The Twice and Future Caesar (10 page)

Kerry's face looked fevered. The lizard was warbling. Cain touched her cheek. The plant lizard's song spiked.

Cain had been watching out for Kerry Blue, warding off guys who tried to line up a docking maneuver. He was getting sick of it. He was giving guys the wave off when it was nothing he hadn't thought about a jillion times for himself.

His throat got thick. “I gotta go.”

Kerry Blue scowled. “You know I can say no for myself, Cain.”

“Kerry Blue, you never say no.”

“I can say yes for myself,” Kerry Blue said, hot.

Cain threw up his hands. “Fine.” He turned his back on her. Pissed and relieved all at the same time. Tired of guard dogging her. “Fine.” He stalked to the hatch.

“Cain?”

He almost didn't hear her for the plant lizard's trilling. Cain turned, snarling, surly, his lip curled. “What?”

“Yes,” said Kerry Blue.

15 Martius 2448
Romulid Carrier
Sidonus
Near Space

During the months-long crossing from the Perseid arm of the galaxy in to the Orion Starbridge, Romulus sparred with an automaton. The humanoid automaton was programmed not to seriously injure him, but it would cause him damage—reparable damage—when it saw an opening.

That didn't happen much anymore.

Romulus practiced combat with several machine opponents at a time, first in patterner mode, and then without the augmentation.

He wore gauntlets on his forearms and a high, armored collar at the back of his neck to shield his patterner cables from harm. And he didn't like to see the wretched cables anyway. They looked like tentacles. They made him think of that infernal machine creature, Augustus.

By the time the carrier
Sidonus
crossed into Near Space, Romulus was drawing breath easily in his sparring bouts. His thoughts flowed clear. He was mentally sharp. He was physically strong. Agile. Quick. Masterful.

He destroyed his machine opponents.

His skin glistened. Victorious, he turned to ask Claudia how he looked.

And then he remembered what he'd allowed himself to forget for a blessed instant. Claudia was missing. She was likely still suffering hideous torture from the nanites, same as he had.

He felt rage toward the
medici
for not curing her too. But they didn't know where she was.

They should have found her. They should have rescued her too!

Romulus checked his wrath. It didn't serve his interests to murder skilled people who were serving him to the best of their mortal abilities.

They had made him into a patterner, a patterner vastly superior to the old model. Mentally and physically, Romulus was better than ever.

He would need to find Claudia for himself.

28 Martius 2448
Roman Imperial Palace
Roma Nova, Palatine
Corona Australis star system
Near Space

“Romulus is here!” Palace sentinels shouted. No warning of the approach. Just an announcement of the arrival.

“Shoot him,” Caesar Numa Pompeii said.

“He's in a school ship,
Domni
.”

That might explain how the ship was permitted to enter Palatine's airspace unchallenged. School ships traveled freely in the Roman Empire. People who menaced children were eviscerated. As this man should be.

“Show me!”

Quickly done. There were hordes of expectant media craft escorting the school ship, all transmitting live feeds. Numa could view from any angle he desired.

The school ship wasn't a fake. It was a real one, filled with real children. The media had received advance notice of its approach. The imperial palace hadn't been given the courtesy.

Raising the shield dome now in the face of children would make Numa look ridiculous.

Nothing to do but let the school ship land at the Capitoline visitors' pad.

The media had already swarmed into place, poised to capture every angle the moment Romulus appeared.

First to appear on the ramp were dancing children.

Romulus himself, gaudily dressed, stepped out with a protective flock of them, who hung on his robes.

Numa roared. “Get a sniper on him.”

“Active deflectors in operation. Can't shoot without hitting a child. I'd rather eat a sword than take that shot,” said his closest bodyguard, and he looked to Numa as if expecting a go-ahead-and-kill-yourself order.

“Don't fall on your sword,” Numa growled.

Law of Armed Conflict forbade using civilians as shields. But the children couldn't technically be called shields here. The children were where they were supposed to be, and the school ship wasn't carrying weapons, unless one counted Romulus. Numa did. But any shot into a crowd of children would be political suicide.

Numa damned Romulus. Damned himself for letting Romulus get this far.

Romulus was on Numa's literal doorstep. Steps. There were one hundred of them, wide, hewn from glistening snowy marble.

Romulus made a long show of ascending with his flock. He picked up a little one who was struggling to make the climb.

At the summit, the monumental palace doors remained shut against him.

Romulus set down his child and turned before the doors to face the thousands who had flocked to the Capitoline to witness history.

Romulus spread his arms wide at the masses, still gathering.

“Friends, Romans, Countrymen, peoples of the civilized Cosmos. Your Caesar liveth.”

The crowd gave an oceanic roar.

Inside the palace, Numa's guards and attendants waited, uneasy. His bodyguard asked. “Caesar?”

“Let him rot out there,” Numa said.

That idea backfired.

Romulus was a great entertainer. Soon he was leading the children in a singing game. Then the crowd demanded a speech.

Romulus was playing the moment, waiting for the audience to get bigger.

