Centurion's Rise (21 page)

“You
r orders and actions can be rather erratic at times,” Hastelloy said as he continued eating the apple he caught.  “I find it pays to take them at their literal base to remove any doubt or room for interpretation.  When you manage something as large and complex as a sprawling city it pays to be precise rather than figurative or sarcastic with your instructions.”

“Spare me you
r lectures.”

“Another thing to keep in
mind,” Hastelloy continued as though Tomal had not spoken at all, “is to listen to the masses and keep them happy.  Otherwise you’ll find yourself without a job; or a heartbeat for that matter.”

Hastelloy stopped to look out over the balcony into the main plaza of the palace.  A menacing mob chanting
vile slogans burst into the courtyard. “Here they are, and my Latin isn’t as good as yours, but I believe they are cursing your mother and the farm animal that molested her to conceive you.”

Tomal’s acerbic smirk vanished in an instant when he looked at the si
ze of the rioting group that quickly overtook his palace.  He looked at Hastelloy with eyes of a child facing the playground bully.

“
If you want to preserve the advantage my position with Caesar gives us, you’ll help defuse this,” Tomal bargained.

“Still only think
ing one move ahead are we, Tomal?” Hastelloy mocked.  “The solution is quite simple.  You need to give the people their champion.  If you release him from his slavery and have him address the crowd to talk them down, this whole thing goes away.”

Tomal said nothing regarding Hastelloy’s suggestion.  He simply stood along the balcony railing chewing his lip.

“Would you swallow that damnable pride of yours for two seconds and do the right thing?  If that mob doesn’t get what they want, they’ll tear you and this city to shreds.”

Tomal glanced at his assistant then spoke to Hastelloy in their Novan language.
“Gallono sucker punched me like a coward when we first landed on this planet.  I do not forgive such actions, I get even.”

Has
telloy responded in the same tongue,
“You don’t have the luxury of holding on to grudges at the moment.”

Changing back to Latin again so his aid could understand the words
, Tomal went on.  “Fine, I will give the people their champion, but the request to talk the mob down must come from you.  I refuse to ask anything of that man.”

“Fi
ne,” Hastelloy said in disgust and made his way off the balcony heading towards the gladiator training area where Gallono was held.

Ten long minutes later Tomal made his way
down to the main courtyard of his palace.  The staged release of Gallono would take place at the stairwell leading to the main entrance of the palace.  Tomal stepped down twelve flights of stairs to a large landing where the two flights of steps ascending from the left and right met.  The angry mob was just barely kept away from the side stairs by the palace guards, but their control of the area was degrading rapidly.

When Tomal’s presence on the steps was noticed an
enraged roar washed over the plaza.  Tomal raised his hands to induce enough silence for his words to be heard.  “As the people’s Tribune I know your frustrations.  You feel used and abused by the powers that be.  You feel the slighting of your champion in the arena was the final insult.”

A doubtful moan rolled across the crowd, but they remained silent to hear him out.  Tomal glanced behind him
and saw Hastelloy and Gallono talking off to the side.  Confident everything was in place he turned back toward the crowd once more and continued.

“I tell you now, your anger on this matter is misplaced.”  Many in the crowd shouted their disagreement, so Tomal upped his volume.  “Do not take my word for it.  Listen to the words from your champion.”

The mob erupted in cheers and applause as Gallono made his way down the palace steps to stand beside Tomal on the landing.  Tomal extending his hand to shake Gallono’s and pulled him in for a one armed embrace.

“I offered you your freedom and you refused, choosing to remain a gladiator instead,” Tomal whispered into Gallono’s ear.  “You
got me?  Can you keep that story straight?”

Gallono pushed Tomal away and his only response to the question was a contrite grin.  He then stepped up to the railing and absorbed the crowd’s lavish
ing praise.  Five minutes of constant applause passed before Gallono was able to calm the mob enough to speak.

**********

Albus yelled and cheered with the rest of the crowd when the gladiator champion appeared.  Albus had not witnessed the bout in person, but the stories of the event were now the stuff of legend.  If even half the embellished tales were true, the man descending to the landing was indeed a god among men.

