The Twice and Future Caesar

by R. M. Meluch

  “We’re not here to be safe,” Captain Forshaw said. It seemed the kind of pronouncement one should make at a time like this.

  “You had better be safe, sir,” Mishindi said. “You’re no good to anyone dead or captive. Now disappear.”

  Before Merrimack jumped to FTL, Captain Farragut asked Colonel Augustus, “Quo vadis?”

  Augustus showed no emotion. “Is that the only Latin you know, John Farragut?”

  “Just about,” Farragut admitted. “Where are you going?”

  “As I have no means of transport, I’m with you.”

  “I can’t give you a spacecraft. I can set you ashore somewhere.”

  “The last order I had from a legitimate Caesar was from Magnus. Magnus gave me to John Farragut. I was never here by choice. Sad to say, you are my best shot at keeping Rome alive. I vowed to protect Rome. I’m stuck serving you.”

  “Where I come from, vows made under duress are not binding,” Farragut said.

  “That is the difference between us. When a Roman gives his word, his word is given. The duress invalidates nothing.”

  11 March 2444

  0800 hours

  U.S. Space Battleship Merrimack

  Asteroid Belt, Solar System

  Near Space

  President Sampson Reed refused to seek refuge in the emergency continuity of operations center underneath the White House. So it happened that Romulid Legionaries were able to lay hands on him. They sat President Reed down in the Oval Office and activated all the cameras and news links. Romulus ordered the President to surrender the United States to Romulus.

  Farragut needed to drop Merrimack out of FTL to view the newscast in real time without relativistic gaps. The space battleship lurked inside the Solar System, on the surface of an asteroid, reflecting a light return that mimicked the asteroid’s surface.

  Lieutenant Hamilton couldn’t watch. She shifted her eyes away from the tactical display and stared off into nothing.

  When Romulus’ demand came, President Sampson Reed refused to surrender.

  Hamster heard the shot. She flinched. It had the sound of an old-fashioned handgun.

  Marcander Vincent reported coldly: “The President is down. The Speaker is up next. Congressman Sol Roythemd. Democrat. Connecticut.”

  Glenn peered at the display and caught a glimpse of Roman legionaries dragging Reed’s body out from behind the blood-spattered Resolute Desk before she looked away again. She heard the legionaries seating the Speaker of the House. Heard the voice of Romulus demanding surrender.

  Glenn Hamilton jerked at the pistol crack.

  Marcander Vincent: “The Speaker is down.”

  Glenn Hamilton looked to Captain Farragut.

  Farragut’s eyes were downcast, his gaze fixed on the deck.

  “Oh, no.” Lieutenant Hamilton put her hand on the captain’s shoulder, just for a moment.

  She never thought they would go this far down the line of succession this quickly.

  Tactical sounded as though he were checking program notes. “Up next is the President of the Senate Pro Tem. Who is that?”

  “Catherine Mays,” Glenn snapped at Marcander Vincent. More softly, she asked the captain, “Do you know where she is?”

  “Under the White House,” Captain Farragut said, trying to look stoic. “She’s in the bunker.”

  Glenn asked, scarcely audible, “Does Romulus know she’s your sister?”

  “I have no doubt that he does.”

  * * *

  Romulus signaled Senator Catherine Mays on a public broadcast channel and invited her up to the Oval Office.

  “The President’s place is in the White House,” he scolded. “Not hiding underneath it.”

  “I am not the President,” said Senator Catherine Mays.

  “Yes, yes, Senator. I do understand that you need to resign from your current position as President of the Senate Pro Tempore before you become President of the United States,” Romulus said.

  Captain Farragut roared on his command deck, “Get me a firing solution on Romulus!”

  “Searching, sir,” Targeting said, reluctant. The Xerxes’ stealth was perfect, and it was probably moving, probably close to Earth. Merrimack was fourteen light-minutes away.

  Romulus had access to an imager inside the secure bunker. It was focused now on Senator Catherine Mays.

