Muses of Terra (Codex Antonius Book 2) (2 page)

And it was a fear the Saturnists and his friends shared.

Cordus glanced at Kaeso. Since Kaeso rescued him from Terra six years ago, he had been the father to Cordus that his real father, a Muse puppet, could never could be. Kaeso not only taught Cordus practical knowledge like self-defense and how to pilot a starship, but virtuous wisdom, like being an honorable leader people
wanted
to follow. While Kaeso drilled Cordus mercilessly on the practical, he never talked about the virtuous. Cordus learned those things by watching Kaeso among his crew.
 

Cordus knew Kaeso loved him like a son, but Kaeso was wary of Cordus’s control over the Muses. What would Kaeso say if Cordus revealed he saw the ghost of Marcus Antonius, and that he suspected his Muses had something to do with it?

They arrived back at the six-man shuttle in which they’d flown to this moon and entered the pressure hatch. Once inside, the golems removed their helmets and sat in the flight couches behind the pilot couches without a word. All three must’ve been grown in the same vat—dark hair, pale skin, and surreal blue eyes. Cordus would’ve thought them Picts if he’d seen them walking down a Roman street.

Not that I know what a Roman street looks like these days.

Kaeso tossed Cordus packs of freeze-dried fruit and smoked eel, which Cordus tore into and devoured.
 

Kaeso also gave the golems food packs, though theirs weren’t as appetizing as Cordus’s—a protein and vitamin paste that satisfied the needs of the golems’ biological systems. They each took their packs without a word, inserted the straws into the tops, and slurped down the contents.

While their minds were programmable tabulari, their human bodies needed food. Cordus had been surrounded by slaves in the Consular Palace, but never gave them much thought at the time. Now, after six years among Liberti and Saturnists opposed to human slavery, he wondered about the ethics of using golems. Liberti and Saturnists had no qualms about growing golems for servitude. If the Liberti were against enslaving one form of human, why didn’t they see a problem with enslaving a different form?

It was one of the many Liberti contradictions that made them so fascinating. Roma’s culture was a simple Muse-query away, from the New Republic’s founding a thousand years ago to the present. The Liberti, however, were a mystery.
 

“Would you rather have theirs?” Kaeso asked. “You’re staring at their paste like you want to spread it over your eel.”

Cordus shrugged. “Just wondering what they’re thinking?”

“They’re golems; they don’t think. Might as well ask what this shuttle is thinking.” Kaeso ripped into his food packs, poured some raisins in his hand and popped them into his mouth. “I’m more interested in what you’re thinking.”

“About?”
 

Kaeso’s frown said he didn’t believe Cordus’s feigned ignorance.

Cordus quickly thought up a topic besides Marcus Antonius. “I was thinking about how to persuade you to let me go to Reantium.”

Kaeso drew in a deep, slow breath, as he always did when Cordus asked to go on Saturnist missions. After he exhaled, he would explain how Cordus was too important to risk on simple courier runs.
 

Which is why I’m keeping Marcus Antonius to myself.

“You give me the usual excuses,” Cordus said hurriedly, “and then I counter that I’ll never learn how to take care of myself if I’m stuck in a Saturnist stronghold. That’s how these things always go. But let me remind you that my eighteenth birthday is in two weeks. Liberti law says I’ll be a man when I turn eighteen. Even though Roman custom says I was an adult at fourteen—”

“With your father’s permission.”

“—I still honored the Liberti custom—”

Kaeso barked a laugh. “While whining the last four years.”

“My point is that in two weeks I can decide the course of my life. You and Ocella and Gaia Julius cannot keep me prisoner behind Saturnist walls. Walls are why I fled Roma.”
 

Gaia Julius, an exiled Roman patrician, led the Saturnist sect that hid Cordus. She thought Cordus’s blood was humanity’s only weapon against the Muse strains. But after six years of research and blood draws, the Saturnists had made minimal progress against the Terran strain Cordus carried. Part of the problem was that once Cordus’s blood was drawn, the Muses in it dissolved their protein coats, making it difficult for Saturnist medicus teams to develop a vaccine against them. That contrasted with Cordus’s ancestors, who had used their blood to easily infect others. The Saturnists had to rebuild the nucleic acids in the Muse strain from scratch just to figure out which proteins it used to infect cells, something that was taking much longer than they anticipated. The only true cure they knew was for an infectee to avoid delta sleep during a way line jump, like Kaeso and Ocella had when they rescued Cordus from Terra. However, it was a cure that risked madness for the infectee.

