Strength and Honor

by R. M. Meluch

  Pontius Placidus could see that familial loyalty was blinding young Romulus to the obvious guilt of his sister. A difficult thing to explain to a Caesar. “The recognition molecules—”

  Romulus cut him off. “//Claudia has a memory of killing our father, then Augustus’ nanites created that too. He just had his nanites destroy the evidence of that part of the scheme before he let you find the ‘recognition molecules.’ He was a patterner! He could create and hide evidence at will! Claudia did not kill our father. I know she did not.”

  The medicus had not considered the possibility of the patterner planting a false memory first, then sending his recognition molecules out to find it. “I apologize, Caesar. I fell for it. You are correct. It would not be beyond the ability of a patterner.”

  “Where would Augustus get the raw data to find the pattern to do that? He had American help, didn’t he?” Romulus guessed the answer he wanted to hear.

  The medicus was reluctant to follow that leap. “Nanotechology has been around for hundreds of years. We have it. The Americans have it. Brain alterations? I’m afraid those are Roman advances, Caesar. Augustus had Secundus’ Striker. Strikers carry extensive data banks already installed. You are correct, patterners don’t normally construct things. But this particular patterner, Secundus, worked under Constantine Siculus. That means both Secundus and Augustus had Constantine’s database.”

  “PanGalactic Industries,” Romulus gave a horrified murmur.

  Constantine Siculus was the founder of PanGalactic Industries. The father of modern manufacturing. Tell the PanGalactic program what you want with great specificity, and PanGalactic will figure out how to get it made. Augustus must have asked for very specific nanites.

  “Augustus knew I wanted his head!” said Romulus, agitated. “Those nanites were meant for me!”

  “I believe you may have it, Caesar.”

  “How do those nanites travel? Are they loose in my palace?”

  “They are only mobile within a human body. But they may pass by contact like dust. If you are the nanites’ true target, then you are in danger, Caesar. The nanites could be on your gloves if you touched the black box even with your gloves on.”

  “I didn’t touch the black box at all.”

  “Claudia. If you touched your sister after she touched the black box, you are certainly already exposed.”

  “I haven’t.” A chill passed through Caesar’s body. He had started to touch her many times, but always stopped himself. “Myself,” said the medicus. “I have touched the black box extensively.”

  Pontius Placidus could tell by the look on Romulus’ face that Caesar would love to throw the medicus into the nearest annihilator. Caesar instead commanded soberly, “Kindly confine yourself to a quarantined area.”

  “Yes, Caesar. Anything Claudia touched may carry these nanites. With your permission I shall organize a cleansing of this site, and the reception area where she first contacted the black box. We can sanitize your shoe soles on the way out.”

  “Good man,” said Romulus. “I have noted your initiative, your thoroughness, and your discretion in this affair.”

  Pontius Placidus nodded, accepting the recognition. He could expect tangible gratitude for his service. Caesar Romulus could be wildly generous.

  “Make her comfortable,” Caesar commanded. “And get those things out of her brain!”

  “I will do my best, Caesar.”

  Romulus breathed a big angry inhalation, about to shout at Placidus that best wasn’t good enough. Forced himself down from boiling wrath. Tried to find words to impress the urgency on this intelligent ape. “Pontius Placidus, she is your sister. She is your daughter. She is your wife. She is your mother. You understand how important she is?”

  “Everything possible will be done,” said Pontius Placidus. Romulus left the clinic, quaking to the foundation of his being.

  Romulus contacted his chief of palace security with orders that Senators Umbrius, Trogus, Quirinius and Opsius be expelled from the palace and denied future access, by force if necessary. Then he added Numa Pompeii to that list. He thought about ordering Gaius Americanus killed or quarantined, but Gaius was confined under the Coliseum, so there was no point dredging him up.

  Romulus considered having an arsonist torch the palace annex. Damned Augustus again.

  He had wondered about the shot through his throne in his bunker. He wondered what made Augustus so sure Romulus would be on the throne when he took the shot.

