Bastion Science Fiction Magazine - Issue 8, November 2014
Page 6
Furia leaned forward, and Kaeso smelled the flowery soap scent off his skin. “That was not Vivia Laelius,” he said with the same quiet fury. “That was a godsdamned Vestal Vir—”
“Sir!” one of the Praetorians cried.
When Furia turned to him, the Praetorian pointed at Vivia. Furia’s eyes widened.
The skin on Vivia Laelius’s face dissolved and then turned to ash, which floated away and evaporated on the concourse breeze. Underneath was the artificial face of a golem with a bald head and bright yellow skin.
“Gods,” Kaeso breathed, looking down at the golem. “What just happened to her face? Is that…is that a golem?”
Furia stared at the golem, and then said to the Praetorian next to him, “I want this spaceport locked down. No shuttles take off or land. And signal the way station that no ships enter the way line until they’re searched.”
“Yes, sir,” the Praetorian said, then strode away speaking into his collar comm.
“Did you think that was the Vestal?” Kaeso asked Furia. “What was that on the golem’s face that made it look like Vivia Laelius?”
Furia stared at Kaeso for several long moments. He turned to another Praetorian and said, “Find a briefing room and keep him there until I can question him personally.”
“Hey,” Kaeso said indignantly, “I have to report back to the Senate on what just happened. Vivia Laelius is still on the loose—”
Furia whirled around and strode down the concourse. “You’ll report to the Senate when I’m done with you,” he said over his shoulder.
#
Furia released Kaeso four hours later after questioning him on why he was at the spaceport, who he thought Vivia Laelius was, how long he’d been tracking her, et cetera. The Umbra briefing data in Kaeso’s implant helped him keep his story straight throughout the interrogation. He assumed the data that Umbra planted in the Senatorial tabularis corroborated his Vivia Laelius investigation. Furia had certainly seemed angry he had no one to torture for information after losing the Vestal. Though Kaeso was apparently no longer under suspicion, he knew he’d be under Praetorian surveillance for some time. Which meant a vacation from Umbra missions for the next few months.
After leaving the Mercury Spaceport of Roma, Kaeso went to the Capitoline and found Senator Gaius Octavius Blaesus in his office. Kaeso tendered his resignation. He told Blaesus he did not want to cause the Senator any trouble regarding the shooting, since he had always been kind to Kaeso. Blaesus was sorry to see him go, but appreciated his willingness to sacrifice his job to protect the Senator’s reputation. He told Kaeso he would never forget it.
Calvina messaged Kaeso six days later.
It came as an audio clip sent directly to his implant via Umbra interstellar comm. He “heard” the ping while on his new cover job as a private lictor for a Roman equestrian banker. He waited until he was off duty later that night, and then took a golem taxi to the Trastevere and the oak grove of Diana. While the Diana flamens sang their meditative rituals to the moon goddess, Kaeso closed his eyes and listened to Calvina’s message.
“Salve…well, Galeo still won’t tell me your name, so I suppose I must call you my Rescuer. Your Ostian uncle’s tuna freighter was not as unpleasant as you’d think. The smells reminded me of home. I missed those smells. We left the Ostian spaceport without a problem. Galeo says we got through the Terran way line seven minutes before the Romans shut it down. Umbra got my family out the day before I left, and I’ve been told they are waiting for me on Libertus. I haven’t seen them in four years, so it will be wonderful to…sorry, I’m having trouble keeping the tears away.” Kaeso then heard a smile in her voice. “I hope ‘Vivia’ had better control over her emotions than me.”
She paused, and then said, “I can’t tell you why I left Roma, but Galeo has allowed me to give you the following vague explanation; it was one of my conditions before I talked to Umbra. Roma has a darkness at its core that has given it great prosperity, yet demanded a terrible price. I would not pay that price, so I left.
