The Twice and Future Caesar

by R. M. Meluch

  Farragut turned away. I just killed my brother.

  He clung to a wild hope that John Junior hadn’t been on board the pirate ship.

  “Sir! Look to the gate!”

  Another motion disturbed the scattered condensate. A shape. Like the last one but distorted.

  Another Xerxes had dropped down from FTL. It wore its energy field wide and thick toward its bow like a catcher’s mitt.

  “Reload! Launch another karit!” Farragut ordered.

  Useless order. Merrimack was still light-years away from the target.

  “Second karit already underway,” Calli advised.

  Farragut was happily surprised. Shouldn’t have been surprised at all. This was the Merrimack. Redundance was good. It was very very good.

  “Time to intercept,” Calli demanded.

  Tactical answered, “Negative intercept. Unless the target slows down, we have a five second deficit. Target will be at the gate in ten seconds. Nine. Eight. Time of the karit to the gate is now thirteen seconds. Twelve. Eleven. Intercept deficit holding steady.”

  Farragut stared at the tactical display as if he could drive the karit missile faster and will Romulus to slow down. But Romulus knew he was being chased now. He would make no mistakes.

  Later someone can tell me why I think this matters.

  Later. There might not be a later.

  Rear Admiral John Farragut waited through the final seconds in perfect dread for nothing to happen. Trying to memorize this moment, the people around him, as if they were all going away.

  “Romulus at the gate in five. Four.”

  The countdown fell on cotton ears.

  “Three. Two.”

  John Farragut meant to keep his eyes wide this time.

  “Xerxes at the gate.”

  Eyes shut. Held his breath.

  It was dawn on the eastern seaboard of the United States of America. Kathy was waking up.

  Farragut tried to imprint their images on his memory forever—his wife, his daughter—even though he knew he would be home soon and they would be there.

  There would be time.

  It only felt as if he was waiting for his world to end.

  He breathed.

  7 June 2443

  U.S. Space Battleship Merrimack

  Globular Cluster IC9870986 a/k/a the Myriad

  Sagittarian Space

  HE BREATHED.

  One cry with several voices sounded. The clearest from Tactical, “He bounced!”

  “Ho!” from Targeting.

  Captain Farragut’s eyes flew open.

  On the tactical display the Arran messenger ship was not recognizable. Farragut wasn’t even sure it was the Arran messenger. It was flat, utterly flat, as if it had collided with something, hard, and now its crumpled mass was caroming straight away from the Rim Gate, its tail pushed into its nose.

  Farragut had been braced for the end of his world, as much as anyone can brace himself for such a thing. Now he felt ridiculous for being afraid.

  Everything and everyone was still here, just as they were an instant ago. His too beautiful XO Calli Carmel was still on deck. Big-eared young specialist Jeffrey was still at Tactical. His Terra Rican sword master Jose Maria de Cordillera still observed from the rear of the command deck with the Marine guards. And Captain John Farragut’s Roman patterner really had just kissed him on the neck on his own command platform in front of God and his command crew.

  Farragut’s ears felt red and his face burned bright as the Jupiter Monument. He just wanted to vanish into a black hole. No time for it. He forged ahead. He pointed toward Augustus and told one Marine stationed at the hatch, “Brig that man.”

  The Marine guard snapped to and glared at Augustus, who went quietly.

  Farragut could bring the Roman up on charges later. For now he ordered, “All stations. Figure out what happened and tell me what I just saw. And where is my Star Sparrow?”

  Tactical: “Star Sparrow is headed toward the Rim Gate on momentum only. Dead missile. Live warhead.”

  “Detonate that infernal thing,” Farragut ordered. “I don’t want someone feeding that back at us.”

  Not that there was anyone out here who could redirect the burned out Star Sparrow.

  But something had already happened that was altogether wrong. The Arran messenger hadn’t made it through the gate.

