Strength and Honor (13 page)

He regripped his sword and slashed again to take off the next bundle of stalks that flowered obscenely from the rover tube.

The black balloon of the body sputtered itself empty and dissolved. The attendant backed away, the neck of his tunic pulled up around his nose and mouth against the caustic stench.

Lollius Lunaris just stared with watery eyes.

Romulus prowled over the gore. “That was easy.”

Caesar thought, but did not say:
we lost sixty-four Legions to this?
Not to disparage the might of Rome before anyone.

It ought to have been obvious that there was more to the Hive than he had seen, but he was too elated with himself to go that way.

“So there are gorgons here. So much for America’s victory against the Hive!”

“They did warn us it was not finished, Caesar,” Lunaris said.

Another tube cap popped, shot across the compartment and dented the rear wall. Tentacles sprouted in a grotesque nest.

“Leave it! Mine!” Romulus dashed in.

The tentacles reeled in like a startled sea anemone, back into the rover tube. The Hive was already learning. Romulus stabbed his sword into the tube up to the hilt.

He turned his face away from the ooze that jetted out. He pushed deeper, up to his elbow, into the tube. Flinched. Turned the sword, stabbed several times.

He pulled his sword out and revealed a star-shaped wound bitten into his hand.

“Ha!” He regarded his wound from all angles. Rather proud of it. He was going to let it scar. “Any more?” he asked, hopeful.

But the scarab crickets had gone silent.

Romulus tossed his sword to the floor. Let someone else retrieve it and clean it. He passed verdict: “Not nearly as diabolical as the Americans would have us believe.”

No one dared remind Caesar that this Hive was born yesterday. Not even yesterday. Today. These creatures had not been around for countless millennia, consuming and learning from every encounter with every alien it ate.

Caesar made eye contact with the men in the chamber, the curator, his attendant. “You are not to tell anyone about this. Not anyone.”

Lunaris’ face showed bald horror. “They’re so close! Should we not call for help from the United States?”

“Oh, is that not what they wish!” Caesar cried. “They planted these monsters in Near Space so they can demand Subjugation again.”

“These gorgons hatched out of bedrock, Caesar. How could they possibly be imported?”

“How could the Hive have planted them in solid rock!” Caesar countered. “If gorgons hatch upon the death of their parents, what have these been waiting for?”

“Something to eat?” Lunaris suggested. “The League of Earth Nations should be warned. Earth is not the enemy. The United States is the enemy. Earth is the home world. We intend to retake Earth. We do not want it eaten, Caesar.”

“And I have told you the Earthlings will know when they need to know,” said Caesar, and softly, “Did you ever hear the old saying ‘two people can keep a secret if one of them is dead?’”

Lunaris felt every muscle in his face just let go, his expression gone stupidly slack. He stared as he would up the barrel of a gun.

Caesar broke a smile. “I never placed much store by that saying. You—and you,” he turned to his attendant, “will swear yourselves to secrecy and we shall leave it at that.”

They swore.

———

The human media was filled with images from Fort Ike. The U.S. broadcasts concentrated on the worry and grief of separated families and the interruption of trade between Near Space and the Deep End. Roman broadcasts reran the smoking images of the Shotgun.

The League of Earth Nations protested the Roman attack on Fort Eisenhower on grounds that it was launched three months prior to the declaration of war.

Romulus disingenuously explained that be had deployed a portion of Rome’s forces to the Deep for defensive purposes. Rome, he assured the LEN, had no intention of mounting an attack at the time of the ships’ launch. But, “sensitive to the LEN protest,” Romulus declared he would recall his warships at once.

Romulus had already achieved his objective of shutting down the Shotgun. The LEN protest now allowed Romulus to call his warships back with all possible speed and be thanked for it.

He had cut off U.S. access to the Deep. He had stranded John Farragut’s
Merrimack
in the Deep End. And the
Monitor
was deeper still. And
Wolfhound.
Those warships were now three months away from Palatine and Earth.

So were
Gladiator
and Numa Pompeii.

Numa would just need to deal with that. Romulus thought he might leave some crumbs for Numa to sweep up by the time he got here.

