by David
it."
Gaius sighed. "Well, we'd better
agree to disagree, then. Since you feel so
strongly about it, why don't you stay out here this
time?"
Jenny folded her arms and glared at him
angrily. "Maybe I will."
"Good." Gaius turned toward the
holodeck entrance, but took only two steps
before he spun back to face her. "In fact,
perhaps you shouldn't come over here for these exercises
anymore, given your opinion of how we do
things."
"I should just wait out here while you go in and
get yourself killed by a computer-generated
barbarian, is that it?"
"I haven't been killed yet!" Gaius
said, practically yelling. "Look--"
Jenny suddenly put a hand over his mouth.
"We're being watched."
Gaius stopped talking and turned to his
left.
Half a dozen Magna Roman soldiers
waiting to enter the holodeck were watching with great
interest.
"What are you looking at?" Gaius
snapped. "Get in there"--he indicated the
holodeck--"and get that camp set up!"
The soldiers scrambled to obey.
Gaius took Jenny's arm and led her a
short distance down the corridor. "I worry
about you during the exercises as well," he said
in a low voice.
"Do you?" Jenny's anger evaporated at
his words.
"Of course I do ... but I still won't
change the way things are. These are exercises
to prepare for life-and-death situations. A
single mistake, and--"
"All right." Jenny admitted defeat for the
moment. "Let's go in there together and watch each
other's backs."
What followed in the holodeck was similar
to Jenny's first experience of the Centurion's
training simulations. The enemy was the same--
German tribesmen--and the ambush tactic was
also the same. But there were also differences, the most
important of which was that no real humans died.
Only simulations were killed, and none of those
deaths happened close enough to Jenny to seem
real. The other major differences were the sizes
of the opposing forces and the setting.
This time, the fighting was the Battle of
Britannia, which historically marked the turning
point in the long Roman war against the
Germans. The German tribes united for
long enough to send a combined army by sea. They had
purchased transport from their northern
neighbors, the Norse, to attack the great
Roman city of Londinium, which they thought was
undefended. It was to be the battle to destroy
Roman power and prestige in the West.
Instead, it was a trap, carefully laid
by Roman army strategists.
The German army landed in southern
Britannia and advanced rapidly toward
Londinium. It wasted little time on pillaging
as it went, for the greater prize awaited.
However, the seemingly empty meadows were
virtually saturated with carefully hidden
Roman legions. When the trap was sprung,
the surprise was complete, and it was German
power that was broken, not Roman.
The purpose of this holodeck exercise was
to train officers for battlefield command, rather
than to expose them to hand-to-hand combat.
Gaius was in supreme command of the legions
waiting in hiding, and those who had entered the
holodeck with him were in various subsidiary
command positions with those legions or on his
staff. Gaius had to use runners and youths
on fast horses to keep track of the advancing
Germans and to transmit his orders to his
legions; none of the communication technologies
taken for granted by Starfleet personnel were
available to him. Thus it was quite possible for the
officer being subjected to this exercise
to mishandle his command badly enough so that the Germans
won this replay of the Battle of
Britannia.
"What would happen then?" Jenny asked.
They were in the command post in the outskirts of
Londinium. Behind them lay the silent city.
Before them were the rolling plains, silver in the
moonlight, across which the Germans were advancing
toward them. The Germans were still out of sight of
their naked eyes--which was all they had in this
simulation--as were the hiding legions. At least
they could talk in normal voices instead of
whispering.
"I suppose the Germans would overrun us
and kill us all," Gaius replied.
Jenny could hear the tension in his voice. She
put her hand gently on his forearm. The
muscles were knotted, quivering slightly.
"Not if you told the computer to end the simulation
quickly enough."
Gaius smiled tightly. "With the score the
machine would give me for losing the Battle of
Britannia, I'm not sure I'd want
to survive."
"Couldn't you just follow exactly the same
tactics the historical general did?"
Gaius shook his head. "These Germans
don't follow the same tactics the
historical ones did. Wouldn't be much of an
exercise that way, would it?"
Jenny took her hand away. She was sure
he hadn't felt it anyway.
"There!" cried one of the officers.
Far away, invisible but for the flashes of
light reflecting from their spears and axes, the
Germans came. As they moved, Jenny's
keen eyes picked out more of them; they were spread
in a long line, and the dust of their movement was
clear long before individuals came into view.
