Gates of Rome tr-5

by Alex Scarrow

  ‘… I hacked them… I… you see I… they were… reset to take his orders…’

  ‘Slow down,’ said Maddy. ‘Please. Slow down. You’re not making sense.’

  ‘… chief technical officer… me… m-me! See?… I was in charge! Exodus! Exodus! ’

  ‘Exodus?’

  ‘P-project… the project. Exodus… I was chief t-technical officer.’ The old man squatted down on the cool floor, his painfully malnourished body already exhausted from the rush of excitement.

  Cato crouched down beside them. ‘Ask him if he was one of the Visitors.’

  ‘Oh, I think he must be,’ replied Maddy.

  ‘R-Rashim… m-my name… it… it’s Rashim!’ he replied in broken Latin. ‘Yes! I… I was one of them! I w-was there! I was THERE!’

  Sal came over to join them. ‘I’ve bound Liam up and… Jahulla!’ Her eyes took in the ruined facsimile of a human being, tucked into a foetal huddle on the floor. She stifled a gasp. ‘Who is that?’

  ‘We think he’s one of the Visitors,’ Maddy whispered in reply. She turned back to the man. ‘What happened to you?’ she asked. ‘What happened to the others?’

  Rashim’s wild eyes danced from Cato to her. ‘B-betrayed! My fault

  … oh my G-God it… it w-was all my fault I… I j-just wanted to… I never thought that… I… Oh God! OhGodOhGodOhGod — ’

  Maddy touched his hand, held it to calm him down. ‘Shhh. It’s OK, it’s OK. You’re safe now. We’re going to get you out of here.’

  ‘No… m-must listen. Y-you must listen to m-me now!’ He snatched his hand from her. ‘Time! Not m-much time! It… it… it h-happens soon!’

  ‘What does?’

  ‘Tell me… tell m-me the day! What is… the day? WHATISTHEDAY? ’

  ‘Date? Is that what you want? You want the precise date?’

  Rashim’s head nodded vigorously. ‘ TELL M-ME! ’ His thin voice was almost a childlike scream.

  Maddy looked at Bob.

  ‘Information: today’s date in the Roman calendar is twenty-nine Sextilis, in the Twentieth Year of Gaius. In the contemporary calendar that would be twenty-ninth August AD 54.’

  Rashim’s eyes rolled, showing the whites, and his eyelids drooped down, almost closing. His cracked and bloody lips fluttered silently, counting, calculating.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Maddy. ‘Rashim? Rashim — is that your name? What are you doing?’

  He raised a bony finger tipped with a long claw-like nail to shush her, his lips still silently twitching and leaking bloody spittle into his beard.

  ‘Rashim? What’s up? What’re you doing? Are you counting? Is that it?’

  ‘ NO-O-O-O! ’ Rashim bellowed suddenly. ‘No-no-no-no… too soon, too soon, toosoon. TOO SOON! ’

  Cato grasped Maddy’s arm roughly. ‘Tell me! What is he saying?’

  Too many things, too much hitting her at once. Maddy was ready to scream along with this crazy scarecrow of a man on the floor beside her.

  ‘Rashim! What? Tell me, what is too soon?’

  His eyes locked on her. ‘I am c-coming!! I will be here!!!’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘B-beacons… BEACONS! L-light, to show the way!.. I… I came… I came years b-before! I w-was here! To show the way!!’

  She shook her head. That meant nothing to her. It was complete gibberish.

  ‘R… r-receivers…’ Rashim continued. ‘I p-placed th-them. T-t-tachyon b-beacons — ’

  Maddy looked up quickly at Bob; his inert face flickered with a reaction.

  ‘Rashim, did you just say tachyon?’ asked Maddy. He was burbling nonsense again, the half-whisper of a deranged mind. She grabbed his shoulders firmly. ‘Rashim! You said the word tachyon! You’re talking about time travel! Yes?’

  He nodded frantically. ‘Yes… yes! M-markers! S-signals.’

  ‘Madelaine.’ Bob hunkered down beside her. ‘This could be an alternate time-displacement method. Marking out a locked location, a time-stamp.’

  Rashim’s face lit up hearing that, his deranged whispering brushed aside in an instant. ‘Yes… y-yes! Understand?’ He grinned manically, looking at Bob then Maddy. ‘T-time travel! Exactly! We came through… all those, all those years… but I came through before the others. See? Yes. It was me. I had to set it up, you understand?’

