by R. M. Meluch
The ceremonial guards unlocked his chains and dropped a short sword at his feet as they left him in the ring.
This time there were two men already out there. One wore a metal half-collar of sorts and a thickly padded sleeve on one arm. He wielded a heavy net, which he flourished like a matador’s cape. The other gladiator, who wore a helmet, had a short blade sheathed in his belt, and carried a trident. Steele was calling him the picador.
Steele supposed he himself was the bull.
But he wasn’t.
The two gladiators saw Steele enter, then turned their attention toward another gate with an attitude of anticipating something big and deadly to come charging out.
Steele wasn’t waiting.
Steele darted across the arena, came up behind the picador, the crowd shrieking a warning. Steele got there just as the man was turning. Steele slashed down on his shoulder right where the helmet left off. The picador fell to the ground, spouting blood, that ghastly shade of arterial red, in a strong pulsing stream.
Steele seized up the trident, raised it high and threw it downward through the other gladiator’s swirling net, pinning the net’s edge down through the sand to the wooden floor. Steele crouched to launch himself into a charge at the gladiator, when the gates burst open. The giant lizard bolted out with a metallic screaming growl.
Not the lethargic thing Steele had seen float past his cell on a lift. This beast was gnashing and snapping in a crazed fury, its giant tail lashing. The spectators all drew back in their seats.
The lizard bugled and roared as if in pain, and came straight at Steele.
This is not right.
Steele dodged behind the gladiator who was trying to get his net free from the trident. The lizard ignored the gladiator and tracked Steele’s motions. It wanted him and only him.
Kerry had told him that humans did not smell tasty to the giant lizards. Humans were not edible. And the lizard did not appear to be hungry. The only thing Steele could think of was the object the medic had punched into his earlobe. Steele bet his life it was a transmitter.
Galloping dinosaur feet shook the floor. Spectators laughed, feeling the jarring in their seats. The lizard tossed its head, ramming its pyramidal nose horn into the wall. A great scream rose from the crowd, descending in nervous laughter.
Steele was running, dodging, shifting directions, letting the momentum of the lizard’s great mass carry it past its mark, tumbling nose over tail, and getting up roaring. Like a rhino chasing a chipmunk. One skid on the sand and Steele would be done.
He couldn’t find a still moment to lift his sword close to his neck without cutting his own throat, so he dug at the capsule in his earlobe with his fingernails.
And turn!
The lethal tail swept past.
The capsule came out, a small rod, no bigger than a ten-gauge wire, between his blood-sticky fingers.
The surviving gladiator had his net free by now. He swirled it over his head, either to net Steele or to drive him toward the beast.
Steele pitched his capsule at the gladiator.
The lizard instantly lost interest in Steele, and followed the capsule’s arc through the air. The giant head bowed down and plowed through the gladiator’s net. Metal fabric tore before the pyramidal horn. Lizard jaws closed on the gladiator’s middle, and the beast gave him a backbreaking dog shake before hurling him aside. The beast then pounced on a spot in the arena, scrabbled in the sand with its three-toed feet, and stomped.
The stomp must have crushed the tiny transmitter, because the lizard lay down in a sudden flump, relieved and panting. A shred of metal netting still hung off its face. Its giant sides moved with its pain-free breaths.
The lizard’s yellow eye focused on Steele, then shut.
Didn’t care about him.
And Steele didn’t care about it anymore.
The chant started: A-da-mas! A-da-mas!
Steele collected the gladiator’s short blade from its sheath at the corpse’s waist, and the trident from the sand. He tested the weight of the trident in his hand.
He moved close to Caesar’s box. Looked up.
And damn everything to hell, Romulus wasn’t there.
32
I’VE LOST CONTACT with the Marines,” Mister Hicks announced from the com station.
“We’ve lost correspondence,” Merrimack’s displacement tech reported to the command deck. “Roman jammers are in effect down below.”
“Clam us up,” Gypsy told the displacement tech. “Restore our jammers.”
