Authors: R. M. Meluch

The Ninth Circle (24 page)

BOOK: The Ninth Circle

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The LEN representative seemed prepared for that answer. He choked through that news and revised his plea. “We want to ransom the bodies. Those were good people.”

The brothers exchanged glances, then shrugs.

Nox demanded double the offered reward. He sent a last visual message, printed:
Load the shipment into a courier missile and launch it on the vector printed below at the precise time printed below. Any improvisation, any failure, any tail, and we will send you pictures of the drawn and quartered bodies of your men so you know how they will be spending eternity when we kick them FTL, where they will never be found.

Message sent, Leo shut down the res chamber. In case they had been located, he jumped
Bagheera
to FTL with the 2186 in tow.

“Are we really going to do that?” Pallas asked, uneasy at the thought of drawing and quartering dead bodies.

“Shouldn’t come to that,” said Nox. In any case, Nox had made the threat. It would fall to him to carry it out. “They already know what we can do.”

As the appointed hour approached, Leo monitored the designated vector for any sign of a courier missile. The rest of the brothers gathered round Leo’s console in the control room to wait.

Faunus asked Nox if he was ready to start drawing and quartering.

“
You
, maybe,” said Nox.

“Thar she blows!” Leo sang, surprised. He turned from his console to face his brothers. “They did it. They launched a courier.”

“The LEN kept their side of the deal,” said Galeo. Truly had not expected that.

“
As far as we know
,” Orissus added significantly. “We don’t really know what’s in the courier.”

“The mass is right for gold,” said Leo.

“But it could be lead,” said Orissus. “The mass is similar.”

“Could be fruitcake for that matter,” said Faunus.

“We’ll never know what it is,” said Nox. “We’re not picking up the ransom. Ever. Only question now is do we park the police ship and send the LEN the coordinates to find it, or do we blow it up.”

The question felt suddenly weighty. Faunus dodged it. Asked Nox, “You’re not going to draw and quarter?”

“No, but you may if you want,” said Nox. “Oh, my brothers, what are we doing here? Do we give up our dead or not?”

“We vote,” said Nicanor.

Orissus argued for no. “We’ll look soft.”

“We need to decide if we’re to be crazed berserkers beyond the pale, or do we want to be a strong enemy who keeps our word,” said Nicanor.

“We’re
pirates
,” said Faunus. “We don’t have a word.”

Nox left the control room. He came back lugging a very large wheel-made terra cotta jar. “Enough debate.”

He set the jar down on the deck. The brothers formed a ragged circle around it. Some of them guessed what Nox was about.

“It’s a yes no question,” Nox said. “Your decision and your reasons are your own. Just vote.” He passed out lots.

The lots were the ancient kind, smooth black and white stones, which Nox had taken from the bottom of a glass flower vase in the ambassador’s bedchamber.

“A yes vote means we give up the dead. A no vote, we do something else with them. Drop a white stone into the jar for yes, a black stone for no. I gave you each a bunch of stones, so no one will know your vote by what color stones you have left behind.”

Nox went first. He lowered his fist into the neck of the jar. Let drop the first stone. It clinked against the ceramic base. He moved back and sat cross-legged on the deck.

Nicanor moved forward next, dropped his stone. Fell back into the circle.

Then Faunus.

Leo.

Pallas.

Galeo.

Orissus.

A strange silence followed, everyone just watching the jar that held their answer.

“That’s all of us,” said Leo, waiting for someone else to move.

Nicanor stepped in. He hefted up the jar and spilled out the stones.

Winged creatures rose from the trees with sharp cries.

Monkey squirrels jumped branch to branch in screeching retreat. Glenn heard their chittering calls receding deeper and deeper into the forest.

Spiderwings Glenn hadn’t even known were there fluttered aloft and wheeled away in a swarm. Something startling was coming this way.

In the meadow, foxes were dancing with Patrick. The foxes didn’t mind the alarms. Foxes existed at the top of the food chain, too big for most predators, too smart for the others.

Glenn and some young foxes—Princess, Banshee, and Cosmo—ventured toward the calls to check out what set off the treefolk.

The foxes’ noses were going like bloodhounds but seemed to be detecting nothing at all. They were confounded by that.

At the first sight of strange whiteness in the dense greenery the foxes hunkered down among clumps of ferns.

Glenn stood up. Her shoulders bowed. The foxes observed her lack of fear, and they relaxed too. They stood up with her, sniffing, still smelling nothing.

The white strangenesses were LEN scientists, kitted in full body condoms. They looked wrong and alien in their exo-suits. They’d come equipped with rebreathers and all. No wonder the foxes were confused. Foxes lived by their noses. They could see the xenos, hear them, but otherwise the xenos might not even be here.

Two white figures advanced. They seized Glenn by her upper arms.

