Strength and Honor (16 page)

“Here is where I tell you how deep a hole you’ve dug for us. Unfortunately, I can’t reprimand any of you.” Pacing. Teeth grinding. The Alphas’ gazes remained fixed stiffly forward but all of them just wanted to exchange glances and say, “Huh?”

Steele was mad as hell. And not just at them. Someone wearing a lot of brass had got hold of that bullmastiff’s leash and yanked.

Words came out of TR Steele like he was performing his own appendectomy: “They are dancing in the streets back home. I have orders from our C in C to buy each of you a beer.”

And to the cheer about to erupt, his forefinger jerked up in the air to silence it, and he warned all on deck, “You can sit on that till I leave.”

He spun on Ranza. “Espinoza, this doesn’t ever happen again.”

“Aye, sir. And I agree. I should never—”

“I don’t give a skat if you agree, soldier. You just do.”

“Aye, sir.”

Steele stalked back through the ranks. A navvy, not in Steele’s chain of command, spoke over his clanging march toward the doors, “The beer order is coming from
President Johnson?”

Steele looked at the navvy and snarled. He had just said that.
“I
wouldn’t.” He nearly collided with Chef Zack come marching into the hangar deck with a six-pack in either hand. Zack had appointed himself to the task of hand delivering the President’s order.

Someone else brought in the recordings to show the Alphas what had caused the Presidential hallelujah.

Cain hadn’t just knocked the golden eagle off its perch. He had knocked the monument base over sideways so that the bald eagle, which used to be cowering on its back, now looked for all the world like it was rolling over to get up.

That’s what they were roaring about Stateside. “Wow,” Cain looked at his work. No wonder the beer got here before his Swift even dried off. “That’s my hole,” said Cole Darby. He pointed at the hole that allowed the monument to cant over. “That’s my hole.”

“Nice hole,” said Cain.

“A
real
sharpshooter would have picked off the chicken without breaking the bald eagle’s left toe,” said Cole Darby.

Cain swaggered over, hooked his arm round Darb’s neck, snugged him in close for a side-by-side hug, nearly strangling him in the crook of his elbow. “And here’s my man, Darb. I love him like a brother.”

Darb’s voice came out strained, muffled by a face full of muscular arm. “I’d feel much better about this if someone other than a guy named Cain were talkin’.”

———

The handle to the hatch of Steele’s private compartment clicked, turned.

Steele watched it, scowling. Could not quite believe what he was seeing. Someone was letting himself into Steele’s quarters without knock or permission.

The hatch opened to Kerry Blue, holding beer for two. Steele looked away. “Flight Sergeant, you do not want to be here.” She let herself in. The hatch shut behind her. “That was crappy what they did.”

They?
He was plenty pissed with her too. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t been flying with Alpha Flight. Kerry Blue had been as much a part of it as Cain Salvador.

“I am not happy with any of you.” Steele rested his chin on his fist, not looking at her. “Huh? Oh, I wasn’t talking about the Alphas. We did what we did and I really expected to be in the lower sail right now guarding a box of donuts for it. They shouldn’t be giving you different orders from two hundred light-years away about your Marine Flight.”

They. He lifted his head. She was talking about President Johnson and the DC brass holes. Kerry finished, “I thought the chain of command went both ways.”

“So did I,” Steele said into his fist. Still pissed, but amazed that she understood why he was pissed. She offered, “I can go to the lower sail if it’d make you feel better.”

She had already made him feel better. She got it. She
got
it. He just wanted someone to recognize that he had been undercut from on high. And of all people, it was Kerry Blue who got it.

If he felt any better Kerry Blue would be on her back on the deck right here, right now.

“Give me those beers and get out of here,” he said.

“You can handle these by yourself?” Kerry put her hps to the mouth of one bottle before surrendering it. “Sure you don’t need reinforcements?”

“Out!”

10

^T
HE MEDIA WERE CALLING IT
the Doolittle Raid, after an air strike nearly a half millennium ago. That operation had not taken out a single military target either.

The strike on Palatine had rattled a lot of windows and cracked a few foundations, made the Romans dive like prairie dogs, and rolled over the chicken. That was about the sum of it.

