by Rob Steiner
Nestor also took some cakes, then asked, “How have you tested this Muse device, Aulus Tarpeius? I wasn’t aware there were infectees on Reantium.”
A golem set another platter of cakes on the table, then reached into its work vest, pulled out a pulse pistol, and shot Nestor. The top of the Greek medicus’s head exploded. His body and chair fell backward and landed with a crack on the marble floor.
Cordus stared, frozen, the scene unraveling in surreal slowness. He could not think or feel or move. Four other golems had pistols in their hands and advanced toward the table. The head of one of the golems exploded into yellow fragments. Blasts erupted from his right. Kaeso and Dariya were shooting down the golems. Daryush and Blaesus dove under the table. Tarpeius stood, holding up his hands, screaming at the golems. Cordus could not understand his words.
In fact, he could not understand anything he was seeing until Kaeso slapped his face with an open palm. “Get up!” he screamed, pulling Cordus out of the chair by an arm.
Cordus blinked. Yes, he should leave this place. Where friends are gunned down by golems. Where the remains of Nestor’s head were scattered across the terrace. Yes, it was best to leave.
Cordus let Kaeso drag him after the others as they fled into the gardens beyond the terrace. Pulse shots cut through the gardens around him until the trees and bushes surrounding the villa hid all the humans. They continued running through the dense foliage. Leaves and branches slapped and scratched Cordus’s face and arms.
After sprinting a hundred paces, they found a columned, marble altar to Abundantia and hid behind it. Kaeso and Dariya peeked around the marble columns as they reloaded their pulse pistols. Daryush sat on the ground with his arms wrapped around his knees. Blaesus and Tarpeius, their chests heaving, sat on a marble bench surrounded by flowers.
“What’s happening, Tarpeius?” Kaeso growled. “Talk or we throw you to your dogs.”
Tarpeius closed his eyes, tears streaming from them. His surgical augmentation seemed to have failed, for he looked ancient, withered, and defeated. “They took Drusa and Figula,” he said between sobs and pants. “I had to do something. I had to give them something. They’re going to crucify my family!”
Blaesus glared at Tarpeius. “So you gave them us? Oaths you have taken, Tarpeius. Saturnists have survived the millennia because they did not give each other up, no matter the personal cost.” Blaesus snarled. “You coward.”
Tarpeius turned to Blaesus with wide, mad eyes. “Gods damn you, Gaius Octavius Blaesus! You have no family, so do not speak to me that way.”
Kaeso finished reloading his pistol. “The ‘why’ doesn’t matter. How do we turn off those golems?”
Tarpeius started laughing. Kaeso narrowed his eyes at Tarpeius.
“You can’t turn them off, you fool,” Tarpeius laughed with red eyes. “We tried. They run the gods damned planet now!”
Cordus suddenly found his voice. “The golems rebelled? The golems are this ‘Reantium Liberation Collegium’?”
Gods, those were golems at the discipulus checkpoint. They looked and acted like golems, but I still didn’t see them. Golem programming was so secure that malfunctions were almost non-existent. It was like thinking a ship’s tabulari would suddenly start flying the ship on its own.
“We thought we could control them,” Tarpeius murmured, almost too quiet for Cordus to hear. Then he looked at Cordus with pleading eyes. “We thought we could use the same interstellar com mechanisms as your Muses. We thought we could reprogram them all at once, without master keys.” Tarpeius groaned. “All we did was free them.”
Cordus felt numb. “My blood. You didn’t use my blood for a Muse detector. You used it to reprogram golems? Why?”
Tarpeius laughed insanely again, then waved his hand back toward his villa. “So we could do that to a Republic with golems as ubiquitous as roaches!”
“Gods, man,” Blaesus said, aghast. “I cannot begin to think up a more horrid weapon to—”
“Roma needs to die so it can be reborn the way the gods meant it!” Tarpeius screamed at Blaesus, spittle flying from his mouth. “Isn’t that what Saturnists have wanted for a thousand years?”
Pulse blasts showered them in marble fragments. Kaeso and Dariya peeked from around the columns, searching for targets.
