by Rob Steiner
Kaeso took the crowbar from Dariya, and wondered when dead bodies stopped bothering him. After your first assassination, he reminded himself. After that, they all became just another slaughtered animal. Kaeso thrust the crowbar’s edge into the elevator doors and yanked back harder than he intended. The crowbar came out and he stumbled backward. He slammed the crowbar on the floor.
“Easy, sir,” Lucia said, rushing over to him. “Are you all right”
“Fine,” he said. “I'm fine.”
He grabbed the crowbar, went back to the door, and inserted it again. This time he opened the door three inches. Kaeso and Lucia pulled it open with their hands. When the opening was shoulder width, he aimed his headlamps down the shaft. There was only blackness beyond his lamps’ range. He could not see the elevator car below, or when he looked up. He pulled his head out and studied the dark control pad on the wall to the right.
“Flamma,” he said, “think you can handle it?”
Flamma snorted and unslung his tool bag. “I built my own gladiator golems, so I think I can hook a battery up to a wall pad.”
As Flamma worked, Dariya brought Daryush back to the group. His brow was sweaty and furrowed, and he kept his wide gaze on the elevator.
“How are you, big man?” Kaeso asked.
Daryush shrugged.
“We'll be out of here soon,” Kaeso said. “We’ll be rich enough to install a brand new engine on Caduceus. You'll spend months tinkering with it.”
The big Persian brightened a little. Kaeso glanced at Dariya, and she gave him a grateful nod.
The elevator began to hum. Kaeso turned to see the wall pad aglow and running through a startup routine.
“Got it,” Flamma said.
Once the pad's controls came on, Flamma pushed a button on the display, and the elevator cables began moving. The car rose above the floor, its interior light pouring from its partially opened doors. It stopped when it was parallel to the floor, and then the doors opened all the way.
“How long will the battery last?” Kaeso asked Flamma.
“An hour. I got another one, in case this takes longer.”
Kaeso turned to the crew. “Ready?”
They all nodded in their helmets, their eyes wide. Even Blaesus seemed a little nervous now that it was time to go underground.
“Remember,” Kaeso said. “All we have to do is grab the paper in those vaults and we're rich. We won't have to work another day for at least...a month.”
Each one grinned. Except for Daryush who still looked ill.
Kaeso stepped into the elevator and the crew followed. Once everyone boarded, Flamma brought up the car's control pad and checked a few readouts.
“I think we got the right place,” he said. “The display above the door says there's one level below ground, but the pad says differently. Just a few hacks here...and there...”
The door slammed shut, and Daryush jumped. The elevator began to descend.
“We’re on our way,” Flamma said.
The control pad dinged when the elevator reached the basement level, but the elevator continued to descend. The crew remained quiet.
“Schematics say the vaults are a hundred feet below ground,” Kaeso said, more to break the nervous silence than to provide information the crew could see on their own visors.
“Check your 'Contagion' and 'Radiation' levels,” Nestor said.
“Medicus,” Blaesus said, “if any were in the red, I think you’d have heard screaming by now.”
The elevator stopped with a thud, and the entire crew flinched. Then the door opened to darkness.
8
Kaeso stepped out of the elevator. His helmet lights illuminated the hallway fifteen feet ahead. A layer of dust coated the cream-colored floor, and billowed up when Kaeso walked on it. He swept the hall with his lights, illuminating the smooth walls. There were no decorations or patterns, and Kaeso saw through the dust and grime that the walls were the same cream color as the floor. Light domes ran down the center of the ceiling, but none were lit.
Kaeso passed several doors on each side of the hall and followed the schematics to the vault room door. It was red, metal, with a hand-shaped identipad on the right side.
“Flamma,” Kaeso said.
“Got it, Centuriae.” The young Egyptian pulled out his tools and went to work on the pad.
“Sir,” Lucia said, facing the black hallway.
“What?”
She shined her helmet light down the hall at two doorways. One was half-open and the other closed, its handle broken off.
“We’re bound to find open doors down here,” Kaeso said.
“I mean the floor.”
