The Umbra handler grinned. “I told you it was going to be fun.”
#
The Vestal Virgins had been the guardians of Roma’s Eternal Flame for over 1,500 years. It was said that Romans loved the Vestals like a mother, but obeyed the Collegia Pontificis like their paterfamilias.
That’s why it stunned Kaeso that a Vestal wanted to defect to Libertus. The why of it, however, was none of his business. The Vestal was just another mission object. He had his orders, and like any Umbra Ancile, he would carry them out.
He stood in the long line at the Temple of Vesta’s east entrance, his Umbra cloak projecting an elderly pilgrim from India with black and gray hair, brown skin. He moved along with the rest of the line filled with families, pilgrims from far off Republic worlds…and undercover Praetorian Guardsmen.
Only the standard cohort of six Collegia Lictors guarded the temple’s entrance. Kaeso’s trained eyes, however, found the Praetorians stationed throughout the Forum: the young couple sitting at the outdoor tavern smiling at each other over full wine glasses; the middle-aged man on a bench near a fountain reading the Daily Acts on a tabulari scroll, but never tapping the device to move the pages; the window cleaners on the Temple of Janus next door that had scrubbed the same window twice since Kaeso had been in line.
Umbra had taught Kaeso patience, training he relied on to get him through the line and into the Temple. He could have trusted his briefing; his implant enabled him to recall data better than his own memories. But he always reconnoitered a mission location in person. The implant data, combined with his own memories, gave him a complete sense of a place that one alone could not give him.
Kaeso passed the body scans at the door—his Umbra cloak showed the internals of the same man it projected on the outside—and shuffled through the Temple with the rest of the Romans. The Temple was ancient, and thus quite small compared to the modern Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus a few blocks away. It was a circular room no more than thirty paces wide with columns around the periphery. The Sacred Fire of Vesta burned in a brazier set into a marble pedestal in the center of the temple. Two Vestal Virgins stood on either side of the brazier. Both were dressed in the attire of their order: a white woolen infula draped over their heads, a white suffibulum veiling their faces, and a red and white palla draped over their bodies. Both Vestals stood still with their heads bowed, their lips moving in silent prayer.
Kaeso recognized the Vestal to the right as the woman in his briefing. Her name was Calvina Domitia, from a respected patrician family in Ostia just fifteen miles from Roma. She was young, no more than twenty-five, with dark braided hair and an olive complexion. He saw why the Vestals had chosen this woman. Her face could not have been more Roman.
Kaeso remained with the rest of the crowd and walked past her without stopping. Calvina kept her eyes downcast the whole time; she would have no way of knowing Kaeso’s disguise anyway. He continued around the Flame’s perimeter and then out the door.
With her image firmly in his memory and implant—along with the security details outside—he felt more confident that his initial assessment of the mission was correct.
This would be the hardest exfiltration he’d ever attempted.
#
Kaeso chose to walk from the Temple of Vesta back to his Palatine Hill flat. The long walk enabled him to go over his planning for this impossible mission. Impossible is what Umbra does, he reminded himself. It’s why the Romans, and even the Liberti Senate, think we’re ghosts.
It was dark when he finally arrived at his one-room flat on the sixteenth floor. When he entered, he said, “Lights.”
The lights came on. He drew his pulse pistol and aimed at the hooded figure sitting on the couch near the window. The figure held up its hands.
“Forgive me,” cried a woman’s voice, “I did not mean to startle you!”
“Who are you?”
“I—I need your help.”
The woman slowly stood, and then pulled down her hood. It was the Vestal, Calvina Domitia.
Kaeso thought furiously. How in the name of Jupiter does she know where I live? How did she get out of the Temple?
He was half tempted to shoot her now. A surprise like this meant a Praetorian trap. They had somehow set this all up to flush out Liberti agents in their midst, who they could never catch. For the Vestal to know his address meant she was either a Praetorian who had made him, or she had far more access to Umbra resources than even he did.
The latter possibility was all that stopped him from killing her now.
