The Centurion's Empire

by Sean McMullen

  The scramjet was weaving randomly at hypersonic speeds, leaving twisted contrails as the laser struck the interceptor. The shell disintegrated but the core blasted out with a far higher acceleration, flying blinded by the ionization of its own passage. It shot past tlie scramjet, missing by less than a hundred feet.

  "Clear miss, and—yeah, it's flamed out Kappa Delta, you're safe. Kappa Delta? Hey ELTY, the scramjet's downlink is out."

  'Tracking debris," the ELTY targeting computer's voice reported. "ATA platform reporting a second hit." The operator stared into a hologram scenario, numbly watching two clouds of debris and the free-falling warhead. The warhead suddenly self-destructed, to be replaced by a third red cloud-icon.

  "ELTY, report and record the intercept status of the Kappa Delta," she said, afraid of her own words, hugging her arms tightly against her breasts.

  "The ATA platform destroyed Kappa Delta 174 with a direct hit from their laser cannon array." The operator shivered. There was a metallic taste in her mouth, and her body felt numb and clammy.

  "ELTY, where did the targeting priority on Kappa Delta originate?"

  "Point of origin was the ATA platform."

  The operator collapsed with relief across the hologram desk, her head amid the miniaturized symbols of the scenario display, her uniform coverall drenched in her own perspiration. The targeting that had destroyed the scramjet had not originated from the Janus—but who had ordered the orbital to fire?

  Back in Houston Lucel listened to the audio news as she unpacked in a luxury hotel. A scramjet on charter from United to Wurzel Electrobionics h4d been destroyed during what appeared to be a terrorist incident. Initial reports were unclear as to whether it had been destroyed by a missile or by the ATA orbital platform in a targeting error. The names of the two pilots and an executive aboard meant nothing to her.

  Rural Texas, 18 December 2028, Anno Domini

  The roadspike took Vitellan almost due west to Austin, then up onto the Edwards Plateau. They had been riding for several hours when the roadspike called "Shortcut!" over his shoulder, then turned off along a dirt road. It led to an abandoned quarry cut into the side of a hill. The Harley slithered in gravel, then came to a stop. The roadspike lowered the kickstand, then stepped off.

  "Los Angeles?" asked Vitellan, stiffly climbing off the seat.

  "No mon, but it's the end of the road for you. Savvy?"

  A blade snicked clear of its handle, gleaming bright and silver in the sunlight.

  "Ah, humiliores," said Vitellan, raising a finger and pointing at the roadspike. The roadspike had wanted a quiet kill; one never knew who might hear a gunshot. He advanced on Vitellan, who backed away slowly. As the roadspike rushed him Vitellan did a spin-dodge and slapped aside the knife-arm that sought him like some chimera of unicorn and cobra. The roadspike stumbled past, then whirled in the dusty gravel, in time to see his victim pick up a length of wood from a smashed pallet. It was about the length of a gladius, and Vitellan hefted it for balance in a disturbingly professional manner.

  In a sudden panic the roadspike flung his knife to his other hand and groped in his jacket for his Ruger 9mm, but Vitellan was already closing. A moment later the last centurion of the Roman Empire stood over the body of his would-be murderer. Blood trickled from one of the roadspike's ears, and there was a distinct dent in the skull.

  "Fuckwit est," Vitellan said as he looked at the hair and blood on his length of timber, then he dropped it to the gravel and began stripping off his clothes.

  >Once he was dressed in the roadspike's gear, Vitellan dragged the body over to the quarry wall and triggered a small rockslide to cover it. He stared at the Harley, trying to relate it to the van and his driving lesson on his first day in Houston. Lucel's words were still in his' memory: "brake," "clutch," "throttle," and "gears" fell into place as he tinkered and experimented. The sawn-off, pump-action shotgun in the bike's carrier made him pause for a moment, as did the sealpacks of amphetamines and bloodsand taped under the tank. At last he took a deep breath, offered a prayer to the God of Christians, and began trying to start the engine.

  Two hours later the bike was dented and covered in dust and Vitellan's jeans and jacket were torn and bloodied... but he could ride a motorcycle! Leaving the floor of the quarry scoured with skidmarks, he rode triumphantly out onto the dirt road, waving to a fresh rockslide by the wall and calling "Vale, et grates."

