The Twice and Future Caesar (9 page)

Rome no longer recognized Jose Maria as a political neutral. He had taken refuge with the U.S. battleship. His racing ship
Mercedes
was hangared inside
Merrimack
's port side cargo hold.

Jose Maria was aging grandly. The white streaks were broad now in his long black hair. His hair was held back with a silver clasp his late wife had given him. He was the master swordsman on
Merrimack
. The former captain of the
Merrimack
was famous for putting swords on spaceships.

The swords hadn't been used in anger since the extermination of the Hive, but they were still popular for exercise.

“Caesar asked after you, Jose Maria.”

“I am not surprised, fair Captain. Am I putting you in a difficult position?”

“Not ever.”

Weng and Ski were both xenobiologists. Jose Maria was a Nobel Laureate in microbiology. He had the records from the Romulid installation open and on display.

Calli regarded the many displays.

“Are the Romulii working on biologics?” Calli asked.

“Of a sort,” Jose Maria said.

Doctor Weng wagged his head, mystified. “Where did the Romulii get the money for this kind of installation?” He sounded envious. It wasn't as if
Merrimack
didn't carry leading edge equipment.

Doctor Sidowski answered, “Evangelicals get limitless funds. Romulus is a god, you know.”

Weng: “Romulus was a loon.”

Romulus had spent most of the reign of Caesar Magnus in exile in Perseid space. There he'd siphoned off every available imperial resource for his own projects. At the time no one would say no to the son of Caesar Magnus. And the colonists in the far arm of the galaxy didn't
want
to say no to him. Romulus threw money around.

Ski: “And never mind the money, how did the loon attract the talent? He has the best scientists and inventors on his team.”

Weng: “Second only to ourselves.”

Ski: “We only got a partial download of the loon's data bank, but this stuff is
amazing
.”

“Romulus always could amaze,” Calli said.

In his reign, Romulus had declared war on the United States. He'd thrown off the Subjugation. He was audacious. He lived like an Olympian—an Olympian god, not an Olympic athlete. No one wanted a meek Caesar.

“What did you find amazing in the recovered data?” Calli asked.

Weng hesitated. “I'm not sure some of this stuff is real.”

“Why? What did you find?”

“It looks like—” Weng started, got stuck, as if what he was about to say was weird and past belief.

Ski: “Go ahead and say it.”

Weng: “They constructed a patterner.”

“The Romulii did?” Calli asked. “No. You're right, Doctor Weng. The Romulii would never.”

“Why?” Jose Maria asked. “Why would they never?”

Weng: “Romulii loathe patterners.”

Ski: “A patterner brought Romulus down.”

“
I
and a patterner brought Romulus down,” said Jose Maria. “What can be more powerful than the weapon that brought your god low? The Romulii not only
would
make a patterner, I postulate they
must
make one.”

“The plus side of that is that patterners tend to think for themselves and to not love their makers,” Calli said. “Did we capture or kill anyone from the facility who has cables hanging out of his neck?”

“No,” Weng said. “And I
did
check every prisoner in the ships we captured. The patterner got away.”

Ski: “If one ever existed.”

“I am convinced that a Romulid patterner does exist,” Jose Maria told Calli. “Captured records indicate that the Romulii modified a Xerxes to accommodate a patterner.”

Ski: “We didn't see a Xerxes leaving the asteroid.”

Weng: “Well, we wouldn't, now would we?”

A Xerxes type ship was known for its perfect stealth. You never detected them.

“Xerxes technology is proprietary, closely guarded, and self-defensive,” Jose Maria said. “Xerxes ships turn notoriously lethal when one tries to reverse engineer them. That said, I do not believe it is beyond the resourcefulness of the Romulii to fit Striker capabilities onto a lawfully acquired Xerxes without provoking its self-defense mechanism.”

Weng: “Never mind the ship. They would need a live person to make into a patterner.”

Ski: “A live person with special requirements. High intellect. Physical vigor.”

“
Most
Romans fit those requirements,” Calli said. Rome bred its citizens for brains, beauty, and brawn. “They could use just about anyone for their victim.”

Ski stammered unintelligibly. Doctor Sidowski became famously inarticulate around Calli Carmel.

