Muses of Terra (Codex Antonius Book 2) (28 page)

Ocella felt as if she were flailing, that she was reacting to what happened to her rather than coming up with an actionable escape plan. Running through this corridor and the Vestal-numina act she put on with Kaeso were just attempts to do
something
, but without an end goal in mind. She had to have faith that sooner or later these vessel Muses
had
to make a mistake. And then they’d be ready.
 

Her thoughts turned to Cordus as they did every other minute. Had he survived Reantium? What was he doing now? She prayed he had done the sensible thing and returned to Caesar Nova, not Libertus like Kaeso had suggested.
 

But if he was the stubborn Cordus she knew, he was doing something stupid to try and rescue her and Kaeso, likely egged on by Blaesus and Dariya. She almost smiled at the thought of Blaesus reciting a speech to Cordus from some past senator extolling the virtues of Roman bravery and honor. Dariya would have rolled her eyes and spent three seconds telling Cordus something like, “They are our friends, so we go.” Nestor would have—

Her stomach twisted. Nestor and Lucia. Both gone.
 

Ocella looked at Kaeso sitting on the floor with his eyes closed. He had kept his distance from the group during their jog through the octopod-sized corridor, but never too far. She couldn’t imagine what he must be going through now. Lucia had been his pilot for almost ten years and Nestor the closest thing to an advisor he’d allow himself to have. They were part of the family he had adopted after he left Umbra. The family that replaced the one he had abandoned.
 

Now Nestor and Lucia were dead. She desperately wanted to go to him, talk to him. Not only did she want to comfort him, but she needed his comfort as well.
 

But their Vestal-numina act had to be maintained for now, and it was one of the things Ocella found most unbearable about this godsdamned vessel.

As if he could sense her thoughts, Kaeso opened his eyes and looked at her. They stared at each other without expression, their eye contact conveying emotions their act would not allow.
 

Claudia passed Ocella, breaking her gaze with Kaeso. Claudia stopped before Kaeso and seemed about to say something, but then turned around.

“What?” Kaeso said. He didn’t look up at her, only stared down the corridor.

She stopped, still struggling, but finally said, “She forgave you.”
 

Kaeso didn’t react.

“Well, not at first, but eventually. When you…died, it took her a long time to forgive herself because she thought she caused it. I know how silly that sounds, but I was—er, she was a child. Then you showed up on Libertus six years ago…”

Kaeso’s eyes narrowed, but he still wouldn’t look at Claudia. Before he went to Libertus, he had assumed Umbra’s facial augmentation would have masked his old self from Claudia. Claudia’s suspicions came as a shock to Ocella as well, since her face no longer looked like the one she had before she joined Umbra.
 

“She never knew for sure, of course,” Claudia continued, “but she suspected. Like I said before, you have her son’s eyes.” Her voice caught, and she paused as she tried to keep herself from crying.
 

This time, Kaeso blinked once, and his jaw clenched. Yet he still wouldn’t look at her.

She calmed herself, and then said, “Anyway, I just wanted you to know that she forgave you.”

Claudia waited for him to say something, but he just stared down the corridor.
 

She frowned, then turned to Ocella. “I think they want to get moving. This corridor makes them uneasy. They say it’s too long.”

Varo grunted. “Glad we’re not the only ones who think so.”

Ocella nodded, then stood. She looked back at Kaeso, who sat motionless. She crouched down and put her hand on his. He flinched and then looked at her with glistening eyes. Ocella could not tell if it was the corridor’s strange light or if Claudia’s words had affected him.

He stood without saying a word. He gave her hand a squeeze before pulling away.

“Golem,” Kaeso called out.

Ocella tensed. Claudia glanced back from her position behind the octopods and watched Kaeso approach her. Though she seemed to pale the closer he got, she didn’t back away from him.
 

“I would know more about my daughter,” he said. “If you would tell me.”

