by R. M. Meluch
No burning penetrated through the thick layer of lion’s mane. Steele closed his other wrapped hand around the horn and turned, ready.
The chimaera lumbered toward him. No need to chase it.
As it neared, Steele dodged heavily to one side and plunged the poisoned goat horn between the thing’s ribs where its heart ought to be.
The lion body reared straight up, bugling and thrashing. It staggered on its hind legs. Tottered toward Steele, who broke into a run. The monster tripped toward him on two legs, foot over foot, until finally it fell over theatrically in a billow of dusty sand.
Done.
The crowd cheered.
Steele looked to his boy gang. They weren’t celebrating. They were gesturing frantically.
Of course no horror show ever ends the first time the monster dies. Something always comes back for a final bite. It was some kind of law.
The crowd sounds changed to cries and gasps.
The chimaera’s shattered teeth were melting into black oozing puddles in the sand. Then they were rising, taking shape, moving, growing. Flapping. Steele thought they might be turning into bats. Steele rocked his sword free from the lion’s brow, then stabbed at the things forming. Didn’t want to see what they were becoming.
There were too many of them.
One bubbled up and took to ragged flight.
The nightmare thing came at him, keening. Steele swung with his sword and batted it away broadside, hard. The ragged creature whistled skyward. And hit the energy barrier.
Steele hadn’t known there was an energy barrier between him and the audience, but of course there had to be.
On impact the black creature dissolved in a bright rainbow spray. More of the tarry black things rose from the sand, chittering, flying at him. Steele slashed and swung at them. Didn’t want to know what would happen if he let one touch him.
Got them all.
He bent over, his breath rattling.
Slowly he straightened up. He dragged himself to the goat’s other poison-tip horn. It was shorter than the one he’d plunged into the monster.
He still had hanks of lion’s mane wrapped around his hands. His right hand was a solid mass of pain, lion hair caked to it with his blood.
He picked up the shorter goat horn in his mane-wrapped left hand and threw it at Romulus.
Energy barriers only stopped fast moving objects. The thrown horn passed through the force field. It fell short of the imperial box and dropped into the crowd.
Won an ooooh from the crowd, and a sullen smirk from Caesar.
There was a scramble below Caesar’s box for the souvenir. Someone came up with the horn. Held it up like a home run ball.
Steele was disappointed that the horn didn’t burn the Roman.
Maybe the passing through the barrier neutralized the caustic, or maybe the caustic was effective on Steele alone. Steele couldn’t touch it. The Romans could.
The lupes had anticipated everything here. Nothing staged here. Nope. Not a thing.
The crowd didn’t care.
Women in front rows were throwing their tops at him. There came down water bottles, flowers, keys.
Dragging his sword, Steele trudged across the ring.
He picked up the severed snake head in his bloody hand and tossed it up before him. He twisted round, gripping his sword hilt in both hands like a baseball bat, and swung for the fences.
The broadside crack sent the snake head sailing up toward the Imperator’s box.
The snakehead passed through the energy barrier. Hit Romulus on the cheek.
A great inhalation rose from the crowd. Fell quickly into a stunned hush.
Except for Steele. Steele danced like a street fighter, beckoning with his bloody hand, daring Romulus to come down.
That brought gasps from the crowd.
Then Caesar stood up.
A moan rose and died in the crowd.
The entire civilized part of the galaxy held its breath, except for Steele, battered, and dancing his leaden foot shuffle. Bones showed through his burned palm, beckoning.
Romulus stood rigid like a spear stabbed in place.
Then Romulus moved.
Out came his sword.
Silence shattered into utter tumult.
CAESAR TOOK OFF A GLOVE. Threw it down into the arena. It landed at Steele’s shuffling feet.
Steele picked up the glove in his good hand and waved for Romulus to come down. You could see him saying, “Come on. Come on.” Couldn’t hear him. The noise in the coliseum was like the inside of a spaceship engine.
Captain Carmel watched from the command deck of the Merrimack. “That wasn’t an accident, that thing getting through Romulus’ force field.”
“Hell, no,” Dingo said. “Do you think Romulus is wearing a homing device in his cheek?”
“Must be,” Calli said. No one’s aim was that good from that distance. Romulus wanted Steele to hit him. “Romulus is playing Steele.”
“Steele can’t tell.”
“I don’t know. He might be able to tell it’s staged.”
“Captain, I don’t think he cares.”
They could see Romulus giving orders to an attendant.
One of the iron gates to the bloody arena clattered up. Steele spun and dropped into a defensive posture.
A medibot, showing a red cross, hovered out into the ring. Steele crouched, sword ready in his left hand to fight it off.
Romulus got on a megaphone and pronounced with the voice of Zeus over the noise. “Let the machine mend you, you ass. I will not fight a lamed adversary.”
And Romulus signaled for music.
The crowd stomped along with the beat.
The medical automaton hovered toward Steele. Steele swung at it.
A dart from the medibot immobilized him.
The crowd booed.
