Strength and Honor (18 page)

Gladiator
separated. The tendrils stretched, snapped. The ship’s seals closed. The force field solidified.

Five. Four.

Gladiator
wore away faster than light.

“Abort! Abort!” Calli ordered. “Shut down destruct sequence!”

Three. Two.

“Destruct sequence terminated, aye.”

Calli took no moment to relax, already barking, “Load Star Sparrow! Target
Gladiator! Hit him!”
“Star Sparrow loaded, aye. Acquiring firing solution.”

“Fire when ready!”

“Star Sparrow away.”
Gladiator
launched a missile rearward to meet the Star Sparrow and detonate its warhead before it could catch up.

Numa Pompeii ceded Sirius Base to the Americans.

Captain Calli Carmel boarded Base Sirius. She was a tall woman, thinner than she had been, and she had always been slender. Her new scalp produced an uneven thatch of something that passed for hair. The new hair was thinner and several shades lighter than her former luxurious chestnut locks. She cut her new hair very short because it would not grow right and she did not have time to screw with it.

She asked after the wounded and after any damage to the station.

Snapped ends of
Wolfhound’s
snares hung out the large breach which the Romans had cut in the station’s bulkhead. The force field had resealed upon
Gladiator’s
separation and kept everything inside intact. The stationmaster had already summoned a patch crew.

“You sounded dead serious back there, Captain Carmel,” the stationmaster said, shaky with relief. Calli’s dead silence said how dead and how serious she had been.

“How did you know he would back off, Captain?”

“He left,” said Calli.

“I mean, how did you know he
would
leave?”

“That’s when I knew.”

The stationmaster grew angry. “You would have—?”

Calli cut him off. “You can’t go into a game of Russian roulette without accepting that one of those chambers
does
have a round in it.”

Outraged, the stationmaster asked, “You play?”

“Only when the stakes are worth dying for,” said Calli.

Base Sirius sent a request to the Department of Defense: Next time we signal for help, don’t send
Wolfhound.

There was not going to be a next time. The showdown at Base Sirius had proved the vulnerability of these lone outposts.

The Department of Defense ordered the immediate evacuation, dismantlement, and booby-trapping of all space stations outside of a fortress. Solo orbital stations were all hostages waiting to be taken.

“I will be accepting requests for transfer in my cabin,” said Captain Carmel, preparing to leave the command deck of her ship,
Wolfhound,
which had just disconnected from Base Sirius.

A round of snorts circled the command deck, and a chorus of raspberries sounded over the intracom from engineering—what her crew thought of her offer to take their transfers.

There was a stark sincerity to the juvenile noises. They left no doubt that Calli’s men were still her men, every man jack and jane of them.

A proto-smile jerked at her lips. “That’s so sweet,” said Calli, struggling to keep her eyes from puddling up. “The name of this boat ain’t
Lapdog,
Captain,” said Lieutenant Amina Patel.

According to Amina, anyone who did not know what the captain was about after the battle at the Citadel musta gotten a legal separation from his brain.
Wolfhound
already had a berserker reputation, and her captain was called Crash Carmel for some reason or other.

Her com tech gloated, “Did you see the look on Pompeii’s face when he saw you, Captain?” It hadn’t occurred to Calli that Numa might not have known what she looked like after his attack on her shuttle. She had quickly gotten used to being behind this face.

“Yeah,” said Calli softly.

She gave the watch over to her lieutenant and left the command platform because she thought she was about to throw up.

Calli returned to her cabin. Looked in the mirror.

Is that what it took? she wondered. Get your face flamed off to get respect? Or did Numa Pompeii think she became “hysterical” because he ruined her looks? Is that what it came down to?

She turned the mirror over. Did not care what Numa Pompous Ass thought of her. Just glad he had believed her.

She had cared very much which choice Numa made. Even though she had wanted him dead, he made the choice she really wanted.

There was a buzzing in her hands, as if her pulse had sped up a hundred times. She swallowed down nausea. She had come very close to killing a lot of people today, half of them friendly.

Watched her hands shake. She lay down, closed her eyes. Weathering the aftershocks. She had won. She could kill Numa later.

