Muses of Terra (Codex Antonius Book 2)

by Rob Steiner

  “‘Ush, watch the door, will you?” Dariya said. Daryush nodded, then walked over to the door and leaned against the wall outside with his arms folded. He tried to wear a menacing look. His first instinct was to avoid conflict at all costs, so over the years he figured out that looking as mean as possible was the best way to avoid a fight.

  “You’re making me nervous, Dariya,” Cordus said in a tone just audible above the engine hum.

  “You should be,” Dariya said as she tapped her tabulari. She stepped aside and then pointed at the display. “I found this an hour ago while I was searching our archives for tactics on how to use that crazy energy shield the Saturnists installed on my girl. I figured we may need it soon.”

  “Good thinking,” Cordus said. He scanned the com diagnostics and they all looked normal to him. “You’d better tell me what I’m looking for, or we’ll be here all day.”

  Dariya gave him an approving glance. “You admit your ignorance like Kaeso. I like that.”

  She tapped the icon that showed the archives. The display expanded, and Cordus saw the system was operating normally. Except…

  Cordus froze.

  Someone had been searching through Vacuna’s log regarding its trip to Menota six years ago and the Muse archives it had found. That archive was locked, and only the ship’s Centuriae could access it. The archive had been opened eight hours ago, and Cordus had not done it.

  He looked at Dariya.

  “Right,” she said. “Somebody on this ship is a snoop.”

  “How? Only the centuriae can authorize access, and I sure as Juno did not.” Cordus studied the display.

  “I have spent the last hour searching the tabulari. All I can see is that the archive was opened last night, but there is no identification stamp. Whoever did this knew how to cover themselves.” Dariya leveled her eyes at Cordus. “Seems to me there is only one person on the ship who would have those skills…”

  Cordus stared at the archive readouts. It didn’t make sense for Aquilina to do this. Umbra knew what Vacuna found on Menota. Perhaps they had not made that information available to her and she wanted it out of personal curiosity? If she was that curious, why wouldn’t she simply ask him for the information?

  Cordus shook his head. “That doesn’t mean Aquilina did this. We have four other Romans on this ship who we know nothing about. Besides, if Aquilina was smart enough to get into our archives, seems to me she’d be smart enough to cover her tracks better.”

  “She—er, whoever did this covered themselves well. Simply erasing the identity stamp takes skills. But to erase all access traces would require a system restart, and that would have drawn our attention quick.” She tapped the tabulari and closed the archive. “So what are your orders, Centuriae?”

  Cordus gave her a sideways glare. “You ask as that as if you’re glad you’re not me.”

  Dariya grinned.

  “Can you set a trap to let us know if it’s accessed again?”

  “Already have. The spy will not gain access without setting off every alarm on the ship.”

  “Good. Keep me posted on any other unauthorized system access.”

  Dariya nodded, and Cordus left the engine room. Daryush gave him a questioning look, and Cordus said, “All clear, big man?”

  He gave Cordus an upturned thumb, and then returned to the engine room.

  “There’s a simple way to deal with this,” Marcus Antonius said from behind Cordus.

  Cordus turned to his ancestor. “I’m not going to shoot them all.”

  Marcus snorted. “No, no. Too messy. Just gather them in Cargo One and open the air lock. Quick and clean.”

  Cordus began climbing the ladder to the command deck. Marcus called from below, “You’ll need a harder spine if you hope to rule one day, boy.”

  Cordus stopped climbing, but kept his eyes fixed on the command deck above. I will die before I accept that destiny.

  He continued climbing. Marcus was silent, but Cordus could somehow sense the Muse image smiling.

  21

  Bells chimed softly behind Ocella as she sat in a red, gold-trimmed couch on a covered patio before a calm, clear sea. The sky was blue, and the bright Liberti sun warmed the white sands around her. She held an infant to her breast, and she hummed a soft Roman lullaby to the child. She pulled back the white blanket covering the infant boy’s dark hair, and she gently stroked his head.

  “Cordus,” she whispered with a smile. The baby’s eyes opened, full of innocence.

