Strength and Honor (40 page)

Romans were coming out of the trees. She couldn’t count them, could hardly see them. They moved like humans. Kerry saw guns, and that was enough to take the fight out of her.

When chaos resolved out of thrashing black figures, Kerry counted ten Romans, and still eight of the good guys. No one had managed to get away.

The Romans acted like humans. They taped the Marines’ mouths shut.. Kerry guessed the lupes weren’t trusting automatons’ decision-making skills on this mission.

Kerry recognized one man when the black mask came off his face. That one used to be the night Vigil under the Coliseum.

Gypsy Dent’s voice was sounding on the com. “We are in range, Flight Sergeant. Take your disks.” Romans stared at each other in amazement. You could see the whites of their eyes get real big. They had clearance to displace five people onto
Merrimack.

The Vigil muted Cain’s com. Another Roman said, “What can only five of us do on a space battleship?” The Vigil said, “Five of us, armed, with a chance to board
Merrimack!
We have the element of surprise.”

“It’s an enormous risk.”

The Vigil took Kerry Blue’s displacement collar roughly from her neck and closed it round his own neck. “Who else wants the honor?”

Four others unsnapped collars from the other Marines, and snapped them round their own necks. The five Romans who were staying behind kept weapons trained on the Marines.

“We’ll never get another chance like this!” said the Vigil. “We have green lights! Fortune favors the bold!” Cain moaned on reflex. His shock was genuine, staring at green lights that had been red just moments before.

The Romans stood on the disks.

“All greens.”

The Romans must have brought jammers into range with them. Did they not realize that?

“Tell your ship to bring us.” A Roman shoved a weapon into Cain’s face and made to take the gag from his mouth.

“No! Don’t trust him on the com,” said another Roman. “He’ll just give a warning. Don’t wait for
Merrimack
to bring us. Initiate send.”

The five Romans touched the controls on their collars.

In a thunderclap, they vanished, lights showing green on the LDs. The remaining Romans looked smug. The Marines looked appropriately horror-struck. “We have boarders on
Merrimack”
one Roman told another in crowing disbelief.

He should have paid attention to that disbelief. The U.S. boffins had switched all the red and green lights that came down to the planet, just to confuse the Romans. The switch confused Marines too. Kerry Blue silently recited
Red is right. Green is ...
She tried to remember what Darb said about green lights.
Think great green gobs of gushing goo?

Merrimack
had gone silent. Commander Dent must have figured out something had gone wrong down here. Not that any piece of the displacing Romans could possibly have arrived, gooey or otherwise. But
Mack’s
displacement techs knew the difference between a red light and a green light.

A Roman, still imagining that the boarding of
Merrimack
was a success, ordered his technician, “Quick, restore displacement jammers to this area!”

The technician was checking his equipment. Trying to comprehend what he was looking at. “Jammers are showing already on ...” Slow horror just making itself felt. The Romans stared at the green lights on the U.S. equipment. Starting to suspect they had made an assumption they should not have made. They hadn’t even thought to question the meaning of a green light. Green was simply the universal go.

There were only five Romans left now. In the Roman confusion, the Marines jumped them. Fought hand to hand. Or boot to chin—Kerry Blue’s favored method, as her hands just weren’t that strong.

The Marines took the Roman weapons, quietly shot their owners with them, cut the capsules from their ears, hid the bodies in the woods, and threw the capsules into the river.

Watching the moons’ light on the river, Kerry clawed the tape from her mouth. “Who’s got the com?”

They all looked at each other. No one spoke.

“Well, who had it last?” said Kerry.

“One of the Romans?” Taher suggested.

“Fubarosity,” said Cain.

Steele was taken out of the cage again. He was given no armor. That meant it was feeding time for the animals. “Good-bye, Adamas,” said a gladiator.

The ceremonial guards unlocked his chains and dropped a short sword at his feet as they left him in the ring.

This time there were two men already out there. One wore a metal half-collar of sorts and a thickly padded sleeve on one arm. He wielded a heavy net, which he flourished like a matador’s cape. The other gladiator, who wore a helmet, had a short blade sheathed in his belt, and carried a trident. Steele was calling him the picador.

