio, bouncing bubble, tight beam, broadcast, any and every means she had to contact her flight, to contact anyone.
Except the res. The res switch wore a red lockout on her console. Res pulse was instant contact. Res pulse would bring the Hive.
Activating her resonant pulse would get her cashiered. It would get the Myriad eaten alive.
Though she was not sure she was even
in
the Myriad anymore.
Her Swift would not even tell her how fast she was going. It would tell her what kind of power she was putting out, but it would not clock a velocity for her. There were no referents.
Time. There was time. The chronometer worked. Gauges of internal functions worked. Told her at what rate she was using up her oxygen and her water.
A Swift’s distortion field was not nearly as tight as
Merrimack
’s. You lost air in these little ships. The air scrubber was not the best either. This wasn’t a pleasure boat. You fought or you did your patrol and you returned to the ship. That’s what you did in a Swift.
You did
not
get lost.
Time to get methodical about this. She pulled up the diagnostic screen on her computer. Damn thing tried to tell her all systems were functioning. She pulled up the debug screen.
Reg had enlisted in the Fleet Marines to go to college on Uncle Sam’s card. Maybe Kerry Blue was content having no better schooling than the average toaster oven, but Reg did not plan to stay dumb forever. She had not been able to get into the Navy. No spaceman aboard Farragut’s boat didn’t have an associate degree or better. Mostly better.
There’d been no such requirement to get into the Corps. You had to be stupid to take this job (so said the navvies). But the Corps taught her things. Taught her to fly. Taught her how machines worked. And when her tour was up, the Corps was going to pay for
her
degree. Better than an associate degree. Reg Monroe was going to be an engineer someday, in the Navy, with braid on her sleeve, and she was going to sit at the table with the likes of John Farragut and Calli Carmel and His Fine Self Jose Maria Cordillera.
Reg wanted to marry someone like
Don
Cordillera. Didn’t see herself bunking forever with belching nematodes like Dak Shepard.
This
elegant hag was moving up and out, so help her God, and if she had to kill someone to get there, then bring on the gorgons, bring on the Romans. Bring on anything but this.
What
was
this? She had not signed on for this.
This had to end some time.
Heard the whisper before she knew she was doing it. “Let me out.”
Tried to concentrate on the screen. Assembly language. Might as well be Chinese.
“Let me out.”
She rocked back and forth in her seat. “Let me out. Let me out.”
Screaming soon. Bouncing off the sides of the cockpit. “Let me out! Let me out let me out let me out!”
Didn’t even try to quiet herself.
There was no one around to hear.
Alpha Flight was still missing as Delta and Echo Flights returned from recon missions of the other two inhabited planets of the Myriad, Centro and Rea.
The flights confirmed that Centro and Rea had both already received the Archon’s address to the nation—faster than any Myriadian spaceship could travel, faster than light, faster than even flights of Swifts traveling many times the speed of light had crossed the distance.
“How the blue blazes are they doing that?” Farragut asked anyone within earshot.
No one could answer.
Echo Flight reported Centro to be a struggling little outpost of 900,000 beings, who looked just like Arrans. They were settled in the narrow hospitable zone of an arid world of high winds and a ruddy sun half as luminous as Sol. Most Centrans lived around the spaceport. The heavy elements used in the spaceport’s construction had come from elsewhere, probably Arra, because, as Pilot Officer Jan Karowicz put it: “Molybdenum don’t grow wild on Centro.”
Echo Flight had sighted a Myriadian spaceship in flight in the Centro system, poking along at eighty percent c. The Myriadian ship did not come into Centro’s spaceport. “I didn’t think it could have seen us, but it must have because it just flew on by,” said Pilot Officer Karowicz. “We withdrew from the system so it might feel safe to come home, because it was just running off to nowhere.”
Delta Flight reported the other planet, Rea, to be much the same, a small world, lacking in heavy elements and orbiting close to an M8V sun. There were three million inhabitants on Rea, living on the seacoasts. The oceans were bigger than Centro’s, rotation slower, same ruddy sky. “Didn’t look like any prize, but the Reans seem to like it,” said Delta Leader.