“What became of Gaius?” Romulus asked as he strode through his mobile fortress. He did not address the question to anyone. He need only speak to air, and an answer would come to him.

“Dead, Caesar.”

“Pity,” said Romulus. “Launch Operation Homeland.”

———

Horses bolted across the Kentucky field. A pregnant mare kicked up her heels.

Chief Justice John K. Farragut had just sat down at the head of the table for breakfast, his wife seated at the foot, daughter Lily and the children in between. Lily had renamed all her children Farragut after moving back in with her parents. Could not have too many Farraguts.

A roar from the sky shook the house, shook the ground. Shook great-great grandma’s crystal.

Horses whinnied, stampeded.

Through the window His Honor saw the pregnant mare hauling herself away in lumbering panic. “What
idiot—!”

His Honor rose from the table, seized his revolver, and stormed out of the house, napkin still tucked into his collar. He brandished his Colt at the sky where ranks of Roman missiles passed over, just above the treetops, in his Kentucky sky.

8

^T
HE CONTINENTAL U.S.
had a porous border.

Roman missiles entered Earth’s atmosphere high over international waters, then dropped to sea level and cruised one hundred feet over the surface to enter U.S. airspace. Those missiles that survived the coastal defenses continued on the deck to terrorize all they passed. They flew between tall buildings, through mountain passes. They would seem to be headed straight at a metropolis, then abruptly lift up and skip over civilian skyscrapers.

Missiles cruised over Kentucky, passing one hundred feet over the house of Justice John K. Farragut.

Missiles drove into the defensive shields of military installations at Fort Campbell, Kentucky; Vance, Oklahoma; Oaxaca, Oaxaca; Tacoma, Washington; Fort Bliss and White Sands in Texas and New Mexico.

U.S. defenses could not just shoot the missiles down. Once the missiles hit atmosphere, they caused less damage if allowed to slam into their heavily shielded military targets than if shot down elsewhere.

Attempts to deflect the missiles had little effect. The missiles course-corrected and pursued their targets with a singular will. Someone was driving them.

Interceptors in space caught many of the missiles before they reached Earth, detonating them in the vacuum. Many more got through.

U.S. Space Patrol Torpedo Boats hunted for the missile carriers in space. The missiles could be traced back to their launch points, but the Roman carriers moved away faster than light immediately upon launching their missiles, so the Spit boats found nothing at trail’s end.

Five days into the attacks, a Roman armada of five great gunships dropped down from FTL just inside the orbit of Jupiter. They showed themselves silhouetted against the bright lights of the Jupiter Monument so they could be seen and feared on their approach. Their force fields repelled all ordnance, and the Romans wanted that to be seen too.

Roman camera ships broadcast the images everywhere, just in case the United States failed to do it.

Caesar Romulus picked up the scene from his distant, hidden Fortress Aeyrie. His attendants arranged for him to have a wide, wide vista of space, as if he were right there, watching the armada like Xerxes from his throne at the Battle of Salamis.

“Salamis was a disaster,” Romulus said. “You might have invoked something better than that.”

“Thermopylae then,” the attendant revised quickly.

“So was Thermopylae.”

The attendant sputtered. Romulus cut him off, “Please do not try again.” He settled, mildly disgruntled, into his throne to watch the show.

Saw beam flashes glancing off the five juggernauts.

Saw the five massive ships closing on the fragile blue-white jewel that was Earth. Saw the five on approach, belching fire at their attackers. Saw a titanic spearhead shape lower into his view between the leading camera and the five.

Romulus said, “What is that?”

“That—” his personal guard started, leaving a long, long space between the subject and verb, “appears to be
Merrimack.”

“It does, doesn’t it?” said Romulus.

“Merrimack
is in the Deep,” another attendant said.

“It could be
Monitor,”
said Caesar’s guard.

“Monitor
is also in the Deep.”

Romulus commanded, “Get some data weasels up here and get an identity using something other than visuals.”

The answer he wanted was not the one he got: “Remote surveillance confirms this is not an illusion. The plots are solid.”