The Germans had been canny enough to send
scouts north to the mouth of the Tamesis River,
which divided Londinium in two, and then toward
the city; but the Romans had anticipated that,
and the scouts had found nothing. Now this scouting
party was moving to rejoin the principal group,
and the main battle party was moving toward the city.
Concealed behind the rudimentary wall surrounding
Londinium, Gaius flicked his eyes over
the approaching Germans. To move too soon
would be a disaster, he knew; waiting too long
would have less dangerous repercussions. This
truth ran contrary to every axiom of Roman
military thinking he had been trained in, but it
was accurate nonetheless.
Jenny de Luz gasped as the Germans
came close enough to make out individual forms.
There were thousands of them--surely the only time the
barbarians had put aside their tribal
differences long enough to form such a huge army--each
one a tall, proud warrior with blond or red
hair and beard. Each held his spear,
sword, or ax confidently in a muscular
hand.
Then Jenny saw that they moved in a ragged,
disorganized mob, with no structure or
order; each
warrior moved faster than necessary,
each wanting to be the first into the city. Here and there
some men rode on horses--tribal
chieftains, she assumed--but they made no
attempt to bring the formations into order. Instead,
they whipped their mounts past their men when they could,
so that as the Germans drew closer, the
chieftains were at the forefront.
Jenny saw, too, that the Germans were
plunging in blindly, paying no attention to the
surrounding terrain. As they approached, the line
squeezed together, bunching in between the river on one
side and a long, low hill on the
other. It was a trap that anyone with even the most
elementary training in the techniques of land
warfare should have been able to spot.
From near-motionlessness Gaius changed to a
blur of blinding speed. In his left hand he
held a riding whip, which he cracked twice;
this was the signal for three young, slender men,
nearly unarmored and
mounted on the fastest horses, to ride to his
subsidiary commanders. They were off instantly,
clinging tightly to the horses to keep their
saddles as they raced to their destinations.
"Marius!" he snapped to one of the officers
standing nearby. "Tell your men to form up near the
river. Hurry!"
The man he had spoken to ran to do his bidding.
The German chieftains, mounted on great
shaggy horses, waving swords and crying out with
wild war whoops, were almost on them.
Antonius Appius, a taciturn officer
with the quiet deadliness of a snake, made a
brief motion with his hand, and ten men stepped
forward, each holding a pilum, and cast the
heavy spears. The throws all found their marks,
and no more than ten meters away, ten men
screamed and died. The spear experts picked
up another ten pila from the ground and waited.
The remaining chieftains reined in their
panicky mounts, realizing that something was going
desperately wrong. Then a great shout arose
as the Romans marched from the far side of the hill
to push the Germans into the river.
The Germans were fierce fighters, as
evidenced by the shouts and screams and the noise of
metal on metal, which was, even from this distance,
nearly deafening. But on level ground, the
Romans were and always had been unmatched. The
three unwavering lines of Roman infantry
pushed steadily onward; when they reached the
river, the Germans' advantage of size and
weight disappeared, and they were cut down without
mercy as they slipped and floundered in the mud.
Those few who managed to turn back the way
they had come, trying to escape to the east, were
suddenly charged by several hundred Roman
cavalrymen, who ran them through with long lances
or simply trampled them. Beyond the battle
site Jenny saw the water of the river glint
red.
A greater problem was the
significant number of Germans who had
managed to break free of the main Roman line
on the west side, facing Londinium. Here,
Jenny realized, could be the city's greatest
threat, and certainly the greatest danger to their
personal safety.
The surviving chieftains, who had been
retreating from Antonius Appius' grim
spearmen, were heartened by the appearance of their men
behind them, and swept forward. Then Marcus
Claudius' cohort, three hundred heavy
infantry supported on the wings by javelineers
and by mounted lancers, executed a perfect
left-wheel movement from the river.
The javelin-throwers moved out along the
banks, hurling into the thick of the approaching
German mob, while the cavalrymen ranged
along their flank, herding them toward the
infantry.
With a roar, the Germans closed on the
infantry. The first line wavered and fell
back, but the second line moved quickly to fill
the gaps, while the third threw their heavy
pila to deadly effect. Within minutes the
Germans were all dead or routed, running
back toward the east, only to be met by the main
body of the Roman troops, who cut them down
quickly.
