Muses of Terra (Codex Antonius Book 2) (38 page)

Aquilina gritted her teeth and ran after Tarquitius, with Gracchus behind her. They charged down the stairs as explosions echoed around the temple and Consular Palace grounds. She glanced up at the sky to see blue streaks of light forking down around them. She had no more time to watch before Gracchus pushed her inside. He slammed the door shut just as a nearby explosion shook the entire temple. Dust and bits of stone fell on her head, and she had to blink the debris out of her eyes.

She had never been in the temple’s roof-top command bunker, mostly because this was Custudii territory. It was a long room, but not very wide. One whole side was covered by tabulari and holo-monitors, each showing different areas of the temple complex. Six Custudii dressed in the same black armor as the Praetorians, but with Capitoline Triad sigils on their shoulders, sat at the tabulari communicating with cohorts stationed throughout the Temple complex. Aquilina noticed two Praetorian women sitting at tabulari near the far end of the room, also talking into their headsets.

“Status,” Tarquitius called out.
 

A Custudae tribune quickly approached Tarquitius, just as another explosion shook the room. The young man flinched.

“No sign of the toxin they released on Libertus,” the tribune said. “Drones are attacking Legion bases across the planet, but not in significant force. Probably diversionary strikes to keep them busy. The main focus of their attack appears to be Roma.”

“They don’t want to kill the whole planet,” Tarquitius said. “That’s something. What of Arrius?”

Aquilina flinched at the Senator’s name, but she thought she hid it well.

“His Naves Astrum is engaging the vessel, but cannot breach its shield. The vessel seems to be ignoring them. Arrius is destroying the drones as they come out of the vessel, but there are just too many for him to get them all.”

The mass driver cannons on the roof continued their thumping blasts, making the floor and holo-monitors shake. A massive explosion on the roof made Aquilina stumble. Everyone reached for the wall or a tabulari to steady themselves. They glanced at each other with fearful eyes.

“Direct hit on cannons five and nine!” shouted a Custudae at a tabulari. “All cannons now taking drone fire!”

Gracchus leaned toward Aquilina. “They won’t last much longer out there.”

“They need to protect the com dish,” she muttered back. “Cordus can’t get back without it.”

“Could we just move the dish inside?” Gracchus asked.
 

Aquilina closed her eyes and accessed her implant for technical data on the dish. Information flew past her closed lids in streaks of letters, numbers, and diagrams. It took her implant seconds to search through the Muse com dish specifications. The com dish was on the roof so as to minimize any interference, but she could not find any spec saying the dish
had
to be on the roof. It was possible that bringing it inside would interfere with the signal, but leaving it outside at this point would surely destroy it.

She turned to Gracchus. “Fine idea, Praetorian. Want to help me get it?”

“Not really.” But he unslung his pulse rifle and ensured it was set to fire.

Aquilina turned to Tarquitius. “We’re going to move the com dish.”

Tarquitius frowned. “It’s raining drone fire out there, girl. You sure?”

“Yes,
old man
, I’m sure. If we don’t protect that dish, Cordus can’t defeat the vessel.”

Without another word, Aquilina unslung her own rifle and followed Gracchus up the stairs to the horizontal door that protected the bunker. Gracchus heaved it open. They were greeted by a cacophony of mass driver blasts, sizzling drone fire, explosions, and the screams of men. They leaped out of the bunker, and then Gracchus slammed the door shut while Aquilina raced toward the com dish. The scents of ozone and smoke made her cough. Black shapes streaked above the Temple, then blue lightning blasted holes in the roof, cannons, and men around her. More black shapes slowed down and descended, though Aquilina could not tell if they were landing on the roof or the temple grounds. Roma’s main power utilities appeared to be knocked out, for most of the city was now dark, with pockets of lights here and there. The temple compound was also dark on the outside to theoretically make it more difficult for the drones to attack. It did not seem to impede them at all, though.

They could turn Roma into glass if they wanted to, but they’re not. They want Cordus alive. That will give us time.
 

