The Twice and Future Caesar (11 page)

And there was something else. Marcander Vincent at Tactical— not a young guy—spotted it. Possibly the only proactive thing Marcander Vincent had ever done in his long lackluster career.

“There's a newly erected structure on Beta Centauri. Big one.”

He brought the structure into close view.

Calli said, because John Farragut wasn't here to say it, “Oh, for Jesus.”

It was a coliseum.

6 April 2448
U.S. Space Battleship
Merrimack
Earth orbit
Near Space

T
HERE
WAS
A
SAYING
ON
M
ERRIMACK
: If anything's gonna happen, it'll happen on the Hamster Watch.

The Hamster Watch was what everyone still called the middle watch, the hours during ship's night, even though the Hamster herself, Lieutenant Glenn Hamilton, was no longer aboard. Lieutenant Hamilton had her own command.

“Steele's alive! Steele's alive!”

They were screaming it in the low-lit corridors on all decks of the
Merrimack
, as if she were a college dorm and not a space battleship.

The Romulii had just announced that the gladiator Adamas was returning to the arena.

That woke everyone up.

Flight Sergeant Kerry Blue looked as though she'd been shot.

Acting Wing Commander Cain Salvador looked as though he'd been stabbed.

Captain Carmel stalked up to the command deck in sweatshirt and sweatpants. She waved down the apology of the Officer of the Watch. “Where is he?”

“Beta Centauri. The artificial planet. Possibly on the daylight side.
Colonel Steele's exact location is uncertain. But local news broadcasts say Adamas is headlined to open the games celebrating Romulus' return.”

All first watch personnel had been ordered back to sleep. The forecastle was dark again, but no one was sleeping.
Merrimack
was headed to the Centauri system.

The Fleet Marines, netted into their sleep pods, were whispering.

The last time anyone had seen TR Steele was at the extreme galactic edge, near the planet Zoe.

Steele's Swift had been on approach to
Merrimack
. His Swift overshot the landing slot, and his com had gone silent. When his Swift was recovered, Steele wasn't in it. The landing disk inside his Swift indicated that he'd displaced. He was presumed dead.

Suddenly he was here in Near Space. In Roman hands.

“He's not in Roman hands,” someone whispered. “He's in Romulid hands.”

“Like there's a difference?” Sounded like Dak over on the Y chromosome side of the partition.

“Not to me.” Rhino's voice there. “Only good Roman's a dead Roman.”

“How did this
happen
?” Kerry Blue squeaked.

“I keep thinking back to the sortie when we lost him,
chica linda
,” Carly said. “We scrambled. There wasn't a displacement collar in the Old Man's Swift. Remember that?”

Twitch and Dak nodded to themselves in the dark. They remembered.

Carly flicked a hard look sideways in the direction of Rhino. Not that Carly was able to see Rhino. Carly knew where she was. “Rhino gave him a collar.”

Big Rhino sounded crushed. She whispered a wail, “You think I don't know that?” Then suddenly she gasped on a shuddering thought. “Hey! Do you think they were really after
me
?”

“Uh,” Shasher Wyatt started awkwardly. “I'm kinda pretty sure the lupes got the guy they were fishing for.”

It took the best part of an eon for Kerry Blue to get alone with Cain Salvador.

“He's gonna kill me,” Kerry said. Her face was nearly white. Cain had never realized till now that she had a few freckles.

“You'll be okay, Blue.”

“
Okay?
I'm gonna be as
not
okay as anyone ever got!”

“He won't hurt you.”

Hurt her? Mean like hit her? Not likely. Not ever. Officers don't hit enlisted men. Steele would just walk away, annul the marriage, and set her ashore. He wouldn't talk to her. Wouldn't look at her. Probably even let her keep the ring she kept in her locker.

Yeah. That won't hurt at all
.

“What a fog ducking mess.”

And that wasn't even the worst of all possible nightmares. What tore her up was that she might never get to see that look of hurt betrayal and disappointment on Thomas Ryder Steele's face.

Thomas was going into a rigged fight to the death in a Roman arena.

15 April 2448
Columbia City, Beta Centauri
Centauri Star System
Near Space

Steele received instructions from a hologram. No Roman felt safe breathing the same air as the legendary Adamas.

“Gladiator,” a holoimage of the lanista greeted Steele.

The lanista's eyes were elaborately painted like a figure in an Egyptian tomb. A tomb would be a good place for him.

“Go to hell,” Steele said.

“Pay attention, Adamas, if you want to live. And we truly do want you to live, but it's not a given. You need to earn it.

“Your first opponent will be the chimaera. To kill it, you need to stab it in the heart, but that's not possible until you do all of these first—
all
of these. Pay attention.”

The hologram's forefinger jutted up. “First. Cut off its tail. Mind you, the tail's teeth are poison.”

Steele's scowl deepened.
The tail's teeth?

The lanista's middle finger flipped up alongside the forefinger. “Second. Cut off one of the goat's horns. Mind you, the horns are poison tipped.”

Another finger. “Third: Cut off the goat head.”

