Strength and Honor

by R. M. Meluch

  A top adviser lingered behind after the others had left. The aging general Julius Zosimus was not close enough to be a confidant. Romulus did not have those. But Zosimus was given as much trust as one could expect from a man who had seen his father murdered by a top adviser.

  The two were alone. Zosimus knew there were anti-surveillance jammers here. Still he drew close and kept his voice low. His lips barely moved in case anyone had a camera on him. “Caesar, there appears to be a real gorgon presence on Thaleia. Not large, but it’s—”

  “Rumor,” Caesar finished for him. “Listen to what I am telling you. Kill the rumors. Everyone is to understand that the gorgons in Near Space were only ever U.S. propaganda, and that we are too clever to swallow any dung they try to feed us.”

  “Understood, Caesar.”

  At the base of the Capitoline a wide swathe of new grass sprouted where the Monument to the Conciliation used to stand. Of the Monument itself nothing remained. The wreckage had been removed quickly after the American attack.

  General Numa Pompeii stood on the new grass, too late to the dance. There had been U.S. ships over Palatine, and Numa Pompeii had not been here to turn them away.

  Numa Pompeii had spent the last three months slogging across the two thousand light-years of the Abyss. Caesar might have waited until Gladiator could pass through the U.S. Shotgun before he decided to declare his war. Romulus had known exactly what he was doing. The palace guards admitted Numa readily enough. A servant offered him the traditional refreshment, which Numa declined. Another servant showed him to a chamber, there to wait.

  The Imperial Palace that Numa Pompeii remembered was built of blue and white marble, with stately Ionic pillars holding up coffered ceilings.

  The circular chamber in which the returning Triumphalis was left cooling his heels had been redone in holoimages, so he was standing inside a storm cloud.

  Lightning flickered. Thunder rolled. The short, graying hairs on the back of Numa’s thick neck stood up with the electricity.

  Numa Pompeii had dressed for an audience with the Self, not as a Senator, but as a general. His polished bronze cuirass was inlaid with gold and silver across his vast chest. Greek style leather tabs skirted his short tunic. Bronze greaves sheathed his shins. The formal military garb left his powerful arms and legs in view.

  He wore his siege crown. “About bloody time, Pompeii.” Caesar Romulus strode into the chamber with a lightning flash.

  Romulus sported an old style Roman cloak draped over black clothes of a modern cut. A small gold oak wreath sat on his lush curls.

  Numa was certain that others found the lightning distracting, but he did not flinch at the bolts. He kept his eyes on Romulus. The young man had gotten very comfortable in his role since Numa last saw him. All his stridency was gone. There was a sure, easy set to his posture.

  “Whose side are you on?” Caesar asked.

  “You stuck me in the Deep,” said Numa. “Blindsided me with that declaration of war. Held your confirmation vote without me. I am on your side of course.”

  Romulus grinned at him. “You always land on your feet, Pompeii.” He nodded like a rival recognizing a superior player. “I am told you killed our Gaius Americanus and Captain Callista Carmel.”

  Numa did not bother telling Romulus that the attack on Gaius and Calli Carmel was not his doing. Caesar already knew that. Denial would just make Numa sound weak. He asked in turn, “Are they dead then?”

  “I’m asking you,” said Caesar.

  “I cannot confirm the report. I saw the attack. I did not stay around for the result. A lot of American ships were out for my blood and there was a very large U.S. space fort within quick striking distance of the scene.”

  “That part jibes with what I have heard. I remember listening to a recording of Captain Farragut calling off the chase. I think he said, ‘Let him go. Numa’s gotta be flying out of U.S. space faster than a turkey in November.’ “

  “Faster than light, actually,” said Numa.

  Caesar’s voice went soft with a venomous undercurrent. “I am told that the reason Gaius left the fortress, and the reason the Americans think you killed him, is that you invited Gaius out.”

  “True,” said Numa, looking Caesar in the eves.

  Caesar blinked. “You killed him?”

  “I invited him out,” Numa said.

  “Why did you want to meet with Gaius? What did the two of you have to talk about?”

