The Centurion's Empire

by Sean McMullen

"Why ask me?"

  "Because I was thinking out loud, but no matter. I've made other plans in case those loons at the ranch goofed out."

  "So—but do your people know we're here?"

  "They'll be driving past every few minutes and polling for us with a tight-beam radio pulse. When I get the pulse we leave and walk to the left, two blocks down to the all-night deli. A dark blue Toyota roachvan will be waiting." An amber spot glowed before her eyes on the dataspex. "There they are! Stay with me now." She pulsed the roller door up and scanned the outer loading bay. "All clear, no—" An autonic that was clinging to the right wall fired, hitting Lucel's lower left ribcage with a tumble-round. She collapsed with a percussive wheeze as Vitellan saw a shadow step around the coiner and fire something at him with a soft stutter. Darts stung his arms and chest, and he fell facedown over Lucel.

  "Scrubbed the girl, tranked daddy," the shadow reported to a wristcomm.

  Hands seized Vitellan's body and rolled him over. His right arm flopped over lifelessly—and plunged the steak knife from the bistro into the shadow's throat. The second figure did not realize anything was wrong until his companion collapsed. Vitellan picked up Lucel's gun and squeezed the trigger. Nothing happened. Keyed to her palmchip, cannot fire, the Streetwise imprint suggested within his mind.

  Vitellan backed into the loading bay as the second man fired more tranquilizer darts into him. There was no effect. Engineered bacteria administered by Lucel in the Paris hospital had manufactured enzymes in his blood that were neutralizing the tranquilizer. The figure leaped onto the bay, crouching low, arms extended. Vitellan threw the image to his imprint: formal martial arts fighting stance, tae kwon do with commando streetfighter variation. Vitellan felt behind him and seized a broom. He snapped the brush off with his foot. The man lunged, easily deflecting the overhand blow that Vitellan made with the handle—but the Roman gently drew it back in a smooth underloop and jabbed it forward. The handle's splintered end smashed past teeth and lodged in the Luministe's throat. Vitellan stabbed underhand with the steak knife, but the blade hit body armor and snapped. Seizing the man's back collar, the Roman slammed his head into the ferroslab wall and he suddenly went as limp as a dead squid in a fishmonger's basket. Alert for more attackers, Vitellan picked up Lucel's body. His hands clutched cloth soaked in slick, cooling blood. A black shape on the floor vomited Glucoboost through the gash in his neck and died. The tiny autonic gun-platform clinging to the wall followed Vitellan with its barrel, but it had a bar on shooting at his profile. He turned left outside the loading bay and ran, Lucel's blood pouring down his shirtfront and trousers. Two blocks away a laser scanner from a dark blue Toyota van identified the profile of Vitellan's current mask. The driver gunned the fuel cell engine, and within seconds strong hands bundled Vitellan and Lucel inside. -

  They were Africans, Nubians perhaps, Vitellan realized as the door slammed shut behind him. He had met Nubians when he had been garrisoned in Egypt, so long ago that America was not even a legend in Roman folktales. A medic pumped broad-spectrum stabilizing serum laden with nanoware into Lucel with one hand and slapped the skin grapples of a heart pacer down on her chest without bothering to remove her shirt.

  "She's dead, I brought her anyway," panted Vitellan, watching with the detached despair of one who had already given up.

  "Dead she is, mon, but we'll soon fix that."

  They seemed to drive for quite some time. Although there were many turns, there was no sense of being chased. The van finally stopped, and the back doors were opened from outside. Vitellan looked out, one hand on Lucel's cold forehead. Four guards leveled automatic rifles at them and a man with mutton-chop whiskers walked up, a wide-beam weapons scanner held before him. After some moments he held up his other hand. "All clear," he declared, and medical orderlies swarmed up to take Lucel away. Vitellan stepped from the van, unsteady on his feet and feeling curiously lonely. The man with the scanner noticed the blood soaking Vitellan's hands and clothing. He pointed and began barking keyword-laden orders. More medics rushed forward, but Vitellan held up his hands.

  "Ah, believe it or not, I'm uninjured," he said.

