Steam Legion (22 page)

We may not be able to stand up to the enemy forces in the region, thanks to the orders from Rome that stripped us of the Twenty-Second Legion, but we can still make the rebels pay.

They would mount a militia army to counter the one they were dealing with, she had already decided. The core would be the two Centuries of active-duty Legion as well as every reserve Legionnaire that she could scrounge from the river delta. With those as the iron tip of her spear, Dyna felt that they could at least severely maul any armed incursion, even one of the Legion-sized militia force the Judea Province had sent into their region.

****

Master Heron read the latest dispatch from the signaling teams Dyna had sent out, tickled by the fact that the devices built at the Library were seeing real use for the first time ever. The Senate had never authorized the disposition of the incredibly expensive devices, except for a few that were permanently assigned to the Praetorian Guard in Rome.

I see that the military threat is somewhat worse than we had expected,
he noted, reading more out of the few words that had been sent back than most people would have been able to read in a full scroll of reporting.

Like his latest apprentice, Heron’s interest wasn’t in politics, but he was better connected than Dyna and had found it necessary to pay attention as things moved along in the Empire. The fact that the Twenty-Second Legion had been ordered out of the Egypt Province was enough to trip a great many of his warning bells, and it probably would have except that he had been feeling quite down at the time it happened.

My friend Nero is acting stranger and stranger lately,
Heron pondered, concerned with the increasingly erratic behavior from a man he had once known quite well indeed.

The current events were just the latest and greatest symptom of a pattern he’d first noticed over three years earlier. While Nero had never been a man with the inborn greatness some of Rome’s Emperors had in the past, he had never been so reckless and bizarrely prone to making such poor decisions. Over the years of their contact, Heron had come to consider Nero a good, albeit often frustrating and annoying, friend. His conservative approach to technology had driven Heron to near madness, all but literally pulling every hair from his own head when the Emperor actively forced the suppression of time- and energy-saving technologies that would reduce the need for unskilled labor.

Now, though, things had progressed far beyond suppressing technical development. The orders coming out of Rome were actively endangering her citizens, and Heron was concerned as much for the Empire itself as for his friend who had become Emperor.

For the moment, however, Heron found himself with other concerns. His young apprentice. Hell, if he were honest he’d call her in public what she really was—his protégé and heir. What she was doing now, however, was treading into dangerous political waters.

Only the Senate had the right to grant permission to levy a Legion, and while Dyna wasn’t precisely doing that, she was coming closer than most would be willing to tread given the political climate of the Empire at the moment. Heron knew that she didn’t see that, however; she only saw the incredible potential for loss of life and knowledge.

Well, that and I rather suspect that she has always wished to lead a campaign as her ancestors once did,
Heron supposed. He couldn’t blame her for that. He knew the draw of the past better than most, but her taste for battle and campaigning could cost her a great deal more than she realized.

Heron smiled sadly at the reports in front of him, seriously considering reining in the young woman for her own good. She was, for now, still trading on his name and influence. Were he younger, he’d have stopped her already, since she could be burning many bridges with his patrons, but he was an old man and he felt the end approaching.

More than that, he couldn’t really bring himself to withdraw his support from her endeavors. Heron wanted very much to see just what she could
do
with all the inventions he had built, recovered, and restored from the past works of men like Archimedes of Syracuse. The cost of fielding such equipment and the lack of real interest from the Senate and others had prevented him from seeing it until now, but Dyna had no care for the costs. She only wanted results.

The many forges and craft shops of Alexandria were all working day and night to produce the reinvented steam cannon, his own automated chariot design, and other projects that had never really been more than curiosities before. Now, with manpower suddenly being at a premium for some of the jobs most often easily filled, they found themselves in exactly the situation Heron had always dreamed of in the past.

No, he wasn’t going to be reining in Dyna on this one. He wanted desperately to see just what she could do almost as much as she clearly desired to do it.

Heron picked up a stylus and dipped it in his inkwell, quickly jotting out an order to the various master craftsmen working under his supervision.

Consequences be damned,
Heron decided.
I am an old man, but I won’t let this last chance pass me by. We have a short time, Dyna, child, before the Empire will be able to regain control. Let us see just what we can do with it.

He was still one of the most renowned minds in the Empire, and while his physical capacity had greatly reduced over the years, there was nothing wrong with his mental faculties. Heron looked over the remains of the eight Spartan warriors that had been put to such a
fascinating
use the night of the riots and invasion.

The mechanism he had used to make them do their little dance was far too impractical for real world use, he was well aware of that. However, Heron had recently been called on by several patrons to create some moving sculptures that just might be applicable. In fact, he had armatures and skeletons all completed for those projects, just waiting for the final design and cosmetic work.

But without the weights, there will be no force to their motions.
He frowned, puzzling through the problem as he took a sip of wine.

Heron’s eyes widened and a slow smile blossomed on his face.

Oh my, but there is another source of power that will do. Oh yes, oh yes. This will be
so
much fun indeed.

Chapter 16

After better than a week at Cabasa, things were finally beginning to turn in a direction Dyna liked and at a rate she was at least marginally satisfied with. Men were easy to find for a militia force, but the effectiveness of such a group would inevitably be extremely limited. They came with their weapons and armor, very little cohesive training if any, and were to be considered…at best, Light Infantry.

More gratifying were the former Legion soldiers who answered the call, most with at least their own gladius and leather armor. They weren’t equipped with the latest Lorica Laminata, of course, but even good laminated leather armor would be a blessing if they could find enough shields to go around.