Princess dropped into a bent-leg starting position, seeming unsure if this were a game. The boy foxes snarled from all fours.

Glenn shook off her captors’ hands, indignant. “I
beg
your pardon.” She knew Dr. Maarstan and Dr. Szaszy from the
Spring Beauty
.

The xenos let go. Probably because they had upset the foxes, not because Glenn told them to.

Princess, Banshee, and Cosmo hummed, quizzical, their heads tilting the way they did when very confused.

A tall figure moved forward, forceful. Director Izrael Benet. Boomed like a truant officer to a child, “What do you think you’re—” His eyes strayed up toward the meadow. He caught sight of Patrick between the trees. Izrael Benet exploded. “
What is he doing
!”

Glenn turned to see what Patrick was doing. “He’s, um.” No way out of this. “Teaching the foxes to trot.”

The older female, Mama-san, stood with one forepaw on Patrick’s shoulder, the other forepaw in Patrick’s hand as Patrick tried to get her to execute a four-count box step.

“
That is outrageous!
”

“I know,” said Glenn. “They don’t really care for it. They like the polka much better, but Patrick just couldn’t resist.”

Director Benet bellowed to the white-suited xenos behind him, “Get her out of here.” And he stalked out onto the meadow waving and roaring at Patrick: “Get away from the natives!”

Glenn watched Benet corral her husband.

Good thing he hadn’t seen the bunny hop lesson.

As the xenos marched Glenn and Patrick away, Princess and Cosmo cavorted alongside for a while, getting some clue that this was not friendly. They held their tails straight up and bristling.

Banshee brought a rubbery green fruit in his mouth like a dog, offering it hopefully first to Glenn then to Patrick. Thought if he played by the rules, they wouldn’t leave him.

Patrick hummed something.

The three foxes sat down and watched them go.

Glenn looked back over her shoulder to see bewildered faces and doleful eyes, Banshee with the ball still in his mouth.

Stones clattered onto the pirate ship deck.

Two black pebbles stood out. The rest were white.

“The vote is yes,” said Nicanor. “Return the dead.”

The result brought relieved sighs from most of them and an alarmed, “Wait!”

The brothers looked to Nox, who had shouted.

“There are too many stones here!” Nox sounded almost panicked. His palm shook as it moved across the stones to separate them. Eight. There were eight stones and seven brothers.

Nicanor said, “Who voted twice?”

Eyes met eyes around the circle.

Galeo lifted his forefinger, a confession. “I voted both ways. It’s kind of an abstention.”

“Damn, Galeo! You scared me,” said Nox, breathing too hard.

“What?” Galeo shrugged. “I just cancelled myself out.”

“
I thought Cinna was here!
”

“Are you hearing telltale hearts, Nox?” Orissus said.

Nox held his hand over his own hammering heart. “Sometimes.”

Pallas said, “Before we give the LEN these coordinates, we should leave a mark on our kill.”

“You want to sign our work?” said Faunus.

“Aye.”

“Sign it how? Who are we?”

Pallas boarded the police ship 2186 and blotted blood in a pattern of spots on the deck.

Faunus looked over Pallas’ shoulder as he daubed the spots. “What’s that supposed to be?”

“Leopard spots.”

“Looks more like jaguar,” said Leo, who knew something about cats.

Pallas paused, his brow knotted up hard. “
What?
”

“Jaguars have the dot in the middle. Leopard spots shouldn’t have a dot in the middle,” Leo said.

“I dripped!” said Pallas.

“Take it out,” said Leo.

“Well here, you do it, Michelangelo,” said Pallas who was feeling nauseated anyway. It hadn’t been easy extracting enough blood from the dead to paint with, and the stuff was not easy to work with. He started to think drawing and quartering would have been easier. Pallas pushed the bloody brush at Leo, glad to be rid of it.

Leo took over spotting the deck. The others watched. Leo daubed tight circles of five or six blots—with no dot in the middle—until the deck took on a distinctly leopardish look.

The deck had been a buff color. The blood was turning dark.

Faunus stood back. Puzzled. Vexed. He’d missed something. First Nox named the damned ship
Bagheera
, and now they’d broken out in spots. Faunus didn’t want to ask the question in case the answer was obvious, but he had to know, “How did our mascot get to be a leopard?”

“It’s not a mascot,” said Nicanor. “It’s more like an avatar.”

Nox said, “The leopard guards the lowest rings of the Inferno.”

They returned to their Xerxes and sent a message to the LEN: “You may approach these coordinates to collect the remains. Do not mistake this for mercy. We have none.”

And they let themselves be seen. For the briefest instant they took down the Xerxes’ stealth system, and flashed an image bright and deadly:

Their colors on the hull, yellow with black spots for the leopard who guarded their domain.

BOOK: The Ninth Circle

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