Weng answered, hedging, “Uh, sir. We're getting to the unbelievable part here. Doctor Sidowski thinks he might maybe have an idea of who the Romulii might be using as their base human being to construct a patterner.”

Ski blurted, “No. I don't
think
. We
know
exactly who they're using.”

Weng: “We're reasonably sure we know who they might have tried to use.”

Ski: “You won't believe this, Captain.”

“Just give me the report,” Calli said.

Weng and Ski went silent.

Jose Maria said, “The evidence is as compelling as it is unbelievable.”

Calli was already impatient and irritated. Suddenly she was alarmed. “What? Are you telling me they're using
Colonel Steele?”

“No, fair Captain.”

Awareness.

No sense of time passing.

His last memory had been of madness.

It was still there, the madness. It stabbed, flickering, on and off. A torturing impulse, quickly snuffed. It flared back to life. Difficult to think straight. Impossible. Mind screaming. Make it stop.

The ghost came and went.

He wasn't where he had been. He'd been on the papal balcony in the Vatican on Earth.

Father's bloody ghost was suddenly right here.

Gone. Here. Gone.

Romulus sat up slowly. Opened his mouth and tried to speak. Stopped. Dry.

He could not form and hold a single complete thought. He couldn't talk.

Someone was there with a water bottle. Romulus took a sip from it. Sputtered. The bottle fell through his fingers. Splashed at his bare feet. Another water bottle was quickly in his hands, someone helping him hold it.

A voice reached him in his pit of madness. “Caesar. You have nanites in you. They are torturing you. You need to help us cure you.”

He saw the cables in his forearms. Felt them behind his neck.

The voice went on. “We can't get the nanites out of you. You are the only being in the cosmos who can.”

What?
Tried to speak. Didn't get a sound out.

Father's bloody corpse was right there. Then an instant of peace. Immediately the torture returned. Maddening. What were these people saying to him?

“Forgive us, Caesar. All will become clear in a moment.”

Romulus tried to speak.
I don't understand
.

Cables made their connections.

Let there be light
.

He knew.

Knew.

Everything
.

Knowing horrified.

Aghast, violated, mutilated. And yet.

A galaxy of data formed into patterns.

It was all there. Then a tortured stab from the nanites blinded every other thought.

Romulus knew what this meant. What these men wanted him to do.

The
medici
couldn't remove the nanites from him. They could only interrupt them for a moment at a time, then the nanites came back.

It would take a patterner to remove the nanites from Romulus.

So they'd made one.

Me
.

Nanites in his brain triggered the hallucinations and the intense pain. Every time the
medici
's nanites neutralized the demon ones, other nanites resurrected the demons. The demons were difficult to detect. Upon observation, the demon nanites returned a status of nonexistence.

The patterner Romulus knew his enemy now. He knew where the tools he needed were and how to use them. The
medici
had provided an
interface for him to build a cure for himself. He followed the imperative before he could let himself feel outrage for what he'd become.

Get the nanites out. First.

Screaming pain stabbed him.

An instant of clarity.

Jagged flashes reared again, stabbing, scattering his thoughts.

He assembled a program and fed it into his neural network.

Clarity returned. Extended into moments. His breaths evened.

Expectant faces hovered around him.

Romulus was going to demand their names, but he already knew them.

He'd already decided not to kill them. He recognized what they were trying to do.

They'd made him a god.

It hurt, godhood.

He unplugged the cables and inhaled without pain. Without
much
pain. He had a throbbing headache. A rehydrator hissed in his arm.

Nerve and muscle stimulators had kept him from atrophying during his long sleep. His body was toned and sleek as an athlete's.

He straightened his short tunic and set his shoulders proudly back. The faces around him were anxious, amazed, adoring. Terrified.

Then, as a single being with one ringing, passionate voice, all the
medici
saluted him: “Hail, Caesar!”

2 Februarius 2448
Romulid Carrier
Sidonus
Perseid Space

R
OMULUS
SEARCHED
HIS
mind for the
medici
's names. He'd just had them. He didn't remember them now. A moment ago he'd known everything.

Knowing faded. He'd been omniscient just a heartbeat before now.

He'd had answers. The answers escaped.

He took a few breaths. His mind was clear. So what happened to everything he just knew?