  Vitellan had little trouble on the highway, as fragments of memories gated in from what was left of Robert Wallace included road codes. His appearance was intimidating. Cov-

  ered in dust, blood, and scratches and riding a filthy bike, he was given a very wide berth by the few others on the road. At Fort Stockton he decided that the bike needed fuel and that he needed a map and food. The roadspike had already stopped for gasoline, so Vitellan knew something of the procedure.

  Rosamaria Conception very nearly fainted when she saw what had just ridden in from the east and stopped before the pumps. She was alone at the gas station, just minding the place and studying for the next semester's coursework. Imprints had not yet managed to displace old-fashioned study, even in 2028, as students were required to come up with original conclusions about what they studied. She watched as the roadspike fumbled with the pump, struggled with the fuel cap, splashed gasoline over himself and the bike, and finally managed to get some into the tank. He's out on bloodsand, thought Rosamaria as she watched the gasoline overflow and billow in clouds off the hot engine. Her foot caressed the security button. The specter limped across to the office and through the automatic doors.

  "Feed bike! Gas!" Vitellan declared, opening his wallet and displaying the contents to Rosamaria. She glanced at the reading on the display.

  "That will be $35.80 sir," she said with as much calm as she could manage.

  Vitellan offered her a thousand-dollar banknote. Rosamaria swallowed.

  "Sir, do you have anything a little smaller please?"

  "Small pease? Pease pudding?" asked Vitellan. desperately, knowing that he was missing the point completely. She shook her head. "No, smaller bills. A hundred or something. I don't have enough hard-c change, but if you give me one of those unsec smartcards that would be fine."

  Most of the words washed past Vitellan. He knew English, but it was two years of English from the fourteenth century. He had picked up a few modern words in general speech, but his basic infrastructure for modern English had faded with his imprint. He could have bought gasoline from Chaucer, but not from this Texan girl of the twenty-first "century. He rubbed a grimy hand over his face.

  "Is there nobody on this entire continent who can understand a civilized language?" he sighed to himself in Latin.

  "Latin!" exclaimed Rosamaria. "You speak Latin?"

  "Why yes, indeed I do," replied Vitellan in Latin, almost collapsing with relief and immediately switching his manner to fourteenth-century courtly charm. "But how do you come to speak such an old language so very beautifully, good lady?"

  "Me? Oh, I'm a college student on a break from Flagstaff," she replied, thinking weirder and weirder all the while.

  "Ah, a student. One should always study and better oneself, it is a very noble pursuit. Now then, how much do I owe for the, ah, gasoline as you call it?"

  "Thirty-five dollars eighty."

  "Yes, yes, now I see. I thought you were saying thirty-five dollars and eighty dollars."

  Vitellan glanced around the shop, noting the range of goods with interest.

  "Would you be so good as to help me with some other purchases?" he asked.

  "That is what I am paid to do," Rosamaria replied, half suspecting that she had fallen into a dream. Vitellan bought her personal low-speed portable imprint unit, a roadmap, and the imprint disks for Selective American Vernacular, Rough Tours of the West Coast, and Know Your Rights. Rosamaria gave him a canvas backpack that someone had abandoned there months ago, and he added several bottles of soda and cans of meatballs in sauce to his purchases.r />
  It was a quiet day, so she talked to him about English usage and street talk, and answered his questions about survival on the road while he hosed down his bike, washed, and bandaged his cuts.

  "That bleeding star on your jacket must be removed if you want to cross gang turf," she advised. "Give it here, I shall pick the threads and put a T on your back with gray tape. T means you are a transient."

  "What is a transient?" asked Vitellan as he shrugged out of the heavy impact jacket.

  "Transient means you have been booted out of your gang,

  and are moving to new territory. Most gangs leave you alone, but if you meet up with psycho-cells ..." She noticed the Ruger in the inner pocket of the jacket. "Well, you will need to use this persuader."

  "Ah yes, I have been meaning to ask you about that. Could you instruct me in its usage?"

  "You must be joking! You do not know guns, yet you pack a Ruger and a pump-action. You ride in on roadspike wheels, but you speak Latin like ... like ... an alien out of a UFO."