Kaeso and Ocella were just as overprotective as Gaia Julius, but their reasons were more paternal. They hid him because they cared about
him
. While most people thought Cordus was assassinated by the Liberti—according to the official Roman cover story—elements in the Roman government knew he lived. Roma was consumed by civil war, and every Roman general sought to legitimize his or her claim to the consulship. If they knew an Antonius still lived, especially the Consular Heir, then his life would be under constant threat from assassins. There had been two attempts on Cordus’s life over the last six years, both from Praetorians who did not survive the attempts thanks to Kaeso and his crew. It was why Kaeso, a former Umbra Ancile, drilled Cordus on self-defense, weaponry, and evasion.
 

At almost eighteen years old, Cordus could best most Saturnists in hand-to-hand sparring, knew how to disassemble and reassemble a pulse rifle in under two minutes, and could pilot a ship through the rocks and ice of a ringed planet.
 

Yet Kaeso still refused to bring him along on his Saturnist missions.

After Cordus spoke, Kaeso stared at him. Cordus did not look away. Kaeso rarely raised his voice to anyone. Why would he if he could just stare down people into obeying his orders?

“First, I don’t care if you’re a man according to Liberti law, or if you’re eighteen or a hundred and eighteen. I’m the centuriae of my ship, and I will take you on missions when I say you’re ready.”

Cordus clenched his teeth but continued to hold Kaeso’s commanding stare.

“Second, you know damned well why we need to keep you safe. Like it or not, kid, you’re humanity’s greatest chance at keeping the Muses from turning us all into cattle. Your blood won’t be much use if it’s floating in space or feeding the worms on some Janus-forsaken rock of a world.”

“Kaeso, this is all—”

“I’m not done.” Kaeso’s lip curled. “Third, you’re right.”

Cordus blinked. “Which part?”

“All of it.”

Cordus stared at him. It was the first time Kaeso ever told him he was right about anything. When Cordus answered a question correctly, Kaeso would nod without expression or maybe give him a rare smile.

“Which puts me in a dilemma,” Kaeso continued. “Yes, we can’t keep you imprisoned your whole life. Someday you’ll need to step out into the real world and take care of yourself. Maybe even return to Roma.”

Cordus cringed. He was the last Antonius and the Consular Heir. Even as a child, he had never wanted to be consul. All he ever wanted, and still wanted, was freedom: to command his own ship like Kaeso, to explore worlds he’d never seen or even knew existed.

The Roman consulship was another prison, with the highest walls in the universe. Let the Roman warlords fight for it.
 

“So here’s the deal, kid,” Kaeso said. “You can come with us to Reantium. Ocella won’t be happy to see you, but deep down she knows you need this. You will work on this trip. Are you ready for that?”

Cordus tried not to leap off his seat. “It’s all I’ve wanted since I left Roma. I want to earn my way, not be sheltered. I
am
ready.”

“Fine. I’ll tell the crew when we get back to
Caduceus
.” Then Kaeso studied him a moment and said, “Just remember you can’t run from your responsibilities, because they’ll always catch up with you and tackle you to the ground. I’ve learned that the hard way, and I’d rather you didn’t.”

“I’m not running, old man.” Cordus grinned. “If anything, I want more responsibility.”

Kaeso frowned slightly, as if Cordus had not understood the point. He did understand, though. Two responsibilities had been thrust upon him by something as unfair and arbitrary as birth.
 

One, the Roman consulship could be his if he declared himself. If the last Antonius arose from the dead, it could end a civil war that had raged for six years and claimed millions of lives. But that would mean an end to Cordus’s freedom.

Two, his mastery over the Muses—and his blood—could save humanity from enslavement to the whims of an alien virus. Yet even that ‘talent’ was suspect these days, especially after seeing Marcus Antonius Primus, something that could only have come from his Muses.
 

