The Twice and Future Caesar (2 page)

C
OLONEL
TR S
TEELE
didn't know where he was. He didn't know who he was or what he was. He had the sense of nearing a surface, which suggested he was under something. It was dark. He wasn't breathing. But he had a heartbeat.

He neared consciousness while they were moving him. Didn't know who
they
were. His eyelids fluttered. He heard, as if through thick gauze, concerned murmurs from the people lifting him. One voice sounded sudden alarm, but Steele couldn't understand the words.

What language was that?

Did I crash?

The last thing Colonel Steele knew, he'd been in the cockpit of his fighter Swift, lining up his approach to dock with the United States Space Battleship
Merrimack
.

And now he wasn't.

He had a sense of time having passed. But how long? Hours? He had a bad feeling that it was longer than hours.

How did he get here? Where was here?

Was that voice speaking
Latin?

Oh, hell, he was sinking back into red-black nothingness.

Where was the
Merrimack?

And where the hell was Kerry Blue?

5 January 2448
U.S. Space Battleship
Merrimack
Indra Aleph Star System
Perseid Space

The universe was all wrong.

Rumor had it that Flight Sergeant Kerry Blue had married the Old Man.

Yeah, right
. A flight sergeant married to a full bird colonel? Not in this man's Fleet Marine. Flight Sergeant Shasher Wyatt wasn't idiot enough to believe that squid story. And the idea of Kerry Blue married to anyone? In what universe?

But how then to explain how Kerry Blue went from anybody's port in a storm to sleeping alone in her own pod?

Kerry Blue was pretty. Okay, fine, she was what passed for pretty on a space battleship patrolling the edge of nowhere. The longer
Merrimack
stayed out here at the galactic rim, the prettier Kerry Blue got. She had it all over those perfect lindas in the dreambox for being real. But you could have one of those dream babes anytime—anytime you were off duty. You couldn't have Kerry Blue anymore, anytime, at all. That hurt. And for some stupid reason it made her more wantable.

And then there was Cain Salvador—
Lieutenant
Cain Salvador, if you can believe that—acting like her daddy with a shotgun. You touch Kerry Blue on pain of, well, pain. The rumor was that Cain had been best man at the supposed wedding. But just ask him if that was true and Acting Wing Commander Cain Salvador would order you to do something anatomically unacceptable involving a . . . well, anyway. Cain was not the problem. The Kerry Blue of old could get around any chaperone God ever invented. The problem was that Kerry Blue didn't want to get around Cain. She really did act like she was holding a docking beacon for the one man who wasn't on board. And when Kerry Blue fixed on one guy, the rest of you lot were so not screwed.

So the only ball Flight Sergeant Shasher Wyatt got to play with Kerry Blue involved a hoop.

It was Team Alpha versus Team Baker in the starboard maintenance hangar. The Bakers were swabbing the deck with the Alphas, who were not tall.

Alpha Six, Kerry Blue, jumped for the basketball.

So did Geneva Rhine, Alpha Three, the one they called Rhino. Rhino
was an upholstered boulder with a cute elfin face. Rhino slammed into Kerry Blue like—well, not like a charging sugarplum fairy. And Rhino and Blue were on the same team. Just the sound could knock the air out of you.

Shasher Wyatt winced.

Kerry Blue came down from the jump, breathless and ball-less. Her feet missed the deck. She landed on her back and rolled. Shasher Wyatt staggered. An alarm clanged.

The status panel flashed red. Shasher Wyatt was over Kerry Blue, trying to help her up. He fell too.

Other Marines on the court in the maintenance bay staggered. The ship shivered. The deck heaved. There was a sound like rocks crushing. The ship's energy shell buzzed.

Whatever
Merrimack
allowed you to feel wasn't anything close to whatever really hit her. The real sounds were muted way down to something that wouldn't blast your eardrums out.

The tremor in the deck was just the smallest suggestion of what had actually hit the space battleship.

The tremor suggested that
Merrimack
had just been nuked.

Right now the ship's auto-defense program would be turning the
Mack
on her central axis faster than your brain synapses could fire, shifting her attitude and raising full shields to cover the engine vents.

Over the loud com the Dingo's voice sounded: “All hands. Siege stations.”

Siege status locked the ship up until the command staff could find out exactly what they were dealing with.

Everyone hated sieges. No one—not the navvies, not the Fleet Marines, not the ship's dogs—no one liked a defensive fight. You just wanted to get out there and blow something up. Nothing flew under siege. The Marine Wing's fighter craft were locked down in the hangar bay. Nothing to do but stampede with the rest of the team to the projectile gun blisters and wait for something to open up.

Up ahead of Shasher Wyatt, Kerry Blue was racing Dak Shepard to get to the hatchway of gun bay twenty-five first. She was going to lose that race. Dak used to be a linebacker. But instead of squashing her at the hatchway, Dak grabbed her, shoulders and ass, and launched her into the gun blister ahead of him.

Shasher was last man in. Climbed onto his gun.

Of course the foxtrotting gun ports were buttoned shut. That meant the torpedo tubes would also be shut and the missiles clamped down inside the ship's inertial shell.

The only guns operable at the moment would be the battleship's energy weapons. Those were for the Navy shooters. The Fleet Marines with their projectile weapons had no trade. Got to stare at the blast covers. The monitors didn't show nothin'. Had to wonder if they were broken.

So here was Team Alpha, twiddling their thumbs.

