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Authors: R. M. Meluch

BOOK: The Ninth Circle
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Orissus was the hard-ass of the lot. Square, bulky, sardonic. His thick lips were made for sneering. Orissus took this insider/outsider division seriously. Orissus got clumsy with liquids around Cinna’s bunk, and he tended to step on Cinna’s parade-polished boots five minutes before inspection. Another reason to want this trial over with. It was getting hard not to hate Orissus.
Nicanor had a noble name, and he had nobility. Nicanor stood a gnat’s breath taller than the rest. He was perfect. Not as mean as Orissus. Nicanor was cold and lofty as a hero’s statue.
Leo and Galeo. Had the reprod designers gotten lazy when they cranked out those two clones? Physically, Leo and Galeo were Tweedledee and Tweedledee. But Leo was technically inclined, and Galeo was a head-basher.
And then there was Nox. He should have been taller, but there had been no choice. Nobody had designed Nox. He wasn’t a clone. Nox had been born. Really born. Not gently retrieved from an incubator at term, but extruded from a live woman’s very narrow you-have-got-to-be-kidding-me passage. Gotta love natural conception, but the final delivery? Cinna thanked any and all gods for giving him a penis.
Nox’s mother had to be insane.
Cinna could tell at first look that Nox was a wild weed. The naturally selected had a certain chaos about them. Nox stood a full hand-span shorter than his brothers, and he was fair-skinned and blond. He had been born on Earth. American, but no one held that against him. Nox was not a blood brother, but he was a brother all the same. That he was adopted meant somebody deemed him worthy to be Antonian. The venerable line of Antonius hung its gens name on him and now he was Antonius Nox, every bit as Antonian as the rest of them. Maybe even more.
You could usually tell the converts from the natives. The adoptees and the novos had to prove themselves. They had a fanatical drive to out-Roman the Romans. Probably why Nox wore a traditional knee-length tunic with no trousers and sandals instead of boots. Sand under a sandal strap either ripped up your feet or made you tough. Nox kept proving he was tough. He’d already proved he was Roman enough for this squad.
Nox was in.
Cinna, the blood brother, was still out.
Orissus spat on the hard ground at Cinna’s approach. “You’re late.”
“I’m not,” said Cinna evenly. Knew he wasn’t late.
“Get moving then,” said Nicanor.
Cinna didn’t understand. “Move?”
Nicanor nodded his noble head sideways and backward toward the massif behind them. “Lead on,” said Nicanor.
“Where?”
“Just follow the path,” Pallas told him.
Cinna saw it now. A narrow footpath snaked up through rocks and weeds.
Cinna took the point position, though he didn’t know where he was going. He just followed the rough path that led around and up the sloped side of the massif.
The predawn sky was getting a bruised haze to it. Cinna’s night vision switched itself off.
His seven brothers hiked behind him at a distance.
As they ascended, Cinna heard them talking together behind his back. He couldn’t make out what they were saying.
Cinna set a brisk pace. The squad needed to be back on base before muster.
The Legion left its new recruits little unstructured time. The idea was to run the young men ragged so they wouldn’t have any energy to get into trouble. That was the plan. The squad was meant to be sleeping now.
Someone underestimated the energy levels of physically fit youths with a craving for risk.
So here was Cinna’s squad, forcing themselves on another march, out of bounds, against the rules.
Rules in the Empire were rigid.
But when caught between obeying the rules or following his mates, there was no real choice.
Cinna climbed nearly half a kilometer up the path that zigged and zagged over rocks, loose stones, and scrub weeds. He mounted the summit as the sky was paling from violet to blue.
Path’s end brought Cinna to the sheer eastern precipice of the rock. He recognized this place though he’d only ever seen it in pictures.
This was the crag called the Widow’s Edge.
As far as anyone knew, there was no actual grieving Roman woman to go with the name of this crag. But should one want to end it, Cinna guessed the drop from here would do the job. Thoroughly.
The air moved at this height, lifting Cinna’s hair from his brow. Gray-green leaves of stunted trees fluttered.
The wide vista took on color and detail, until sunlight lanced across the edge of the world and shut Cinna’s eyes.
He bowed his head. Opened his eyes a slit. Looked down.
The cliff face was vertical. Striated yellow-white rock blazed with a quartz gleam in the light of dawn.
The dry hardpan lay dead flat down below. A long way down below.
Gravity on the colonial planet Phoenix was stronger than on the Roman home world, Palatine. But this drop would be lethal anywhere.
A gust of air gave Cinna an unsettling push.
He took a step back from the edge. Looked up.
Seven of the world’s small moons shone in their own phases, strung across the thin dusty sky above them. The early sun threw the brothers’ shadows hard and long behind them where the western horizon hugged its indigo darkness. In between lay the nightmare of the Dragon’s Back, alternating jagged sharp ridges and deep pits of blackness.
The stars were fading. Only the steady white shine of a few planets and satellites persisted. The day would be clear. It always was.
Cinna knew he was up here for some rite of passage. He didn’t know what his brothers intended, but he was ready. He was going to be worthy.
Nox moved to the very edge of the precipice, leaned over, and peered down. The wind moved his blond hair. His tunic flapped around his thighs. He pulled his lips back from his teeth with an inward hiss. Spoke, not to Cinna. “It looks higher than I remember.”
“Well, I don’t think it
grew
,” said Pallas from the rear.
Leo (or was that Galeo?) glanced over the edge to see for himself and immediately shied back. “Nox is right. It’s higher.”
I’m supposed to be scared
, Cinna guessed.
Cinna looked straight down.
It was scary.
Orissus stalked up behind Cinna and Nox at the edge and stood there for a silent moment. Without warning he seized Nox by the shoulders and shouted, “
Watch it!
”
Nox flinched. Then turned and spit in Orissus’ eye.
Orissus grinned and backed off with evil chuckles. Wiped his eye. A smile curled into Nox’s snarl.
They were playing. Like wolf cubs.
No one played with Cinna like that. Yet.
There were eight men in this squad, like the old Roman
contubernium
, tent party.
In an ancient day the men of a
contubernium
shared a tent and a pack animal. These days they shared a barracks hut. Cinna’s squad would form a crew of a Strig when they became fully fledged legionaries, but the term for the squad remained
contubernium
.
Latin was Nox’s second language, and he was actually very good at it. He refused to wear a language module, so he missed words now and then. There was a story that when Nox first saw the word
contubernium
in print, he didn’t know what it meant, so he tried to parse it. “
Con. Con.
Con obviously means
with
. Okay then.
Tuber. Tuber
.
Tuber
.” He’d grasped about for meaning and finally guessed, “Are we sharing a potato?”
Standing now at the Widow’s Edge, Cinna asked Nox, “Is this where I get to do something with a potato?”
It was supposed to be a joke.
Nox didn’t laugh. None of them did.
Cinna deflated.
I get it. I’m not one of them yet
.
They wouldn’t laugh with him until he proved himself.
Well, then, let’s do it
. “Are we rappelling?” Cinna asked.
The other seven remained silent. An ominous kind of silence that kept Cinna from guessing hang gliding next.
Pallas stepped forward, made Cinna face him. Pallas told him, “You are going to jump.”
Cinna had been afraid of that.
He took another look over the edge. “Then what?”
“You fall.”
Cinna exhaled a feeble laugh.
Pallas’ expression, for all the softness to his face, was impenetrable. Cinna couldn’t read a thing on it.
Cinna looked to the others, faces like the one he saw in the mirror. Faunus a little broader. Nicanor handsomer. Orissus square and scarred. Leo and Galeo. Oh, hell, which was which? All of them looked solemn, remote, their expressions masked, tensed as if braced to sever a limb.
Cinna was afraid he was the limb.
Cinna asked, “Rope?”
“No,” said Pallas.
“What’s the trick?”
Pallas shook his head. “There isn’t one.”
Faunus, not a trace of mirth in his jovial face, said, “We’re telling you to jump.”
2
 
