by Frank Morin
“The hill is closed for renovation,” the fake police officer said in Italian and then repeated in English.
“I’m looking for the Colosseum,” Tomas said.
“It’s right over there.” The man actually turned to point.
Tomas lunged, spinning the surprised sentry and driving a thin-bladed knife into the base of the man’s skull.
Instead of punching through to his brain and killing him instantly, the blade bounced off the man’s head.
The heka spun, elbowing Tomas and reaching for his gun.
Tomas tackled him to the ground, wrestling for control, and shouted, “All teams, move in now! Sentries are web-protected.”
The sentry punched him in the mouth, and he growled as he fought the man down. Domenico jumped into the fray, and together they subdued the sentry and tied him up with steel-braid zip ties. He might be web-protected, but that didn’t make him stronger than other men and didn’t prevent him from being bound.
The suppressed reports of sniper rifles cracked from the nearby tower. To Tomas, those softened reports sounded the death knell of his plan, and would serve only as a warning to the other watchers that the attack had come.
“Spotters are not down,” one of the snipers reported. “Repeat, bullets did not drop them.”
“They’re all protected,” Tomas said, amazed at the breadth of the web. He hadn’t faced one this sophisticated since the battle of Bull Run in the colonies. “Team two do you copy? Heka are protected.”
“Roger,” Anaru said. “We’ve made contact and found the same. First scout is disabled.”
“Advance with caution,” Tomas advised. “Teams five through seven, move to support Anaru. Equip with anti-enhanced restraints. The enemy is active and alert. Expect resistance. Team nine, set up support ordinance.”
Tomas and Domenico dragged the still-struggling heka up the paved road for fifty feet and tied him to a tree. A new disturbance sounded from the Forum as tourists too stupid to run from the initial gunshots panicked at the sight of dozens of heavily armed men racing across the ruins. Tomas’ men wore their fake polizia uniforms, but he had hoped to minimize the disturbance.
As Tomas slipped on his helmet and took up his rifle, gunfire erupted from higher up the hill. Bullets whined as they ricocheted off walls and stone pavers. Tomas led his men into the cover of trees and ruined walls. They needed to move fast, but attacking a protected enemy up a hill was suicide. He needed a better plan.
Tomas caught a glimpse of several heka standing unafraid in the open, firing down on his men. Protected as they were, they could attack with reckless abandon. The heavy fire slowed his team’s advance. Their enhancements multiplied their strength and accelerated healing, but didn’t make them invincible.
He tapped his earpiece to change channels. “Gregorios, we’ve begun our assault, but the heka here are protected too.”
“I don’t want another light brigade,” Gregorios said. “But you have to take those tunnels and disable that web.”
“Roger. We’ll get it done.”
Tomas shot a particularly daring heka five times in the face. The man went down, but reappeared a few seconds later.
If only he could call in air support. They might be protected, but getting a cluster bomb dropped on their heads would dampen their spirits for sure. A bunker buster bomb into the hidden tunnels might even disrupt the web for them. Unfortunately, they couldn’t risk widespread damage to the historical landmark.
That didn’t mean Tomas couldn’t get creative.
“Someone take out that guy,” Tomas called.
One of his men, crouched farther along the ruined wall, popped up and fired a gun that looked like a modified grenade launcher. It was one of Quentin’s inventions. Instead of exploding rounds, it fired weighted bolos.
Those weighted ends dragged the ropes open and they hit the heka just below the knees. The ends whipped around his legs several times, tying him securely in half a second. The heka stumbled, and three of Tomas’ men charged him, armed with zip ties. They dragged the bound fighter out of sight before other heka could interfere.
The tactics would work, but it’d take too long, and every moment of delay meant more of their comrades could get killed in the fighting around the Castel.
“Squad nine, where are you with those mortars?”
“Almost ready,” their leader reported.
Anaru protested. “Captain, we can’t call in explosive rounds.”
“We’re not,” Tomas said. “Squad nine, fire smoke just above our position. We’ll close and take them down at close quarters.”
