Strength and Honor (45 page)

^S
TEELE AND HIS RECAPTURED MARINES
sat on the floor in a boxcar. The compartment smelled like sheep. Every surface felt greasy with lanolin. There was no light. After several hours, a voice in the dark sounded, moaning, “Just how long does it take to get to the Coliseum?” It was probable they were not going back to the Coliseum after two escapes.

They didn’t seem to be going anywhere.

Daybreak brought light and nothing else, Time wore on. There was no food. There was still a carton of water, which they were relunctant to drink because there was no crapper in here.

“Did you see the light, sir?” Dak Shepard asked.

Steele looked to either side of himself for some other “sir” who might answer the question. He squinted at Dak Shepard. “What?”

“When you died,” said Dak.

“I saw it once,” said Kerry Blue. “The light.” She had been drowning. Dak turned to her. “See anyone at the end?” Kerry shook her head. “I didn’t get very far before a medic was squishing water out of me.”

“Sir?” Dak turned back to Colonel Steele. “Did you?”

Steele slowly nodded. “Saw my mom. She told me to go back.”

Dak nodded, liking that answer. But it was only part of what Steele heard from the light.

What Ma Steele actually said was,
Boy, you go right back there and get her.

The sun was past zenith when the boxcar set down, and the door lifted open. Automatons and human guards herded the Marines into a clean Spartan dormitory, some place where the season was autumn. The guards locked the Americans in by themselves.

There was a security system all around the building, but no locks on the doors to the individual rooms. Once locked inside, the prisoners had free run of everything. There were dry showers, cots with air mattresses, food, drinking water, heads, a first aid kit, and a dry laundry.

Cain blurted, “Wow! Was there a regime change?”

Steele supposed the League of Earth Nations must have stepped in to enforce conventions of treatment of POWs.

Dak looked around for a video. That was asking too much. But there were decks of cards.

So the Marines played cards, talked, making up stories of what could have changed about the war to land them here. Except for Steele, Ranza, and Cain who spent the daylight inspecting their confines, searching for a way out.

There were two cots in each sleeping room, but enough rooms for each Marine to have his own private space.

At nightfall Kerry Blue came to Flight Leader Ranza Espinoza’s room, and stood in the doorway hugging a pillow. “Can I stay here?”

Kerry Blue hadn’t had her own room
ever
and discovered she didn’t like it. On
Merrimack
there would be eight women stacked into a space this size. And there would be Dak Shepard snoring right on the other side of the thin metal partition that walled Kerry’s pod from the guys’ rack.

The private room felt like exile.

Ranza was trying to make her thick cloud of freshly cleaned hair lie down. She shot Kerry a sneer through the mirror. “You mean you’re not going to bunk with
Thomas?”

Ran/a had been in the arena when Kerry screamed the colonel’s name over the wall.

Kerry asked, “You gonna bust me, Ranza?”

“Nah. Can’t. Take that cot. I got this one.”

“Thanks,” Kerry came in. She sat on her cot. Thought to ask, “You
can’t?”
“Can’t,” said Ranza.” ‘Cause if the Old Man wanted to feat with me, I’d be there in a half a heartbeat.”

Wolfhound
had not received new orders since Caesar’s collapse, so she maintained orbit around Earth. When the wolfhunter ship finally received a message other than a general broadcast, it wasn’t from Command.

Red Dorset at the com reported, “Captain Carmel, I have a resonant hail coming in on a disallowed harmonic. Claims to be Gaius American us.”

“I’ll take it,” said Calli. The transmission came with a video. Calli saw the face and let out an involuntary, “Oh.”

Gaius Americanus touched his own young face. “Oh, yes.” He had forgotten, as had she, that they hadn’t seen each other since they had both been burned. “That’s what my wife is going to say, I’m afraid.”

“What’s happening, Gaius?”

The Roman appeared to be debating how much to say, “You saw the transmission from the Vatican?”

“The whole universe saw that,” said Calli. “Our nations are talking.”

“Who is speaking for the Empire?” Last seen, Romulus was screaming incoherently. “The Senate.” Calli noticed that Gaius was wearing a red-bordered Senatorial toga.

“No interim Caesar?”

