Muses of Terra (Codex Antonius Book 2)

by Rob Steiner

  The auburn-haired girl said, “Your mind will stay here, but your body will die. You will become part of the vessel. Like us.”

  Cordus took in the stars around him, the planet below, and all the ships flitting about nearby. The power and freedom he had with this ship was everything he ever wanted. The things he could do, the places he could explore…

  Ocella put a hand on his face and gently turned him toward her. “You can’t stay.”

  Cordus stared at her. “But we could be together.”

  Kaeso stepped forward. “There’s a world down there full of scared people who need a leader to give them hope.”

  “I’m not strong enough to—”

  “You are,” Kaeso said firmly.

  “I just…don’t trust myself to be consul,” Cordus protested.

  Ocella said softly, “I know. That is why it must be you.”

  Cordus turned away, his eyes and senses taking in the universe. Gods, why tempt me with everything I ever wanted if I was meant to do something else?

  He remembered Aquilina in Roma. She was standing guard over his body right now. He hoped it had been an easy task, considering he was still alive and could see the com signal. She believed he could inspire others to make the Republic a better place.

  He remembered Dariya and Daryush. He hoped they had somehow escaped in Vacuna and were on the other side of the universe by now. They deserved their own ship and the freedom it gave them after the hard life they had known at Roman hands. Despite all that, they had given Cordus, a Roman, their loyalty.

  He remembered Blaesus. He prayed the old man still lived after the alien attacks in Roma. He embodied the best parts of the Roman principles of law. The Republic would need people like him now more than ever.

  He remembered Nestor, killed by golems on Reantium, which seemed like years ago. He had had more faith in the Pantheon than anyone Cordus had ever met, including many flamens. He had lived a charitable life according to his faith. Cordus prayed Nestor’s soul was welcomed in Elysium with a triumph that overshadowed Heracles.

  He remembered the Praetorians Piso and Duran, who died before his eyes. He hoped Ulpius and Gracchus still lived. All four followed him because he honored them with respect, a leadership quality he learned from Kaeso. Their allegiance to him had strengthened Cordus and given him courage.

  He thought of the countless Romans throughout the Republic with the same values of honor, faith, and charity, who were being used by petty warlords. It was a horrific injustice.

  Cordus knew he could not fix the Republic overnight. Probably not even in his lifetime. But there was no one else who could begin the process right now. Perhaps Vibia Servillia Gemmella had had the strength and honor, but she had died because she believed in Cordus. So many people had died because they believed in him.

  Perhaps it’s time I put my faith in them…and believe in myself.

  Cordus turned to the three children. “I cannot stay, but I cannot leave you in control of this ship.”

  They stared at him like mindless golems awaiting his command.

  Cordus looked at Ocella and Kaeso. They both knew what he had in mind. But if he destroyed this vessel, their personalities in the vessel’s archives would cease to exist. “I…I can’t let…”

  Though they were not Ocella and Kaeso, he still could not bring himself to say the words.

  “We know,” Ocella said. She put both hands on his face. “It’s all right, my dear boy. It’s all right.”

  “Do what you have to do,” Kaeso said. He pulled Cordus into a tight embrace, and Cordus could feel his hard body shaking. “He was proud of you before. He’d be even prouder now.”

  After several moments, Cordus slowly released Kaeso and then turned to the three children. “I’m going to send this vessel into the sun with a course I will lock in. This vessel is too dangerous to exist, especially with you still around. How do I keep you from taking control when I leave?”

  The boy looked at Cordus’s hands. He now held three sets of shackles. “Put those on us. They will prevent us from taking over the vessel, at least for as long as it takes to fly into the sun.”

  Cordus stared at the children and searched their thoughts for deception. As with the Terran Muses, he sensed an underlying anger at his control. But they could not lie to him.

  He ordered them to hold out their hands, and they did so dutifully. After he had shackled the children, he turned back to Ocella and Kaeso. He opened his mouth, but didn’t know what to say that he hadn’t already said.

  Kaeso broke the silence. “Claudia was also taken. Can you bring her here before…?”