Kaeso looked at the floor between the two doors. Foot prints and scuff marks in the dust allowed him to see the cream tiles. The marks were recent judging from how the tiled floor shined in his lights.
Lucia glanced at Kaeso, then drew her pulse pistol. Kaeso did the same.
“What is it, Centuriae?” Nestor asked from behind.
“Everyone stay here,” Kaeso ordered. “Lucia and I’ll be right back.”
Kaeso and Lucia approached the opposite doors cautiously, Kaeso in the lead with Lucia a step behind him.
“Watch the closed door,” he told Lucia when they arrived. “I’ll check the open one first.”
“Yes, sir.”
His heart thumping, Kaeso held the pistol in a firing position with his right hand, and pushed open the door with his left. His lights showed a small room with metal shelves. Empty boxes and canisters littered the shelves and floor, some ripped apart. Or chewed apart. Cans with vegetable and meat labels, ripped boxes of dried rice and noodles, and garum bottles all lay empty on the floor. There wasn’t a morsel of food left, as if everything had been licked clean. Kaeso searched the small room, but could not find any other boxes or cans with food.
“Anything, sir?” Lucia asked.
“It's a pantry. Or used to be. Been cleaned out. We’re not alone down here. Flamma, how’re you coming with that pad?”
“Almost there, Centuriae.”
“Hurry up. Lucia, let's check the other door.”
Kaeso left the pantry, passed Lucia, and stood to the left of the closed door. Lucia went to the other side. Kaeso did a countdown with his fingers from three. When he reached zero, he pushed open the door.
A kitchen. On the right was a flat top stove in one corner. To the right of the stove was a sink and more counter space. There was a door to a walk-in freezer on the left side of the room, next to an external refrigerator. A square table with no chairs stood in the center of the room.
“Why is there a pantry and kitchen in a vault meant to store bank marques?” Lucia asked.
“Probably a bomb shelter as well,” Kaeso said. “When they founded this colony, the Menota system was on the edge of Zhonguo space.”
Lucia nodded. Sixty years ago Roma and Zhonguo fought repeated border skirmishes, which blew up into the Nox War. That little conflict went badly for the Zhonguo and moved the border six way line jumps into Zhonguo territory. Menota was now well within Roman space, and the threat of indiscriminate bombing from the Zhonguo had ceased. Ironically, it would not be the Zhonguo that bombed Menota.
Kaeso walked over to the stove, where two pots sat on the cold burners. Both pots had a black residue at the bottom, as if left on the burner after most of the contents were scooped out. Black stains covered the entire stove, along with the counter space beside it.
Lucia opened the freezer door and sucked in a breath. Kaeso looked past her to see dozens of bones piled inside the dark freezer. Skulls stared back at him with yawning jaws. Dried flesh still clung to many of the bones. A flash of insight told him how it went down here for the survivors. First they cleaned out the pantry. After they ate all the food, they ate their dead. When the dead were gone…they created more.
He thought back to the footprints outside the doors. Could they have survived this long, though?
�
�Go back to the door and keep watch,” Kaeso told Lucia.
Lucia nodded, went back to the door and stood in the hallway. Kaeso shut the freezer door and then opened the refrigerator. Four desiccated heads stared back at him. They were hairless, with brown leathery skin pulled tight around their skulls. Kaeso shut the door and left the room.
“Flamma.”
“Another minute.”
Nestor approached Kaeso, glancing at the doors. “What did you find, Centuriae?”
“Heads, bones, dirty pots.”
“How old?”
“A few months, no more.”
Blaesus cleared his throat. “The planet was bombed two years ago...”
Kaeso scanned the dark hallway beyond. He saw no other doors, but his visor told him there were two more rooms ahead, and then the hallway ended at a T-shaped intersection. If people had survived down here since the bombing, they were that way. And they would be infected with the Cariosus. Kaeso fought his implant’s warnings to flee this tomb as fast as possible. Not yet, not yet, not yet, he repeated to himself. He had to keep the demons at bay just long enough to get—
“I'm in, Centuriae,” Flamma said. The door clicked, and Flamma pushed it open.