The dish was still intact, but the Praetorians who’d been guarding it were behind their sandbag bunkers. Their black-helmed heads peeked up above the bags as they watched her and Gracchus run towards them. She stopped before the com dish and knelt down to study it.

“I need more light,” she screamed to Gracchus. He nodded, then ran over to the Praetorians and shouted something.
 

As Gracchus retrieved a torch, she closed her eyes and tried concentrating on the specs for the dish. The terrible noise and shaking roof made it difficult. She had to spend several valuable seconds researching her implant’s data to find the diagrams on the dish. She located the records she needed and held them in reserve until Gracchus returned.

He ran back to her, keeping his head low amidst the explosions. He fell to his knees beside her, activated the torch, and pointed it at the dish.

“Look for a thumb pad on the base,” she yelled. Gracchus moved the torch around the base and located the pad.

The small thumb pad was well hidden—it matched the matte gray exterior of the dish’s base—with only a black, oval outline to indicate its presence. Aquilina placed her thumb on it and then focused her implant to unlock it. A slot on the bottom of the base opened to reveal a flat tabulari with no interface, just a monitor the size of her hand. Tarquitius was right about the dish being inaccessible to anyone without an implant; the only way to interface with the dish was with implant communication. She needed to unlock the dish from its perch here without severing the com connection.

She was about to focus her implant toward the dish’s interface when the sudden lack of noise startled her. The lightning had stopped, and the dark drones no longer swarmed above the temple.
 

She looked at Gracchus. His eyes widened as he stared over her shoulder. He whipped his pulse rifle around and fired several pellets over her head. Aquilina ducked away from the rifle, and then looked behind her.

A wave of spider-like creatures was racing toward them.

The Praetorian cohort outside
Vacuna’s
shield began to withdraw from the landing pad and then ran up the garden path toward the palace’s exit.

“Where are they going?” Dariya muttered, staring at the external displays.

Daryush grunted and motioned to one of his displays on the command tabulari. It showed a view from the west, toward the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus. Dariya could see the roof through the shield’s blue haze. Cannons fired at black shapes in the sky, which returned fire with blue forks of lightning. Orange explosions bloomed across the roof, and fires spread.

“They have bigger troubles than us now,” she said. She strapped herself into the pilot’s couch and then began the engine startup routines.

She could feel Daryush’s accusing eyes. Without looking at him, Dariya said in Persian, “Cordus told us to leave if things went sour, and that’s what we’re going to do.”

Daryush continued staring at her. She finally met his eyes and snapped, “I don’t like it either, but we have to take care of ourselves. Just like we’ve always done, right?”

Daryush frowned, then turned away to stare at the command tabulari.
 

“‘Ush,” she said with a softer voice, “the Romans killed our mother. They took your tongue. I will give my spirit to Angra Mainyu before I sacrifice anything more for them.”

Daryush brought up a blank slate on the tabulari and then tapped out a message in Latin:
Cordus and Blaesus are not “the Romans”. They’re family.

Dariya sighed, then turned off the shield and engaged the ion engines. The ship hurtled into the sky above the palace.
 

“I’m sorry,” she said, her grip tight on the ship’s controls. “We can’t help Cordus and Blaesus.”

As she set a heading for space, she prayed to Ahura Mazda that the alien drones would ignore them. And that she had the luxury of her brother’s honor.

46

The massive temple was farther than Cordus expected. He wanted to start jogging across the seemingly endless grasslands toward it, but Ocella strolled along at a leisurely pace and he didn’t want to leave her behind.

“Can we hurry?” he asked.

She smiled at him. “Time does not flow here like it does in the mundane world. Your friends down in Roma do not experience things in the com room the same way you do here.”

Fear bit at Cordus. How did she know about the com room? What else did she know?

“Are you Ocella?”

“Yes,” she said. “But not the one you knew.”

Cordus swallowed. “Is she…alive?”

“As you define it? No.”

Cordus’s legs weakened and he gasped for air. Nausea swept through his gut, and he put his hands on his knees. He stared at the grass and soil at his feet.
Oh gods, my mother is dead. They killed my mother. Kaeso, too?

