by R. M. Meluch
Don’t Do Twice.
None of the attack craft had any joy. Whether shooting in atmosphere or from space, no one could land a significant shot on a Roman military installation.
No one was accustomed to missing.
Cain: “Something is uffing my targeting system here!”
Darb: “You are not alone.”
Cain: “That gives me no comfort!”
Alpha Flight was operating near Roma Nova, the daylight side of the world, and they were all overheating. Ranza Espinoza bellowed: “Alpha Flight! Come on yous! On the roof! Pattern Zulu Tango. Now!”
The Swifts of Alpha Flight rocketed out of the atmosphere on an evasion path to avoid intercepts during ascent.
In the cooling darkness, Kerry Blue sent: “We aren’t going home yet, are we? I don’t want to go back with gots.”
Dak: “Me neither.”
Twitch: “Yo.”
Cain: “You can leave me here. I am not going back to Merrimack empty-handed.” Ranza:” ‘Kay. Let’s go get the chicken. Let’s go get the chicken.” And she dove into atmo. Dak rolled over and dove after her. Then Carly, Twitch, Darby, and Kerry Blue. “Chicken?” Cain asked, falling in behind everyone else.
“A chicken is a yellow bird,” said Carly.
Technically speaking most chickens were white. But even Darb could figure out that Ranza meant yellow in the chickenly sense of the word—cowardly.
The Alphas were over Roma Nova. Ranza had her Flight on the deck on a direct line with the Monument to the Conciliation.
A golden eagle was a yellow bird.
The monument had been redone so that the bald eagle cowered on its back with the golden eagle positioned high over it, diving at it, claws outstretched.
“We’re not allowed to hit the palace!” Kerry cried as they neared the Capitoline. “We’re not hitting the palace,” said Ranza. “We’re hitting the chicken.”
“We’re not allowed to hit the Capitoline!” said Kerry. “The monument is not on the Capitoline.” Darb, that time. “It’s at the foot of the Capitoline.”
“See? Some of the skat Darb knows is useful. Chicken sighted off the starboard bow!” Ranza veered up the Via Triumphalis.The others followed in a long chain just above the ground traffic.
Citizenry dodged out of the buildings lining the Via to look at the roaring spacecraft, then skittered back inside.
“I can’t get a bead,” Carly reported on approach, worried. “Ranza, I can’t get a bead. The monument’s got distortion around it.”
“Okay let’s do this the old-fashioned way. Line it up by eyeball. We’re gonna make a mess. Follow me. Nobody hit the palace or we’re all chucked.”
“I’m showing hostiles headed in,” Darb reported. “Lots. Thirty seconds out.”
“Then get this done in twenty-nine seconds!”
“We’re gonna get atomized.”
Ranza held to her kill course. Closed fast on the monument, lobbed a shot on the golden eagle and veered up. A miss. Next in was Dak.”Gotcha, gotcha,gotcha—oh!” Looked back, climbing. “Winged it!”
He had taken off the very tip of the golden eagle’s portside wing. Darb made a big hole next to the monument’s base. Carly, Twitch, and Kerry scored clean misses. Twenty-five seconds down. No time left. “Bad guys are hording in. Whole bunches. Don’t seem happy,” said Darb. Only thing protecting them from long-distance fire was the close proximity of the Imperial Palace and the grand buildings in this neighborhood. The Roman ships charging in now were bound to be harpies. They would snatch the Swifts out of the sky and haul them off elsewhere to crush them.
“Take your shot, Cain!”
Cain came riding in just topside of a Roman hoverbus.
“Cain, it’s up to you now. Bring it home!”
“Cain! Cain! Cain!”
On the deck. On level. Cain’s clearsceen filled with golden feathers.
“Hoorah!”
Took his shot and veered straight up. “Mama, get me outta here!” Cain yelled, a whole fleet of pissed off and ugly coming after him. Covering fire was coming from above as Alpha Flight climbed away from Roma Nova, chased by an angry mob.
“Alpha Flight. Alpha Flight. This is Merrimack. You are clear to approach portside flight deck, hot as you need to.”