But U.S. morale soared, and that had probably been the real mission objective anyway, because
Merrimack
was ordered home. The crew were not told if other ships were being left behind at Palatine, but everyone on board wondered why they couldn’t stay in the enemy system to do some real damage.

Titus Vitruvius lay in his sleep chamber in the city of Antipolis on the planet Thaleia, not sleeping.

His tiny chamber in the ziggurat had once been clothed in the illusion of a tree fort. That was too babyish for him now. Now his chamber was rigged to appear like a Legion commander’s quarters aboard a ship of war.

While he was in his room he was not in a self-contained city on an automated factory world. He was on board the Legion carrier
Horatius.
In his world, he had taken over command of
Horatius
upon the death of Herius Asinius.

On a shelf of gods he prayed to, he had Mars and Bellus and Minerva and Virtus and Honorus. No one really quite believed in gods but it never hurt to ask them for favors.

Also on the shelf was an image of Herius Asinius. Rome did not officially deify people anymore, but Titus did.

Titus belonged to
gens
Vitruvius, but the standards and the grey and scarlet legion colors in his room were
gens
Asinius.

Because Thaleia was the home of PanGalactic Industries, the patron god of the planet Thaleia was Vulcan, the craftsman. Outside of the self-contained city’s pleasant illusions, the world was bleak, harsh. But it had an atmosphere, free-flowing water, sun, wind, and minerals. Thaleia’s settlements existed to serve its factories.

Titus Vitruvius wanted nothing more than to get off of Thaleia. Vulcan had no place on Titus’ shelf. Titus preferred Mars to Vulcan, Achilles to Odysseus. Brawn and courage to industry and cunning.

Thaleia’s factories were largely automated and self run, so the population of Thaleia was small as planetary populations were reckoned. The factories churned out killer bots. PanGalactic Industries’ killer bots had been redesigned so they could not all be commanded to self-destruct by a single signal as the first generation of killer bots had been. There used to be millions of them, and soon would be again.

Thaleian factories manufactured the missiles and the drones that were terrorizing America, and they assembled the carrier craft which transported the missiles and drones to within striking distance of Earth.

Thaleia’s factories had also rebuilt the planet’s orbiting defenses. At a distance of seventy-one light-years, Thaleia was the closest Roman planet to Earth and to the hated United States of America.

The heavy defenses kept the enemy away from Thaleia. Titus had expected the Americans to make their strike here instead of Palatine. But Thaleia sat out that action, and Titus was disappointed.

If he must be on a planet instead of on a warship, Titus wished he could be on Palatine, shooting Americans out of the Roman sky.

His mother wouldn’t let him go anywhere.

He was at the age where your mother is a boat anchor. And he was unfortunate enough actually to have a mother. His friends had been born from incubators. Lucky them. Oh, they knew where their maternal DNA came from, but
Jupiter!
You get pushed out between a woman’s thighs, she thinks she owns you and does not let go. Ever. His mother just did not understand. Titus had fought against the Hive. He had helped Herius Asinius defend the Roman fortress! He was a combat veteran! He was twelve years old!

Upon his final parting, Herius Asinius had given Titus an order to protect his mother. Titus knew that legionaries often got orders they didn’t like and they were expected to obey. But things had changed since then. If Herius Asinius were alive, he would give Titus new orders. Titus just knew it.

Titus still kept his ant farm and his jar of zakan moths with him. They used to give warnings of any Hive presence. The moths only ever did anything if Hive monsters were very, very close.

The Hive in Near Space was dead. It was completely gone from Thaleia.

The last Hive stragglers were thousands of light-years away in the next arm of the galaxy, across the Abyss in the Deep End. Titus kept his telltales because they had been a gift from Herius Asinius, whom he adored. And they had saved his life once.

Midnight. Titus was awake, and not sure why. His eyes were open, watching the ants. They crawled out of their tunnels as if someone had kicked their container. The zakan moths began to chirp.

“Mater! Mater!”
Titus Vitruvius ran into his mother’s chamber. “Hive! Hive sign!”

