Muses of Terra (Codex Antonius Book 2)

by Rob Steiner

  “What was your mission on Reantium?”

  Aquilina winced again. “I still can’t talk about some things. Details on existing operations, for one.”

  She then gave him a raised eyebrow and a coy grin. “You have a little secret of your own, eh, Titus?”

  He involuntarily averted his eyes, which angered him. He ignored the heat in his face and forced himself to return her gaze. The heat only compounded his discomfort, and beads of sweat fell down his back.

  Gods, what is wrong with me?

  Marcus chuckled. “Why, young Antonius, is that lust we sense in you?”

  Quiet!

  “How is it,” she asked, “that you also heard the vessel’s message? Your friend Kaeso and I had Muse implants. Were you an Ancile, too? There’s no other way you could have…communicated with me like you did from that tavern.” Her gaze traveled up and down his body, which quickened Cordus’s heart. “You’re certainly built for the job, but I doubt you’ve seen eighteen Terran years. You’d be the youngest Ancile I’ve ever known.”

  “Maybe I am,” Cordus stammered. “You don’t look much older than me. How old are you?”

  He cringed inwardly. If you wanted to sound petulant, you could not have done a better job.

  Her smile widened. “Older than eighteen.”

  “Well…I can’t talk about some things either,” Cordus said, pretending to review something on his tabulari to avoid her large brown eyes. “All of this is irrelevant anyway. You need to warn Umbra Corps that a threat they’ve never encountered is on its way to Libertus.”

  Aquilina’s expression turned serious. “I’ve been trying since that vessel came to Reantium, but I can’t get through. It seems to be jamming me.”

  During the Roman siege of Libertus six years ago, the Romans had used a similar jamming signal. The vessel was more advanced than Roma, so he assumed it had the same ability to jam Muse communications.

  “Just keep trying,” Cordus said.

  His tabulari showed the vessel slowly pulling away from them. Vacuna was at its top acceleration. Any more and it would overload the inertia canceling systems. Even now, he felt his weight pressing into the pilot’s couch.

  He brought up a map of the Illium system on his tabulari. Illium Primus, the lone Terran-class planet in the system, was a so-called Lost World, independent from Roma since it was colonized two hundred years ago. The entire system had ten million citizens, with mining bases throughout the system’s planets and moons. It was economically, culturally, and militarily aligned with Libertus. Besides the Reantium way line, it had two other way lines in the system: one linked to Abundantia, a Roman system, and one to Libertus.

  Cordus checked the distances from Illium’s Reantium way line terminus to the other two. The Abundantia way line was closest, only a single Terran astronomical unit away. The Libertus way line orbited Illium Primus, but was over seven astronomical units away.

  A plan began to form in Cordus’s mind, but he needed the alien vessel to confirm one last detail before he would begin to allow himself hope.

  The alien vessel sped toward the Illium way line, getting farther from Vacuna. At this rate, it would reach the way line in ten minutes, and then Vacuna would follow it through ten minutes later.

  “What are you thinking?” Aquilina asked. “You look like someone contemplating ten latrunculi moves ahead.”

  “Something like that,” Cordus said. He tapped his collar com, which broadcast his voice throughout the ship. “Ulpius, this is Cordus. Pick up the com in the medical hatch.”

  After several long seconds, Dariya’s voice said, “He is busy.”

  That didn’t sound good. Cordus’s stomach turned queasy thinking Blaesus may die on this ship. Do the job, Centuriae.

  “Just make sure you strap Blaesus into the medical delta couch. We’re going through a way line in twenty minutes. I’ll tell you once we’re close so you can get to your couches, too.”

  Ulpius growled in the background, “I ain’t going to be finished in twenty godsdamned minutes!”

  “Then make sure he’s stable,” Cordus ordered. I could be ordering Blaesus’s death. He shook away that thought. “If we don’t follow that vessel through the way line, we may lose it.”

  Ulpius grumbled something Cordus couldn’t hear, but Dariya said, “He says he will try.”

  After a minute of silence, Aquilina said, “So what is your plan?”