He
felt his stomach twinge when he saw Mark Antony and the champion embrace.  The gladiator was supposed to be a champion for the people.  If he now embraced the man who ruled the city and denied his freedom, the gladiator was clearly bought off for the words he was about to say.  Albus lent his ears to the coming speech, but kept his cynicism and doubt at the ready.

“Countryman,” the champion shouted.  “Thank you for the love
you show me, though I feel I have not yet earned your praise.  I fight in the arena to earn a sense of purpose for myself.  Even after my great victory in the arena I still felt my place was there with sword and shield in hand.  Had the people’s tribune offered me my freedom I would have refused.” 

A
confused mix of cheers and doubt emanated from the crowd as the champion paused until his words could be heard again.  Albus quietly envisioned how many naked women would occupy the champion’s bed tonight, complements of Mark Antony for this speech.

“
Until now,” the champion continued.  “Until this very moment, I thought my place in life was in battle.  I see now I was wrong.”

The champion pointed at Mark Antony as he continued.  “This pig never offered me my freedom that day in the arena.  He saw there was more in it for him if I continued to fight and entertain all of you.  Keep you distracted so you
’d forget the injustice and hardships heaped upon you.”

The crowd began to percolate with excitement, and Albus felt his blood come to a boil along with everyone else.  His heart lifted as he watched Mark Antony take several
steps away from the champion.  These words were not the ones the Tribune expected to hear.

“How many times have you watched your
Domine molest your wife or daughter as you pretend to go on as if nothing happened?” the champion raged on.  “How many battles have the soldiers among you fought only to watch the commander’s profit from your efforts?  No longer!”

The crowd roared in agreement as Mark Antony retreated up the steps and out of sight along with another man dressed in a senator’s toga.  Albus thought the man looked remarkably similar to the
one who incited the mob to march on the palace in the first place, but that couldn’t possibly be the case.

“From this day forth we rage against the injustice put upon us.  Let us rage so loud that Gaius Julius Caesar might actually hear us and return
to the Republic he seeks to rule rather than frolicking in the desert with that witch of the Nile, Cleopatra.”

The crowd
instantly bulled over the token force of palace guards to take their rage out on the estate.  As the mob approached their champion, he turned and gestured towards the palace building.  “Take it, take it all.  This city was built by our hard labors and tonight we reclaim what is ours.  Our dignity, our equality; take it all!”

Mark strolled up
to the vault door and ran his hand along its smooth surface with the satisfaction of nearly completing a life time of work.  He was close, so very close now.  Only this vault door stood between him and the answers he deceived, threatened, intimidated, sacrificed, and even killed to attain.  This was his crowning moment and he allowed himself the briefest of moments to soak it in.

The moment passed as quickly as it came.  He wasn’t there yet, this door needed to move, and judging by the look on the engineer’s face it might still be a while.  Mark adjusted the lucky ball cap on his head and paced over to the frustrated soldier and his commanding officer.

“What do you think we need?” Mark began.

“An act of g
od,” the soldier groaned back.  “There are no power leads for me to access, or entry combination pads to hack.  What we do have is a three step identity check.  In succession there’s a palm reader, voice analyzer, and a retinal scanner.  When you compound these with the fact that we don’t even know who’s identity we need to replicate, you get a door that is not going to open any time soon.”

Mark turned his attention to the team’s demolitions expert.  “I don’t suppose you have any better news for me.”

“Let me put it this way, the front door to the warehouse was only two inches thick and our best shot barely got through.  This puppy,” the soldier said slapping the door two times, “Is over a foot thick.  Any detonation strong enough to punch through is going to blast the outer statue clean off the planet’s surface, and the concussion wave would crush any person or equipment inside this chamber.”

“We’ve been able to push around our Egyptian military handler to this point, but destroying a national treasure alongside the only surviving wonder of the world is a bit much, even with your connections,” the SEAL team commander added.

So close was all Mark could think as he paced around the outer chamber.  Eventually he came to a stop and looked around the room with remarkable calm.  “Suggestions?”

“There’s a display monitor next to the scanners here,” the engineer said, very tongue in cheek.  “Why don’t you knock and see who’s home.”

