by R. M. Meluch
Numa Pompeii then turned away dramatically, as if he’d seen enough. He made a theatrical upward lifting motion with his broad hands. And as he did, the cameras on distant Arra captured images of the Hive swarms rising into the air, tentacles reaching upward as they left the ground.
The alien plague lifted away, apparently in obedience to Numa Pompeii’s command.
LEN officials there on the planet Arra were shown crying with gratitude and relief. They hailed Numa their savior.
Numa allowed time for the media to verify the truth of the images. Caesar Numa Pompeii really was pulling the gorgons away from the planet surface.
Then Numa turned to the cameras with deep disgust and scolded the watching galaxy, “Put not your faith in mad dogs.”
JOHN FARRAGUT TURNED AWAY from the Tactical display. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the images of Hive swarms turning at Numa Pompeii’s command. “Is that real? Somebody tell me how Numa can be directing the Hive. And from two thousand parsecs away!”
“Numa has the irresistible harmonic,” Commander Calli Carmel said. “Must have.”
“So what if he does? How did Numa get a resonator all the way across two thousand parsecs to the Myriad for the gorgons to chase? He doesn’t have any ships out there. How is Numa controlling a resonator from two thousands parsecs away.”
Calli shook her head. Not a clue.
Jose Maria de Cordillera suggested, “Possibly you may find answers in the brig, young Captain.”
Farragut bounded to the hatch. “Commander Carmel has the deck and the con. Jose Maria, I’d like you with me.”
Augustus didn’t rise at the captain’s entrance into the cell. He spoke with his eyes shut, motionless as a coiled serpent. “Ave, Don Cordillera.”
To Farragut Augustus said nothing.
“Who do you belong to?” Farragut demanded.
“Rome,” said Augustus.
“Are you Numa’s man?”
“Numa Pompeii has made it known that he’d be damned if he ever stooped to using patterners. I don’t know if Numa is damned or not, but I won’t move against him, given that he’s the lawful Imperator.”
“I need you to see this.” Farragut sat down with a resonator.
A moment passed.
“It requires opening your eyes, Augustus.”
The eyes opened.
Farragut replayed the wizard’s duel for Augustus, showing first the Hive’s renewed assault on the planet Arra in the wake of the election of Numa Pompeii and then the Hive lifting away from the planet at Numa’s supposed command.
“How is Numa controlling the Hive from two klarcs away?”
“I was not consulted.”
“Might Numa have an agent inside the LEN and on site?” Jose Maria suggested. “There could be someone on board Woodland Serenity who can deploy decoys and effect resonance in the Myriad on behalf of Caesar.”
“Numa’s mind is not a database that I can access,” Augustus said. “But it’s a well-reasoned guess, Don Cordillera. Can I come out of the brig?”
Farragut said, “Not until I know where Numa’s Rome stands with the U.S. Need anything in here, Augustus?”
“Don Cordillera and a chessboard.”
Farragut looked at Jose Maria, who nodded consent.
“Moebius or regular board?”
The shape of the board didn’t really matter to these two. They kept all the moves in their heads anyway.
“Moebius,” Augustus said. “It’s more elegant.”
Romulus paced long strides within his Xerxes. He was vibrating with rage. And fear. He’d thought he was past fear.
His secret weapon had betrayed him.
Numa Pompeii should not have the irresistible harmonic yet. Not in the year 2443. But Numa did have it. It was yet another deviation from the original timeline as Romulus had lived it.
And now the Roman Senate had declared Numa their Caesar because they thought Numa controlled the Hive. These people did not understand the nature of the enemy.
And they do not understand the power of me.
They required enlightenment.
Romulus would teach these lesser beings what a powerless pretender was Numa Pompeii.
Romulus issued a terse pronouncement. “People of all nations, try to find me when you are ready to kneel.”
Immediately, sarcastic media commentators claimed to be quaking in terror. They asked one another: “Anyone kneeling at your location? Not here. You? Let’s check in with our affiliate on Mu Cygnus. Any outbreaks of kneeling there?”
“Why, yes, Sal, I have a sighting of kneeling here on Thaleia. Oh. No. Wait. That’s a marriage proposal . . . Stand by. . . . Yes. She said yes.”
10 September 2443
Roma Nova, Palatine
Corona Australis star system
Near Space
Upon the ascension of Caesar Numa Pompeii, Magnus was invited to leave the imperial palace. There was a tacit command for him to remove his children with him.
Magnus engaged a freighter to transport his belongings out of the palace and back to his country estate in the green rolling hills outside Nova Roma here on Palatine.
Magnus’ son Romulus showed up in person to collect a few things he valued and some things Claudia wanted. The palace had been their home for most of their lives.
Romulus didn’t really care to see his father, but Magnus sought Romulus out.
The old man looked sad and unbearably solicitous. The monumental scale of the palace, the thick soaring columns, the vast domed ceiling high overhead, all made Magnus look very, very small. He hadn’t been rejuvenated. His own fault. He didn’t need to look that frail. If he thought age made him look wise, he was desperately mistaken. He looked beaten.
