Muses of Terra (Codex Antonius Book 2)

by Rob Steiner

  Marcus Antonius leaned between Cordus and Kaeso, and Cordus jumped. “You see, we are not that different from each other,” Marcus said.

  Kaeso noticed Cordus’s flinch. “You all right, Trierarch?”

  “Fine,” Cordus said, though he couldn’t see Kaeso with Marcus between them. Cordus quickly rubbed his left eye. “A speck…”

  Marcus laughed. “You’re getting good at lying to him.”

  Why are you here? Cordus asked with his mind.

  “We’re always here, young Antonius. We’re part of you, remember?”

  Why are you taunting me then?

  Marcus affected a frown. “We would never taunt you. We have more respect for our master than humans ever did for theirs.”

  If I’m your master, then I order you to go away and not come back unless I call for you. Clear?

  Marcus bowed his head. “Of course, Dominar.”

  Then he disappeared…to reveal Kaeso staring at Cordus with a raised eyebrow.

  Cordus blinked several times. “Damned speck.”

  Nestor spoke up from his delta couch behind Cordus. “You might have an eyelash. Do you want me to check?”

  “I’m fine,” Cordus said a little too forcefully. Then in a gentler tone, “I think it’s out now.”

  He hoped he could make Marcus go away and reappear with a simple order. He decided he would test that later when he wasn’t so busy…or around people.

  Vacuna descended toward the Tarpeius holdings on a clear, sunny day. The ship sped over rolling green hills and vast crops of wheat, maize, and other vegetables and grains. Farming was Reantium’s reason for existence, and it had once been considered Roma’s “granary”. With Reantium’s independence, food prices in the Republic would now soar. Some outlying systems and colonies would even starve.

  Cordus ground his teeth. Just one Roman warlord Legion could’ve stopped this revolt before it even began. And yet millions of citizens will starve because gluttonous senators fight over who gets to sit in the consul’s chair.

  The hailing channel chimed. “Vacuna, this is Tarpeius flight control. Please respond.”

  Cordus thumbed the com. “Tarpeius flight control, this is Vacuna.”

  “We have you inbound from the southwest at 200 miles out from Tarpeius spaceport. That port is no longer in operation. Please proceed to government-sanctioned Nascio spaceport at the coordinates I’m forwarding to you.”

  Kaeso frowned, then thumbed his com. “Tarpeius flight control, this is the Centuriae of Vacuna. What happened to the Tarpeius spaceport?”

  There was a noticeable pause. “Tarpeius spaceport has been decommissioned by the Reantium Liberation Collegium.”

  “‘Reantium Liberation Collegium’?”

  “Reantium’s holy government. Please proceed to Nascio spaceport where agents of Aulus Tarpeius will transport you to his villa.”

  Kaeso’s frown deepened. “Acknowledged, Tarpeius flight control. Vacuna out.”

  Cordus entered the new coordinates into the tabulari. The ship’s automated systems obeyed the commands and brought the ship into a steeper descent to the Nascio land port seventy miles closer.

  “So this is Tarpeius’s reward for staying out of the rebellion,” Cordus said.

  “Or punishment. The ‘Reantium Liberation Collegium’ is likely bitter he didn’t use his considerable resources to drive the Romans out.”

  “Should we be worried?”

  Kaeso looked at Cordus wryly. “Just don’t tell anyone who you are.”

  “Great.”

  “The Centuriae is right,” Nestor said. “The worlds that rebelled against the Republic all wanted one thing: independence. Most desire membership in the Lost Worlds, so they try very hard to remain friendly to non-Romans. As long as we stick with our usual cover stories, we will be fine. The post-rebellion worlds we’ve visited so far have treated us like pontiffs.”

  Cordus wished Kaeso and Nestor’s words reassured him, but they didn’t. Terrible uneasiness spread from his gut. He hadn’t felt this nervous since he escaped Terra six years ago. He noticed Kaeso also seemed tense. His brows furrowed as he scrolled through planetary news feeds on his tabulari.

  This is what it’s like to be in danger. Get used to it.

  Nascio flight control hailed the ship and then took control of their landing process. Cordus was already uneasy over the dead way station and change in spaceports, so letting an unknown flight controller fly the ship made him bite his lip.