“Look, lady, I just work for the Senate. Call the city vigiles if you’re in trouble.”
Kaeso’s cover job was a security lictor for Senator Gaius Octavius Blaesus. The kind Senator had no idea who Kaeso really was, and there were times he almost felt guilty about misleading Blaesus.
But there was no room for kindness in an Ancile’s work. Kindness would only stop him from killing unarmed women to protect Umbra’s secrets.
The Vestal gave Kaeso a hard look. “I could go for a pint of posca.”
Kaeso froze again. She’s using the Umbra pass code for aid.
“I don’t have any posca,” he responded. “There’s a pepper shortage.”
She looked a little more hopeful, and then said, “Posca isn’t that hard to make. Just takes…” She paused, as if struggling to remember the correct order of the words. Kaeso tightened his finger on his trigger. “It just takes sour wine, some water, and a few herbs.”
“Posca needs pepper. I’d never keep second-rate posca in my home.”
“Then where can I find second-rate posca?”
Kaeso exhaled sharply. He holstered his pistol, turned and opened his flat door. It was clear in both directions. He looked back at the Vestal and said, “I’ll show you.”
#
Kaeso guided the hooded Vestal out of his high-rise flat and into a taxi driven by a bald golem with bright yellow skin. They switched taxis two more times, following a circuitous route through Roma’s Suburba. They finally stopped at an oak grove consecrated to Diana on the Trastevere side of the Tiber River before he actually spoke to her.
“Why did you come to my flat?” Kaeso growled, his eyes surveying the park for threats or signs of pursuit. “I was supposed to get you out.”
“Leaving the Temple was never a problem,” Calvina said. “I need help leaving Roma.”
“How did you know where I live? And who gave you the aid codes?”
“Galeo gave them to me.”
Kaeso clenched his hands into fists. Blessed Juno, I swear I’m going to kill him.
“Those codes are used between agents like me, not by mission objects like you.”
Calvina stiffened. “I’m not an ‘object,’ I’m a person in great danger. And with information your people need. You are supposed to help me, not lecture me.”
Kaeso took several deep breaths. Once he was relatively sure he could keep his voice steady, he said, “I don’t like surprises. Especially when it comes to my missions. You were supposed to wait for me to contact you. Why did you come to my flat?”
Her face darkened. “I couldn’t wait any longer. Things have developed that required me to leave sooner than we had planned. I contacted Galeo and he told me how to find you.”
When she said no more, Kaeso got the impression she was unwilling to tell him just what those “developing things” where. Though curious, Kaeso was trained to ignore details that did not affect his mission. Whatever her reasons for leaving so soon, she was here now and he had to adjust his planning.
Kaeso licked his lips. “Very well. To be honest, you just made this mission much easier.”
“At least I did something right.”
He looked at her in the lights of the dimly lit park. The lights would turn off at moonrise once the oak groves filled with Diana worshipers. Calvina was terribly frightened, her eyes darting from one oak tree to another, searching out
threats just like he was doing. He needed to calm her down before she did or said something that drew too much attention.
“Everything will be fine,” he said, affecting a reassuring smile. “I’ve done this many times.”
Her eyes shifted to him. Where he had meant to put her at ease, he had only made her angry. “In three hours, when the Vestalius Maxima finds out that I’m missing, all of Roma will begin looking for me. My face will be on every news crier broadcast and every vigile wanted list. The Praetorians and Collegia Pontificis will use all their resources to find me. Gods, even the Consul will come down off his heavenly Capitoline perch and join the hunt. Given all that, do you still think ‘everything will be fine’?”
Rather than make things worse, he simply said, “So…do you like to fish?”
#
After the street lamps went off in the oak grove and the Diana worshipers began their rituals, Kaeso located one of the many supply caches he kept hidden across Roma. This one was beneath a boulder covered by shrubs. He pulled out the metal box and handed Calvina several items: the gray uniform of a fishing guildsman, plastic chits amounting to two hundred sesterces, and a mesh Umbra hood.