  “I did not want to meet with Gaius. I wanted to offer him transportation home. You do know that you marooned two senior Senators out there without access to the Shotgun.”

  “You found your way home.”

  “I did.” Numa let the sourness bleed into his voice. That trip had been a monumental waste of time. “A ship can run a lot of drills in three months. It is a very long journey when your world is at war. Longer still when your world is under attack.”

  “We survived,” said Caesar. “Without you.”

  “I rejoice,” said Numa.

  Romulus was suddenly cheerful. “I’m glad to see you, Pompeii. I am. I have work for you to do. But first.”

  Caesar Romulus stepped back, held his ring hand before him, downward, so that one needed to kneel in order to kiss it.

  The dialogs. IV.

  A: Do you not, Don Cordillera, have a problem being Catholic even knowing that your Church was created as a Roman power lever?

  JMdeC: The secret Roman imperialists lost their grip on the Church in the twentieth century.

  A: We did not lose our grip. We let go. Yet Catholic priests still learn Latin. Why is that?

  JMdeC: The idea of Latin in the Church was not to be a vehicle for your language. It was so the faithful might go to any church in the world and hear the same Mass. The idea was to make the church catholic.

  A: It served to unify the Roman Empire.

  JMdeC: The Church still stands without Romans.

  A: In Vatican City. Within Old Rome.

  JMdeC: You abandoned the Vatican.

  A: Rome left a lot of valuable crap behind if you noticed. A fortune.

  JF: That means something?

  A: We’re coming back, don’t you know?

  11

  BASE SIRIUS WAS A U.S. outpost, critical for its location within nine light-years of Earth.

  The main star in the system, Sirius A, was just over twice the mass of Sol, and twenty-six times as bright. That and its closeness made Sirius the brightest star in Earth’s sky.

  But Sirius A was not the Dog Star of ancient Greece. It was the companion star, the Pup, Sirius B, that had caused wonder in the ancient heavens.

  Two millennia ago, Sirius B left the main sequence and swelled up to red gianthood. It ballooned so large and bright that it was visible from Earth in the light of day. The Greeks thought the heat from that giant red star made the Dog Days so hot. But the Dog Days were only hot because Sirius appeared closest to the sun when it just happened to be summer in the northern hemisphere.

  The Dog Days of August continued to be hot for millennia after the red giant shrank down to a planet-sized white dwarf, dense, dim, invisible in Earth daylight like any other star—leaving later Earthlings to wonder what was so special about the Dog Star, and how could anyone possibly imagine that Sirius added heat to Earth’s northern summers.

  The U.S. space station Base Sirius orbited the bright primary star at four times the distance from Earth to Sol. Even at that, the station’s muscular solar filters were needed to keep Base Sirius from burning up.

  And these days there was also the Pup to consider. The orbit of Sirius A and Sirius B around each other was highly eccentric. At the moment, the two stars were just widening from periastro, putting Base Sirius almost the same distance from one as from the other. From the station there was no confusing the two—the main star was several times bigger and ten thousand times brighter than the Pup.

  The station orbited the main star on a slight oblique so that its view to Eart
h was never occluded.

  “Occultation, ninety by ninety by three,” Station Watch sang out. “Incoming hostile. It’s a big one. Nothing stealthy about this one.”

  “Call the station to invasion alert,” the stationmaster ordered, then hailed Jupiter Control to advise them that Base Sirius was about to come under attack.

  “We see him, Sirius,” Jupiter Control answered on a resonant link. “Wolfhound will respond.”

  “Send more ships,” Sirius sent. “My lookout is telling me the incoming hostile is big.”

  “It’s very big,” Jupiter Control acknowledged. No comfort there. “It’s Gladiator. Tell your people to stand by for heavy rolls.”

  The station immediately hailed its rescuer: “Wolfhound, Wolfhound, Wolfhound. This is Base Sirius. What is your location?”

  A wolfhunter class spaceship appeared from behind the ferociously bright primary star. “Base Sirius, this is Wolfhound. We are here.”

  “Thank God,” Sirius responded, watching the enormous plot that was Gladiator closing on the system.

