The Myriad: Tour of the Merrimack #1 Read Free Page A

was too vast for chance encounters. Someone crossed your path out here, means you were stalked.
    “Ladder up!”
    Crew quickly scrambled clear of the vertical passages within the sound of Farragut’s shout, for Captain Farragut made his entrances like a cannon shell. He clambered up the ladder, spry for a big man, and bounded to the control room.
    Two MPs flanked the hatch on either side. Within was a compact space, daylit, bustling. Technicians and specialists worked elbow to elbow at their stations-—tactical, com, navigation, targeting—each in direct communication with his attendant department belowdecks. Multiple large display screens above the workstations relayed visuals and ship’s status at a glance. “What’ve we got?” Farragut demanded.
    The prox alarm announced someone not given an approach vector was collision close. “Friend or Foe?”
    “IFF says Friend,” tactical reported dubiously. And no one was convinced of its friendship from looking at the overhead displays.
    The U.S. alliance with Palatine was a brittle one. Merrimack ’s low-band scanner readings, as translated into a visual, displayed the unholy image of a Roman Striker.
    Merrimack ’s tall, impossibly beautiful XO announced coolly, “Captain Farragut, your new IO is here.” A wry brittleness infected her whole bearing. Commander Calli Carmel had a knowing respect for Roman might and Roman treachery.
    The concerned pinch in her brow was in clear view with her dark hair pulled severely back into a braided tail to her waist.
    Farragut regarded the painted Striker on the display. A sharp-edged, wicked little craft, faster than the Mack . “Red and black. What gens is that?”
    “Flavian,” said Calli. Calli Carmel had attended the prestigious Imperial Military Institute on Palatine during the brief conciliation between worlds. Made her the resident expert on things Roman. “Not the worst,” she interpreted. “But not the conciliatory party either. Gens Flavius voted against the surrender. He’s requesting permission to come aboard.”
    “Permission granted.” And to her hesitation, “We’re expecting him, aren’t we?”
    Calli lowered her voice, grim. “Not yet. We never sent our location to the repeater. Our operations are classified, but he found us without being given rendezvous coordinates. It appears we have no secrets from this guy.”
    “Good quality in an IO, you don’t think? What’s his name?”
    “Augustus. They’ve given him the rank of colonel.” Lofty enough. But not a line officer.
    “Augustus what?” said Farragut. “What Augustus?”
    “Just Augustus.”
    “I thought only slaves had only one name.”
    “Augustus is not a slave name,” Calli advised.
    “Well, he’s not the emperor,” said Farragut. “Let him aboard.” He quit the control room running. “Clear ladder!” He hooked his feet round the rails outside the rungs and slid, fireman style, to the mid-deck. Marched out the starboard dock to greet his new intelligence officer.
    He found the deck crowded with the curious, armed with made-up official reasons to be here, anxious for a glimpse of their uneasy ally.
    Not just a Roman, this was rumored to be a patterner, one of the Empire’s augmented men designed to interface with a computer and make gestalt sense of the random information within its databases. The Roman Empire valued its patterners highly. Patterners were rare, pricey pieces of equipment. Palatine must think Merrimack had a real chance of locating the Hive home world to be sending a patterner into U.S. service.
    The Roman uncoiled from his Striker. Tall. They were all tall. Romans were evolving bigger by every generation, and not, one suspected, by natural selection. Captain Farragut at six foot one was unaccustomed to looking that far up. The Roman stood easily six foot eight—max height allowed on board an American space vessel—all in proportion. He was going to have to duck through the hatches. Age, perhaps