  ‘You placed out… what, some kind of time-stamp markers?’ asked Maddy. ‘Beacons? Is that what you’re saying?’

  ‘Yes! Y-yes! Then we a-all came through. We all came through! Exodus! ’

  ‘ Exodus? What is that? Is that the name of your… your group or something?’ She recalled a name stamped on the side of the first-aid pack. Project Exodus.

  ‘Project Exodus?’

  ‘P-project! Yes!’ He huffed air into his lungs. ‘We came… the future is dead! We came back. We c-came back here! That… that is — was — m-my project. My project. My project!’

  They heard the gravel-rasp of Macro’s voice, an exchange of voices outside the temple in the short passageway. A moment later, he was standing in the pooling light of the doorway.

  ‘Cato… we’ve got some company.’

  ‘Lepidus?’

  Macro shook his head slowly. ‘No such luck.’

  Cato cursed. He looked at Maddy. ‘Caligula’s on his way back. We may not have much time left.’

  ‘Can you buy us some more time?’

  He gestured at the piles of dust-covered technology. ‘So, can we use these things?’

  Maddy shrugged. ‘Maybe. Maybe there’s a way out of here. I just… I…’

  Cato nodded. ‘I’ll do what I can.’ He got up and headed to the doorway.

  They watched him go until Bob broke the silence. ‘It is possible Rashim may have been part of an advance party that arrived in this time to deploy markers in order to plot out a safe arrival area for a much larger group.’

  Rashim nodded. ‘But… calculations, I… made mistakes. So many m-mistakes.’ He shook his head, eyes leaking tears on to his scab-encrusted cheeks. ‘Too many new p-people. They made me guess. I had toguess! ’ His eyes darted wildly in their sunken sockets. ‘You… can’t just… guess. This… has to be precise. Time t-translation, you MUST be precise! You understand? PRECISE! ’

  Maddy nodded. ‘Oh yes… I know that.’

  ‘I–I… I got it wrong. W-we lost half of them.’

  ‘Lost? Do you mean in chaos space?’

  Rashim stilled. ‘… chaos? Chaos?’ He worked the word round his mouth. ‘Chaos… yes. Or Hell? Hmmm? Hell?’ He licked his dry, cracked lips, shook his head and began to giggle manically. ‘This is my Hell… my Hell, my Hell, my hidey-hole Hell. My hidey-hole Hell. Me and Mr Muzzy. Mr Muzzy and me — ’

  ‘Rashim!’ She shook him by the shoulders. ‘Rashim, come on, stay with us!’

  His face steadied; the insane smile slid off his lips and vanished into his beard. ‘I lost them in chaos. Lost s-souls now.’

  ‘You said half of them. What about everyone else? What about the rest of you? You came here, right?’

  Rashim laughed again. Bitterly. ‘Arrived… seven… seventeen years too early.’ Strings of blood-tinted spittle hung from his lower lip. ‘Wrong time… wrong time… wrong Caesar.’

  ‘Bob…’ said Maddy. ‘I’m just trying to figure this out. He’s saying he made a hash-up of things and his group what? Overshot these time-stamp markers?’

  ‘Correct. That is what I believe he is saying. They went back seventeen years earlier than intended.’

  She looked at him. ‘And that happened about seventeen years ago? That’s when “the Visitors” supposedly arrived?’

  ‘Affirmative.’

  She shook Rashim from his manic reverie. ‘Rashim! Is that what you’re saying? Your deployment team are going to appear sometime soon? Appear to place out those beacons?’

  He nodded. ‘ He knows too.’

  ‘He? Who?’

  ‘ God.’ Rashim chuckled.

/>   ‘God?’ Bob looked confused.

  ‘Right,’ said Sal dismissively. ‘He’s a nut.’ She looked at the others. ‘And we’re listening to him?’

  ‘No, wait!’ said Maddy. ‘He’s talking about Caligula, aren’t you, Rashim?’

  ‘I told him… it was this year… this summer… I told him.’

  ‘Oh my God! You actually told him about your advance party appearing? About there being a portal?’

  Rashim nodded. ‘He… his… his doorway to Heaven.’

  Maddy looked at Bob. ‘Could we use it? Could we use this portal to get home?’