None of them twiddled well.

And there's Kerry Blue seated at her gun next to Shasher. He watched her thigh move as her heels tapped. Heard her muttering, “
C'mon c'mon c'mon
.”

Shasher didn't say anything. No one wants to hear the new guy talk. Shasher had just come over from the Battery. Always wanted to fly. Not flying now.

Here in the gun bay was Dak Shepard, Alpha Two. Solid guy. Dak was a brick. Swam like a brick. He was all muscle, even to his brain. Dog devoted. Dog friendly. Doesn't drool, but he sweats. You can't call him stupid. Okay, fine, you can, but you really want Dak on your team.

Carly Delgado was in the four slot. Strong, hard, tough, bad as a hornet. Bony. Fast. Plays with knives. That little fist swings around like a rock on the end of a whip, and Shasher Wyatt wakes up in the ship's hospital. Why don't you just spar with a bobcat next time, Shasher?

Kerry and Carly are both kickers when they don't have weapons on them, which is rare. Carly's always got a blade on her.

Carly hangs tight with Twitch Fuentes. Twitch looks dangerous, and he can be. But that dark-eyed squint and frown is just his face in at-ease position. Flat planes of heavy bones, brown skin, black hair, broad build. Quiet. After five tours you'd think Twitch would talk but he don't. He understands Americanese as well as anyone else in the team. Shasher guessed Twitch just got so used to not talking he just doesn't do it. Afraid of sounding dumb.

Then there's Geneva Rhine, the Rhino. Rhino likes being a Marine. Don't like being a girl at all. Has a red X tattooed between her eyebrows and tattoos on her knuckles DNFW, as in Do Not Foxtrot With. Rhino hates Romans. Don't we all? But Rhino
hates
Romans.

Not here in the gun bay with the rest of the Alphas was Flight Leader
Cain Salvador. Lieutenant Cain Salvador now. Cain was probably on the command deck. That's where Colonel Steele would be, if Colonel Steele was here.

Merrimack
was operating at the back of the Outback, at the edge of the galaxy, where it wouldn't do to have a half battalion of Fleet Marines under the command of a mere rate. It would take two months or more to whistle a real officer out here from Earth. So
they—
the “they” who made those decisions
—they
had gone and field-promoted Cain.

Nothing was right in the universe. Colonel TR Steele should be up there on the command deck, and Cain Salvador—
Flight Leader
Cain Salvador—should be in here in gun bay twenty-five with the rest of us Alphas.

Should be
was another way of saying
ain't.

The buzz of the ship's energy guns vibrated the gun bay.

There's Kerry Blue kicking her heels like a squirmy child. “Well,
some
one's got trade.”

“Ain't us,
chica linda
,” said Carly Delgado.

“I think they're just shooting in the dark,” Shasher Wyatt said.

Dak Shepard: “Can't
we
do that?”

“I'm with Shash,” Kerry Blue said. “Know what I'm not hearing?”

Dak and Carly called it at the same time: “Incoming fire.”

Listened to the ship's beam gunners raking surrounding space with concentrated hellfire. Didn't sound as though they connected with anything.

“Helm. Take us to FTL.”

“FTL, aye.”

At the captain's order the space battleship jumped out of normal space to faster than light.

The stars disappeared.

“Change course, random vector.”

The pilot acknowledged. “Random vector, aye.”

“Jump down to sublight.”

“Sublight, aye.”

The stars reappeared in the
Merrimack
's portholes.

“Position of the bogey!” Captain Carmel demanded.

Tactical reported, “Bogey does not register on the tactical screen. Bogey does not appear to be in normal space.”

Merrimack
's attacker had apparently dropped out of FTL to take its shots and immediately jumped back to FTL space. There was no knowing where the enemy was in FTL space. But here in normal space
Merrimack
was a sitting target.

The captain said, “Dingo, I want to be somewhere else.”

The ship's XO, Stuart Ryan, was a lean, hard-strung man from the land of Oz, eager as a wild dog. Dingo Ryan gave the orders, “FTL jump. Random vector.”

“FTL, aye. Random vector, aye.”

Traveling FTL was dangerous inside a planetary system, but
Merrimack
had collision avoidance programmed into her otherwise random choices to prevent her from crashing through anything massive. Not that she couldn't survive a collision with just about anything short of a black hole.

Safe again at FTL, Calli Carmel rounded on Tactical like a hissing swan. “Tactical! Identify bogey.”

The ship's systems would have got a read on the hostile plot in the instant of its appearance while in normal space. Tactical had since had time to process the data.

Marcander Vincent at the tactical station reported, “Bogey reads like a Roman Accipiter. Negative hull identifiers. But it posted a Roman flag.”

“Helm. Change course. Random vector.”

No one could track a plot moving FTL. But technology never stood still, and Calli Carmel took no chances when dealing with Romans. She assumed
Merrimack
was being tracked even while traveling in FTL space.

“Random course change, aye,” the pilot responded.

Calli looked to the tactical station. “Mister Vincent. Was the bogey sending IFF?”

“Negative IFF.”

“Negative transmissions while the plot was sublight,” the com tech added.

“Dingo. Lock us down.”

“Helm. Systems. Full lockdown.”

Her XO gave the orders to make it happen. In full lockdown,
Merrimack
was almost invulnerable. The list of threats that could fit through that “almost” was getting longer by the year.
Merrimack
was still a grand ship, but not a new one.