Praetorian Series [4] All Roads Lead to Rome (52 page)

So far, everything had gone according to plan.  Our combat units were in place, high value targets were present and where they were supposed to be, and no one had done anything to compromise the security of the mission.  But this was the easy part.  Reconnaissance was always a simple enough matter when it came to the simpletons of the Roman Empire.  Had something already gone wrong, I wouldn’t have been above calling off the mission completely because of sheer incompetence.  However, while my friends were many things, the one thing they most certainly weren’t was incompetent.

All except a pair of Roman Praetorians, an asshole, and my darling sister, that is.

They were
way
behind schedule now, and I couldn’t imagine what was keeping them.  Then again, it were the reasons I
couldn’t
imagine that worried me.  Maybe we’d read everything completely wrong.  Perhaps Remus was in fact trying to save the world from the tyranny of Romulus, in his own warped way, and we were wrong to place our trust in Romulus.  It was completely possible he’d torn our rescue team to shreds just for appearing before him.

I clenched my eyes shut and tossed the thought from my mind like a crumpled piece of paper with a bad idea written on it.  Everything was fine.  There were dozens of things that could delay them, the least of which being that their job required them to navigate an ancient prison system that had to be about as confusing as a labyrinth.  Which meant it was completely possible that an actual Minotaur was done there, stalking them, maybe even eating them…

“What’s wrong, Jacob?”  Helena asked.

Her voice jerked me awake, and I turned to look at her.  “Hmm, what?”

“Your hands,” she said, nodding at them.

It was then that I noticed them shaking, causing the binoculars to rattle in my grip. 

I set it down and squeezed my hands into fists, clenching them tightly, holding them like that for as long as I could before it grew uncomfortable.  When I opened my hands, the trembling was gone, and I let out a long breath of relief.

I turned back to Helena.  “Sorry.”

She cocked an eyebrow at me, her face fully of worry.  “Are you sure you’re all right?”

“Fine.  My mind was wandering.”

A tiny smile grew on her face.  “Well, at least
that
hasn’t changed.”

I smirked, but it wasn’t a particularly joyful look.  “I guess you’re right, but trust me, I’m fine.  Frosty.”

She didn’t answer as she continued to look at me, and I knew that while she wanted to trust me, it must be difficult now.  I looked away awkwardly, and pressed the PTT button on my radio.

“Ground Team-Actual, status.”

“
Bored
,” came the reply immediately.

“Just give me a sitrep.”

“Still waiting on Rescue-1.  No sign of the Wizard either.  They’re about to sacrifice a cow, but I moved us out of the splash zone.  Over.”

I sent him a double click and nothing more.  There wasn’t anything else to say.  In fact, I was slightly jealous that he could be bored right now.  Bored would be nice.  I’d take bored over frustrated and anxious in any situation.  Bored meant relaxed.  Bored meant…

My radio crackled to life again.

“Uh, check that, Sniper-1,” came Santino’s voice in my ear again.  “Something’s… happening on stage.”

I reached for my binoculars and slammed them against my eyes, zeroing in on the wedding platform.  In the course of a minute, the scene had shifted from tranquility to chaos, all because a single individual the size of a tiny house had gone completely out of control.  Remus was stumbling like a drunken fool, spinning in wide, uncontrolled circles, his feet splintering floorboards as he stomped and strutted around the platform like Ric Flair in a wrestling ring.  His arms flailed wildly, but powerfully, and one young woman who must have been one of Agrippina’s personal servants, flew through the air and into the crowd below when she was struck by one of his frenzied swings.

The scene lasted only a few seconds more before Remus, in one last violent convulsion, flopped onto his back.  The impact threw those on the platform to the ground around him, some falling from the stage like the poor woman earlier.  He’d hit like an earthquake going off beneath their feet, and I felt my jaw drop at what I was seeing.

I clicked my PTT button.  “What happened?”

“No idea,” Santino reported.  “Everything was going fine until he and Agrippina drank some wine.  Then…
that
happened!”