Calvina stared at the hood curiously.
“I’ll need to cut your hair to make it fit,” Kaeso said.
She nodded distractedly.
“You’re name is now Vivia Laelius and you are a Remiges First Class on the tuna freighter Pisces.”
Calvina smiled sadly. “My father was a tuna fisherman in Ostia. I thought I would be too…until the Collegia took me.”
“Took you?” Kaeso said, looking for a knife in the cache box. “I thought Vestals wanted to be Vestals.”
“Not always. In my case the gods chose me by giving me the face of the ‘ideal’ Vestal. The Collegia found me when I was thirteen and took me to the Temple for training.”
Kaeso knew he was dangerously close to learning more about the mission object than he needed. Caring only distracted him from the important details. Like surviving.
He found the knife and looked up at her.
“I have to cut your hair now.”
Calvina let Kaeso slice her long braided hair until it was only an inch above her scalp. When he was done, she glanced at the pile of dark hair on the ground and then raised her chin. “I look like your sister now.”
Kaeso smiled before he could stop himself.
She rubbed her head. “I hear short is the Liberti style for women.”
He winced at a flash of memory. His Liberti wife, from a life before Umbra, had the same short hair as Calvina. Then he saw his wife’s ship explode, heard her screams on the comm. Gods, I can’t remember this, not on a mission. He ordered his implant to clamp down the memories like he always did when they came. The memories faded. His mind compartmentalized, enabling him to concentrate on the task before him and nothing else. His implant would give him new tasks when it was time for them.
The mission became his sole focus again. And he stopped caring about its object.
“It is. Put the hood on.”
Calvina slipped the hood over her head. While the hood was deactivated, she looked like someone wearing a translucent metallic sock. Kaeso focused his implant on the cover identity Galeo had given him. The hood flickered and then became the face of Vivia Laelius, an ethnically Zhonguo woman from Terra’s eastern Asia.
“Did you change me?” Calvina asked. “I can’t tell.”
Kaeso nodded, and then inspected the hood to ensure it completely covered her head and neck.
“Say something,” he said, checking whether her projected mouth synced with her voice.
“You are saving my life, sir, and I don’t even know your name.”
“Nor will you,” Kaeso said. The hood worked to his satisfaction. “Let’s go.”
Calvina followed without speaking. Kaeso was glad for her silence; he already knew too much about her.
#
Calvina had been wrong earlier. The news criers broadcasted her “kidnapping” within two hours after her escape from the Temple of Vesta. Within three hours, the six Collegia Lictors responsible for protecting the Vestal Virgins were screaming their innocence from iron crosses arranged side by side in the Roman Forum. In four hours, the Roman Consul, Marcus Antonius Publius, made a rare appearance on all visum channels declaring in his preternaturally calm voice that Calvina Dominitia would be found and that her kidnappers punished far more severely than the Lictors.
Kaeso and Calvina hurried down the Via Appia, passing Roman citizens watching the building-sized visums run constant updates on the search for the kidnapped Vestal. They affected the same horrified expressions as the citizens. Bearded, bedraggled doomsayers screamed to the crowds that Roma would come to ruin if the Vestal was killed. Street vigiles led the doomsayers away as soon as they started yelling, but the anxiety among the superstitious Roman crowds was palpable.
The visums often showed a bald Praetorian with cold eyes and a cold voice urging loyal citizens to report suspicious activities to the Praetorian Guard. Kaeso queried his implant and learned the Praetorian was named Aculeo Furia, a Tribuni Primus in the Guard. He frowned as he read Furia’s Umbra data in his mind’s eye. While most Praetorians were easily bribed—Kaeso had accomplished more missions that way than through violence—Furia was a believer. He would not be bribed, he would not be dissuaded. He would not stop until he found Calvina.
Kaeso hated believers.
Though Calvina was well disguised by the Umbra hood, the terror on her face needed some work. The hood mimicked the wearer’s expressions so that the projected face showed the same emotions as the real face underneath.