  Base Sirius received Wolfhound into its energy field and established hard dock. The ship essentially became part of the station and added its strength to the force field.

  Gladiator approached, brute, daunting, nearly the size of the space station.

  Wolfhound kept up continuous fire on Gladiator as the Roman massif approached. The station itself was poorly armed, its defenses designed to repel pirates.

  The gigantic Gladiator jammed a force field hook through the station’s force field, and pried it wide. Wolfhound had to instantly cease fire.

  Gladiator stabbed a corvus into the station hull and drew alongside with deafening booms.

  Then sounds of metal tearing and shearing carried throughout all three vessels.

  The stationmaster sent a nervous message to the adjacent Wolfhound, “You’re not leaving us are you, Wolfhound?”

  Wolfhound could cut and run. An orbital station could not. “No,” Wolfound answered. “Gladiator will not take this station.” Metal tore. Romans cut a wide opening in the station’s bulkhead to create their own dock. Air pressed in on the sinuses and the ears with the addition of Gladiator’s heavier Roman atmosphere. Roman soldiers stood in the rough dock, prepared to board the station.

  They hesitated at the sight of tendrils racing along the deck, in through the breach, into Gladiator, quick as snakes. The tendrils wedged themselves under hatches, through vents, all through the ship.

  The Roman boarding party cut the tendrils. The tendrils immediately re-formed, re-fused, became whole again. “Sever those,” Numa Pompeii ordered from his command deck as the tendrils stretched into the compartment.

  “The men are trying,” Gladiator’s exec answered very quickly, with something more urgent to tell him: “Domni, there is an autodestruct rigged and counting down. Ground point is Wolfhound.”

  “Isolate Wolfhound from the station,” Numa ordered.

  “Unable to comply, Domni. These—tendrils—are all through the station. And now they are in Gladiator and they are preventing our interior partitions from sealing.”

  A Roman ship was built like a chambered nautilus. The tendrils caused this nautilus to leak through every chamber.

  On a Roman ship, the partitions were fire walls. The Triumphalis made an impatient sound. “What is their intent?”

  “We have no message from Wolfhound, Domni. The countdown is at two minutes.” The exec tried to sound pragmatic. Was not succeeding. ‘”Earth minutes. They’re shorter.” Even Numa Pompeii was a little disconcerted, confused. A bluff was no good without a warning. The count was down to one minute forty seconds. No ultimatums were coming. “I don’t believe this,” Numa snarled to himself, and aloud: “Recall our boarders. Quickly. Hail Wolfhound.” In a moment the communications specialist presented the com: “Wolfhound, Domni.” Before he opened the com to speak, Numa Pompeii paused to check: “Who is captain of Wolfhound!”

  “Callista Carmel.”

  “I mean who is captain now.”

  “The captain of record is still Carmel.”

  Numa muttered, impatient. He had seconds here. “Wolfhound, this is Numa Pompeii of the Imperial warship Gladiator. What is your intention?”

  “To blow your ass to kingdom come if you don’t release this station.” Numa Pompeii took a physical step away from the com as if it had reached up and bit him. The voice sounded again on the com, “You like fire, Numa? You can give it, let’s see how you can take it.” General Pompeii immediately recovered himself. Spoke into the com, “Callista, there is no need for this.”

  An unfamiliar female face appeared on the video. Unfamiliar lips moved to the sound of Calli Carmel’s voice: “Back it off, Triumphalis, or you’re coming with me.”

  It was without a doubt Callista. With a new face. Still he knew her.

  There was no time for grappling with the disconnect between the unfamiliar face and the familiar voice and the all too familiar attitude. Numa said, “This is pure hysteria.”

  “Hysteria?” Calli echoed, surprised at the distinctly female word. “That’s Greek for ‘womb,’ isn’t it? Do you mean you can’t stand losing to any woman? Here I thought it was just me.”

  “I am not losing!” Numa thundered.

  “What do you call dying with all hands on board? Oh, that’s right, I’m about to call that winning. You will have to call it losing, because Rome is not taking this station.”