The Alphas cleared atmo and came in at a near crash atop Merrimack’s port wing. Mack’s force field clapped down over the Swifts.
Merrimack’s force field lit up and sparkled under a rain of fire.
Clamps rose up from the flight deck, clamped the Swifts down. The elevators carried the fighters down inside the ship to the hangar deck.
At the green light, the Alphas popped canopies.
The whole hangar deck was filled and chanting, “Cain! Cain! Cain! Cain!” Anyone who could be here was here. Merrimack must have jumped to FTL to have this many people free to crowd the hangar. Kerry climbed out of her Swift, jumped down to the deck and joined in the chant. “Cain! Cain! Cain!”
The man of the hour climbed out of his cockpit to stand atop his Swift. Cain Salvador gave a sheepish shrug of his big shoulders, and an “aw shucks” kind of nod. He gave his admirers a thumb’s up.
And suddenly the deck went silent.
You knew who was here without looking.
Colonel Steele. Stalking through the crowd.
Flight Leader Ranza Espinoza stepped forward, talking before the colonel could reach the front, “Sir, this was my idea, my responsibih—”
“Shut up.”
Ranza shut.
Steele stalked up the line of Alphas.
“I thought that kind of crap died with Cowboy Carver.”
Ranza started, “Sir, I—”
“Shut up.”
“Hm,” Ranza made a sound, uncertain whether she should verbally acknowledge that order or just obey it.
“That stunt was extremely dangerous. Not only was the target unauthorized but it was within range of civilians and the palace which are absolutely off-limits. Your actions were not on any list of contingency plans. It was freelance bullskat.”
Steele paced, his head red, fit to steam out his ears.
“Here is where I tell you how deep a hole you’ve dug for us. Unfortunately, I can’t reprimand any of you.” Pacing. Teeth grinding. The Alphas’ gazes remained fixed stiffly forward but all of them just wanted to exchange glances and say, “Huh?”
Steele was mad as hell. And not just at them. Someone wearing a lot of brass had got hold of that bullmastiff’s leash and yanked.
Words came out of TR Steele like he was performing his own appendectomy: “They are dancing in the streets back home. I have orders from our C in C to buy each of you a beer.”
And to the cheer about to erupt, his forefinger jerked up in the air to silence it, and he warned all on deck, “You can sit on that till I leave.”
He spun on Ranza. “Espinoza, this doesn’t ever happen again.”
“Aye, sir. And I agree. I should never—”
“I don’t give a skat if you agree, soldier. You just do.”
“Aye, sir.”
Steele stalked back through the ranks. A navvy, not in Steele’s chain of command, spoke over his clanging march toward the doors, “The beer order is coming from President Johnson?”
Steele looked at the navvy and snarled. He had just said that.“I wouldn’t.” He nearly collided with Chef Zack come marching into the hangar deck with a six-pack in either hand. Zack had appointed himself to the task of hand delivering the President’s order.
Someone else brought in the recordings to show the Alphas what had caused the Presidential hallelujah.
Cain hadn’t just knocked the golden eagle off its perch. He had knocked the monument base over sideways so that the bald eagle, which used to be cowering on its back, now looked for all the world like it was rolling over to get up.
That’s what they were roaring about Stateside. “Wow,” Cain looked at his work. No wonder the beer got here before his Swift e
ven dried off. “That’s my hole,” said Cole Darby. He pointed at the hole that allowed the monument to cant over. “That’s my hole.”
“Nice hole,” said Cain.
“A real sharpshooter would have picked off the chicken without breaking the bald eagle’s left toe,” said Cole Darby.
Cain swaggered over, hooked his arm round Darb’s neck, snugged him in close for a side-by-side hug, nearly strangling him in the crook of his elbow. “And here’s my man, Darb. I love him like a brother.”
Darb’s voice came out strained, muffled by a face full of muscular arm. “I’d feel much better about this if someone other than a guy named Cain were talkin’.”
———
The handle to the hatch of Steele’s private compartment clicked, turned.
Steele watched it, scowling. Could not quite believe what he was seeing. Someone was letting himself into Steele’s quarters without knock or permission.
