Gates of Rome

by Alex Scarrow

  Maddy nodded. ‘Yes … yes, it does.’ She realized it was better Liam wasn’t here with them. Both Liam and Bob had gone out to their local Barnes & Noble for some reading matter. Liam was adamant he wanted to read up on how to use computers and the Internet better. Maddy assured them there really was a book entitled The Complete Idiot’s Guide to the World Wide Web, that she wasn’t just being rude.

  ‘Do you know what I think?’ said Sal. ‘This is going to sound like I’m a complete fakirchana-head. But …’ She took a breath. ‘I think that tunic might be Foster’s!’

  Maddy chewed her lip anxiously. Perhaps this was the right time to share what the old man had told her. Sal was so close to the truth … in a way. Secrets. She hated keeping them, particularly this one. It stank.

  ‘Sal … we need to talk about Liam.’

  Sal looked at her sharply. ‘What? What is it?’

  ‘He’s … well, he’s not who you think he is.’

  Sal looked shaken. ‘What?! What do you mean? Who is he?’

  ‘Let’s go get a coffee. Right now.’

  ‘Maddy! Tell me!’ She looked upset. No. Frightened. ‘Who is he!?’

  ‘I need a coffee first.’ Maddy realized she was trembling. Her legs felt like they were set to give way on her and she felt queasy enough to hurl chunks on to the pavement. ‘I need to sit down, Sal. I really need to. I need to gather my thoughts … and I need a freakin’ coffee.’

  CHAPTER 14

  AD 37, 16 miles north-east of Rome

  He found himself staring up at a cloudless blue sky. A rich, deep blue like the skies one used to see in old images from the beginning of the twenty-first century. Quite different from the perpetual discoloured cloud cover of 2070: the turbulent, sulphurous acid rain clouds, the ever-present smog above cities and refugee shanty towns.

  Quite beautiful.

  Rashim could feel the warmth of the sun on his face. Hear the whisper of a fresh, untainted breeze gently stirring the branches and leaves of trees nearby.

  Is this Heaven?

  He realized that was a pleasing notion. That Project Exodus had gone disastrously wrong, that every translation candidate including himself had died – torn to pieces by extra-dimensional forces – and this … this was the afterlife. His uncle, an imam, had once taken him aside and tried to describe what Allah’s Paradise would be like. It had sounded like this. And he’d scoffed at the man’s faith.

  Maybe I was wrong. Maybe there is a God.

  And that pleasant illusion could have lasted a while longer, lying there on his back and enjoying the deep blue above him, if it hadn’t been for the stirring of others all around him. It seemed like they’d managed to do it. They survived the jump.

  With a weary sigh, Rashim slowly lifted himself up on to his elbows and looked around.

  They were right on the flat ground of the receiver station, a field of swaying, olive-coloured grass. In the distance the glint of a gently meandering river and hills beyond that.

  The correct location all right. But he couldn’t see any sign of the four receiver beacons, ten-foot-tall tripods with an equipment platform at the top of each one. Each one marking a corner of ground space the exact same size as the translation grid back in the Cheyenne Mountain facility.

  He got to his feet, hooding his eyes from the sun. No sign of them. Rashim cursed.

  We’ve overshot the snap range.

  ‘Where is this? Where are we?’

  Rashim turned to his right. The corporal was standing beside him. ‘Where the hell is this?’

  ‘Where this is, is near Rome. But I’m not sure precisely when it is. The receiver station was deployed ahead of us in AD 54,’ Rashim continued, more thinking aloud than answering the corporal’s question. ‘They should be right here, dammit, but I can’t see any of the beacons.’

  ‘AD 54 …?’ The man rubbed his temples as if trying to push the idea into his head. ‘You mean like the year 54? Like fifty-four years after Jesus Christ?’

  Rashim nodded distractedly. ‘Only this isn’t. I can only guess this is some time before then. We’ve overshot the destination time. This is further back in time.’

  Rashim completed his three-sixty survey. The field was peppered with people slowly sitting up and getting to their feet, gathering their wits and looking dumbstruck up at the strangely clear and beautifully blue sky above. Many of them still in a silent state of shock. Across the field he noted one of the MCVs – the huge Mobile Command Vehicles – had gone missing.

