by Rob Steiner
Cordus scrolled through the statement, which said essentially what the Dictator just paraphrased. He looked up at her, and she regarded him with the same cold calculation with which Aquilina had watched him at times. I thought she believed in me; why does she not seem to trust me?
Cordus stood. He was almost six inches taller than Gemmella, yet he still felt like she was looking down at him. “My crew—”
“Is no longer your concern—”
“They are my only concern. Right now I’m just a freighter centuriae held under mistaken identity. Does my crew have amnesty? I want your personal guarantee.”
Gemmella’s eyes narrowed.
“Because if they don’t,” he continued, “I’m staying in this cell.”
After a few moments of silent staring, she said, “Tell me, Marcus Antonius Cordus, does your loyalty also apply to the Roman people you wish to rule?”
“I don’t wish to rule anybody. I assume your daughter has already told you I take this path reluctantly. But history and religion say the consul serves the people rather than rules them. I would take my historic and religious duties seriously. If I were consul.”
Gemmella did not smile, but her icy gaze softened. “You have my personal guarantee that your crew will receive amnesty.”
“When can I see them?”
“After you declare yourself. Once you do that, you will have Praetorian protection.”
“Is my life in that much danger right now?”
Gemmella barked a laugh. It was similar to Aquilina’s, but did not have the playful quality. The Dictator’s laugh was tempered by hard years and cynicism.
“We didn’t put you in this cell for its amenities,” Gemmella said. “There are factions who’d rather the Antonii stay dead. You’re in much greater danger while you’re undeclared than if you declare yourself. In the former situation, if those factions knew who you were, you’d be a dead freighter centuriae held under mistaken identity.”
“Has Aquilina told you my plan to stop the alien vessel?”
Gemmella’s eyes twitched and her jaw flexed. “Yes.”
“And you will allow me to do it?”
Gemmella spoke slowly. “If the situation becomes so desperate that we have no other choice…then yes, I will allow it. But we have weapons the vessel hasn’t seen yet. Your plan will not be needed.”
Cordus acted as though he accepted this, but thought, I’m sorry, Dictator, but it is your weapons that will not be needed.
“Will you follow me?” Gemmella said.
Cordus nodded once. Gemmella turned and left the cell, followed by an assistant and two black-uniformed Praetorians. Cordus’s legs suddenly felt as if they were cemented to the floor.
Aquilina gave his arm a gentle squeeze. “I’ll be there with you the whole time,” she whispered.
“What did you do to get me out of here?”
“Somehow, news leaked to the Republic bands that Marcus Antonius Cordus still lived and was in the Consular Palace. Even holos of your landing in the palace gardens were leaked. Over the last twenty-four hours, facial recognition experts from across the Sol system have confirmed it could be you. So everyone is demanding to know if it really is you.”
“Your mother could not have been happy.”
Aquilina smiled. “She’s the one who ‘leaked’ it.”
Cordus blinked, then shook his head and left the cell.
As he stepped out, he glanced at the four Praetorians surrounding the Dictator, then looked again. Gracchus looked much older in his ceremonial Praetorian armor; Piso’s black, curly hair peeked from beneath his golden helm; Duran watched him with amused brown eyes. Ulpius wore the same dour look he always had, though he didn’t look as grizzled now that he had shaved the gray stubble off his face and neck.
“Thought you were all Legion,” Cordus said dryly.
“What gave you that impression?” Ulpius growled.
Duran grinned. “Lady Aquilina assumes she’s our commander, but we’ve always been her Praetorian detail—”
“I’m warning you, Duran,” Aquilina said in a deadly voice from behind Cordus, “call me ‘lady’ once more and you’ll be guarding penguins at the South Pole Detention Center.”
Duran snapped to attention. “Sorry, ma’am,” he said, but his eyes still held amusement, as did those of Ulpius, Gracchus, and Piso.
Cordus smiled despite the circumstances.
