This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead is entirely coincidental. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from Rob Steiner.

ASIN: B00NA239EE

September 2014. Published by Quarkfolio Books (
quarkfolio.com
).

Cover illustration by Stone Perales (
stonewurks.com
).

For Grandpa Chuck.

Do not argue what a good man should be. Be one.

- Marcus Antonius Pictor, the only Antonii to retire the consulship.

Marcus Antonius Cordus sprinted across the rust-colored gravel of the airless moon, his breath fogging the faceplate with each exhale. Sweat beaded on his brow. He lowered the air temperature in his helmet with a flick of his eyes. Cool air blew on his face and dried the sweat.

Cordus wished the suit could ease his pounding heart. He’d spent the last six years in Caesar Nova’s comfortable 1.003 Terran-standard gravity. This moon was +0.12 T, which made his muscles scream much sooner than he expected.

The blood-red swirls from the gas giant above gave enough light to keep him from tripping over a boulder or slipping into an iced gully. He could have switched his helmet view to infrared with an eye-tap, but it would interfere with the colored view in his faceplate’s left corner that showed the multi-colored heat signatures of the three golems chasing him.

His right foot slipped on black ice, and he lost a few steps to the golems as he righted himself.

Cordus sighed. He flicked his eyes to the rear heat window to turn it off, then switched his forward faceplate to infrared. He squinted as the landscape illuminated before him in black and green colors, a much better view to avoid hidden ice.

I know the bastards are behind me
.
No need to track them.

He ran through a narrow gully, which kept the golems from spreading out. It was why he chose it. He’d never set foot on this moon before today, but he assumed from its geology that it had once been warm and wet before some cataclysm took away its atmosphere. The gully was an ancient riverbed, now filled with smooth rocks and dry, water-eroded banks. If water had flowed through this gully, then it would have formed—

There. Infrared showed a dark opening several paces to his left. Cordus lunged toward the cave, praying to Jupiter that it was deep enough for him to—

A wall of black rock greeted him less than three paces past the entrance.

“
Cac
,” he breathed.

The golems arrived a few heartbeats later. Their dark-gray pressure suits showed no sigil or livery bands, and Cordus could not see through their frosted faceplates. They spread a pace apart to form a semi-circle that blocked the opening.

“All right, boys,” Cordus said, holding his hands out. “We had an invigorating run, eh? Good thing for you I’m a forgiving fellow. This is your last chance to leave this moon alive.”

Neither golem replied. Cordus knew they wouldn’t. He taunted them over an open channel, but he doubted they cared. They were programmed to kill him, not banter with him.

Cordus backed into the cave and the golems followed. The cave was not as deep as he preferred, but at least it forced the golems to come at him one at a time. Which was why he ducked in there to begin with.

The first one lunged at him clumsily. Cordus kneed the golem’s stomach, then elbowed its neck. The golem fell motionless to the ground.

The second golem made a more nuanced attacked. It came at him with outstretched hands, then dropped and swept its leg toward his. Cordus leaped over the leg sweep and then gave it a savage rounding kick to the helmet. The kick’s power sent the golem headfirst into the solid rock at the back of the cave. The golem collapsed in a heap.

Cordus had no time before the third golem came at him. A knife flashed in the moon’s meager red light. Cordus jumped away, the knife within a finger’s width of his pressure suit. He now stood in the riverbed. Weaponless, he considered running.

No. This ends here.

The golem came at him again with the knife. Cordus deflected its knife hand, but the golem brought its other elbow around into Cordus’s throat. He fell backward onto gravel and rocks. Without thinking, he grabbed the first rock he could find and flung it at the golem’s faceplate. The rock bounced off the helmet. The golem’s head jerked backward reflexively. Cordus knew it wouldn’t damage the helmet, but at least it distracted the golem.

Before the golem could focus on Cordus again, he kicked hard at its knee. Bone crunched through his boots, and the golem crumbled to the ground, dropping its knife. Cordus scrambled for the knife, picked it up, and jumped to his feet.

The two golems in the cave had not moved. The third golem clutched at its shattered knee, writhing at Cordus’s feet. Cordus smiled triumphantly, then turned around.

A fourth golem, which he had not seen until now, kicked him in the chest. Breath exploded from Cordus’s lungs. He fell onto the riverbed again. He still held the knife, but the golem kicked it from his hand. Cordus grabbed the golem’s other foot with both hands and twisted it. The golem’s body followed. Cordus pushed with all his strength, sending the golem onto its back. He grabbed the knife again and turned to finish the golem off.

