Muses of Terra (Codex Antonius Book 2) (14 page)

The golems at the door strode toward Cordus and the Romans. The impassiveness in their blank faces suddenly infuriated him. The rage scoured away his calm in a blinding moment.

If you’re going to kill us, you should feel something! Joy, fury, anything! Well I feel something. Die, you godsdamned machine!

Cordus was about to swing his rifle at the nearest golem, but it crumpled to the floor as if shot. But no pulse blast had hit it. The golems behind it staggered, as if hit, but regained their balance and continued forward.

Fury still burned in Cordus, and he prayed with all his will the golems coming at him would join their fallen comrade.

They staggered again, and this time fell to the floor.

Cordus had no time to wonder what happened. A surge of electricity erupted from his body, and his senses were heightened beyond anything he’d ever experienced. He suddenly stood beside his body, watching the golems coming through the door, along with the Romans ready to meet them.

Harsh whispers came from above him. Like his Muses, but different, more chaotic and unfocused. He couldn’t understand what they said.

Aquilina’s voice murmured from outside the tavern. He wanted to tell her they were in trouble, that they needed her help—

He sat at a table in a dark room, one light pad on the ceiling illuminating the table. Across from him sat Aquilina. She stared at him, her mouth open in shock.

“How…?” she stammered.

“We need help,” Cordus said. He didn’t know how he came here, or where this room was, but he instinctively knew he was speaking to Aquilina. “The golems have us surrounded. Go through the back door of the tavern and surprise them from behind.”

He didn’t know whether Aquilina got the message, for he felt as if he were spinning down a whirlpool…and then he was back in his body.

A pulse blast from the back door startled Cordus. One of the golems fell face-first onto the floor. Aquilina stepped over it and fired at the four other golems at the common room door. She took them down in quick succession. All four were so surprised, they never lifted their rifles.

Cordus stared at her.
She heard me.

Aquilina stared back at Cordus with the same shocked expression she wore in the dark room.

“Unless you want to cook something, I suggest we go,” she said finally. “The other armored cars are two blocks away.”

She went out the back door without another word.

Cordus, still unable to speak, turned to the Romans behind him who stared suspiciously at Aquilina, unsure of whether to follow her. Ulpius brushed passed them.
 

“Liberti spy or not, the woman saved our lives,” he rumbled. “I’m following her.”

He paused to pick up the pulse rifle from the golem near the door, then exited into the sunlight.

Cordus was surprised when the other Romans looked to him rather than Ulpius. “Let’s go,” Cordus said, then stepped over the pocked steel tables that had shielded them.

The three Romans picked up the rifles and pulse clips from the downed golems and then followed him.

Cordus entered an alley behind the tavern. Tib’s body had been thrown to one side. Ulpius knelt over it with hard eyes. He took a ring from Tib’s left hand and put it into his pocket.
 

Ulpius met Cordus’s eyes. “Family signet.”

He marched after Aquilina, who was at the end of the alley peeking around the corner. Cordus hurried after Ulpius, the other three Romans behind him.
 

He watched Aquilina take the point position with the skill of someone who’d done it her whole life.

Gods, what did I just do?
 

14

By the end of the fourth day of their journey to Reantium, Ocella wished for whatever sleep the aliens had used on them in the Menota system. Once again, she thought, like all humans, it was ironic that way line travel between the stars took a blink of the eye, whereas travel within local solar systems took days and sometimes weeks.

On the first day, Ocella and Varo had removed their pressure suits and wore their ship jump suits. They were startled when the walls in the room suddenly shifted and changed, like clay molded by an unseen sculptor. Two ‘beds’ appeared from the wall on one side of the room, and then a small, enclosed latrine formed at the other end. The beds had a blue, gelatinous mattress dry to the touch, but formed to their bodies. The latrine looked the same as the one on
Vacuna
and worked just as well.
 

Ocella looked forward to the times the Lucia golem delivered their ‘food’—a green, tasteless paste—and water, if only to break the monotony. If the aliens were curious about the Aramaic that Ocella and Varo spoke, the Lucia golem never commented. The golem simply delivered their food and then left without a word.