Relief spread across Claudia’s face. “I would like that very much. I have so much to—”

“No,” Kaeso said coldly. “
You
are not Claudia. You are a golem with her memories. As long as you remember that, we’ll get along fine. Do you understand?”

Claudia’s reaction couldn’t have been more pained if Kaeso had punched her. “I understand,” she whispered.

 
The octopod golem behind Claudia whistled and cooed. She turned around, wiping her eyes with her sleeve, and nodded. All five octopods leaped to the hand rungs on the ceiling and began their swinging sprint down the corridor.
 

As they jogged, Kaeso asked the golem about the real Claudia’s childhood in a cold, clinical voice. The golem answered in the same tone without looking at him.

Oh, Kaeso,
Ocella thought as she jogged behind them.
How can you listen to that voice and look on that face—the voice and face of your daughter—and still be such a cold bastard?

32

Cordus had always thought it ironic that his last memory of Roma was its sewers.

He had been a scared child fleeing for his life with Kaeso and Ocella through the ancient Cloaca Maxima beneath the streets of Roma. The Praetorians chasing them had filled the dank, water-filled tunnels with a gas that had knocked him out. When he awoke, they were in a Praetorian facility on Terra’s south pole, from which they eventually escaped to space.
 

Now, he was about to return to Roma. He had vowed it would never happen, but here he was.

Vacuna
came out of the quantum jump near the alpha way line above Terra. Cordus expected startled queries from the Terra Way Station, but the com was silent. He gave Aquilina a questioning look. She sat in the command couch, unrestrained. He had released her, along with her Roman team, once he agreed to come back. He was giving them what they wanted, so he didn’t see the point in keeping them prisoner.

Aquilina tapped the back of her head behind her right ear. “I told them we were coming. You should have a clear flight path to Roma.”

“We’re not docking at the way station?”
 

“You want Blaesus to have the best and quickest medical care possible, right?” Aquilina said.

Cordus wanted to take back his question as soon as he uttered it. It was the centuriae in him speaking. Docking at a way station, per standard procedure, meant disembarking with Blaesus on a stretcher and rushing him to the way station’s nearest medicus. While the facilities on the Terra Way Station were good, they were no match for the Roman Dictator’s own team.

The com chimed, and Cordus opened the channel.
 

“
Vacuna
, this is Roma Flight Control. Proceed to Terran flight path 001-001. You are cleared all the way to landing.”

“Only the consul gets a path like that,” Aquilina said.

Cordus ignored her and responded, “Acknowledged, Roma Flight Control. Proceeding to path 001-001.
Vacuna
, out.”

The path would take them directly to the Palatine Hill and a landing pad within the Consular Palace grounds. Cordus remembered the flight path well. It was the one he and his family took when they returned from visiting Republic worlds.

Cordus programmed the path into the tabulari, and then let the ship fly itself.
 

“Your medical team will be waiting for us when we land, correct?”

“Yes.”

“And Dariya and Daryush—”

“I told you, they will not be arrested.”

Cordus nodded. “Because if none of those conditions are met, I will admit to being nothing more than a freighter centuriae through my dying breaths.”

Aquilina gave him a severe look. “I know I haven’t given you much reason to trust me, but you have to now.”

“You didn’t trust me with the way line codes. You entered them yourself, remember?”

She shifted in the command couch. “Trust comes in small steps and is built over time. You will come to trust me once you see me honor the bargain we made. And I will come to trust you when you honor your side. I know that even now you’re trying to figure a way out of declaring yourself. But for my part, I swear upon all the gods of the Pantheon that I will honor my side of the bargain.”

She sounded convincing to Cordus. Of course, she had said many things that turned out to be lies. But she was right about one thing—he had to trust her. If he didn’t, he might as well turn the ship around now.
 

“So you’ve been communicating with Roma all along through your implant?”

“Yes, but it’s one-way, like sending a letter through couriers.”
 

“How? Umbra Ancilia had to use live Muses for their implants to work. I thought the Terran Muses were extinct.”
 

The Muses in Cordus whispered in protest, saying they were
not
extinct, but he ignored them.