Caesar Magnus had been responsible for the annihilation of sixty-four Legions. No one recovers from that.
And Magnus took personally the mockery heaped on his child.
Magnus sounded mortally embarrassed. “My son, you cannot expect to ascend so quickly without stumbling. If you would rule, take a step back.”
Romulus absorbed the absurdity. This broken man dared give him advice? If I would rule? A dangerous glassy-eyed smile slid onto Romulus’ face. I do rule. Romulus said softly, “I rule an Empire bigger than this galaxy.”
Within days of Numa’s miracle, the gorgons in the Myriad inexplicably reversed themselves one more time. Ravenous swarms of them descended back to the surface of the planet Arra. The Hive threat had not been neutralized after all.
The League of Earth Nations contacted the new Imperator of Rome, Numa Pompeii. The LEN urgently requested that Numa restore his protection to the planet Arra and to the other worlds within the Myriad star cluster.
The demand, the need for it, caught Numa off guard. He didn’t let his confusion show. He improvised. He told the LEN that the reversal of the Hive was the League’s fault. The LEN hadn’t obeyed his instructions to the letter.
The LEN representatives insisted they had done everything Numa required.
Numa Pompeii clicked off and turned away from the resonator in his battlefort Gladiator. “Merda.”
“Domni?” his exec, Portia Arrianus prompted.
Numa had not yet made any move to take up residence in the imperial palace on Palatine. He had always preferred his battlefort to any ground station.
He told his exec, “Confirm that the LEN decoys in the Myriad are actually resonating on the proper Hive harmonic.”
Portia Arrianus promptly entered the irresistible harmonic into her res chamber. She reported, startled, “Nothing, Domni. I’m reading nothing on that harmonic. The decoys are not resonating.”
“Resonate the irresistible harmonic.”
“It’s not going, Domni.”
Numa snarled. “Explain ‘It’s not going.’
Resonant pulses don’t go. They are.”
“Domni, the harmonic is not.”
“How does a harmonic vanish?”
“Someone must be resonating on the complement of the harmonic. That’s the only way.”
It was a known phenomenon. You could interrupt harmonic messages by resonating the complement of the harmonic. Neither harmonic existed at the moment of collision. The tactic was common among jilted lovers.
Numa growled in sudden revelation.
“Get me that pinprick on the resonator. No. Strike that. Set me down in my palace.”
Numa Pompeii in his vast flesh arrived inside the imperial palace with a displacement thundercrack. He strode across the marble antechamber and prowled all the chambers, his sword drawn, ready for Romulus. He found only Magnus looking withered and forlorn. Packing.
Numa received a resonant hail. He assumed it was Portia Arrianus, and he answered, impatient. “Speak.”
No video image accompanied the slow sardonic voice that didn’t belong to his executive officer. “Caesar. Save them.”
Numa. Voice like an earthquake. “Romulus! You are taking responsibility for the Hive reversal in the Myriad?”
“I’m revealing your impotence in the face of humankind’s greatest threat.”
“Stop canceling out my harmonic. Otherwise, confess to being humankind’s greatest threat yourself.”
“The harmonic is all yours,” Romulus said blithely. “May it give you joy.”
Numa reactivated the irresistible harmonic. It existed again. But there was nothing irresistible about it now. The LEN in the Myriad reported that the gorgons on the planet Arra continued to ravage everything within tentacle reach. Whatever had been distracting the Hive earlier was now gone.
“What did you do, Romulus?” Numa roared into his res com. “What the hell did you do?”
“Knowledge is power, Caesar. I have it. You do not. Knees,” Romulus told Numa. “I am expecting knees.”
No one was kneeling. It was a tragedy, of course, the Hive’s renewed descent to the beautiful distant alien world, Arra. But its threat to Earth and Palatine was still remote. Humankind had more than a century in which to prepare for the eventual gorgon invasion of Near Space, time enough to devise a solution. The nations would think of something in that time.
“You don’t have a century,” Romulus told humankind. “You have until yesterday.”
The Hive that had existed on the irresistible harmonic was dead. It died the instant Romulus resonated the complement of the Hive harmonic.
When a Hive’s harmonic goes silent, the entire Hive dies.
But during its long existence a Hive left behind eggs anywhere it ever found food.
And in the combined presence of food and the absence of its parent Hive, those eggs wakened as a new Hive, resonating a new harmonic.
Romulus had seen that happen in the future. Here, now, he made it happen sooner.
Romulus knew the new harmonic of the successor Hive. He’d got it from Merrimack’s future records.
Romulus knew where some eggs of the successor Hive lay buried, strategically located. He’d already seen them hatch five years from now.
And on an airless world a scant twenty light-years from Earth, tentacles broke from ancient bedrock.
14 September 2443
U.S. Space Battleship Merrimack
Fort Theodore Roosevelt
Near Space
John Farragut visited his patterner in the brig. “Augustus, does Romulus have your Striker?”
Augustus had been playing a Spanish guitar. The guitar belonged to Jose Maria. Augustus set the guitar aside on the cot. “I believe not.”
