The Twice and Future Caesar (29 page)

The glob slid off quick and clean. The Old Man looked disappointed.

He could've benched her if she hadn't passed that test. She didn't know why Steele never wanted to send her forward. She was as good as anyone else. Couldn't understand why he hated her.

Steele was kitted up for ground duty too. He was going down with his dogs. He and Farragut were alike that way. Both of 'em led from the front.

Kerry glanced out a portal. The planet was getting real big.
Merrimack
was descending fast.

And we got orders to proceed down the lower sail. Why do they call it a sail? It's a one-hundred-fifty-foot tower slanted back like a shark fin, mostly filled with equipment. And it has a ladder for deploying us lot.

The Fleet Marines filed down in units, Kerry Blue down front with Alpha Team. Waiting on the ladder for the hatch to open. Twitch Fuentes below her, Cole Darby positioned to come down on her head if she didn't move it when it came time to jump.

Hatch open. Everybody out. Kerry Blue jumped.

She landed easy. The gravity wasn't too fierce. She ran to make way for everybody else.

She could see now where
Merrimack
let the Bull Mastiffs out—in the center of a ring of widely spaced domes that housed the settlements.

Kerry looked for Dome E. Couldn't see for the bright white flashes that split the perfect black. She blinked. She had to find Dome E. Or, better yet, just follow Lieutenant Hazard Sewell.

Ran with her team through a rain of sparks.

Whipping gorgon legs sniped at her flank. She hadn't even seen them. A downstroke with her sword made the biting mouths fall away. More mouths moved in. She sliced those off too.

Heard the hiss of a suit leak. One of the mouths got her. Then came that little
fwip
sound as her suit sealed itself.

She stabbed a landing disk as she ran past it. It stuck to her sword point and came with her. She had to kick it off. The Marines had orders to secure
all
displacement gear.

Steele motioned with his sword for Red Squad to split right, and Hazard Sewell led the charge into Dome E. Everybody get inside as fast as you can pack yourselves through the air lock and make way for the evacuees to get out.

Kerry Blue, first thing, pulled the D collar off a civilian, who fought her for it. Kerry won. Told the woman to suit up for dust off.

The woman said she'd rather displace.

“Suit or die. Those are the choices.” Kerry slashed the legs off a gorgon that fell from the overhead.

The ground shook. Not good. Makes the civilians scream, and that don't help.

The floor tiles moved, breaking underfoot. Kerry stumbled over the uneven ground, hacking at the tentacles that bloomed up between the broken edges of foundation tiles.

The dome lights failed.

Headlamps on. Made for jarring shadows.

Kerry Blue tried to count her dead. Couldn't verify half her kills. The gorgons disintegrated, and she was left arguing over pools of ooze that really were her kills, not yours, Cole Darby, go get your own. No time to argue. Lots more opportunities. Priority targets were the gorgons that got between the civilians and the exits.

Not feeling as scared as she oughtta be. Reminded herself: Do not under-respect the enemy.

Most of the resident scientists had already suited up for evacuation. Kerry's crew had to clear the gorgons from the exit and then shove refugees out the air lock. Keep 'em moving.

Until you had to stop.

Civilians were whiny and unpredictable and really hard not to cut. Even the smart ones. Especially the smart ones. It was like dressing children, making sure they were ready to go outside in the snow. This geek woman tried to go out the air lock with a big ol' gash in her pressure suit. Told Kerry Blue, “It'll be fine. I don't mind the cold.”

“Ma'am? You'll mind the vacuum.” Kerry Blue slapped a piece of sealer on the gashed sleeve before the woman could get out there and pop her lungs.

Keep 'em moving.

Green Team was out there on the other side of the lock, clearing a path for the civilians to get to the landers.

They heard something over the com: “We're down here stabbing bilge balloons and babysitting tourists while
Rio
's Wing is flying and shooting. Is that fair?”

Hazard Sewell, right beside her: “We are known for no friendly hacking. You should be flattered, Marine.”

Fishing was a real art form. Kerry's company was hard-practiced at fighting in narrow corridors alongside brothers she loved more than her own life.

“I'm flattered, Mister Lieutenant Hazard Sewell, sir,” Kerry Blue said as a Swift executed a barrel roll over the dome. “I'd rather be flying!”

She saw Hazard's white face through his crystal-clean bubble helmet, mouthing words for only her to see:
Me too
.

Swarms of gorgons scaled the dome, trying to get in through the top. Kerry could see them moving up there on the translucent panels.

She heard a deep structural groan. Dome E was cracking. Air hissed out. Kerry Blue's suit fluttered in the current.

