The Twice and Future Caesar

by R. M. Meluch

  Kerry and Carly are both kickers when they don’t have weapons on them, which is rare. Carly’s always got a blade on her.

  Carly hangs tight with Twitch Fuentes. Twitch looks dangerous, and he can be. But that dark-eyed squint and frown is just his face in at-ease position. Flat planes of heavy bones, brown skin, black hair, broad build. Quiet. After five tours you’d think Twitch would talk but he don’t. He understands Americanese as well as anyone else in the team. Shasher guessed Twitch just got so used to not talking he just doesn’t do it. Afraid of sounding dumb.

  Then there’s Geneva Rhine, the Rhino. Rhino likes being a Marine. Don’t like being a girl at all. Has a red X tattooed between her eyebrows and tattoos on her knuckles DNFW, as in Do Not Foxtrot With. Rhino hates Romans. Don’t we all? But Rhino hates Romans.

  Not here in the gun bay with the rest of the Alphas was Flight Leader Cain Salvador. Lieutenant Cain Salvador now. Cain was probably on the command deck. That’s where Colonel Steele would be, if Colonel Steele was here.

  Merrimack was operating at the back of the Outback, at the edge of the galaxy, where it wouldn’t do to have a half battalion of Fleet Marines under the command of a mere rate. It would take two months or more to whistle a real officer out here from Earth. So they—the “they” who made those decisions—they had gone and field-promoted Cain.

  Nothing was right in the universe. Colonel TR Steele should be up there on the command deck, and Cain Salvador—Flight Leader Cain Salvador—should be in here in gun bay twenty-five with the rest of us Alphas.

  Should be was another way of saying ain’t.

  The buzz of the ship’s energy guns vibrated the gun bay.

  There’s Kerry Blue kicking her heels like a squirmy child. “Well, someone’s got trade.”

  “Ain’t us, chica linda,” said Carly Delgado.

  “I think they’re just shooting in the dark,” Shasher Wyatt said.

  Dak Shepard: “Can’t we do that?”

  “I’m with Shash,” Kerry Blue said. “Know what I’m not hearing?”

  Dak and Carly called it at the same time: “Incoming fire.”

  Listened to the ship’s beam gunners raking surrounding space with concentrated hellfire. Didn’t sound as though they connected with anything.

  “Helm. Take us to FTL.”

  “FTL, aye.”

  At the captain’s order the space battleship jumped out of normal space to faster than light.

  The stars disappeared.

  “Change course, random vector.”

  The pilot acknowledged. “Random vector, aye.”

  “Jump down to sublight.”

  “Sublight, aye.”

  The stars reappeared in the Merrimack’s portholes.

  “Position of the bogey!” Captain Carmel demanded.

  Tactical reported, “Bogey does not register on the tactical screen. Bogey does not appear to be in normal space.”

  Merrimack’s attacker had apparently dropped out of FTL to take its shots and immediately jumped back to FTL space. There was no knowing where the enemy was in FTL space. But here in normal space Merrimack was a sitting target.

  The captain said, “Dingo, I want to be somewhere else.”

  The ship’s XO, Stuart Ryan, was a lean, hard-strung man from the land of Oz, eager as a wild dog. Dingo Ryan gave the orders, “FTL jump. Random vector.”

  “FTL, aye. Random vector, aye.”

  Traveling FTL was dangerous inside a planetary system, but Merrimack had collision avoidance programmed into her otherwise random choices to prevent her from crashing through anything massive. Not that she couldn’t survive a collision with just about anything short of a black hole.

  Safe again at FTL, Calli Carmel rounded on Tactical like a hissing swan. “Tactical! Identify bogey.”

  The ship’s systems would have got a read on the hostile plot in the instant of its appearance while in normal space. Tactical had since had time to process the data.

  Marcander Vincent at the tactical station reported, “Bogey reads like a Roman Accipiter. Negative hull identifiers. But it posted a Roman flag.”

  “Helm. Change course. Random vector.”

  No one could track a plot moving FTL. But technology never stood still, and Calli Carmel took no chances when dealing with Romans. She assumed Merrimack was being tracked even while traveling in FTL space.