  One of the platoons of combat units strode purposefully across the field towards him, equipment jangling from its webbing, standard army-issue T1-38 pulse carbine slung from a strap on its shoulder. The combat unit came to a halt in front of him and took off its helmet.

  ‘Dr Yatsushita has assigned you full authority.’ Rashim looked at the unit, unsure whether it was telling him that or asking him. The combat units unnerved him. Unlike the bulky, seven-foot-tall goliaths the military used to develop, these newer models could pass more easily as human. Genetic tweaks had produced combat units every bit as strong as the older variants without requiring the same amount of muscle bulk. They still looked like a bunch of military stiffs, though; two dozen po-faced Combat Carls with identical buzz-cut hair. Hardly going to be the fun crowd at a party.

  The combat unit standing in front of him carried the rank of lieutenant; its name, just like Corporal North, was stitched above the breast pocket of its camouflage tunic. Giving them names felt wrong. They should just have numbers. Mind you … he’d given his lab unit a name, hadn’t he?

  ‘Right, yes … uh … Lieutenant Stern, is it?’ Rashim tried a salute. Not sure if it was the right thing to do.

  Stern? Rashim wondered which moron came up with that cheesy name for this unit. He could only imagine what the rest of the platoon were called: Chuck, Butch, Tex, Travis.

  ‘Sir,’ said Stern, ‘what are your orders?’

  Rashim puffed his lips and laughed a little nervously. ‘What … er, what do you suggest?’

  Stern cast cool grey eyes across the field. There were a lot of empty patches of grass where equipment, even people, had gone missing. ‘I’d suggest, sir, we’d better take stock of how much got lost during the translation.’

  Rashim nodded vigorously. ‘Yes, yes, quite … exactly the thing I was going to suggest. Very good.’ He frowned, his best attempt at looking officious and entirely in command. ‘Well, off you go then, uh … Stern. See to it.’

  The combat unit saluted him crisply. ‘Yes, sir.’

  He watched the unit jog across the arid grass towards the rest of the platoon. The other people who had survived the jump were beginning to gather their wits. He could see Vice-president Stilson had managed to make it through – more’s the pity – and that dictator and two of his wives.

  Rashim wondered how long before one of them decided that they should be leading Project Exodus instead of him.

  CHAPTER 15

  AD 37, 16 miles north-east of Rome

  ‘We’re in a rural region called Sabines, about sixteen miles to the north-east of Rome.’ Rashim looked at the Exodus group gathered in front of him. Just under a hundred and fifty of them. They’d lost roughly half the people in the jump. The children, the baby, were among those that had failed to emerge from extra-dimensional space.

  God help them.

  ‘This location was picked out by the Exodus survey team. Headed up by, uh … well, me actually.’ He shrugged self-consciously. The sun was setting behind a row of cypress trees on the horizon, and long shadows stretched across the gently swaying grass around them. ‘I was in charge of establishing the receiver station.’

  ‘What’s that?’ someone in the gathering dusk asked.

  ‘Four beacons broadcasting tachyon beams. The EDT: the Extra-dimensional Translation array …’

  Keep it simple for the morons out there.

  ‘The time machine –’ he hated that term – ‘was designed to zero in and snap to
on these beacons’ beams and use that to guide us in to the correct emergence point. But it, uh … it appears we’ve gone a little further back in time than we actually planned.’

  ‘And lost over a hundred of our people!’ Rashim turned towards the voice. ‘Someone messed this up badly!’ Vice-president Stilson glared like an Old Testament preacher.

  ‘Well now, look, Mr Stilson … this really isn’t a precise science. And quite honestly, with all the last-minute data changes coming in, and no time to recalibrate the EDT’s transmission program … Actually, I’m rather amazed that any of us survived!’

  Stilson shook his head angrily. ‘OK, I’ve heard enough. Look, I’m assuming authority from here on in. This is a damned mess already and we need to turn this around right now!’

  ‘What?!’ Rashim’s voice skipped up a notch. It was almost a yelp. ‘No! Look see, uh … Dr Yatsushita actually put me in charge of Exodus. He said that –’

  ‘I’m afraid we don’t have time for this, Dr Anwar … isn’t it?’