“Beware that darkness, my brave Rescuer. Galeo tells me there is great pain in your past, so I understand why I was a ‘mission object’ to you. Just don’t forget what it is you are fighting for. The darkness is tempting, and it will try to take you as it tried to take me. I owe you at least that bit of cryptic advice as payment for saving my soul. Thank you. I hope we meet again.”
The message ended. Kaeso kept his eyes closed for a while, focusing on the Diana chants. He had performed several dozen exfils during his six years in Roma, from rich equestrians to Senators to legets in the Naves Astrum.
Calvina was the first among all those ‘mission objects’ to send him a message of thanks. And for the first time in many years, it reminded him why he did this job.
###
Rob Steiner is author of the Codex Antonius series (Muses of Roma and Muses of Terra), which contain the further adventures of Kaeso Aemilius in an alternate Rome. He's also written two epic fantasies (The Last Key and Zervakan) and a contemporary mystery (Aspect of Pale Night). He lives in Georgia with his wife, daughter, and "wiener-cat" Scully.
Playing in the Skeleton on Riot Day
Jedd Cole
It was Wednesday. Riot day.
"I said I don't like you going up there. Especially with your sister," Mom said. Her voice carried a kind of tired sound around the curves of the vowels.
My brother Rod ate oatmeal. "We could die all the time," he said. "The activists put bombs all over the place." This always shut Mom's mouth. Her eyes looked down at such moments, guilting us for making her remember. Maybe Rod didn't feel guilty, but it always worked on me.
He found me on the sidewalk a few minutes afterward, as usual. "C'mon, Sheila," he said.
The Skeleton was big and old and scary to me, but I always did what Rod wanted to do. He was thirteen after all, responsible. I was ten, could still slip under the radar.
"Are you sure we should go up today, Roderick?" I said, as I did every Wednesday, on that dirty road, looking up from my brother's old shoes to that ancient, dry place.
"Only three people a year have ever died in the riots," he said. That's what would shut me up, like Mom. This is just how it went.
The Skeleton stood beside the old hospital. The lower parts of it had walls and siding, sort of white with black smoke stains and bullet holes. The walls gave way to the dark red of rebar at about the third floor. It had twelve floors unless you asked Rod, who was sure it had thirteen. Little white plastic strips like ribbons were tied at random points along the rusty beams, always fluttering. Through the big gaps in the metal you could see flights of stairs and elevator shafts like so many bones and empty blood vessels.
Besides being Wednesday, it was also January, and it was cold up on the roof. The boys called it the Skull because the particle boards were all white and brown from the frost and the years, like the real skulls we saw sometimes when we wandered around behind school.
I remember one of those skulls had still been half covered with skin, even though its eyes were gone. There used to be a lot of them behind school before the principal, Mr. Voltaire, had gone out last year to remove them. Rod liked to tell me stories about Mr. Voltaire, how he had been a hero in the last war as a scout who snuck up to alien striders and planted bombs on their legs. Rod always told the best stories. He said that Mr. Voltaire would probably be a hero in the next war, too.
Rod and I waited for Hal and Clay to get there, so we played on the stairs like he was Mr. Voltaire and I was an alien. I had never actually seen an alien—just the striders—so I just followed Rod's directions. I was always the bad guy, but I didn't mind so much then. Rod liked to be the hero. He was brave.
We heard Hal and Clay moving around below, so Rod and I walked back up to the Skull to wait for them. Whenever we stopped like that, I felt sad. Not because we stopped playing, but because I thought of Rod growing up and fighting in the next war like Mr. Vo
ltaire. He talked about it a lot. Mom wouldn't let him talk like that in the house, but I heard it in his voice whenever we played, whenever he saw Hal and Clay, whenever he looked at me from up the stairs and pointed his hand at me like a gun. I faithfully slid down to my knees, making death moans in my mouth.
"Hey, Rod," Hal and Clay said together.
"Hey, guys," Rod said.
One of the twins looked at me when they came up, saying quietly and with a smile, "Hi, Sheila."
"Hi," I said, careful not to guess which twin it was. I tried to look for a marker, something to separate him. He had blond hair just like his brother, but—there, a lock of it was sticking down over his forehead. The other's hair was neat.