  “Random course change, aye,” the pilot responded.

  Calli looked to the tactical station. “Mister Vincent. Was the bogey sending IFF?”

  “Negative IFF.”

  “Negative transmissions while the plot was sublight,” the com tech added.

  “Dingo. Lock us down.”

  “Helm. Systems. Full lockdown.”

  Her XO gave the orders to make it happen. In full lockdown, Merrimack was almost invulnerable. The list of threats that could fit through that “almost” was getting longer by the year. Merrimack was still a grand ship, but not a new one.

  “Lockdown full. Aye.”

  “Return us to normal space, a thousand klicks from our original position.”

  “Space normal, aye.” The pilot gave the galactic coordinates of the space battleship’s new position.

  “Stand at full alert,” Calli ordered.

  And waited for their attacker to come back around for another strike.

  Dingo Ryan came to her side. “What do you think?” he muttered.

  Calli gave her head a small shake. Really didn’t know. “Nothing’s right about this.”

  Dingo glanced to a porthole. You never saw your attacker. But you really couldn’t help looking.

  “Where is he?”

  In the waiting, the ship began a low thumping from within. You felt it through the decks—Marines ’cussing. This percussion number was their own war dance. The Bull Mastiffs of the 89th Battalion wanted out to hunt.

  The bogey had shown a Roman flag.

  Calli: “Com.”

  “Com. Aye.”

  “Give me my direct res link to Numa.”

  “Res link open. On your com, Captain.”

  Caesar Numa Pompeii took Calli’s hail immediately. Without greeting, the voice of Caesar himself sounded from the captain’s com. “What do you have?”

  There were no gaps in his transmission. That was telling.

  Dingo mouthed without sound, He’s traveling sublight.

  Calli nodded silent acknowledgment. Spoke into the com, “Why did you jump me?”

  “Captain Carmel?” Numa sounded innocent. Truly. Not pretending.

  Calli told him, “I just took a thousand megaton tap from your Accipiter.”

  Caesar Numa’s voice returned a quiet rumble. “Not mine. Kill it. Then find the nest and kill that.”

  Calli didn’t take orders from the Roman emperor. But she welcomed permission to open fire on a Roman-flagged vessel. That permission betrayed Caesar’s desperation to exterminate the subversives.

  Caesar Numa didn’t ask where Calli was. He would already know, the instant she’d hailed him on the resonator.

  Rome had the technology to locate the source of a resonant pulse. The United States Naval Fleet didn’t.

  The res link went dead without a signoff. Unless Calli had Romulus in custody, Numa, the emperor of Rome, had no time for her.

  Calli turned to her XO. “That Accipiter can’t be alone.”

  Dingo gave a quick nod. He also smelled a rival predator here. “There’s a hidden outpost or a mothership close by. Got to be. We got lucky flushing out that Accipiter.”

  “Lucky never happens in my presence,” Calli said.

  Lucky usually meant you didn’t understand the situation. Lucky meant you were being set up.

  “It looks like we’re close to what we’re hunting for,” Calli said.
“I don’t trust the look.”

  No one ever just happened to run into anyone between stars. And this chance encounter felt altogether wrong.

  Calli posed her problem to the XO. “Why did the Accipiter hit us?”

  Dingo Ryan didn’t understand the question. “Sir?”

  “What did the Accipiter gain by attacking us? He knows we’re shielded. All he did by shooting at us was give away his presence. Why would he reveal himself? And how did he know we were here?”

  “Numa knows we’re here,” Commander Ryan said.

  “Numa knows now. He didn’t know where we were until I resonated him. Why is there a short-range Roman attack craft out here and why did it hit us?”

  “Sir, we’re in this star system hunting for a Romulid outpost. Is it too big a stretch to think we finally found one?”

  “Yes. It is. You know it is. If those are Romulii in that Accipiter, then we didn’t find them. They came out and flashed us.”

  Dingo Ryan covered his eyes and gave a growling snarl.

  The war drumming from down decks was getting louder. The Marines pounded, stomping on the bulkheads and ductwork. The sound reverberated through the ship. BOOM pom pom pom BOOM pom pom pom.