  Vitellan and Lucel had been brought to a private medical clinic named SkyPlaz near Hermann Park. It specialized in the treatment of those who could afford designer body enhancements that were unregistered, and hence in a murky class of borderline legality. The whole fourth floor of the block had been reserved for them, with Village credit unwittingly picking up the tab.

  Lucel had arranged for a contract security firm run by one of the more respectable of Houston's Afro-gangs to pick them up, and a protection bureau in Taiwan that guaranteed secure and discreet accommodation had booked them into SkyPlaz. Lucel's life had thus been saved by the precautions meant for Vitellan.

  In the hour after he had been admitted, Vitellan was given an intensive body scan and toxin flush, and his scratches and dart strikes were bonded and sealed. Although he took a shower and was scrubbed thoroughly by the handlers, he still imagined that he could smell blood as he dried himself. Completely exhausted, he lay on his back on a lounge, wearing sandals and a kimono of white silk painted with leafy green bamboo stems. For comfort it was the closest that he had worn to Roman clothing since the second century. Within moments he was asleep, and he barely noticed himself being lifted from the couch onto a trolley.

  Lucel was stabilized and put in a biosupport unit while her damaged skin, ribs, and organs were attended to. Vitellan had his mask removed while his body was scanned for organic implants and his blood filtered for debris and toxins. When he awoke the next day he lay running his hands over his stomach for a long time. There was no pain from his stomach, there had been no pain in his stomach since he woke up in the Luministe hospital in Paris. He was free of pain for the first time in a decade of waking life. How long had he been awake now? Three days? He almost wanted the pain back as a reference point in this chaotic, headlong world of the twenty-first century. His body seemed unfamiliar too. Old scars and marks were gone, and his fingers were longer and more delicate. More cosmetic work, he decided. By mid-morning the doctors and medical engineers had finished with him and he went to visit Lucel. She was no longer at danger status, but had only been revived suffi-

  ciently to be integrated with a trauma attenuation imprinter, and was still hours from being allowed back to full consciousness.

  Vitellan ate lunch wearing his bamboo print kimono, watching an afternoon thunderstorm lash against the windows. Managing rice with chopsticks was quite a challenge, and he sprayed a lot of food around while a puzzled waiter watched patiently.

  The Roman spent the rest of the day watching Lucel being built back into a viable body. Her face was covered in blue utility gel supporting tubes that went into her mouth and nostrils. It looked as if some surreal jellyfish was feeding on her. The tumble-shots had smashed two ribs, minced some abdominal muscles, and torn her intestines in several places. One had pulverized a kidney as it left her body. Medical utility arms carefully cleaned her skin while computer-linked cameras and scanners assessed what could be salvaged.

  Her abdominal cavity was opened, and the small intestine carefully inspected and spliced where the round had flayed it. When the surgical handlers had finished she had lost only a few inches of intestine. The damaged sections of rib were reconstructed with a calcium matrix, while the torn muscles would eventually be replaced by vat-muscle keyed to her antibody signature. One quick spray of gunfire, then all of this to bring her back from the edge of death, Vitellan mused. Lucel's abdominal muscles were hard and well developed, so the handler cut, stapled, and bonded to retain the strength. A small array of damaged tissue built up on a platter beside her in the unit.

  While she was unconscious an interactive dialogue between a computer and her nervous system probed for brain damage, but none was found. Although her circulation had ceased for a lethal period, the oxygen reserves built into her tissues had saved her. Arms with electrical stimulators worked her musc
les to preserve tone.

  It was evening before the surgical handler completed the operation by clamping and bonding Lucel's skin where it had been breached. The gel was slowly sucked out until she lay naked on the contoured surgical table within the biosup- port unit. Vitellan noted her black wedge of pubic hair. For some reason he had not thought of her as having pubic hair, like the women and goddesses of many ancient statues. Her breasts were small and firm, they would not get in the way when she was fighting. Perhaps she had had them tailored that way, Vitellan speculated. He decided to check, and under Vitellan's imprinted directions the monitor interface confirmed that her breasts had been altered by surgery. It was a common procedure for combat-career military women, the cyclopedia imprint assured him. Her fallopian tubes had also been clamped off, and there were some other minor surgical enhancements involving her muscles and nervous system. The rest of her physique was the result of hard training, Dr. Baker later confirmed that when he called in to assess the progress of his machines with the patient. That gave Vitellan some reassurance. Physical work still counted for something, so there might be a place for him in this world after all. Baker began to talk to Lucel.