  “It involves some secrets I need to keep from you. I’d rather not tell you in case I learn my plan won’t work.” He kept his face impassive. “Forgive me if I don’t quite trust you yet.”

  Aquilina shrugged. “Fair enough. Although if you want us to work together, you’ll need to trust me.”

  “Funny coming from an Umbra Ancile.”

  “I’m physically prevented from trusting you. You won’t trust me by choice.”

  “I don’t want to get into a ‘who’s more trustworthy’ argument. I’ll tell you my plan when I’m ready.”

  “What should I do in the meantime? This command couch makes me feel useless.”

  “Know anything about pressure suits?”

  “Enough to put one on.”

  “There’s a closet of them in Cargo One. Go make sure they have air and their systems are running.”

  “How many should I prep?”

  Cordus thought a moment. “Four.”

  She regarded him a second longer, then unstrapped herself from the command couch. “Very well. Just don’t go through the way line until I return.”

  “You have seventeen minutes.”

  She snorted, then rushed to the command deck ladder in the back.

  When the sound of her steps faded, Cordus whispered, “You’ve been quiet, Marcus.”

  “We know what you’re planning. It won’t work.”

  Cordus turned to Marcus for the first time since he sat in the pilot’s couch. Marcus lounged in the delta systems couch, one leg over the side. It seemed to Cordus that a human would not have been comfortable in such a position, especially wearing Marcus’s ancient armor and leather skirt straps. Marcus made it look comfortable, though.

  “What do you think I’m planning?”

  “Well it’s obvious you want to board the thing,” Marcus said, inspecting the nails on his right hand. “How you do it is irrelevant. It’s the boarding part we think is doomed.”

  “Why?”

  Marcus brought his leg down and leaned forward. The affected boredom on his face turned to haunted seriousness. “Because that ship is alive. That strain doesn’t use individual hosts like most strains. It prefers to travel the stars in living ships. And when it is invaded, it eradicates the threat much the same as your body’s immune system tries to eradicate an invader.”

  Cordus stared at Marcus and then laughed. Marcus scowled. “We fail to see the humor in—”

  “You don’t see it?” Cordus said. “We—humans—will be a ‘virus’ that invades the ‘body’ of a Muse strain.”

  Marcus rolled his eyes. “Yes, ha-ha, the irony is sublime. But we still don’t think you appreciate the dangers of the task before you. It was a struggle for us to establish a foothold in human bodies. We lost trillions in that war to your natural defenses. Do you have an army of trillions to waste fighting that vessel’s natural defenses?”

  Cordus turned back to his tabulari, doubt in himself and his plan creeping into his mind. “Well, it won’t matter if I’m wrong about what this ship will do once it reaches a way line.”

  “What do you hope it will do?”

  “Stop.”

  Marcus smiled. “Ah, clever. Again, that may get you inside. What will you do once you’re inside?”

  “One thing at a time.”

  Cordus let the minutes before the vessel’s way line jump pass in silence. When the moment arrived for the vessel to reach the way line, Cordus tapped a button on his tabulari to record the event.

  What he saw gave him hope. The vessel, like every other human
ship, stopped on the way line’s event horizon. It was motionless for a second before the way line’s gravity reached out and pulled it in. The vessel disappeared.

  Cordus nodded to himself, realizing for the first time his heart had been pounding. We can get inside. But Marcus is right—what do we do then?

  17

  The opening to the room irised, and Ocella sat up on her gel bed. The Lucia golem entered the room, stood to one side, and then Kaeso marched in after it. The golem then left the room and the opening irised shut behind it.

  Ocella leapt up and wrapped her arms around him. He matched the intensity of her embrace. They held each other for a long time, and she didn’t care that Varo was on the other side of the room respectfully giving them their moment, or that the ship was likely watching them. Right now, all she wanted to do was lose herself in Kaeso’s warm arms and forget the past week.

  “I’m sorry,” she finally whispered in his ear. “I didn’t know what else to—”

  “Stop. You did the only thing you could do.” He pulled back and placed a gentle hand on her cheek. His usually stony eyes were soft. “I’m glad you did it. I missed you.”

  She leaned her head on his chest and hugged him tighter. “I missed you, too. And I’m glad you’re with me.”