The tousled one. I think he loved me.
I usually tried not to say anything unless it referred to both of them so I wouldn't have to identify one or the other. They always wore the same thing, both of them. Thin jackets, hole-ridden jeans, and white shirts. Well, mostly white. The dust always seemed to make your clothes dingy. My dress used to be white with polka dots. Now it was brown with polka dots and some mud spots too. Mom tried washing it a lot, but it never helped. I didn't mind.
"C'mon, let's go watch the square," Rod said.
We all went to the edge of the roof, stepping lightly on the boards and plastic sheets, and then lay down on our bellies, stuck our feet in the air, and watched the town square. There's something about lying on your stomach that makes you feel safe. I liked this part of the day, when we were all safe up here on the Skull.
The square was a place like a park, with a road that went around it and buildings around that, and the town stretching out from there. The Skeleton was on one side of the square. There was a statue at the center of the park of an old man on a horse. I could read the sign next to it: Mayville Town Square. Beneath it read: Chamber of Commerce - Mayville, Missouri.
The square was where the riots always happened. There were already a bunch of people in front of the statue. Beside the statue was the leader, a woman who looked really angry by the way she waved her fists in the air. We couldn't really hear what she was saying, but we could hear the crowd cheer sometimes. They seemed angry too.
The army would be coming soon, because it was riot day.
Being on the far left of our group, I looked over to watch the boys' faces. All three of them looked excited. I was too, I guess.
"Let's go down!" Rod said.
I was suddenly scared. "Wait!" I said. "Let's just watch for a while."
The twins supported me, and we waited.
I can't remember a time when there weren't riots, but it seemed to me then like it hadn't always been a weekly thing. The aliens always used to seem so far away, even though you could hear striders roaring sometimes in the night, see their legs patrolling the streets during school.
The grownups called them the occupation. I first noticed that word the day before they killed Daddy. I remember sitting in the barber shop, closing one eye to look through the bullet holes in the wall. All the dust in the air fell slowly through the beams of light that peeked through. I was imagining what it felt like to be shot. There was so much dust in the air.
"Blair tells me the occupation's picking up," said the barber. He was an old man. He was nice, but I don't think he cut my hair well.
Mom was sitting on a bucket by the wall, reading a book. "What do you mean, picking up?" she said. I looked over, my hair jerking out of the barber's hands. Mom looked worried. I knew that look. I hated that look.
The old man resumed, gently moving my head to face the cracked mirror that seemed to split me open.
"Coming down on the activists, the insurgency," he said. Scissor swishes punctuated his phrases. "And the assemblies—Old John's crowd, and the like."
"Oh no," Mom said. I looked over once more, and the barber made an exasperated sound as my hair slipped from his fingers again. Mom's face contorted a little, and she put a hand over her eyes.
Old John? I thought. I know now he meant Daddy. Rod had been there when it happened. He told me that the aliens busted a gathering of his. A walker caved the ceiling in and the soldiers jumped over the walls and took a lot of them prisoner. They use some kind of mesh that they sling over people's heads and shoulders, and it tightens and the strider reels them up. I've seen it, live people dangling from the strider's shoulders like the wind chimes Mom used to hang in the windows. Rod told me that the leader picked Daddy up and looked at him with his mask. It lit up and burned Daddy's face off. Rod was half buried under some rubble, and they left him and some of the others alone.
You could always tell when the aliens were coming because there was a low roar like a lion that came from everywhere, echoing off the walls of the Skeleton and the old hospital beside it.
There it was. A screech came afterward, exploding the air. The boys got excited at the sound of it, and stood up, but we all covered our ears. The screeching was so loud it felt like I would explode. It didn't seem like a natural sound. It lasted forever. Then we saw a cloud of brown dust rising up above the buildings beyond the square. That's when the boys started going down. This is when I usually ran home.
I followed them.