  Romulus’ voice sounded, “Very well, then, Senator. Resign from your position.”

  “I do so resign.”

  Farragut shouted uselessly at the tactical display, “Cat! What are you thinking!” No one could hear him except his command crew. “Where’s my shot!”

  “Negative target.”

  “Augustus!” Farragut was near pleading.

  “If it were in my power, I would have taken the shot long before now.”

  They were searching for a hole in the vacuum.

  Romulus spoke sweetly for all the civilized galaxy to hear. “Very good, Madam President.”

  From here, a swearing-in wasn’t necessary. Catherine Mays was already President.

  Romulus’ imager cut in another scene from a second location, where Roman legionaries waited, arrayed in full ceremonial armor with spears.

  Romulus commanded the legionaries from afar, “Rack ’em.”

  A centurion repeated the command for the assembled troops. In a single motion, the Roman legionaries hoisted their spears to form an arch over a long gauntlet. The legionaries were all young. The centurion relaying Romulus’ orders to the men was terribly young.

  Glenn Hamilton gasped in sudden recognition. “That’s—”

  She stopped talking.

  The centurion was John Knox Farragut Junior. John John. Brother to Captain Farragut. Brother to the President of the United States.

  “That has to be an imposter,” Glenn said.

  Captain Farragut shook his head.

  No. It doesn’t.

  John Junior wore a belligerent expression that was trying to show pride, but it read more like wounded anger, as someone getting even after a grave insult.

  Under John Junior’s direction, Roman guards herded captive men-in-uniform into a column in preparation to walk in shame under the spears.

  Calli Carmel looked up from a data station. “Captain! None of those troops are U.S. military personnel. I ran their idents. They’re not even American citizens, and they’re no one’s military. They’re colonials dressed in U.S. uniforms. Romulus has pressed a few thousand stand-ins for this show.”

  Farragut nodded. The truth wasn’t necessary here. The appearance of truth was all Romulus required.

  John Junior was real.

  As more and more people from all the settled regions of the galaxy tuned in to watch the U.S. be subjugated, Romulus lined up a beam shot into the underground Presidential Emergency Operations Center. The bunker was well fortified.

  Executing the President down there required Romulus to plot a firing path through all the layers of the bunker’s inertial shell that was every bit as adamant as a space battleship’s fortifications. He could make those calculations. They were intricate but not beyond his power to resolve.

  His beam drill waited, ready to hit President Mays in the forehead when she tried to defy him.

  She would defy him. Romulus already knew that. She was a Farragut. Groveling would be good, but he couldn’t expect it.

  President Mays was young, a famously stodgy dresser. Her only jewelry comprised a wedding band and a plain locket on a thin chain around her neck. Romulus knew the locket contained pictures of her two boys and her husband.

  She was ridiculously ordinary.

  Catherine Mays made a prosaic figure seated at the broad desk, a faithful replica of the Resolute Desk that stood in the Oval Office above ground, but without the fresh blood on
it.

  Romulus detected some reluctance in his Xerxes to acquire the target. The damned diplomatic ship kept asking him to recalculate his line of fire, pointing out the risk of hitting a human being.

  Just in case his beam drill failed to fire, or in case Catherine Mays hid under the desk, Romulus had a resonator standing by in his displacement chamber. The resonator was prepped to transmit the irresistible harmonic. He made the necessary calculations to displace the resonator intact and functioning through the CONCOM bunker’s formidable jammers.

  What that death lacked in immediacy, it would make up for in terror.

  Romulus saw the President on the imager. She had taken a seat at her impressive desk. She looked straight ahead. Her posture made sighting the beam easy.

  Romulus gave the order over the public broadcast. “Madam President. The civilized galaxy is watching. Surrender your nation to the true Rome and to me as its Imperator.”

  President Catherine Farragut Mays spoke clearly for all the news outlets and for Romulus’ imager to carry. “My fellow Americans. This day, speaking as Commander in Chief, I order all U.S. armies and all U.S. military ships in port and in space to carry on. No surrender. Not ever. God bless America.”