  “They took Claudia from Libertus?” Cordus asked. Kaeso nodded.

  Ocella said, “And Lucia, and Varo. And some octopod aliens who helped us.”

  Cordus nodded sadly. He focused on the faces of Lucia and Varo, and they suddenly appeared before him looking confused. He didn’t know the faces of the aliens, but he sent out a query for the aliens who helped Ocella and Kaeso. Five octopods appeared next to Lucia and Varo.

  “You are released,” Cordus said to all of them.

  Claudia gasped and ran to her father. They hugged each other tight.

  Lucia and Varo blinked, then gaped at the stars, the planet, and the three shackled children. Lucia growled and made a move toward the children, but Cordus stood in front of her.

  “They can’t harm you now,” he said. “Besides, there’s nothing you can do to them anyway. Do you understand what happened to you?”

  Lucia shifted her gaze to Cordus. Her anger faded to sadness and resignation. She nodded. Kaeso put a hand on her shoulder.

  “He declared himself, Trierarch,” Kaeso said.

  Lucia turned back to Cordus with a raised eyebrow. “Well, it’s about time,” she said, and then bowed her head. “Sire.”

  Cordus explained his plan to destroy the vessel. She nodded crisply throughout and took her orders like the legionary she once was.

  “We’ll take care of it,” she said, glaring at the three children. “They won’t escape.” She turned back to Cordus, and, with embarrassment, said, “I’d appreciate it, though, if you could maybe…” She paused and took in a breath. “Maybe posthumously reinstate me—or her—to the Legions. With honor.”

  Cordus nodded. “You have my promise. Everyone will know the honor with which you’ve conducted yourself these last years.”

  She stood at attention and gave him a crisp Legion salute—a fist over her heart and then a straight arm forward.

  One of the octopods approached Cordus. It hooted and clicked, but Cordus had no trouble understanding it.

  You honor us by bringing us before you, Sail Master. This vessel destroyed our civilization. Remember us.

  Cordus accessed the vessel’s archives and learned what happened to the octopods’ culture. It was indeed exterminated by the vessel. In an instant, he learned everything the vessel knew about the octopods. He hoped those memories would stay with him when he returned to Terra.

  Cordus nodded to the octopod. “I will remember, Sail First Arm,” he said, referring to the octopod’s rank among his people. Satisfied, the octopod returned to his companions.

  Cordus took them all in. Kaeso and Ocella, Lucia and Varo, Claudia, the aliens, the three children. They all watched him. Kaeso and Ocella with pride, Lucia and Varo with respect, Claudia and the aliens with curiosity, and the three children with the blank looks of pre-programmed golems.

  Cordus willed the ship to break Terran orbit and fly with all conventional speed toward the sun. It did. There was no tabulari readout, but he knew it would take less than fifteen minutes for it to dive into the sun. He locked the course.

  He raised his hand in goodbye to Ocella and Kaeso. They raised their hands to him.

  Cordus willed himself back to his body. He released his grip on the golem energy and let it fall back into the golems throughout Terra. The journey back was the opposite of his journey to the ship. He flew past Arrius’s Nav
es Astrum, then down through the clouds of Terra, then to Europa and Italia and Roma. He plunged through the roof of the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus…

  …and gasped for breath in the com chair. Aquilina stood by him, trying to calm him. It took several moments for him to take in enough air to feel like he could breathe normally again. Ulpius stood behind Aquilina with a grin. Then, to his surprise, he saw Dariya and Daryush smiling at him from the other side of the chair.

  “You did it, Cordus,” Aquilina whispered to him. “You saved us all.”

  Cordus nodded and then began to weep.

  Aquilina stroked Cordus’s hair as he sobbed bitter tears. She understood. If she did not keep control, she would be crying over her mother every moment.

  After some time, Cordus stopped crying and closed his eyes. At first she was alarmed that his life was slipping away, but his breathing had the rhythm of deep sleep.

  “So what in the all the hells are we to do with them?” Ulpius said.