“You’re in Roma for the first time, Vivia, try to enjoy it,” Kaeso said as they walked through the city’s ever-present crowds. “One more tuna fishing trip on the Mediterranean and then it’s back to the spaceport.”
My wife loved fresh tuna roasted with pepper, mint, and—
His jaw clenched. He let his implant compartmentalize the details of his Ostian fishing trip with Vivia. And the unwelcome memory.
She nodded and then affected the look of an awed tourist…who was about to be eaten by lions. But her voice was steady when she said, “Remind me to sacrifice to Neptune in your uncle’s name for letting us borrow his boat again.”
Kaeso smiled his agreement. He did it not only to stay in character, but also to approve her act. She was already doing better than ninety-nine percent of his previous exfils.
#
They arrived at the Mercury Spaceport of Roma the following dawn to find massive lines. Well-dressed merchants and families with bored children jammed the checkpoints at the gate. Beyond the gates, orbital shuttles lifted off every ten seconds, their silent grav engines propelling them to the Terran way station and the interstellar way line. As expected, the port gates were filled with extra vigiles, Legionnaires, and plain-clothed Praetorians.
It was the security he could not see that worried him.
Kaeso glanced at “Vivia.” When he caught her eye, he gave her a quick nod. She turned and stepped into the line. He allowed several more people to get ahead of him before he joined.
The line moved quickly despite the extra searches at the front. They got to the entrance within ten minutes, where Kaeso was better able to assess the security: standard body scanners with pat downs and bag searches if the vigiles were suspicious. He did not see the vigiles lead anyone away, however, and the Praetorians watched it all with bored expressions.
The vigile at the body scanner motioned Vivia forward. She stood in the scanner for a long moment, the vigile checking his hand tabulari.
This could get ugly if they decide to pat her down, Kaeso thought. The Umbra hood could fool eyes and scanners, but not hands.
The vigile nodded, and Vivia walked through without incident. Kaeso entered the scanner a minute later. The scanner chimed when it found his pulse pistol; after he showed the vigile h
is Senatorial lictor credentials, they waved him through.
Kaeso followed Vivia along the main concourse from twenty paces behind. She walked steadily through the early morning crowds toward her shuttle gate. Kaeso’s implant focused his mind on filtering out citizens from obvious security personnel. Praetorians were posted at every other gate, though none gave Vivia more than a passing glance.
Kaeso thought Vivia was going to make it to her shuttle until he saw Aculeo Furia waiting at her gate. He sat on a bench near the gate door as if awaiting the arrival of an old friend: his arms extended along the tops of the chairs beside him, legs crossed, black shoes gleaming. When he saw Vivia, his cold eyes narrowed. He moved one finger to point at her.
Plain-clothed Praetorians jumped from out of the crowd.
Vivia turned and raced toward Kaeso.
Kaeso un-holstered his pulse pistol and shot Vivia three times in the chest. She crumpled to the ground, her body skidding to a stop in front of him. She was on her back and looked up at him with dead eyes. People on either side of him screamed, yelled, and ran to get out of the way of the shooting.
“Put it down!” screamed the Praetorians racing toward him, their pistols drawn and aimed at Kaeso. He immediately put his pistol down and raised his hands in the air.
“I’m a Senatorial lictor!” he yelled back. “My credentials are in my cloak pocket!”
The Praetorians reached him, kicked away his pulse pistol, and then shoved him to the ground. Hands reached into his cloak and pulled out his credentials. From his position on the ground, Kaeso saw Furia’s gleaming black shoes approach him. They stopped in front of his face.
“Stand him up,” Furia said.
Rough hands pulled Kaeso to his feet. Furia glared at him with barely contained rage. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done?” Furia snarled quietly.
“I killed a traitor to the Republic,” Kaeso said. “We’ve been tracking Vivia Laelius for weeks. She’s wanted for bribing Senators—”
Bastion Science Fiction Magazine - Issue 8, November 2014 Page 5