“Wait,” I said, “he drank wine and then went into a fit?”

“Yeah, but they drank from the same cup.  He couldn’t have been poisoned.”

“Agrippina would spend years poisoning herself in miniscule doses to build up an immunity just so that she could pull a stunt like this,” I said, wondering if she would actually try to poison Remus, and for what purpose.  I stared through my binoculars, trying to make sense of what was happening as I gauged the crowd reaction.

A panic was setting in, slow to build but about ready to boil over.  An entire crowd of thousands was growing restless, each and every one of them trying to look over each other for a better view, yelling at people in their immediate vicinity and acting otherwise unruly and very mob-like.  These people didn’t even know Remus, but they were obviously in love with him, and a riot was likely unless more Praetorians showed up to quell the anger.

It seemed as though Agrippina had done our job for us.  Perhaps she had atoned for some of what…

“Look, Jacob!”  Helena exclaimed, and I could hear her rifle rattle as she repositioned it against her shoulder.

I wasn’t sure where she wanted me to look at, but the view through my binoculars drifted to where Remus had fallen.  The first thing I saw was Agrippina, her hands covering her mouth, but the expression on her face wasn’t of concern, but sheer, outright fear.  And the reason for why was growing clearer by the second as Remus slowly rose to his feet.  His skin was paler than normal and his body seemed weak, but rise he did, and the expression on his face was not happy.

I saw his mouth moving with intense vigor, and I understood immediately that he was yelling.  There was no way I could hear him from this great distance so I didn’t even try to understand.  Instead, I focused on Agrippina’s tiny form as she backed away, her mouth moving just as quickly, but to no effect.  Remus no longer seemed interested in a wedding, his face ablaze with fury, and I knew their planned nuptial was about to turn into a coup.

“What should I do?”  Helena asked.

“Well… I guess you could just kill her now.”

“I’ve got no shot,” Helena retorted.

I grumbled under my breath, taking notice through my binoculars of the dozens upon dozens of Praetorians entering the venue, many taking up defensive stations before Agrippina, spears and shields at the ready.  Even more streamed into the surrounding area, hundreds upon hundreds more.

“Sniper-1, Ground Team-Actual,” came Santino’s voice in my ear.  “This is turning into a real charlie foxtrot.  Please advise, over.”

“Standby,” I commed as I turned to Helena.  “What do you think?”

“He’s going to kill her, Jacob.”

“So?”

She turned to me, fire in her eyes.  “I can’t let him kill her.  I can’t.  I have to do it.  I have…”

“Helena, calm down,” I said, recognizing the anger she felt right now.  “We’ll wait for Romulus.  Then you can kill her all you…”

Helena’s nose flared for just a second before she snapped her eyes back behind her scope, and I swore under my breath, knowing what she was about to do.  I trained my binoculars down range, quickly taking in the sight of Remus throwing Praetorians left and right in an attempt to get at Agrippina.  There was no stopping him, and there was no stopping Helena either.  She fired without any further prompting.  I kept my eyes glued open as I waited for the bullet to reach its target, but then Remus jumped to the side and the bullet rocketed past him to smash into the floorboards, missing him completely.

But despite his apparent clairvoyant insight into self-preservation, he didn’t seem to understand exactly what had happened, directing his head in every direction as he searched for his assailant, Agrippina’s Praetorians continuing to jab at him.  But then his head whirled around completely and I saw him look right at me, from hundreds of meters away.  It didn’t seem possible that he could sense our exact position, but he was clearly looking directly at us.

Not at me, actually, but at Helena.

That wasn’t part of the plan.

“Aw, shi…”  I started to whisper but my simple expletive was cut short when Remus leapt off the venue’s platform, dropping thirty feet to the ground, and landed with an enormous crash.  He knelt there, momentarily stunned, before he picked up his head and started sprinting directly toward Helena and I.  He plowed through the mesmerized crowd, sending the bodies of men, women, and children flying in all directions as he tossed or kicked them aside.  I lost sight of him almost immediately when he entered a denser area of the city, obscured by a thousand buildings.