A glut of gorgons briefly plugged the crack. Then the crack widened, and the whole wad of them fell in, down, and splattered onto the buildings and the running people.

More of them tumbled down in giant clumps.

“Oough!” A gorgon fell through the ceiling, right onto Kerry Blue. Would've killed her in normal gravity. This one dropped her to the broken floor, knocking the breath out of her. She felt the tentacle hits; the thing was biting at her suit.

Suddenly the gorgon sack was melting all over her.

“GRETAAAAAA!” There was Dak with a sword. Master crazy. Severed tentacles and gorgon bits flying this way and the other way. Dark ooze slid down Dak's sleeves.

Kerry jumped to her feet and cut open the next gorgon that came at them. “Tango Yankee, Dak!”

Dak was already away, flailing and yelling like a berserker, “Greta Greta Greta Greta!”

Kerry's team guided the civilians through the dome's air lock. Another squad waited outside to shepherd the people into the waiting life craft.

And
Rio
's Wing was upstairs, flying cover. Lucky them. Their Swifts became dragons in the dark. They scorched bright paths across the black rock.

Many, many whippy legs fled before them.

From way upstairs,
Merrimack
advised that there was no more human life inside Dome E.

Kerry looked up at the dying dome. Air hissed out. Freezing steam glittered in the emergency lights.

There were more gorgons out here. Lots and lots, harassing the landers and trying to get into the other domes.

The gorgons out here were the bloated kind. Under atmospheric pressure gorgon bodies got smaller, compressed to about a meter wide not counting all those snaky tentacles. These gorgons were balloons. Their fanged tentacles were all the same.

A squadron of Swifts from
Rio Grande
approached for another strafing run to burn the refugees' escape route clear of gorgons. The fighters came in real low on the deck.

Kerry would've been moving a lot faster than that if she were flying that close to the ground.

Suddenly a whole mass of gorgons rose up from the rock surface, tentacles clasped to form a living net of themselves. Five of the Swifts pulled up and clear. The last one flew right into the net, and crashed down into the rock. Kerry watched it auger in. A scream. Hers. “
No!”

There was no explosion.

A mass of dark thrashing bodies piled on top of the Swift.

The pilot could be alive. You could bury a Swift and live if you had the fat part of your energy field—your cowcatcher—deployed right. Kerry Blue knew that real well. The pilot could be alive.

The other Swifts came in screaming, flaming. Gorgons leaped and clutched and burned.

The downed Swift was moving, coming out of the ground, rising in a drunken motion.

Kerry Blue squinted. Didn't look right. The crate wasn't flying. And it didn't have its cowcatcher deployed. It didn't have a force field at all.

The gorgons had it. A mass of tentacles pried the Swift out of the rock. More were pulling at its canopy.

“Hotel One, this is
Rio
. Negative life signs in the downed craft. Secure the crash site.”

Secure
it meant fry it. You don't let gorgons eat your dead. The Swift's wingman came down blazing and screaming. Melted all the gorgons from the crash site and incinerated the pilot's remains.

* * *

As evacuation landers lifted off from 82 Eridani III,
Merrimack
's tactical specialist reported, “Activity on the far side of the planet.”

“What activity?” Commander Carmel demanded.

“Gorgon emergence.”

Tactical read off the planetary coordinates and brought up an image of gorgons climbing out of the ground.

They spilled out like pebbled lava and crawled over each other, building themselves into a towering mound. Then the mound slipped wide. It looked like a volcano with still more gorgons crawling out of its central crater.

“Get an incendiary down its throat,” Farragut ordered. “Cook 'em.”

Merrimack
circled half round the planet and breathed fire into the crater until the ground stopped crawling.

Steam rolled across the rock and froze.

“Look for escape holes.”

“Aye, sir,” said Tactical. Then immediately, “There they are.”

Tactical fed the coordinates to Targeting and brought the area into view.

More holes formed in the rock several klicks away from the first target, like volcanic vents, spewing live gorgons.

“Burn them, sir?”

“Negative. Wait until they give us a bigger surface target.”

Tactical reported yet another vent, bigger, erupting at the planet's pole.

The emerging masses were changing shape. Packing themselves together, building and contracting.

The XO murmured, “John? What do these shapes look like to you?”

“I see it, Cal. Do we have anyone left downstairs!”

“Negative human life down below. We are clear to unleash anything you want on the planet, sir.”

Captain Farragut hailed the
Rio Grande
. “Dallas! The enemy are forming up! The gorgons are trying to make spheres! Do not let them organize! Gorgons can achieve FTL in sphere formation. Beams will just scatter them and drive them into hiding to regroup. We need a neutron hose here, and I don't have one.”