He just hoped Paul was indeed sleeping somewhere in the tunnels. Sarah was in grave danger if he was, but if she held out long enough for Tomas to firebomb the sleeping Cui Dashi, they could end the threat once and for all.
Chapter Eighty-One
I wish the Roman people had only one neck! Shahrokh warns against runes to subject the souls of my people, but would that not be easier?
~Caligula, the fourth life of Julius Caesar
Sarah stood beside Eirene at the top of a long stone staircase below the portico of the imposing stone temple of Summanus, god of nocturnal thunder. They faced north across Rome, and the ancient city looked soft in the gentle light of early morning. A dark pall of smoke hung over the northern reaches of the city, obscuring the distant hills.
Eirene wore a hooded, crimson robe with a black leather mask, but Sarah recognized Iltea’s body. A priest in battle garb stood on the far side of Eirene. She had called him Titus, and he was asking her a series of questions. Sarah ignored the conversation, her thoughts focused on reviewing the plan for the upcoming confrontation.
She was scared, but resolved. She’d spent the last few minutes exploring the expansive portico and preparing the battleground. She had marked ciphers on columns in several strategic locations, just in case she needed them later.
Paul had hurt her repeatedly, and his promised torture was so vile she felt dirty just thinking about it. She wanted to shove a sword through his guts like he’d done to her. But secretly, she wished Tomas’ force would destroy the machine and the sleeping Cui Dashi before he arrived.
A priest rushed up the stairs. “The Visigoth hordes are approaching at speed.”
Eirene nodded. “I can feel Paul tampering already. Much depends on you, my dear. Are you ready?”
“Bring it on.” The quaver in her voice wrecked her attempt at bravado. She added, “How long do we need to hold?”
“That depends on Tomas and Greg,” Eirene said. “Paul will try to force the memory forward to the time when the master rune will appear. I’ll delay as long as I can, but alone, I can’t hold him off forever.”
“Unless I kill him first.” Sarah doubted she’d succeed in killing Paul, but they’d driven him from dreams before. That would count as a victory too.
All too soon, over a hundred heavily armed soldiers approached at a quick trot. At the head of the army ran Spartacus, oaken spear held easily in his powerful hands. Paul ran at his side, still wearing his impeccable blue suit and wide-brimmed hat.
“You’re sure Spartacus is just a memory projection?” Sarah asked.
“He has to be,” Eirene said as she led Sarah back into the shadows of the deep portico and its marble columns. “The real Spartacus is busy at the Castel. I’ll worry about him. Stick to the plan.”
“Can’t we just shift to another memory?”
Eirene shook her head. “I tried that as soon as I felt Paul’s presence, but I’d need to take them with us or they’d walk this memory unhindered. I can’t shift them. Paul’s too strong.”
Not for long. Sarah ran the ciphers through her mind. This time, Paul was in for a surprise.
Catapults fired from concealed positions within the outbuildings at the base of the stairs, but the deadly barrage of caltrops and stone shot flickered and disappeared.
Eirene winced, rubbing her temple. “Definitely tampering.”
> “Can you stay in control?” Sarah didn’t want to risk getting separated again.
“This is my memory, but given enough time, he’ll take over.”
“He won’t get that much time,” Sarah promised her.
Before she’d left Tomas, they’d shared a passionate kiss and he’d gripped her shoulders, his expression intent. “Sarah, you can’t hold back. When Paul shows up, hit him with everything. Overwhelming force is your only chance.
She planned to do just that.
Undamaged by the failed catapults, the barbarian army cheered and surged up the steps. The sound was terrifying, but the sight of the rampaging horde didn’t scare Sarah as much as it would have in other circumstances. She leaned forward, eager to witness as they ran right into her trap.
The Visigoths’ howling battle cries faded to surprised panting, then to soft groans. The army slowed, and barbarians began dropping. Shields and swords clattered against the stone stairs as they fell to Sarah’s invisible assault.