As if someone were eavesdropping on the conversation, the display monitor suddenly flickered to life.  Mark moved over to the screen for a closer look, but as he approached his face turned white as a confirmation dress.  It couldn’t be.  The face staring back at him on the monitor could not possibly be.  The man was dead.

“NSA Agent Mark, how nice to see you again,” the moni
tor said calmly.  “What’s wrong? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“I have,” Mark responded while summoning his bravest
façade.  “You died.  You took a cyanide pill to avoid my questioning back at NASA headquarters.  You died.”

“Death is onl
y the beginning,” the man on screen smirked.  His words were accompanied by a solid metal door sliding shut over the exit ramp and the faint hiss of air rushing out of the room.

Just before he lost consciousness Mark heard the man on the view screen say in a very amused voice, “You didn’t think it would be that easy did you?”

Tomal squirmed while
he sat in a plain wooden chair in the center of a plain white room.  Everything about the place was ordinary and that troubled him to no end.  Was this to be his surroundings going forward?  If so, he would dearly miss his statues, slaves, food, drink, and all the other elements his aristocratic life in Rome afforded him.

While he pondered his surroundings, Tomal nervously clapped his hands together between his knees
with his elbows resting on his jittering thighs.  He sat up and leaned back in the rickety chair.  When he hit the rigid backrest he thought a splinter may have made its way beneath the skin near his right shoulder blade.  He missed his pillow covered chairs.

Tomal leaned forward again and listened as the creaking of the uncomfortable chair bounced around the walls. 
Eventually his impatience got the better of him and he stole a glance at the door.  Both guards fired a look that screamed, ‘avert your eyes or you will lose them.’

He promptly continued inspecting the tile floor at his feet.  Moments later the cadence of
angry footfalls approaching drew his eyes back to the doorway.  When the footsteps grew to a deafening pitch and stopped just outside the door, both guards snapped to rigid attention.

Slowly, Julius Caesar stepped through the doorway and glanced around the chamber with a dismissive eye.
Clearly he was too good for this place and despised needing to be there.

Tomal sprung to his feet and delivered a crisp salute.  “General, welcome home.”

“Home?” Caesar repeated slowly as he paced Tomal’s direction.  “The place I left to finish off my enemies was home.  My home was a thriving metropolis that commanded respect and awe from the known world.”

As Caesar approached
, he gestured with a single finger for Tomal to be seated.  When his order was obeyed Caesar spread his arms out wide and glanced around with a vague expression. “This place I return to now is a rotting carcass disintegrating from within.”

For the first time since entering the room, Caesar raised his voice with an unbridled rage behind it.  “Brigands roam the street with impunity
, taking and destroying whatever they desire.  The rule of law is something the mob now wipes their backside with.  This is not home.  This is a disgrace worthy of those effeminate Greeks, not mighty Rome!  It’s a disgrace created by your incompetence that is so thorough and complete that it approaches an act of treason.”

“I . . . I tried to keep them occupied,” Tomal stammered like a school boy scrambling to explain his actions to the principal.  “I held festivals, hosted lavish games. . .”

“Yes I heard,” Caesar barked back.  “And when a people’s champion presented himself in grand fashion on the arena floor you promptly kept him in his place of servitude for all to see and grow enraged.” 

Caesar kicked Tomal's chair, rotating it backwards and dumping Tomal onto the floor.  Caesar quickly moved to stand directly over the fallen man. 

“You may as well have hiked up your toga and taken a piss on every commoner in the crowd,” Caesar shouted.

Tomal struggled to get off the floor.  His instinct was to spring to his feet and return the violence, but one look at Caesar's snarling face made him think better of it.  Instead he rose to a kneeling posture before Caesar.  Despite the submissive position he delivered a challenging repl
y.  “He was my slave to command; I had the right to keep him in service.”

Caesar delivered a sharp backhanded
slap to silence the fool.  “Slaves and plebs outnumber everyone else in the Republic a thousand to one.  The only thing keeping them in line is the hope that one day they will rise above their station.  You robbed them of that hope and this . . .
anarchy
is the result.”