“But is it
Merrimack
or Monitor?”

“It is
Merrimack
and
Monitor.”

Romulus’ head whip-turned toward the vista.

Two. There were two.

“Did anyone bother to confirm the damage to the Shotgun?” Caesar asked. Silence told him that that particular ball had been dropped and was rolling around under the deck. “And what does our informant in Fort Eisenhower say?” Romulus tried again.

“Our informant went silent before the Shotgun was destroyed,” said an attendant, then revised, “Before the Shotgun appeared to be destroyed.”

“Ah,” said Caesar. He sat back in his throne. “Let’s watch the show.”

The five Roman gunships powered up their weapons. Their enormous barrels jutted through their thick hulls, just breaking the surface of their stout force fields, ready to hurl their load of smart shells.

Monitor
and
Merrimack
swept in on either side of the lead ship, banged into it with body checks, squeezing it between their own force fields as the Roman ship fired.

The ordnance had nowhere to go. All the force fields were adamant. The only path of irresolute resistance was in the guns themselves.

Unable to come out, the charges blew back.

The lead Roman gunship blew up. Its engine shields lost integrity, and the antimatter reservoirs blew up like minor suns.

Merrimack
and
Monitor
had anticipated that, and were away in time, but one of the flanking Roman gunships took a matter/antimatter blast on its bow that flickered its shields.

Romulus watched from his throne. Said, “Who made that Xerxes remark? I want his throat slit.”

An attendant asked shakily, “Truly, Caesar?”

Romulus answered, cross, “Of course not. I am angry. I am not mad.”

———

Fort Eisenhower had been blowing smoke.

Few antique submarine movies were ever made that did not feature the submarine, under siege from depth charges, spilling out oil and air and clothing to give evidence of its own destruction. So the odds on success using only smoke clouds to give the appearance of the Shotgun’s demise had seemed very small. And it was really the shrill news reports that sold the disaster, the agonized voices of the reporters, the dramatic images of roiling smoke photographed so lovingly and aired over and over. Images of sobbing relatives back home, not knowing the fate of their loved ones. Those people more than the smoke turned back the Roman warships from Fort Eisenhower.

So
Merrimack
was able to return to Near Space in just the time it took to clear the smoke out of the Shotgun.

She arrived at Fort Roosevelt in less than a blink, less than a heartbeat. In literally no time, space tenders had been unwrapping the foil shroud from the ship two thousand light-years from where she existed a moment ago.

From inside the ship, the lifting of the shroud revealed the spectacular twin white stars of Beta Aurigae through the viewports on one side, and the lights of Fort Theodore Roosevelt on the other.

Bigger than Fort Ike, Fort Ted covered a volume of space nearly one light-minute in diameter. Fort Ted held the largest human population not situated on a solid world.

Monitor
arrived at Fort Eisenhower from her Deep End patrol right on her sister ship’s heels and followed her through the Shotgun to Fort Roosevelt.

Once they cleared the fort the two space battleships blazed out of the Beta Aurigae system, charging the eighty-two light years toward Earth at threshold velocity.

They expected some anger and resentment upon their surprise appearance. But the people of the United States were so joyous to find the Shotgun working, and so profoundly relieved to be connected to the Deep End, and so utterly enraged over the Roman attack on Earth soil, that most people forgave the deception. Red-blooded citizens were willing to support anything that would strike back at Rome.

———

Marine Swifts from
Merrimack
dove into Earth’s atmosphere. They intercepted Roman missiles and herded them like stray doggies, up and up. The missiles tried to turn around, back toward their targets, but the Swifts bounced them higher and kept knocking them, until they were high enough to vaporize safely.

“YeeeHAW, git along little doggie! Oh no no no no no, not that way!” That was Kerry Blue on the com. Her missile had slipped out of her control and had slid under her Swift. “Somebody pick me up!”

“I got your doggie, Alpha Six,” That was Ranza Espinoza. She gave the escaping missile a rough nudge. “Take my wing.”

Kerry Blue fell in on Ranza’s flank, watching her missile get bounced higher and higher. “Can I space that?”