“Trierarch,” Kaeso said calmly, firing off pulse blasts. “We could use your help.”
You are the trierarch. Act like you know what you’re doing. Especially when you don’t.
Cordus retrieved his pulse pistol from the holster in his vest. He hurried to another column and then peeked around the edge toward where Kaeso fired.
“Movement to the right,” Dariya called out. “They are surrounding us.”
“Dariya, take them into the maize fields,” Kaeso said, “I’ll cover your retreat.”
Cordus said, “I’m Trierarch, sir, that’s my job.”
Kaeso stared at Cordus.
“I’m here,” Cordus said firmly.
Kaeso nodded once. “Take them into the maize, Trierarch. I’ll cover you.”
Cordus nodded, then turned and helped Blaesus up from the ground. Daryush was already up and impatient to flee. Cordus let Tarpeius stand on his own.
He turned to Kaeso, but before he could say anything, Kaeso said, “I’m right behind you.”
More blasts hit the columns, this time from the left and right.
“Go!”
Cordus led the survivors further into the dense garden until they reached a clearing. He stopped them. The edge of the swaying maize fields was twenty paces ahead of them across a green, well-tended lawn. Cordus turned left and right, but did not see any golems.
“Dariya?” Cordus said.
“Nothing. But those sons of whore machines could be anywhere.”
Cordus turned to Tarpeius. “Any other security we should know about?”
Tarpeius stared at the ground, shuffling from foot to foot. “Nobody was supposed to get hurt…”
“Blaesus?” Cordus asked.
“None that I remember besides simple sensors,” Blaesus said between heavy breaths. “But he obviously upgraded in the ten years since I was last here.”
Pulse blasts from behind split the branches and leaves around them. Trampling feet rushed toward them. Cordus brought his pistol around, but held off when Kaeso burst through the bushes.
“Go, go!” Kaeso yelled, pushing them forward. “They’re right behind me!”
Cordus and the others sprinted across the clearing and toward the maize rows. Just as he entered the maize, blazing cold agony enveloped his entire body. And then he remembered no more.
10
Ocella awoke with a start from a dreamless sleep. Despair flooded her heart when she realized she was still on the alien vessel. The dead, gray-brown planet Menota filled the view screen on the wall. She instinctively felt the pistol holster at her side and found it empty. She sighed.
Varo lay on his back beside her, and his eyes fluttered open. His face fell once he was lucid. She wondered if she looked the same when she realized where she was upon awakening.
“How long was I asleep?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” Ocella said, sitting up on the black floor. “I was asleep, too. I think they did something to us, because I don’t recall lying down. They took our pulse pistols.”
Varo checked his empty holster and cursed.
Ocella stood and then nodded to the wall. “We’re above Menota. Last I remember we exited the new way line. Menota should have been a four-day journey from there, if they’re as fast as our ships.”
Varo stood as well, regarding the wall. “At least we didn’t have to sit here staring at that for four days.” He looked at her hopefully. “There’s some mercy in that, eh?”
Ocella didn’t say anything. She doubted mercy had anything to do with it. The ship wanted to keep them alive for some reason. It didn’t want to feed them or give them water, so it put them to sleep. Ocella was no more hu
ngry or thirsty than when she first arrived on the ship, so it must have been a frozen sleep.
But why keep us alive?
“We’re overdue at Reantium,” she said suddenly.
“Do you think they’ll come for us?”
“I hope not.” What can a few Saturnist ships do against this thing?
“How will we escape if no one helps us?”
She frowned at him. She assumed the vessel was listening. She did not want it to know they were hopeless mice, there to run whatever labyrinths in which it decided to put them.
“We will leave when it is time,” she said, annunciating each word.
Varo seemed to understand her meaning and gave her an abashed nod. “Yes, Centuriae.”
The wall behind them irised open and a naked woman stood in the entrance.
“Lucia!” Ocella gasped.
She went toward her Trierarch, but then stopped within a few paces.
