The Twice and Future Caesar (27 page)

The alien plague lifted away, apparently in obedience to Numa Pompeii's command.

LEN officials there on the planet Arra were shown crying with gratitude and relief. They hailed Numa their savior.

Numa allowed time for the media to verify the truth of the images. Caesar Numa Pompeii really was pulling the gorgons away from the planet surface.

Then Numa turned to the cameras with deep disgust and scolded the watching galaxy, “Put not your faith in mad
dogs.”

J
OHN
F
ARRAGUT
TURNED
AWAY
from the Tactical display. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the images of Hive swarms turning at Numa Pompeii's command. “Is that real? Somebody tell me how Numa can be directing the Hive. And from two thousand parsecs away!”

“Numa has the irresistible harmonic,” Commander Calli Carmel said. “Must have.”

“So what if he does? How did Numa get a
resonator
all the way across two thousand parsecs to the Myriad for the gorgons to chase? He doesn't have any ships out there. How is Numa controlling a resonator from two thousands parsecs away.”

Calli shook her head. Not a clue.

Jose Maria de Cordillera suggested, “Possibly you may find answers in the brig, young Captain.”

Farragut bounded to the hatch. “Commander Carmel has the deck and the con. Jose Maria, I'd like you with me.”

Augustus didn't rise at the captain's entrance into the cell. He spoke with his eyes shut, motionless as a coiled serpent. “
Ave
,
Don
Cordillera.”

To Farragut Augustus said nothing.

“Who do you belong to?” Farragut demanded.

“Rome,” said Augustus.

“Are you Numa's man?”

“Numa Pompeii has made it known that he'd be damned if he ever
stooped to using patterners. I don't know if Numa is damned or not, but I won't move against him, given that he's the lawful Imperator.”

“I need you to see this.” Farragut sat down with a resonator.

A moment passed.

“It requires opening your eyes, Augustus.”

The eyes opened.

Farragut replayed the wizard's duel for Augustus, showing first the Hive's renewed assault on the planet Arra in the wake of the election of Numa Pompeii and then the Hive lifting away from the planet at Numa's supposed command.

“How is Numa controlling the Hive from two klarcs away?”

“I was not consulted.”

“Might Numa have an agent inside the LEN and on site?” Jose Maria suggested. “There could be someone on board
Woodland Serenity
who can deploy decoys and effect resonance in the Myriad on behalf of Caesar.”

“Numa's mind is not a database that I can access,” Augustus said. “But it's a well-reasoned guess,
Don
Cordillera. Can I come out of the brig?”

Farragut said, “Not until I know where Numa's Rome stands with the U.S. Need anything in here, Augustus?”

“
Don
Cordillera and a chessboard.”

Farragut looked at Jose Maria, who nodded consent.

“Moebius or regular board?”

The shape of the board didn't really matter to these two. They kept all the moves in their heads anyway.

“Moebius,” Augustus said. “It's more elegant.”

Romulus paced long strides within his Xerxes. He was vibrating with rage. And fear. He'd thought he was past fear.

His secret weapon had betrayed him.

Numa Pompeii should
not
have the irresistible harmonic yet. Not in the year 2443. But Numa did have it. It was yet another deviation from the original timeline as Romulus had lived it.

And now the Roman Senate had declared Numa their Caesar because they thought Numa controlled the Hive. These people did not understand the nature of the enemy.

And they do not understand the power of me
.

They required enlightenment.

Romulus would teach these lesser beings what a powerless pretender was Numa Pompeii.

Romulus issued a terse pronouncement. “People of all nations, try to find me when you are ready to kneel.”

Immediately, sarcastic media commentators claimed to be quaking in terror. They asked one another: “Anyone kneeling at your location? Not here. You? Let's check in with our affiliate on Mu Cygnus. Any outbreaks of kneeling there?”

“Why, yes, Sal, I have a sighting of kneeling here on Thaleia. Oh. No. Wait. That's a marriage proposal . . . Stand by. . . . Yes. She said yes.”

10 September 2443
Roma Nova, Palatine
Corona Australis star system
Near Space

Upon the ascension of Caesar Numa Pompeii, Magnus was invited to leave the imperial palace. There was a tacit command for him to remove his children with him.

Magnus engaged a freighter to transport his belongings out of the palace and back to his country estate in the green rolling hills outside Nova Roma here on Palatine.

Magnus' son Romulus showed up in person to collect a few things he valued and some things Claudia wanted. The palace had been their home for most of their lives.

Romulus didn't really care to see his father, but Magnus sought Romulus out.