I keyed my radio.

“Eagle Eye, do you have a visual?”

“Intermittent, Sniper-1.  Target is heading in your direction.  Be advised, target will advance on main roadway in five seconds.  You should have eyes on.”

I sent Cuyler a double click and adjusted my binoculars so that I could see the main thoroughfare that led directly to our position atop the Viminal Hill.  Not a second later, Remus emerged onto the road and continued to barrel his way toward us, not caring who or what got in his way.  He was a living wrecking ball, crashing through vendor stalls, pack animals, and humans alike.

Helena opened up on him again, sending round after round at him with her DSR-1 sniper rifle.  Slowed by the bolt action on her rifle that required her to chamber a fresh round manually after every pull of the trigger, the interruptive action at least allowed her time to settle herself and aim more carefully between each successive shot.  But, as amazing as she was with a precision rifle, not a round had struck Remus, each one impacting the road around his body, missing him by inches.

She fired five bullets quickly, ejected her spent magazine, and calmly smacked home a fresh one filled with another five rounds.  I didn’t bother watching her as she worked, knowing innately how she operated, and waited as she took careful aim again and fired.  It was another miss, as Remus sidestepped to the right, but then he was forced to pull up abruptly when another shot came at him from the right – from Cuyler.

Helena noticed too, and processed the information immediately.

“Tell Cuyler to replicate that shot,” she ordered me.  “Then have him do it again exactly two seconds later.”

“Eagle Eye,” I commed, not even bothering to answer her.  “Repeat exact shot on target when ready, then repeat again exactly two seconds later, howcopy?”

“Copy,” came the reply, followed by the first shot Helena had requested, followed two seconds later by the same one again.  Helena fired at the same time as well.

She’d guessed right.  However Remus was able to predict where to jump when fired on, he only seemed capable of dodging one thing at a time.  When he pulled up short to dodge Cuyler’s shot, he was caught in the crossfire and took a hit from Helena.  However, he was still able to lean enough to the left so that Helena’s round only grazed the side of his chest instead of taking him square in his center mass.  It hit him hard, but the bullet seemed to have literally lodged itself in his skin.  It had torn open a small, bloody trench along the side of Remus’ chest, underneath his armpit, but a normal human would have founded that entire flank blasted to shreds, but in Remus’ case, the bullet had simply skimmed along the surface before coming to a stop, much like how a crashed aircraft would plow into the soft dirt of the Earth before finally stopping.

Remus reached up a hand to cover the wound, his face full of rage, but then another shot came in from Cuyler, taking him unprepared again and in the left arm.  This one too penetrated flesh but also didn’t come out the other end as it would on a normal individual.  I was too far to see the wound in detail, nor at the right angle, but something told me the bullet had simply lodged itself in the muscle tissue of his biceps again.  The wound, if one could even call it that, was likely superficial, and had probably inflicted only slightly more damage to Remus than had he been shot with an extremely powerful paintball.

Even so, he was staggered, and Helena and Cuyler took full advantage, raining shot after shot at him as he advanced.  Almost all of them missed, but a few struck home, taking him in the abdomen, his left thigh, and right shin.  It was then that I almost thought we had him contained, but then he looked right at me again and smiled.  He seemed to pick up speed, if that was even possible, completely undeterred by the wounds he’d sustained and quickened his pace to the point where I could no longer track him.

He was only a hundred meters away.

“We should bug out,” I told Helena, but she wasn’t listening as she rose to her feet so that she could angle her rifle downward to continue shooting.

Desperately, I looked through my binoculars and sighted Remus almost at the base of our hill now.  Even if we egressed immediately, there was no way we could outrun him.  I wasn’t even sure, snipers though we were, if we could hide from him.  He’d probably smell us out.  I lowered my binoculars, easily able to see him with the naked eye as he started to climb the hill, and reached for my pistol with my right hand and my combat knife with my left.