With their basic physical needs satisfied, they occupied their minds by practicing their ancient Aramaic. Ocella’s skills seemed better than Varo’s, which she attributed to her Umbra training. Varo hadn’t spoken the language since he was a child and was only taught informally by his Hebrew grandmother. But with all their idle time, their conversation skills were improving.

On the third day, the Lucia golem entered the room with a surprise: It finally had eyes instead of the unnerving black sockets. It still had gray skin with blue tendrils just beneath the surface, and even the eyes had hair-thin blue veins. Ocella was grateful for the differences, though, for it re-enforced the fact that she was not speaking with Lucia, and that this alien ship had killed her Trierarch.

Ocella and Varo mostly watched the wall view. She wasn’t aware of any way line jumps, but she knew one must have occurred since what she assumed was Reantium grew on the wall by the hour. It was now a small blue marble in the center of the wall. Time seemed not to exist here, and she slept more often than she was awake. Varo was the same way. If anything, he seemed to sleep longer.
 

On the fourth day, he was in such a lethargic state that he didn’t even want to practice their Aramaic. Ocella kept forcing him, until he finally snapped at her. “This is pointless!” he yelled in common Latin. “How is speaking some dead language going to get us out of here?”

“Because,” she said calmly in Aramaic, “it will keep us from going insane. Now tell me again, in Aramaic, the prayers your grandmother taught you.”

Varo stared at her with angry, desperate eyes. He sighed once, and then began reciting the prayers.

Mostly, however, Ocella lay in her gel bed, watching the view of space and occupied with her own thoughts. She wondered why the aliens assumed Cordus was on Reantium. She was supposed to meet Kaeso and
Vacuna
on Reantium, not Cordus. If the aliens wanted Cordus, why didn’t they just go to Caesar Nova where he’d been the last six years? They could easily retrieve that information from Lucia’s memories.

Could Kaeso have brought Cordus to Reantium, and Lucia somehow knew? Anger boiled in Ocella at the thought. They had agreed Cordus was not to leave Caesar Nova until he was properly trained and mentally prepared for the dangers that would find him wherever he went. He had become increasingly vocal on going on a Saturnist mission, especially with his eighteenth birthday approaching. And Kaeso had become increasingly sympathetic to Cordus’s arguments. Could he have finally convinced Kaeso? The last she’d heard, the situation on Reantium was tense, but no worse than any other planet in the war-torn Roman Republic. If there was any mission Cordus could convince Kaeso of bringing him along, it would be Reantium.

What made Ocella most angry with Kaeso, however, was the thought he confided in Lucia and not her. Just thinking of the possibility made her teeth clench, which was irrational since she didn’t know for sure either way.
 

But unless the aliens were lying to her—a distinct possibility—they were going to Reantium for one purpose: to make Cordus a “witness”, whatever that may be.

A section of the wall irised open, startling Ocella. The Lucia golem, still naked, entered. Ocella’s stomach wasn’t growling, so she didn’t think it was time for a meal.
 

Varo, in the bed next to hers, awoke and swung his legs onto the floor. He watched the Lucia golem with suspicious eyes.

“We now orbit the planet you call Reantium,” the golem announced.

The wall view still showed the blue marble of Reantium surrounded by empty space. “I thought this showed our current location,” Ocella said.

The Lucia golem looked at the wall view. It suddenly changed to show a Terran-class planet filling the entire wall.
So they do lie,
Ocella thought.

Varo sounded indignant. “Why did you deceive us about our location?”

The golem cocked its head. “Why do you both converse in a language this drone does not comprehend? Is that not deception?”

Varo glanced at Ocella, and she said, “There’s little here for us to occupy ourselves. We speak it to pass the time.”

“How does speaking a different language make time pass?”

“It doesn’t, exactly. It just—”

“This topic is irrelevant,” the Lucia golem said, its strange eyes focusing on the wall view again. “We have located Cordus and your lover, Kaeso Aemilius, on the planet.”

“My lov—? Wait, Cordus is
in-system
?”

