It was sound that went first. Eardrums deadened, he careened off the bridge, chest so full of metal he'd lost count how many times he'd been shot. He could see the flash-bang of incendiary rounds as they were fired from both his fellow 300 and the advancing Americans, the light momentarily coloring roiling black smoke with flashes of pink and yellow. The horizon wobbled in his vision, then tilted wildly and righted again as he spun in the air.
Cyprian Flavius Cassius hit the water back first.
The canal was deep, submersion would have happened immediately, but that was not the reality Cyprian experienced as he sank through the slow molasses that was the last moments of his life. Seconds felt like minutes, minutes became the longest, most pitiful hour of his life. A splash was a crescendo of splashes, each echoing and roaring in growing multitude, crashing in time with the bridge-shaking concussive thumps as ordnance roared over him. Small figures took to the sky, arcing gently upward, their black and red forms chased by plumes of fire and shrapnel.
He sank a millimeter, water finally going past his ears and the faint crack of grenades abruptly vanished in sloshing bubbles. Chunks of metal and concrete rained down and the water frothed wildly at impact. Any hope he had of hearing anything else was gone.
He was dying. Knew he was, but it was taking its damn time in happening.
He was dying, but sometimes life liked to make certain. Shrapnel, a length of steel pipe about the length of two Roman men, came out of nowhere and speared right through him. Pinned him to the surface of something underneath and left him half out the water feeling stupid. Not that he could feel it – his whole body was numb – but now he had no choice but to float until he either bled out or gravity let him slip under. Whichever came first.
Water crept down the small canal toward his eardrum. He watched the fight on the bridge above with growing unreality. It was like watching a vidfeed with the sound turned off. It was impossible to feel much attachment to that, even though he knew every one of the Flavians being killed that day. Had drank with them, fought with, slept with. His thoughts flickered from battle to his childhood, to his schooling, to battle again, and then to one particular man. The man had a name, but it eluded him. Frustrating. It wasn't even a terribly difficult name to remember, he knew that at least. The man in his memory was a bullish figure, large and as ready to laugh as he was to fight. A man larger than life. Cyprian felt a rush of fondness for him.
The pressure in his ear evened out with a little pop and the icy cold water of the Corindahlor Channel finally snuck in.
Then nothing.
That is what stays with him. He doesn't remember much of this period he likes to think of as, no, not purgatory; he has no belief in god. In-between. He had no sight. No sound. Nothing to touch or feel with, but what he remembers is that state of detachment, the echo-bubble of oxygen in liquid. It was an itchy sensation, a knowing that was just on the edge of awareness.
Time was slow and he neither slept nor woke.
He did open his eyes once, when he finally had the means to do so.
It was cold. He couldn't move, could only feel the thump, thump of his heartbeat and the shifting movement of his ribs over his lungs. He knew he was naked, recognized he was submerged in a large healing tank filled with an electric-blue nutrient gel. Not the usual pink. Didn't care, as he distantly understood that he was still alive. Were there others? The thought barely summoned any emotional interest in him, deadened perhaps by drugs, or perhaps simply because he felt very little. There was music playing distantly somewhere. He couldn't place the song, could barely hear it past the gurgle-blub of nutrient gel. It was familiar though.
He looked down. He recognized the half-fitted face mask, the tubes that simultaneously fed him oxygen while also choking him. There were other tubes, lots of them, wires and metal filaments. Metal things he didn't recognize. There was so much metal, did he even have legs? Looked up. He was in a room. It was dark. His eyes shifted into night vision and a heat signature in the shape of a man appeared in front of him. Vision shifted and he was seeing normally; the orange blob took the shape of a scientist wearing black and red. The lights went on and for a moment, he caught a glimpse of himself off the reflection of the tank. He was a nightmarish thing, his body cracked open, flesh and metal half wound together. He should be in a world of pain, but he couldn't feel anything, he couldn't move, couldn't even twitch a finger, he –
The man stopped looking at him and turned to speak to someone.
Then it was dark again.