  She pulled back from him and then released the anger that had simmered for days. “But you must have cac for brains if you thought it was a good idea to bring Cordus to Reantium.”

  “That was nice while it lasted.”

  “I’m serious, Kaeso. He’s not ready to go into a war zone, and he’s certainly not ready to command Vacuna.”

  “Listen,” Kaeso said, “I would not have made him Trierarch if I didn’t think he could handle it. Yes, when things blew up he froze, but only for a second. Juno, we all froze when Nestor—” Kaeso stopped, blinked several times. “Nestor… So much was happening that I never had a chance to think about him.”

  Kaeso proceeded to tell her what happened on Reantium. From the initial, inexplicable golem attack at Tarpeius’s villa to the moment Kaeso arrived in this room. Ocella fought back tears when she learned of Nestor, shook her head in confusion over the golem uprising, and prayed Cordus took Blaesus to a system with good hospitals rather than chase after them.

  “You should have seen him,” Kaeso said. “He’s a born leader. I don’t know what he did between the garrison and the hospital, but to those Romans he rescued, he was their Centuriae. They’d follow him anywhere.”

  Kaeso was rarely so animated about anything. His pride in Cordus made his eyes sparkle and was almost infectious. Almost.

  “He should not have been there,” she said.

  She realized she sounded petulant, berating Kaeso for something neither of them could change now. But her frustration and fear wouldn’t stop her from venting her anger. Kaeso happened to be the most convenient target right now.

  Kaeso watched her patiently. It made her all the more angry because he acted like he did nothing wrong and was waiting out a child’s tantrum. Couldn’t he see that Cordus had to be protected so he could fulfill his destiny when the time came? Couldn’t he see the insanity of risking Cordus’s life in a mission that was unimportant compared to the battles to come?

  Apparently not.

  She turned away from him and went back to the gel bed near Varo. Varo stood and walked over to Kaeso. They exchanged a few words, mostly on how they wished they had met again under different circumstances.

  Ocella ignored them both and lay down on the bed. The frustration and fear she had kept in check while with Varo had evaporated when Kaeso entered the room. She was ashamed for the way she broke down in front of Varo, a crewman who was supposed to look to her as his Centuriae.

  Why did Kaeso have to bring the boy?

  Cordus was stubborn, and it was possible he’d come after her and Kaeso. If he did…well, she wasn’t sure what would happen. The vessel wanted Cordus to remain free, but wanted him to follow them and was using Kaeso and Ocella as bait. But for what? Her throat seized when she thought of them dissecting Cordus to—

  She closed her eyes. Minerva, grant Cordus the wisdom to ignore the bait.

  Ocella noticed Varo and Kaeso were conversing in Aramaic. Varo was doing Ocella’s job: giving Kaeso their status and all the information they gleaned so far regarding the vessel. It wouldn’t help their situation if she kept worrying about Cordus and letting her anger at Kaeso paralyze her. She pushed those feelings to the back of her mind…for a more appropriate time.

  She stood up from the gel bed and walked to Kaeso and Varo.

  “…still don’t understand what their true goals are,” Varo was saying in Aramaic.

  “They want Cordus to follow us,” Ocella said in Aramaic, as she approached them.

  Kaeso regarded her a moment and then nodded. “How much do they know about his—?”

  The opening irised and the Lucia-golem stepped through, this time clothed in the same blue merchant’s jumpsuit that the human Lucia had worn onto the vessel. The golem also looked more human, with fewer blue veins pulsating beneath its skin, and its white skin tone closer to Lucia’s pallor.

  Kaeso watched the Lucia-golem with a clenched jaw. It was a reminder the vessel had killed his friend. He had lost two old friends in quick succession, and Ocella felt guilty over her earlier behavior. Her guilt did not ease her fear for Cordus or her opinion that Kaeso was wrong to bring him to Reantium, but she couldn’t imagine Kaeso’s pain over those two losses.

  No, I can imagine it. I gave myself the same pain six years ago.

  “We have entered the star system you call Ilium,” the golem said without inflection. “We will soon arrive in the system you call Libertus.”