  "Glad to have you back, Miz Lucel," the doctor spoke into a mouthpiece that curved around from the frame of his dataspex. Vitellan stared at the body in the unit, but it showed no movement other than that of breathing and the induced muscle contractions.

  "Yeah, he's here, he's been watching you most all of the day. Sure, I can do that." Baker removed his dataspex and swiveled around to Vitellan. "We've got a consciousness tap into Mix Lucel, part of the checks for brain damage that we've been doin'."

  "But she is not awake," Vitellan said with a gesture to the unit.

  "Oh she's home all right, but don't ask how. Just watch, this might make it a little easier for you to get your head around."

  He tapped at some studs beneath a display on the side of the unit, and above the transparent bulkhead a green holographic ball the size of an apple formed. "Consciousness being gated now," the female Texan voice of the unit announced. The green ball expanded into an orange, life-size holograph of Lucel's head and neck. It was translucent at first, then it slowly took on human tones and textures. Vitellan stood up, and his face was directly before her eyes as the holographic eyelids blinked. It was the first time that he had seen her face without a mask for more than a few seconds.

  "Good to see you up and about, Miz Lucel,"'said Baker as he stood up. "Now I'll just set the cloaker and leave you two alone."

  Lucel's holographic eyes followed Baker until he had closed the door behind him.

  "Someone locked on to us," she said to Vitellan, her lips and facial muscles working too perfectly for life.

  "Two of them," Vitellan replied. "And some sort of robot with a gun. They shot you."

  "I... think I was hit in the stomach. Is—is everything all right?"

  "I think so. We're in a clinic named SkyPlaz. Your contract gang team brought us here. The gangs seem more reliable than the authorities in this century."

  "That's the market economy for you. So, the gang's tac squad in the van rescued us?"

  "No, I killed both of the Luministe agents and carried your body to the contract gang's van."

  "You killed two of the Luministe's enhanced contract lock-ons and rescued me?"

  "Yes."

  "How humiliating." "You'd rather I hadn't?"

  "It's okay. A little humiliation can lift one's game, just like a bit of guilt makes sex more fun." Her approval sent a warm flush through his bleak feeling of helplessness.

  "How did they try to stop you?" she asked after a moment.

  Vitellan held up five tiny flighted wedges. "With these. The doctor gave them to me as souvenirs."

  "Trank darts. They'd dissolve in your bloodstream for five hours or thereabouts, keeping you asleep for the duration. Luckily I set up your body to be proof against a suite of chemicals like that when we first met. Who's running the shop?"

  "In theory, me."

  Vitellan began to pace before Lucel's holograph, his arms folded tightly and his head bowed. The insubstantial eyes of the projection followed him. Somewhere beneath the tangle of electronics and medical support equipment, Lucel herself sensed that he was disappointed at being let down by his own people in Durvas.

  "I wish you could take over again," he confessed. "How do you feel?"

  "Absolutely numb," she admitted as her projection looked down into the biosupport unit. "The real me looks a mess."

  "You were hit by three rounds from a little robot gun platform. They nearly cut you in two."

  "How long ago?"

  "Twenty-four hours. Your bones and intestines were bonded back together by the robot arms in the case below you. I watched."

  "Voyeur."

  "They put in a new kidney." "I'd have never guessed."

  "You were dead for at least ten minutes. You should have had brain damage, according to my cyclopedia imprint. How did you survive?"

  "I've had oxygenation backup built into my tissues in stabilized molecular cages. It's designed to cut in if I stop breathing for more than two minutes. There's autoclamps for severed blood vessels, and a pacer also fires up to force my blood to circulate if my heart stops for more than five seconds. I can take a lot of damage and pull through." Vitellan had been accessing his imprints as she talked. "Micropumps driving and routing blood by selective arterial contraction, with stabilized molecular cages to store oxygen: the cages were developed from the same stabilized lattices as the covalent lattice explosives."

