Muses of Terra (Codex Antonius Book 2) (21 page)

Neither one of us wants to betray Petra
.
We both loved her too much. Gods, why must I realize these things when it’s almost too late?
 

A hatch slid open behind her, confusing her. Was it a dream? She turned to see Varo standing before an open room. When she looked closer, she recognized it as their cell.

“Thank the gods!” Varo exclaimed, then rushed in and hurried to the latrine in the far corner of the cell.
 

Ocella and Kaeso walked in, but her relief evaporated when she saw the wall display. The outline of a Terran-class planet spread out below, its nightside alit with large cities sprinkled across its northern and southern continents.
 

Despair suddenly made Ocella want to weep.

“No,” Kaeso whispered, staring at the wall display. His face was a jumble of emotions that she hadn’t seen since he last visited his daughter six years ago.
 

They had arrived at Libertus.

“I’m getting transmissions from Umbra now,” Aquilina said, her eyes glassy and unfocused in the command couch. She rubbed behind her right ear as if massaging away a headache. “They’ve engaged the vessel above Libertus.”

“What’s happening?” Cordus asked. He wished he could tune in the intra-system channels on his tabulari, but the transmissions traveled at the speed of light. Any normal com from Libertus Primus would take hours to arrive at their location. Aquilina’s Muse implant was the only way they could monitor events in real-time.
 

Umbra ships were the most powerful starships humanity had ever produced, at least according to Kaeso and Ocella. While Roman ships were massive and packed a lot of firepower, Umbra ships were stealthy, speedy, and could hit any ship and then escape before the ship even knew it was there. While not the “planet killers” that a legion of Roman Eagles were, a swarm of Umbra ships could stop any attack.

At least, any
human
attack.

Cordus waited for Aquilina to respond, using all his self-control to keep from shaking her.

“It’s not going well,” she murmured.

“For who?” Cordus asked.
If Umbra destroys that vessel before Kaeso and Ocella can escape…

Aquilina opened her eyes and glared at him. “Who do you think? Umbra is losing.”

Cordus didn’t know whether to be relieved or worried. Kaeso and Ocella would live, but three billion people lived on Libertus.

Dariya’s voice came over his collar com. “Centuriae, please come to the engine room.”

“Why?”

“Centuriae…please.”

He glanced at Aquilina, but she was focused on the transmissions she was receiving from Umbra. He unbuckled himself from the pilot’s couch and descended the ladder to the engine deck. A sick feeling spread through his core.
 

When he reached the engine room, Dariya was standing with her hands on the tabulari console. Daryush stood next to her, his hands in the pockets of his jumpsuit, his face twisted with worry.

“What happened?”

“The
cac
-spawned way line engines failed.”

“But why?”

She turned around. “Apparently
I
did it.”

“You’re not making sense.”

She pointed at the tabulari. “The quantum way line coordinates changed the second we engaged the delta sleep. It was an automated program, well-hidden…and it has my seal on it.”

Cordus stared at the display. Sure enough, the logs showed Dariya’s seal on the routines that disabled the delta system. “You didn’t—! Did you?”

“Of course not!” she growled. “But somebody did, and they were good enough to use my seal. My seal! On my own
cac
-spawned ship!”

“What about the trap you set on the com system?”

She shook her head wearily. “Nothing.”

Cordus was suddenly as angry as Dariya. The person doing this was not just a leak anymore, but an active saboteur. This person had prevented Cordus from getting Kaeso and Ocella back. He shook with impotent rage and wanted nothing more than to kill this saboteur with his bare hands. Whoever it was, it was someone he had rescued from Reantium, and they had repaid him by—

“You should have spaced them all,” Marcus Antonius said from beside Cordus. “They could all be Liberti, for all you know, and you can’t trust the Liberti.”

Cordus ignored Marcus for the moment.

“Dariya, close all the hatches on the ship. I don’t want the Romans free.” He prayed they had not left their couches yet.

Dariya nodded grimly, then quickly tapped the tabulari. Hatches slammed shut across the ship at the same time, except for the one to the engine room. Daryush looked scared, but he drew the pulse pistol from the holster at his side and went to the open hatch to keep watch.