  ‘I have no information. This must be a time-displacement technique developed after my inception date. After the agency’s database was set up.’

  ‘But it’s got to be similar… the same basic technology, right?’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘If it’s a beacon… could we use it to communicate forward to computer-Bob?’

  Bob nodded. ‘Theoretically. The only way to transmit data is a tachyon transmission.’

  The big question was whether computer-Bob was still in one piece, capable of receiving anything.

  ‘Rashim… you said it’s soon. A few moments ago you said “soon”. You were talking about the advance party appearing, right?’

  He offered her an appalling gummy smile. ‘Too soon… too soon,’ he replied in a sing-song voice. ‘Three days.’

  ‘Three days’ time?’

  Rashim nodded.

  ‘Do you know where? Can you tell us exactly where?’

  He was mumbling to himself in that unhinged, sing-song way.

  ‘Rashim!’

  ‘I know… I remember…’ He tapped his skull of tatty, wiry hair. ‘All in here. Don’t worry, me and Mr Muzzy know.’

  Sal cocked an eyebrow at her.

  CHAPTER 70

  AD 54, Imperial Palace, Rome

  Cato strode down the dimly lit main passageway towards the front portico.

  ‘I said… they’re not actually from Britain.’

  Macro looked at him. ‘They’re not?’

  ‘No… the place they come from is…’ Cato made a face. ‘I’m still struggling to make sense of it myself, as it happens. The place they come from is the future.’

  ‘The future?’

  ‘Yes, the very same place as the Visitors. Time ahead of us.’

  Macro frowned as his mind worked on that. ‘Years yet to be?’

  Cato nodded. ‘But from a place more than a thousand years yet to be.’

  He expected his old friend to struggle with that concept. Instead, he nodded casually. ‘Well, that explains quite a lot, then.’

  ‘Macro, I don’t understand what’s going on with that prisoner we found. They’re talking about something. Perhaps they’re discussing some of the Visitors’ devices. Perhaps their chariot. I don’t know. But all I do know is we have got to find a way to give them some more time.’

  ‘Cato, there’s you and me, your centurion, Fronto, and that giant of a man back inside.’

  ‘Bob.’

  ‘Yes, Bob… strange name. Anyway, I’m not sure how long the four of us can hold back the entire Praetorian Guard, Cato. That’s a fool’s errand.’

  ‘We have Fronto’s men. That’s enough men right there to hold the front gate for a while if it comes to a fight.’

  ‘That’s if they’ll fight on our side.’

  ‘True.’

  They strode through the entrance portico. Cato nodded at the section of men stationed there. They carried on down several steps outside into the courtyard. He could see Fronto’s men across the courtyard drawn up in an arc round the iron gates. Through the iron bars he could see a body of troops outside. Dismounted equites. Cavalry on foot acting for the moment, very reluctantly, as infantry.

  He picked out Fronto and approached him. ‘Centurion!’

  ‘Sir!’

  ‘What’s going on here?’

  Fronto nodded to the decurion still standing outside the gates. Beyond him Cato could see in the failing light of the late afternoon what looked like two or three hundred men and their horses. Still more of them in the distance, a column on horseback trotting up the avenue.

  ‘This traitor, sir!’ Fronto barked loud enough for his men to hear him clearly. ‘Wishes to loot the emperor’s palace.’

  ‘I see.’

  The decurion caught Fronto’s reply above the noise of his own men assembling in ranks behind him. ‘That’s not true! I have orders from the prefect!’ The decurion looked at Cato. ‘Orders for your arrest.’

  ‘It’s common practice in the Roman army to address a senior officer as sir, Decurion.’

  ‘Open the gates immediately!’ the decurion snapped as Fronto’s men lined up behind their shield wall. ‘This tribune is to be arrested for treachery!’

  Macro snarled angrily and took several steps towards the gate. He grabbed the iron rails in his hands. ‘This tribune is your superior officer!’

  The decurion offered him a patronizing smile. ‘And you? What are you, you fat old man? Nothing. Not even a soldier.’

  Macro ground his teeth then spat through the bars. ‘I could still take you on… boy.’

  The officer ignored him. ‘You will open the gates immediately or you will ALL be treated as traitors and punished accordingly!’