The boos might have been for Steele attacking the Red Cross or they could be for the bot paralyzing Steele.
Either way, Steele was unable to move until the bot repaired and re-skinned his hand, rehydrated him, and let him go.
The crowd bayed approval.
Steele flexed his right hand, snatched up his sword from the sand and took a swing at the retreating medibot.
He appeared reenergized and eager for a fight.
Up in the imperial box, Romulus threw off his cloak. He was wearing armor underneath. It gleamed like polished bronze. It was probably something harder and lighter. Romulus had come to the games ready for this match.
An attendant offered Romulus a crested helmet. Romulus made a show of refusing it. He touched the oak crown on his dark locks. You had to read his lips to know he said in Latin, “This is my armor.”
The music swelled.
Calli called for the status on measures to retrieve Steele from the arena.
“We can’t shoot through the dome, sir,” Targeting reported. “Can’t be done.”
“Then take out the dome generators.”
Dingo advised, “The generators are protected under their own force fields.”
“Then take out the continental power grid,” Calli said.
Tactical located the orbiting power plant that serviced the region around the coliseum.
“Target acquired.”
“Secure the target,” Calli ordered.
Beam fire hummed and hissed from the space battleship. You couldn’t see the shot. You saw the orbital power plant exploding.
Down on the planet surface, lights winked out across the continent.
The energy dome over the coliseum didn’t even waver. It shone like a ground star.
The Romulii had constructed the coliseum like a space station, self-contained and adamantly shielded.
Everything around it was dark.
&n
bsp; Calli crossed her arms. “I may have just shot myself in the career.”
“Captain, this is playing out to a script,” Dingo said. “Romulus has anticipated everything.”
Calli needed to outthink Romulus. That used to be easy. She used to know Romulus.
She didn’t know Romulus the patterner.
She caught herself wishing the unthinkable. She wished to hell that Augustus were here.
Romulus strode down the aisle toward the arena, his hands out to either side, accepting all the touches from his people.
Down in the arena, Steele danced like a boxer.
A moving shadow passed over the stands, followed by a roaring. The engine noise was scarcely distinguishable from the crowd noise. Sunlight glinting off something moving fast made everyone look up.
An echelon of U.S. Fleet Marine Swifts had passed over. They were turning around now in arrowhead formation. They came back and executed an airshow roll over the coliseum.
The Swifts fired field disruptors.
The emplaced defenses around the coliseum neutralized the disruptor signals. The flight of Swifts succeeded only in showing their colors.
And that was all they expected to do.
Captain Carmel had sent down the Alphas. Hoped she hadn’t made another mistake. The sight of Alpha Flight could put the heart in Steele or it could fatally distract him.
It was a useless stunt in any case. This fight was fixed. Calli knew it. But Steele got to see his wife fly over before he died. And he would die.
Unless it was part of Romulus’ playbook, Steele could not survive this contest.
Across the dust and heat shimmer, Steele looked into Romulus’ eyes. He saw an inhuman depth and hollowness to them. Steele had seen eyes like that before.
Augustus.
Those were Augustus’ eyes when Augustus was plugged into patterner mode. Steele looked for cables. But if Romulus had patterner cables they would be under that bronze collar and those long gauntlets on his forearms.
There was no saluting.
Romulus opened with a wide back swing, which left a huge opening under his raised arm.
Careless, Steele thought, dodging the strike. He thrust into the opening.
And now his sword was moving itself sideways.
That’s what it felt like. Wasn’t even a clash. Steele’s blade was just sliding off in the wrong direction with Romulus’ inhumanly fast parry.
Just like that. Fate turned in an instant.
Steele felt soft wet heat lining either edge of the wound opening in his side. The pain lagged behind the cut. Blood was leaving his head.
Then there was the pain.
A hit. Something felt like a hit. But it was a stab in his midriff. Steele couldn’t inhale. Couldn’t move his diaphragm. Romulus’ sword was in it.
And there went the lights.
Steele landed heavily on his back. His head cracked on the ground. He moved his mouth but couldn’t form words. Tried to spit. Tried to breathe.
Romulus strutted a wide circle around his fallen opponent soliciting a decision from the crowd. He milked the moment. Held his thumb pointing parallel with the ground, looking to every last one of the spectators, as if their vote counted.
And maybe it did.
The chant unified, became one creature with many heads, demanding, Vi-ve! Vi-ve!
They wanted Steele to live.
After an eternity the hand moved.
Thumb up.
Romulus stood over Steele. “I grant you life. I grant you freedom. Go home to your woman, gladiator.”
Romulus then turned his face up to the sky. “Merrimack, collect your man.”
“Shit!” Calli cried.
Down on the planet, a Roman medibot was stabbing Red Cross flags into the sand to plot a box around Steele.
Tactical cried, “We have a hole!”
The opening was visible on the tactical display. A shaft had appeared in the arena’s protective energy dome, through which a displacement extraction might be possible.
Commander Ryan turned to Calli. “Captain! It’s a Trojan horse!”