  It wasn’t just that the Arran ship had plowed into an invisible barrier. The Arran messenger didn’t have the velocity to crush itself like that. The trajectory of the wreckage suggested a collision with an undetectable object coming out of the gate at extreme speed.

  Undetectable? It was as detectable as a bomb. But what was it? Was it still out there?

  The Arran had crashed into something. The resultant vector carried the flattened Arran straight away from the gate.

  Farragut demanded of anyone, “Was the unseen thing a solid traveler or an energy hammer?”

  Targeting: “Other than its effect on the Arran, the observer buoy’s instruments don’t tell us anything at all.”

  “Did the thing have a mass?”

  Tactical: “Can’t tell how much of that force was mass and how much was acceleration.”

  “What was the position of the Arran messenger at the moment of impact?”

  “Precisely at the gate.”

  “Precisely?” Commander Carmel challenged the term.

  Tactical stood by his observation. “Precisely. I don’t think the Arran messenger got a molecule inside the gate. The force—or object or whatever it was—prevented the Arran from entering the kzachin.”

  “Something else out here didn’t want the Arran to go back in time,” Farragut guessed. He looked to Jose Maria de Cordillera, who gave a very slight sideways nod, allowing the possibility.

  “Who else is out here, young Captain?”

  “The LEN,” Tactical said.

  Someone snorted low into his station. Muttered, “My Aunt Ferdinand.”

  “That hit didn’t come from anything Arran. It’s nothing LEN, and it’s not Hive,” Farragut said. “Commander Carmel!”

  “Sir.”

  “Siege stations.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  Calli called the ship defenses to full lockdown.

  Farragut moved to the rear of the command platform where his stately civilian sword master stood with the Marine guards. “Jose Maria. Any thoughts on what that thing could be?”

  Jose Maria de Cordillera looked baffled. “I would consult with Augustus.”

  Farragut didn’t much want to talk to that son of a she dog. Didn’t have a choice. “Calli, your boat. I’m fixin’ to talk with our resident Roman.”

  Lieutenant Colonel TR Steele stepped forward, fist clenched, offering to assist with the Latin-Americanese translation.

  Farragut waved Steele down and stalked out the hatch.

  Colonel Augustus, Merrimack’s Intelligence Officer, sat with one foot up on the bench in the brig, one elbow resting on his bent knee, his eyes shut. A pinch showed in his tall flat brow. He didn’t rise, didn’t open his eyes at the announcement of the captain’s entrance.

  “You comfortable?” Farragut asked.

  “Not ever.”

  Augustus looked wrung out. There was considerable pain involved with being a patterner.

  “Something happened,” Augustus guessed without looking up.

  “Tell me what just happened,” Farragut said.

  Augustus held up a hand, to show his cables unplugged and dangling. “I don’t have the input to know that, now do I?”

  “Then how do you know something significant happened?”

  “Because you’re here—twitching.”

  “I do not twitch. I am looking for the reason why you undercut my authority on my own comm
and deck.”

  “Is that what I did? I didn’t expect to be here now—however one might define the word ‘now.’ Events might have gone the other way. Then you wouldn’t be stomping in my cell.”

  Farragut was fairly bouncing off the bulks, his boot heels landing heavily.

  “You were the one who said things happen once,” John Farragut said.

  “I changed my mind. Things happened both ways. Or multiple ways. This is not the only reality. It’s the one that I’m in right now, and no, it’s really not comfortable at all. Will you stop pacing? You can’t imagine that something changed when the Arran went through the kzachin. You wouldn’t be able to recognize a difference.” He slumped back with a sigh. “What do you think you saw that shouldn’t have happened?”

  Farragut said, “The Arran messenger did not go through the kzachin.”

  That opened Augustus’ eyes. “Unexpected. How did you make intercept?”

  “I didn’t. Something hammered the Arran away right at the gate. Rabbit punch. Knocked him flat back. I mean flat and I mean back.”

