Muses of Terra (Codex Antonius Book 2) (16 page)

 
As they all got into the armored car, Cordus thought,
Gods, I am running through deep
cac
now.

16

Cordus sped through Nascio’s ruined streets, having no choice but to trust that the vessel had cleared the way for them back to
Vacuna
. Thankfully, the vessel’s ‘word’ was true—Cordus did not encounter any other golem patrols in the city. It made him wonder why the vessel would help them, considering it just kidnapped the two people who meant the most to him in the universe.

It wants us to follow them. Why?
He tried not to think about that now.

Not only were golems absent from the streets, but so were humans. When he asked the Romans what had happened to the humans, their eyes turned haunted. Piso explained that the local citizens who survived the initial rebellion were rounded up to ostensibly serve as laborers in the fields. But rumors of mass crucifixions made even the citizens rebel, which led the golems to slaughter them.

“There are no more people,” Piso said, shaking his bandaged head. “At least not in Nascio. Don’t know what things are like elsewhere on the planet.”

Cordus glanced in his rear mirrors. Tears streamed down Duran’s dark cheeks as he watched the passing maize fields.
 

Outside Nascio, the road to the spaceport was also clear of armored cars and golem checkpoints. But the bodies of crucified Romans stared down at Cordus. He lowered his window to shout at the carrion birds feasting on the corpses. The legionaries also yelled or whistled. Aquilina kept her eyes on the road ahead.

When they were within five miles of the spaceport, Cordus noticed black smoke billowing from it. They arrived to see hangars, buildings, and starships in smoking, burning ruins. The acrid chemical stench filling the air turned Cordus’s stomach.

Cordus stopped the armored car next to
Vacuna
. The ship appeared intact.
At least they’re honest kidnappers.
He jumped out and ran toward the ship’s lock. He placed his palm on the lock, and the door ramp hissed open with a slow groan.
 

Once the door ramp touched the ground, Dariya and Daryush rushed Blaesus into the ship. Cordus watched after Blaesus with deep worry. The old Senator was silent during the speeding trip and barely conscious the whole way. Even now he seemed on the border of lucidity and fainting. Ulpius followed the two Persians as they carried Blaesus as fast as they could to the ship’s supply lift, which would take them up to the crew deck and the ship’s medical hatch. Aquilina and Piso jogged up the ramp, while Gracchus and Duran backed in, their rifles still up and scanning the spaceport. Cordus was the last one in, and he closed the door ramp from inside Cargo One.

“Delta couches are on the crew deck,” Cordus told the Romans. He turned to Aquilina. “Only three there, so you can take one on the command deck.”

All four nodded and then followed Cordus as he hurried to the ladder. The three Legionaries jumped off onto the crew deck while Cordus and Aquilina continued up to the command deck. Cordus strapped himself into the pilot’s couch. He couldn’t bring himself to sit in the command couch.

“Know anything about delta systems?” he asked Aquilina.

She eyed the old delta controls. “I can run one as long as it doesn’t break.”

“Take the command couch,” Cordus said, beginning the engine start-up. Since all systems started normally, it looked as if the golems had not tampered with the ship.
 

Could be a different story once we’re flying…

Aquilina strapped herself into the command couch. “So I get to be centuriae today?”

Cordus allowed himself a sideways grin as he continued the start-up routines. “Kaeso always told me the command couch is the one place on the ship were a person can do the least damage. You can only monitor ship’s systems, you can’t change them.”

“Unless I know the password, eh?”
 

“Which you don’t. So enjoy the ride.”

It took less than a minute for Cordus to complete all the start-up routines, his fingers flying across the tabulari. The ship's engines engaged and
Vacuna
lifted off the ground. Cordus ensured the ship’s inertia cancellers were on full power, then instantly accelerated the ship past the speed of sound straight up into the sky. Even with inertia cancellers, he felt as if the hand of Jupiter was pushing him down into his couch.
 

He hoped the acceleration did not hurt Blaesus, but he had to get into space fast. He had no idea if the alien vessel had quantum way line engines like
Vacuna
, or if it had to use the alpha way lines. If the vessel had quantum engines, it was likely Cordus would never find it again.