Gracchus and Piso fell into formation around the Dictator and her three assistants, who spoke with her quietly. Ulpius and Duran marched behind Cordus and Aquilina. Cordus did his best to match Gemmella’s purposeful stride. If he was about to become consul, he would need to act like her.
The walk through the holding cells beneath the Consular Palace was a blur. His mind could not focus on anything other than what he was about to do. He had feared and avoided this moment his entire life. Even when he was a boy, he had never wanted to be consul. Now he was about to claim leadership over 150 billion people spread across the universe. His hands trembled, and he constantly wiped his sweaty palms on his pant legs. Sweat beaded on his upper lip and forehead. His legs would not match the confident strides of the Dictator in front of him.
What if I just abdicated instead of declaring myself? What if I just named Gemmella the new consul and said it was the start of a new Roman dynasty?
“Because you gave them your word, young Antonius.” Marcus Antonius strode next to Cordus, matching his pace. “And we know you’d rather die than break your word. An impractical code, but yours nonetheless.”
I don’t know if I can do this, Cordus thought desperately.
“Oh, you’ll love it,” Marcus replied, anticipation making him virtually bounce down the corridor. “There’s nothing greater than the love of a mob. Makes you feel like a god.”
Cordus grimaced, and Marcus added, “Or what we presume a god would feel. Of course, we’re not gods, so we have no idea for sure.”
Cordus realized they were in the columned hallway of the Consular Palace’s entry, walking toward the open doors ahead. He could see gray sky outside, and the snapping red pennants lining the top of the Circus Maximus. He smelled rain on the humid breeze coming through the doors.
He passed the marble statues of old consuls, all Heroes of the Republic. Near the end of the hall, at the entrance, he saw a statue of his twelve-year-old self. Cordus had heard about it and knew it proclaimed him a martyr and Hero of the Republic for “standing tall before barbarism”. His father, the last consul, had commissioned it after believing he succeeded in secretly murdering Cordus on Menota. As with all the statues in the hall, it accentuated his features, giving a twelve-year-old boy the muscles and bearing of a thirty-year-old. He certainly didn’t remember feeling that tough and confident—he mostly remembered being terrified all the time.
“I suppose you’ll have to take that down,” Aquilina said at his side, her gaze on the statue. “That’s for a dead child.”
Cordus didn’t say anything. He was too sick to speak.
“I was in the Forum when they unveiled it six years ago. I was only a child myself, but it inspired me.” She looked at him. “It told me that even children could ‘stand tall before barbarism’.”
“It’s fantasy,” Cordus whispered harshly. “I was never brave. That statue is nothing more than a cloak to cover my father’s crimes.”
Aquilina nodded. “True. But it did inspire me, and countless others, to serve the Republic. Is that a bad thing?”
Cordus didn’t answer because he didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know anything anymore. He had sworn to the gods that he would never put himself in this position. Yet here he was, of his own choosing. In less than twenty paces, he would be standing on the palace steps—
White light blinded him, and then he felt the impact. He heard nothing as he flew backward, slammed into the two Praetorians behind him, and then landed on the polished marble floor. Sharp chunks of debris pelted him along with sickeningly warm p
ieces of what felt like raw meat.
He lay on his back, paralyzed by the blast and the lack of air in his lungs. He took in several gasping breaths and then coughed up plaster dust and mucus. He opened his eyes and slowly propped himself on one elbow. After starbursts faded from his eyes, he saw the people he’d been walking with a second before. They all lay on the floor among the debris, some moving, but most still. His hearing crept back accompanied by a terrible ringing, and then the sounds of screams and pulse rifle fire coming from outside the palace.
Find a gun, you fool.
He forced himself up; his body groaned with the effort. A Praetorian lay next to him. Duran. His neck was turned in an unnatural angle, his sightless brown eyes staring to the right. Cordus took his pulse rifle and swung it around toward the palace doors. He blinked the dust and wetness from his eyes. Pulse fire still raged outside, but nobody was charging in. The right door was off its top hinge and tilted against the doorframe. Only the jagged upper half of the left door remained. Seeing no immediate danger from the entrance, he scrambled to his feet, still aiming the rifle at the doors. His eyes flicked over the bodies and debris around the hall.