12

^R
OMAN ATTACK CRAFT HAD
returned to the American skies, nagging as wasps.

Romulus’ three surviving new gunships had not been sighted again in the Solar system. They had not just dissolved, so they must be somewhere the U.S. truly did not want them.

Monitor
patrolled the Solar system, actively hunting for them.

Plagues of unmanned fighter craft in Earth’s atmosphere harried U.S. military installations. The Roman craft could not penetrate the military base’s force fields, but they interfered with deliveries of supplies, and with personnel coming and going.

Defenders destroyed them, but others arrived from hidden carriers to take their places without delay.

John Farragut arrived at Fort Carolina under a swarm of them. It had required his entire Marine Wing to get him inside the force field dome.

He had come to hear the admiralty discussing the status of the conflict.

This war had been nothing but unconventional. Romans always knew how to reinvent war. Hiding one’s true objective was not new, but Romulus was inscrutable—though a lot of people expressed a desire to scrut him.

Rome had not been able to stop U.S. imports and exports. The United States was a member of the League of Earth Nations. Anything could enter or exit the United States as long as a ship of a League of Earth Nation member carried it.

There were constant alarms from U.S. colonies across Near Space. None amounted to more than a cry of wolf, probably started by the wolf. Rome was trying to make the Americans scatter their resources.

As for Romulus’ objective in declaring this war, he was keeping that to himself. Unless he was hiding in plain sight.

“Could Caesar seriously—seriously—mean to annex the United States to the Roman Empire?” the Secretary of Defense put it to the admiralty.

“He would be mad,” said one.

“So was Hitler,” said Admiral Mishindi. “Did not make him less dangerous.”

The Secretary recognized Captain Farragut who wanted to speak. Farragut stood up, said, “Augustus told me America was a Roman colony.”

“Not seriously,” said the Secretary.

“Augustus,” said Farragut, “was serious.”

“Is the patterner still alive, Captain Farragut?”

“He was way too alive last I saw him, sir.”

“But now?”

Farragut shook his head. “I don’t know.” A Striker had a higher threshold velocity than
Gladiator.
“He should have arrived in Near Space before Numa Pompeii if he were coming.”
So I guess it’s starting to look like not.

Captain Farragut walked under a sky of Carolina blue streaked with contrails. Sunlight shimmered slightly through the distortion field.

He sighted a tall willow walking with an easy stride under the Carolina dome, a veteran certainty in her gait. Her strong slender figure made even dressdown khakis look good. Her face tended toward the elfin. Her skin was baby smooth, but she couldn’t be that young, not with a walk like that. Her short hair was a sassy mess of nothing but cowlicks.

Farragut moved in to stride beside her. “I feel like I should know you.” He reached across himself to offer his hand. “John Farragut.”

Her long-fingered, baby-smooth hand slid into his grasp. “Hi John. I’m Calli Carmel.”

His blue eyes grew huge. He pulled her into him with a great bear hug, held onto her. “Oh, for Jesus!” Rocked her. “Oh, for Jesus.”

“I guess I look awful,” said Calli over his broad shoulder.

“No,” he choked.

She caught the chagrin in his voice. “Right.” She pulled back to look at him. “John, you look like you’ve been hit in the face with a wet cat.”

“Well, I might. It’s like I just got caught flirting with my sister!” She had been in his chain of command so long he could not think of her as anything but one of his sisters. She blinked in delighted surprise. Spoke, tickled, “You were flirting with me?”

His face turned an honest pink. He fished about for a subject to change to. “How do you like the Yankees’ chances in the Series this year?”

“Don’t you try to take it back, John Farragut. I don’t look in mirrors much.”

“It’s not bad at all, Cal. It’s cute. It’s just really,
really
different.”

The face was heart shaped, less symmetrical than it used to be when she had been Helen of Troy. The jawline was altogether different. The nose shorter, pert. Eyes light brown. An attractive face with a powerful life force behind it.

“It’s a field job,” said Calli. “Uncle Sam special. They were talking about six weeks to get me into a specialized clinic and re-create what I used to look like, and lots of over the budget money that I am not spending on a
face.
I told ‘em gimme the off-the-shelf jaw, stick in whatever eyeballs you got on hand, slap a nose on me and get me back in service. There’s a war on.”