If Augustus’ description of Origin was accurate, then maybe Rea looked like home sweet home.
“Deck three.”
Steele jumped. He had his com open to monitor the control room, waiting for this.
Jesus, God, there they are.
He took the rungs by twos up the ladder to the control room deck. Found the Officer of the Watch, little Glenn Hamilton, hovering over the sensor station with an air of guarded alertness.
Steele read the faces on the command platform. His spirits sagged. “It’s not my flight?”
“No, sir,” Lieutenant Hamilton answered. “Big return.” And she snapped impatiently to the tac specialist, “Give me an F, Jeffrey. Which is it?” Friend or Foe?
“Foe,” the specialist, Jeffrey reported, finally resolving the signal. The fresh-scrubbed, big-eared college boy looked up from his readouts. “We got ourselves an effing LEN golf ball.”
“F ’em back.” Hamster crossed her arms. Shortest man jack or jane on board
Merrimack
, Glenn Hamilton looked like a doll dressed up in a lieutenant’s uniform. “Confirm that ID.”
“Aye, sir.”
The bloody gorgons were preternaturally adaptable. It was only a matter of time before they learned to fox an IFF response.
And Hive swarms traveled tightly bunched into giant spheres, giving them the same big round profile as a peaceful League of Earth Nations exploratory vessel.
And though they were expected, the LEN were not expected
yet
.
Merrimack
had sent the notice scant days ago. The LEN were not expected in the Myriad for weeks or months.
“ID confirmed,” said Jeffrey.
Lieutenant Hamilton glanced to the chronometer, murmured, “They didn’t waste any time.”
The LEN had to have been on the frontier already to get here so fast. Just luck.
Bad luck from
Merrimack
’s end of it.
“Recheck ID.”
“ID confirmed.”
Hamster’s auburn brows drew together. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say they were stalking us.”
“You know better?”
Hamster turned to find the Roman IO on deck. “No. Actually, I don’t. Do you, Colonel Augustus?”
“They lost you at the Sagittan Nebula,” said Augustus. “
I
did not.”
“But,” Hamster shook her head. “Why would the LEN be on our tail?”
“Digging for conspiracies, dirty military dealings, secret abominations. Things the U.S. Navy are known for.”
“We are not.”
“To paranoid defenders of nature, you are.”
Hamster turned to the tac specialist. “Jeff, what ship is that?”
“Woodland Serenity.”
Steele grunted. When the League of Earth Nations had learned that an American military vessel had tripped over a Class Nine ETI, they would have sped here on fire. “They’re afraid we’ll uf the contact.”
“Wouldn’t want to disappoint them,” Hamster said faintly.
Courtesies were cursory. League of Earth Nations representatives all but stormed through the long flexuous temporary corridor which connected
Woodland Serenity
and the battleship
Merrimack
the moment soft dock was achieved. They demanded with undiplomatic haste and candor, “You haven’t contaminated the site, have you?”
When the LEN learned the full extent of the “contamination,” they went hyperbolic, appalled near to rapture at the list of naval transgressions:
Obliterating native defenses (the minefield).
Terrorizing the populace (turning the Arran missiles around on Arra).
Sending a female soldier down for a Mati Hari-style spy mission (Flight Sergeant Blue’s recon).
Displacing a sapient life-form aboard
Merrimack
without its consent (the rescue of Donner).
Interfering with an alien nation’s internal power struggle (the rescue of Donner).
“I shouldn’t have saved the Archon?” Farragut asked.
“No,” Ambassador Aghani confirmed. “It was an internal matter. You had no right.”
“I had a duty. I’m here to defend the U.S., Earth, and her protectorates and allies. My next duty is to my crew and company. The Myriadian opposition party isn’t on that list. I saved the guy who saved my Marine. Local political complications aren’t my concern.”
“I’m sorry if this is too complicated for you, Captain Farragut,” said Ambassador Aghani. “But you’re right: it’s not your concern.” And Aghani ordered
Merrimack
out of the Myriad immediately.
“We’re gone,” Farragut declared without argument. But Steele advised in a murmur, “Captain, I still have a flight out.”