  Captain Carmel finally ordered, “Mr. Ryan. Throw a bucket of water on my dogs. They’re not going outside.”

  Four months after Caesar Numa ejected Merrimack from the Zoen star system at the galactic edge, the U.S. space battleship still patrolled the galactic Outback. This was not American space. The Perseid arm of the galaxy was dominated by colonies of the Pacific Rim nations of Earth. The United States had no colonies here.

  Merrimack’s company and crew of 1145 hands made her the largest U.S. presence in Perseid space.

  The Perseid arm of the galaxy had been a festering ground for Romulus and his rabid followers, the Romulii, even before his public rise to power. Romulus had founded most of the Roman colonies in Perseid space while his father Caesar Magnus was still alive.

  After Romulus’ meteoric rise and meteoric fall, his followers were still fanatics. More than ever. The Romulii became an underground subversive faction of the Roman Empire, disloyal to the legitimate Caesar Numa Pompeii.

  The United States was not an ally of Rome or its current emperor, Numa. Between Romulus and Numa, Numa was the lesser of two evils. It had been Caesar Romulus who declared war on the United States of America two years ago. The U.S. didn’t want to see that Caesar back in power.

  Romulus was missing.

  War’s end had left Romulus in Caesar Numa’s custody, incapacitated, and existing in an induced coma on the Roman capital world Palatine under heavy guard.

  At some time between then and now, Romulus’ rabid followers had spirited their comatose leader away from Numa’s custody. Worst guess had him way out here in Perseid space, being rehabilitated in preparation to bring him back to power.

  A healthy Romulus could mobilize worlds. Romulus had been adored. Still was.

  That Romulus might be alive and recovering in Perseid space was a nightmare that must never see daylight.

  So the Joint Chiefs had not ordered Merrimack back to Near Space.

  Captain Carmel ordered, “Launch Argus.”

  Argus, named for the mythical hundred-eyed giant, was a flotilla of drone scouts controlled by the Wraith—Specialist Tim Raytheon—the ship’s chief V-jock and drone wrangler. Wraith was young, bony, and pale. He received a rejuv three times a year to keep his reaction times sharp.

  Dingo Ryan ordered, “Mister Raytheon, turn over some rocks in this system. You’re looking for just about anything. You know what belongs and what doesn’t.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  The drone flotilla Argus deployed with no more noise than the hissing of missiles through their launch tubes.

  As the drones dispersed, Commander Ryan moved to Calli’s side. “It’s a big search area, Captain,” he said quietly.

  The rough dimension of the Indra Aleph star system was 500 billion cubic astronomical units.

  “It is that, Mister Ryan,” Calli allowed.

  But it was smaller than infinity. By galactic measure, Merrimack was just about stepping on the Romulid lair.

  Dingo said, “I’m surprised Romulus’ followers don’t have him in a labyrinth.”

  Romulus was beloved by his fanatics for his dangerous and twisted sense of entertainment. Calli’s brows lifted. A labyrinth did sound like Rom’s sort of fun.

  She said at last, “Is there anything to say they don’t?”

  12 Ianuarius 2448

  Asteroid 543

  Indra Shwa Zed Star System

  Perseid Space

  THE CRAMPED GRIMY CORRIDOR looked like it used to be white. The lights buzzed within dirty fixtures. Flickered on and off. Something yellow-green dripped off a moldering ceiling that was so low that Nox had to crouch. The drops sizzled on hitting the concrete floor and gave off a sickly sweet vapor. A dark bloody brown crust dried around the fallen drops. Flat, pincered bugs the size of flounders with serrate legs clung to the peeling walls on either side of him. Their mouthparts clacked.

  Then the passageway opened to a wide high chamber, and Nox saw in it what he was meant to see: In the floor, a pit. From the ceiling, a pendulum.

  Perched over the doorway hunched a molting, raggy-winged, one-eyed raven with a croaking caw and a viciously barbed beak.

  Almost none of it was real.