“Not a chance.”

That meant Rome was working in a power void—which would be more of a power glut if you counted all the Senators. No one could expect that many ambitious brains to agree on anything, except that they all distrusted anyone who might seize control as deftly as Romulus had upon Magnus’ death.

“What is the purpose of this call, Senator?” Captain Carmel kept her words formal.

“A personal favor, if at all possible,” said Gaius. “Check on my wife and children at Fort Eisenhower? I know you can’t carry a message. If you could just see that they are well?”

“I think I can accommodate that,” Calli said.

Seeing him, and speaking of Fort Ike, memories of their doomed flight in the shuttle came back to her. The attack. The fire. “I’m sorry the war might be ending without my getting a chance to kill Numa.”

“He’s right here,” said Gaius.

“No, no, don’t pass me over to— What do
you
want?”

The vastness of Numa Pompeii filled her com screen. “I wanted to let you know I had the warrant for your arrest lifted, Callista.”

“What warrant?”

“For your arrest for the murder of Caesar Magnus.”

That nonsense? She had assumed Claudia’s accusations were long behind her. “That wasn’t I.”

“I know that,” said Numa. “Why isn’t there a warrant out for
your
attempted murder of Gaius?” said Calli. “And why is he even talking to you? Gaius! Where’s Gaius! Put Gaius back on!”

“You ridiculous American cowgirl,” Numa’s deep voice rolled like mumbling thunder. “Had I wanted Gaius dead, he would be dead. I would have let him board
Gladiator
and executed him with my own sword. I would not have hatched a sniveling plot in the dark using a disgraced moron from Daedalus Station and Romulus’ other toadies.”

What he said made sense, but Calli was never good at backing down or giving Numa Pompeii the benefit of any doubt. She said back, “What was Romulus hoping to achieve here?”

“I was not privy to Caesar’s plans and would not tell you if I knew. I like your new face by the way.”

“Don’t be cruel.”

“I mean it,” said Numa. “It lets the strength behind it show through. Before you were just pretty.”

———

Sound and lights outside the POWs’ dormitory woke the Marines, who had become light sleepers anyway. Ranza rolled off her cot to look out the window. A lander descended, right next to the building. Leaves and dust fanned out beneath it.
“It’s one of ours!”

Kerry ran to the window, looked for the Roman guards. Found them at the periphery of the lights, standing there, looking surly.

“No one’s shooting!” Kerry marveled.
“We’re going home!”

Home meant the
Merrimack.

She was afraid that their evader status might exclude them from fighting the rest of the war. But they learned upon boarding
Merrimack
that there might not be much more war left. Other Marines from the 89th were being picked up from the field.

With the return of seven hundred plus Marines,
Merrimack
reverted to its noisy, crowded familiarity.

Colonel Steele spent extra time in quarantine, having died and been resurrected by Roman medics—like Augustus had been.

“I am not Augustus!” Steele bellowed. But TR Steele distrusted Romans more than anyone, so he submitted to the extra scrutiny to make certain he carried nothing of them aboard.

“So God struck Romulus down,” said Marcander Vincent at his tactical station on the command deck of
Merrimack.

“Didn’t look like God’s work,” said Systems. “Looked more like Augustus’ work.” The helm nodded, murmured, “Same thing that got Claudia.”

“Augustus’ nanites laid out Claudia on Palatine,” said Marcander Vincent. “How could those nanites get to Vatican City?”

Captain Farragut, listening to the crew chatter, caught in a breath in sudden epiphany. Vatican City. The seat of the old Catholic religion.

I know a Catholic.

He knew a Catholic who had personal nanites exempted from the sterilization of the
Merrimack
at the outbreak of the war. The nanites had been set outboard while the space battleship was scoured. The nanites had been picked up by their owner in space after he separated from
Merrimack.

I know a Catholic who had an audience with the Pope.

“Young Captain!” Jose Maria de Cordillera greeted John Farragut’s hail cheerily. He wore a fine white shirt and a waistcoat the color of pure gold. He appeared to be on the coast of Spain, on a terrace of a villa on the sea, tranquil as if nothing momentous were happening anywhere in the galaxy.

“Are you still on Earth?” Farragut asked looking at the scene behind him.