  Rashim nodded.

  ‘Right, well, I’m the senior government representative of the North American Federation here. Which gives me executive authority. Like it or not, that puts me in charge.’

  ‘Dr Anwar …’ A woman. Civilian. He recognized her as one of the Project Exodus support staff. Not one of the candidates.

  ‘Yes?’ Rashim answered her quickly before Stilson could go on any more. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Do you know how far we’ve overshot the receiver markers?’

  Rashim nodded forcefully and tried his most authoritative face. Here was a question he most certainly had an answer for. ‘Yes. I was able to successfully record the decay rate of the tachyon field. It’s quite simple really. Tachyon particles decay at a constant rate, a very similar principle actually to something like carbon dating where …’

  Keep it simple.

  ‘Well, basically, to cut a very long and boring technical explanation short, ladies and gents, we went back about seventeen years earlier than planned.’ He scratched his chin and offered them a wan smile. ‘Which, actually, I think is quite impressive really.’ He ran a hand through his hair. ‘Given the last-minute metrics I had to guess at.’ He shrugged and smiled. ‘It could have been a lot worse than that really.’

  ‘Seventeen years out … over half our people lost and most of our equipment gone!’ Stilson stepped forward. ‘Good God, man! This is already a damned mess! I know what the precise plans were for colonizing the past … that’s ancient history now. We’re going to have to take stock and –’

  ‘Uh, well now, Mr Vice-president, yes … of course we may have to play out the “deployment phase” slightly differently.’

  ‘You can say that again, Anwar. Looks like we’ll be improvising the plan from now on.’

  The group were silent. Few of them had been briefed on the details of Project Exodus.

  ‘All right, listen up, everyone!’ barked Stilson. ‘Gather round closer! I’m going to bring you folks up to speed on what you need to know. What I’m about to tell you has been classified for top-level eyes only. Outside of the Exodus technical team, the only other eyes on this have been those of the President, myself and the joint Chiefs of Staff.’

  Rashim noticed how easily Stilson could rally everyone round.

  ‘This project has been in development for over five years, funded by what remained of our defence procurement budget, for what it was. Exodus was … and still is … our plan to transplant our values, our knowledge, our wisdom on to the infrastructure of an existing, well-established and robust civilization. The Roman Empire.’

  Rashim heard the vice-president’s audience stir.

  ‘A panel of historical experts identified a specific moment in time in which to deploy Exodus. We were meant to arrive towards the tail end of the reign of a weak emperor. A guy called Claudius. A weak emperor struggling to maintain his position in power. Now … the plan was quite simple. To offer our services, our technology, to this guy Claudius in exchange for executive power. In effect to become his governing body. And eventually, on his death, to replace Roman dictatorship with American-style Republican democracy.’

  Stilson turned and looked at Rashim pointedly. ‘But it appears things have gone very wrong.’

  Rashim felt all of their eyes fall on him. ‘Uh … now, yes. But you see most of you here are the wrong people. That is to say, you’re all the wrong weights and sizes; it’s thrown all my calculations completely out! Which is why we lost –’

  ‘Dr Anwar,’ said Stilson, ‘what we don’t need to hear are excuses or technobabble after the fact. What we do need to do is start rethinking our plan of action. We’re here in this time now and that’s what we have to deal with. So, what we need to start finding out is exactly where we stand. What the situation is seventeen years earlier. Can you at least tell us something about that?’

  Rashim looked at the man and the others gathered behind him.

  You’ve lost them already. You’re not in charge any more. He realized it wasn’t knowledge or wisdom that made a leader. It wasn’t being smarter than everyone else. And, by God, he could perform intellectual somersaults round most of these morons. No, it was something as simple as the deep cadence of a voice, a certain way of addressing assembled people. A way of carrying yourself. Authority. Entitlement. Stilson had that all right. And Rashim none of it.

  ‘Dr Anwar?’

  He sighed, slid open the panel of the h-pad on his wrist and a faint holographic display hovered in the air in front of him. ‘Yes … there we go. So.’ He swiped through a timeline with his finger. ‘Ah, here we are. We’ll be dealing with a different Roman emperor. Not Claudius, but …’ His fingers traced along a glowing chart line to a name. ‘Caligula.’

