Read The Myriad: Tour of the Merrimack #1 for Free Online

the great journey to the globular cluster?”
    The apprentice xenologist shook her head. “No, sir.”
    “Not even in any of their children’s histories?”
    “No, sir. Juvenile broadcasting doesn’t seem to be part of their culture. All the transmissions have—what looks to us to be—an official look. We can’t be sure, since we can’t understand a word. Well, we can understand a few words. Yes , no , and the like.”
    All the resources at his command and John Farragut could not get an answer to a question as simple as how three planets separated by ten, twenty, and forty-three light-years were communicating. That was unacceptable.
    Merrimack had everything. Provisioned like a small carrier, the space battleship had two compact automated fabrication plants—the technology for which had been lifted from Rome—that could repair the ship’s formidable armament. Above and beyond her strictly military defensive, offensive, communications, detection, propulsion, and navigational equipment, Merrimack housed in its small sick bay all the equipment of a major hospital. The Mack carried a hydroponics garden, raw grain in its two dry storage silos, and stores of meat and milk radiated, microbe-free, and vacuum-sealed. In the spirit of redundancy, the Mack also carried a small breeding group of pygmy cows, goats, quail, and ducks for fresh milk, meat, and eggs, just in case the food stores became contaminated or personnel become stranded on an alien planet in the Deep. The ship’s galley could be programmed to create anything the ship had ingredients for, from full meals to pretzels and popcorn. There were squash courts on board and a running track. The enormous virtual library was updated every time a launch cycled Fleet Marines in and out from their tours of duty. Merrimack had everything.
    Merrimack had research labs for the ship’s many xenoscientists to analyze the unexpected.
    The xenos weren’t working hard enough.
    Farragut collected Echo Flight’s recording bubbles and made straight for the xenolinguist’s lab. Burst in, demanding, “Ham, I need a translation of the dominant language of the F8 planet and I need it now.”
    Dr. Patrick Hamilton did not rise. He plucked a module from his console and tossed it to the captain in answer. “Here.” Then, regretting his flippancy, added quickly, “Sir.”
    “What is this?” Farragut held the module up to the light. To all appearances it was a standard language module, lightweight, about an inch square, with a three-prong interface.
    “From your Roman.”
    “Augustus,” Farragut named him.
    “That,” Ham confirmed in heavy distaste. “That thing is inhuman. Inhuman. That’s the word for it! Your Roman comes stalking in here like zombie cyborg from the stratosphere, wired and staring as if nobody’s home. Plugs into the main port. Dumps that out five hours later.” Patrick Hamilton jabbed his forefinger at the module in Farragut’s hand. “Five bleeding blinking bloody hours.” The linguist slumped back in his chair and covered his eyes. His hand was long-fingered and soft-skinned, an academic’s hand.
    “And what is this?” said Farragut, turning the module over and over, as if he would see what was so remarkable about it.
    “Myriadian. The language. Fifty-five thousand words of it with grammar and idioms.” Dr. Hamilton sounded about to cry.
    Patrick Hamilton was from Mars. Not Mars the colony, Mars the place where odd people come from. A quirky man of science, Dr. Patrick Hamilton hadn’t the steel in him of his line-officer wife Glenn—Hamster—Hamilton.
    Farragut did not know what Glenn saw in him. Patrick Hamilton was a reasonably attractive man, in a boyish way. Boyish in the sense of puerile. Perhaps because Glenn’s career allowed no time or place for a child, she had married one instead.
    “Myriadian?” Farragut echoed. “Is that the major language on the planet in the F8 system?”
    Patrick Hamilton, PhD, Chief Xenolinguist on