The Twice and Future Caesar (41 page)

Romulus detected some reluctance in his Xerxes to acquire the target. The damned diplomatic ship kept asking him to recalculate his line of fire, pointing out the risk of hitting a human being.

Just in case his beam drill failed to fire, or in case Catherine Mays hid under the desk, Romulus had a resonator standing by in his displacement chamber. The resonator was prepped to transmit the irresistible harmonic. He made the necessary calculations to displace the resonator intact and functioning through the CONCOM bunker's formidable jammers.

What that death lacked in immediacy, it would make up for in terror.

Romulus saw the President on the imager. She had taken a seat at her impressive desk. She looked straight ahead. Her posture made sighting the beam easy.

Romulus gave the order over the public broadcast. “Madam President. The civilized galaxy is watching. Surrender your nation to the true Rome and to me as its Imperator.”

President Catherine Farragut Mays spoke clearly for all the news outlets and for Romulus' imager to carry. “My fellow Americans. This day, speaking as Commander in Chief, I order all U.S. armies and all U.S. military ships in port and in space to carry on. No surrender. Not ever. God bless America.”

She made it a point to keep her eyes open.

Romulus stood up, vibrating. Anger tasted rich. He ordered his Xerxes: “Fire.”

E
VENTUALLY
THE
P
RESIDENT
had to blink. She appeared unsettled.

Catherine Mays assumed a posture of dignified waiting, becoming perplexed. Her eyes flicked to one side. She asked tightly, “Mister Julius, are we done here?”

Captain John Farragut pounced on the tactical station. “Status! What's Romulus doing? Someone tell me what just happened?”

“Nothing to report, sir.”

It was like waiting for a UXB.

At last, on the feed from the CONCOM bunker, John Farragut saw President Catherine Mays stand up. “We're done.” She walked out of the picture.

Romulus scrambled to make his beam drill fire.

He sent the order again.

But the Xerxes' firing system had shut down altogether.

No. No. No
.

He commanded his ship: “Diagnose system failure.”

The ship replied: “Unauthorized use of a Pacific product against a sovereign governmental institution resulted in system termination. If you believe you have received this message in error, please contact the manufacturer. Pacific apologizes for any inconvenience. Agents are standing by to assist you.”

Romulus proceeded to his backup plan—to displace a res chamber transmitting the irresistible harmonic into the presidential bunker.

But the displacement failed. The failure wasn't an issue of the bunker's defenses. The Xerxes' displacement controls were not responding.

A yelp from Claudia on the upper deck told him that her fantasy habitat had gone dark.

And now all the Xerxes' systems were shutting down.

Targeting was dead.

The Xerxes wasn't even apologizing anymore. The ship didn't like the target. Romulus had given it an illegal order. On his second attempt to breach the U.S. continuity of government bunker, the Xerxes decided it had been taken over by terrorists. It was sending a report to the manufacturer, shutting down, and erasing programs. Life support remained functional. Little else did.

This was infuriating. Romulus would just shut the whole ship down completely, restart, and begin again.

Farragut bellowed: “Find Romulus!”

Tactical responded with some surprise. “I think I have him! I
have
him! There! Unidentified spacecraft on the grid.” Marcander Vincent brought up a visual image. He turned around from his station. “Is that what a Xerxes looks like?”

The image of an elegant yacht-sized ship appeared on the monitor.

“Acquire the target! Confirm identity!” Farragut ordered. “Hold your fire until I know for damn sure who that is.”

The elegant ship was quickly collecting a coating of gorgons. They were clotting onto the ship, rapidly obscuring its graceful lines.

Calli said, disgusted, “Now Romulus is shielding himself with gorgons.”

Augustus spoke from the rear of the command platform. “You think that is shielding?”

Romulus worked quickly, aware that the res chamber, which he'd tried to displace into the Presidential bunker, was still inboard. It was inside his displacement chamber, and it was resonating the irresistible harmonic.

He needed to get down below, shut the res chamber off, and eject it.

The Xerxes' inertial field was down. Gorgons flocked to his unshielded ship. He heard them moving on the hull, scratching and thumping. He bellowed to Claudia to get a spacesuit on.

In an attempt to reestablish control of his rogue systems, he plugged into patterner mode. He made the last connection to his Xerxes.

The data bank was not there.

Immediately, he was lost in a vast resonant consciousness, nebulous, infinite, hungry, angry, urgent. He was in the Hive. The Hive's mindless mind overwhelmed. He was trying to form a thought, struggling to keep hold of himself.

I?

He was attempting to put words to things without definition. He was losing . . . losing what?

The Hive detects the enemy Other inside a hard shell. Hardness of shell doesn't deter. The Other inside must be destroyed.

Gorgons chewed through the Xerxes' hull. They squeezed the oily brown sacks of their bodies inside. They sprouted mouths.

They touched an alien awareness.

The Hive pressed on Romulus' consciousness.

I am—lost.

I am all. I am everywhere.

Am.

What does am mean? Am has no meaning.

Two things Romulus must do.

He must keep hold of his singular self. And he must blend into the Hive totality. Romulus must do both. Neither allowed the other.

Gorgons milled. They were inside the ship. They prodded with their mouths. Jostled him. Searching for the enemy Other. They sensed the Other. It must not exist. Imperative to kill the Other.

This self was different. Incongruous. Is it I? Am I food?

Romulus thought quickly. No. Not! I am not food. I am Hive!

I am hungry.