Steele supposed he himself was the bull.

But he wasn’t.

The two gladiators saw Steele enter, then turned their attention toward another gate with an attitude of anticipating something big and deadly to come charging out.

Steele wasn’t waiting.

Steele darted across the arena, came up behind the picador, the crowd shrieking a warning. Steele got there just as the man was turning. Steele slashed down on his shoulder right where the helmet left off. The picador fell to the ground, spouting blood, that ghastly shade of arterial red, in a strong pulsing stream.

Steele seized up the trident, raised it high and threw it downward through the other gladiator’s swirling net, pinning the net’s edge down through the sand to the wooden floor. Steele crouched to launch himself into a charge at the gladiator, when the gates burst open. The giant lizard bolted out with a metallic screaming growl.

Not the lethargic thing Steele had seen float past his cell on a lift. This beast was gnashing and snapping in a crazed fury, its giant tail lashing. The spectators all drew back in their seats.

The lizard bugled and roared as if in pain, and came straight at Steele.

This is not right.

Steele dodged behind the gladiator who was trying to get his net free from the trident. The lizard ignored the gladiator and tracked Steele’s motions. It wanted him and only him.

Kerry had told him that humans did not smell tasty to the giant lizards. Humans were not edible. And the lizard did not appear to be hungry. The only thing Steele could think of was the object the medic had punched into his earlobe. Steele bet his life it was a transmitter.

Galloping dinosaur feet shook the floor. Spectators laughed, feeling the jarring in their seats. The lizard tossed its head, ramming its pyramidal nose horn into the wall. A great scream rose from the crowd, descending in nervous laughter.

Steele was running, dodging, shifting directions, letting the momentum of the lizard’s great mass carry it past its mark, tumbling nose over tail, and getting up roaring. Like a rhino chasing a chipmunk. One skid on the sand and Steele would be done.

He couldn’t find a still moment to lift his sword close to his neck without cutting his own throat, so he dug at the capsule in his earlobe with his fingernails.

And
turn!

The lethal tail swept past.

The capsule came out, a small rod, no bigger than a ten-gauge wire, between his blood-sticky fingers.

The surviving gladiator had his net free by now. He swirled it over his head, either to net Steele or to drive him toward the beast.

Steele pitched his capsule at the gladiator.

The lizard instantly lost interest in Steele, and followed the capsule’s arc through the air. The giant head bowed down and plowed through the gladiator’s net. Metal fabric tore before the pyramidal horn. Lizard jaws closed on the gladiator’s middle, and the beast gave him a backbreaking dog shake before hurling him aside. The beast then pounced on a spot in the arena, scrabbled in the sand with its three-toed feet, and stomped.

The stomp must have crushed the tiny transmitter, because the lizard lay down in a sudden flump, relieved and panting. A shred of metal netting still hung off its face. Its giant sides moved with its pain-free breaths.

The lizard’s yellow eye focused on Steele, then shut.

Didn’t care about him.

And Steele didn’t care about it anymore.

The chant started:
A-da-mas! A-da-mas!

Steele collected the gladiator’s short blade from its sheath at the corpse’s waist, and the trident from the sand. He tested the weight of the trident in his hand.

He moved close to Caesar’s box. Looked up.

And damn everything to hell, Romulus wasn’t there.

32

^I
’VE LOST CONTACT
with the Marines,” Mister Hicks announced from the com station.

“We’ve lost correspondence,”
Merrimack’s
displacement tech reported to the command deck. “Roman jammers are in effect down below.”

“Clam us up,” Gypsy told the displacement tech. “Restore our jammers.”

“Jammers activating, aye.”

Gypsy ordered the com tech, “Stop hailing. Go silent.”

“Gone silent, aye,” said Mister Hicks, somber. They had been so close. He had just talked to Flight Sergeant Cain Salvador. They had come within seconds of getting five of their own out of there.

Captain Farragut prowled station to station, helpless. Five Marines just within grasp, and suddenly gone. He could not give up.

“Did we get the coordinates of the displacement equipment?” Farragut asked. “We can take the
Mack
down and pick them up.”