“Jammers activating, aye.”
Gypsy ordered the com tech, “Stop hailing. Go silent.”
“Gone silent, aye,” said Mister Hicks, somber. They had been so close. He had just talked to Flight Sergeant Cain Salvador. They had come within seconds of getting five of their own out of there.
Captain Farragut prowled station to station, helpless. Five Marines just within grasp, and suddenly gone. He could not give up.
“Did we get the coordinates of the displacement equipment?” Farragut asked. “We can take the Mack down and pick them up.”
“Forty-one degrees, twelve minutes, fifty-nine seconds north latitude, eighty-nine degrees, two minutes, fifteen seconds west longitude.” Marcander Vincent looked up from his tactical station to Captain Farragut. “They’re in Roma Nova, sir.”
“God bless America!” Farragut shouted, frustrated to hell. He had orders—strict orders—not to enter space over Roma Nova. “Get us out of here. Fire something at Numa’s ship on the way out.”
Marcander Vincent noted: “I have a ship rising out of planetary atmosphere. Italian signature. Has the appearance of an Earth civilian craft.”
“Check that one!” Farragut ordered, wanting badly to shoot something.
Upon leaving atmosphere, the Italian ship jumped to FTL. Merrimack followed and easily picked it up again on a predictable course toward Earth. The ship executed no evasive maneuvers. No Roman ships accompanied it in escort.
Merrimack took up a parallel course. Mister Hicks hailed the ship. “Italian vessel, this is the U.S.S. Merrimack. Identify yourself.”
The pilot begged, “Don’t shoot. We have children on board! They are children!”
“We’re not going to shoot,” Captain Farragut told him. “We’ll probably hook you if you don’t check out. And contrary to Roman propaganda we don’t torture children.”
“We will ‘check out.’ This is a school bus!” the pilot cried. He recited his school district’s identification and the ship’s identification numbers.
Mister Hicks sent the confirmation request to Italy via res pulse. He received back confirmation that the vessel really was a school bus from a suburb of Old Rome, carrying a group of young students. The Italian added a plea not to hurt the children.
Everything checked, yet something was odd. John Farragut picked up a subliminal sense of something not quite fitting. But it was nothing he could bring into focus.
Most of the viewports were masked, but Marcander Vincent angled a scanner beam through one to reveal children. They were in the ten-year-old range, acting like kids with some adults in the back. The pilot was sweating like a smuggler, but then he had a space battleship menacing off his port quarter.
There was something wrong.
“He’s smuggling,” said Farragut.
“What do you want to do, sir?” Gypsy asked.
Farragut shook his head. Enough that there were children on board and it was an Italian vessel.
“Wear off. Notify Jupiter Control. I want this bus checked again next week when it’s coming in to Earth.”
A Roman guard, a human one, came down to the dungeon underneath the Coliseum with a contingent of automatons to the POWs’ cage. The man sent an automaton into the American cell.
The automaton knew which prisoner was Steele. “Here, try this on,” the automaton told him.
This was a gladiator’s helmet.
Ranza Espinoza moved to the bars and
shouted at the human, “This is a violation of conventions of war!”
“And I’m sure we’ll hear about it,” said the man outside the bars. He was standing carefully on the corridor’s center line, out of arm’s reach from either side.
“What pinhead was this made for?” Steele tossed the helmet back at the automaton. The automaton turned to face the Roman. “He rejected it.”
“I see that,” said the human and gave orders to another automaton in his ranks. “Find a bigger one.”
“A bigger helmet?” the automaton requested clarification.
“Yes, a bigger helmet,” the man said, irritably. “Go.” Then thought to add, “Find a bigger one and bring it back here!”
Steele recognized the man now. He was not a guard. He was the one Steele called the ringmaster of the games. The Romans called him a lanista.
In the arena the lanistifs tunic glittered. Here he was wearing blue jeans. He had a mane of flowing yellow hair, chiseled features, and manicured hands.