“Dear boy,” the Ocella golem said, walking back to him, “do not grieve for her. All that she was is now in me. All her memories, emotions, and dreams for the future. I have them all. Including her love for you.”

Cordus looked up at this thing pretending to be the woman he loved as a mother for six years. She seemed so young, her light brown skin smooth around her eyes and mouth, her black hair missing Ocella’s silver strands. But she gave him the same patient look Ocella had given him the last time he saw her. Just before she and Lucia left to scout the Menota system.

It may have looked like her and had her memories, but it was not
his
Ocella.

“I want to see your masters now,” Cordus growled. He stood tall again, stamping down the nausea. “Enough delay.”

The young Ocella regarded him with kind eyes and then nodded, “As you wish.”

They were suddenly inside the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus. Cordus recognized the main altar chamber where hundreds of Romans gathered for mass rituals. But instead of an altar, there were three thrones. Upon those thrones sat the gods Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva. Each one was at least twelve feet tall. They looked just as impressive as they did in all the statuary and art throughout the Republic and every other world where the Pantheon was worshiped.

To Cordus’s left, Ocella knelt prostrate on the floor before the three gods.
 

Jupiter put one fist on his knee and leaned forward, his blue eyes glittering with lightning. “You are the first being to meet us here without purification. That interests us.”

“Is that what you mean by ‘purification’?” Cordus said, nodding to Ocella.

Jupiter raised an eyebrow, as if Cordus had just asked if space was cold.

Marcus Antonius appeared to Cordus’s right, a grin on his bearded face. Though Marcus looked confident, the Muses in Cordus’s mind whispered fearfully.

“Impressive,” Marcus said. He walked perpendicular to the thrones with his hands clasped behind his back, as if inspecting a cohort line on the battlefield. “Perhaps if we had appeared to the boy like this he would’ve shown us more respect.”

Juno stared at Cordus, her contempt for Marcus dripping from her voice. “We do not hear the words of a strain that bows to mortals.”

“‘Mortals’,” Marcus said and then laughed. “It took us years to understand their culture so thoroughly as to manipulate them like this. You’ve done it in a matter of weeks. Congratulations!”

The three gods stared at Cordus, ignoring Marcus.

“What did you do to Ocella and Kaeso?” Cordus asked in a low growl.
 

The owl on Minerva’s shoulder fluttered its wings. Minerva said in a serene voice, “They are part of us now. As you will be soon.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means,” Jupiter thundered, “that your mundane body will be brought to our vessel and examined.”

Juno said, “Your coming here has helped us. We now know the source of the signal that projects your mind. We will retrieve your body presently.”

Marcus continued to pace before the three gods, but spoke to Cordus. “You’re a unique individual in our history, young Antonius. No species, in all the millions of years we’ve roamed the universe, has ever controlled us. Some were immune or incompatible, but none have
ruled
us like you. They want to dissect you like a flamen inspecting goat entrails.”

“Like you would?”

“Of course,” Marcus said, “but we can’t. Plus…we’re not sure we’d want to anymore. We’ve developed a certain, oh, respect for you over the years. Perhaps it’s the same love and respect slaves develop for a benevolent master, or the acceptance your species gave us when we first infected your ancestor. Whatever it is, we stand with you now, young Antonius.”

Juno sneered, looking at Marcus for the first time. “Your strain has become a slave to the mortals, just like the strain on Libertus. Blasphemy! When we retrieve the boy’s body, we will burn you out of him.”

Marcus bowed. “You are welcome to try, my lady.”

When he straightened, he had a javelin in his right hand. Cordus had a microsecond to wonder where the javelin came from before Marcus flung it at Juno. The javelin flew straight and true into Juno’s heart. Red blood spurted across her white robes. She gasped, staring first at the javelin and then at Marcus, before she slumped in her throne.

Jupiter roared. He stood, a fork of blue lightning in his right fist. He cast it at Marcus. Marcus raised his forearm, and a large, red shield emblazoned with the golden eagle of the Republic materialized. The shield deflected the lightning, but the blast sent Marcus flying backward twenty paces. He landed hard and then slid across the smooth marble floor.