Cordus froze.

Behind the golem stood a man without a pressure suit dressed in the ancient gold armor and red cloak of a Roman general from a thousand years ago. The man had dark curly hair and a matching beard. A green light reflected from his eyes as if he were a cat surprised in the dark by a torch lamp.

Finish him.

The man’s voice echoed in Cordus’s mind the same way the Muse whispers did. Cordus did not need his Muse memories to know the man was Marcus Antonius Primus, first Consul of the New Roman Republic. His visage was on almost every fresco, statue, and visum in the Roman Consular Palace.

Before Cordus could react, the fourth golem slammed into him with a tackle that knocked him on his back again. The golem produced another knife and placed it at Cordus’s neck.

The golem’s faceplate cleared. Kaeso Aemilius looked down at Cordus, confusion and anger warring in his eyes. He turned to where Marcus Antonius stood. Cordus glanced there, too, but the riverbed was empty.

“You had me, kid,” he growled, turning back to Cordus. “Why did you hesitate?”

Cordus opened his mouth to speak, but paused.
Do I say that I’m seeing ghosts? That Marcus Antonius Primus, my thousand-year-old ancestor has come back to give me sparring advice?

Kaeso grew impatient, so Cordus blurted, “I thought I saw another golem.”

Cordus winced inwardly. The other three golems all lay where they fell. Kaeso regarded Cordus a moment, then grunted and stood. He offered Cordus a hand, which Cordus took.

Back on his feet, Cordus searched the riverbed for…whatever he saw. Besides the three golems and Kaeso, no one else was there. He turned his eyes to Kaeso again, who watched him suspiciously.

“I thought no weapons this time,” Cordus said.

“I said no weapons for
you
, kid.” Kaeso slid his knife into the sheath on his thigh. “Your assassins will likely have them. Would be poor assassins if they didn’t.”

Kaeso eye-tapped the displays in his helmet. All three golems stood in sync and formed a line behind him. Kaeso marched back up the riverbed toward their shuttle.

Cordus followed. “A real assassin would shoot me with a pulse rifle from a thousand paces.”

Kaeso grunted. “Can’t train you to evade a pulse pellet from a thousand paces, now can I? And don’t change the subject. Why did you hesitate back there?”

“I told you, I saw a golem coming at me. The light on this moon is tricky. You said so yourself when we landed.”

The crimson gas giant above them cast red and black shadows across the moon’s rocky landscape. Cordus wanted to believe the light had played tricks with his eyes. Wanted it badly. He queried the Muses, but they were strangely silent on the matter.

“I saw your eyes, kid,” Kaeso said. “Your faceplate was clear. Something scared you and it wasn’t a golem.”

“Golems are scary when they’re coming at you with a knife. I don’t know what to tell you, old man. I froze, simple as that.”

Kaeso gave him a sideways glance. “Fine. We’ll do the same drill again, and we’ll keep doing it until you
don’t
freeze.”

Cordus didn’t say anything and simply nodded. He had learned over the last six years that complaining about Kaeso’s orders earned him an even worse job.
Kaeso would let the golems chase me until my air ran out if he caught me blinking at his order.

Cordus prepared himself to run the exercise again. But he scanned the riverbed to ensure no long-dead ancestors were haunting it.

It took Cordus one more attempt to complete the drill to Kaeso’s satisfaction. Mostly because he wasn’t distracted again by the ghost of Marcus Antonius Primus.

Thinking about Marcus Antonius—as real as Kaeso and the three golems walking with him back to the shuttle—made Cordus shiver. He had queried his Muses throughout the second drill, and then just now, but they suggested answers he’d already considered—tricks of the light, fatigue, even an actual spirit. When Cordus pressed them further, they either grew silent or gave him the same answers. It made him suspect his Muses had something to do with the apparition.

This disturbed Cordus. Over the past year or so, the Muses had become…not exactly resentful of his mastery over them, but hesitant in their answers. As a child, simply pondering a topic would fill his mind with wisdom from previous Antonii generations, quite often more data than he could process. But lately he had to ask them precisely worded questions before they’d give him the answer he wanted. Their wisdom and memories were no longer as effortless to access.

Cordus understood he was a unique human being. As far as he or the Saturnists knew, he was the only human in the last thousand years able to control the sentient alien virus humans called the Muses, rather than the other way around. Nobody knew how that ability would change as he grew older. Would he eventually lose it and become a tool of the Muses like every other Antonius since Marcus Antonius Primus? It was a fear he awoke with every morning and plagued him until he fell asleep at night.

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