Muses of Terra (Codex Antonius Book 2) (25 page)

“Centuriae, we have a problem with the way line engines.”

Cordus shut his eyes a second and took a deep breath.
Gods, you never let it be easy.

He tapped his collar com. “I’ll be right down.”

When he arrived in the engine room, Cordus found Daryush growling at the tabulari in front of him. The big Persian put his fists on his hips and then flinched when he noticed Cordus enter the engine room. He shoved his hands into his pockets and seemed embarrassed that Cordus had heard him.

“So this is how you talk when no one’s around?”

Daryush gave an embarrassed grin and then shrugged.

“He heard the same from me just now,” Dariya said from behind Daryush. “The Romans made a mess of my engines, Centuriae, and I do not think I can fix them. At least not without parts from a way station.”

“What did they do?”

“The quantum
and
alpha way line engines are locked. We need a key code to unlock them both and it is different for each one.” Dariya let loose a stream of curses in Persian and Latin, and turned around to study the tabulari. “I was so focused on the delta sleep system that I did not see this lockout program.”

“Have you tried entering a key? Maybe—”

“Yes, I assume I
could
get lucky and enter all 16 alphanumeric characters in the correct order with a pure guess. And Ahura Mazda
could
jump out of the engines and make me a goddess.”
 

“Dariya, you’ve always been a goddess to me.”
 

She shot him an incredulous glare, which he returned with a grin.
 

“Centuriae, you are too young and too Roman for me.” She turned back to the tabulari console, muttering something in Persian. “Besides, I already tried entering a key and here is what happened.”

Cordus came over and watched the tabulari as Dariya tapped the key into a text field. The text field disappeared from the screen and then a video of Aquilina came up. She was sitting in the pilot couch on the command deck.

“
Salve
, Marcus Antonius.” She smiled briefly, then continued. “If you’re seeing this, it’s because you somehow subdued me and my men. I hope you didn’t kill us, because that would ruin my high opinion of you. Anyway, so you’ve taken control of the ship and are trying to engage the way line engines. By now you know they are locked. Think of it as my backup plan to bargain for my release…or my revenge from the underworld.”

“
Cac
,” Cordus muttered.
 

 
“Only I know the codes, so it would be a waste of time trying to get them out of my men. If you want to go anywhere, you’ll need to bargain with me. If I’m dead, well, I’m sure the Liberti Defense Force will be along soon—once they’re done rebuilding.”

She leaned forward as if to turn the video off, but then said, “Oh, by the way, if you enter the wrong code on each engine more than three times, the engines will overload and destroy the ship.”

She smiled, and then the video winked out.

“I would just as soon bargain with Angra Mainyu then that Roman bitch,” Dariya spat. “No offense, Centuriae.”

Cordus stared at the blank video screen. “We may have no choice. Once we drop Blaesus off at the Liberti mining colony, we’re going to need those quantum way line engines to catch up to the alien vessel. I won’t abandon Kaeso and Ocella.”

“No, we will not,” Dariya said. “But say we do bargain with her. How can we trust her? She certainly won’t trust us after this. How can we know she has not left some other trap in our systems, waiting for the right time to spring it on us?”

“I know, but what choice do we have?”

She cursed again. “None. I just do not like it.”

Cordus couldn’t agree more. He hated bargaining with Aquilina, especially since she probably had more tricks awaiting them once he woke her up. She had survived on Reantium, taken control of
Vacuna
, and hid that way line lockout program without even Dariya detecting it. She had fooled Cordus into thinking she was from Libertus and an Umbra Ancile. It all meant she was too dangerous to even wake up, much less bargain with. Any bargain they made with her held the prospect of hidden treachery. But if they didn’t bargain with her,
Vacuna
would never leave the Libertus system. Only the
Vacuna’s
quantum way line engines could catch up with the alien vessel.

There
is
a way you can ensure she deals honestly with you…

Cordus’s stomach roiled at the thought. Not only because he’d sworn he would die before doing such a thing again, but because it had come from his own mind and not his Muses.
 