  ‘What data do we have on this guy, Dr Anwar?’

  ‘Uh … let me just look that up on my …’ He hadn’t had the time to read up on the historical briefing Dr Yatsushita had the project historians put together. Not really. If things had been a bit less of a frantic rush these last few months and weeks, he might have been able to give it a cursory read-through. His job was the metrics, punching the numbers – getting them all here in one piece.

  ‘Emperor Caligula? I can tell you about him.’ All heads turned towards someone in the crowd. By the fading light Rashim vaguely recognized the face: one of the candidates. One of the few people who was actually meant to be there instead of another last-minute gatecrasher.

  ‘I know all about Caligula … God help us.’

  Stilson gestured for the crowd to allow the man through. ‘And you are?’

  ‘Dr Alan Dreyfuss. Roman historian. Linguist.’

  ‘OK, then, why don’t you go ahead and tell us what you know, Dr Dreyfuss?’

  The man was in his thirties, narrow-shouldered with a pot belly, a shock of sandy hair above glasses and a salt and pepper beard grown, Rashim suspected, to hide a double chin.

  ‘Oh, Caligula …’ Dreyfuss began shaking his head. ‘Oh boy, this guy’s bad news.’

  ‘Bad news? What do you mean?’

  ‘He’s mad.’

  ‘Mad?’

  ‘Uh-huh. Totally. Completely insane.’

  The people stirred, unhappy at the sound of that.

  ‘But look, I think there’s a way we can play this guy,’ said Dreyfuss, smiling.

  Stilson pursed his lips and nodded appreciatively. He seemed to like this guy. ‘All right, Dr Dreyfuss, let’s hear what you’ve got.’

  ‘Shock and awe. We’ll make an entrance.’ Dreyfuss played the crowd almost as well as Stilson. ‘This guy made his own horse a senator, would you believe? This guy, Caligula, believed in omens, portents; he was superstitious, paranoid.’

  Dr Dreyfuss grinned. ‘We’ll make him believe we’re gods.’

  CHAPTER 16

  AD 37, north-east of Rome

  The two MCVs bounced energetically across fields of wheat, leaving broad paths of flattened stalks in their wake. Rashim
held on to the handrail as both hover-vehicles slid across a rutted track into the next field.

  Their approach was relatively quiet; the deep hum of electromagnetic repulsors was almost lost beneath the clatter of strapped-on equipment bouncing against the carbominium hull. He watched the heads and shoulders of slaves emerge from the tall, swaying stalks like startled meerkats. Eyes and mouths suddenly wide with horror, then gone as they scurried away in fear of their lives.

  Ahead of them a wider track thick with carts on the way into Rome became a sudden carpet of chaotic panic as slaves and merchants scattered into the fields and horses reared and bucked in their harnesses. The leading MCV veered left, on to the track. This one wasn’t ruts of dried mud but a cobbled stone track. A proper road in fact.

  ‘All roads lead to Rome!’ Stilson’s voice crackled over the comms-speaker.

  Rashim wrinkled his nose and sighed in silent disgust at the blowhard idiot’s appalling cliché. He looked at the back of Stilson in the MCV in front, standing on the vehicle’s front gun platform like some buccaneer admiral on the prow of his square-rigged ship. The vice-president was punching his fist in the air with childlike excitement.

  You let that jerk take over. Congratulations.

  He looked at the combat unit sitting beside him on the MCV’s hull, T1-38 calmly resting across muscular forearms. He covered his throat mic. ‘Looks like someone’s having fun, eh?’

  The unit had the reflective sun visor of his helmet pulled down. Rashim couldn’t see his eyes, just the bottom of his nose and the mouth, chewing on protein gum with all the grace of a horse munching on hay.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  To be fair, Stilson and Dreyfuss’s rejigging of the plan called for a display of bravado. They’d lost way too much of their ammunition, power-packs, equipment and manpower to guarantee being successful taking control of Rome by force. Two dozen combat units and whatever number of rounds of ammo they were carrying on their equipment belts were enough to make a spectacular display of firepower, but not much more. Certainly not enough to take on several legions and a city of one million inhabitants.