“
Merrimack
. This is
Rio Grande
. We can oblige,
Merrimack
. Clear orbit. Advise when you are away.”

Farragut looked to his exec. “Make sure all our Marines are on board and put us somewhere else, Cal.”

The space battleship
Merrimack
jumped to FTL.

The space battlecruiser
Rio Grande
took a neutron hose to the planet 82 Eridani III, returning the long dead world to deadness
again.

17 September 2443
U.S. Space Battleship
Merrimack
82 Eridani Star System
Near Space

“W
HO
'
D
WE
LOSE
?”
Hazard Sewell asked. “I saw a Swift go down.”

“That was Piotr Czerwonykoszula.”

“Who?”

“FNG.” Cole Darby said. New Guy.

Darb had very recently been an FNG.

Flight Sergeant Czerwonykoszula flew out of
Rio
. Still, he was a Bull Mastiff. One of the 89th.

The Bull Mastiffs sent up a howl for their fallen brother. He was one of us. And next time it could be any one of us.

There wasn't so much as a molecule left of him to send home. Old Man Steele told the family that Piotr Czerwonykoszula took a whole lot of gorgons down with him.

On the voyage home to the Solar System from 82 Eridani, Captain Farragut praised his Fleet Marines. Thanked them. Stood them for a round of drinks—on him personally. And barked the 89th Bull Mastiff salute.

After the toasts, Captain Farragut, Commander Carmel, the civilian
Don
Jose Maria de Cordillera, and the Roman Colonel Augustus
stayed behind in the bar—the captain drinking Kentucky bourbon, Calli drinking Mezcal
sin gusano
. Jose Maria still had a bottle of Spanish Rioja left from dinner. Augustus watched ice cubes melt in a glass of seltzer.

They rehashed the battle.

82 Eridani III, planet Xi, was so ancient that its core held no vestigial heat. Yet the living Hive had come out of the rock. Not just rock. Bedrock.

The planet was the multibillion-year-old birthplace of the Arran civilization.

The archon Donner, the leader of the Arran civilization in the Myriad, had been born on Xi. He and his people had come forward in time billions of years through the Rim Gate at the edge of the Myriad.

It was Donner who had first posed the question: Why were there no descendants of his ancient people out here among the stars—people billions of years more advanced than Earthlings? Why hadn't Donner's people colonized the stars?

Their descendants should be out here somewhere.

Now it was apparent what had happened to those people. Before Donner's early civilization could develop faster-than-light travel, the Hive had arrived at 82 Eridani III—planet Xi—and destroyed all life on it.

“Why didn't the Hive destroy all life on Earth at the same time they destroyed 82 Eridani?” Calli asked. “The worlds are close together.”

“They are close now,” Augustus said. “Earth didn't exist at the time.
Sol
didn't exist at the time. The Solar system is young.”

Donner's colonists on planet Arra in the Myriad were all that was left of the ancient Xi civilization. Now their adopted homeworld was under Hive attack.

“Donner was a good dictator,” Farragut said into his bourbon.

“Was?” said Calli. “Is he dead?”

“Not last I knew. But he's not exactly a dictator any more. He's overseeing the evacuation of Arra with the LEN.”

Farragut scowled into his bourbon. Breathed in. Held it. Hesitated to speak again. “I know I'm billions of years late to the party, but why do I have the feeling that Romulus planted those gorgons on Xi?”

“Because your subconscious is paying attention even if you're not, John Farragut,” Augustus said. “Romulus didn't plant the gorgons, but he intentionally woke them up. The money trail for the scientific expedition
on Xi leads to an imperial account on Palatine. Romulus set the breakfast table for the buried Hive.”

“He's a patterner,” Calli said. “How can we possibly battle a patterner from the future?”

“Romulus may be a patterner, but he wasn't made out of patterner material. Patterners are chosen for our integrity, our loyalty, and our intelligence. Romulus is only intelligent. Being a patterner allows him to recognize interconnections and logical outcomes. It doesn't force him to see anything. He can solve complex problems if he has exposure to the required data. He can outmaneuver us. And he should. But he won't. He's delusional. He's
Romulus
.”

“And he knows the future,” Calli said. “He knows everything we're going to do.”

“Again, no. The future changed the instant Romulus arrived in his own past. His future knowledge is actually two sets of mismatched faulty data, neither of which is necessarily true.”

Jose Maria: “And do you not think Romulus the patterner can figure that out?”

Calli nodded agreement with Jose Maria. “Romulus should figure that out.”

“He should. But he's in love with his own omniscience,” Augustus said. “We're blind to our future. That's our advantage.”

“We're blind—? Now how in the Sam Hill is that any kind of advantage, Augustus?”