The hatch opened to Kerry Blue, holding beer for two. Steele looked away. “Flight Sergeant, you do not want to be here.” She let herself in. The hatch shut behind her. “That was crappy what they did.”
They? He was plenty pissed with her too. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t been flying with Alpha Flight. Kerry Blue had been as much a part of it as Cain Salvador.
“I am not happy with any of you.” Steele rested his chin on his fist, not looking at her. “Huh? Oh, I wasn’t talking about the Alphas. We did what we did and I really expected to be in the lower sail right now guarding a box of donuts for it. They shouldn’t be giving you different orders from two hundred light-years away about your Marine Flight.”
They. He lifted his head. She was talking about President Johnson and the DC brass holes. Kerry finished, “I thought the chain of command went both ways.”
“So did I,” Steele said into his fist. Still pissed, but amazed that she understood why he was pissed. She offered, “I can go to the lower sail if it’d make you feel better.”
She had already made him feel better. She got it. She got it. He just wanted someone to recognize that he had been undercut from on high. And of all people, it was Kerry Blue who got it.
If he felt any better Kerry Blue would be on her back on the deck right here, right now.
“Give me those beers and get out of here,” he said.
“You can handle these by yourself?” Kerry put her hps to the mouth of one bottle before surrendering it. “Sure you don’t need reinforcements?”
“Out!”
10
THE MEDIA WERE CALLING IT the Doolittle Raid, after an air strike nearly a half millennium ago. That operation had not taken out a single military target either.
The strike on Palatine had rattled a lot of windows and cracked a few foundations, made the Romans dive like prairie dogs, and rolled over the chicken. That was about the sum of it.
But U.S. morale soared, and that had probably been the real mission objective anyway, because Merrimack was ordered home. The crew were not told if other ships were being left behind at Palatine, but everyone on board wondered why they couldn’t stay in the enemy system to do some real damage.
Titus Vitruvius lay in his sleep chamber in the city of Antipolis on the planet Thaleia, not sleeping.
His tiny chamber in the ziggurat had once been clothed in the illusion of a tree fort. That was too babyish for him now. Now his chamber was rigged to appear like a Legion commander’s quarters aboard a ship of war.
While he was in his room he was not in a self-contained city on an automated factory world. He was on board the Legion carrier Horatius. In his world, he had taken over command of Horatius upon the death of Herius Asinius.
On a shelf of gods he prayed to, he had Mars and Bellus and Minerva and Virtus and Honorus. No one really quite believed in gods but it never hurt to ask them for favors.
Also on the shelf was an image of Herius Asinius. Rome did not officially deify people anymore, but Titus did.
Titus belonged to gens Vitruvius, but the standards and the grey and scarlet legion colors in his room were gens Asinius.
Because Thaleia was the home of PanGalactic Industries, the patron god of the planet Thaleia was Vulcan, the craftsman. Outside of the self-contained city’s pleasant illusions, the world was bleak, harsh. But it had an atmosphere, free-flowing water, sun, wind, and minerals. Thaleia’s settlements existed to serve its factories.
Titus Vitruvius wanted nothing more than to get off of Thaleia. Vulcan had no place on Titus’ shelf. Titus preferred Mars to Vulcan, Achilles to Odysseus. Brawn and courage to industry and cunning.
Thaleia’s factories were largely automated and self run, so the population of Thaleia was small as planetary populations were reckoned. The factories churned out killer bots. PanGalactic Industries’ killer bots had been redesigned so they could not all be commanded to self-destruct by a single signal as the first generation of killer bots had been. There used to be millions of them, and soon would be again.
Thaleian factories manufactured the missiles and the drones that were terrorizing America, and they assembled the carrier craft which transported the missiles and drones to within striking distance of Earth.
Thaleia’s factories had also rebuilt the planet’s orbiting defenses. At a distance of seventy-one light-years, Thaleia was the closest Roman planet to Earth and to the hated United States of America.
The heavy defenses kept the enemy away from Thaleia. Titus had expected the Americans to make their strike here instead of Palatine. But Thaleia sat out that action, and Titus was disappointed.