  Obviously Romulus had not been on the throne, and obviously Augustus hadn’t been sure.

  But Augustus knew—for sure—that Romulus wanted his head.

  Augustus had left this trap for him.

  Claudia sprang it instead.

  was meant for me. It was meant for me. I survived you again, you mechanical zombie abortion.am Caesar and you are dead!

  Romulus was filled with a sudden sense of elation, an amazing freedom. The air felt clean and pure in his lungs. He was alive, and he felt like celebrating.

  Merrimack ghosted a French merchant ship that was not where it was supposed to be, on a stealthy approach to Palatine.

  Captain Farragut did not like to shoot at civilians, even French ones. But he did not intend to let the ship pass. The decision was between gentle ramming and terminal blasting.

  “Let’s show ourselves,” said Farragut.

  “He could run, sir,” Tactical advised.

  “Then we’ll catch him again when he drops to sublight at the planet. We know where he’s going.” Merrimack moved in close enough to read the name on the hull, Pharaon.

  Merrimack swept in front of the freighter. Hailed on the international channel and commanded the ship to turn back. The freighter Pharaon did not respond. Maintained course.

  Merrimack’s Intelligence officer, Colonel Z, suspected the freighter was not the French craft it appeared to be.

  Thaleia was the more likely point of origin.

  Farragut looked to his exec. “Anything, Gypsy?”

  Gypsy Dent had sent a res inquiry to Earth upon first sighting the freighter, to verify the ship’s authenticity. “Waiting for something back from France,” said Gypsy. “Bumper cars,” said Farragut.

  Helm made two gleeful fists. “Aye, aye, Captain!”

  “Go easy,” said Farragut. “Don’t hurt him yet. See if he has anything to say now.”

  Merrimack moved in like a killer whale trying to balance a baby seal on its nose, while the com tech held his headset away from his ear.

  “What do you have?” Farragut asked.

  “He’s squawking,” said the com tech.

  “What’s he saying.”

  “It’s in French.”

  “Aren’t you wearing a module?”

  “It’s real bad French. I got the words ‘outrage’ and ‘my government.’ “

  “We can wait and see what his government has to say.”

  “Can I keep bumping him, sir?”

  “Oh, sure. Carry on.”

  Reports from Palatine indicated that Mack’s Fleet Marines had some success on the ground. But Farragut was beginning to suspect they had paid dearly for it. Several teams had dropped out of contact. He could only pray they were on the run.

  Intelligence had been sifting through ground chatter within the Roman populace. The scandal of the hour was that Caesar’s sister Claudia was calling for her father and sprouting blisters on her hands.

  “What was Lady Macbeth’s first name?” Gypsy mused.

  “I don’t know,” said Farragut. “Was it Claudia?”

  Romulus had accused the patterner of poisoning his sister. John Farragut never took Romulus’ accusations at face value. But there were rumors about Augustus’ head on a platter and programmed nanites that made it sound like Augustus really had committed this attack.

  But it also sounded like the nanites had been meant for Romulus. Augustus meant for his head to go to Caesar on that platter. But he miscalculated who would touch it. Augus
tus got Claudia instead of Romulus. Farragut guessed Augustus would want to get Claudia too, but Romulus had slipped the snare entirely.

  And it seemed a pretty precarious snare with a number of tenuous links, all of which must be connected in order for the nanites to find their target.

  Augustus was a patterner. He could calculate patterns too intricate for the human mind to hold. Still, “Wouldn’t you think he would have some more direct, more certain way to get Romulus?”

  “Maybe he was long past his life expectancy and he was just missing at the end,” Gypsy suggested. Hamster: “Maybe he’s counting on you to finish it, John.”

  “Oh, if that’s the case he really did lose it at the end. Not that I wouldn’t love to set Rom’s soul free. I’m not a political assassin. Unless I meet Romulus in battle, that just can’t happen.”

  And anything that Farragut could do to Romulus just wouldn’t be bad enough. Clearly Augustus missed his target.

  “Captain, we have trade.”