The three mounted messengers came galloping
toward Gaius Aldus; they slowed, then
dismounted and saluted him.
"All commanders are well," one reported.
"Good," Gaius replied. "Simulation
end."
The simulation vanished instantly.
Londinium, the spreading plains, the vast
numbers of legionaries and German
tribesmen all disappeared, leaving a small
group of Magna Romans and Jenny de
Luz standing scattered about on the naked
holodeck.
The lines of worry and tension slowly left
Jenny's face. She took a deep lungful
of air and blew it out again. There, she thought.
The empire is safe again.
She caught Gaius' eye and smiled.
And so am I.
Chapter Eight
The whistle of the communicator awoke
Picard. Data's voice filled the room.
"One of the M'dok ships is breaking orbit,
sir. You asked to be called if any--"
"On my way," Picard snapped, rolling
from the bed.
When he reached the bridge, Wesley
Crusher was at conn, and Data in the
captain's chair. As Picard headed down the
ramp, Data moved quickly to the ops console,
taking over from the crewman manning it.
"Status?" Picard asked, seating himself.
"One of the M'dok ships has left,
sir," Wesley said. "Looks like it's headed
for home."
"And the other ship, Ensign?" Picard
prompted. He watched the fuzzy image of the
single M'dok ship on the main viewscreen.
"Still in orbit, sir."
"The Centurion?"
"Out of our line-of-sight now, sir.
She'll be visible again in about half an hour."
Over the next few hours the M'dok would
lower their shields at irregular intervals
to test the intentions and resolve of the
Enterprise crew. Instantly Picard would
raise shields and move in closer. His meaning
was unmistakable no shuttles, no
transporters. The M'dok would raise their
shields again just as quickly, and Picard would once
again order the Enterprise back to its station and
its shields lowered to minimum.
The M'dok could have turned on the
Enterprise and attacked it. Given the
nature of M'dok society, Picard was
surprised that they did not do so. But such an
attack would have been suicide, and perhaps even the
M'dok were not given to throwing away their lives
to no purpose.
Throughout those boring, potentially deadly
hours, Picard sat in the captain's chair,
elbow on knee, chin on fist, eyes fixed<
br />
on the main viewscreen, where the M'dok ship
floated. What was the M'dok's purpose?
What were they doing? And where was Sejanus? The
Centurion had failed to appear at the
expected time, giving Picard cause for
concern.
The captain straightened from his brooding
position, stood and stretched, his spine cracking
audibly in the hush that pervaded the bridge.
"Let's give it another try," he
announced. "Mr. Worf, hailing
frequencies--"
"Captain!" Wesley interrupted. "The
Centurion!"
"Where are they, Mr. Crusher? Exact
position and trajectory."
"Extreme sensor range, coming in from a
highly elliptical transfer orbit
intersecting ours and the M'dok's."
"Damn him!" Picard said, slamming his
fist down on his own knee and rising from his
chair. "The M'dok will see that as an
attack. Worf, hailing frequencies open.
Centurion, this is Picard. Captain
Sejanus, break off your approach, do you
hear me? Break off your approach!"
Worf cut in. "The M'dok have increased
their shields to full power."
Picard shook his head. Damn Sejanus!
"Full power to ours, Mr. Worf."
"Centurion shields are up, sir,"
Data said.
"M'dok firing, sir! On
Centurion!"
Picard rapped out, "Hold your fire,
Mr. Worf."
Wesley said, "Centurion on
intersection trajectory, sir. Attack
mode!"
And then the Enterprise crew could do nothing
but watch as the Centurion approached the
M'dok ship at high speed.
The Magna Roman ship fired its
phasers at full power. The M'dok ship
took the full brunt of the shot, its
defensive shields radiating energy in a
brilliant rainbow display. Then the
Centurion hit it with photon torpedoes,
and the M'dok shields began to fluoresce
dangerously.
"They can't take that much longer," Wesley
muttered--a mutter that everyone on the bridge
could hear. "Why don't they respond?"
Picard knew why not the Enterprise.
He could sense the M'dok captain's
indecision. If he fired on the
Centurion, would the other Starfleet ship
join the battle? Then his ship would be doomed for
sure. The only sensible move was to retreat.
Which he did.
The M'dok ship's shields faded
momentarily, and the ship began to move away from the
two Starfleet vessels, picking up speed
rapidly.