“It keeps you from swinging at a change-up when you're expecting a fast ball, John Farragut. Romulus has false certainties. And because he's Romulus, he will continue to refuse truths he badly wants not to see. That is where he will fall. If he doesn't kill us first.”

Numa Pompeii issued an Empire-wide mandate from the imperial palace on Palatine for any Roman citizen to kill Romulus on sight wherever he was.

Because military service was a condition for full citizenship, Rome's citizenry was well prepared to carry out the mandate should the opportunity present.

But Romulus had vanished. He was not in Roma Nova. He wasn't even on the planet Palatine.

He reappeared days later on the artificial planet that orbited Beta Centauri. There, Romulus hoisted the imperial flag and his own eagles over the main city. He chose new colors for himself. Red, black, and gold.

He set up his government-in-exile inside the Italian embassy over cries of treason from Roma Nova and polite objections from the League of Earth Nations, whose world it was. Beta Centauri had no national identity. Romulus met no armed resistance. The LEN officials questioned the legality of his action. It wasn't exactly a challenge. More of an inquiry.

The Italian Ambassador claimed to be enjoying lively discussions with his guest.

“He's saying that under duress!” Farragut said. He was more than ready to charge into the Centauri system and free an embassy-f of hostages.

Jose Maria shook his head slowly. “I do not detect any sign of duress from the ambassador, young Captain.”

“Calli?” Farragut appealed to his exec. Calli knew Rome. Calli knew Romulus.

“Romulus can be charming. I can believe the discussions are lively,” Calli said. “Honestly, John, I don't think we'll be getting an invitation from the LEN to invade Beta Centauri.”

“I don't like him there.”

“I'm right with you, sir,” Calli said.

Beta Centauri was a strategic outpost. Centauri was the closest star system to Earth.

Augustus said it. “It puts Romulus a javelin's throw from Alpha Centauri and within a day's striking distance of Earth.”

Lieutenant Colonel Steele, who usually kept quiet on the command platform, broke his silence. “Striking distance? What's Romulus got to strike with? What's he got?”

“I have no information to work with,” Augustus said. “He's exceptionally good at keeping secrets.”

“Can someone get a bead on Romulus from Centauri orbit? Sniper shot? Get me to Centauri!” Farragut said. “I'll do it.”

“Romulus is on Italian soil,” Calli said. “Hitting Romulus inside the embassy would be an act of war. Against the wrong country.”

30 September 2443
Italian Embassy
Beta Centauri
Centauri Star System
Near Space

“What is this face?” Claudia demanded. That snapped Romulus back to attention. She'd caught him frowning.

“I can't locate Jose Maria de Cordillera,” Romulus said. “He's not where he's supposed to be. But, you know what? I don't need to find him. I just need to torch his world. He needs to watch. Now you're pouting, Empress. Why?”

“I want it.”

“Want what, my sweet? You want Terra Rica?”

“Yes. I want Terra Rica for my domain. I don't like it here. There's no society on Beta Centauri.”

Claudia was accustomed to the operas and shows, sensations, concerts, grand balls, riotous festivals, lavish routs, races, wealth, culture, and the exquisite beauty of Roma Nova on Palatine.

Romulus considered this. “Destroying the planet does seem a waste of beautiful
terra firma
. Shall I just remove the people?”

“Only the boring ones. I want
Don
Cordillera's family to be my servants.”

“I want Jose Maria's family dead,” Romulus said.

“Nooo. I want them in splendid livery and waiting on me.”

Romulus struggled not to tell her the future he'd rescued her from. She had no idea what agonies that saintly monster Jose Maria meant to put her and him through.

Romulus forced a smile. “You're right. Death is ugly. I don't want ugliness touching you. House Cordillera will live as your servant stable. But
Don
Cordillera needs to die.”

“Why?”

For what he would do to you in a vanished future.

He couldn't tell her.

Claudia pulled on his hands as if coaxing him to dance with her. “He would make the most spectacular butler! I want him.”

“Then you shall have him,” Romulus lied.

1 October 2443
U.S. Space Battleship
Merrimack
Earth orbit
Near Space

In a public broadcast from Beta Centauri, Romulus stated that a Roman Imperator had the exclusive right to declare war on behalf of the Empire. Romulus announced his intent to exercise that right.

Calli, watching the transmission from the command deck of
Merrimack
, lifted her hands, baffled, then let them drop, disgusted. “Now he's taking powers he doesn't legally have.”

“Like that's never been done,” Farragut said.

“Romulus doesn't have the right to make war,” Augustus said.

“He says he does,” Calli said. “He's invoking the divine right of kings.”