  "You've got it. Vitellan, could you find my dataspex for me?"

  "Yes."

  "I want you to interface them with the cables going into this thing that I'm being repaired in. I can see the panel from here—I'll talk you through the procedure."

  "Whatever you say. Do you want to do more database work?"

  "Yes, but I want to check what the spex contain as well.

  They have a low energy recorder, they've been recording everything going on around them since I was shot." When he returned from his room the pale holographic head remained in midair above the surgical unit. He plugged flaccid, flat cables into slots and pressed patterns of studs while the holograph head called instructions and passwords across the room. As the connection was established the holograph vanished. The Roman suddenly felt like curling up and going to sleep. Lucel was in charge again so he could relax, yet he was still uneasy about being completely in her power. Her projected head reappeared just in time to find Vitellan yawning and stretching his arms.

  "You should be asleep," she said sternly.

  "Spoken like an Icekeeper," he replied, lying back in a contour chair with his arms folded and looking at the ceiling monitors. "You remind me of a man named Gentor."

  "Get some rest, Vitellan. You've been stalked and attacked by professional—"

  "As professional killers they were nothing compared to the Danes, or even a well-trained gladiator. I'm a soldier, and I have survived many battles. Remember that, please, and don't try to seal me up in a box. I don't break easily."

  "Is something on your mind?" Lucel's hologram asked, assuming a vulnerable and insecure expression. I am the Master of the Frigidarium, he reminded himself, I have a right to ask questions about what is done in my name.

  "I asked to be revived in the year 2054 of the Christian calendar," he said, now trying to modulate his tone to unthreat-ening curiosity. "That was to mark two thousand years since my birth. Now I have been revived and it is only 2028. Why was that done?"

  "It's a long story. The location of your body in the Alps was preserved in both Durvas and a castle in France after you were frozen. Late in the eighteenth century there was a successful revolution against the nobility of France, and the Hussontal castle was burned to a stone shell. Meantime the village of Durvas had maintained a few ceremonies such as the ice harvest, and even the office of Icekeeper had been filled in an unbroken line all the way back to Guy Fo
xtread, whom you probably met."

  "Yes, I knew him well."

  "Fantastic," she breathed through translucent lips. "Anyway, the Durvas people had folktales, traditions, the original Frigidarium, and a copy of the map that had been destroyed in France. The folk in Durvas did not know that the map had been destroyed, however, and they were worried that the French revolutionaries would locate your body and destroy it. The Icekeeper of Durvas decided to revive the care for your frozen body, but he also decided that a more reliable way of making ice was needed. Thus Durvas became a center of refrigeration research.

  "It soon became obvious that the map in the Hussontal castle had actually been destroyed, because Durvas spies reported that the castle was set afire during fighting, and was not looted before it burned. The Icekeeper decided that it was still safe to leave you in the Alps, but the refrigeration research was continued—just in case you ever had to be returned to Durvas. The village prospered and grew immensely over the next two centuries. In 2016 a decision was finally made to move your body from Switzerland to England. Greenhouse melting of the alpine ice was given as the official reason, but there was also some doubt about whether Durvas had a legal claim to you or whether the Swiss could claim you as an archeological artifact. The move was thus preemptive and done in secret, but once your body was safely in Durvas there was a general announcement about your existence, and about who and what you are. It caused a sensation worldwide."

  "All of that is in my imprints," said Vitellan, unimpressed. "So, I was dug out in 2016, then revived in 2028."

  "Yes, although in theory you were meant to stay frozen there until 2054, by your own wish."

  "If I was still frozen in some new Durvas Frigidarium, why was I revived early?"

  "For the same reason that you were revived in the ninth and fourteenth centuries. There was a crisis, and you were needed."

  "Me? Needed? In this century? You must be joking." "No, it's true. Bonhomme was discovered six years after you, but in those six years a strange groundswell of cults had