  Irritated, impatient, with that damn countdown grating on him, Numa scolded, “Callista, this is not how battles are fought.”

  “It’s my ship, my station, my battle. We’re doing it my way. This is my pyre, and those snares make sure you’re in it. The ties that bind. If you’re still here in sixty seconds, you die.”

  “So do you,” he reminded her. She had to know. But she wasn’t getting it.

  “I’m small coinage,” said Calli. “You always tell me so. But I am taking out the great Numa Pompeii and the Gladiator. My tombstone will look good with a silver star on it. And I spent enough time on Palatine that that actually matters to me. I can’t lose.”

  “Your crew and the station personnel would rather live.”

  “But I pretty much want you dead, and I would really love for you to know what it feels like to burn alive, so I can’t decide what I hope you do here. I’m all in. Call or fold.”

  Weary, exasperated, Numa jerked his head to signal the specialist to cut the com link.

  Numa turned to his exec: “Is everyone on board?”

  “At once, Domni. But you do not think she is bluffing?”

  “I know she is not! Seal the ship the instant everyone is on board. Break those damned snares, tendrils, whatever they are!”

  Twenty-two. Twenty-one. Twenty.

  “She would take out her own ship and an entire American station?”

  “Move! Move!” Thirteen. Twelve. The last Romans clattered back aboard. Hatches shut.

  Tendrils severed.

  But the tendrils immediately eeled through the seals to reform themselves, leaving a small breach in the Roman hull.

  “The seals are imperfect!”

  Nine. Eight.

  “Get some space between us!”

  Gladiator separated. The tendrils stretched, snapped. The ship’s seals closed. The force field solidified.

  Five. Four.

  Gladiator wore away faster than light.

  “Abort! Abort!” Calli ordered. “Shut down destruct sequence!”

  Three. Two.

  “Destruct sequence terminated, aye.”

  Calli took no moment to relax, already barking, “Load Star Sparrow! Target Gladiator! Hit him!” “Star Sparrow loaded, aye. Acquiring firing solution.”

  “Fire when ready!”

  “Star Sparrow away.” Gladiator launched a missile rearward to meet the Star Sparrow and detonate its warhead before it could catch up.

  Numa Pompeii ceded Sirius Base to the Americans.

 
; Captain Calli Carmel boarded Base Sirius. She was a tall woman, thinner than she had been, and she had always been slender. Her new scalp produced an uneven thatch of something that passed for hair. The new hair was thinner and several shades lighter than her former luxurious chestnut locks. She cut her new hair very short because it would not grow right and she did not have time to screw with it.

  She asked after the wounded and after any damage to the station.

  Snapped ends of Wolfhound’s snares hung out the large breach which the Romans had cut in the station’s bulkhead. The force field had resealed upon Gladiator’s separation and kept everything inside intact. The stationmaster had already summoned a patch crew.

  “You sounded dead serious back there, Captain Carmel,” the stationmaster said, shaky with relief. Calli’s dead silence said how dead and how serious she had been.

  “How did you know he would back off, Captain?”

  “He left,” said Calli.

  “I mean, how did you know he would leave?”

  “That’s when I knew.”

  The stationmaster grew angry. “You would have—?”

  Calli cut him off. “You can’t go into a game of Russian roulette without accepting that one of those chambers does have a round in it.”

  Outraged, the stationmaster asked, “You play?”

  “Only when the stakes are worth dying for,” said Calli.

  Base Sirius sent a request to the Department of Defense: Next time we signal for help, don’t send Wolfhound.

  There was not going to be a next time. The showdown at Base Sirius had proved the vulnerability of these lone outposts.

  The Department of Defense ordered the immediate evacuation, dismantlement, and booby-trapping of all space stations outside of a fortress. Solo orbital stations were all hostages waiting to be taken.

  “I will be accepting requests for transfer in my cabin,” said Captain Carmel, preparing to leave the command deck of her ship, Wolfhound, which had just disconnected from Base Sirius.

  A round of snorts circled the command deck, and a chorus of raspberries sounded over the intracom from engineering—what her crew thought of her offer to take their transfers.