  "Aliens and UFOs. My acquaintances tell me that they are literary and mythical."

  "Believe me mister, you are mythical. You turn up out of nowhere looking like you tried to punch out a bear, but then you start speaking flawless Latin. That's as strange as any UFO story. I hear a lot of UFO stories when I come out here in semester breaks, folk make up wild stories to cut through the boredom. You are different. You do not have a story, yet you talk like you stepped straight out of..." She reached behind the counter and held up her copy of the Deciad. "Out of this."

  "You flatter me," Vitellan replied quietly, raising a bandaged hand to his face and bowing slightly. Rosamaria took Vitellan through the basics of cleaning, loading, and firing his guns before he handed her five thousand dollars of Baker's money.

  "This is too much!" she exclaimed. "Five K for my old imprint deck and some roadgear?"

  "You gave freely of what could not be purchased," replied Vitellan, zipping up the jacket. "My regret is that I could not give more."

  Rosamaria dashed back into the office as he swung a leg over the Harley and gunned the engine into life. She returned with her trade paperback edition of the Deciad and thrust it at him with a heavily chewed pen. Vitellan stared at the book, then looked to Rosamaria.

  "My lady, I am not Decius," said Vitellan after thinking for a moment and deducing her probable thoughts.

  "But you could not say anything else .. . Please write in it, anything. It is something that you can give that cannot be purchased."

  Vitellan took the point and killed the engine. He wrote in Latin to rosamaria, the friend who came to my aid opposite the title page and returned the book to her, then he took her hand and brushed it with his lips. The spell was shattered as the Harley's engine hammered back into life, and with a final wave Vitellan engaged the gears—then lurched forward, stalled, and nearly overbalanced. Sheepishly he started the engine again, and this time released the clutch more smoothly. He pulled out onto the highway, ventured another wave, swerved wildly, regained control, then opened the throttle and accelerated away. Rosamaria stood hugging the Deciad to her breasts and staring down the road after Vitellan long after his bike was out of sight. It was like the wildest, most indulgent of wish-fulfillments, as if she had stepped into a legend just long enough to save the hero and avert tragedy. As she watched the newscasts in the months that followed, however, she could never entirely escape the notion that her fantasy might have actually been real. 6

  countess and knight

  Houston, Texas: 18 December 2028, Anno Domini

  Hall was based in Northward Civic, but commuted to the SkyPlaz clinic along F59 and S288 every day. The SkyPlaz clinic was on neutral ground between Hermann Park and the Brays Bayou; it was an interface between two economies and legal systems. Some of its floors were legitimate medical suites, others were leased by the gangwards. There was much interchange between floors. Patients, drugs, and equipment moved freely, with no questions asked, and a sophisticated database laundered the accounts to protect both the guilty and guiltier. In SkyPlaz work could be done at other than the prescribed rates, in fact work could be done that could otherwise not be done at all. It was an embassy and marketplace all in one, with excellent secu-

  rity and discretion included. Hall was one of the resources available through SkyPlaz, an MIT graduate whose reputation was international—if not mainstream international. He was part of that "best" that SkyPlaz provided, and as such he was highly valued. This was not always well understood by those outside.

  "No word of Baker yet?" Hall asked the hologram of Roarch, the head of his security node. The holographic face suspended above his desk looked tired and worried.

  "He was last seen entering the scramjet," Roarch replied.

  "Someone came out wearing the right mask, our guys confirmed that under deep scan. We got a security monitor record of the dude with the same mask talking to some roadspike working carpark E. He rode off with him."

  "Smells like shit on a shoe. Which spikes was he with?"

  "Hellrunners. We got calls out but they're traditionals. They spend a lot of time on civilian turf and they got no comms. It could be tomorrow before we get real words."

  Hall glanced to a wallscreen, where a newscast showed shattered debris being skimmed from choppy gray waves by Canadian sailors.

  "He could have been aboard the scramjet," said Hall as he turned back to face Roarch's hologram.

  "Yeah, but airpost security says only three boarded. Anyhow, why go to that sort of trouble to trash a medical? Jinslash would have done the job for fifty K's."