“Done,” Dariya said. “What will we do with them?”

Cordus had his pistol out and strode to the hatch. “I don’t know yet, but I don’t want them wandering the ship until I have answers. You two stay here and seal the hatch behind me. I’m going to get Aquilina.”

Cordus stepped through the hatch after ensuring the corridor was clear, then nodded to Daryush. The big Persian nodded back, then closed the hatch.

“Finally, you’re going to finish the Liberti spy,” Marcus said, leaning against the bulkhead with his arms folded.
 

I’m a little busy. Go away.

“Just offering our support, young Antonius,” Marcus said. “One bit of advice, though: shoot her before she can talk. Otherwise your hormones will get the better of you.”
 

Then Marcus winked out of existence.

Cordus kept his pistol in a firing position as he approached the ladder to the upper decks. He scanned the corridor to ensure both cargo hatches were shut, took a few deep breaths, and quickly pointed his pistol up the ladder.
 

Nobody was there, and no shots came down.

He used one sweaty hand to climb the ladder to the crew deck, while his pistol hand pointed above him, his heart thudding in his ears. Cordus leaped off the ladder onto the deck and scanned the corridor for threats. All the crew hatches were closed.
 

He whirled around. A closed storage hatch was on the left and the galley entrance on the right.
 

The galley hatch was open. All of the ship’s hatches should have been closed. Was it a malfunction? Was somebody in there? He had to find out.

It took some effort to move his feet forward. He stepped down the corridor slowly—

“Easy, Centuriae,” a male voice said calmly from behind him. Cordus froze and then felt the tip of a pulse rifle at the base of his neck. “Drop the pistol.”

The storage hatch. Gods, my stupidity may have just killed me.

Cordus raised his hands, shifting the pistol in his hand so that he held it by the barrel. He bent down slowly and put it on the floor.

“What are you doing, Ulpius?” Cordus asked. He didn’t have to turn around to know it was the centurion behind him.

“My duty.”

“You can’t fly this ship on your own.”

“I know.”

“Then how…?”

Cordus’s voice trailed off as Aquilina and the other three Romans stepped out of the galley, their weapons pointed at Cordus. Their blank expressions told him they would kill him given the slightest provocation.

“We’re taking you home,” she said in a neutral tone. “
Sire
.”

23

Bursts of light flashed across the wall display as beams of intense blue energy destroyed the Liberti defenses surrounding the planet. Satellites, Liberti Defense Force warships, the rebuilt way station, ground-based missile batteries, and even cloaked Umbra ships were throwing everything they had at the alien vessel. Libertus had rearmed after the Roman siege six years ago, with more weapons than it ever had in its history. The fire it deployed now would have obliterated any human fleet.
 

Stuck in a cell on the alien vessel, Ocella didn’t even feel a tremor from the Liberti assaults.

Kaeso sat on a gel bed staring at the wall display, his shoulders slumped. She sat next to him, holding his limp, dry hand. He had not said a word since they returned to the cell.
 

Varo stood against the back wall, his arms folded, staring grimly at the battle above Libertus.
 

The door to the cell opened behind them, and the Lucia-golem walked in. She regarded them with the emotionless face the aliens still could not fix.

“This world falls,” the golem said. “Witness.”

The wall display shifted and then focused on a swarm of what looked like tiny black wasps spilling from one of the openings across the vessel. The vast swarm of drones shot toward Libertus and then spread out so they evenly covered the entire planet. As the drones descended through the atmosphere, planetary defenses tried desperately to shoot them out of the sky. Liberti plasma cannons and missiles disintegrated drones by the dozens, but there were simply too many for the Defense Force to get them all.

“It only takes a few,” the Lucia-golem said.
 

“What are they doing?” Ocella asked in a half-whisper, staring in horror at what was happening to her home.

“Some will take witnesses,” the golem said. “Most will destroy life on the planet. The strain below must not survive.”