  The octopod aliens stood frozen with their top four tentacles splayed out around their heads. She walked toward them. The ones she approached skittered out of her way, but did not make any other moves.

  “You sure that’s wise?” Ulpius said. He held his empty pulse rifle like a club.

  “Only one way to find out.”

  She continued walking through them and then out into the hall. The hall was filled with octopods in the same frozen stance.

  Indeed. What in the hells are we to do with you?

  The stairwell door at the end of the hall burst open and Tarquitius strode out, a gladius in his hand. He shook his head at the frozen octopods and then made his way through them toward Aquilina. He lowered his sword once he reached her, but continued regarding the aliens nervously.

  “Damnedest thing,” he breathed. “They had us beat. Just a few of us left. Then all of sudden they just stopped. The golems, too. They’re just standing outside the temple.”

  “Did the people see what happened on the monitors?” Aquilina asked.

  “Oh yes. Quite the drama, that was. If they weren’t fighting off aliens and golems, they were watching. I imagine most people across the planet saw it. How’s he doing in there?”

  “He’s tired, but fine.” Aquilina glanced behind Tarquitius. “Where are your men?”

  “What few I have left are downstairs making sure those golems and aliens don’t wake up—”

  Aquilina brought up her pulse pistol and shot Tarquitius in the head. The Prefect didn’t have time to put a surprised look on his traitorous face. He simply fell backward onto the path he had created through the aliens.

  Aquilina turned to see Ulpius standing behind her with an unreadable expression.

  “Cordus is a good man,” she said, holstering her pistol. “In the coming days, there will be things that need to be done. But they are things he won’t do. Things he shouldn’t do. We will do those things.”

  Ulpius gave her a hard stare and then nodded slowly.

  Aquilina opened an unlocked office door. She grabbed Tarquitius under his arms and began dragging him into the office. Without a word, Ulpius grabbed the traitor’s legs, and they unceremoniously dumped the body into the empty room.

  The Originators raged against their shackles.

  As soon as Cordus disappeared, Ocella watched the Originators grow from innocent-seeming children into the twelve-foot giants they had been in their temple. She knew that her feelings of loyalty toward them had been the Originators controlling her thoughts. There was a part of her that even now wanted to free them and bask in their approval.

  But she couldn’t do it even if she wanted to. Cordus had locked the shackles tight. The Originators could no longer control the ship or change the course Cordus had set. They were all going to dive into the sun and oblivion.

  “We will rip your caccing heads from your caccing bodies!” Jupiter shrieked at them.

  Spittle flew from Minerva’s lips as she screamed, “We will devour your livers while you watch!”

  Juno struggled against her chains, her wrists bloody. “We will cast you to the gorgons and let them rape you for eternity!”

  The others glanced nervously between the Originators and the growing sun in the spherical room. Like Ocella, they tried to ignore the screams.

  Varo said, “Will we go to Elysium?” He had to raise his voice over the vile curses coming from the shackled Originators.

  “We’re already in Elysium,” Lucia muttered, watching the sun get closer.

  Claudia leaned close to Kaeso. “Do you think we’ll feel pain?”

  Kaeso looked at her with unbridled love. “No, daughter,” he said. “It will be quick.”

  She smiled. He wrapped an arm around her.

  Kaeso held out his other hand to Ocella. She took it, meeting his eyes. Their thoughts flew back and forth, expressing emotions and love they never could have conveyed with words. For this one moment, Ocella was suddenly grateful for their golem bodies; they never could have given their love to each other like this as humans.

  The sun filled the entire room now. Ocella turned to Lucia and held out her hand. Lucia looked at it, and then Ocella. With a wry grin, she said, “I hated you when you first arrived.”

  “I know,” Ocella said. “I hated you, too.”

  “You grew on me, though.” She took Ocella’s hand in a firm grasp. “I’d say it will be an honor to die with you, but we’re already dead, eh?”

  Lucia turned to Varo and held her hand out to him. “Want to join this orgy of sappiness?”