When he wakes again, properly, he wears a thin sheet and equally thin smock, both items as sterile white as the room he is in. At the end of his bed, a scientist stands with a crisply folded stack of clothing in his hands. Black and red, Flavian colors. The scientist's lab clothes are white and his skin as pasty as a fish's belly. His hair, blond, curly and receding a little, is the only splash of interest in the otherwise bland, porridge-like man. There is a weakness about his chin that Augustus finds interesting. Perhaps it is attraction.
The man clears his throat and places the pile at the end of the bed. He has a kindly manner that Augustus immediately thinks is fake. "Well, let's get started from the beginning, shall we?"
There are no introductions; there doesn't need to be. The man in the bed knows his name is Augustus. He knows this the same way he knows the scientist is Actaeon. Both words come unbidden to his mind, both without family name but both clearly affiliated. They are both Roman and this is a Roman laboratory.
His name is Augustus, his gens is Flavia. He is to serve Caesar and Rome, in that order.
He has seven years to live.
Give or take.
It takes Augustus six tries before he is able to dress himself without tearing his shirt in half. Another two for the pants. He doesn't bother with the boots.
Including Actaeon, there are three scientists in charge of his care. They show him a video of who he once was. Artfully grainy footage (added post production to simulate a sense of nostalgia, his mind tells him) depicting Cyprian Flavius Cassius's leap toward his enemy, and his subsequent death. Taken from that angle, the young idiot with his shirt open and his laughing charge toward the American camera might have been heroic. The camera saw as Cyprian's chest was shredded by gunfire. It didn't see what happened after, as he took forever to die after falling off a damn bridge with a rebar shoved through his torso and water in his ear.
Augustus contemplates the video as it loops again.
"This was me?" He asks, as if he doesn't remember dying. He remembers more than dying, flashes mostly, bits and pieces of image and emotion with no context, but doesn't think of it. That was someone else's life. A dead man's memories. They don't need to know.
"Yes, and as one of Rome's finest, you were chosen by Caesar to serve again," says Actaeon sunnily. The other two are silent. Neither had introduced themselves, perhaps thinking that whatever method they had used to feed information into Augustus's brain had also included their introductions. Perhaps their names hadn't been interesting enough for Augustus to retain them.
Actaeon is soft. Getting him to self-destruct doesn't take long.
Later, after the fires have been put out and after he is once again fully clothed, he smiles at the remaining two scientists. Then, smiles more directly at the rounder one with the mutton chops and pepper in his hair. His name is Conianus. A faint wince the man can't quite hide, just a small crease at the corner of a thin-lipped mouth. A moment of hesitation and, almost against his own will, Conianus lifts his eyes, blue as cornflowers, and meets his gaze. Augustus hears the sense-memory of bubbles, a burbling, gushing past his ears as oxygen rushes toward the surface of a canal he is no longer half submerged in. He feels cold.
His smile widens.
This is going to be fun.
The Dialogs are a series of datafiles taken from the black box containing the patterner Augustus's personal and externally stored memories. These files are now housed at the library of the Roman Intelligence Center, Extension Archives HQ, Auxiliary Stacks.
Archive footage, Data pack 3434564lk3665k42n2b67758:
Voice: Please look into the camera and speak clearly. State name and purpose.
Augustus: Octavus, Augustus, to serve Caesar until death.
Voice: To serve Caesar and not Rome?
Augustus: Caesar is Rome. My answer isn't going to change since the last time you asked.
Voice: Alright, let us move on, then. Earlier today, there was an incident. Do you know what I am referring to?
Augustus: Yes. I was testing the systems.
Voice: Testing? You bypassed system security, shut down all communications between facilities and sent guardsmen scrambling to the other side of the moon.
Augustus: You obviously expected that I or one of my predecessors would do something like this. Either your data scrubbers are unparalleled or you house your data in completely separate and unattached servers. I didn't find what I was looking for.
Voice: And what were you looking for?
Augustus: [silence]
Voice: Is that how you intend to serve Caesar?