He didn’t want to think of those responsibilities now. He would finally test the skills he’d spent years practicing. Even if the trip to Reantium was simply a courier and rendezvous run, it was something real. Cordus would not ruin it by worrying about things he couldn’t control.

3

Marcia Licinius Ocella shifted in her command couch again. The rocks, ore, and ice floating outside the ship wore on her nerves. She glanced to her right at Lucia Marius Calida, the ship’s pilot. In the darkened cockpit, her face was serene in the white, blue, and red lights of her control panel as she steered the ship through the dangerous debris.
 

It’s the most relaxed she’s been in days.
Too bad the entire trip here wasn’t through a debris cloud
.

They had entered the vast spherical cloud surrounding the Menota system three days before. At first, the scraps left over from the formation of the Menota solar system were sparse. But three hours ago, the debris grew so dense—likely the aftermath of a planetoid collision—that Lucia took the ship off auto to fly it herself. While the ship’s tabulari could theoretically evade debris, Lucia—and Ocella, for that matter—trusted gods-given human piloting instincts more than the ninety-year-old
tabulari
.
 

If we had an Umbra ship…

Six years after she left Umbra and she still longed for the Muse-granted tech the Umbra Ancilia used in the field. Saturnists were an outlawed organization, so they made do with what they could scavenge or buy off the black markets. Not like the vast resources to which an Umbra Ancile—or a Roman Praetorian—had access.
 

As evidenced by the ship they now flew, which was old when Ocella’s mother was born.

“Just got a talaria hit,” announced Varo Ullup from behind Ocella. The young Saturnist, two years older than Cordus, operated the delta sleep controls and monitored the talaria scans. “It’s in and out, though. Hard to get a fix.”

“It’s this damned debris,” Lucia growled, betraying her affected serenity. “Can’t get a decent line of sight.”

“At least we know it’s out there, though,” Ocella said, then winced. She was trying to remain calm and useful, but knew obvious comments like that didn’t help. The command couch was the most useless position on a ship. Everyone else on the crew had a specific task. Centuriae, on the other hand, were bound by tradition and protocol to let the crew perform their assigned tasks. Centuriae had to focus on strategic decisions rather than minutia.

Which meant centuriae mostly sat in their couches wondering why they were even there.

Lucia scowled at Ocella’s comment but said nothing Ocella was grateful; she didn’t want another shouting match with Lucia during such delicate piloting maneuvers.
 

Ocella cursed herself once again for letting Kaeso talk her into bringing Lucia.
 

“She’s the best pilot I know,” he said as they held each other in bed the night before she left for Menota. “If that way line is in the outer debris clouds, she can get you through safer than any other Saturnist pilot.”

“But there’s still…tension between us,” Ocella said. “I don’t want distractions on this mission. It’s too important.”

“Every mission is important. It’s time you two found a peaceful solution.”

“Easy for you to say. She loves
you
.”

 
Kaeso sighed. “I made my feelings clear long ago. I’m her centuriae and her friend…but my heart is with you.”

“You’re so romantic. Doesn’t absolve you from listening to my grumbling.”

 
“You’ve kept your distance from each other for six years. One of you has to make the first move.”

“How would you feel if I wanted you to make friends with one of my unrequited lovers?”

“You have unrequited lovers?”

She jabbed him in the ribs, and he laughed. He pulled her to him, his naked skin warm against her body. “I’ll talk to her again,” he said.

“No, it’s my problem, I’ll do it. She
is
the best pilot for this mission. She’s been out there twice already. We’ll work it out.”

Ocella knew Kaeso was right…but he didn’t have to command a ship with a resentful pilot.
Blasted man!
All he sees is the loyal and brave Lucia, not the surly child next to me.

“Got another hit,” Varo announced again. “Stronger this time. Heading six seven point three.”

“Six seven point three,” Lucia acknowledged, then tapped the controls on her tabulari to redirect the ship.

The view outside the command deck window did not reflect the tight quarters through which they flew. The only sign of debris came when a dark mass blocked the stars, or when a rock floated through the ship’s running lights. Lucia didn’t look out the window, but stared at her anti-collision scanners to pilot the ship.