Marcus Antonius appeared next to Daryush.
 

“You’re right,” Marcus said, his dark eyes boring into Cordus. “You have no choice. If you want to save your friends, this is the only way to ensure that mean little Praetorian up there won’t
cac
all over you. What is your decision, young Antonius?”

Before he could think too hard on it, he said to Dariya, “I want you and Daryush to stay off the command deck, no matter what you hear. And make sure Blaesus stays in his bed.”

“Are you sure you want to be alone with her? She is dangerous.”

He turned to the hatch. “I’ll be fine. I just don’t want any of you up there when I…”

Gods, am I really going to do this? Am I really going to break the only promise to myself that has held any meaning to me my whole life?

“Centuriae,” Dariya said from behind him in a hard voice, “you do what you have to do to make her talk.”

Marcus grunted. “Your Persian makes sense, young Antonius. Listen to her.”

Cordus left the engine room and climbed the ladder to the command deck. Dariya assumed he was going to torture Aquilina into giving up the codes. In some ways, he wished that’s all he had to do.
 

28

Cordus tightened the shoulder straps over Aquilina as she slept in the pilot’s couch. He had wrapped more straps across her body and the couch. She could escape with a little effort, but Cordus only needed to keep her still until his Muse aura took hold.

He made his preparations as if he were an empty-minded golem. He tried ignoring his protesting conscience. He had to empty himself of all emotion if he was to get the information he needed. He had begun to have feelings for Aquilina, and he wondered if she had felt something for him. It was most likely an act on her part, he decided. His feelings were real, though, and they were augmented with a grudging admiration for the skill in which she had fooled him and taken control of the ship. If they were playing a
latrunculi
match, she had rolled over him like a master would a novice.
 

“Marcus,” Cordus said aloud, “I will need your help to keep focused.”

Marcus Antonius appeared in the delta couch behind the command couch. He wore a look of greedy anticipation. “Whatever you need.”

The Muses whispered in Cordus’s mind. They swept away all emotions, replacing them with a singular focus—get the key codes from Aquilina. He had not let the Muses infiltrate his mind like this in so long that he almost instinctively tried to push them out.
 

Cordus leaned over Aquilina, brought up the delta controls on her tabulari, and turned off her couch’s delta sleep field. Her eyes blinked open, she looked up at him, and then tried to move. She glanced at the straps and then raised an amused eyebrow at him.

“You didn’t disappoint me,” she said.

“What are the key codes to the way line engines?”

“Right down to business, eh? What are you willing to—?”

Cordus leaned forward. “Give me the codes.”

She must have seen the lack of emotion on his face, for she hesitated and uncertainty replaced her amusement. “No.”

Make her trust me,
Cordus told the Muses.

He felt the billions of Muse viruses in his body each release just a few molecules of aura. The molecules floated through Cordus’s blood and up to his lungs and skin, escaping through his breath and pores.
 

Aquilina’s eyes grew unfocused. She opened her mouth to speak and then shut it again. She blinked, then her lips curled in anger. “What are you doing?”

Make her love me,
he told the Muses. They released more aura.

Aquilina drew in a sharp breath and stared at Cordus with soft eyes. The eyes of someone in love. Or what Cordus imagined it would be.

“Give me the codes,” he said again.

She gave him a languid smile and was about to speak, but then hesitated. She shook her head in two quick motions, and shut her eyes tightly. When she opened them again, rage burned there. “No,” she said through clenched teeth.

Make her worship me.

Her mouth fell open, and her eyes held adoration for him meant only for the gods. It was how he remembered supplicants staring at his father years ago. They worshiped him as a god. And he believed it.

Cordus struggled to ask her the question once again. Nausea over what he was doing fought the Muses, and it was hard for him to focus. “Give…me…the codes.”

Aquilina’s mouth opened and closed. She was fighting the aura, fighting it with all her will. A high-pitched moan issued from her open mouth, growing louder and louder until it became an anguished shriek.