  France had failed to acknowledge the freighter out there. “Pharaon is not French?”

  “Not French.”

  “And the not-French ship has friends,” Tactical reported. “Roman gunboats, three of them, not disguised as anything.”

  “Not-French ship is running,” said the helm.

  Captain Farragut stood up at his station, a hunter’s gleam in his blue eyes. “Tally ho.”

  The dialogs. VII.

  A: Don Cordillera, does your Church still have those thrones and dominations, and those sixteen-headed, eight-winged seraphim no one can look at? So how do you know what they look like anyway?

  JMdeC: That is the apple talking. It was the choice of the apple that caused Man to leave the Garden. It is the willingness to let go the apple that takes us home. You cannot find God by logic.

  A: And there is the supreme cheat, damn you. Knowledge got Adam kicked out of the Garden and you can’t find God through knowledge. There’s a double bind. How bloody convenient. When your game doesn’t make sense, make the first rule of the game that you need to turn off your God-given brain as a prerequisite of playing. Now that explains John Farragut, but you, Don Cordillera, you have eaten way too many apples to sucker yourself into discarding all you know. I’ll bet your soul there are no seraphim.

  JMdeC: My soul? Not yours?

  A: I don’t have one. I was created by man.

  26

  ALL AROUND PUGET SOUND heavy lifters hauled pieces of bridges and streets and buildings out of the water. Tremors continued to hamper attempts to make order out of the chaos in the Pacific Northwest.

  But the cities had drinking water systems working now.

  The wolfhunter class ship Wolfhound lifted off the uneasy ground and returned to space, taking up a vigilant orbit around Earth.

  She had gone from milk cow to traffic cop. Wolfhound routinely stopped incoming vessels to demand identification.

  “Wear off, Wolfhound. We are French nationals,” the latest object of interest declared, and kept going forward toward Earth’s atmosphere.

  “Cease forward progress, Bertrand,” Captain Carmel of the Wolfhound commanded the French ship. “Please wait while we confirm your identify.”

  “I have already told you who were are.”

  “You will wait until France agrees with you, Bertrand.”

  The French merchant ship did not slow or alter course.

  “Hook the Frenchman,” Calli ordered.

  “Hooking the Frenchman, aye.”

  Wolfhound threw out an energy net to snag Bertrand and stop the ship from getting any closer to Earth.

  “This is piracy!” Bertrand declared. “The United States cannot board a vessel of any League signatory!”

  “We are not boarding you, Bertrand. You and I are waiting together for confirmation from France. Then you may be about your business.”

  “I will be about my business now”

  “You are—allegedly—our ally, and Rome declared war on us. You have given us no assistance. Is it too much to ask you to wait while we make sure you are who you say you are? What happened to all for one and one for all? Wasn’t that a French saying?”

  “You derive great protection from our neutrality! See how we lifted siege from your Pacific coast? As long as Rome is not at war with the whole world, you are sheltered by our peace. Would you have us open the whole world to nuclear fire? Do you not have laws against illegal search and seizure?”

  “We are not searching you, Bertrand. And we’ll let you go, if you prove to be French.”

  “I need not prove anything to you! This is not our war. You will let us go now.”

  “How is it not your war?”

  “Rome does not fight us, and we do not wish to fight Rome.”

  “You don’t? Didn’t you just say you were a member of the League of Earth Nations?”

  “You know that we are. And the League of Earth Nations shall hear about this!”

  “As we are part of the League, that means the League is hearing about this right now. And this member of the League has a war on its hands, like it or not. War was declared on us, and the rest of Earth goes about business as usual.”

  “You are talking in circles. You have not been listening to a word I say—”

  And he was right. Calli Carmel hadn’t been listening. She was just letting the Frenchman rail while she waited for the report from France. As long as they were talking, the Frenchman wasn’t doing anything dangerous.

  The hand signals from her com tech on the other channel caught her attention. Thumbs up. The Frenchman’s identity was confirmed.

  “Release hook,” Calli ordered.

  “Hook released, aye,” Engineering responded.