John Farragut held her hands in his. They were her same full-sized hands but with no lines whatsoever, and her nails were thin—the pliant nails of a little girl. Calli said, “Aren’t they ridiculous?”

“It’s good to see you with skin on, Cal.” He kissed her ridiculous fingertips. Took her face, kissed both her baby soft cheeks, her brow, her mouth. Pulled back, ran his hand over the fuzzy top of her head. “What’s with the hair?”

“I don’t know, John. I think it’s on strike. I never realized how
heavy
all that was. I may never grow it back.”

“I heard your buddy Numa finally made it back to Near Space.”

“You heard that,” said Calli wryly.

“Just a little almighty furball at Base Sirius.”

“No furball,” said Calli. “I told him to leave and he left.”

Farragut had heard the details. “Dumb, Cal. Don’t do that again.”

“I probably won’t have to. Apparently I’ve established myself as a real DNFW.”

Do Not Foxtrot With.

“I don’t guess nobody’s fixin’ to be asking you to dance this war,” said Farragut.

“I hope not,” said Calli. “Between you, me, and the brick wall, I don’t have another one of those stunts in me. I just hope I’ve built up enough psycho capital to carry me through to the end.”

“I’m sorry about Gaius Americanus,” Farragut told her. He had heard the news of her mentor’s passing.

Calli’s new face fell, more reflective than mournful. Her eyes were down, her brow pinched. She did not seem sad. “I was sorry to hear that too.” Spoken too carefully.

He picked up her intonation. “What do you know, Cal?”

“I don’t—” she started, paused very long. Lifted her head.”—
know.”

He listened carefully to what she was not telling him. They had both seen too many dead people walking around on their hind legs these days to trust an obit. Unless you saw the body, you did not really
know.
And even then you checked it for DNA.

Calli said, “I want Numa dead. And I don’t even care who does it. Romulus can plant him on a pike and that would be good for me.”

“The guy who actually flamed you and Gaius was Praefect Rubius Siculus.” Calli nodded. She had been told. “I uffed him over pretty good,” she said with some regret.

“You saved his life.”

She remembered that moment with stinging clarity. “I didn’t do him a favor.”

She had saved Rubius Siculus from a disaster of her own making, and she had killed Romans under his command in the process.

Rubius Siculus hated her. Had a right to. He had probably died happy thinking he had killed her. And that was okay with Calli. She had never hated him. He had just been there.

But it could not have been Rubius Siculus’ private vendetta that brought him to Fort Eisenhower, a voyage of months, to lurk there in the darkness outside the fortress, alone, for time without measure, waiting for someone at long last to come out. Rubius Siculus had to be under orders.

“We never did catch the ship that executed the diversion,” Farragut told her, apologetic.

“Oh, I know who that was,” Calli said. “Rubius Siculus was always under Numa Pompeii’s command. This is Numa Pompeii’s work.”

Farragut signed time out. “If it was Numa, why didn’t he just let Gaius come aboard
Gladiator
and slit his throat?”

“He wanted to take me out too,” said Calli.

“You weren’t the target, Cal.”

She seemed insulted. “My being there was a
coincidence!”

“It would be an odd universe without coincidences. Yes. You were collateral and you know it.”

That stopped her.

She did know it.

Organizing a hit on Calli did not fit Numa Pompeii’s practiced disdain. Numa was her nemesis, but she had never been hated by him. She was too far beneath him ever to be a rival, or worthy of a plot of any sort.

Numa did not give her any more thought than to toss an insult her way if she crossed his path. “He could have killed you way back at Planet Zero,” said Farragut. “But it was Numa who called Gaius out of the fort.” Calli gave her last best argument.

“Gaius could have said no to Numa. But sooner or later Gaius was coming out. And however he came out, whenever he came out, someone would still be camped out and waiting for him. It just happened to be Numa who gave the opening. Whoever ordered the hit had the money to buy off a station Intelligence officer who could tell him exactly when and how Gaius was leaving the fort. He had military resources to deploy at least two ships in the Deep End to make sure the deed got done.”