“Finally,” Dariya said. “Let's get the marques and leave this dungeon.”
Daryush grunted his agreement.
“Articulate as always, my Persian friend,” Blaesus said and followed them inside.
Kaeso turned to Lucia. “Watch down that hall. Let me know if--”
“You'll know, sir.”
Kaeso entered the vault room to find his crew staring at the shelves. Stacks of paper sealed in clear plastic sat on each shelf. Blaesus walked over to one shelf and sighed.
“There must be 30 million sesterces worth of marques in this room,” he said.
“Gods be praised,” Nestor breathed.
“We're on a timer, people,” Kaeso said, walking to a shelf and unslinging the bag from his shoulder. “Blaesus and I will load the bags. Dariya, Daryush, and Nestor will take the bags up to the ship. And bring back the cargo carts. We’re going to need them.”
Almost seven million sesterces for us, if the Romans keep their word, Kaeso thought as he stuffed marques into the large bags. A million each. He didn't know the interest rates on Liberti accounts, but he knew they'd be enough for his crew to avoid work for the rest of their lives. Kaeso could sell the ship to Lucia and quit the smuggling business without worrying about his people. He wouldn’t have to solve their problems or keep them fed and clothed. He wouldn’t even have to worry about the Roman authorities finding them. He wouldn’t have to worry about them at all. They would have the means to do whatever they wanted, and he would...well, he would do something else.
After fifteen minutes of packing and loading the bags onto the ship's cargo cart, the mood in the vault room had gone from tense anxiety to jovial banter on how they would spend their loot.
Blaesus described the villa he would buy on a lake on Capri, a resort moon in the Libertus system. He would spend his days reading, writing, and eating the richest, fattiest food he could buy.
“Maybe even a dally with a rich patrician widow,” he said with a wink at Kaeso.
Flamma said, “I've always wanted to open a gladiator training school.”
Blaesus laughed. “I would've thought your, um, misunderstanding with the Collegia Pontificis had soured you on the arena.”
Flamma shrugged as he zipped up the bag he just filled. “I still love the arena. I just never liked the fame or the…taboos associated with it.”
“Like falling in love with your golems?” Blaesus asked.
Kaeso prepared for an angry outburst from Flamma, but the young Egyptian just shrugged. Perhaps the new money eased his sensitivity over the subject.
“Yes, ” Flamma said in a quiet tone. “Like that.”
Kaeso had never asked Flamma the whole story behind his flight from Roma, since he figured that was Flamma’s business. But like anyone who knew anything about the Roman gladiator sport, Kaeso knew Flamma had committed the religiously unacceptable act of declaring Arial, his female gladiator golem, a ‘human.’ Though Romans used human genes to build golems in large vats, the Roman Collegia Pontificis had decreed that golems were not human, thus making it morally easier to use them as gladiators and sex toys.
If Flamma had stuck to just sleeping with his golem, there wouldn’t have been an issue. Though the Collegia frowned on sex with golems, they tolerated it so long as it was discrete. With Roman patricians paying top sesterces for the best sex golems, there was no real way to stop it anyway.
However, for Flamma to declare Arial human…that was high order blasphemy. The Collegia banned Flamma from the arena for life and forced him into exile.
“I loved programming new golems,” Flamma said, “giving them life, and testing them against the best in the Republic. I'll have enough money for a new identity, so that won't be a problem. It'll be like when I first started. When I did it because I loved it, not because people expected me to do it. How about you, Nestor?”
Nestor had just walked into the vault room pushing an empty cargo cart after unloading the first marques on the ship.
“I will continue to travel,” Nestor said. “The gods have created a wondrous universe, and humanity has not seen a fraction of it. I want to see what is out there. Perhaps I will find other races. Humanity cannot be the only mortal intelligence the gods created.”
Kaeso listened to his crew’s dreams with satisfaction. They all had their own ideas that did not involve him or Caduceus. It made him feel better about his own plans.
That is, until Dariya spoke up. She and Daryush were still unloading bags on the ship, but her voice was clear over the com.