  Calli took her com off mute to interrupt the Frenchman, who had been scolding her without taking a breath. “Okay, you’re free. I’m glad we had this time to talk. Have a good day.”

  She needed some polite words to show on the transcript, which was certain to be attached to the Frenchman’s complaint to the LEN.

  The com tech reported: “Captain! The Frenchman is calling back.”

  “Don’t take the call,” said Calli.

  The red-haired kid at the com, Red Dorset, happily clicked the Frenchman off. “That one was nasty.”

  “They’re all nasty,” said the cryptotech. Tactical reported, “Italian transport coming in. Lord, Italy has a lot of traffic.”

  “At least the Italians wait,” said Calli, moving around the close-packed deck to the tactical station to see the plot’s attitude. “They moan, but they wait.” She reached over Tactical’s shoulder. Her long finger with its baby-thin nail pointed at the Italian plot. “Check this one out.”

  “Aye, aye, Captain.”

  The Italian vessel stopped upon request.

  Red Dorset at the com station issued a verification inquiry to his Italian contact, Guglielmo Baptista in Old Rome. Red and Guglielmo were on a first name basis by now.

  International traffic to and from Earth had continued as if everything were normal. If anything, traffic had increased. To the rest of the world, the conflict was “the American war.” Palatine was America’s enemy, not theirs.

  Red Dorset drummed his fingers at his station, waiting to hear back from his Italian buddy. He thought out loud, “I wonder if the Frenchman didn’t have a point back there. These other countries do sort of protect us by continuing trade.”

  “He had a point,” said Captain Carmel. “One. But those ships can still damn well stop for an ID check.”

  Red was young and talked a lot. Calli could picture a redheaded toddler driving his mother up the wall with a constant “Why? Why? Why?”

  “It’s surprising—” said Red. “Well, I think it’s surprising— Rome hasn’t been hitting our infrastructure while we’re sabotaging theirs. Not complaining, mind you. But why isn’t Rome hitting our infrastructure?”

  “Because Romulus thinks America’s infrastructure is his infrastructure. That’s the
Province of America down there, and we’re just infesting it.”

  Rome had hammered just one small part of the United States. The upper left-hand corner. Romulus would not want to ravage the entire countryside. He did not want to take possession of a disaster area. Romulus wanted a fat productive province.

  Red Dorset sat suddenly straight, hand to his earpiece. He spoke into the com, “Grazzi, Guglielmo!” And turned to the captain. “The Italian checks out.”

  Calli took up her com to officially thank the Italian pilot for his patience and gave him leave to continue to Earth.

  And Red was asking questions again. “How can Romulus think he can take over America? He can’t get air space superiority. Is he just going to walk in and plant his Eagles on the Mall in DC and everyone will just hail Caesar?”

  Calli nodded. It’ll be something like that.

  Captain Farragut had lost contact with two of his Marine units who were down on Palatine. No one else was sharing information on how many other Marine units from other battalions were down there or how many of those were now missing. And Farragut did not have good data on how the softening up of the battlefield was progressing.

  Ship noises had a hollow ring without his seven hundred and twenty Marines. A lot of heavy feet were not thumping round the raised jogging track at all hours. Spirited games were not played against the navvies in the squash courts or in the basketball court that was actually the maintenance hangar.

  The crew were slightly older, more measured men and women, with advanced engineering degrees and less brawn than the Marine companies. The crew played less. Shouted less.

  Merrimack was quiet, circling Roman space like a shark, waiting for swimmers to dare cross her waters.

  Captain Farragut spent a lot of time in the squash court.

  Playing squash with his XO was to remember just how very long her arms were. And hard. In Greek myth the woman Daphne turned into a tree. Farragut was convinced that Egypt Dent was that very tree turned back into a woman. She was moderately fast. Very fast for a tree. More strong than agile. She didn’t change direction quickly but she could smash that little green ball as hard as any Marine. Gave a loud “Uh!” with every smash, like a tennis player’s grunt or a martial artist’s kiap.