28 March 2448
U.S. Space Battleship
Merrimack
Port Chalai
Near Space

Merrimack
arrived in Near Space via the colossal displacement facility of the Pacific Boomerang. The Boomerang cut kiloparsecs off the journey from the distant Perseid arm of the galaxy to the Orion Starbridge, a/k/a Near Space, where Earth and Palatine and most major worlds were located.

Upon arrival in Port Chalai in Near Space,
Merrimack
was still a week away from Earth. A voyage to Palatine would be even longer.

The command crew watched the resonant newsfeed from the Roman capital world as strange events unfolded.

Thronged by young children, Romulus mounted the palace steps. He
looked healthy, energetic. Not at all like a man who had spent over a year in a tortured coma.

He wore billowing sleeves and a high ornate collar.

“See that?” the Intelligence Officer, Bradley Zolman pointed to the close image on
Merrimack
's tactical display. “He's covering up his patterner's cables.”

Zolman drilled deeper into the recording, which captured more than visuals. The deep scan revealed that Romulus was wearing a polymetal collar under that lacey Elizabethan ruff, and polymetal gauntlets under his voluminous sleeves.

Something was missing.

Calli noticed immediately. No one else did. “Where's Claudia?”

“Sir?”

“Why is Romulus making a public appearance at the palace without precious Claudia on his arm? Where is she?”

“That information is need-to-know,” the Intelligence Officer said.

“Z?” Calli said. “I need to know.”

28 Martius 2448
Roman Imperial Palace
Roma Nova, Palatine
Corona Australis star system
Near Space

At last the towering doors of the imperial palace moved. They hinged outward, so their parting herded a thick lot of children off to the sides.

The crowd noise spiked.

The doors only moved wide enough to frame Numa Pompeii like a picture. They put all the focus on Numa. And kept him from being flanked.

Caesar Numa Pompeii advanced like a rockslide, agile for such a big man. An oak crown wreathed his balding head. His face was craggy. He was not lovely, especially next to Romulus who should have been named Adonis. Numa was, however, striking.

Children clustered close on all sides of Romulus, clinging to his gold cloak.

Romulus didn't salute Caesar Numa Pompeii. He wouldn't. A salute was a literal wish of health and safety.

Romulus turned his back on Numa and addressed the crowd and the cameras.

“People of Rome.” The noise fell away. Everyone strained to hear. “We thank citizen Numa Pompeii for his service in the interim. We hope he enjoys his well-earned retirement. I am here.”

The cheers and rumbling objections sorted out who was underground insurgent Romulii and who was honored old Roman guard here.

When the noise subsided, Numa said, “Romulus, it's glib and simplistic to think you can just pick up where you left off.”

“Is it?” Romulus spoke directly into a camera. “I suppose it is, seeing that things have gone to hell in my absence, but I will overcome. Of course, one can only expect a substitute to do so much, so it's understandable, though regrettable, that the Empire has lost luster from its former glory under your misguidance. Well, there it is. No use sorrowing over it. You only did the best you could. I am here now.”

Numa would not speak at Romulus' child-thronged back. Instead he found another cluster of cameras and talked to them. “Romulus, you can't ignore the fact that you are brain-damaged and there is another Caesar in control today.”

“An interim figure,” Romulus told his camera. “Of course there would be. It's a perfectly ordinary occurrence for a leader in hospital to return to his office without expecting an insurrection while he was mended.”

“The Senate voted a new ruler.”

“The senile strike again. The vote was criminally premature.”

“The vote was over a year ago. You were effectively dead, Romulus. There is no provision in the constitution for resurrection. And it is clear to everyone here that you are still deranged and infested with nanites.”

“Numa Pompeii, we will refrain from having you arrested for treason if you return to your lawful place now.”

“Romulus, you are as deluded as ever.”

Romulus turned to face Numa. Even forced to look up, Romulus radiated power, superiority. “Pompeii, if your next words are not Hail Caesar, you are a traitor to the Empire.”

Numa slowly extended his ring to be kissed.

Romulus rested one hand on the shoulder of the child on his immediate left, and he strode down the wide steps, waving to the crowds that parted before him, a strained smile affixed to his face.

5 April 2448
U.S. Space Battleship
Merrimack
Near Space

A terrestrial week after Romulus' appearance on Palatine, the Romulii raised a Roman flag and Roman eagles on the artificial world orbiting Beta Centauri.

Beta Centauri, like the whole Centauri star system, was a League of Earth Nations protectorate, but the League offered no resistance to the flag raising beyond polite inquiries.

Global emergency alarms sounded across planet Earth. Earth lay within a half-day's striking distance from the Centauri system.

Apparently Beta Centauri was to be the site of Romulus' government in exile.

Merrimack
came to high alert.

“Can't we just shoot them?”

The voice sounded from the rear of Calli Carmel's command platform. The XO, Dingo Ryan, contained a snort of laughter.

The Marine standing guard at the hatch was Flight Sergeant Geneva Rhine, the Rhino. Hard-core Roman hater, that one. Calli had a fleeting thought that the Rhino declared too much.

Captain Carmel shook her head. “The LEN haven't invited us to defend them.”

“We're a member of LEN,” said Dingo.

“We
are?
” someone else said, and several specialists at the closely packed stations of the command deck sniggered into their consoles.

Calli Carmel tended to forget how young these guys were.

She let it go.