“—
Just
as soon as my patrol gets back,” Farragut amended.
“When is your patrol due?” Aghani demanded.
“I am not required to divulge that information,” Farragut answered. He had absolutely no idea.
“We are all allies here, Captain,” Aghani reminded him.
“Information on Naval operations is available on a need-to-know basis. Why do you need to know?”
“We can give your boats hangar.”
Gasps and stifled laughter burst from the Naval personnel on deck; gagging and bristling from the Marines. No one could quite believe the nerve of the LEN suggestion: Just leave. The LEN would pick up the stranded flight.
Farragut answered lightly, “I think not.”
Chagrined at their own overstep, the LEN personnel withdrew to their ship. Farragut turned to Lieutenant Colonel Steele. “So when are your Swifts due back?”
“Two hours ago.”
Farragut frowned. “They didn’t bubble you?”
“No, sir.”
“Bubble them?”
“Can’t see them.”
The captain understood the import. Said anyway: “We’ll wait for them.”
Steele exhaled, grateful. “Yes, sir.”
“Find them, TR.”
The captain had a way of giving an order that made it seem not just possible but expected. John Farragut had faith enough to float a battleship. “Yes, sir!” Steele answered, heartened—while knowing full well when people disappear in outer space they stay gone.
Relations with the LEN regrouped into an edgy, adversarial cordiality, the kind of brittle intercourse once reserved for encounters between Earth and Palatine.
Though the United States was a League nation, LEN assistance in U.S. attempts to retain its colony had never gone beyond harsh words. The LEN, over the objection of one of its members, had long since recognized Palatine as an independent nation.
The LEN representatives were now solicitous of Augustus as a member of a conquered people held under the American heel. Their goodwill oozed with the slime of moral superiority. They invited the Roman to add to the LEN’s list of complaints against Captain Farragut.
Guillame Kapila asked in flawless Latin, “Are you being equitably treated?”
Augustus might have told Kapila that the Navy had billeted him with the spare torpedoes. Instead he gave the LEN representative stone silence, as if Kapila had addressed a robot.
“Colonel Augustus?” Kapila prompted.
Augustus stared elsewhere.
Kapila glanced to the captain. “Why does he not answer?”
“I don’t know. Augustus, why don’t you answer?”
“I was not addressed by a recognized entity,” Augustus told the captain.
“Recognize him and answer him,” said Farragut.
Augustus turned to Kapila and answered frostily, in English, “I am not here to chat with civilians.” And back to Farragut: “Permission to leave the deck.”
The request sounded wholly alien coming from Augustus. Amazed to be the target of Augustus’ courtesy, Farragut let him go.
Augustus loathed people who apologized for their own kind.
And Augustus was not the only one who would not answer the LEN. When Farragut tried to pass the banner to the LEN, Donner would not come to the radio.
The LEN could not get past layer upon layer of intermediaries, secretaries, and toadies that came between them and the Archon, encountering each time lower- and lower-ranking individuals, until the only beings on Arra whom the Earthlings could get to come to the com were juvenile females who recited songs for them.
The League representatives demanded that Captain Farragut assist in making contact, but Donner would not even come to the com for Farragut anymore.
Donner was most displeased to discover that John Farragut was not the Archon of Earth. Donner did not talk to minions.
The LEN, in turn, was convinced that this refusal to communicate was at the Navy’s instigation. After all, all rational beings desired communication.
“You didn’t want us to make contact,” Farragut countered the LEN accusations. “Now you want introductions?”
“The indigenous beings have only heard Earth speak through its belligerents,” said Ambassador Aghani. “Now that the damage is done, they must also hear from the peaceful Earth. You will lift this barrier to understanding. Do you understand me, Captain?”
Since Donner would not come to the com, Farragut, Augustus, and the LEN embassy burst down into the Archon’s presence in the Archon’s own garden.
Donner had been crouched at the lakeside with a little male child, showing him how to skip grains across the water to make winged, scarlet fish leap out and catch them before brilliant azure swallow-tailed birds could swoop down and snap up the grains first.