Tomal shook of
f the blow that hurt his pride far more than his cheek.  “I tried subduing the mobs by engaging the army, but they just melted away and joined in the looting and chaos.  There was nothing to do except focus my security forces on critical elements of the city and let the fire behind the mob's madness burn itself out.”

“
To summarize what I just heard, you’ve done absolutely nothing to save my city,” Caesar said as he turned his back on Tomal as if the very sight of him gave offense.  As he paced back to the doorway he continued his analysis.  “You cowered behind what loyal soldiers you had left and waited for me to arrive and pull you from the inferno you started.”

When Caesar reached the nearest guard at the door he reached out and slowly drew the soldier's sword from
its scabbard resting on the man’s hip.  Caesar executed a military pivot to face Tomal with the blade held with both hands at a menacing level.  In silence Caesar returned to standing over Tomal, who did not move from his kneeling position on the floor.

Just when Tomal expected a swift cut to separate his head from its home, Caesar lowered the blade till the point rest on the ground. 

“It’s my own fault I suppose,” Caesar pondered while looking up at the ceiling and his god Jupiter beyond its boundaries.  “You can engineer siege works better than anyone I’ve ever known.  You know how to command soldiers who must obey your orders to win great battles.  But you have no clue how to rule people who are only obedient to their own selfish desires.”

Caesar extended a hand to help Tomal rise to his feet.  Still holding o
n to Tomal’s hand Caesar said, “I used your talents in the wrong capacity and that error requires correction.”

Tomal bowed his head, “
As always, I am at your service.”

“
I understand the gladiator champion who leads this rebellion barricaded himself, along with a couple hundred other gladiators, in the arena training grounds.”  Caesar thrust the handle of the sword he held into Tomal’s hand.  “You will lead the assault on his stronghold and kill every last one of them.”

Tomal was
confused.  “Isn’t that just repeating the mistake I made?  If wronging the champion incensed the people to riot, I shudder to think how they will react to his execution.”

“He was a champion,” Caesar corrected.  “
Now he is a lawless brigand.  The people follow him because they think he can do no wrong; they think he is unbeatable.”

“
You and your military prowess will show every rioter in the city they are wrong.  You will crush this man’s stronghold so decisively the people will have no doubt that their belief in this champion’s infallibility could not have been more wrong had they all been born with their asses on backwards.”

Tomal’
s spirit soared the instant he felt the grip of a sword in his hands.  He was not finished; he would not be executed.  Instead, he was given the chance to win yet another victory for Caesar and add to his base of power.

“
It will be done, General,” Tomal said with a voice brimming with confidence.

“
Good,” Caesar said as he held Tomal’s gaze for entirely too long.  Tomal could tell he was searching for any hint of false bravado behind his eyes.

Finally satisfied, Caesar turned to leave the room, but Tomal interrup
ted his exit with a question.  “What will you do in the mean time?”

Caesar looked annoyed at having to point out the obvious
.  “I leave to rule the Republic.  I’ll put the Senate back under my heel and then dazzle the people with the promise of everything they desire.”

“
You think orating some empty promises to the people will win them over again?” Tomal questioned.

Caesar just chuckled as he turned and walked through the door.  From the cor
ridor beyond he shouted back.  “There’s not a doubt in my mind.”

**********

In the late morning sun, Tomal looked across the courtyard atop an unremarkable horse he commandeered from one of his cavalry commanders; next to the arena his men marched into their positions.  His objective, the gladiator training grounds, stood on the opposite end of the open expanse.  Tomal had never toured the facility himself, but he could plainly see the intelligence he garnered from the facility’s architect was correct. 

The target sported a large three hundred
foot square open air courtyard where the gladiators practiced and honed their craft.  Along the entire left side of the training ground stood a long flat roofed structure that in Tomal’s opinion resembled an open air gazebo more than a barracks.  There were no doors, only support columns keeping a roof over the place where the gladiators ate and slept.  The building provided absolutely no strategic value to the defenders.

The back and left side of the training ground were lined with a fifteen foot high stone wall that stood three feet thick with nasty iron spikes bent inward to further impede any attempt by a gladiator to escape.