If he must be on a planet instead of on a warship, Titus wished he could be on Palatine, shooting Americans out of the Roman sky.
His mother wouldn’t let him go anywhere.
He was at the age where your mother is a boat anchor. And he was unfortunate enough actually to have a mother. His friends had been born from incubators. Lucky them. Oh, they knew where their maternal DNA came from, but Jupiter! You get pushed out between a woman’s thighs, she thinks she owns you and does not let go. Ever. His mother just did not understand. Titus had fought against the Hive. He had helped Herius Asinius defend the Roman fortress! He was a combat veteran! He was twelve years old!
Upon his final parting, Herius Asinius had given Titus an order to protect his mother. Titus knew that legionaries often got orders they didn’t like and they were expected to obey. But things had changed since then. If Herius Asinius were alive, he would give Titus new orders. Titus just knew it.
Titus still kept his ant farm and his jar of zakan moths with him. They used to give warnings of any Hive presence. The moths only ever did anything if Hive monsters were very, very close.
The Hive in Near Space was dead. It was completely gone from Thaleia.
The last Hive stragglers were thousands of light-years away in the next arm of the galaxy, across the Abyss in the Deep End. Titus kept his telltales because they had been a gift from Herius Asinius, whom he adored. And they had saved his life once.
Midnight. Titus was awake, and not sure why. His eyes were open, watching the ants. They crawled out of their tunnels as if someone had kicked their container. The zakan moths began to chirp.
“Mater! Mater!” Titus Vitruvius ran into his mother’s chamber. “Hive! Hive sign!”
Verina Vitruvia stirred sleepily. Her compartment smelled like flowers. She smelled like flowers. She moved her long hair from her face. She groaned at the chronometer. Mumbled, “It must be something else.” Her head fell back into her pillow.
“No. They are here.” He tried to shake the bed, but it wouldn’t shake.
Verina’s voice came from the pillow. “Go back to bed, dearest.”
Titus stomped into the corridor and pulled the city alarm. Flashing lights flared to life, and the clangor rose up and up the spiral corridors of the ziggurat.
Verina was up as if catapulted. She ran into the corridor and shut the alarm back off. She hissed at her son to keep herself from shrieking, “What ar
e you doing!”
Screams rose from somewhere. Male voices.
“You’ve started a panic,” Verina scolded, trying to usher Titus back inside their chambers. “We will be fined for this.”
“Romans do not panic,” said Titus.
“What?”
The screams. He meant that men were not screaming just because the alarm sounded.
The screams sounded like men on fire, and they were coming from way down in the lowest level of the ziggurat. Then the alarm reactivated. The lights were flashing, the clangor blaring. Someone else had pulled it this time.
Verina turned Titus around, started to herd him down the ramp to the exit. Titus planted his heels and seized her night cloak to make her stop.
“Don’t go this way. The gorgons are under the city. That’s where they came from the first time. This way.” He took his mother by the hand and tugged for her to come up the ramp.
He bellowed—as deep as a boy’s soprano voice could bellow—to everyone they met stampeding down the spiral corridor to turn around and go to the roofs. He shouted for someone to contact the home guard to order an airlift to take them off of the rooftops.
A voice responded from somewhere in adult baritone, a military acknowledgment, “It shall be done.” And Titus at last understood why Herius Asinius, the god, had ordered him to stay in Antipolis.
———
Romulus returned to the Imperial palace on Palatine, abandoning the safety of his mobile palace Fortress Aeyrie to be with his people. He publicly regretted that he had not been here during the raid. The U.S. ships had already withdrawn from Palatine by the time Romulus took up residence again.
Upon his return, Romulus found rumors of Hive appearances in Near Space circulating on Palatine. Romulus could not believe how quickly the word of the Hive spread from his own trusted people on Fortress Aeyrie to Palatine—even after he swore them to silence. Caesar was going to crucify someone for this.
But the rumors going round Palatine were not of gorgons on 82 Eridani III.
These rumors were of gorgons on Thaleia.
“Kill the rumors and find out what is really happening on Thaleia,” Caesar ordered. “It’s all U.S. propaganda.”