  Cordus looked out the command deck windows at the Nascio spaceport. Few ships were parked around the port, mostly shuttles and air flyers. Four block-shaped hangars with the iconic Roman red-tiled roofs were spread across the port, and a small control tower stood near the edge of the concrete landing pads.

  Nascio flight control set Vacuna down on a pad with a slight bump. As soon as the ship landed, controls came back to Cordus’s tabulari, so he powered down the engines and the inertia/grav fields. Cordus felt lighter, as Reantium’s gravity was 0.95 T.

  Should make self-defense a bit easier, he thought warily.

  The ship’s external com chimed from a local voice network.

  “This is Vacuna,” Cordus answered.

  “Vacuna,” a Germanic male voice said, “I am Uller Mus, chief slave in the House of Aulus Tarpeius. I have a ground car waiting to take you to my dominar’s villa. I am on the southeastern corner of the port and will be holding a sign with your ship’s name.”

  Kaeso reached over and thumbed the “mute” button. He then tapped his collar com. “Blaesus, did you hear that?”

  “I did,” Blaesus said, “and I know Uller Mus very well. He’s a dour man, though efficient and capable.”

  “So you do recognize his voice?” Kaeso pressed.

  “It certainly sounded like the grumpy old dog.”

  Kaeso turned off the “mute” and nodded to Cordus. Cordus said, “Thank you, Uller Mus. We will meet you in ten minutes.”

  “Acknowledged, Vacuna.” The transmission ended.

  Cordus unbuckled himself from his couch. Kaeso did the same, still frowning.

  “You don’t trust this Uller Mus?” Cordus asked.

  “Not that,” Kaeso said. “It bothers me how easily Tarpeius gave up his spaceport to the new government. He has a private legion to protect his holdings and security systems better than even the Roman garrisons. They’d have no trouble fighting off a revolutionary mob. What made him give up so easily?”

  Nestor had already unbuckled himself and stood near the command deck ladder. “The ‘mob’ overthrew the Roman garrisons, so maybe they’re more powerful than they seem?”

  “Maybe,” Kaeso conceded. “But all the combined Roman garrisons on Reantium barely added up to a legion, and they were spread across the planet. A frenzied mob could take down individual cohorts, but not a well-supplied legion like Tarpeius’s.” Kaeso looked at Cordus. “Whatever the case, I don’t like unanswered questions. Stay alert, Trierarch.”

  Cordus nodded. He didn’t need Kaeso to tell him that.

  The Vacuna crew gathered in Cargo One as Kaeso lowered the external ramp. They all wore some variation of a green jumpsuit that was standard fashion for Liberti merchant crews. Blaesus, however, seemed to chafe in his jumpsuit; he had wanted to wear his brilliant white toga as he typically did on-world, but thought better of it. An obvious Roman fashion on a revolutionary world might garner sour glares at best, a sniper’s pulse pellet in the brain at worst.

  “I hesitate to burden you with such a request, sire,” Blaesus said as he dropped his packs to the floor, “but could you carry my second bag? My back spasms have returned and will not let up. I think it’s because I’m sleeping on a ship’s bunk again, which makes a board of nails seem as comfortable as a feather quilt in comparison.”

  “Sure,” Cordus said, then picked up the pack. He grunted in surprise; the pack seemed to hold a dozen hardbound books and a few bricks for good measure.

  “You’re a wonderf
ul Trierarch, sire,” Blaesus said, then bounded down the cargo ramp.

  Cordus now understood why the rest of the crew scattered when Blaesus entered Cargo One. He put the pack over his shoulder and walked down the door ramp.

  At least no one will mistake me for a Roman patrician. They’d rather die than suffer under this load.

  At the bottom of the ramp, Kaeso eyed Blaesus’s pack as he tapped the controls on the Vacuna to close the ramp. “You’ll learn,” he said with a grin.

  The yellow sun, blue sky, and cool breeze refreshed Cordus’s spirits and made the pack seem lighter. This was the first time in six years he’d set foot on a Terran-class world other than Caesar Nova. A pleasant grassiness permeated the air. The hills beyond the tarmac were green and rolling, with occasional trees that looked more like giant shrubs than the tall canopy trees Cordus grew up with in Roma. Cordus had grown used to Caesar Nova’s limited vegetation of man-sized bushes, so he marveled at the size of Reantium’s tree-shrubs.