Through her screams, she stared at Cordus with adoring eyes. In between the screams, she said, “Slave…or…soldier…?” She said it over and over again.

My father had slaves. Kaeso had soldiers.

Cordus’s conscience blasted through the walls he’d built and threw the Muses out of his mind. He fell back into the command couch, sweating and crying. He leaned forward and put his head in his hands.

I can’t do this. I’m sorry Kaeso, Ocella. I can’t do this…

“Oh, young Antonius,” Marcus said from the delta couch, “you were so close.”

Cordus jerked his head up. “I am not your puppet,” he said aloud. “I am not like my father, and you will know your place!”

Marcus held up his hands in surrender. “Of course. Poor choice of words.” He disappeared.

Cordus looked back at Aquilina. Her eyes were red and her cheeks flushed from the effort of fighting the Muse aura.

“What did you do to me?”

Cordus held her gaze. “I’m sorry. I swore I’d never— But I need those codes. The lives of my friends are at stake. I’m not going to use the Muses again to force you to tell me the codes. But I need them.”

She leaned back in the couch, then closed her eyes. “What would you do with them, Consular Heir?”

Cordus tried not to wince. “I told you, I would rescue my friends. This is the only ship outside Umbra that can get within that vessel’s shield sphere—”

“Say you rescue your friends. What will you do then?”

Cordus gave an exasperated sigh. “I don’t know. Live my life. Will you give me the codes or not?”

She leaned forward as far as the straps on the couch would allow. “You think my mother is just another warlord with delusions of starting her own dynasty.”

“By your own admission, she let Libertus die!”

“She saved you! Do you really think you could have stopped that vessel? When the finest warships in the Liberti arsenal couldn’t scratch it? When not even their Umbra ships, which have
the same quantum way line drives
as this ship, were swatted from space like flies? If we had tried your plan, we’d all be dead now!”

Cordus wanted to shout back at her, but he knew she was right. He had always known his plan was risky at best, suicidal at worst. But he had wanted to do something,
anything
, to rescue Kaeso and Ocella. Even if that something had a low likelihood of success. They had risked everything for him more times than he could count.
 

All he would’ve done was kill the rest of his crew.
 

“Yes, she may use the same tactics as the other warlords,” Aquilina continued, “but she believes in the Republic. She believes it must survive or humanity will descend into a dark age.”

Cordus snorted. “A bit dramatic. Plenty of other worlds exist—”

“But almost all share a common culture with Roma. Almost all share the same religion, the same government, the same language. Even a large chunk of the Zhonguo worships the Roman Pantheon. Libertus and Roma were the same in virtually every way.”

Cordus shook his head. “The Liberti people elect their consuls. Roma’s were forced on the people by the Muses.”

“I know there are differences between Roma and every other world. But Roma is the Mother from which all those worlds were born. If Roma dies, then humans would lose the one culture they all have in common. Humanity would fracture and probably never unite again. At least not until another culture came along to unite us once more, and that wouldn’t happen for thousands of years. It took Roma almost two thousand to get where it is today.”

“Blaesus would be more interested in this debate than me. Talk to him, but give me the way line codes.”

“Not unless you swear to me on everything you hold dear that you will come back to Terra and take your rightful place as consul of the Roman Republic.”

Cordus laughed. “Gods, you don’t give up, do you? How can I make this clearer.” He leaned forward and shouted in her face, “I…don’t…want…to be consul!”

She didn’t flinch but regarded him sadly. “I never asked if you
wanted
to be consul. I’m saying you
need
to be consul. What you
want
is irrelevant.”

“The last thing Roma needs is another consul imposed by the Muses.”

“But you control your Muses, and that is the difference. Look, you would be the transition figure. All the major warlords fighting right now have publicly proclaimed they would follow an Antonius if a real one should appear. If you declared yourself, they would have no choice but to follow you, especially when presented with a crisis like this alien vessel. Once you unite the warlords, we can use the combined strength of
all
Roman Legions to defeat this alien vessel.”