  Hall flung a stylus down on his desk and folded his arms. "Give me a break! Jinslash would have had its ass kicked from here to low orbit by the Ward Lords. They're stupid but not that stupid."

  "So we're left with the big who, and I don't like that." A hand appeared beside the holographic face and Roarch chewed a thumbnail. "Like you said, Dr. Hall, there's shit to smell but not to see. Get back here, my man, now. Get all the cards and disks on that Vitellan dude and bring 'em with you. Everything! Do a mask on and take a car—and make sure you got muscle with automatics."

  An armored sedan pulled out of SkyPlaz from the outpatient ramp an hour later. Hall had been wearing a mask and his head had been swathed in bandages, but Lucel had other

  criteria to watch for. Hall's stature, the armed guards, and the fact that a patient in bandages was well enough to carry a heavy tote bag. She pulled her Sundart convertible out into the light traffic and followed the sedan, keeping quite close behind.

  Within two blocks the sedan's driver realized that some-one was following. He gunned the peroxide engine and engaged 1

  the computer-enhanced evasion option to weave through the traffic. Lucel cursed quietly, but her car had all the same pursuit and evasion options and the gap barely widened. They entered a feeder for S288, going north, weaving through the traffic in formation. From the sedan's side window a guard fired a laser at the Sundart's windshield, but the bursts were absorbed by polarity baffles and Lucel was annoyed rather than dazzled. The guard changed to a Ruger GP-100, but Lucel's own dazzle-laser was locked on to him by now. Shielding his eyes, he aimed Jow, and hit her front right tire. Lucel's Sundart lurched as she fought for control. Almost at once autoseal polymer repaired the rents and a gas reservoir began to pump the wheel back to operational pressure, but now the sedan was two hundred yards ahead. UniWard was to the right of the freeway.

  "Bad turf, anything goes," muttered Lucel as she hunched forward slightly.

  As if to agree with her the Sundart's onboard radar blazed a warning of an attack vector from the right: airborne and coming in low. It was a big profile, the size of a tiltfan. An overpass shielded the aircraft's approach as Lucel gained on the sedan. She reached down for a heavy tube trailing flaccid cables that plugged into her radar. Holding it up over the windshield she fired blindly at a space beyond the overpass where the tiltfan would have to fly. The Taipan intercept
or swamped the sportscar in exhaust as it streaked to where its target was headed—but someone in the tiltfan had already fired an identical Taipan at the sedan.

  The sedan detonated in a fiery teardrop that smeared along S288's bitumen and dispersed into burning shards. The tiltfan's passenger shouted "Hit!" triumphantly just as the horrified pilot cried "Incoming!" Lucel's Taipan struck amidships, and the covalent lattice in the warhead collapsed right between the rear engine bay and the cabin. The tiltfan sprayed flesh, flames, and composite debris to either side, but it flew on, hanging on the two front fans and slowly descending before hitting a construction site in Broad Acres and exploding. Lucel paused, standing up in her Sundart and confirming that everyone in the sedan was dead. She set her dataspex to scan for a suite of profiles, and within seconds a flashing wireframe centered on a blackened, battered composite case that had been inside Hall's tote bag. She jumped from the car and snatched up the case in a towel.

  Another car had stopped by now, and a man had got out.

  "Hey, look at that, she's part of a heist," he called. "Stop—"

  Lucel shot him in the leg. He collapsed but held on to the driver's-side door, shouting in surprise and pain. His passenger scrabbled in the car's door pannier for a gun as Lucel heaved the case into her Sundart and tumbled in after it.

  "Evasive!" shouted Lucel, lying across the seats as shots whined past her. The Sundart added the smoke from its tires to that curling up from the roadway as it steered for the feeder into the matrix of streets that was Eastward. Twenty minutes later the smoke had dispersed from the Houston sky. Across the city, where the Buffalo Bayou marked the border of Eastward, a hawk floated on the air, flying in the random, soaring curves of a scavenging pattern. There was no suggestion of an attack vector until it was right over a walled compound on Waugh Drive, then the wings folded and it fell like a stone. The explosion was sharp and hollow, showering soil, grass, and shreds of flesh into a nearby swimming pool.