“Aquilina!”
His voice still sounded muffled to his recovering ears. The Muses were hard at work repairing any damage to his body. Likely everybody else was in much worse shape than he.
“Aquilina!”
Her dark braid lay beneath the upper torso of one of the dictator’s assistants. Cordus rushed over and with one hand pulled the torso off Aquilina’s head. He checked her pulse, found it, and almost sobbed with relief. She coughed and gasped, her entire body curling into a fetal position.
Thank Juno, she can move.
He turned her over and she continued to cough, but her eyes were open and staring at him. He helped her sit up so she could cough easier.
“What…?” she tried to say, but another coughing fit came.
“An explosion,” Cordus rasped through his own ragged throat. “There’s fighting outside.”
She stared at him. “I can’t hear,” she shouted.
“Mine is only now coming back—”
Her eyes suddenly widened. “Mother?” she yelled, looking around.
She tried standing, but fell back to her knees. Cordus slung the rifle over his shoulder and helped her up.
“Mother!” she yelled again, searching the bodies.
Ulpius was on his feet. He looked dazed and spat gobs of debris, but he had his rifle up and aimed at the door. Everybody else still lay on the floor, either too wounded to rise or dead.
“Mother!” Aquilina screamed. She stumbled in the direction Gemmella had been before the blast. Cordus followed her with his rifle up, trying to avoid stepping on bodies. He tread around Piso, who lay on his back with his chest ripped open. Fortunately the Hiberian was dead.
Aquilina rushed forward and dropped to her knees next to a bloody form. Cordus stood over them both, glanced at Gemmella, and knew she was going to die. The left side of her face had been sheered off almost to the bone; her left arm was gone along with most of her torso. The whites of her ribs poked through her blackened and bloody skin.
Aquilina held her head. Amazingly, her right eye moved to Aquilina. The dictator whispered something, but blood leaked from her mouth.
“What?” Aquilina shouted, moving her ear next to Gemmella’s mouth. “I can’t hear you!”
It wouldn’t have mattered if she had. Cordus’s hearing was virtually healed already, but even he could not make out what the dictator was trying to say; only wet gurgles came. Then her chest stilled, and her right eye stared up at the ceiling.
More pulse fire came from outside, and this time shots tore up the remaining pieces of the jagged left door.
Ulpius, and now Gracchus, rushed over to Aquilina and Cordus, both with rifles pointed at the door. Ulpius yelled, “My lady, sire, we need to leave now!”
“Mother!” Aquilina shouted at the dead Gemmella. “What did you say? Mother, I can’t hear you—”
Cordus yelled near Aquilina’s head, “We have to go! They’re right outside the door!” He reached for her arm, but she pushed him away.
“She’s trying to tell me something! I can’t hear what she’s saying!”
Cordus slung his rifle and pulled her up by both arms. “Your mother’s dead!”
Aquilina stared at him and then looked down at her mother. “But I…I didn’t hear what she said…”
Cordus put both arms around Aquilina and gently, but firmly, pulled her along as he and the two surviving Praetorians raced back down the hall.
38
“Centuriae or pilot, ‘Ush?” Dariya said.
Daryush looked from the command couch to the pilot’s couch on the command deck of Vacuna. He frowned with indecision.
Dariya gave an exasperated sigh. “‘Ush, you had the pilot’s couch last time, so take the command couch.”
She knew the source of his indecision. The command couch was larger and more cushioned, which better accommodated his large frame. But the pilot’s couch had a larger screen on its tabulari for a better view of the horse races on the Roman bands. The Romans may be bastards in most things, but they bred the finest horses in the human universe.
Dariya threw up her hands and sat in the pilot’s couch. Daryush shrugged, then sat in the command couch and brought up the races on the smaller tabulari monitor. Dariya loved her brother beyond words, but his hesitant nature infuriated her at times.