"That was fast!" Rod said. The plastic made crumpling sounds under his feet, and the particle board thundered.
With every turn of the staircase, I looked at the park square rising to meet us, and saw the metal striders emerge from between the buildings far away, little figures beside them. The neighbors and the barber and the people from the grocery store and the teachers from school and all the other angry people started rushing toward them, shaking their fists in the air.
We ran across the dry grass and hard dirt of the park, and I was behind the boys. Other people ran with us to join the crowd. I stopped short of the mass of people. I was afraid to go in.
Only once had I joined the mob, and only because Rod had been holding onto my hand. That was the first and last time I'd gone down to the riot before now. It was exhilarating, squeezing between all the bodies and picking up rocks and bricks with the rest. I couldn't really throw a brick, though. Rod could. He was a lot stronger than me, and whenever Hal and Clay were around, he got even stronger. They had joined up with us and were throwing rocks when the big strider in front of us started hissing at the crowd. I didn't know sounds could sting like that all over your body and in your head. One of the ladies that I recognized from the library tripped over me then and I fell, and some other people ran on top of me before Rod came. We went straight home. I didn't cry that day. That I remember clearly. I also remember being disappointed at not seeing an alien, just striders, which were everywhere anyway.
So now, standing on the edge of the crowd, I was afraid. I didn't want to get trampled again. But I felt more scared without Rod. The striders seemed to stare at me, little round black eyes pointing different directions but all the same, down at us, at me, at Rod. Each strider walked on two legs, long and thin like twigs, but they could move fast—like the little spiders you find in dark corners.
I could hear what some of the people were saying:
"Down with the occupation!"
"More water rations!"
"Let us go!"
"We want our rights!"
I ran around the crowd to the edge of the park and stood beside a barricade made out of orange cones and garbage cans and metal wire. I saw my first alien. He was very tall. Dark green and black armor covered all of him from head to toe, and his face was covered up by metal. I thought Rod told me they had six arms, but I saw that they only had four. I don't know how, but he saw me and walked over fast. I imagined his flat mask lighting up, burning me alive.
He waved his arms and his gun in the air and I heard the sound of a voice coming from his opaque helmet. I didn't understand the language. I took a step back and he jerked his arm up as if to say, "Get lost." The muscles under his arm moved and overlapped strangely.
I looked back at the riot before
I made a move, and then it happened. The crowd started throwing bricks and rocks at the soldiers, and the one in front of me turned and ran back to the line of shields, shouting things I didn't know.
Rod and the twins ran over to where I was as the hissing started scattering people all over the park. I heard the strange electric cracks of the soldiers' guns, and loud screams accompanying them.
"Don't worry," Rod said to me, as he did every Wednesday. He laughed a little. "They're just rubber bullets." He and one of the twins picked up rocks and threw them at the soldiers from behind the barricade. The tousled one stayed behind and stood next to me. I watched his hand reach out and grab mine.
It felt strange, like a dream. The soldiers broke ranks and started chasing the crowd into the park. Rod always told me that it was like a game. They would always take a few people away, he said, and then release them by the weekend. I didn't trust that, but I guess I could understand his enthusiasm. He was trying to be like Mr. Voltaire. Like Daddy. I didn't know yet who I wanted to be like. I was always the alien when we played war. What would I be when Rod grew up and went away?
"Rod, let's go home!" I said. At that moment, Rod took up a large chunk of concrete and threw it hard at the nearest soldier, the one who had shouted things at me before. It hit him in the thigh, breaking into little crumbly bits against the armor.
The alien shuddered and looked over, making a buzzing sound that made me think of locusts in the summer. Then he ran at us.
"Oh crap," Rod said, turning. I saw in his face a smile. It made me think of the word "rebel." He grabbed me and we all ran back toward the Skeleton. I heard the weird sounds, the electronic words coming from the aliens behind us. The boys were all laughing in a strained, crazy sort of way.
This was just something the boys did. This was the game. They were laughing with the ironic laughter of those who are about to get tagged.