  She made it a point to keep her eyes open.

  Romulus stood up, vibrating. Anger tasted rich. He ordered his Xerxes: “Fire.”

  EVENTUALLY THE PRESIDENT had to blink. She appeared unsettled.

  Catherine Mays assumed a posture of dignified waiting, becoming perplexed. Her eyes flicked to one side. She asked tightly, “Mister Julius, are we done here?”

  Captain John Farragut pounced on the tactical station. “Status! What’s Romulus doing? Someone tell me what just happened?”

  “Nothing to report, sir.”

  It was like waiting for a UXB.

  At last, on the feed from the CONCOM bunker, John Farragut saw President Catherine Mays stand up. “We’re done.” She walked out of the picture.

  Romulus scrambled to make his beam drill fire.

  He sent the order again.

  But the Xerxes’ firing system had shut down altogether.

  No. No. No.

  He commanded his ship: “Diagnose system failure.”

  The ship replied: “Unauthorized use of a Pacific product against a sovereign governmental institution resulted in system termination. If you believe you have received this message in error, please contact the manufacturer. Pacific apologizes for any inconvenience. Agents are standing by to assist you.”

  Romulus proceeded to his backup plan—to displace a res chamber transmitting the irresistible harmonic into the presidential bunker.

  But the displacement failed. The failure wasn’t an issue of the bunker’s defenses. The Xerxes’ displacement controls were not responding.

  A yelp from Claudia on the upper deck told him that her fantasy habitat had gone dark.

  And now all the Xerxes’ systems were shutting down.

  Targeting was dead.

  The Xerxes wasn’t even apologizing anymore. The ship didn’t like the target. Romulus had given it an illegal order. On his second attempt to breach the U.S. continuity of government bunker, the Xerxes decided it had been taken over by terrorists. It was sending a report to the manufacturer, shutting down, and erasing programs. Life support remained functional. Little else did.

  This was infuriating. Romulus would just shut the whole ship down completely, restart, and begin again.

  Farragut bellowed: “Find Romulus!”

  Tactical responded with some surprise. “I think I have him! I have him! There! Unidentified spacecraft on the grid.” Marcander Vincent brought up a visual image. He turned around from his station. “Is that what a Xerxes looks like?”

  The image of an elegant yacht-sized ship appeared on the monitor.

  “Acquire the target! Confirm identity!” Farragut ordered. “Hold your fire until I know for damn sure who that is.”

  The elegant ship was quickly collecting a coating of gorgons. They were clotting onto the ship, rapidly obscuring its graceful lines.

  Calli said, disgusted, “Now Romulus is shielding himself with gorgons.”

  Augustus spoke from the rear of the command platform. “You think that is shielding?”

  Romulus worked quickly, aware that the res chamber, which he’d tried to displace into the Presidential bunker, was still inboard. It was inside his displacement chamber, and it was resonating the irresistible harmonic.

  He needed to get down below, shut the res chamber off, and eject it.

  The Xerxes’ inertial field was down. Gorgons flocked to his unshielded ship. He heard them moving on the hull, scratching and thumping. He bellowed to Claudia to get a spacesuit on.

  In an attempt to reestablish control of his rogue systems, he plugged into patterner mode. He made the last connection to his Xerxes.

  The data bank was not there.

  Immediately, he was lost in a vast resonant consciousness, nebulous, infinite, hungry, angry, urgent. He was in the Hive. The Hive’s mindless mind overwhelmed. He was trying to form a thought, struggling to keep hold of himself.

  I?

  He was attempting to put words to things without definition. He was losing . . . losing what?

  The Hive detects the enemy Other inside a hard shell. Hardness of shell doesn’t deter. The Other inside must be destroyed.

  Gorgons chewed through the Xerxes’ hull. They squeezed the oily brown sacks of their bodies inside. They sprouted mouths.

  They touched an alien awareness.

  The Hive pressed on Romulus’ consciousness.