Even before they left the atmosphere, Cordus began scanning the space above them. Reantium’s atmosphere played havoc with the sensors and seemed to return false hits all over the sky. The higher they flew, however, the more false hits fell off the screen, until he found a single large hit twenty thousand miles from his position.

“That thing is thirteen miles long,” Aquilina breathed, staring at the command tabulari. “No beacon. Surrounded by some kind of energy bubble. We can get a visual read, but nothing on its composition or internal systems.”

Cordus checked the readings and a chill went through him. The “energy bubble” Aquilina mentioned looked like the same thing the Saturnists recently installed on
Vacuna
based on tech from the Menota Muse archives. If it was anything like
Vacuna’s
shield, no scans or physical objects would be able to penetrate it. He was likely going up against a vessel packed with every bit of tech the Muses had.

Cordus clenched his teeth and set a course for the vessel.
Vacuna
darted toward its location.
 

But as soon as he set the course, the vessel shot out of Reantium’s orbit toward the alpha way line near the star system’s second planet 60 million miles away.

Cordus frowned. It was as if the vessel had been waiting for him before leaving.

Doesn’t matter
. He accelerated
Vacuna
after the vessel.

“You’re flying into a trap,” Aquilina said. “That thing wants you to follow it.”

Cordus shook his head. “If it wanted to capture or kill us, it could have done it on Reantium. It wants us to follow for another reason.”

“So you’re going to do what it wants?”

He chewed his inner lip, thinking of Kaeso and Ocella. “I don’t have a choice.”

Cordus stared at his tabulari as he felt Aquilina’s eyes on him, but she said no more.
 

Even with Caduceus's scopes at maximum magnification, the vessel was still outside visual range, but Cordus got an idea of the vessel's shape from the sensor readings. It was, as Aquilina said, almost thirteen miles long and looked like a black spiked tower with glowing blue veins. Theories cascaded through his mind. Ocella had been searching the Menota system for the secret way line they saw in the Menota archives six years ago. Had she found it, gone through, and then met this alien vessel controlled by a new Muse strain?

Marcus Antonius,
Cordus called with his thoughts.
What can you tell me about this new Muse strain we’re following?

Marcus’s voice came from the delta systems couch behind Cordus. “It is one you’d do well to avoid.”

Cordus didn’t look behind him.
Why?

Aquilina interrupted Cordus’s thoughts. “The way line it’s heading toward goes to Illium. Illium has two way lines: one to Abundantia and one to Libertus.”
 

A terrible coldness seized Cordus’s chest. Libertus was now the only planet in human space with the greatest concentration of Muse hosts. The Terran Muses were wiped out six years ago, along with the physiologically incompatible Menota Muses. If this new strain was like the others, then it was in a perpetual state of war with all other strains. It would do everything it could to seek out new strains and destroy them.
 

The vessel had Ocella and now Kaeso, so it likely knew about Umbra and the Liberti Muses.

“Your Liberti friends will not find this strain so easy to defeat,” Marcus said behind him, “so what chance do you think you have against them in this ancient garbage hauler? Flee, young Antonius.”

Marcus always seemed to urge Cordus to take the most aggressive actions. If something could scare Marcus that bad, Cordus began to wonder if he should listen to the ancient avatar’s advice.

No. Ocella and Kaeso would come for me. If I flee now, I might as well be dead; the guilt would make me a hollow shell the rest of my life.

 
“It’s going to Libertus,” Cordus said to Aquilina. He looked at her, praying he could keep his eyes and face hard. “We both know why.”

Aquilina licked her lips, then winced as if trying to ignore a sudden pain in her head. “I can’t say anything,” she said slowly, “until I know what you know. If your friend is what I think he is, or used to be, then you’ll understand.”

Both Kaeso and Ocella told him stories of Umbra, how their implants prevented them from saying anything about the organization. Even uttering the name “Umbra” made their implants send a stabbing pain through their brain to remind them of their loyalties. Not even the Liberti consul knew of Umbra’s existence; its security was too important to trust to the honor of a citizen who would only hold the consul post for six years.
 