Augustus: [shrugging] If he asks me to. I was bored. Having fun and serving the Empire aren't mutually exclusive.
2nd Voice: Subject shows above average intellect and aptitude. However, subject is also showing signs of rebelliousness and has difficulty acknowledging authority. Further socialization before release is recommended.
When the call from Palatine comes early for him, the staff at the unnamed facility on one of Ostia's smaller moons are more than willing to show him the door.
They give him a uniform, a striker, and destinations to a ship he is to rendezvous with. He has just enough fuel to get there. As long as he is very precise. It is a final test. Or, perhaps, retribution. He already knows all he needs to about being a man, being a soldier and being Roman. The striker is made to be an extension of his own body – he can fly it as if he's done so his whole life.
A week later, a senator punches him and he saves Caesar's life.
"I'm disappointed," Julius Caesar Magnus says as he lays on his back on the cold marble floor, covered in plaster dust and shattered stone. Hell of a thing to say, considering their relative positions. Augustus is half crouched over him and Caesar Magnus has an excellent view right up his ceremonial thigh pteruges.
Caesar Magnus opens his mouth to say more as a nearby bust explodes into hundreds of powdery fragments but Augustus holds his finger to his lips. "Shhh," he says, attention not on the man he is straddling, but on the light glinting off the mirror-polish of an ancient suit of armor. He spins his shoulder cannon a complete 180. Fires off two conservative shots without once looking back. The first shot sears through three silk banners and shatters a large, multi-paned, crystal window. The second shot following immediately after on the same trajectory kills the roof sniper and his spotter, taking a large chunk of roof along with their lives.
Now, he turns to Caesar and says dryly, helping him to his feet, "I'm sorry you're disappointed." He doesn't need to check to be certain he's made the kill.
"Oh, I'm not anymore," Caesar Magnus says. "Give me a gun." There is no need for it; gunfire has already died down to a few unhappy bursts. Still, Augustus pulls a spare pistol, with laser sights and 45mm Punisher rounds, from a back holster and hands it over butt first. Praetorian guard stride through with rifles ready, optic visualization flickering over their pupils as they communicate with off-site leaders. The amphitheater is packed with throngs of panicked senators, some fallen, some still frozen in place and clutching white-knuckled at the backs of chairs. Most are clustered in confusion around the main entrance, the antechamber having been sealed the moment Augustus had shoved Caesar aside and a guardsman had fallen.
Caesar Magnus comes up beside Augustus and touches his shoulder. "You actually let him hit you," he says with amusement, reaching up to press two fingers against the edge of a bruise already starting to turn puffy and blue on Augustus's cheekbone. He is not a big man by Roman standards, not the way Triumphalis Numa Pompeii is, but his presence is still regal, still the impressive one of a man capable of bulldozing his way into a known trap with nothing but his office and bluster. His jowls give him the appearance of an affable bloodhound. "I should have you charged with damaging Caesar's equipment."
"If the toaster malfunctions, blame the manufacturer. If it is damaged, blame Gaius Licinius's fist for striking it."
Caesar Magnus laughs, though with less humor and there is acknowledgment in his eyes at the point. "A very expensive toaster, if that were the case." His hand returns to Augustus's shoulder. It is warm and he can feel it easily through the leather of his uniform and the cables dangling in the way. "I will keep that in mind."
He turns to leave, then turns back. "I read your file. I thought you ran an alternative current... did you really sleep with his mother simply because I asked you to set this up?" Alternative current. The Americanism is incongruous coming from Caesar's mouth.
Augustus let his smile be the answer. Caesar Magnus has his file. He does what he wants and if there is a target in front of him, he doesn't feel the need to discriminate. Caesar had wanted memorable. There was nothing less memorable than a fully televised live fight fist fight between a Senator and Caesar's new patterner. Magnus shakes his head.
"Just don't do it again."
The last assassin is killed and the men responsible are hauled away. Clean up is quick after that.
Despite an entire array of cables sprouting from the back of his neck and upper spine like an old world router, switching into patterner mode is as easy as finding a socket, selecting the correct cable and plugging it in.