The woman in the door was not Lucia. She looked like her, from her muscular build to her shaved, stubbly head. But her skin had a grayish tint, and veins of blue pulsed lightly beneath.
And she had no eyes. They were empty sockets.
“Gods,” Varo breathed behind Ocella. “What did they do to her?”
“It’s not her,” Ocella said in a low tone. “What did you do to my Trierarch’s body?”
The Lucia golem’s head turned to Ocella. “This is not your Trierarch’s body, Centuriae,” the golem said, her voice sounding like Lucia’s. “It is a replica.”
“A golem?”
Lucia’s head shifted. “Yes, similar to your golems. Forgive this appearance, Centuriae. Eyes are difficult. We will add them later. We have questions that cannot wait until then.”
“I have questions—”
“We would know the capabilities of your Umbra Corps ships.”
Ocella stared at Lucia, but avoided her eyeless sockets. Instead, she focused on Lucia’s mouth. “I don’t understand why you need—”
“This drone’s brain has limited data regarding Umbra Corps, yet it believed Umbra Corps to be powerful. Its memories suggest you were once in this organization. Do you know the capabilities of its starships?”
Whenever Ocella heard “Umbra Corps”, she instinctively flinched, waiting for the searing pain from the Umbra implant behind her right ear. Umbra Ancilia were forbidden to discuss Umbra with non-Ancilia. The implant, a data and communications link between the Umbra magisterium and its Ancilia, physically prevented discussion of the ultra-secret Corps. Libertus lacked massive fleets of warships, so it used the deadly Ancilia to infiltrate hostile regimes and end threats to Libertus before they began.
But Ocella was no longer in Umbra, which she left when she rescued Cordus six years ago. Still, the promise of pain was not easy to forget.
“I don’t know their capabilities now. Why?”
“Four Umbra ships are on an intercept course with us. They have technology that defies our scans. We would know how to disable them so we can gather more witnesses.”
Ocella turned and stared at the view wall. All she saw was Menota, one gray half bathed in sunlight and the other dark. There was no sign of ships.
Could Umbra ships fight this vessel? Not the ships that existed when she was an Ancile, but Umbra could make huge leaps within a short period of time.
“Like I said, I don’t know their capabilities anymore.”
The Lucia golem “stared” at her as if assessing her truthfulness. She then shrugged in an awkward way, as if she knew what the gesture meant, but did not know how to execute it. She looked to the wall, and Ocella followed her gaze.
The view on the wall shifted, magnified, and focused on four black Umbra ships flying toward the alien vessel in a wide formation. Ocella was surprised Umbra still patrolled the Menota system, given the ‘no landings’ treaty between Libertus and Roma had expired with the latter’s civil war. She also assumed they knew the Menota Muse archives were destroyed by the last Roman consul in a fit of Muse-fueled rage. Why were they still here?
Of course. They knew a second way line existed in the Menota system. Had they found it, or were they searching for it like Ocella and the Saturnists?
An Umbra ship suddenly disappeared in a white ball of light. When the light dissipated, the ship was gone. Two more ships were destroyed in the same fashion, one after the other. The last ship tried to turn and flee, but did not get far before it succumbed to the same fate.
Ocella stared in shock at the images. Umbra warships were the most advanced ships humanity had ever built. Their power, and secrecy behind the Umbra veil, were what had kept Libertus free for two hundred years.
Yet this vessel had destroyed them in moments with a shrug.
“This drone’s memories,” the Lucia golem continued, as if nothing had happened, “say that the Roman Consul destroyed the Menota archives. Why would he commit such a sacrilege?”
When Ocella found her voice again, she blurted, “What do you want with us?”
Lucia stared at her with those monstrously empty sockets. “You are to be witnesses.” She said it as if the statement was self-evident and needed no further explanation. She then cocked her head. “The Roman Consul’s son, Marcus Antonius Cordus, is important to you. This drone’s memories suggest this is so.”
Ocella felt the blood drain from her face. I will not give this thing Cordus. It will have to kill me.