  “Pedica me.”

  “What?”

  “Not possible.”

  Farragut didn’t think that was literally what Augustus had said. But Augustus was right. It hadn’t been possible. Farragut replayed the moment in his mind. One second he was listening to the countdown dwindle to nothing, then a shouted “Ho!” from Tactical, a scrambling at all stations, and on the monitor was the image of the flattened Arran wreckage careering away from the gate.

  “It was impossible,” Farragut said.

  “I just told you that. Don’t repeat my words back to me. I don’t have the patience for it.”

  “There was a force that didn’t register on the space buoy’s sensors. We know something was there only because of what it did. It stopped the Arran.”

  “Intentional?” Augustus asked with his eyes shut.

  “You tell me. Looked intentional as a load of buckshot finding its way into a cheating lover from where I was standing. I need you to plug in to Tactical and figure out what really happened.”

  “No.”

  “Colonel Augustus?”

  Augustus covered his face with his hand. “My head hurts. I don’t feel like it. Brig me.” He peered out with one eye through the cage of his fingers as if to check his surroundings. Found Farragut was still here, with him, in the brig. Augustus closed his eye, settled back. “Unless it results in the annihilation of the Hive, don’t bother me. I feel like death.”

  He meant that literally. The patterner was dying. Patterners had severely shortened lifespans. Augustus had passed his due date last year.

  “It’s an order.”

  “You have no leverage with me, Captain.”

  “Yeah?” Farragut said. “There was a moment back there when I thought you mighta given a pile of turnips what happened to me.”

  Augustus sat up. Anger flared in his hollow eyes. “That was when I didn’t think we’d be alive to have this conversation.”

  After a moment, Augustus exhaled a weary breath. He asked, reluctantly, “What was the vector of the unseen force?”

  “Straight out of the kzachin.”

  “Something popped out of the kzachin at the very instant the Arran messenger was about to enter?”

  “That’s what I’ve been telling you. So you tell me, how did the unseen force coming from the other end of this wormhole know there was a messenger ship fixin’ to come through the gate right at that moment?”

  “Your unseen force hit the messenger at the precise time and exact place to prevent the messenger from going back in time. That speaks of premeditation. Screams it, actually.”

  The Rim Gate was known to connect to another gate—another kzachin—a quarter way across the galaxy and 10 billion years in the past.

  “Patterner,” said Farragut.

  “Origin didn’t have patterners ten billion years ago,” Augustus said.

  “Well, maybe there’s a patterner from our future coming back to take the shot at the messenger we couldn’t make. You!” Farragut said on a sudden thought. “It’s you. In the future, you’re fixin’ to come back here and stop the Arran messenger from going through the kzachin.”

  “No, I am not. I don’t have a future. But as idiotic as your suggestion is, part of it may have merit. You’re a patterner, John. Not your intellect. That’s an empty squirrel cage. Your base instinct is matching pieces in the background.”

  “My instinct is saying the unseen force is not my friend.”

  “You don’t think it could be here to save us from the Hive?”

  “No. And you don’t believe that either.”

  “I don’t. I just thought you might think so.”

  “I’d sooner think it’s here to saddle up the Hive and ride it right over us.”

  “Controlling the Hive is a dubious ambition, but you’re right on one count. One can never go too far wrong imputing malevolent intent to a hidden power.”

  Augustus closed his eyes and went silent.

  Hours ago Farragut had caught Augustus looking down the business end of a sword.

  Farragut scolded, “This is an inconvenient time to be contemplating suicide.”

  “I didn’t consider your convenience. May I have my sword back?”

  “All the gorgons in the galaxy heading this way, and you’re fixin’ to desert. I’m at the Alamo here. I order you not to kill yourself.”

  “Then you risk me joining the other side in the middle of the next gorgon battle, id est, not convenient either.”

  “Why would you do that? Why would you join the gorgons?”

