The Ninth Circle (18 page)

Read The Ninth Circle Online

Authors: R. M. Meluch

Nox brought the Xerc straight down, abrupt as a runaway freight elevator. Set it down hard.
The brothers jerked away from the sudden noise and flying sand. They hadn’t seen the ship coming. Still didn’t see it.
The Xerxes unveiled in the rising dust. The hatch opened. The brothers stared, astounded, six mouths perfectly round. They looked like a tenement birdhouse.
Nox shouted, “Come on! Come on! Come on!”
Now came an alarm—sounding from inside
Bagheera
’s control room.
The Xerxes calmly spoke warnings of air and spacecraft approaching in direct lines.
Suddenly, a skyhook from the orbiting horizon guard smashed down, a fist of energy at the speed of light.
There before any of them could know it.
Either the Xerxes deflected the hook or the sky watch had targeted a thrown image. Either way, the hook missed the Xerc and captured the trees instead. Ripped them and the rock-hard ground under them out of the planet surface and hauled them up, leaving a crater behind it.
Nox bellowed, “Run!”
His brothers charged up the ramp, pelted through the air lock. Hatches sealed fast behind them.
Bagheera
’s inertial field sealed over.
“
Bagheera
! Escape!”
The Xerc rose up hard. The ascent exceeded the speed of the ship’s in-atmo stealth capabilities. It left a scorch mark in the air pointing the way it fled.
Immediately clear of the ionosphere, the Xerxes assumed full stealth again. Its image disappeared from all sensors. Its heat trail scattered.
Bagheera
changed course. Changed again.
Outside the space lanes, Nox jumped the Xerxes to FTL. He ordered a hard turn on a skew vector and punched the Xerc to threshold velocity.
Threshold velocity was a function of a ship’s mass. Few spacecraft existed with a combination of extreme power and low mass better than a Xerxes. And no one could chase an FTL plot unless they knew exactly on which vector to look.
Roman Intelligence could locate the source of a res pulse, if Rome knew your resonant harmonic and you had your res chamber activated. Nox had deactivated or destroyed all res sources on board
Bagheera
.
Nox leaned, straight-armed, over the control console, waiting, breathing, listening.
Monitor lights blinked benignly green. Only the threshold indicator hovered near red, but Nox wanted that.
They’d got away.
Nox’s brothers entered the control room with cautious, awed laughter, tentative smiles, and shining eyes.
Orissus left his mouth hanging open. Faunus smacked him up under the chin. Orissus bit his tongue.
Nicanor ran his hand over the sleek steel surfaces and the instrument panels as if making sure they were real.
Leo and Galeo prowled, unfocused, dazed, happy, horrified, amazed.
Pallas’ gaze fell on Nox’s shirt. He noticed the darker patch of wetness on the dark fabric and found the red-brown crust limning Nox’s fingernails. There were red fingerprints and handprints on the consoles.
Everything Nox touched had blood on it.
Pallas dropped his stare to the black deck, the pool of something wet shining there. Pallas nodded down. “What’d you do with whoever that was?”
“I, um, got rid of him,” said Nox unsteadily.
The mortal remains of Camiciarossa had blown out an air lock.
A moment of thick silence pressed in on Nox. The brothers were trained to be soldiers. They’d been taught how to kill.
It was still theory for the rest of them.
“I guess you had to,” Nicanor said gravely, understanding.
“Not really,” said Nox. “I didn’t have to.”
“And what was that like?” said Orissus.
Nox threw up. Spattered the deck. Got Pallas’ boots.
Nox’s throat stung. “Oh, screw.” He braced himself, palms on his knees, head down, body bent over, waiting for anything else that wanted to come up.
“Well, then, why did you kill him?” said Orissus.
Nox spat, stood up, his nose thick. He sniffed. That was a mistake. He swallowed. His voice came out raw. “To slam the door behind me! You all think I can go ‘home’ somewhere! I
can’t!
This is you and me!
We
are in this!”
“In a river of shit,” said Leo over the pool of blood. It was a statement of solidarity.
“Face down.” Galeo said as the others nodded.
“No, Best Beloved. That’s only the eighth circle of hell,” said Nox. “We’re lower than that.”
“All right. Agreed,” said Faunus. “This isn’t the future any of us wanted, but here we are.” He ran a beefy hand along the elegantly molded trim around the hatch. “Nox, you make a superb pirate. And I think I can get used to hell.”
 