She had placed battle ciphers along both sides of the steps, similar to the ones she’d set up in Suntara to bolster Francesca in powering the machine. These ciphers weren’t so gentle. Instead of siphoning tiny fractions of soul force of those in the affected zone, these drained everything, without mercy.
Within seconds the entire charge faltered and only Paul and Spartacus remained standing. Spartacus swayed where he stood, but was already cutting into his forearm to activate a new rune. Paul didn’t appear affected by the cipher at all.
Sarah braced herself against the hoped-for influx of energy drained from those attackers, but as their bodies faded from the memoryscape, she got nothing. She wasn’t surprised. They weren’t really there, after all, even though they could inflict wounds upon the memory walkers.
“Pilum and martiobarbuli,” Eirene ordered, her calm voice ringing in the abrupt silence.
Her caller, a pinched little man who stood at her left shoulder, whistled four sharp notes. Battle priests all down the line at the top of the steps launched javelins or barbed darts at the two men. Sarah cringed to think what those missiles could do to living flesh.
She didn’t get to see it firsthand. Paul waved one hand, and the missiles disintegrated.
Eirene tried again. “Sagittarii.”
Two shrill, whistled notes. Composite bows thrummed from the concealed raised platforms. Arrows whistled down, but again disappeared.
“I hate cheaters,” Eirene muttered.
Down on the steps, Spartacus’ new rune flared, and he stood tall again.
Sarah decided Paul must have marked some kind of blocking rune before they arrived at the temple. A huge, six-barreled gun appeared in front of him, mounted on a tripod, with a belt of ammunition snaking out of a large box. He tipped his wide-brimmed hat up enough to reveal a smug smile as he reached for the handle.
A hairy ape-like creature rose out of the steps near him, but he twisted the minigun in its direction and squeezed the trigger for half a second. The gun buzzed like a psycho saw, and hundreds of rounds ripped the beast apart.
Paul shouted, “Sarah, say hello to my little friend.”
She replied. “You can’t be serious! You can’t even come up with your own grand entrance line?”
His smile faltered. “I loved that movie.”
He spun the gun in her direction, shouting, “And I will not allow you to disparage it!”
Sarah ducked behind one of the thick stone pillars as he opened fire. Bullets tore into the stone with a roar like an avalanche. Eirene was huddled behind another pillar, clutching at her head.
“I can’t stop it,” she said, looking irritated.
Sarah needed power, and she couldn’t afford to hesitate. She’d considered her options, but hadn’t figured out a way to safely test her theories. Vlad’s words rang in her mind.
“Nothing like this has been done before. If I’m not willing to take the risk to protect those only I can protect, then we’ve already lost.”
Willing her fingers not to tremble, Sarah embraced her rounon well and began marking a cipher into the face of the pillar as Paul’s withering fire shredded its far side. Her finger trailed glowing light, and the cipher formed against the stone. The beauty of it and the thrill she felt while using her gift helped calm her, and her finger moved faster.
She built a cipher to grant her strength, but instead of using modifiers to draw energy from nearby souls, she added symbols from the lesser master rune they’d acquired from the assassination of Julius Caesar. She didn’t dare use it all, and she included modifiers to limit the amount of energy she drew from even that tiny piece to one percent. Even so, it was good that Alter didn’t see what she was doing.
“Whatever you have in mind, I suggest you implement it soon,” Eirene called. “Your pillar is almost gone.”
“Got it!” Sarah cried, completing the cipher with a flourish. She focused on it, willing it to life, but hopefully not too much life.
The cipher blazed against the stone, and a torrent of energy thundered into Sarah’s body, shaking her with its intensity. Even that tiny fraction of the energy she’d drawn from that lesser master rune hit like a hammer-blow. She grabbed the pillar to keep from collapsing, and felt the vibration from bullets striking just inches away on the far side.
She no longer feared them.
Her muscles quivered with the need to move. She’d never felt so incredibly strong, never imagined it possible. If she wanted to, she could rip the temple off its foundation and throw it across Rome.
She didn’t want to do that.