  Ocella’s eyes sprang open when their cell door irised. The video wall above her illuminated the Lucia-golem in the opening. Kaeso had already risen from the gel bed where he’d been laying next to Ocella.

  “You may explore,” the Lucia-golem announced, and then left the room. The door did not shut behind her.

  Varo rose from the gel bed beside them. “Is it serious?”

  Ocella glanced at Kaeso, who looked back at her with a frown. “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “Yes, why?”

  “You’ve been crying.”

  Ocella felt her wet cheeks, and then wiped away the tear streaks. “I’m fine.” She stood up from the gel bed, blinking away the tears and focusing on the opening. “Should we leave before it closes the door again?”

  Kaeso scratched his stubbly chin. “I hate doing what it wants.”

  Varo approached the open door. “Well I hate sitting here. With all due respect, Centuriae Amelius, we’ve been locked in this cell days longer than you. I can’t speak for Centuriae Licinius, but I need to get out of here.”

  Kaeso looked at Ocella again, and she shrugged. “They can do whatever they want to us locked in here,” she said. “I don’t see how exploring makes things worse.”

  He grunted. “Things can always get worse.”

  “Where’s the optimistic Kaeso I once knew?”

  “There’s a difference between optimism and common sense.” He motioned toward the opening. “After you, Centuriae.”

  Ocella strode toward the door and after Varo, who had already left the room. She stopped just outside the door and stared in shock. The walls were no longer black with blue glowing veins. The whole corridor now looked like the interior of a human-built starship.

  Vacuna, to be precise.

  Kaeso sucked in a breath behind her. She followed his haunted gaze as it swept the corridor, right to left. From what she could see in the meager light, the corridor stretched in both directions until the ends became a faint point on the murky horizon. It must have gone on for a mile each way.

  “Well this is different,” Varo remarked.

  “They’re using Lucia’s memories,” Ocella said. “They re-fashioned this part of the vessel to look like Vacuna. Why?”

  Kaeso walked to the closed hatch across from their cell. He tapped the lock pad to the right of the hatch, but it did not open. An “access denied” message scrolled across the pad’s display. He then went to the next hatch to the left, about ten paces down the hall. It also gave him an “access denied” message.

  Varo tried several hatches down the hall to the right, but got the same results. “Great,” Varo said, walking back to Ocella and Kaeso. “We trade a one-room cell for a really long one.”

  “Maybe this is where they’ll put all the ‘witnesses’ they keep talking about,” Ocella said.

  Kaeso finally said, “No, they want our reactions to all this. The Liberti Muses traded their wisdom and technology for experiences. Experiences are their currency, food, and religion all rolled into one. The Terran strain was the same, and the Menota. It’s the one thing they all had in common. This strain is no different.”

  Ocella looked up and down the endless corridor. “They want us to explore, to gain new experiences.” She gave a mirthless chuckle. “They were just as bored watching us in the cell as we were sitting there.”

  Kaeso nodded. “Let’s assume it’s true that they want us to experience all this. Soon they’ll think we’ve had enough and w
ill want to make a withdrawal.”

  Ocella shuddered. She wondered what they had done to Lucia’s body to create the golem and extract her memories.

  Careful, Ancile. Those thoughts lead to panic.

  She still thought of herself as an Ancile, even though she’d left Umbra six years ago. The Umbra training changed her forever, as it was meant to, and she doubted she’d ever think of herself as anything other than an Ancile.

  Albeit one that betrayed and shattered the order.

  Varo looked between Ocella and Kaeso. “I can’t stay in that room any longer.”

  Ocella felt the same. The cell was like a sarcophagus to her even though it was three dozen paces—she’d counted—from one end to the other.

  “Agreed,” Ocella said. “Besides, we need to gather intelligence if we—I mean, when we get off this vessel.”

  Kaeso’s mouth twitched at her optimism, but he nodded. “So which way?”

  Ocella slammed her hand against the locked hatch.

  “Fifty-seven,” Varo murmured behind her.