  Nox pulled his monoc down over his right eye. The filtered lens on the monoc showed him only what was really there—just a plain metal chamber. No monster bugs, no blood, no pendulum. There really was something sticky on the floor, but it was clear. The raven was nothing but a caw.

  Nox walked through the swinging pendulum.

  Overly complicated, nonsensical squidsquat. Nox would name this defensive program Jackass Quest, except that he was here to assassinate a Caesar. And a lot of the merda in here could really kill him.

  Sensors implanted in Nox’s eyes were sending readings up to the ship for his guide, Cinna, to process and direct him where to go. The patterner Cinna, codenamed Chessman for this mission, saw through Nox’s sensor implants. The implants sent more than visual images. And it wasn’t just Nox’s sensors sending the patterner information.

  The Chessman was seeing through the sensors that all his brothers carried, seven of them, crawling through this maze. Plugged into the ship’s vast data bank in patterner mode, Cinna could process all the input at once.

  “Nemo. Pit,” the Chessman warned.

  “I see it,” Nox said. “What do you want me to do with it?”

  “Don’t fall in,” said the Chessman.

  “Jump off a cliff, O Best Beloved,” Nox said back.

  “This looks like a game I played,” one of Nox’s brothers said.

  Another answered, “I think this is a game I played.”

  “Gurdanjan’s Dungeon,” said another.

  “That’s the one.”

  This program was set up to deter, distract, disguise, and destroy. This dungeon was meant to really kill them. Playfully.

  This was what happened when you put gamers in charge of security. They built in layers of overly elaborate, impractical, and outright frivolous obstacles, when what they really needed were heavily armed guards with orders to shoot to kill.

  The gaminess of this place had all the hallmarks of the Romulii.

  A lofty, no nonsense voice that had to be Nicanor’s sounded. “Chessman, can we just shut down the game generator so we can all see what we are doing?”

  “We could. If one of you shows me where the generator is,” the Chessman responded, and went on just as calmly, “Ogre. Run. To your right. Fast.”

  Nox heard heavy breathing over the link. Had to be Ogre. Running.

  The call signs were confusing Nox. The only c
all signs Nox knew instantly were Nemo—that was his call sign—and Chessman—that was Cinna, the patterner. Chessman was Nox’s navigator in here, his lifeline.

  And Scimitar. Nox knew the call sign Scimitar. Scimitar was the whole squad. If Chessman called Scimitar that meant all the brothers and it was an emergency. Nox listened for that one. If Chessman called Scimitar, they were probably running for their lives.

  Chessman: “Loki. Walk softly. You have a human being directly under you, one level down.”

  A whisper, probably Loki, sounded, “Can I shoot down?”

  The Chessman: “Don’t.”

  The presence of human guards meant the defenders were serious about guarding something, not just playing games. The presence of human guards also meant it was going to be a son of a bitch getting out of here alive.

  The man who sent the Ninth Circle in here was not desperately concerned with their getting out alive. Just in their completing the objective: Kill Romulus.

  Caesar Numa couldn’t openly order a hit on his predecessor. So Numa had secretly conscripted the most feared and vicious pirate band in civilized space, arranged their very conspicuous deaths, and placed a patterner in their squad.

  The brothers were privateers without a marque. Officially they didn’t work for Caesar. Officially they were the disgraced dead.

  There was a high chance of actually dying in here. They knew that coming in.

  The voice of the Chessman sounded in Nox’s ear: “Nemo, Paladin. Ignore the falling rocks.”

  Nox fell, screaming, with a feeling of being crushed and buried alive. His voice came out amazingly loud for having rocks caving in his chest. Nox gasped, “Chessman, is this a tactile illusion?”

  “It is. Get up and walk.”

  It took all Nox’s will and strength. He didn’t even feel his limbs moving. He just imagined walking. Then suddenly he lurched out of the illusion and staggered. And breathed.

  His brother Pallas, code-named Paladin, was standing over him. “You all right?”

  “I’m superluminary,” Nox snarled, gulping air.

  The patterner’s calm voice directed, “Nemo. See the iron maiden.”

  “I see it, Chessman.”

  “Open it.”

  Nox hesitated. “What’s inside?”