The Twice and Future Caesar (31 page)

3 October 2443
U.S. Space Battleship
Merrimack
Earth
Near Space

N
O
ONE
EXPECTED
this battle for another century and a half, if ever. Not here. Not on Earth.

Captain John Farragut wanted to bless the Earth Horizon Guard to kingdom come. The Horizon Guard had managed
not
to detect the gorgons entering Earth's atmosphere. But gorgons were here, washing ashore from the Atlantic Ocean, masses of them. Many were dead, but thousands more, maybe millions more, were still alive. How did they just
sneak
past Earth's defenses?

Merrimack
's captive insects on the command platform buzzed in panic.

Farragut asked of anyone on the command platform, “Are there gorgons on my boat?”

“None reported so far,” Lieutenant Glenn Hamilton said. She had already initiated a search. “All hands are doing a sweep. The dogs are checking the tight spots.”

“The gorgons may not be on board yet, but they know where we are.”

That was apparent. The telltales were singing madly.

“Where are they coming
from?
” Glenn cried, frustrated. “We didn't carry them from 82 Eridani, did we?”

“Hell of a thought, Hamster,” Farragut said. “Not really possible.”

Farragut looked to his patterner, who would shoot him down quick as thinking about it if he made a wrong assumption.

Augustus shook his head slowly, no. “We—your
Merrimack
—did not bring gorgons here. And not from 82 Eridani. 82 Eridani III is thoroughly dead. These Hive cells are displacing from somewhere else.”

“Displacing!” Farragut could not have heard right. “There's no precedent for gorgon displacement.”

“Then they learned,” Augustus said flatly. “We know they can learn. Distance doesn't mean anything to resonance.”

“Not to resonance, it doesn't, but distance sure as morning means something to displacement accuracy,” Farragut said.

“And that's why this lot are making a sodding mess of themselves,” Augustus said.

Amid the catastrophe, Vice President Sampson Reed was hastily sworn in as President of the United States of America.

It had been a joke, not a funny one, that Marisa Johnson chose Sampson Reed as her vice president as a life insurance policy. No matter how much anyone hated Marisa Johnson, they wouldn't let her come to harm so long as Sampson Reed was waiting in the wings.

Now, President Reed had the Home Guard trying to assess the enemy. Res scans were less than helpful. Like trying to identify the properties of elementary particles, to observe the Hive was to change it.

Because no one had seen the Hive arrive, and gorgons were washing up on the Canary Islands, the fear was that the gorgons were hatching out of the Earth.

Vwakikikikik ships already in Earth's orbit offered to help scout the ocean floor for enemy activity.

Squids were normally as serious as a pool full of preschoolers. Squids did not wage war. They didn't have weapons. But it was in the squids' self-interest to help humanity stop this plague before it could find its way to the squids' watery homeworld, Vwakikikikikkk.

The squids' translucent blue orbs descended from orbit to float and roll on the terrestrial ocean waves. The squids exited their craft through water locks and dove down to the ocean depths.

The pressure meant nothing to them. The salinity was irritating but tolerable. The squids reached the Atlantic floor in minutes.

They felt the seismic disturbances and verified that they were not originating from within the earth. The upheavals were coming from scattered locations in deep water.

Then the squids sighted gorgons at depth.

Tentacles lashed out from black masses of liquid.

Veterans of Hive encounters immediately recognized the ooze as the remains of dead gorgons. Live gorgons sucked the dead ooze, then took notice of the squids.

Merrimack
's xenolinguist reported to the command deck to assist in communicating with their squid allies. This was Hamster's husband, Patrick Hamilton.

By the time Doctor Patrick Hamilton made his entrance, Colonel Augustus was already plugged into patterner mode and connected on the com with the squid ship, doing just fine translating subtle shades of Vwakikikikik meanings.

Patrick wasn't needed here after all. Someone forgot to tell him. He hovered at the rear of the platform like a lost glove. His wife didn't look at him. Lieutenant Glenn Hamilton was working.

Augustus queried the Vwakikikikik scouts: Might the gorgons be hatching from the bedrock? They'd done it on 82 Eridani III.

It was a horrifying thought. The squids cast about, searching for anything emerging from the ocean floor. They reported negative signs of eruptions.

At that moment they witnessed a displacement event. A sudden massive expression of ooze burst into existence in the water, swirling with dismembered tentacles. The displacement shock registered on all shore stations. The force would have killed humans that close to the epicenter. The squids flowed with the shock wave.

“
That
was a displacement event,”
Merrimack
's displacement tech confirmed.

“Using what equipment?” Farragut demanded.

Augustus: “The Vwakikikikik report negative equipment. The gorgons are spontaneously displacing. They're not doing a neat job of it.”

Great clouds of black ooze plumed and spread on the current. The living monsters sucked in the debris of their dead.

“Displacement. This is Command. Confirm jammers.”

“Displacement jammers active, aye.”

Nothing was going to displace intact aboard
Merrimack
.

Captain Farragut sent a personal message to the Vwakikikikik ship. Thanked the Vwakikikikik for the recon and strongly advised them to get out of the water and out of the atmosphere, and out of the Solar System. Yesterday.

The Vwakikikikik thanked Captain Farragut for his concern. Squids shot to the surface as if chased by gorgons.

The command crew watched the tactical display in horror as gorgons welled up underneath the rising squids. They weren't rising fast enough. You wanted to help them. “
Swim!
” somebody yelled at the tactical displays.