He remembered—only because he'd learned about patterners years ago—that whatever knowledge he acquired while he was in patterner mode didn't stay with him. He retained only fragments after he disconnected. Old knowledge he did retain. And he knew that he'd just come out of an induced coma.

“How long?” Romulus asked. His voice croaked.

“A year, Caesar.”

“What happened to me?”

“Nanites. Specifically programmed.”

“From where?”

“The patterner Augustus.”

Romulus shook his head. That couldn't be right. “Augustus is dead.”
He remembered that. Farragut shot Augustus in the war. “Augustus was dead before this happened to me.”

“True, Caesar. But before that, Augustus created nanites programmed specifically to target you. He passed them to someone else to deliver to the Vatican. The nanites lay dormant, waiting for you to touch them.”

“And his accomplice was?”

“Jose Maria Rafael Meridia de Cordillera.”

“Ah. The saintly Terra Rican. I shall want him dead,” Romulus said, as if making a to-do list. “A saintly death. The war?”

“Over. As soon as you fell.”

“We were victorious,” Romulus assumed.

The voice was careful. “No, Caesar.”

“We
lost!
” Romulus started forward. Nearly blacked out. He caught himself.

“No, Caesar. We didn't lose. The war just . . . stopped.”

“We control Earth?” Romulus asked. He braced himself for the worst.

And got it. “No, Caesar.”

“My troops?”

“Our armed forces have withdrawn from Earth. But there are still a million true Romans on planet who can be called to duty.”

“Who is administering my Empire?”

“Numa Pompeii.”

Of course it would be Numa. “He presides over the Senate?”

There was a pained pause.

“He styles himself Caesar,” said the lead
medicus
. His name was Xavier. Xavier coughed. He added belatedly, “Caesar.”

“Well,” Romulus said, more to himself than to anyone else.

Xavier said, “We needed to rescue you from Numa's custody to bring you here.”

“And where is here?”

“On board your loyal carrier
Sidonus
. Headed to Near Space.”

“Headed to Near Space from where?”

“We—we loyal followers of the true Caesar—we had an installation in Perseid space. We were raided by a United States space battleship. We got you out only just in time. This is not the reception we intended for you.”

Romulus' brow knotted. “Why are the United States attacking Roman soil if the war is over?”

“The United States don't recognize us as the true Rome. Anyone openly loyal to you has been branded traitor and subversive. That makes us a legitimate target under their kangaroo international law.”

“The only law is Rome,” Romulus said.

“Many Romans don't recognize us as the true Rome. They mistakenly follow Numa Pompeii.”

“They will be educated,” Romulus said. And his next breath brought the most important question, the question to which they must not be without the right answer. “Where is Claudia?”

2 Februarius 2448
Roman Battlefort
Gladiator
Perseid Space
FTL

Caesar Numa Pompeii's colossal mobile palace, Fortress Aeyrie, raced back to Near Space at threshold velocity. Caesar wasn't in it.

Numa Pompeii fled the gaudy trappings, silk sheets, and hovering servants to take point in his warship,
Gladiator.

Gladiator
was a battlefort, stark, solid, brutal. On board it, Numa wore ancient battle dress. It was uncomfortable. The Empire was at peace. Numa Pompeii was at war.

He rued the loss of Romulus. Not a loss as in a death. The death of Romulus would be a happy event. No, this was the kind of loss that meant no one whose job it was to know could tell Caesar Almighty where the mad traitor Romulus was.

As much as Numa wanted to dismiss Romulus as a cartoon clown unworthy of his imperial attention, the cold fact was that Romulus had a rabid following. Romulus' name could mobilize hundreds of millions of people. Even comatose, Romulus was dividing Numa's Empire.

War unites. I rule a peace.

Once a nation attained peace, dissatisfaction settled in quickly. Romulus had run Rome like a pyramid scheme. Conquests kept cash flowing to pay his bottomless pit of debt. Now Numa was to blame for every fault and
inconvenience in the Empire because he was at the helm
now
. It was left for him to restore power and water and communication services to all the colonies. One is never thanked for such things. The service is simply expected.

When Romulus had declared war on the United States of America, Numa had thought him mad. The move was looking brilliant now. Rome really needed to be at war. Deadly enemies were what held people together. Once the outside threats were gone, the people started on each other. And then they'd come after their leader.