She wanted to kill Paul.
“Are you all right?” Eirene asked.
“Never better.” Sarah felt full in a way she never had before, energy infusing her every cell. Had she attempted to draw more power, she wasn’t sure she could have contained it. Vlad’s warning about the disastrous results of losing control rang in her mind. He hadn’t survived his attempt to push the limits. She needed to finish the fight and extinguish her power source.
She summoned a scalpel to hand and marked the two critical lines onto the rune on her thigh. Powered by so much new energy, the rune blazed instantly and she felt her body composition shift into quicksilver fluidity.
In a flash, Sarah leaped out from behind the pillar and jumped off the top of the steps, springing eighty feet, aiming to land close beside Paul.
Paul twisted the heavy minigun and caught her in midair. The deadly torrent swatted her out of the air twenty feet short of him. Rounds pinged off her hardened skin, but the lead poured in with such intensity that the bullets began tearing into her quicksilver torso, the kinetic energy driving her back.
“Surrender to me, Sarah,” Paul shouted over the roar of the gun. “And you don’t need to get hurt any more.”
He promised peace, but his eyes were cold and mean.
Sarah rolled, trying to escape the storm of bullets to close on him. Maybe jumping down the steps hadn’t been such a good idea.
Then she spotted Spartacus, who stood off to one side, mouth agape, staring in wonder at the minigun. He was the memory shade of the real Spartacus, so knew nothing of guns.
He was her chance.
Sarah scrambled in his direction, moving on all fours faster than normal people could run, but knocked back constantly by the still-roaring minigun. Spartacus realized the danger too late, and Sarah tackled him off his feet.
Paul stopped firing.
As Sarah had suspected, he wanted to keep Spartacus around. So she threw the struggling gladiator at Paul.
He knocked Spartacus out of the air, but that was more than enough time for Sarah to close.
With a thought, her arms flowed into swords. With two swipes, she sheared the blurring gun barrels and severed the ammo belt.
“That was getting boring anyway,” Paul said, lunging, hands bursting into purple fire.
Sarah’s sword arms flowed back to normal, and she caught his wrists, then shifted her hands into spiked
manacles that dug into his flesh.
Paul might be Cui Dashi, supernaturally strong from the souls he’d siphoned, but he gasped from the unexpected pain. Tomas, with all his enhancements, couldn’t stand against him, but Sarah held his hands back from her face and no longer feared him.
For the first time, he wasn’t quite strong enough. With the strength of the lesser master rune aiding her, Sarah held him, barely.
“Today it’s my turn,” Sarah growled.
She head-butted him in the face, then shifted her arms back into swords and drove them into his body over and over. He tried to retreat, but she kicked aside his broken minigun and pursued, stabbing him again.
“How do you like it?” she snarled.
She drove a sword into his throat, then threw him up the steps. He smashed right through the first thick column of the portico and cracked the second. His blood splattered the stones, and Sarah marveled that he had any left. When he struggled to his hands and knees, fear shone in his eyes.
Spartacus’ battle cry caught her attention. The Thracian gladiator had closed with Eirene, who had slipped out of her crimson robe. He had recognized the full figure she wore, and an expression of rage twisted his features.
“You have dishonored her too long, daughter of the gorgons!” he shouted.
Eirene avoided his plunging spear and kicked him down the steps. “I am so tired of that line.”
She waved to Sarah. “Don’t dawdle, dear.”
Sarah saluted and flew up the steps in a graceful jump, kicking Paul in the ribs as he struggled to his feet. Bones shattered in his torso and he screamed as the impact launched him through the cracked column and into another one.
Sarah caught a fifteen-foot section of the toppling column and used it like a club, smashing it over his head. The column shattered, but left him crumpled on the cracked floor. She had hoped to drive him out of the memory, but he appeared willing to suffer pain for the chance to get at the master rune.
Good. She decided to oblige.
His blood coated the stone all around, and the air was heavy with the stench of it. She lifted his broken body from the floor and held him high, exulting in the feeling of matchless power.