The Last Roman (Praetorian Series - Book One) (17 page)

I gave him a doubtful look. “That doesn’t seem very
likely considering what we’ve seen from these guys so far.”

He shrugged. “We know the Russians have been
supplying terrorist cells with some of their fancy new equipment.
It wouldn’t surprise me if they could block our satellite
uplinks.”

I didn’t have much time to think on it when the door
leading upstairs began to shake.

So much for our “safe” house. I glanced at Santino.
He rolled his eyes, retrieved his HK416, and helped me pile the
containers for use as barricades. We stacked them three high and
two wide, enough for about ten feet in length and five feet high of
coverage. We piled them around McDougal’s inert form, and dragged
Helena next to him. Those of us who could, took up positions behind
the containers, and trained our guns on the narrow door.

And we waited.

I had to give these terrorist bastards some credit,
because they were patient and had themselves some style. Instead of
merely beating down the door, they used a directional explosive to
direct the force of the blast towards us, but we were ready for
them. We had decent cover and the additional protection of our
electronic ear buds. The little devices allowed ambient noise to
flow through the eardrum, but as soon as they detected any sudden
deafening noise, would activate to block it from entering the ear.
The end result was a few seconds of slight deafness until the
filters allowed sound to flow through again, but alleviated any
symptoms of distortion that would occur from an explosion.

When the bad guys set of their charge, we shrugged
them off as though nothing happened. Then they started to pour
through. One after the other, they came through the door only to
get mowed down by precision shooting, and hails of gunfire from
Bordeaux’s big ass gun. Ammo wasn’t an issue anymore.
Theoretically, we had enough to kill a million of them if we wanted
to.

Hopefully, we wouldn’t have to.

There were lulls in the battle when either Bordeaux
or Vincent would chuck a grenade through the door and force the bad
guys to either run or be killed. We timed it so that we had fresh
magazines in place before they came back for more. Occasionally,
the enemy would lob their own grenades, but our containers were
bullet proof and could easily handle shrapnel from second hand
grenades. Especially ones that probably began their lives in some
shady Russian manufacturing plant. I’m surprised none of them went
off in their hands, but so many had been exchanged at this point,
maybe I missed one that had.

We were lucky none of them actually looked before
they threw their grenades. Most landed in front of the containers
and the rest fell harmlessly enough that we just kicked them away.
I still managed to get nicked in the leg with a glancing piece of
shrapnel when I covered Helena from a grenade that went off on top
of our barricade. Most of the team took a piece of something here
and there. But we were holding. Hopefully for not much longer,
because we had to counterattack and get the hell out of here
fast.

Twenty minutes into the firefight, it got to the
point where their dead provided extra coverage in front of our
barricade. Their bodies also littered the stairs, and blocked the
doorway. We were about to try the radio again, when our prisoner
decided to wake up. It must have taken him awhile to fully regain
consciousness, but all of us were too distracted to notice. Still
tied, he got up and made his way to the bag Santino had put his
glowing ball in. It wasn’t until he took the ball out, and the blue
light illuminated the room that I noticed him.

Ball in hands, he lifted it high over his head,
staring right at me.

“With this device, the servants of Allah will
finally…”

A stray bullet from the enemy upstairs nailed him
between the eyes. He fell to his knees, eyes rolling into the back
of his head, dead before he hit the floor.

I caught Santino’s eye and he smiled at me.

As Abdullah’s body crumpled to the floor, the sphere
fell from his hands and rolled in my direction. I was immediately
enticed by its glow as I watched it roll closer. Its allure grew as
it thudded against my boot. Staring down at it, I saw clouds swirl
from within like the epicenter of a hurricane, revealing a cavern
filled with men dressed in white robes kneeling reverently. An
additional lone figure stood in the background, clearly not a part
of the group.