“Forty-one degrees, twelve minutes, fifty-nine seconds north latitude, eighty-nine degrees, two minutes, fifteen seconds west longitude.” Marcander Vincent looked up from his tactical station to Captain Farragut. “They’re in Roma Nova, sir.”

“God bless America!” Farragut shouted, frustrated to hell. He had orders—strict orders—not to enter space over Roma Nova. “Get us out of here. Fire something at Numa’s ship on the way out.”

Marcander Vincent noted: “I have a ship rising out of planetary atmosphere. Italian signature. Has the appearance of an Earth civilian craft.”

“Check that one!” Farragut ordered, wanting badly to shoot something.

Upon leaving atmosphere, the Italian ship jumped to FTL.
Merrimack
followed and easily picked it up again on a predictable course toward Earth. The ship executed no evasive maneuvers. No Roman ships accompanied it in escort.

Merrimack
took up a parallel course. Mister Hicks hailed the ship. “Italian vessel, this is the U.S.S.
Merrimack.
Identify yourself.”

The pilot begged, “Don’t shoot. We have children on board! They are children!”

“We’re not going to shoot,” Captain Farragut told him. “We’ll probably hook you if you don’t check out. And contrary to Roman propaganda we don’t torture children.”

“We will ‘check out.’ This is a school bus!” the pilot cried. He recited his school district’s identification and the ship’s identification numbers.

Mister Hicks sent the confirmation request to Italy via res pulse. He received back confirmation that the vessel really was a school bus from a suburb of Old Rome, carrying a group of young students. The Italian added a plea not to hurt the children.

Everything checked, yet something was odd. John Farragut picked up a subliminal sense of something not quite fitting. But it was nothing he could bring into focus.

Most of the viewports were masked, but Marcander Vincent angled a scanner beam through one to reveal children. They were in the ten-year-old range, acting like kids with some adults in the back. The pilot was sweating like a smuggler, but then he had a space battleship menacing off his port quarter.

There was something wrong.

“He’s smuggling,” said Farragut.

“What do you want to do, sir?” Gypsy asked.

Farragut shook his head. Enough that there were children on board and it was an Italian vessel.

“Wear off. Notify Jupiter Control. I want this bus checked again next week when it’s coming in to Earth.”

A Roman guard, a human one, came down to the dungeon underneath the Coliseum with a contingent of automatons to the POWs’ cage. The man sent an automaton into the American cell.

The automaton knew which prisoner was Steele. “Here, try this on,” the automaton told him.

This
was a gladiator’s helmet.

Ranza Espinoza moved to the bars and shouted at the human, “This is a violation of conventions of war!”

“And I’m sure we’ll hear about it,” said the man outside the bars. He was standing carefully on the corridor’s center line, out of arm’s reach from either side.

“What pinhead was this made for?” Steele tossed the helmet back at the automaton. The automaton turned to face the Roman. “He rejected it.”

“I see that,” said the human and gave orders to another automaton in his ranks. “Find a bigger one.”

“A bigger helmet?” the automaton requested clarification.

“Yes, a bigger helmet,” the man said, irritably. “Go.” Then thought to add, “Find a bigger one and bring it back here!”

Steele recognized the man now. He was not a guard. He was the one Steele called the ringmaster of the games. The Romans called him a
lanista.

In the arena the
lanistifs
tunic glittered. Here he was wearing blue jeans. He had a mane of flowing yellow hair, chiseled features, and manicured hands.

“You have become a popular villain,
Adamas”
said the
lanista.

Steele said nothing. Stared like a bull.

When the automaton returned with another helmet, someone from the gladiator’s cage called, “You’re going against one of
us!”

Steele looked around the
lanista,
across to the gladiator. “I never had a problem killing Romans.” The second automaton entered the cage, offered the helmet to Steele. “Here, try this on.”

Steele did. Felt like wearing a bucket with eyeholes. There was metal around his head, but he wouldn’t be able to see a blow to avoid it, so it didn’t strike him as a gain. Steele was an offensive fighter. He didn’t win hiding behind armor.