I am Hive. I am the infinite self. I am I. Single but not separate.

The whole was still aware of difference. Romulus insisted: I am. I am All. I am One. I am
Hive
.

Finally the whole resolved: You are Hive.

Romulus: Yes! Yes! I am Hive!

Hive:
I
am Hive.

Romulus: Yes.

Hive: You are You. You are Hive.

Relief. Understanding. Romulus: Yes. I am Hive.

Hive: I am Hive.

Yes. The Hive understood now.

Hive: I am Hive.
You are OTHER Hive!

The gorgons swelled. Their skins split open. They turned inside out. Translucent blue whiteness extruded from the gorgon husks. The new beings pushed and curled in on themselves into overlapping double loops.

The empty gorgon husks shriveled. The skins' dead flat stalks collapsed.

Within the loops of each of the new gluies, a single large orifice, ringed and ringed with stubby milky teeth, undulated.

Romulus swung a knife. The blade stuck in the gelatinous body.

The orifice clamped onto the blade and sucked it in, along with Romulus' arm. The stubby teeth were visible within the body, tearing his suit, chewing him.

Burn stench stung his eyes. Smelled like death. Heard a sucking with the sound of chewing. Saw red.

Heard Claudia. Screaming.

Claudia wore her protective earring, and the protective harmonic ran in her bloodstream. The gluies scarcely noticed her moving among them. They had no ears to hear her screaming.

She disintegrated at their acidic touch. The gluies consumed her organic remains.

Gluies used more energy than they provided to the Hive. Now, without the rival Other to combat, the Hive let their high-maintenance cells disintegrate.

The gluies gave off black smoke as they melted.

Merrimack'
s tactical displays gave visual images to the sensor readings. The command crew saw the gluies that clung to the Xerxes were now losing cohesion. Their remains slowly sloughed off the ship's hull on the inertia of their last motions.

“Get a drone in there!” Farragut ordered. “We need to preserve Romulus' data bank and get his res chamber! Get it done yesterday!”

He crossed the command platform with long strides, back and forth, bouncing off the bulkheads. Caged.

We won the battle. We're about to lose the war.

* * *

The Xerxes put up no defense against the drone's approach. The Xerxes had no inertial shell and no stealth properties. Its hull had been breached in many places.

Wraith Raytheon, the drone wrangler, cringed as he piloted his drone in through a ragged hole in the Xerxes' hull. Black ash and oil coated the interior surfaces. Small remnants suggested that the ruined space inside the ship used to be beautiful.

“Any sign of Romulus?”

“Negative presence,” Wraith reported. Flinched at a drop of his own sweat. “Possible remains. Here.”

Wraith's drone hovered over what looked like a patterner's cables on the deck.

“The gluies got him!”

“Mister Raytheon. Locate and access the Xerxes' data bank.”

“Control center located, aye. I'm in, sir. Nothing to retrieve. The data bank has been destroyed.”

“There has to be a trace read,” Farragut said. “Retrieve the ship's data cells.”

“Nothing to pull, sir.”

The image from the drone showed fused and scorched masses that might once have been components. Melted trails burned across hard polymer surfaces. The drone found on the deck what might have been an earring in a patch of black residue.

“Can you get the Hive harmonic off the ship's res chamber?”

“I can't find the res chamber. This might have been it.” The drone hovered over another amorphous plastic mass. The melted heap was of a size and in a position where one might expect to find a ship's res chamber.

“Mister Raytheon. Get a drone inside the Xerxes' displacement chamber. Determine if anyone displaced out of that ship.”

Wraith's drone found the displacement chamber blackened and scored with a special fury. There was nothing to inspect. Nothing to retrieve.

Romulus was dead, and he'd taken his secrets with him.

TR Steele's Fleet Marines had a word for this situation: BOWASS.

Bend Over We Are So Screwed.

All the Hive spheres renewed their assault on planet Earth. More spheres arrived. No one alive knew how to stop them.

Augustus glanced from the ship's chronometer to his own.

Farragut noticed the glance. “Are you waiting for a shuttle, Colonel Augustus?” Farragut asked, cross.

Just as Tactical sang out, “Striker on the grid! Sublighted inside the Solar System, heading ten by three by sixty-six.”

Augustus' black and red Striker now appeared on the tactical display. Its hatches hung open to the vacuum, exactly as they had when
Merrimack
abandoned the little Roman ship in the Myriad, a half year ago and two thousand parsecs away.

“You told me your Striker was heading to the galactic hub,” Farragut said.

“So it was. At the time,” Augustus said. “My Striker got far enough and turned around. Here it is.”

Tactical sang out again, and he brought up another display. “See the gorgons.”

The gorgon swarm nearest to Augustus' Striker moved toward it. Already the gorgons were turning themselves inside out, breaking out their gluies. They mobbed the Striker with the frenzy reserved for the irresistible harmonic.

“Colonel Augustus. What are you doing?”

“Not my doing,” Augustus said. “But it's not unexpected. I knew Romulus wouldn't just leave my Striker unsecured in the Myriad. He would either destroy it—he didn't, obviously—or he would rig it with a booby trap against its possible return to Near Space.”

“You were right,” Farragut said. “He rigged it with the irresistible harmonic.”

Translucent white gluies quickly obscured Augustus' red and black Striker, and kept piling on.

A shiver roughened Farragut's skin.
Gluies
.

“Augustus, your Striker is well and truly finished now. What did it gain you to bring it here? Can I assume you brought it here?”