  Varo took Lucia’s hand and then said to them all, “I hope to see you all again soon.”

  The octopods skittered over to Varo, and Sail First Arm held out a fingered tentacle to him. Varo smiled and took it into his hand. Sail First Arm then entwined his tentacles with the other four octopods in his family.

  “We’re afraid,” said a boy’s voice.

  Ocella looked at the Originators, who had returned to their child forms.

  The dark-haired girl said, “We don’t want to die.”

  The auburn-haired girl asked, “Will your gods accept us, too?”

  The innocence and fear emanating from them brought tears to Ocella’s eyes. She no longer felt their rage.

  Claudia held out her hand to them.

  The three children, with shackles clinking around their wrists, hurried over to Claudia. They held each other’s hands. The boy clung to Claudia like a scared child to his mother.

  They all stood in the spherical room, hands connected. Ocella did not care that the vessel had reached the sun’s corona, or that its shields had failed, or that the outer hull had started to burn.

  She did not mind that she and Kaeso were heading toward oblivion. Their bodies were there, anyway, and she had faith their souls had already met in Elysium.

  All she cared about was that Cordus had become a good man. He would face many challenges in the coming days and years. But with Jupiter’s grace, he would face them all with strength, courage, wisdom, and humility. He had become the man he was meant to be. She could let him go now.

  The sun’s light enveloped her, and she smiled.

  51

  Cordus awoke with a start in the com chair. He’d been dreaming of Ocella and Kaeso, but the details quickly faded from his mind. All he could remember was their unconditional love for him. After several moments failing to remember the dream, he decided the emotions were really what mattered anyway.

  But everything else came back to him in a rush. He shut his eyes again and prayed for the oblivion of sleep.

  “Welcome back, Roman,” Dariya’s voice came from his left.

  Cordus opened his eyes. Dariya stood next to him, while Daryush stood behind her giving Cordus a toothy grin. “Sleeping the day away is not proper behavior for a centuriae.”

  “How long was I out?” he rasped. Cordus tried to swallow, but his throat felt drier than Apulia in the summer.

  Dariya shrugged. “Ten minutes or
so.”

  “So not quite a whole day.”

  “Feels like it, considering the company,” Dariya said, nodding behind Cordus.

  He gathered his strength and then leaned over the side of the chair to look behind him. There were at least ten octopod bodies lying in the com room with more in the hallway. They all had wrapped their tentacles around themselves, as if bedding down for the night. They were not moving. They must have died when the vessel finally entered the sun and its communications with them ceased.

  “How long have they been there?”

  “They were about to tear us limb from limb until you stopped them,” Dariya said. “I do not know what you did up there, but they listened to you. Then just a few minutes ago, they all lay down as if going to sleep, but I do not think they are sleeping anymore. They look dead to me.” She paused, and then in a quiet voice, said, “Is it true? Lucia, Ocella,…Kaeso…?”

  Cordus looked at her. “I’m sorry.”

  She gave a shaky sigh. “What will we do now?” she asked under her breath. Daryush’s lost expression said much the same thing.

  “What do you want to do?” Cordus asked.

  “We do not want to stay on this planet any longer than we have to. Even the Persians here are too Roman.”

  “Then Vacuna is yours,” Cordus said.

  Dariya stared at him. “What about Blaesus?”

  “His days of exile are over. I’m going to need him if I’m to survive Republic politics.”

  Dariya’s mouth twitched. “Thank you.”

  Daryush clapped his hands and rubbed them together, eager to get back to the ship and do all the tinkering he’d always wanted to do.

  Dariya smiled at her brother, then said to Cordus, “Come with us. Leave this craziness to all the crazies here.”

  “I wish I could. But these are my people, crazy or not. I need to help them as best I can.”

  Dariya nodded. “Well, then they are already better off than they have ever been.”

  Cordus appreciated the compliment, but the Republic was still technically in a civil war and Roma was in ruins. How were they better off? Would they ever be ‘better off’ with him leading them? Cordus didn’t know, but he knew he owed it to all the people who fought and died for him to make it happen.