She frowned as she scrolled through the local broadcast bands. She couldn’t find any horse races, but she saw lots of news criers discussing the impending announcement that an Antonius had been found and was here in Roma. Criers stood in front of the open Consular Palace doors, awaiting the Dictator and presumably the last Antonius. They all speculated that it was Marcus Antonius Cordus himself, back from the dead.
Cordus, you fool, you should have let them all rot. You should never have come here.
She glanced at her brother, who had settled on an old broadcast of a horse race that seemed to be running through the sands of Arabia. He watched the race with a happy grin.
We should never have come here…
A rumble vibrated her couch. She knew small earthquakes were common in Italia, just as they were in Persia, but her instincts were on edge. She turned on the Praetorian bands that Aquilina had given her.
Men and women screamed over the sounds of pulse blasts. Some cried out they needed a medicus for wounded comrades, citizens, or themselves.
Dariya looked to the broadcast bands. The cameras jerked about as the holders tried to flee the scene, while at the same time record what was happening. The doors to the Consular Palace were blown apart and smoking. Black-armored guards stood near the doors, firing from behind white columns at someone in the crowd. Whoever fired back was disguised as a citizen.
Dariya sat up in the couch. “Cordus…”
Her eyes were drawn to the ship’s external cameras. Not trusting the Romans one bit, she had kept them all on and had even turned on the motion sensors. Nothing could get within a hundred paces of the ship without setting off alarms.
And as soon as she saw movement, the motion alarms blared. Black-armored men with pulse rifles were charging from out of the garden toward the ship.
She lunged for the shield controls on the pilot’s tabulari. A hum permeated the ship as the shield generators came on line, and then a translucent blue glow filled the external cameras. The shield encased Vacuna in a spherical energy, slicing through the ground on which the ship sat. The ship groaned and shifted as the landing pad beneath it became unstable from the shield scooping out a huge semi-spherical chunk of it. She engaged the anti-grav engines. The ship stopped moving as it rose a few feet above the crumbling ground and floated within the energy sphere.
Daryush grunted in alarm as he pointed at the external cameras. Through the blue glow, they saw black-armored men fire at the shield with pulse rifles. But the pellets disintegr
ated harmlessly upon impact.
They were protected. But with the shield in place, the public bands they’d been watching on their tabulari, along with the Praetorian bands, turned to static.
Dariya and Daryush shared a fearful look.
“Caccing Romans,” Dariya snarled.
39
Awareness came in waves.
First, she was warm and content. Then she realized she was alive. She soon discovered she had eyes that she could open, but they did her no good since all she could see was a dark blue haze. She did not care.
Then memories slammed into her, and Ocella woke up.
She floated in a warm gel that encased her naked body. She found she could breath the gel, but that did not ease her panic. She thrashed about, grasping for anything solid within the endless gel. She didn’t even know where to ‘swim’ to, for she had no idea which way was up or down.
A shadow moved to her right, and she swung her head toward it. More shadows moved there, and they grew close enough for her to see their human forms. She moved toward them. Once she got closer, two sets of hands reached in and grabbed her arms. She tried to slip away, but she had no leverage.
The hands pulled her out of the gel and into a cold, brightly lit room. Ocella shut her eyes tight against the brightness. The light filtered through her lids, causing pain. She opened her mouth to scream, but gel spewed out. She turned on her side and coughed up streams of gel.
Gentle hands rested on her back and shoulders. “Get it all out,” a male voice said. “Your new lungs will adjust. Just takes a minute or two.”
When she could breathe without gagging, she slowly opened her eyes to find that they, too, had adjusted to the room’s brightness. However, she realized the room was actually quite dim, though brighter than the cell in which they were held before—
Ocella stiffened, then looked up at the man standing beside her.
Gods. He has the face he had before Umbra. Older, perhaps, but the same.
Kaeso looked healthier and more relaxed than she could ever remember; perhaps back when they first courted twenty years ago, but certainly not after Umbra had surgically changed him.