Kaeso didn’t make a sound when he leaped off the gel bed, nor when he grabbed the Lucia-golem’s head and slammed it to the floor on its back. He continued slamming the golem’s head against the floor until there was a sickening crack. Yellow golem blood spurted from its head and bubbled from its mouth. It offered no resistance and appeared to be dead. But Kaeso continued slamming the head against the floor as hard as he could with one hand, his mouth closed and teeth clenched. When the golem still didn’t move, Kaeso began striking the golem’s face with his fists, over and over, until its yellow blood mixed with his own on his cut knuckles.
 

And he kept hitting it.

Ocella rushed over to him. “Kaeso, enough!”

When he didn’t stop, she grabbed his head with both hands and pried his face upward so he looked at her. He stopped beating the golem when their eyes met. His eyes shocked her for she expected to see rage and grief.
 

All she saw was the blank stare of a golem.

“Kaeso,” she said gently.

After long seconds, he blinked. He seemed to notice her for the first time, and then looked down at the golem he had destroyed. He gave a shaky sigh and then stood. He stared at his knuckles for a time, each covered in yellow and red blood, and then wiped them on his jump suit.

“Kaeso?” Ocella asked.

He didn’t reply. He turned around, went back to the gel bed, and sat down. He stared at the unfolding destruction of Libertus in the exact same position he’d been in before he attacked the golem.

Varo came over to Ocella, staring at the golem. “I’ve been wanting to do that since I first saw it.”

“It doesn’t help,” she muttered. “The vessel will just make another one.”

Varo nodded at Kaeso. “You think he’ll be all right?”

She was silent several moments. “Did you know his daughter, Claudia, still lives down there?”

Varo shook his head. “I didn’t know he had a daughter.”

“She thinks he’s dead. When he joined Umbra, he had to ‘die’ to everyone he ever knew, including his family.”

“I’ve never understood why anyone would do that.”

Ocella shrugged. “It’s not so bad if you have no one in your life. Like I did when I joined.”

“But
he
had a family,” Varo said quietly.
 

“He joined after his wife was killed by a Liberti criminal syndicate she was prosecuting. And he got the justice he wanted. Through Umbra, he tracked down and killed every member of the syndicate within months of becoming an Ancile.”

“So he abandoned his daughter for vengeance?”

Ocella looked at Varo. “Yes, and the guilt has consumed him piece by piece for almost twenty years. It’s rare for him to feel anything or show feelings to others now. But he’s no golem. The emotions are still there, just locked away…mostly.”

Ocella stared at the ruined Lucia-golem on the floor. Its head was an unrecognizable mash of yellow fluid and biological circuitry. Would the vessel be angry with them over its dead golem? The known Muses had ‘personalities’ of a sort. Would the vessel seek to punish them for this?

Did it matter?

“Centuriae,” Varo breathed, staring at the display.

Ocella looked up, already too numb to feel any sadness or anger. What she saw only increased the numbness.

Slowly, but inexorably, the green portions on the planet’s continents turned from green to gray. The change happened first as pinpoints, but then spread out from each point. Whatever toxin the drones had released into the air was killing the planet at what she thought would have been an impossible rate.
 

She watched the bright engine trails of ships fleeing the planet’s surface. Some escaped into space; most were attacked by drones that latched on to the ships. The drones then flew back to the alien vessel after several minutes, leaving the ships floating dead in space.

Ocella turned back to Libertus. During the minutes she had watched the fleeing ships, most of the planet’s surface had turned ash-gray. Even the bright blue of the oceans seemed to dull to a bluish-black color. Libertus had mining colonies beneath the oceans. No doubt life beneath the waves would eventually suffer the same fate as that on land.

All Ocella could do was sit down next to Kaeso, hold his yellow and red-bloodied hand, and weep.

24

Cordus sat on a crate in Cargo One as Piso and Duran pushed Dariya and Daryush into the hold. Dariya glared at the two Romans, but they had already sealed the hatch before her glare caught them. Daryush looked more annoyed than fearful. Cordus couldn’t decide if that was good or bad.

“I’m sorry, you two.”

“Stop right there,” Dariya said, turning her glare on him. “Whining is the last thing I want to hear from you. I want to hear a centuriae with a plan, not a guilt-ridden child.”