  I am—lost.

  I am all. I am everywhere.

  Am.

  What does am mean? Am has no meaning.

  Two things Romulus must do.

  He must keep hold of his singular self. And he must blend into the Hive totality. Romulus must do both. Neither allowed the other.

  Gorgons milled. They were inside the ship. They prodded with their mouths. Jostled him. Searching for the enemy Other. They sensed the Other. It must not exist. Imperative to kill the Other.

  This self was different. Incongruous. Is it I? Am I food?

  Romulus thought quickly. No. Not! I am not food. I am Hive!

  I am hungry.

  I am Hive. I am the infinite self. I am I. Single but not separate.

  The whole was still aware of difference. Romulus insisted: I am. I am All. I am One. I am Hive.

  Finally the whole resolved: You are Hive.

  Romulus: Yes! Yes! I am Hive!

  Hive: I am Hive.

  Romulus: Yes.

  Hive: You are You. You are Hive.

  Relief. Understanding. Romulus: Yes. I am Hive.

  Hive: I am Hive.

  Yes. The Hive understood now.

  Hive: I am Hive. You are OTHER Hive!

  The gorgons swelled. Their skins split open. They turned inside out. Translucent blue whiteness extruded from the gorgon husks. The new beings pushed and curled in on themselves into overlapping double loops.

  The empty gorgon husks shriveled. The skins’ dead flat stalks collapsed.

  Within the loops of each of the new gluies, a single large orifice, ringed and ringed with stubby milky teeth, undulated.

  Romulus swung a knife. The blade stuck in the gelatinous body.

  The orifice clamped onto the blade and sucked it in, along with Romulus’ arm. The stubby teeth were visible within the body, tearing his suit, chewing him.

  Burn stench stung his eyes. Smelled like death. Heard a sucking with the sound of chewing. Saw red.

  Heard Claudia. Screaming.

  Claudia wore her protective earring, and the protective harmonic ran in her bloodstream. The gluies scarcely noticed her moving among them. They had no
ears to hear her screaming.

  She disintegrated at their acidic touch. The gluies consumed her organic remains.

  Gluies used more energy than they provided to the Hive. Now, without the rival Other to combat, the Hive let their high-maintenance cells disintegrate.

  The gluies gave off black smoke as they melted.

  Merrimack’s tactical displays gave visual images to the sensor readings. The command crew saw the gluies that clung to the Xerxes were now losing cohesion. Their remains slowly sloughed off the ship’s hull on the inertia of their last motions.

  “Get a drone in there!” Farragut ordered. “We need to preserve Romulus’ data bank and get his res chamber! Get it done yesterday!”

  He crossed the command platform with long strides, back and forth, bouncing off the bulkheads. Caged.

  We won the battle. We’re about to lose the war.

  * * *

  The Xerxes put up no defense against the drone’s approach. The Xerxes had no inertial shell and no stealth properties. Its hull had been breached in many places.

  Wraith Raytheon, the drone wrangler, cringed as he piloted his drone in through a ragged hole in the Xerxes’ hull. Black ash and oil coated the interior surfaces. Small remnants suggested that the ruined space inside the ship used to be beautiful.

  “Any sign of Romulus?”

  “Negative presence,” Wraith reported. Flinched at a drop of his own sweat. “Possible remains. Here.”

  Wraith’s drone hovered over what looked like a patterner’s cables on the deck.

  “The gluies got him!”

  “Mister Raytheon. Locate and access the Xerxes’ data bank.”

  “Control center located, aye. I’m in, sir. Nothing to retrieve. The data bank has been destroyed.”

  “There has to be a trace read,” Farragut said. “Retrieve the ship’s data cells.”

  “Nothing to pull, sir.”

  The image from the drone showed fused and scorched masses that might once have been components. Melted trails burned across hard polymer surfaces. The drone found on the deck what might have been an earring in a patch of black residue.

  “Can you get the Hive harmonic off the ship’s res chamber?”