  ‘Lads!’ Cato turned to face his men. ‘Those men outside the gate… have become deserters! Mercenaries! They’re here to fill their pockets and then flee the city before our emperor returns! It is our sacred duty to hold this gate!’

  ‘He’s lying!’

  ‘Quiet!’ snapped Macro, smacking his fist against the bars of the gate.

  ‘Men!’ Cato shouted. His voice was never going to match the parade-ground roar of Macro or Fronto, but it carried the authority of rank and experience. ‘The emperor has entrusted this cohort and this particular century to guard his home. He favours us. He trusts us. If we allow those men outside,’ he laughed, ‘those horse-maidens to come in…’

  The men shared his amusement. There was little love lost between any legion’s foot soldiers and its squadron of cavalry. Equites who considered themselves a class above the rest.

  ‘… then we are breaking his trust and disobeying a direct imperial order!’

  The decurion sighed, shook his head. ‘Right… have it your own way.’

  Cato joined Macro beside the gate. They watched as the young officer turned away from them and headed back to rejoin his men.

  Fronto joined the pair of them. ‘Well done, sir,’ he said quietly. ‘Some of my lads were looking a bit twitchy for a moment there.’

  ‘This stand-off’s only going to last until someone turns up with a higher rank or a written order,’ said Cato. ‘Then those men will turn us over.’

  ‘Maybe not… they’re good boys all in.’ Fronto shot a glance at the anxious faces of his men, eyes glinting in the shadow of their helmets, eyes on their centurion. ‘They’re a loyal bunch.’

  ‘Loyal enough to be branded traitors alongside us?’ replied Cato. ‘To face Caligula’s wrath?’

  The centurion pursed his lips, not entirely sure of his answer.

  ‘Like I say… this stand-off’s going to be over the moment we get a higher rank out there.’

  ‘Stand-off?’ Macro sucked air through his gap-teeth. ‘It looks like we’re up for a bit of a scrap if you ask me. Look.’

  Cato followed the direction he’d nodded in and saw a cart being rolled forward through the assembled ranks. It was stacked high and heavy with sacks of animal manure, pushed by several dozen men and beginning to roll under its own momentum.

  He reached up and tightened the strap on his helmet. ‘I think you might be right there, Macro.’

  CHAPTER 71

  AD 54, Imperial Palace, Rome

  The front rank of dismounted equites sidestepped to allow the trundling cart through. Its large iron-rimmed wheels clattered noisily across the paving stones of the square before th
e palace’s north-east gate.

  ‘That’s coming right through,’ grunted Macro.

  Cato nodded. The iron gates were more decorative than they were utilitarian; the cart was going to knock them right off their hinges without any trouble at all.

  ‘Fronto, form up your men closer to the gate.’ He pointed to stone posts either side, and the eight-foot wall that continued all the way round the Imperial Palace. ‘Once they’ve barged those gates open we can hold them in that bottleneck for a while.’

  ‘Right you are, sir.’

  Fronto advanced his men to within twelve feet of the gates, ready to press forward into the open space the moment the cart was pulled back to allow the equites in.

  ‘Where do you want me, Cato?’ asked Macro.

  Cato smiled. ‘Where you feel most at home.’

  ‘In the thick of it, then.’ Macro flashed a dark grin at him. ‘Like old times, eh, lad?’

  ‘Like old times.’

  The cart outside had found the gentlest incline and now was rolling freely towards the iron gates, shedding several sacks as it bounced and vibrated across the flagstones.

  ‘Steady, lads!’ bellowed Fronto.

  Cato watched Macro shoulder his way in among the front rank of the centurion’s men. ‘Come on, ladies, make a hole!’ he heard his friend growl at them.

  Like old times.

  Cato remembered his first skirmish in the army. He was just a boy only a couple of weeks into basic training; Macro, on the other hand, had been little different from the way he was now: short and stocky, an impenetrable wall of foul-mouthed confidence. He remembered that first skirmish, being petrified beyond belief, but somehow, even in the middle of the clash of arms and the screams of the dying, knowing that standing right beside his centurion, right beside Macro… he was safe. That he’d always be safe. As if a cloak of invincibility surrounded that cantankerous old man.

  ‘Here it comes, boys!’ shouted Macro. ‘Who’s up for teaching these horse-girls how to fight?’ The men either side of him roared with nervous laughter.

  Cato grinned as he stood beside Fronto. ‘You’ll have to excuse him.’