Verina Vitruvia stirred sleepily. Her compartment smelled like flowers. She smelled like flowers. She moved her long hair from her face. She groaned at the chronometer. Mumbled, “It must be something else.” Her head fell back into her pillow.

“No. They are here.” He tried to shake the bed, but it wouldn’t shake.

Verina’s voice came from the pillow. “Go back to bed, dearest.”

Titus stomped into the corridor and pulled the city alarm. Flashing lights flared to life, and the clangor rose up and up the spiral corridors of the ziggurat.

Verina was up as if catapulted. She ran into the corridor and shut the alarm back off. She hissed at her son to keep herself from shrieking, “What are you doing!”

Screams rose from somewhere. Male voices.

“You’ve started a panic,” Verina scolded, trying to usher Titus back inside their chambers. “We will be fined for this.”

“Romans do not panic,” said Titus.

“What?”

The screams. He meant that men were not screaming just because the alarm sounded.

The screams sounded like men on fire, and they were coming from way down in the lowest level of the ziggurat. Then the alarm reactivated. The lights were flashing, the clangor blaring. Someone else had pulled it this time.

Verina turned Titus around, started to herd him down the ramp to the exit. Titus planted his heels and seized her night cloak to make her stop.

“Don’t go this way. The gorgons are under the city. That’s where they came from the first time. This way.” He took his mother by the hand and tugged for her to come up the ramp.

He bellowed—as deep as a boy’s soprano voice could bellow—to everyone they met stampeding down the spiral corridor to turn around and go to the roofs. He shouted for someone to contact the home guard to order an airlift to take them off of the rooftops.

A voice responded from somewhere in adult baritone, a military acknowledgment, “It shall be done.” And Titus at last understood why Herius Asinius, the god, had ordered him to stay in Antipolis.

———

Romulus returned to the Imperial palace on Palatine, abandoning the safety of his mobile palace Fortress Aeyrie to be with his people. He publicly regretted that he had not been here during the raid. The U.S. ships had already withdrawn from Palatine by the time Romulus took up residence again.

Upon his return, Romulus found rumors of Hive appearances in Near Space circulating on Palatine. Romulus could not believe how quickly the word of the Hive spread from his own trusted people on Fortress Aeyrie to Palatine—even after he swore them to silence. Caesar was going to crucify someone for this.

But the rumors going round Palatine were not of gorgons on 82 Eridani III.

These rumors were of gorgons on Thaleia.

“Kill the rumors and find out what is really happening on Thaleia,” Caesar ordered. “It’s all U.S. propaganda.”

A top adviser lingered behind after the others had left. The aging general Julius Zosimus was not close enough to be a confidant. Romulus did not have those. But Zosimus was given as much trust as one could expect from a man who had seen his father murdered by a top adviser.

The two were alone. Zosimus knew there were anti-surveillance jammers here. Still he drew close and kept his voice low. His lips barely moved in case anyone had a camera on him. “Caesar, there appears to be a real gorgon presence on Thaleia. Not large, but it’s—”

“Rumor,” Caesar finished for him. “Listen to what I am telling you.
Kill
the
rumors.
Everyone is to understand that the gorgons in Near Space were only ever U.S. propaganda, and that we are too clever to swallow any dung they try to feed us.”

“Understood, Caesar.”

At the base of the Capitoline a wide swathe of new grass sprouted where the Monument to the Conciliation used to stand. Of the Monument itself nothing remained. The wreckage had been removed quickly after the American attack.

General Numa Pompeii stood on the new grass, too late to the dance. There had been U.S. ships over Palatine, and Numa Pompeii had not been here to turn them away.

Numa Pompeii had spent the last three months slogging across the two thousand light-years of the Abyss. Caesar might have waited until
Gladiator
could pass through the U.S. Shotgun before he decided to declare his war. Romulus had known exactly what he was doing. The palace guards admitted Numa readily enough. A servant offered him the traditional refreshment, which Numa declined. Another servant showed him to a chamber, there to wait.

The Imperial Palace that Numa Pompeii remembered was built of blue and white marble, with stately Ionic pillars holding up coffered ceilings.

The circular chamber in which the returning Triumphalis was left cooling his heels had been redone in holoimages, so he was standing inside a storm cloud.