Unable to contain my desire to reach for the orb, I
bent over and picked it up in my gloved left hand. I barely noticed
the bullets whizzing their way past my head as I peered ever
closer. I couldn’t discern any details from the images within, nor
were they overly interesting. They appeared as a still photo would
and were grainier than a photograph from the 1940s, yet I couldn’t
take my eyes off them. Like the blaze of a fire or the steady drip
of a leaky faucet, for some reason I was entranced by what I was
seeing.

With my right index finger, the only finger not
covered by my gloves, I poked at the sphere. My hand moved without
thought, without conviction, but it moved all the same. The globe
felt soft, despite its hard façade, made out of a material
completely foreign to me and I felt my finger begin to push through
the surface. At this point I was completely oblivious to the sounds
of battle raging on around me. All I could think about was the
silky surface of the sphere and how I knew I had to probe deeper.
Buried to the second knuckle, my finger suddenly felt resistance,
then, a tugging sensation. It was gentle at first, but soon became
very persistent, steadily pulling my finger inside. It wasn’t long
before my entire hand was submerged in the sphere.

That’s when I started to panic.

I didn’t feel any pain at first, but when the
tugging stopped, my eyes widened in terror at what I somehow knew
was coming. It was the calm before the storm. In one instantaneous
moment, all the insanity occurring around me became nothing, before
becoming something again. The globe instantaneously sucked the
entire room inside out in one fell swoop, taking everything with it
in a brilliant blue explosion. The dead bodies, my friends, the
containers, even the staircase. It was the single most nauseating
experience of my life. More so than the roller coasters as a kid,
the weekend drinking binges during college, or the life threatening
rolling truck little more than an hour ago. It was the same with
the pain. Unlike anything I’ve ever felt, or dreamed I could have
felt, it was if my very soul was being ripped from my body only to
be stitched back together, piece by piece.

I fell to the floor and felt my muscles
automatically clench in the vain hope of staving off the pain. My
body tried too little, too late. My eyes stung, my mouth parched,
my brain fried, my stomach churned, my bowls threatened to do
something I’d soon regret, and every shred of my being seemed to be
on fire.

But, just as the pain began, which seemed like a
million years ago, it just as quickly ended. It was gone. In the
blink of an eye, the most unimaginable pain I’ve ever experienced
rescinded to nothing and even the memory of what it had felt like
was quickly fading.

I blinked my eyes.

We were in a cavern, a big one, with dead bodies
littered all over the place. Before I could take in more of my
surroundings, the stair case behind me collapsed and fell to
pieces. My first thought was to make sure Helena was all right. I
struggled to my knees and felt her neck for a pulse. It was steady,
and her breathing was normal, but even though she was drugged
before the transition, the painful reentry jarred her awake. Her
eyes fluttered open and slowly focused on me.

“What happened?” she asked weakly, before going
under again.

“I have no idea,” I responded to myself.

Santino was already on his feet, eyes darting back
and forth, looking for a way out. He noticed I was also conscious
and helped me up to survey the area together. I was looking at the
pile of corpses in front of us when he poked me in the arm. I
turned to see him staring in the other direction.

“What…” I started to say just as I noticed what he
was looking at. What I saw couldn’t be real. I was looking at the
same group of toga wearing men I had seen through the orb. They
were in the same semicircle I saw before, all kneeling in our
direction. And they all seemed just as surprised as we were.

Santino and I exchanged glances, but it wasn’t long
before he couldn’t help but say something.

“Togas?” He asked, peering at the men. “So, where’s
the keg?”

Part Two

V

Rome

Location: Unknown

Date: Unknown

“So. Jacob.” Santino said offhandedly. “Want to fill
me in on what the fuck you just did?”

I looked at him, his expression a reflection of my
own.

Neither one of us had any idea what was going
on.

The faces of the men arrayed before us were likewise
confused. They seemed more shocked than frightened, but where I
knew we could take them in a fight, they didn’t seem so sure. Not
surprising considering these men were no taller than five and a
half feet, and were wearing what looked like togas, compared to us
in our body armor. Even Wang stood above the men, and he was the
smallest of us all. He was still working on McDougal and Helena, as
Bordeaux and Vincent joined Santino and me.