The front of the training facility was blocked from the public by a long wall of iron bars that stood as high as the stone walls around them.  A stone archway stood in the middle of the wall of iron bars to serve as a gatehouse.  On a normal day the public would be able to walk past the training ground and watch their favorite combatant practice, or assess who they would wager on in the next gladiatorial games. 

This day was different than the rest
, however.  The gladiators erected a barricade just inside the row of iron bars.  It was made up of anything the gladiators could find: carts, barrels, stones and other rubble.  Tomal even saw some training dummies thrown into the jumbled pile of junk that spanned the entire width of the training grounds.

To an untrained eye the makeshift wall looked rather intimidating, but Tomal was quite unimpressed.  At his core he was an engineer trained to detect flaws and either fix or exploit them as the situation required.

Tomal looked over at his closest lieutenant and gestured towards the pile of rubble between him and the gladiator army.  “They actually chose this spot to put up a final fight?  Why not take the fight into the narrow streets to nullify our superior numbers a bit?”

“I guess they prefer fighting on familiar ground,” the man responded.  “Even here, attacking a fortified position like that is going to be costly.  I’m not sure we have enough force to do the job to be honest.”

“Well then, the trick is to make their position no longer fortified,” Tomal said with a confident smile.  He prompted his mount forward and carefully passed through his front line of soldiers into the open air between his battle lines and the barricade.

Tomal shouted at the top of his lungs for his men, the gladiators inside the barricade, and
any citizens standing around watching the battle from afar to hear.  “Open these gates and surrender, or I will open them for you and take no prisoners.”

For several long seconds silence was the only response.  Then Tomal spotted a dead chicken tumbling his direction, thrown from behind the barricade.  He casually leaned to the side allowing the dead poultry to sail harmlessly past his head.

“I hoped you’d say that,” Tomal said softly and then led his horse back through his battle lines. 

“Ready the ballista
s,” Tomal ordered.

Immediately, all
one thousand of Tomal’s soldiers took fifteen steps backwards to reveal twenty gigantic crossbow-like contraptions mounted on tripod stands.  The intimidating weapons hurled six foot long, six inch wide projectiles, and they were cocked and ready to do their damage.

Most commanders probably would have tried to use catapults to demolish the barricade, but Tomal knew all to
o well those contraptions were just as likely to damage the surrounding structures as they did the barricade.  Ballistas on the other hand, were pin point accurate, especially from this limited range.  The brutal power of a catapult was needed to break apart a well constructed wall, toppling a hastily erected pile of trash was a simple matter of hitting the right spot.

“Fire,” Tomal ordered.  His words were rewarded with the crisp thump of twenty destructive spears flung at the barricade, immediately followed by the sound of shattering wood and parts of the makeshift wall collapsing.

“These gladiators may know how to fight,” Tomal said to his lieutenant, “but they don’t know the first thing about engineering a barricade.  One more round should do it.”

True to his prediction, Tomal watched with satisfaction as the second wave of ballista bolts annihilated what was left of the barricade.  Behind the rubble stood
no fewer than two hundred well-trained gladiators standing shoulder to shoulder armed with their favorite weapons of destruction.

No doubt his adversaries were brave men. 
After all, they entered armed one-on-one battles to the death on a regular basis.  Even with that going for them, Tomal watched their eyes as they frantically looked for somewhere, anywhere to hide.  Alas, they were trapped with nowhere to go except through the wall of soldiers who were suddenly visible in all their glory now that the once proud barricade was reduced to splinters and rubble.

“One more round and add the archers
this time. Then send in the surprise our loyal farmers brought for them,” Tomal ordered.

The ballistas and archers took careful aim at the hoard of gladiators and let fly their missiles.  The
devastating force the ballistas put behind their projectiles was on full display as the oversized spears slammed into the hapless defenders.  The bolts blasted through wood and iron shields like they were made of paper and impaled half a dozen men at a time.  Gaping holes in the gladiator ranks instantly appeared as the direct trajectory of the ballistas hit home.  More defenders fell when the archer’s arrows descended from on high raining down razor sharp tips.