“I want the horse!” Calli cried. “Dingo. Collect Steele the same way we collected Nox. Nothing touches this ship.”
Dingo immediately arranged for an isolation capsule to be equipped with a full trauma rig, nanite scanners, and bomb sniffers. The capsule was cast outboard of Merrimack and outside of her inertial shell. He called for the ship’s Medical Officer to report to the displacement department.
A practicing Riverite, Merrimack’s chief Medical Officer Mohsen Shah calmly accepted whatever occurred. But even Mo’s river was capable of rapids. It was odd to see a man look serene while moving that quickly.
Mo Shah ran to the displacement department.
In an instant he was down in the arena, standing over Colonel Steele.
Mo Shah was a strange, benign presence on the killing ground, with his unimposing build and beatific face. The bloodthirsty audience greeted his appearance with polite applause.
Mo Shah knelt beside the fallen gladiator, snapped a displacement collar around Steele’s neck, and slid a landing disk underneath him. Then he signaled, “Merrimack. I am being ready for displacement.”
With a thundercrack Doctor Mo Shah and Colonel TR Steele vanished from the arena.
Doctor Shah reported over his com link, “We are being arrived intact in the isolation capsule, Captain.”
“Mo! Can you revive Steele?”
“Colonel Steele is not being dead,” Mo Shah reported. Then, as impatient as Mo ever got, said, “My patient is requiring all of my attention.” Mo’s way of saying leave him alone and let him do his job.
Calli clicked off.
A nanite scan had begun the instant Mo Shah and Steele displaced into the isolation capsule.
Dingo Ryan advised quietly, “The nanite scan is clear so far.”
Calli nodded, grateful.
The ship’s IO, Bradley Zolman, asked, “What if the nanite is programmed to return a null to a sensor?”
“Then we’ll see the shape of the nullity,” Dingo Ryan assured him. “If there’s a nanite in Steele, the scanner will find it.”
“I don’t think Romulus planted anything on Steele,” Calli said.
“Why? I would,” said Z.
“You get into trouble anticipating the enemy’s moves by what you would do,” Calli said. “Romulus doesn’t think like normal people. What he values are power, glory, and Claudia. Not in that order.”
“Then what does Romulus get out of this stunt?”
“That.” Calli nodded at the visual feed from the arena.
The crowd was on its collective feet, dancing. Music rocked. Confetti rained. Flower petals fluttered down. A light show dazzled overhead.
Romulus lifted his arms up and wide, collecting the adoration, to chants of “Romulus Deus!”
15 Aprilis 2448
Xerxes
Centauri Star System
Near Space
Romulus returned to his Xerxes ship, energized. He could do anything. The first night of games had been a spectacular success. Only the powerful could afford to be merciful. He had shown his power and his mercy. He had established his omnipotence.
He had left his data spiders here in his Xerxes searching every known database for clues to where Claudia was.
He had to find her quickly. He couldn’t bear the thought of her continuing to suffer as he had suffered.
His medici had given him tools to extract the nanites from himself. He could restore Claudia to health with those tools. It was only a matter of finding her.
He checked his search engine’s progress. The search was complete.
The data spiders had located Claudia’s remains.
Rom
ulus staggered back from the console. He couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. He fell to his knees then forward onto his hands. Coughed into the deck.
Everything was colorless, tasteless, useless.
She was gone. He couldn’t save her.
Even he could not bring back the dead.
He got up. Steadied himself on his feet. Breathed volcanic breaths.
He could not bring back the dead.
But he could add more dead.
18 April 2448
U.S. Space Battleship Merrimack
Centauri Star System
Near Space
Jose Maria de Cordillera, on board the Merrimack, received a resonant hail from his home world.
Terra Rica was a rich, lightly populated planet, a private colony founded by the wealthy Cordillera family from old Spain. Its habitable zone was wide. Its atmosphere and waterways were famously clean. Terra Rica was a paradise.
Jose Maria beheld his niece’s face on the resonator. AnaLuisa was at the controls of her sky yacht. Jose Maria had given her the yacht for her birthday.
Something was wrong with her face. Even as Jose Maria tried to make out the dark marks on her cheek, they popped and she jerked. In a blink, the dark spots had doubled their size. So did a crusty patch on the front of her shirt.
AnaLuisa blinked tears. Her voice was unsteady. “Tio Jose Maria, I, oh, this is it.”
Jose Maria breathed, “Corazon.”
AnaLuisa sobbed. “Do not send medical aid. They—these things—they are not biologic. Do not send anyone. Do not come. Do not let anyone come. Make everyone go. This started ten minutes ago. They are doubling, I think. Every minute. I think this is Jericho.”
There was a white blank instant during which Jose Maria’s mind refused to acknowledge the ultimate nightmare. Something that doubled itself every minute, something as small as a gram, could consume the world in eighty minutes. The world would cease to support human life sooner than that.
The Jericho protocol was the procedure for global evacuation in case of an aggressive contagion.