  Kaeso tensed. He did not tense like a normal person, who would clench his fists or draw himself up taller. Kaeso grew more relaxed. She had trained with him long enough to know that he was keeping his muscles loose so his attack and defense options were open.

  Not yet, Kaeso.

  To draw the golem’s attention from Kaeso, she asked, “Why Libertus?”

  “We must have new witnesses.”

  Kaeso growled, “What do you mean by ‘witnesses’?”

  Lucia-golem swiveled its head to Kaeso. “The Great Archives are gone.”

  When it said no more, Kaeso said to Ocella in Aramaic, “It is impossible to talk to this thing.”

  In flawless Aramaic, the Lucia-golem responded, “It is not ‘impossible’ to talk to us.”

  Ocella looked from Kaeso to Varo. So much for our secret communications. This thing will know everything we say.

  “We deciphered the grammar and words of your second language by listening to you speak it,” the golem said, returning to Latin.

  Then it did the most gruesome thing Ocella had yet see it do—it smiled. It was simply the movement of muscles, without any mirth behind it. The smile never reached the Lucia-golem’s dead eyes.

  Ocella tried to keep her voice steady. “We want to know why you are going to Libertus. We do not understand what you mean by ‘witnesses’ and ‘Great Archives’.”

  The golem’s head cocked, as if listening to instructions only it could hear. “You are our first witnesses. We require more witnesses, more memories. Strong memories. Pain produces the strongest memories. This we have learned over countless millennia.”

  Kaeso asked quietly, “What will you do at Libertus?”

  Lucia-golem’s head swiveled to Kaeso. “Observe. Record. Instigate.”

  Through clenched teeth, Kaeso asked again, “What…does that mean?”

  “We will take more witnesses. Then you and the witnesses will watch us kill Libertus. We will record your pain and rebuild the Great Archives your kind destroyed.”

  18

  “So that’s our situation,” Cordus said.

  He tried to adopt the stance Kaeso used when addressing his crew—arms folded, back straight. Gracchus, Piso, and Duran sat on supply containers, the wisdom of foot soldiers throug
hout history dictating they rest whenever given the chance. The fair-skinned Gracchus stared expressionless at the Cargo One ramp; Piso, the dark-haired Hiberian, picked at the fresh bandage wrapped around the top of his head; Duran, the brown-skinned central African, coldly studied a knife he’d pulled off a golem body in Nascio. Ulpius, his face pockmarked and stubbly, stood behind them, his hands in the pockets of the common blue merchant’s jumpsuit Cordus had given him. Dariya and Daryush stood next to each other near the door to the corridor, their usual place in these meetings. Blaesus was still in the medical hatch under sedation.

  Aquilina watched Cordus with those pleasant brown eyes. He did his best to avoid them.

  He had just explained his theory that the alien vessel was heading toward Libertus. He told them he aimed to board the vessel to rescue Kaeso and Ocella. And with Aquilina’s approval, he explained she was indeed a Liberti spy, though he didn’t specifically mention ‘Umbra’ or the Liberti Muses. The Romans gave her icy stares, but said nothing.

  The problems, he said, were twofold: what to do once they boarded the vessel, and how to warn Libertus about its arrival.

  “Forgive my bluntness,” Ulpius said, “but why should we—meaning us Romans—care what happens to Libertus or two people we don’t know?”

  Cordus regarded Ulpius with the stoniest stare he could muster. Kaeso had used that stare many times to make the strongest Saturnist back down. But watching Kaeso do it and doing it himself were two different things.

  It seemed to work, because Ulpius broke eye contact and glanced away.

  “Because I told you on Reantium what I planned to do,” Cordus replied, “and you came anyway. Too late to back out now, Centurion. Besides, I saved your life and I gave you a ride off that dead planet. I would hope that honor dictate you return that favor.”

  Ulpius shrugged. “Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate all that. But with all due respect, my allegiance is to Roma. Not you.”

  Marcus Antonius suddenly stood next to Cordus. Cordus didn’t flinch or look at him.

  “Well don’t get us wrong,” Marcus said, “but we’d just as soon you didn’t go chasing that strain. Though if you want the help of these plebs, there is a simple way you could get it.”