The old man looked sad and unbearably solicitous. The monumental scale of the palace, the thick soaring columns, the vast domed ceiling high overhead, all made Magnus look very, very small. He hadn't been rejuvenated. His own fault. He didn't need to look that frail. If he thought age made him look wise, he was desperately mistaken. He looked beaten.

Caesar Magnus had been responsible for the annihilation of sixty-four Legions. No one recovers from that.

And Magnus took personally the mockery heaped on his child.

Magnus sounded mortally embarrassed. “My son, you cannot expect
to ascend so quickly without stumbling. If you would rule, take a step back.”

Romulus absorbed the absurdity. This broken man dared give him advice?
If I would rule?
A dangerous glassy-eyed smile slid onto Romulus' face.
I do rule
. Romulus said softly, “I rule an Empire bigger than this galaxy.”

Within days of Numa's miracle, the gorgons in the Myriad inexplicably reversed themselves one more time. Ravenous swarms of them descended back to the surface of the planet Arra. The Hive threat had
not
been neutralized after all.

The League of Earth Nations contacted the new Imperator of Rome, Numa Pompeii. The LEN urgently requested that Numa restore his protection to the planet Arra and to the other worlds within the Myriad star cluster.

The demand, the need for it, caught Numa off guard. He didn't let his confusion show. He improvised. He told the LEN that the reversal of the Hive was the League's fault. The LEN hadn't obeyed his instructions to the letter.

The LEN representatives insisted they had done everything Numa required.

Numa Pompeii clicked off and turned away from the resonator in his battlefort
Gladiator
. “
Merda
.”

“
Domni
?” his exec, Portia Arrianus prompted.

Numa had not yet made any move to take up residence in the imperial palace on Palatine. He had always preferred his battlefort to any ground station.

He told his exec, “Confirm that the LEN decoys in the Myriad are actually resonating on the proper Hive harmonic.”

Portia Arrianus promptly entered the irresistible harmonic into her res chamber. She reported, startled, “Nothing,
Domni
. I'm reading nothing on that harmonic. The decoys are not resonating.”

“Resonate the irresistible harmonic.”

“It's not going,
Domni
.”

Numa snarled. “Explain ‘It's not going.' Resonant pulses don't
go
. They
are
.”

“
Domni
, the harmonic is
not
.”

“How does a harmonic vanish?”

“Someone must be resonating on the complement of the harmonic. That's the only way.”

It was a known phenomenon. You could interrupt harmonic messages by resonating the complement of the harmonic. Neither harmonic existed at the moment of collision. The tactic was common among jilted lovers.

Numa growled in sudden revelation.

“Get me that pinprick on the resonator. No. Strike that. Set me down in
my
palace.”

Numa Pompeii in his vast flesh arrived inside the imperial palace with a displacement thundercrack. He strode across the marble antechamber and prowled all the chambers, his sword drawn, ready for Romulus. He found only Magnus looking withered and forlorn. Packing.

Numa received a resonant hail. He assumed it was Portia Arrianus, and he answered, impatient. “Speak.”

No video image accompanied the slow sardonic voice that didn't belong to his executive officer. “Caesar. Save them.”

Numa. Voice like an earthquake. “Romulus! You are taking responsibility for the Hive reversal in the Myriad?”

“I'm revealing your impotence in the face of humankind's greatest threat.”

“Stop canceling out my harmonic. Otherwise, confess to being humankind's greatest threat yourself.”

“The harmonic is all yours,” Romulus said blithely. “May it give you joy.”

Numa reactivated the irresistible harmonic. It existed again. But there was nothing irresistible about it now. The LEN in the Myriad reported that the gorgons on the planet Arra continued to ravage everything within tentacle reach. Whatever had been distracting the Hive earlier was now gone.

“What did you do, Romulus?” Numa roared into his res com. “
What the hell did you do?
”

“Knowledge is power,
Caesar
. I have it. You do not. Knees,” Romulus told Numa. “I am expecting knees.”

No one was kneeling. It was a tragedy, of course, the Hive's renewed descent to the beautiful distant alien world, Arra. But its threat to Earth
and Palatine was still remote. Humankind had more than a century in which to prepare for the eventual gorgon invasion of Near Space, time enough to devise a solution. The nations would think of something in that time.

“You don't have a century,” Romulus told humankind. “You have until
yesterday
.”

The Hive that had existed on the irresistible harmonic was dead. It died the instant Romulus resonated the complement of the Hive harmonic.

When a Hive's harmonic goes silent, the entire Hive dies.

But during its long existence a Hive left behind eggs anywhere it ever found food.