The Vwakikikikik reached the surface and squeezed themselves inboard their watery ships.

Four of the alien globes waddled into the air and gained altitude. The last orb rose, wallowed, lurched in the air, leaking. Withering. Its membrane was pierced in many places, and the globe was spilling water and squids. Thrashing tentacles reached for them.

Vwakikikikik engineers tried to shore up the ship while others sealed the rents and sliced off grasping gorgon mouths.

“TR. Get some cover out there,” Farragut ordered.

Lieutenant Colonel Steele on the loud com:
Scramble. All flights. Scramble
.

And to the erks in the flight hangars Steele sent instructions. “Prep all Swifts for in-atmo action. Close support loads. Torches and short-range edged projectiles. Launch 'em yesterday.”

Kerry Blue. Running to her Swift.
Go. Go. Go
.

Climbed onto the wing of her waiting crate, Alpha Six. Vaulted into the open cockpit. Bubble helmet on. Secure. Pulled the harness down around her and clasped it shut.

Her erk gave her harness a good jerk to make sure she was strapped in tight, then gave her bubble helmet a double pat.
Go
.

Kerry pulled her canopy forward. Locked.

Instructions streamed into her helmet com. “Engage one enemy at a time. Negative ricochets. Negative collaterals.”

“Yeah yeah yeah. We love our squids,” Kerry said, tapping her feet. “Let me out!”

“Alpha Six, your com is live.”

Oops
.

The elevator shaft descended around her Swift. A butt-slamming lift hauled her Swift abruptly
up
. She was always afraid the top hatch wouldn't slide open fast enough, and she'd be mashed up against it, dead flat. But the overhead opened to the stars. Her crate popped out onto the flight deck atop
Merrimack
's starboard wing.

The glowing blue, green, and white world shone down below. Warm yellow sun way over that way.

Kerry Blue waited in her launch slot, counting down and revving up. Three. Two. Yeeeeeah!

Marine Swifts catapulted off the topside flight deck, screaming.
This is what we live for
.

The Fleet Marines, the Alphas in particular, took this dust-up personally. Squids were brothers, and they were here defending
our
Earth. Had to rescue them. Just had to.

The erks had hung flamethrowers on the Swifts. Fire worked well on gorgons. Worked on squid membranes too. Be ultra-careful about that while you fry the gorgons off the squid bubble.

They had to get it done fast.

Swifts were notoriously short-ranged in atmo. They carried no coolant. It hotted up fast down here.

Kerry Blue already felt she was cooking just closing on the targets.

Lieutenant Hazard Sewell on the com: “Call your targets. Fire at will. Tallyho. Tallyho. Tallyho.”

They were flying in deuces for this sortie. Fighter and wingman. No solos except for Hazard Sewell. He was down here for his eyes, not his guns.

Flight Sergeant Cole Darby stuck to Kerry Blue's tail close enough to give her a baby.

Do not screw up
, he told himself. Not just because he really really liked Kerry Blue. But the Old Man would have his nuts in a grinder if Kerry don't come back same way she left.

A long tear appeared in the foundering squid ship. The squids were in trouble. He saw them spilling through the tear in the membrane and falling into the ocean, where there were gorgons waiting for them.

Getting a little frantic, Darb willed the Vwakikikikik:
Hang on!

Kerry Blue was crazy. She led Darb in
that
close and smeared flaming gorgons all over Darby's canopy. The bits slid off. Darb sheared off sideways to keep up with Blue.

Voice of Dak Shepard: “Greta! Greta! Gretaaah! Come on!”

Another pair of Swifts came in on the deck. Baker Three and Four. The lead crate was shredding gorgons that came up from the water to snap at the Vwakikikikik ship.

In a blink, a mass of tentacles shot high up from the water. Came down with a Swift—Baker Four—in its mouths. Plunged under, down and down, in a pillar of bubbles. The water looked to be boiling.

Kerry Blue: “Who is that?”

Is
. She said is. You always say
is
because a Swift's personal field can withstand a nuke. And because you don't want to bury a brother until you see the body.

Cole Darby saw things bobbing up to the surface that ought never be outboard of a Swift.

It was—really
was
—Baker Four, Alun Cochcrys, new guy. This was his first flight in anger.

That's the way it works. If you're gonna get yourself dead, you get that business out of the way fast. That's why Cowboy Carver's death had been such a surprise. Cowboy bought the casino after surviving too much. That fother mucking shum dit should've been immortal by then. Cowboy screwed up in all ways a man could up screw. And now Cole Darby—not Cowboy Carver—was flying Alpha Seven.

After thirteen sorties you were expected not to die. And those thirteen had to be angry sorties. Only sorties where something was trying to kill you counted toward lucky thirteen. Standing patrols didn't count unless you were bounced and survived it.

Alun Cochcrys' prang left Baker Three hanging out here flying solo. Though, really, Baker Three—that was Big Richard—might actually be safer without Cochcrys on his tail.

Alpha One, Lieutenant Hazard Sewell, picked him up. “Baker Three. Baker Three. Baker Three. I have your six.”

“Do you have to, sir?” Big Richard sent.

You never really trusted officers at the controls.

Darb couldn't afford to look. Had to keep watch on Alpha Six, Kerry Blue. Kerry Blue turns into a mama wolf when she's protecting her own.
The squids were her compadres. And now there was a Bull Mastiff to avenge.