“Where is your Striker?” Farragut demanded.
“Last we saw, Romulus chucked it out of his Xerxes. Back in the Myriad.”
“Means he might have taken your Striker in tow.”
“He didn’t,” Augustus said. “You know that.”
“I do?”
“You should. Towing my ship would obviate his stealth. You would have detected it.”
“Did he scuttle it? Your Striker?”
“You would need more input to make that conclusion, and I’m lacking equipment to get any such information.”
“Ask your Striker if it’s still out there.”
Farragut knew that Augustus could contact his ship remotely. Resonance didn’t care how far apart you were.
“For what purpose?” Augustus asked.
“Your ship is too valuable and dangerous a piece of equipment to be left floating around.”
“So am I,” said Augustus, valuable and dangerous. “You don’t want me to ping my Striker if it’s still in the Myriad.”
“Why don’t I want that? Because the Hive will detect your Striker receiving the res pulse? I’d like few things better than for the Hive to eat your Striker and get it off the game board.”
Saying so, Farragut walked around the moebius chessboard. Moebius chess was like real chess, but it forced you to look at the board differently. It was too easy to make a false move.
This game was still in progress. Farragut had to lean over to see the pieces in the upside down curve. “How does anyone play this?”
“Carefully.”
“Does Jose Maria have a chance of winning this game? You’re a patterner.”
“He does if I don’t plug into patterner mode.”
Farragut straightened up. “Ask your Striker where it is.”
“You’ll cost Don Cordillera the game.”
Farragut crossed his arms in a pose of impatient waiting.
“If you so order,” Augustus said. “If I contact my Striker, it could destroy me. Is that what you want?”
“How? Why would your own ship destroy you?”
“It is probable, to a near certainty, that Romulus rigged my Striker to snare my programming in the event that I try to access its control system.”
“No. I don’t want that,” John Farragut growled, taking big strides in the tight compartment. But John Farragut didn’t like leaving a loose end of that magnitude that far behind him either.
Merrimack’s artificial gravity gave one of its hiccups. Farragut momentarily lost contact with the deck. Gravity restored, he landed without missing a step, long accustomed to his ship’s moods.
The strings of the Spanish guitar vibrated an open chord.
The pieces on the chessboard were magnetic and held their positions.
Farragut signaled the guard that he was ready to exit the brig.
Augustus spoke at his back. “Tell Don Cordillera I have mate in three.”
15 September 2443
Kentucky, USA
Earth
Near Space
His Honor John Knox Farragut Senior, Justice of the Supreme Court of the Commonwealth of Kentucky, took a call from his wife. Mama Farragut told him they had a guest at the house.
Hospitality was a sacred duty, so it didn’t matter that the visitor was Roman. Mama Farragut had taken him in, offered refreshment and insisted he stay for dinner. When she found out the visitor was a man of importance, she called her husband in the state capital. Did John Senior want to join them for dinner? The guest’s name was Romulus.
Dinner itself was fairly civilized. Nothing of any weight was discussed during the meal. Romulus complimented his hostess.
When the bourbon and cigars came out, the women and children left the room. His Honor kept his work and home life separate. He did not want the mother of his children involved in politics.
The gloves came off. A smile was really just a show of teeth anyway. Romulus and His Honor smiled at each other.
John Junior, who was fourteen—just old enough to be allowed to stay in the room—remained silent, awed, as smiles flashed like razors.
The visitor was audacious. His Honor would have shot the Roman if he weren’t a guest.
There were interstellar warrants out on this particular Roman, but you do not abuse guests in your house. You just don’t.
Romulus had floated the idea of provincial rule for his host. Justice John Knox Farragut Senior already considered himself the de facto ruler of the Commonwealth of Kentucky. He did not appreciate a Roman offering him what was already his.
At evening’s end, His Honor left it to young John John to escort their guest out.
Romulus shocked John Junior to holy hell when he turned at the transport’s hatch and told him, “Your eldest brother is overrated, you know. You bear your father’s full name. Yet your father doesn’t know your worth. When you get tired of being John John, here is my exclusive harmonic.” He passed young John a data slip. “It’s not turning coat. America was founded as—and still is—a Roman province. The time for deciding is soon. I have seen your heart and it is Roman. Erroso.”
The parting word wasn’t Latin. It was Greek. John Junior was well educated and recognized the word. Alexander the Great signed his letters so. Be strong.
As John Junior went back into the house, breaking news was showing on the receiver.
A state of emergency had been declared on the Near Space planet of 82 Eridani III. Verified reports were coming in of gorgons emerging from the prehistoric ground.
Astronomically speaking, the Hive was now in Earth’s backyard.
Experts were scrambling for estimates of when the swarm might arrive on Earth.
16 September 2443
U.S. Space Battleship Merrimack
Fort Theodore Roosevelt
Near Space
“NEVER,” Captain John Farragut declared. “We are not letting the Hive reach Earth. Ever.”
On orders from the Admiralty, Merrimack blazed out of Fort Theodore Roosevelt toward the 82 Eridani star system. At threshold velocity it would take her over twenty-four hours to get there.