“We require you to send Kaeso a message. We could create one in your likeness, but we do not yet have the wisdom to mimic your speech patterns.”

“What message?”

When the golem finished telling Ocella the message, she swallowed. “If I refuse?”

“We will kill your drone Varo. If you still refuse after he dies, we will bring Cordus here once we secure him and then slowly kill him in front of you.”

Varo glared at the golem with hard eyes.
 

“I thought you said you needed Cordus,” Ocella said, trying to keep her voice steady. “I don’t think you will kill him.”

“We prefer not to. He will make a powerful witness. But we want to study him, to see what makes him resist the strain he hosts. To do that, we would destroy his body and remake it like we did this drone. The process will kill him. Either way, we will gain valuable wisdom for the new archive. Make your choice.”

Despair and rage flooded Ocella’s senses. She wanted to curl up on the bed behind her and sob.
Who do I condemn: the man I love or the boy who’s become a son to me? And why in the name of all the gods did Kaeso bring Cordus here?

Varo’s gentle hand rested on her shoulder. In Aramaic, he said, “You know what you need to do. He is too important.”

Varo was right. If she looked at the situation from a “what’s best for humanity” point of view, the decision was simple.

But not easy.

She gave a shaky sigh and then turned to the Lucia golem. “Let’s record your damned message.”

15

Cordus, Aquilina, and the four Romans sat beneath the broken window of an old tailor shop listening to the armored car roll by. Cordus gripped the trigger of his pulse rifle. Aquilina and the Romans did the same. No one made a sound.

Cordus met Aquilina’s eyes and once again tried to speak to her through his Muses.
Can you hear me?

If she could, she gave no sign. There had been no time or privacy for them to discuss her message at the tower and their ‘meeting’ during the fight at the tavern. Perhaps even she had no idea how she did it.
 

I sure as
cac
don’t know how it happened.

The car turned the corner down the street.
 

Marcus Antonius appeared next to Cordus, his head peeking outside the window.
 

“You have a foot patrol coming from the right,” Marcus said.

Ulpius was about to stand, but Cordus grabbed his arm and held him in place. Ulpius gave him a questioning look. Cordus shook his head.

Within seconds, they all heard the foot patrol following the armored car. It sounded like six pairs of boots on the debris-strewn street.

“Six golems,” Marcus confirmed, “all wearing fashionable black robes and carrying rifles. Like a bunch of Dis flamens who just rolled in a garbage heap.”

They didn’t seem to be in a hurry and marched as if they were on their way to tend crops.

After a minute, Marcus said, “Clear.”

Cordus slowly peeked above the window. Seeing no other patrols or armored cars, he motioned the others up.

Ulpius whispered, “How did you know they was coming? My hearing ain’t like an owl’s, but it’s good. I didn’t hear them flesh cans.”

Cordus glanced at Marcus, then shrugged at Ulpius. “Your hearing’s good, but mine’s great. Let’s go.”

Aquilina arched an eyebrow at Cordus, but he ignored her. He stepped over the windowsill and onto the empty sidewalk, then led them toward the hospital.

Cordus figured walking eight blocks would take no more than fifteen minutes at a normal pace. But scurrying from building to building and waiting out golem patrols had pushed their time to an hour. He wondered if Kaeso had stabilized Blaesus’s wound. Cordus already lost a good friend in Nestor—he couldn’t shake the image of Nestor’s pulverized head—so the thought of losing another made his eyes mist.

You kept me humble, Nestor, my friend. Who will do that for me now?

“Can’t afford emotion, young Antonius,” Marcus warned as he strolled next to Cordus. “You’ll never see your friends if you dwell on
them
rather than your current troubles.”

Without glancing at Marcus, Cordus directed his thoughts to him.
How
did
I know those golems were coming? You only see or hear what I see or hear. I did not hear them.

“No, you didn’t hear those golems,” Marcus said, “but we did. We use your senses, but we can process the input better than your less-evolved human brain.” He winked at Cordus. “No offense, eh?”

Sure.

“You know, we could enhance your senses a thousandfold if you’d let
us
control your body like we did your family.”