“Who are they?” Bordeaux asked.

“I can’t even begin to guess,” Vincent said,
squinting carefully at the men, “but, as odd as this may sound,
they’re dressed like ancient Romans.”

Well, they were wearing togas. Just like the ones
worn by thousands of college students every year at the ever
popular “toga party”. But these were different somehow, more
genuine, used, and worn in. There was a thick stretch of purple,
about three inches wide, running down the main opening seam on two
men’s togas. If these people really were Romans, even though I knew
they couldn’t possibly be, that could signify a number of things.
Certain kinds of magistrates, I couldn’t remember which, or maybe
augurs, ridiculous sight seers who determined a man’s fate based on
whether or not it was an eagle or a crow that took a shit on
you.

I shook my head. Roman fashion hadn’t been my forte.
Besides, this wasn’t really happening. We couldn’t possibly be
standing in the presence of ancient Romans. There had to be a
perfectly reasonable explanation for this. There always was.

Right?

Maybe... maybe Santino was right, and we somehow
happened into a college toga party in the middle of Syria. What
other explanation could there be? I knew I couldn’t be dreaming. If
I was, I’m pretty damn sure ancient Romans wouldn’t be here, or
Santino, and Helena would either be naked or wearing something
slutty and certainly wouldn’t be unconscious.

I tried to think.

I did touch that glowing ball thing, whatever that
was. But how could that have caused all this? I could barely
remember what it had even done at this point, even though I
remember that I should be remembering something. Even if I believed
it somehow had something to do with this, that meant we just found
a glowing, blue time machine.

As stupid as that sounds.

Only one way to find out. Plan B. If it failed, at
least we’ll be able to pick up a beer pong game or two.

“Vincent, I’m going to try something, back me
up.”

“What are you…?”

I unslung my rifle and handed it off to Bordeaux,
whose jaw hung limp in its sockets. Cautiously, I approached the
men with my hands up. Thinking back to my old Latin classes, I did
the best I could.

“
Meus animus et summus
pacis.”

Yeesh. Was I really that rusty?”

I believe I said, “Me friend and we are peace.” I
always got tripped up on those damn endings. Hopefully, it was
close enough to get the message across. Sure, it relied on these
guys actually being Romans, or at least a classically oriented
fraternity, neither of which seemed overly plausible, but what else
could I do?

The “Romans/frat boys” looked at each other, perhaps
wondering who this barbarian was butchering their language, perhaps
wondering where the nearest bikinis-only jello fight was. I
wouldn’t blame them on the language issue. Speaking Latin is harder
than it seems. It’s a dead language for a reason, and while it may
be used daily in medical and law professions, its conversational
usage went extinct centuries before I was born.

I just hope I got the point across.

One of the men stood up, and after glancing at his
partners, said, “
Salve
.”

“Hello.”

My jaw dropped.

“Speak English?” I asked hopefully, to no
response.

“
Parlez-vous Français
?” Bordeaux offered, to even more blank
expressions.

Damn.
They
were
Romans. Or maybe a Latin club? I shook my head and
looked over at Vincent, his expression likewise in shock. I caught
his eye, still not believing my own ears. “I guess you’re going to
have to talk to them, Vincent. My Latin is beyond rusty. I’ll see
how the Major is.”

“I’ll do my best,” he said awkwardly, still not
completely buying it that these guys were Romans either, “but you
know as well as I that nobody really speaks Latin anymore.”

“Seems they do now,” Santino mumbled.

I ignored him. “Write it down and...” I paused,
forcing myself to believe my own words, “show it to them or
something, just make sure they know we mean them no harm.”

He nodded shakily.

My mind was whirling, but Romans or no, time travel
or no, alien abduction or...