  “I think we can stop counting,” Ocella snapped. Varo closed his mouth with an audible click.

  She leaned both palms on the closed door and took deep, calming breaths. It had started out as a game after the first few hatches—how many could they try before one actually opens. They shrugged off each one as they progressed through the twenties. By the thirties, she was biting her lip. By the forties, she grew angrier with each locked door. Now she simply wanted to walk back to their cell. At least there she could sleep away the time rather than grow increasingly frustrated with each passing moment.

  Kaeso put a gentle hand on her shoulder. “I think we should go the other way.”

  “Why not?” she said. She turned away from the door—and Kaeso—and strode down the corridor back the way they came.

  For the fifty-seventh time she wondered what sort of ‘experiences’ the Muse strain was seeking with this hallway and its locked doors. Did it want memories of anger and frustration to know their mental breaking point? If so, it was doing an admirable job. Ocella was ready to snap Varo’s neck if he counted one more locked hatch.

  It had taken them almost an hour to try fifty-seven hatches, but it only took Ocella twenty minutes to pass the previous fifty-six. It was twenty minutes of silent walking, for Kaeso and Varo were in the same frustrated mood, though they hid it better.

  When she finally counted down to zero, she stopped. The opening to their cell should have been right in front of her. Instead, there was an empty bulkhead wall. She glanced up and down the corridor, but did not see the cell opening.

  “Did I miscount?” she asked Kaeso and Varo, who stopped behind her.

  “I counted fifty-seven,” Kaeso said. Varo nodded slowly in agreement.

  Ocella gave a long shaky sigh. Control, Ancile, control….

  “This cannot be happening,” Varo growled in a low voice. “This cannot be happening.”

  “Calm yourself,” Kaeso said in an even tone. Ocella wanted to snap at him for being so calm in such an insane situation, but her Ancile training kept her tongue in check.

  “Calm?” Varo said, his eyes wide. “We’re standing in an infinite corridor, no doors open for us, and the one place in the entire caccing ship that seemed to stay the same is now gone.” He strode up to Kaeso and screamed in his face. “Why should I be calm?”

  Ocella grabbed Varo from behind and slammed him against the bulkhead wall where the opening to their cell should have been. In a cool, even voice, she said, “Because they don’t want us to be calm. It’s not much, but at least we can bore the bastards.”

  He stared at her in surprise. The swiftness of her attack seemed to have broken his panic. He blinked several times and breathed deeply. When his body finally relaxed, he nodded. “Sorry, Centuriae.”

  Ocella let him go, and Varo grinned sheepishly. “‘Bore the bastards’? Some retaliation.”

  She shrugged and returned his grin. “It’s something.” And then she silently thanked the gods Varo had panicked before she did.

  Kaeso examined the wall where their cell should have been. He ran his hands across the smooth, dark-gray metal. From Ocella’s vantage, it looked as seamless as the walls up and down the corridor.

  “It’s warm,” Kaeso said. “Vacuna’s walls are always cold. Along with every bulkhead wall on every starship I’ve ever traveled on.”

  Ocella touched the wall. It was not blazing hot, but it seemed the same as her body temperature. She turned to the opposite wall and felt the metal. It too was warm.

  “The floors are warm, too,” Varo said. He had stooped to one knee and had both palms on the burnished metal floor. “Just like the walls.”

  “So?” Ocella asked.

  Kaeso stared at the wall a few moments, then said, “Just thought it was interesting.” He motioned to the right of their former-cell. “I suppose we go right?”

  He proceeded down the corridor without waiting for her to follow. Kaeso could be remarkably closed at times. It was one reason why they broke up the first time twenty years ago, before he married her sister, Petra. He was much better over the last six years, but he’d still occasionally shut down on her.

  Like now.

  She strode after him and stopped with him before another hatch. He tried the lock pad, had no success, and then proceeded to the next hatch.

  “You have an idea,” she asked. “What is it?”

  “The seed of an idea. The vaguest hint of an idea.” He glanced at her. “And I don’t want to give it away too soon since our friends may be listening.”