Another finger. “Fourth: Break the lion's teeth.”

Out came the thumb. “Fifth: Slice off a hank of mane.”

The other forefinger. “Sixth: Put out an eye.

“Do all those, then you will—” The lanista stopped and revised slyly. “You
might
be able to stab the chimaera in the heart.”

Steele said in dull surprise as he realized, “It's programmed.”

“Yes. And when I tell you that you can't stab it in the heart until you do all prerequisites, I mean it. Stay alive. We want this to be entertaining. It's the inaugural combat. We're expecting great things of Adamas. If you play a defensive game, the chimaera is programmed to—well, I shouldn't tell you. So look alive, so to say. Tail. Horn. Head. Teeth. Mane. Eye. Heart. Questions?”

“What's a chimaera?”

The holoimage gave an annoyed huff. “You really are ignorant beef, aren't you.” He produced another holoimage.

The chimaera was a full-sized lion, except that it had the head of a wickedly horned goat growing out of its left side. And the goat wasn't a tame little milk nanny like
Merrimack
carried in her hold. This was an Asian kind of goat with long curved scimitars for horns. And there was a snake growing out of the chimaera's ass where a lion tail was supposed to be, fanged-end out.

So that was what the lanista meant when he said the tail had poison teeth.

“Any more questions?”

“How far forward can that tail reach?”

“Can't tell you. We don't want this to look
staged
, you know.”

The space battleship
Merrimack
arrived at Beta Centauri and took up a geosynchronous orbit above the coliseum. Other spaceships wanted the position.
Merrimack
told them to move.

Far down below, the arena rocked to the pounding chant of
A-da-mas! A-da-mas
! Romulus, arrayed like an opera star in his royal box, joined the chant.

Fountains of fireworks blazed upward. Expectation rose and spread like a contagion.

An iron portcullis rattled up.

A century of towering Roman soldiers marched out in box formation, all arrayed in antique bronze armor. Inside the hollow center of the precision marching block walked one shorter blond man.

The crowd laughed at the excessive guards, and they cheered, stomped, and chanted. “A-da-mas!”

Calli breathed, “Steele!”

“Is it really?” Dingo asked.

Valid question. The lupes might have fashioned a duplicate. They had his DNA.

This man's blue eyes glanced all around, wary and searching.

He looked straight up, where
Merrimack
was, his face grim and determined, as if he knew he was looking someone straight in the eyes. Maybe he could see
Merrimack
as a bright day star through the energy dome. He looked like a man who had been here before.

“That's Steele,” Calli said.

The crowd was screeching, throwing flowers.

The box formation marched to a halt.

The box opened. Steele dashed out.

The box closed and marched back to the gate, which opened for them. They left behind a sword in the sand. The iron gate clattered shut.

“Where's his helmet? They didn't give him a helmet!”

“Steele doesn't like helmets,” Calli said.

Captain Carmel summoned her Legal Officer to the command deck. “Mister Buchanan. Is Romulus a military target?”

Rob Roy Buchanan told her, “Captain, you may fire on Romulus if you have a clear shot without collaterals.”

“Dingo! Do we have a lock on Romulus?”

“Negative, sir. They have a full energy dome over the coliseum with jammers and deflectors on their deflectors. Any inbound shot will go wild.”

Acting WinCo Cain Salvador volunteered. “I can take a squadron down. We can get through the dome slow.”

“You'll get through dead,” said Commander Ryan. Dingo was a hell rider himself. If the Dingo shied off a sortie, it really was a suicide run.

“Then find another way,” Captain Carmel ordered. “Get my Marine out of there!”

TR Steele didn't like games. Didn't want to be here in this vast bowl surrounded by thousands of cheering Romans.

They'd tricked him out in a short tunic, a Roman breastplate, boots,
and a shield. They'd given him a helmet. But he'd pulled that off back in the elevator.

His escort of one hundred bronze-clad baboons left behind a short sword, the
gladius
, when they retreated from the arena. He retrieved it, then walked around the ring, looking for anything useful in the things thrown from the stands.

A heavy metal gate at the edge of the arena rattled up.

The chimaera burst from its cage. It was bigger than he expected. Twice the size of a normal lion.

It charged at him, roaring. Sounded like a real lion. Steele waited for it.

The three-headed beast closed the distance in seconds. Steele held his position until he could smell the animal musk. He felt its heat.

Then he faked left. The lion went toward the motion. Steele reversed and sprang right, toward the goatless side of the chimaera, his sword raised to stab it in the ribs, but in an instant the goat's long curved horns jabbed over the lion's back in a slicing arc, all the way over and around the lion torso. Steele lurched back scarcely in time.

Off balance, he staggered away.

The chimaera turned away. Its snake tail coiled and struck. Only by muscle reflex did Steele catch the bite on his shield. Without thought, he followed through with a sword stroke.

Sheared the serpent head off.

The head fell to the sand, fanged mouth open, angry red eyes glaring.

The attached part of the tail lashed about in a horror show spectacle. It spurted blood like a hose under pressure.