  The walk to the ground car loosened Cordus’s tight muscles. It had been over a week since they left Caesar Nova, and he’d barely had time to train like he had on the Saturnist stronghold.

  But I’m not in training anymore. Now he was doing something that mattered, practicing his skills in a real mission. Though the confused situation on Reantium made him nervous, he could not deny the excitement rising in him with each step. The air, the adrenaline, and the low gravity combined to make him feel ready for any challenge the mission gave him.

  A lone ground car sat at the edge of the tarmac, beside which stood a short, stocky man with a shock of blond-white hair, its wisps standing in the breeze. He wore the tan shirt and matching pants commonly worn by slaves throughout the Republic. He held a sign with “Vacuna” hand-written in black, bold letters. This amused Cordus, for there were no other ground cars around Uller Mus, and no other disembarking crews from the parked ships.

  “This must be our car,” Kaeso remarked.

  “Uller Mus!” Blaesus shouted good-naturedly when they were a dozen paces away. “Gods, man, you don’t look a day over 80!”

  “Dominar Octavius,” Uller said in a quiet voice. “A pleasure to see you again.”

  Uller took Blaesus’s shoulder pack from his outstretched hands. He walked around to the back of the ground car, opened the trunk and stowed the pack. Cordus and the rest of the crew handed their packs to Uller, who added them to the trunk.

  Once the packs were secure, the Vacuna crew climbed into the car. Uller got into the driver’s seat, and they were soon traveling down a paved road toward Nascio.

  Blaesus sat in the front seat to Uller’s right. “So the troubles reached old Tarpeius, eh? Bet the bastard wasn’t pleased to lose his spaceport.”

  “He was not, dominar,” Uller said without elaborating.

  “So all his produce goes through Nascio now? Jupiter’s balls, how does he ship it here? His harvesters took their produce directly to his land port—now he has to ship them twenty miles to this one?”

  “Yes, dominar.”

  “How many ground haulers did he have to buy?”

  “Many, dominar.”

  “Unbeliev—”

  Blaesus stopped talking. Cordus glanced at the old Senator and saw him staring out the front window with a grim, angry expression. Cordus leaned around the driver’s seat in front of him to see what could make Blaesus speechless.

  Crosses lined each side of the road bearing Roman soldiers. They all wore the green fatigues common to all soldiers fighting in a green environment. Hand-written placards were nailed above each victim’s head—“ROMAN PIG” in dark letters the color of dried blood. All looked dead at least a week. Some wore uniforms marred by obvious pulse wounds, while others wore relatively clean uniforms.

  Tribunes and logistics staff, Cordus decided. Captured last.

  Brightly colored carrion birds perched on several crosses, pecking at eyes and noses. As Uller drove by, he lowered his window, put two fingers in his mouth, and released an ear-splitting whistle. The birds perched on the crosses scattered into the sky, some still holding their grisly pickings.

  Blaesus eyed Uller a moment, then lowered his own window and produced the same high-pitched whistle at the carrion birds on the right side of the road.

  Dariya sniffed. “They will only come back.”

  Cordus glared at her as she stared out the window. She turned to him and blinked when she saw his face. He didn’t know what kind of expression he wore, but she sighed, lowered her window and began whistling like Uller and Blaesus. Soon even Kaeso and Nestor whistled at the birds.

  Embarrassingly, Cordus could not produce the same whistle with his two fingers as his crew, so he screamed at the birds. The more he screamed, the angrier he got, until he was yelling nonsensical curses with a raw throat.

  How ridiculous we must look, a car full of screaming, whistling passengers racing down the road.

  He stopped screaming when Kaeso put a firm hand on his leg. The rest of the crew had ended their whistling and gave him sideways glances.

  “I think we got them all, kid,” Kaeso whispered.

  Cordus nodded, then used his sleeve to wipe the tears from his face.

  8

  Cordus estimated one hundred crosses lined the highway from the spaceport to the city, and he vowed that somehow the ones responsible for this would pay.