Umbra had kept Libertus—a single star system without a large space fleet—free from the tyrannical regimes surrounding it, like Roma, the Zhonguo Sphere, and numerous other warlords trying to achieve eternal glory. It used the tech given to it by its benevolent virus allies, the Liberti Muse strain, to spy, sabotage, and assassinate away any threats to Libertus before they could materialize into full-scale invasions. Umbra Ancilia were posted throughout human space watching for those threats, using tech no other human government possessed. The mysterious “bad luck” that befell anyone threatening Libertus had earned them the superstitious reputation of being protected by
numina
, demons of the gods.

So if Aquilina was Umbra, then she was physically unable to talk about Umbra until she knew Cordus knew the same information. Then the implant would release her to speak freely.

Cordus glanced behind him. No one else was on the command deck ladder, and he heard no one coming up.
 

He said to Aquilina in a low tone, “If that vessel is a new Muse strain, then it will go to Libertus to destroy the last concentration of Muses in human space. Umbra Corps.”

She sighed, as if the pain suddenly receded. “That’ll make it easier for us to talk.”

“Kaeso and Ocella were once Ancilia. I’m surprised you’ve never heard of them.”

Aquilina snorted. “If you know anything about Umbra, you know that Ancilia never get all the data they want. Only what they need to complete their mission.”

“What
was
your mission on Reantium?”

Aquilina winced again. “I still can’t talk about some things. Details on existing operations, for one.”
 

She then gave him a raised eyebrow and a coy grin. “You have a little secret of your own, eh,
Titus
?”

He involuntarily averted his eyes, which angered him. He ignored the heat in his face and forced himself to return her gaze. The heat only compounded his discomfort, and beads of sweat fell down his back.

Gods, what is wrong with me?

Marcus chuckled. “Why, young Antonius, is that lust we sense in you?”

Quiet!

“How is it,” she asked, “that you also heard the vessel’s message? Your friend Kaeso and I had Muse implants. Were you an Ancile, too? There’s no other way you could have…communicated with me like you did from that tavern.” Her gaze traveled up and down his body, which quickened Cordus’s heart. “You’re certainly built for the job, but I doubt you’ve seen eighteen Terran years. You’d be the youngest Ancile I’ve ever known.”

“Maybe I am,” Cordus stammered. “You don’t look much older than me. How old are you?”
 

He cringed inwardly.
If you wanted to sound petulant, you could not have done a better job.

Her smile widened. “Older than eighteen.”

“Well…I can’t talk about some things either,” Cordus said, pretending to review something on his tabulari to avoid her large brown eyes. “All of this is irrelevant anyway. You need to warn Umbra Corps that a threat they’ve never encountered is on its way to Libertus.”

Aquilina’s expression turned serious. “I’ve been trying since that vessel came to Reantium, but I can’t get through. It seems to be jamming me.”

During the Roman siege of Libertus six years ago, the Romans had used a similar jamming signal. The vessel was more advanced than Roma, so he assumed it had the same ability to jam Muse communications.

“Just keep trying,” Cordus said.
 

His tabulari showed the vessel slowly pulling away from them.
Vacuna
was at its top acceleration. Any more and it would overload the inertia canceling systems. Even now, he felt his weight pressing into the pilot’s couch.
 

He brought up a map of the Illium system on his tabulari. Illium Primus, the lone Terran-class planet in the system, was a so-called Lost World, independent from Roma since it was colonized two hundred years ago. The entire system had ten million citizens, with mining bases throughout the system’s planets and moons. It was economically, culturally, and militarily aligned with Libertus. Besides the Reantium way line, it had two other way lines in the system: one linked to Abundantia, a Roman system, and one to Libertus.
 

Cordus checked the distances from Illium’s Reantium way line terminus to the other two. The Abundantia way line was closest, only a single Terran astronomical unit away. The Libertus way line orbited Illium Primus, but was over seven astronomical units away.