Aquilina shrugged. “We figured out how to communicate like them. Think of it as tapping into a com channel on the far end of the spectrum that only had static before. We found it wasn’t all static, and that there were signals we never noticed. So we created implants that could tap into those signals.”

“You’re saying you have interstellar com that doesn’t require Muses?”

She smiled. “You’ll see when we get to Roma. Things have changed quite a bit since you left.”

“Remarkable,” Cordus muttered. “Umbra and the Saturnists couldn’t figure that out.”

She eyed him with annoyance. “You always discount Roman ingenuity. It was Roma that brought humanity out of technological darkness, after all.”

“It wasn’t just Roma.”

“Yes, the Muses gave the consul direction in their ‘Missives of the Gods’. But the thousands—millions—of engineers throughout the centuries who built those things were
not
infected. They provided their own innovations that took us in directions the Muses never described. The Missives were not detailed plans, just high-level theories. Human beings figured out how to build those things.
Roman
human beings. You should take pride in your heritage, Marcus Antonius Cordus. You’ll be leading us soon.”

Cordus remained silent. He wished he could believe in Roma like Aquilina did. He wished he could trust her to ensure the safety of Blaesus, Dariya, and Daryush.

He wished he could trust himself.

The bumps that the ship’s inertia cancellers did not suppress brought Cordus back to the flight. White plasma formed around the command deck windows as
Vacuna
collided with Terra’s atmosphere. After several minutes the plasma dissipated, and Cordus could see out the window. It was night over Roma, and high, bilious clouds were illuminated by the full moon. Some clouds were heavy with storms, lightning flashing throughout them.
 

He was a bit disappointed at the obscuring clouds. As a child, his favorite part of space travel had always been re-entry. On clear days he could see the European and African continents, and the deep blue of the Mediterranean, spread out before the ship like a vast
latrunculi
board. He would stare out the window of the shuttle and watch the ‘boot’ of Italia grow closer, and then the gleaming steel and glass buildings of Roman
suburbas
, which covered the middle third of Italia.
 

Thanks to his Muses, he had the memories of his ancient ancestors and would wonder what they would think of the sight before him. But all he had to do was look at his parents and siblings in the shuttle seats next to him to know—complete apathy. While Cordus would marvel at Terra’s beauty, his family would either sit motionless in a Muse-addled trance or be giving orders to their secretaries. The Terran Muses never appreciated beauty, only power.

Now, flying back to Roma at night and through dense dark clouds, Cordus couldn’t help but appreciate the symbolism of it—he was flying home, but into a dark storm he could not control.

Winds buffeted
Vacuna
, and Cordus noticed Aquilina shift in the command couch. “This ship can travel to any point in the universe, but you can’t install a decent inertia canceling system?”

“Not enough room. Turbulence make you nervous?”

When Aquilina didn’t say anything, Cordus grinned. “Finally, something that scares the great Praetorian Aquilina Servillia.”

“I prefer not to be pushed around by something I cannot see.”

“Didn’t your Praetorian training include jumping out of aero-flyers?”

“That’s different. I can control my parachute.”

“So it’s about control?”

She looked at him. “What does that mean?”

“It means you and I are alike. We want to control our own lives. We don’t like to be buffeted by unseen forces. We prefer to work alone. Basically the exact opposite of being a consul.”

She sighed. “I watched you lead my men on Reantium. They were not acting—they followed you because they wanted to, and they are not easy to impress. I see the way your crew looks to you, even though you became their centuriae through a field promotion. And they seem even harder to impress than my men. I know you don’t want to be consul and that it terrifies you to your bones, but I believe it’s something you can do.”

Cordus stared out the command deck windows. “I have no choice in the matter anyway.”

“For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”

“Thanks, I suppose.”

“Too many people want to be consul, and they’re always the ones who shouldn’t be consul. Perhaps its time for someone to take the job who
doesn’t
want it.”

“Makes me the ideal candidate,” Cordus murmured.