“No. I have been to Earth and I have been home to Terra Rica since last we met. I am in transit now to another destination. This is
Mercedes.”
He motioned to his surroundings.

Mercedes
was Jose Maria’s little racing yacht, named for his late wife, lost on board the Roman ship
Sulla
years before, the first victim of the Hive.

The turquoise sea, the white birds, the yellow sun, the villa were all a holoimage.

Sun glanced off the water.

Farragut finally got round to asking innocently, “How did your audience with the Pope go?”

“Very well,” answered Jose Maria with the same false innocence. Farragut asked outright: “How did you get the nanites onto the Papal throne?”

“I did not.” Jose Maria sipped red wine, his dark eyes impish. “I put them in the holy water.”

Farragut shook his head. He had watched the recordings of Romulus’ entrance to the Vatican. Romulus never dipped his hand in a stoup or in a baptismal font. He never picked up an aspergillum. “Romulus doesn’t use holy water.”

“But the Pope does,” said Jose Maria. “The hand that touches the water is the hand that rests on the arm of the throne, the hand that grips the scepter, the hand that touches the rail of the balcony. God does intervene in the affairs of humankind. But heaven helps those.”

“You are a holy bastard, Jose Maria.”

“I did penance just in case it was not heaven doing the helping of those who helped themselves.”

Farragut remembered Augustus’ first shot at Romulus, the one that pierced the seat and the headrest of the throne in Caesar’s bunker during the American siege of Palatine. That attempt never quite felt right. It wasn’t enough for Augustus to shoot Romulus through the head. And it had never seemed like it had a high likelihood of success.

That shot had been the announcement to Romulus that Augustus was coming. Death was not enough. Augustus needed to show blood on Romulus’ hands and to make him face his father.

For that there were the nanites left in Augustus’ data bank, which he knew would be excised from his head upon his death. That trap required Caesar to touch the data bank, and Caesar hadn’t.

Had Augustus ever meant for Romulus to touch it? Or had he foreseen Romulus avoiding that trap as well? “How could Augustus be certain Romulus would come to Vatican City?”

“Certain?” said Jose Maria. “I do not know that he was certain, young Captain. Romulus had expressed an interest in giving a speech
Urbi et Orbi et Cosmi
from the Loggia. But for all we know there are more nanites elsewhere. As the nanites are only triggered by a combination of DNA in common with Magnus and memory of patricide, then any other traps, if such exist, will never be activated, never be found. I must believe Augustus created other backups. Redundance is good.”

“Redundance is good,” said Farragut. That was why there were six engines on the
Merrimack.
“Was
that
the purpose of your audience with the Pope?” said Farragut. “To set Augustus’ trap for Romulus?”

“Oh, no. My delivery of the nanites was a last favor to Augustus. That was not the reason for my visit to the Vatican. The reason for my journey was personal.”

“May I ask?”

“I must share, young Captain,” said Jose Maria, becoming quietly animated, “The Vatican has always conducted scientific research, much of it in the field of astronomy and space exploration—the search for the fingerprints of God in His cosmos. The Riverites are not the only ones who see God in His Creation. To the Riverites Creation, not the gospels, is the firsthand testament of God. It is both, of course. Outer space doth make gnats of us all. I went to the Vatican because I funded a research project for them.”

“Success?” Farragut asked.

Jose Maria nodded. “I am on my way to see the results of their exploration for myself even now. The Vatican ship is waiting for me at the site,”

Jose Maria set aside his wine, looked meditative. Emotions shone in his face—wonder, sorrow, and something else.

He gave a sad smile. His voice came out surreal, as if he could scarcely believe what he was saying—speak it and it will cease to be. “They found the
Sulla.”

The Roman Empire was in the control of a Senate without a unified head to make decisions. The Senators proceeded cautiously this time, with much debate. No one was afraid to express disagreement with anyone else. Charisma was ill regarded now, so Senator Trogus got his floor time, and Numa Pompeii had to rein in his eloquence.

If anyone’s voice carried more authority, it was Gaius Americanus. The others were willing to pause now and consider why Magnus chose this man to succeed him. Gaius Americanus became, if not their leader, then their moderator.