She’d already ordered the armories of every township and city within several days’ march to be prepared for use by her militia. Alexandria would be preparing all they could spare to be sent out by supply column in the next week or so, but even so, it was clear that they would be coming short on key supplies, like the scutem shields.

Luckily, they had swords and pylum aplenty, and the latest messages from Alexandria indicated that she would be able to significantly expand her siege division. The psychological edge offered by the steam cannon had shown itself to be a potent weapon entirely without taking the actual projectiles of the weapon into consideration.

Further, Dyna was relatively confident in saying that they were still a long way from using the weapons to their greatest effectiveness. Cassius’s comment about using naptha pots had her wondering if there wasn’t a way to effectively manage as much, though for the moment she couldn’t see any. The force of the initial steam blast would extinguish most any flames she could apply, and honestly, there were few men who would willingly handle lit naptha pots under such unreliable conditions.

She would find other ways, better ways, to use the new weapons. Their power, combined with the ability to put multiple bolts and a heavy stone ball into the air at once, made the cannons a formidable weapon. Now that they had improved versions that travelled more effectively than Archimedes’s original version, they were a tactical option she intended to use to their utmost.

For all her thoughts and plans for future development and use of the devices, most of her time was dedicated to managing the minutia of the militia she was assembling. She was buying up food from the local area, paying in promise script against the provincial Governor, a fact that made her smile when she thought of the face the former Governor would likely have made had she done it while he was alive.

For now the problem would fall on the next appointed Governor from Rome, however, so it wasn’t her immediate concern.

Her ranks were swelling daily, men coming in to volunteer or in response to the activation order she had sent out. The growing numbers were an increasing logistical problem that could quickly become more deadly than the enemy if she didn’t stay on top of it.

I never realized how much more my mother’s teachings would help me manage an army than my father’s,
she thought to herself with a dry smirk.

In her home, they still followed the old Spartan code in which the men prepared for war and the women prepared to manage the households and estate business. Knowing how to fight was something she had always enjoyed more than her mother’s household and estate lessons, but now that she found herself in the middle of a real campaign, it was those lessons she found herself leaning on more and more.

The irony of the situation was not lost on her.

****

The city of Rome was quite possibly one of the finest in all the world.

It was the center of a grand roadway that connected every place in the world worth going to, if you believed the Romans themselves, at least. The city was a magnificent stand of stone arches and buildings that seemed to touch the sky when you stood next to them. To the Romans themselves, there was no doubt that they were the most powerful nation on the face of the planet.

More than that, average Romans on the street of the magnificent city were not only convinced of their national superiority but that they were each somehow personally responsible for the state of their nation and that the world owed them fealty for this and this alone.

The streets themselves gleamed, matching the buildings and monuments, and all roads led to the Senate.

The political center of Rome, second only to the throne of the Emperor itself, if you asked those same people on the streets who credited themselves with the power of their nation. For those who lived closer to the center of that power, however, the center of Rome’s political power was a somewhat grayer area than most would believe.

Within one of the Senate’s private bathhouses, two men well-acquainted with the gray of political power were discussing just how gray they had been willing to get.

“The man has the constitution of an ox,” a toga-clothed man said, sounding more peeved than angry.

“Pax, Flavius,” his companion said. “The plan was never to drop him in his tracks. That would be suspect.”

“I know that, Galba,” Flavius sighed, “but I’ve seen men driven mad in days on what we’ve given him. How has he lasted for three years?”

“I suspect it’s more that no one expects the Emperor to be sane in the first place than that he is somehow immune to the poison my friend,” Galba chuckled. “We may have underestimated him, but not the man himself. Instead I believe he has better advisors than we suspected. They’ve covered for him admirably.”

“If we’d left things as they were, they would have covered for him until the fool died and passed the throne on to a successor of his own choice,” Flavius grumbled sourly.

“True,” Galba admitted. “However, his actions in response to the crisis we provided for him to the south will give us the excuse we need. We’re almost there, my friend, patience.”

“I hope you’re right. If the rest of the Senate should learn that we had a hand in creating the revolt…” Flavius shuddered.

“No one will ever learn so long as we don’t tell anyone,” Galba growled, his tone warning. “It hardly took anything to set off this rebellion. It’s been building for generations. Had it not been for the constant pacifying imperial grants, we would have wiped the troublemakers in Judea Province out a hundred years ago.”

Flavius nodded in quiet agreement. That was one reason why that area had been chosen as the focal point of their current political game. Of the entire Empire at this point, the two most likely places to spark a crisis were Judea and the northern territories, and Judea was a more irritating pain in the Empire’s proverbial rear end.

“Messengers arrived from the Egyptian Diocese a short while ago,” Flavius said after a moment. Honestly, it had been several days, but he wasn’t certain that it was reliable information, let alone particularly important.

“Oh? Did the plan go according to calculations?”

“Mostly, yes,” Flavius said. “The Garrison Commander and the Governor were eliminated by our people before the riot was instigated. However, Alexandria survived mostly intact.”

Galba cast him an irritated look. “How would that be possible? I was under the impression that there were more than enough Zealot sympathizers in the area to bring Alexandria to the ground. The loss of a Roman city would have ended this farce of an Emperor in one go.”

“Apparently a Centurion of the Legion and a minor noble from the Laconian Region of Greece rallied the defenders.” Flavius shrugged, leaving out some of the more farfetched pieces of the report. “Honestly, it was always a long shot that they would burn the city anyway, Galba. Even the Zealots of Alexandria are scholars, and you know what scholars feel for the Library.”