The tedium of postwar rebuilding cast a golden glow over memories of Rome ascendant. Romans longed for the old days and might think to resurrect the man who could bring it all back.

Numa had been two steps behind Romulus at every turn.

Enough!

He drove his fist into the bulkhead and sent a giant bronze scarab cricket flying and buzzing.

Numa calmed himself. Fortunately, he knew Romulus' Achilles heel.

“Where is Claudia?” Numa demanded of his adjutant.

“With respect, Caesar, who cares?”

“Romulus does.
Ergo
, I do. Romulus loves Claudia as much as he loves himself. And for those of you not paying attention, that is a vast amount of love.” He thundered to shake Mount Olympus, “
Find Claudia!”

TR Steele opened his eyes. He saw Roman eagles over him and reached for a weapon that wasn't on him. Tried to reach. His arms were shackled.

The face moved into view over him. Steele tried not to gasp. His hands formed themselves into fists.

The voice sounded, a loathed mellow baritone.

“Rest, gladiator. You are not ready for the arena. You will go in the ring. You will fight. Yes, I saw that. I can read your face. And you're wrong. You will fight, Adamas, or I shall have your wife killed.”

Steele felt his face go slack in shock. He couldn't hide it.

The voice went on. “I know that secret. Know this, Adamas. Unless you fight in the arena, I will have the same loyal Roman who delivered you to me execute your wife. Is her name really Kerry Blue? I thought that was a breed of dog.”

15 March 2448
U.S. Space Battleship
Merrimack
Perseid Space
FTL

Kerry Blue. Flying solo. They called her the Blue Widow because most people didn't believe the Old Man could still be alive. Kerry Blue said he was.

Kerry Blue's hair was brown. Ought to be some kind of lyrical poetic color name for it, but it was just brown. Like mice or wood ashes. Real poetry. It brushed the tops of her wide shoulders when she wore it loose, which wasn't often enough.

Breasts. She had them. Not big, but there. Cain Salvador was too aware that they were there under that girene green jumpsuit.

She had a long waist, hips that flared out girl-style, and a tight ass with girl upholstery Cain shouldn't even be thinking about.

Kerry had strong legs, with a feminine version of muscles that were just too fetching and cute to be called muscles if you want to be honest about it. She had a loose walk, as light on her feet as a Marine can be in jump boots.

Kerry Blue had more suitors than Penelope, even though she hadn't a clue who Penelope was. Cain Salvador had been entrusted with keeping the troops in line. Cain was acting CO of the half bat on board this boat. Cain Salvador was desperate to get Colonel Steele back. Steele may as well have ordered the wolf to walk Red Riding Hood to grandma's house.

Cain revered Steele like a father. Loved him like a brother.

Cain watched over Kerry Blue with the true-blue ferocity of the family bull mastiff.

The Old Man trusted Cain to take care of her.

Trouble was, Cain really really really wanted to care for Kerry Blue.

Merrimack
was tearing back to Near Space at threshold velocity. No one was saying why. Cain hoped it was war.

Cain had the men running laps around the decks, climbing the sails, top hatch to bottom hatch. He ran them limp. That was the idea. He ran harder than anyone. And still some impulses were immune to exhaustion.

* * *

Cain Salvador walked in on Kerry Blue in the hydroponic garden. She was visiting her plant lizard. It lived here.

Her green pet was perched on her shoulder when Cain stepped through the hatch into the soft green compartment. Kerry moved a webby foot off her face to see who came in.

“Oh.”

Kerry's cheeks turned bright red. Kerry Blue didn't ever blush.

And how did it suddenly get so frogging hot in here?

“You gonna run us again?” Kerry Blue said. “I'm not doin' it. You can brig me.”

“I'm not gonna brig you.”

“I'm not running no more laps. I'm not doin' it.”

“I'm not making you run laps.”

“No? Then what?”

Cain waved his arm around at the fruits and vegetables. “Sometimes I just like to walk through the green shit. Lord Almighty, Blue, why is your weed humming?”

Her plant lizard was singing. Okay, it was yodeling.

“No reason,” said Kerry Blue.

Cain stepped in closer. He lifted his hand. To the lizard. “I've never heard it hum.”