“Where is it?”
The Italian attaché was a trim, fast-moving young man amped up on designer chemicals. He’d taken the marble stairs two at a time charging up to the governor’s office. He looked around for his stray Xerxes as if it were to be found inside the governor’s palace.
“Where is
Bernini?
”
Round and jovial as Good Saint Nick, Aemilius, Roman governor of planet Phoenix, answered the young man placidly, “We don’t have it.”
The attaché sputtered. “But you launched a skyhook at it!”
“It missed.”
“How can a skyhook
miss
?”
“That’s a fine stealthy ship you had,” the governor assured him.
The attaché’s eyes stretched. He checked himself before he could say something unfortunate.
Governor Aemilius asked, “Did you not have failsafes in place?”
“They failed,” the attaché said tightly.
“That is the problem with a stealthy spacecraft. It’s very hard to find when you misplace it.”
“We did not—!” The attaché checked himself again. Yelling at a powerful man he needed was a bad idea. The attaché started over. “Are you going to help me?”
“I tried, sir. I did. Count me as one of your failsafes. Your ship did actually leave an exit trail. But that will point us the last direction we want to look. Which narrows the search down to the rest of outer space. You see my problem? The IFF on board your Xerxes is turned off. Its com is not receiving or sending.
Bernini
is probably traveling faster than light. Attempts at remote system overrides have failed. Your ship is obeying a new master.”
“That is the
ship
,” said the attaché. “What about the ambassador’s system?”
“Say again?”
“Control of the Xerxes does not give you access to the ambassador’s system. His data banks. His communications module. His programs. His network. His—His—”
“System,” the Governor supplied.
“Yes.”
“The ambassador left sensitive material in the ship?” Aemilius guessed.
“It seemed like a safe place,” the attaché said dryly. “The ambassador’s system is a separate entity from the ship. It has a separate security program, a separate lock, a separate ID, separate authentication protocol, its own access codes. Its own tracking code.”
“Tracking code?”
“Yes. The ambassador’s system is equipped with a passive tracker.”
“What is that?”
“A passive tracker doesn’t initiate signals. It’s a catcher. You ping it, it returns a signal. Otherwise, it emits nothing. The hijacker can’t tell it’s even on.”
Aemilius considered this. “Assuming the hijacker is somewhat clever, would he not shut the system down entirely?”
“The tracker interprets any unauthorized attempt to access the system as a ping. The tracker would return a signal. We haven’t received a signal. We
know
the hijacker hasn’t tried to disable it. You ping him, you have him.”
“You don’t suppose the Xerxes would bolt the instant we pinged your ambassador’s tracker?”
“No.” The attaché hesitated. He was forced to show his hole card. “It’s a resonant ping.”
And suddenly the attaché was facing a man who could get his feet kissed if he wanted. The governor knew it too.
Aemilius asked silkily, “Just how do you suppose to get a location on resonant pulse?”
The attaché took a breath. “I grovel before the might and mercy of Rome.”
 
Alone among all nations in the known galaxy, Rome could locate the origin point of a resonant pulse, a pulse that existed everywhere at once in the instant of its existence.
The governor of Phoenix ordered Legion ships to stand ready to run down the target as soon as he determined its location and vector.
Aemilius left the Italian attaché upstairs in his palace, while he descended to the cellar, to sunless chambers where Imperial Intelligence agentes dwelled.
Aemilius expelled all but necessary personnel from the secure room. That left four, counting himself.
A young res tech, seated at his station, prepared to engage the resonant locator.
A tactical coordinator stood by at the com, ready to dispatch whichever Legion vessel turned out to be closest to the target.
One lone Intelligence agent remained in the room, watching, only because Aemilius couldn’t get rid of all of them.
“Here.” The governor held up a data slip. On it was the harmonic he had received from the Italian attaché. The man had nearly cried letting go of it. “Find this.”
Aemilius gave the data slip directly to the res tech, bypassing the Intelligence agent.
The res tech loaded the harmonic into his res chamber, then stretched and flexed his arms as if preparing to work magic. “If he’s out there, he’s mine.”
“No, he’s mine,” the governor gently corrected the young man. “Do this.”
The res tech sent out a single res pulse.
Instantly got a resonant return in the locator. “Got him.”
“That simple?” Aemilius said.
The tech caressed his locator unit. “This is the love of my life,
Domni
.”
The locator unit fed the resultant galactic coordinates to the tactical coordinator’s station.
Tactical confirmed. “Target located.” He was about to say something else, but he did a double take at his instruments.
The res tech laughed.
Aemilius looked from the res tech to the tactical coordinator. “Something is funny?”
“Yes,
Domni
.” The res tech snickered like a boy. “His location!”
The tactical coordinator blinked at his readouts. Said, “He’s
here
.”
12
 
“H
ERE?” THE ATTACHÉ ECHOED when the governor surfaced from the underground chambers with an Intelligence agent in tow. “What do you mean
here
?”
“Here,” said Aemilius. “On Phoenix.”
“But the Xerxes left,” the attaché said. “We know he left the atmosphere.”
“The fox doubled back,” Aemilius said quickly. “Your Xerxes is at the bottom of the Uxine Ocean. I’ve sent the coordinates to the horizon guard. They will have a skyhook in place presently.” A buzz sounded on his ear com. It was the horizon guard. Aemilius took the hail. “Talk to me.”
“
Domni
. The target is too small.”
An impatient puff passed between the governor’s lips. “You won’t be able to detect the target,” he explained as patiently as he was not feeling. “The target is a Xerxes in full stealth mode. What you are registering as the target is only a collateral object within the target coordinates. Hook everything inside the given coordinates. As soon as you are ready, execute. Do not wait for my command.”
“Deploying hook,” the horizon guard said. “Hook away. And—”

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