“How can you people abandon the Centuriae?” she asked. “He has given you so much, and the first chance you get you run? Daryush and I will stay with Caduceus. We go where Centuriae Kaeso goes.”
Kaeso sighed. He appreciated Dariya’s loyalty, but he wanted—
“Something's coming!” Lucia screamed.
She fired six rounds from her pulse pistol, then dove into the room. Kaeso went to slam the door, but came face to face with an inhuman visage. It was emaciated and pale, with a bulging neck and hairless body. It snarled at Kaeso, its lips the color of iodine, its teeth yellow. The creature grabbed Kaeso’s suit with bony fingers. Kaeso slammed the door on the thin arm with all his strength. The crew rushed over and pushed the door closed against the creatures pushing from the other side. The door latched shut, and a sickening crack filled the room as the creature's arm sheared off and splattered to the floor. Flamma hit the door controls with a gloved hand to lock the door.
The infectees pounded on the door, growling and screaming their hunger. But Kaeso knew it was not growling or screaming. It was a language, one that everyone outside Umbra thought was animalistic shrieks by people who had lost their humanity to the Cariosus. Kaeso didn’t need his Umbra implant to know what the infected people on the other side wanted.
9
“Mavor's balls! How can anyone still be alive in here?” Blaesus shouted over the pounding and screaming at the door. He stared wide-eyed at the severed arm on the floor. Nestor bent down to inspect the arm.
“Careful, Medicus,” Kaeso said.
“I won’t touch it.” Nestor used a screwdriver from his tool bag to turn the arm over. “They are starving.”
“Obviously,” Blaesus said, “and we’re the juiciest morsels they've seen in two years.”
Lucia holstered her pistol. “I bet they came down for shelter from the diraenium bombs. They must have brought the Cariosus with them.”
“I know Cariosa are tough,” Blaesus said, “but two years in this vault? How did they breathe? Where did they get their water?”
“There must be something here we haven't seen yet,” Kaeso said, watching the door and listening to the screams.
“You mean air tanks?” Blaesus said. “An underg
round cistern not on the schematics? Maybe they've watched dramas on their tabulari this whole time? And we were so close to becoming richer than—”
Kaeso rounded on Blaesus, but Flamma beat him to it.
“Hey, old man,” Flamma said, grabbing Blaesus's arm. “We're not dead yet.”
“Centuriae,” Dariya's voice crackled over the com. “What's happening?”
“Stay on the ship, Dariya,” Kaeso ordered. “Don't come down here. Survivors with the Cariosus attacked us.”
“Is everyone all right?”
“Yes, we’re safe in the vault room.”
“Safe?” Blaesus said.
“Maybe they'll give up,” Flamma said. “Sooner or later they'll figure they can't beat the door down.”
Blaesus turned to him. “Didn't you see reports on the Cariosus, or the bodies upstairs? They won't give up until they've turned their hands to pulp scratching and beating that door.”
Dariya said, “We’re coming down, Centuriae.”
“Negative, Dariya. You and Daryush stay up there. I don't know how many Cariosa are out there, but it's more than one. All they have to do is rip your suit and you'd be dead...or joining them.”
“I have a plan, sir. We will be there in fifteen minutes.”
“Dariya, you will obey my orders and stay on the ship. Dariya? Dariya!”
Kaeso ground his teeth. Dariya and Daryush were brilliant engineers, but he had no idea how they’d react in a fight. Dariya might be willing, but was she able? And Daryush, despite his size, fled to his bunk whenever two of the crew had a mild disagreement. Could he fend off several mad, inhuman Cariosa?
The Cariosa continued pounding on the door and screaming in their nonsensical tongue. Blaesus was right; they would not give up, even when their fists were bloody mash. When that happened, they'd start kicking the door until they collapsed on their broken bones. Then they'd start smashing their heads against the door. Kaeso knew what the virus drove its hosts to do. It would use their bodies until their muscles or bones no longer worked.
He knew the Persian twins were his crew's only hope, but his mind railed at his own greed and stupidity for getting them in this fix to begin with. He knew this had been a possibility, but he also knew this was his best chance to escape the chains of responsibility without abandoning his crew.