  “Can’t you at least—”

  A hatch opened far up the corridor. Ocella froze. She barely saw anything in the corridor’s dim lights, but she caught shadows far ahead and reflections off either smooth armor or glistening skin. They chirped softly, and skittering sounds drifted toward them. Another hatch opened and closed, and the sounds stopped.

  Ocella, Kaeso, and Varo stood motionless. Her heart felt as if it was leaping into her throat.

  “I passed through a room before getting captured,” she said. “It held hundreds of frozen aliens.”

  “Right,” Varo whispered. “The alien zoo.”

  “I must’ve missed that one,” Kaeso said dryly. “I guess the vessel unfroze some of them.”

  Ocella wiped her sweaty hands on her jumpsuit. “I say we go down there. They at least know how to open the doors.”

  “And if they’re hostile?” Varo asked.

  “I don’t think they mean to attack us,” Ocella said. “If they did, they would have done it. They might be trapped just like us. Maybe we can communicate with them and work together.”

  “Or they could be infected,” Kaeso said. “Or—”

  “The point is, we don’t know,” Ocella said, glaring at Kaeso. “Seems to me we have no choice, anyway.”

  Kaeso glanced at the wall where the opening to their cell should have been, and nodded. “So much for the boredom tactic.”

  Ocella looked at Varo. “Are you with us?”

  He nodded, though he didn’t seem pleased.

  Ocella squinted in the dim light at the location where she saw the shadows and then proceeded down the corridor with Kaeso and Varo on either side. They didn’t bother with the hatches they passed. She focused her sight on where the shadows had been, lest she lose track of where she saw them. If that happened, they’d have no idea which hatches the creatures used.

  A vile smell grew stronger with each step, like ammonia combined with swamp decay. When they were within twenty paces of the location, Varo coughed, then pulled his jumpsuit neck over his nose and mouth. Ocella and Kaeso did the same.

  When they arrived, she said, “This about where you saw them, too?”

  Kaeso and Varo nodded, their eyes watering from the stench the creatures left behind.

  Ocella studied the hatch, then glanced at the two men. They both watched her. Even Kaeso looked desperately hopeful.

&n
bsp; She turned back to the hatch and tapped the lock pad.

  The hatch slid open.

  Ocella had a brief moment of triumph before the stench assaulted her with a force that drove her to her knees. She coughed and gagged, and she was vaguely aware of Kaeso and Varo doing the same.

  “Close it!” Kaeso gasped.

  Ocella, on all fours, lifted her head and focused her blurry vision on the lock pad. She raised her hand to hit the pad, but paused.

  Hundreds, maybe thousands, of octopod-like creatures squirmed in the strange fluid-filled ovals she’d seen before. Some crawled out of the ovals, the viscous fluid still clinging to their bodies. Other octopods assisted the emerging ones, chirping softly while cleaning each newcomer with their tentacles. None seemed aware of her, or if they were, they didn’t care.

  Ocella slammed her hand on the lock pad, and the hatch clanged shut.

  The stench still filled the corridor, but it was not as overwhelming as it had been moments earlier. She staggered further down the corridor with Kaeso and Varo. When they reached a point where they could breath without gagging, they stopped and sat against the bulkhead walls.

  “Their births…,” Varo said between coughs, “…stink.”

  Despite the continuing stench and the mucus flowing from her nose, Ocella started laughing. It was a frustrated laugh, a panicky laugh, one she knew contained no mirth at all. But she couldn’t stop herself.

  “Really?” she gasped between laughs.

  Varo and Kaeso stared at her, and then they both began laughing as well.

  Perhaps madness is contagious, she thought.

  22

  It took three more days for the alien vessel to arrive at Illium Primus, the lone Terran-class world in the Illium system. During that time, Cordus checked and double-checked each phase of his plan, from the way line maneuvers to the eventual boarding. He discussed it with Aquilina, the Romans, and Dariya—sometimes with all of them together and sometimes with each one separately. He even discussed it with Marcus Antonius, though the Muse apparition seemed more interested in talking him out of it than offering suggestions.