“You have become a popular villain, Adamas”said the lanista.
Steele said nothing. Stared like a bull.
When the automaton returned with another helmet, someone from the gladiator’s cage called, “You’re going against one of us!”
Steele looked around the lanista, across to the gladiator. “I never had a problem killing Romans.” The second automaton entered the cage, offered the helmet to Steele. “Here, try this on.”
Steele did. Felt like wearing a bucket with eyeholes. There was metal around his head, but he wouldn’t be able to see a blow to avoid it, so it didn’t strike him as a gain. Steele was an offensive fighter. He didn’t win hiding behind armor.
He took the helmet off. Tossed it at the automaton. “I’m not wearing that one either.”
“He rejected it,” the automaton told the lanista.
The lanista nodded wearily to the automaton. To Steele he said, “Nevertheless, it is yours to wear or not to wear. I am tired of you and I hope you die.”
“Same,” said Steele.
After the lanista collected his automatons and left the dungeon, the gladiator pointed across to Steele. “I hope it is you and I.”
This time Steele couldn’t say the same. The man was another big one, a black-haired, bronze titan. The others called him Xeno.
Xeno informed him with a grin, “To yield you lift a finger.”
“This one?” Steele asked.
“No.”
It occurred to Steele that he hadn’t seen this one in a while. Xeno had gone out to the ring one day and had not come back. Steele asked him, “Aren’t you dead?” The gladiator Xeno shrugged massive shoulders. “They like me.” One of society’s dregs called over from the death cage, “Adamas! Don’t use your sword for blocking.”
Two others added at once. “Especially not against an ax.”
“Yes. Not against the ax. Don’t use anything to block an ax.” Xeno’s head turned with a wolfish snap at the criminals. “You’re aiding the enemy, traitor!”
The criminals smiled. “Yes, we are!” said one.
Another of the condemned said, “What are you going to do to me?” And he cackled, as if he were fatally funny.
Steele doubted how sound the advice could be coming from a piece of crap. He asked the criminal, “Have you been out there?”
The condemned man grinned. “I’ve seen the vid casts from the colonies. They haven’t held games up there in a long time.” He pointed at the ceiling.
“They fix the fight?” Steele asked. Not really a question. His fight against the lizard had certainly been fixed.
So the answer surprised him. “You would think,” said the condemned man. “But in front of this crowd? If this crowd spots anything fake, you will both be tied to a bull’s horns. When I go out there, they will want to see groveling and pissing and my insides spilling out. From gladiators they want to see a fight.”
“I’m not a gladiator,” said Steele. All the expressions changed. The prisoner narrowed his eyes. “You think not, Adamas?”
Steele’s armor arrived in the morning. A leather cuirass with leather shoulder pieces. There was no metal on his such as he had seen on the Romans’ armor. Good. He didn’t need the weight. Gravity was slightly stronger here already.
He received one of those stout leather oblong shields his guards carried. He bashed it against the cage bars to see if it would really hold up against a pounding.
From across the corridor someone called, “Ah, you go out with the real gladiators, Adamas. Today you die.”
He left the helmet behind in the cell when the guards came to get him. Automatons kept the Marines against the back wall, while human beings in full armor shackled Steele. One carried a short sword for him. Another picked up his shield and the discarded helmet and brought that along too.
When the gates opened and the sunlight hit Steele’s white-blond hair, the noise swelled to a riot of cheers and catcalls and roars. The stands drummed with stamping feet.
Steele’s surrounding wall of guards expanded away, leaving his sword, his shield, and his helmet in the sand. Steele immediately seized up the sword and the shield, and moved from the spot, just so not to leave himself where the Romans planted him. He looked up for surprises, glanced around the arena for trapdoors threatening to open. Gates opened, one on either side. One gladiator strode out from each gate.
Steele knew them from the cage.