“This drone’s memories,” Lucia continued, “suggest the boy is a host for a rival strain. ‘Muses’, it calls them. Yet it suggests Cordus can control them. Is this true?”
Ocella turned away from the Lucia golem.
“You care for your drones. Would you answer our questions if it would prevent us from hurting the drone behind you?”
Ocella glanced at Varo, whose eyes had widened.
The opening behind Lucia irised open, causing Ocella to start. “We will not waste more witnesses. We have the data we need regarding Marcus Antonius Cordus from this drone’s memories. We will meet him at Reantium. The archives on the planet below must be rebuilt. If this drone’s memories are correct, these ‘Muses’ he hosts will help us accomplish this.”
Lucia turned around and left the room. The opening irised shut behind her.
“Centuriae, if this thing gets Cordus—”
Ocella whirled around. “Quiet!”
Varo snapped his mouth shut.
She had to think. It had been a long time since she was in a hopeless situation like this. Six years, to be exact. There were many more times before that, but she had her Umbra implant to guide her. Its link to the wisdom of the Liberti Muses gave her all the knowledge she needed to think her way out of dangerous situations.
But like every other Ancile, she came to rely on the implant. Now, she tried to focus through the fear and doubt clouding her mind.
She was trapped in an alien vessel. She needed to escape, and any plan had to involve Varo. She could not discuss the plan with him for fear the aliens were listening. Now that they had Lucia’s memories, they knew their language. How could she communicate with Varo in a way the aliens would not understand?
Or, how could she communicate with Varo in a way Lucia would not understand?
Lucia was a Roman citizen. As far as Ocella knew, she had never learned another language besides the universal Latin spoken by almost every human. While some worlds—and some Terran regions—still spoke various ethnic languages, Latin was the language of human commerce.
Ocella caught Varo’s gaze and said in ancient Aramaic, “Can you understand me?”
Varo looked confused, and Ocella wondered if he had ever learned the language of his ancestors. Varo thought a moment, then said in Aramaic, “It has been a long time. I can understand, but speak little.”
Ocella bared her teeth in a smile. “Good. We have some things to discuss.”
11
Cordus awoke to a savage pain in his limbs and head. He groaned, his eyes still shut.
“It’ll pass in a few moments,” a female voice said near his side.
It took all the strength Cordus possessed to open his eyes. His sight was clouded and gritty. He blinked several times, though each blink brought stabbing agony in the center of his head. But the more he blinked, the more the pain faded. Once the cloudiness was gone, he focused on the source of the voice.
She was young, no more than a year or two older than him. She had long, black hair tied in a single braid, brown eyes, and the olive skin of a Mediterranean native. Billions of humans across space had that look, but it gave him a sudden nostalgia for Roma. Her face was gaunt, as though it had been weeks since she had a proper meal.
Kaeso’s voice came from his left. “About time you woke up, kid.”
Cordus could now turn his head without fire surging through his body. Kaeso sat on the floor next to him, dried blood crusting the right side of his face. There was a bloody gash above his right ear on his stubbly head. Despite his obvious pain, he gave Cordus a lopsided grin. For Kaeso, it was tantamount to a running embrace.
Cordus scanned the room. It was octagonal, with barred, open windows at head-height. Judging by the light outside, it was either dusk or morning. He couldn’t tell since he was unfamiliar with the directions on this world. The room was warm, so Cordus assumed dusk. In the meager light, he saw Blaesus, Dariya, and Daryush laying to Kaeso’s left. All three lay on their backs unconscious.
Seven men were on the other side of the room, all wearing the standard-issue gray under-tunics and patterned green fatigues of Roman Legionaries. Some lay on their sides, some sat with their backs against the wall. All were dirty, wounded, and half-starved. The ones who were awake watched Cordus with tired eyes.
The room reeked of unwashed bodies and vomit.
Next to him was the woman who spoke to him. Cordus thought at first she was another Legionary until he noticed her clothes: They were tattered and dirty, but in the style of a citizen.
Cordus tried to sit up. Pain shot through him again, but he clenched his teeth and sat up so his back was against the wall like Kaeso.