Strength and Honor

Copyright © 2008 by R. M. Meluch.

All Rights Reserved.

Covert art by Stephan Martiniere.

DAW Book Collectors No. 1455.

DAW Books are distributed by the Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

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First Paperback Printing, November 2009

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Prologue

^C
AESAR MAGNUS DESERVED
to die.

Caesar Magnus was dead. The assassin was dead.

So did anyone really give a rat’s aft if someone else may have been involved in the killing of Caesar?

Even if that
someone
might have been Caesar’s own son?

Even if that son had assumed the role of the new Caesar?

Either the thought of a patricide leading an interstellar empire did not horribly unsettle the Senate and People of Rome or else denial simply served them better, because the Senate did not challenge the legitimacy of the new Caesar, and the People loved him.

Suspicion was after all only suspicion. Other than possibly murdering his own father, the new Caesar was a damn fine Caesar.

In his very new reign, young Caesar Romulus had already beaten down the monstrous Hive threat to a shred of its former terror. Only a whimpering presence of Hive remained deep in the Deep End of the galaxy. Hundreds of light-years and many American settlements stood between the remains of the Hive and the nearest Roman target. It would be a long, long time before the Hive threatened a Roman outpost again.

Caesar Romulus summoned home all Roman forces that were serving under U.S. command. Let the Americans deal with what remained of the Hive. It was no longer a Roman concern.

Caesar Romulus renounced Rome’s surrender to the United States.

Caesar Romulus expelled the Americans from the Roman planet Thaleia, and reinstalled Thaleia’s orbiting sentinels. He staged a spectacular bombing of the Triumphal Arch which his father, Caesar Magnus, had constructed on Thaleia in honor of the American John Farragut, Captain of the U.S. space battleship
Merrimack.

On the Roman capital world of Palatine, Caesar Romulus redesigned the Monument to the Conciliation. The original monument featured an enormous golden eagle soaring wingtip to wingtip with a bald eagle, like two great powers flying in perfect accord.

In Romulus’ reworked monument, the bald eagle cowered on its back under the claws of the diving golden eagle. “Here,” said Romulus, “let all humanity know that the Conciliation was a fraud. Here is what Rome really thinks of Pax Americana.”

On an interstellar broadcast, for all the known region of the galaxy to witness, Caesar Romulus broke the spears of Subjugation under his own heel.

For that alone, many Romans called for Romulus’ deification.

Too savvy a politician to accept divine honors, Romulus expressed gratitude at the depth of his People’s regard, but said, “You cannot vote someone to godhood.” And that only increased his popularity.

Romulus could do no wrong.

Magnus had already done it all.

Back in the desperate days when the Hive decimated Rome’s mighty legions, desperation led Caesar Magnus to surrender to the United States. The surviving remnants of the Roman armed forces were placed under U.S. command.

With Rome’s second worst enemy engaged against Rome’s most pressing threat, Rome found a chance to rebuild its shattered forces in secret.

While the U.S. carried the greater weight of the common defense against the Hive, Romulus organized the rebuilding of Rome’s armed forces on the empire’s most distant worlds that lay in the opposite direction from the Hive incursion. He’d started that even before the assassination of Caesar Magnus.

Upon declaration of victory against the Hive, Romulus, now Caesar, unveiled his empire’s new battleships.

He paraded his new legions up the Via Triumphalis on Palatine. The legions were very new. Many of the legionaries’ voices had not changed yet. They were full of youthful fire, rabid to reclaim Rome’s crushed pride, eager and ruthless as only children could be.

Lost on the proud new warriors was that Rome could not have achieved all this had Magnus not surrendered Rome to the U.S. No one would thank him for it.

Romulus had also organized the manufacture of a new generation of killer bots. Automated factories on far worlds in the Perseid arm of the galaxy had been churning out killer bots by the hundred thousand per earthly month.

The Americans never suspected it was happening. Automated weapons were worse than useless against the Hive. Machine minds could be turned against their makers. There was no reason to think Rome could be rebuilding its fleets of killer bots.

Romulus had been looking to the future.

Because of his foresight, Romulus’ empire could face the Americans from a position of power, not subservience, when the common enemy collapsed.

There were vicious, jealous whispers that Romulus had killed his father.

Well, he hadn’t. There was a recording of the event. Everyone saw the deed. That was not Romulus’ hand you saw holding the pen that plunged into Caesar’s eye. Whispers said Romulus drove the assassin to it. But no true Roman needed any pushing to kill Magnus.

There was scarcely a citizen in Rome’s interstellar empire willing to look too closely for bones in the closet of a Caesar who accomplished everything Romulus had done for them.

But there was one. A Roman who could not allow Magnus Caesar’s death to go unavenged for any reason.

He was programmed not to.

Magnus’ patterner had a deeply encoded imperative to defend Rome to his last breath and beyond that. To the patterner, Caesar was Rome. And Magnus was his Caesar.

Patterners were dangerous creations, short-lived and difficult. Difficult to create, difficult to maintain, tricky to control. It was dangerous to put that much power into a thing with a mostly human brain.

Only nine of them had ever been successfully assembled. Caesar Romulus did not know it, but the last patterner was still alive. The patterner Augustus had belonged to Caesar Magnus. Augustus was out there. And he did not suspect Romulus of involvement in his father’s murder. He
knew.

PART ONE
Off the Deep End

If anything’s gonna happen, it’ll happen on the Hamster watch.

—proverb on board
Merrimack

1

^L
IEUTENANT GLENN (HAMSTER)
Hamilton was Officer of the Watch when the Emergency Action Message came in.

She passed the EAM to the cryptotech for confirmation, and immediately paged John Farragut on his personal com. “Captain’s presence requested on the command deck.”

Captain Farragut’s voice came back, “What’s this about?”

An instant’s blank panic showed on Hamster’s face. The captain was often in Roman company. Hamster could not afford to explain. She answered quickly, “Gypsy’s hair.” And immediately clicked off.

She stood over the com, feeling the eyes of the command deck upon her. With her eyes set dead ahead, she spoke to anyone in range of her quiet voice, “If what I just said gets back to Commander Dent, every man jack and jane on this deck will walk the plank.” And she took the com back up, “Commander Dent, your presence is requested on the command deck.”

The lieutenant had not requested speed from either the captain or the exec. She did not want to sound alarmed. And the captain was going to arrive like a missile anyway.

John Farragut blew through the hatch to the command deck like a gust of fair wind, wearing the sky blue uniform of ship’s captain.

One of the Marine guards at the hatch announced, “Captain on deck.”

Farragut’s presence announced itself. He was a big man, fair-haired, blue-eyed, an irresistible force. Energy radiated from him. Nearly forty years old now, he kept the bright enthusiasm of a boy.

Captain John Farragut had lately been Commodore Farragut, but that had been a field promotion and temporary. His Attack Group One had disbanded after fulfilling its purpose. The two League of Earth Nations ships of the Attack Group had stayed behind at Planet Zero. The U.S. ships
Rio Grande
and
Wolfhound
were headed back to Fort Eisenhower. And the two Roman ships
Gladiator
and
Horatius
that had been under Farragut’s command separated out on orders from Caesar Romulus.

The space battleship
Merrimack
remained alone in very deep space, in orbit around the dead world Telecore.

Telecore had begun life as a Roman colony. Before anyone had ever heard of the Hive, the Romans built a secret outpost on the planet to outflank American expansion in the Sagittarian arm of the galaxy.

Telecore had ended life consumed by the Hive, The Hive was a great soulless evil that existed only to eat. What the Romans planted on Telecore, the Hive came to reap.