“U
H-OH.”
Uh-oh
brought the Vigil of the watch over to Observer Six’s station in the Sector Primus Surveillance Center. A network of satellite eyes cloaked the Roman colonial world Phoenix. Surveillance served planetary and local weather, health, and safety departments. And it served Imperial Intelligence. Vigils kept watch for any number of things, from wildfires and accidents with wildlife to non-Roman activity.
Phoenix’s resident population numbered only in the hundred millions, and those were concentrated in a few metro areas.
The satellite eyes of Sector Primus covered several Roman military bases and training centers, plus two international spaceports and their surrounding metropolises.
Sector Primus watched over the base of Legion Persus.
The Sector Vigil looked over Observer Six’s shoulder at his readouts. “What do you see?”
Observer Six pointed to one satellite image. “Action on Widow’s Edge.” He blew the image up bigger for the Vigil to see.
The satellite eye that fed this image focused on a cadre of ’phebes—seven young men dressed in
gens
colors and one clad in burlap drab. That would be a tyro.
“Looks like a hazing,” said Six.
“That’s illegal,” Observer Eight said from his own station.
Silence gripped the control room and extended for several heartbeats.
There wasn’t a man or woman in the room who had
not
been hazed.
There were two different kinds of unlawful acts in the Empire. One kind meant Don’t Get Caught. The other kind meant Don’t Do It. Really. Just don’t. Ever.
Hazing fit into the former kind. Hazing was done all the time, because the tacit corollary to the law of Don’t Get Caught was Don’t Damage Your Victim.
Senior Observer Gemma tsked at her station. She spoke laconically, “Bad boys.”
Observers Two, Seven, and Eight left their stations to gather around Observer Six’s station to watch the tyro walk to the edge of the cliff.
Behind the tyro were six tall, gorgeous youths who looked just like him, five of them dressed in bronze and black tunics, black cargo pants, and black boots. Bronze and black were the colors of
gens
Antonia. These boys were from the Legion base of Legion Persus.
The sixth youth was shorter than the others, blond and fair. He wore a black and bronze knee-length tunic without trousers. A gust of wind flashed his jockstrap,the modern equivalent of a loincloth. That man had to be adopted.
Satellite surveillance carried no audio, but the video was good enough for the observers to see the mouths of the ’phebes moving in a chant.
Jump! Jump! Jump!
The Vigil knew this one. About two-thirds of the way down the cliff, a hidden net pops out of the rock face and slows you down to a stop just above the ground. Then the rope holding the net bounces you back up to where you left your last meal. And if you’ve hung onto your wits after the bouncing stops, you laugh and yell, “Again!”
Senior Observer Gemma covered her eyes and returned to her own station. She sat, hunched her shoulders forward, and shuddered. “Gaah. That is still a long-ass drop.”
The Sector Vigil angled the satellite’s cam down to find the net mechanism hidden in the cliff face. There it was. Just as it had been in his day.
Observer Six moved the satellite camera’s focus back up to the tyro’s pallid face and closed in tight enough to see the pinpoints of sweat form on his brow and quickly vanish, carried away by a sere wind. Widow’s Edge stood over dry country.

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