  “It wouldn’t be my idea. I’m past the point where I’m certain I can resist Hive influence. It would happen because of equipment failure. I’m at the end of my life. I’m past due. And you’re hard on your machines.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Don’t ever. I am here to save the Roman Empire from gorgons. Nothing I do has anything to do with you. Be ready to strike me down if I join the other side.”

  “Figure out what happened here,” Farragut ordered.

  “I’m in the brig.”

  Farragut stalked out. He jerked his thumb back over his shoulder as he told the human Marine guard at the hatch, “Unbrig that man.”

  7 Iunius 2443

  Xerxes

  Globular Cluster IC9870986 a/k/a the Myriad

  Sagittarian Space

  Sooner than Romulus expected, he was here. Amid the barrage of new thoughts and images, Romulus knew immediately that he had arrived.

  If he hadn’t been plugged into patterner mode, he couldn’t have followed the events. Everything happened so fast.

  He, in his Xerxes, had emerged from the Rim Gate and crushed the flimsy Arran messenger ship.

  Romulus was in the Myriad. Now.

  Now was five years in his own past.

  To one side of his Xerxes stretched the darkness of open space. To the other, the Myriad star cluster dazzled with the light of three million suns.

  Romulus laughed and heard his own laughter echo back at him from the compartment’s walls. As predicted, he’d slammed the Arran messenger ship away from the Rim Gate. The first thing he’d needed to do was already done.

  He was feeling omnipotent.

  He hadn’t realized how much doubt he’d been holding in. He shouted for joy, a triumphant “Ha!” He took in great breaths. He was breathing.

  “Ha!” He was alive!

  “Ha!” He was here!

  “Ha!” He was in his own damned past!

  Mastery was intoxicating. He shouted to the overhead, as if his voice could carry across the galaxy, “Claudia! I am here!”

  She was alive in this time. Far away, but in this existence, alive, now. And he could keep her that way. “I AM A GOD!
”

  He was aware that he’d already changed future history by destroying the Arran messenger. His certainty of coming events would diminish rapidly from now on.

  He needed to get things in order here, fast, so he could start the long journey to Near Space, to Palatine and Claudia.

  His first priorities were to neutralize Augustus and to take command of the two Legion carriers.

  He took a resonant sounding of the immediate stellar vicinity. He sifted what he needed from the crush of data.

  First: There was Merrimack, nine hours out and closing on the Rim Gate—exactly where she was supposed to be.

  But there was something wrong with her. He brought up her image. There were great holes in her physical hull. Only her energy shell was holding her atmosphere in. Her hull looked like—he couldn’t believe it—chewed. An empty spot gaped under one massive wing. It made her look off balance. Merrimack was missing an engine. She was showing five. She should have six.

  That damage was not in the historical log.

  The damage looked eerily like Hive work. But the Hive shouldn’t be here. Not in the year 2443. Not ever.

  In Romulus’ memory the Hive had never come to the Myriad.

  Romulus executed a broader resonant scan. He felt cold even before he sorted out the mashed-up results.

  He found the Hive. Sphere upon sphere was converging on the Myriad.

  That was wrong. This could not be.

  The Hive shouldn’t be here. The Hive had never been here!

  How could his arrival have changed things so drastically already? Backward in time. It wasn’t possible. He’d just got here.

  He told himself that it could be explained. That it didn’t matter. To hell with Merrimack. Romulus needed to find his Legions. That was an immediate priority.

  Where were the Legion carriers? There should be two, closing in on the Myriad.

  But the two Roman Legion carriers were not on their historical course. They should be there, headed toward the Myriad to challenge Merrimack for the star cluster.

  And Augustus should be ahead of them, flying point in his Striker.

  Augustus was not on his historical vector.

  Might Augustus have detected the Xerxes and changed course?

  No. Romulus had his Xerxes shrouded in perfect stealth. Augustus in the year 2443 would not be able to detect a Xerxes.