On the left was a big guy—as if they weren’t all foxtrotting huge—wielding an ax. Didn’t know his name. Steele was calling him the Ax now. From the right came a bulky black man armed like Steele except that he wore a helmet—a helmet not as bad as the metal shroud with eyeholes they had given Steele. This gladiator’s eyeholes were big and insectoid-looking because of the metal mesh which protected the cutouts.
The gladiators closed in with measured steps from either side. When they were far enough into the ring, Steele sprinted to the wall and made a flanking run back around the Ax.
First thing you learned in sparring two opponents was to get them both on one side.
Steele chose the side with the Ax because that was the more dangerous. If Steele didn’t take the Ax down first, he was never getting him down.
Don’t try to block an ax with a sword, the condemned men had said. Looking at the weapon, Steele believed it. Don’t use anything to block an ax, they had said.
The ax looked like it could cleave iron bars.
They don’t fix the fights, my ass, he thought.
But the guys may have been right about the crowd recognizing fight-fixing when they saw it. There was an awful lot of contempt in the crowd noise as the two gladiators stalked toward him, and the derision didn’t all feel directed toward him.
The Ax took the point position as the two closed in. This was going to be like boxing a bigger man with a longer reach. Steele was only six feet, so he had done that often. The only way to box a man with arms like an orangutan was to jam him up. Steele dropped his shield and edged forward with just his sword.
An enormous gasp sounded from all round, punctuated by titters and jeers. He had given up his shield.
The shield would slow him down.
The heavy ax was rising up for a killing stroke. Steele barreled in like a fastball. In before the blade came down. The long ax handle hit his shoulder as he ran into the holder. He bodily collided with the Ax full length, jarring his teeth. Felt the crunch of flesh and bone against his blade as his sword drove in low. Steele rolled off to the side, wrenching his sword out with him.
The ax fell limply from the gladiator’s grip. Steele jumped aside to get clear of the wounded man, who was tottering and trying to hold his guts inside the horrible wound.
Sounds of delicious revulsion oozed from the crowd. Groans, deeply felt, rose from their own intact guts. They loved it. Intoxicating, to be so close to death and to take their next breaths without pain, exhilarated to be alive.
Steele was busy locating the shiel
d he’d dropped and keeping an eye on the other gladiator.
He kept the tottering, mortally wounded Ax between himself and his fresh opponent. When the Ax fell in the sand with a ghastly spill, Steele bounded over him, landed low to snatch up the ax and jabbed it toward the other gladiator to back him away.
The gladiator danced out of the long weapon’s reach. He tapped the ax blade with his sword, testing, watching for his opening.
Steele stalked forward, jabbing, keeping his opponent at bay until he was standing over his shield.
The ax was too heavy to be of use to him beyond poking his opponent away. If he tried to wield it in earnest, he would die like the man behind him.
He chucked the ax forward. The startled gladiator made a huge leap backward from the enormous blade as Steele took up his shield and lunged forward. He roared on a furious high, “Come on! Come on!”
The crowd rose in a wave, roaring.
Two men with swords and shields clashed. The spectators liked this much better than two against one. All of them screamed at their chosen fighter.
The gladiator smashed his shield at Steele. Steele met it with his own shield. Mistake. If his shield was engaged—
The sword was coming in low. Steele deflected it at the last instant with his own blade, not quite in time. He felt its edge draw a line of fire across his thigh.
A second blow from the gladiator’s shield knocked Steele on his back. Steele kicked the man’s ankles. As the gladiator stumbled and caught his footing, Steele sprang to his feet.
The noise swelled. A bizarre current he could feed off of. The burn in his thigh was nothing. The noise pushed him into an adrenaline high, too hot to care about the pain.
The two circled round the ax. The gladiator kept glancing down at it. He had to move his whole head to do it because of the limited field of vision his helmet gave him.
To Steele seeing was life.
He would not be lured into moving his shield too far from center, because that was apparently what the gladiator wanted him to do.
At a wild overhead strike, Steele jumped back. At a sword swing coming in from the side, Steele dodged to the other side.