  He was not so naive to think that Romans never committed atrocities—he had the Muse memories to prove it. But he always had a soft place in his heart for the common Roman soldiers, the ones who did their duty, rushed into the fire knowing death lay inside, and followed orders even when they knew their tribunes were incompetent or corrupt. They believed Roma was the light of the universe, the culture that civilized humanity. The truth of that was a debate for philosophers and historians. What mattered was the soldiers believed it, and the prevailing culture among the Legions was one of honor and duty to the Republic.

  So when Cordus swore vengeance on the ones who caused this, he was not thinking of the Reantium rebels. He thought of the warlord senators and local tribunes who put those soldiers in the situation that got them hung on crosses as feasts for carrion birds. Sadly, the local tribunes were likely among the men and women on those crosses, thus denying Cordus any way to make them pay.

  But the senators still lived.

  And what would you do? You’re a simple trierarch on an antique cargo ship in an organization that no one outside it believes exists. It’s not like you’re…important.

  Cordus refused to think on his own questions. These were his thoughts and not from the Muses, for they sounded like Kaeso’s practical influence. He buried the thoughts of “doing something” deep. Like he always did.

  They entered Nascio two miles after the last cross. Cordus didn’t know anything about Nascio other than the locals considered it a small city on a planet where the largest cities barely reached 50,000 residents. This one looked to hold no more than 5,000 permanent residents. It didn’t surprise Cordus since most people on this continent lived on their farms and only came into the city for supplies or to deliver their produce.

  Nascio seemed to have taken the brunt of the revolt.

  They first passed the old Roman Legion compound. Broken down fences and gates surrounded six military buildings. Most were blackened and crumbling ruins. An intact watchtower stood in the middle of the compound, the top floor lined with broken windows. Several blackened military ground cars were parked near it, their Roman Eagle sigils scoured off.

  As they moved further into the city, Cordus noticed more rubble than intact buildings. The only ground cars on the streets were wrecks, and few people wandered the streets. Those who did all wore heavy black robes and hoods covering their heads. Cordus couldn’t tell if they were men or women. Some carried shoulder packs, some carried boxes, some carried nothing. All walked in joyless motions.

  A large number of Dis Pater worshipers lived on Reantium, more than on any other wo
rld. They believed that neglecting rituals produced dire catastrophes, from extreme weather to famines to wars. The only way to atone for the sins that caused the catastrophes was even greater attention to rituals, moral restraint, and sacrifices. Part of “atonement” required all believers to cover their bodies in shame when in public, for they had offended Dis Pater through their actions or inactions, and did not deserve to be seen.

  Could Reantium have rebelled against Roma for the same reason the Kaldethi did sixteen years ago—because they believed Roma was corrupt, decadent, and not observing the proper rituals? That didn’t make sense. The Kaldethi rebellion had simmered for decades before it exploded. Up until two months ago, Reantium was the definition of a stable Roman colony.

  Uller broke the silence in the ground car. “We are approaching a checkpoint. Please let me speak to the discipuli. All will be fine.”

  Cordus tensed along with everyone else. Even Blaesus was quiet.

  Cordus watched the checkpoint get closer. Two former Roman armored cars were parked on either side of the road. Scavenged chain fencing was fastened to a long pole that hung over the road. Two discipuli, each dressed in black flamen robes with hoods over their heads similar to the Nascio residents, sat next to the armored cars. Their robes were dirty, torn, and ill fitting, as if they’d been stripped off dead flamens and did not quite fit the new owners. The discipuli stood up from the shade next to the car and approached the center of the road with their pulse rifles in both hands. Cordus noticed a naked old man sitting on the ground hunched over with a chain around his neck fastened to one end of the gate. Dirt, bruises, and open cuts covered his body. The man looked half-starved, for his rib cage bulged from his torso. He stared at the car with dead eyes.

  “Gods,” Blaesus said. “I know that man. He was the garrison tribune in Nascio. Manius Galerius. We had dinner together at Tarpeius’s villa last time I was here. Gods…”

  A discipulus held up a hand, motioning Uller to stop. Uller pulled up next to the discipulus and lowered his window. “Dis Pater’s grace on you, discipulus. These are the guests I mentioned on my trip through here.”