That is the basic gist of it.
He has three potential cables to chose from at the base of his skull; one for PanGalactic standard ports, one for Earth tech which largely functions on outdated solid state drives, and one adaptor cable with flexible filaments formed of nanites he can use to force adapt the cable to. The rest were for his other functions. His 'accessories' Numa Pompeii once joked, as if he were a toy that came with fun gadgets meant for play.
Augustus supposes 'play' could be the word for it if play means blood and death. He has two cables, one for each shoulder-mounted cannon he keeps stored under a crushed brocade drape in his room. There is another cable for an external field radar. A fourth for the firing mechanism to a rocket launched, remote-guided mini missiles the size of large grenades. The fifth is simply a power plug for simpler machines or weapons that don't need more than a basic level of input to keep their power cells running.
When he switches to patterner mode, time changes. The additional processing centers implanted into his brain engage and time suddenly slows to a crawl.
Externally.
Internally, time accelerates, like a ship being jettisoned through space on a jump disc, Augustus goes from near stationary to suddenly over a thousand times the speed the regular human mind can intake through their regular senses alone. He has access to anything, all of it streaming into his brain and then out again near simultaneously. It's very much like falling off a bridge and dying.
The human portion of the process simply rides this out, keeping watch and pulling in data that might be of interest. Disparate things, in and out, stored, then released, then pulled back in. It's like mentally building a construct, with data points as nodes and all Augustus has to do is fill in the connecting pieces to make it a coherent whole. It's possible to connect anything with enough information.
Augustus is doing that now, a routine check of all public archives and some less than public ones he's hacking in through the back door to access. Technically illegal, but patterners are given exceptions, as they are for many things. He is on the tail of a labyrinthine assassination plot, all the same players for the third time this year, when he hears it again. Something slow and stretched out, full of tones and it's like a confused whale keening through molasses. It takes him a moment to realize the sound is speech. Someone is trying to talk to him. Again.
Then, suddenly, there is sensation, a searing heat against the side of his neck, sliding down slowly over his shoulder, down to clasp like iron around his upper arm. Someone... is... touching him? Touching his arm? At this processing speed, even the quickest brush of the fingers is as intimate as a slow caress from a lover. Augustus loses his concentration and, for a lengthy moment, he is drowning. Burning externally, his ears making no sense of the sounds he is hearing. Too much. Everything in his head is exploding.
"Don't touch me," he gasps. Then adds, hollowly, voice coming from the distant place deep inside himself, "Don't talk to me." Both sensations abruptly vanish.
The next moment, Augustus has reestablished equilibrium. Connects several senators together and dumps the lot of it onto a chip.
His eyes refocus to find the server room full of confused senators and a couple rich lords Augustus doesn't recognize. Several stare aghast at him. Caesar Magnus stands in front of him, looking at him with amusement and his hand lifted just an inch from Augustus's arm. The man attempting to speak to him must have been him. Everyone else in the station knows better than to go near Augustus when he is performing his function.
Augustus slowly pulls the chip from his neck and hands it to Caesar. He takes it. The heat of his palm stings Augustus's freezing fingers. Augustus as feels if he is being submerged, drowning in icy waters, burble of oxygen and bubbles through–
Augustus bends and vomits all over Caesar's boots.
Later, he is in his room in a side wing of Caesar Magnus's palatial estate. Had he been a regular soldier, he would have been garrisoned with the rest of the guardsmen but as Caesar Magnus's patterner, he needs to be close at hand. They didn't stint on luxuries, his room is all gilt, red brocades and high arching ceilings, but Augustus sees none of it as he hangs off the side of his bed and dry-heaves into a brass vase. His head aches, his entire body aches and his throat aches after vomiting twice.
Boots, now clean, appear in his line of vision.
Augustus rears back even though the sudden movement sets off his gag reflex and he's in very real danger of vomiting again. Caesar Magnus gestures once, a quick lift of the hand. "No need, I don't think my boots can survive another round." Magnus has developed a habit of showing up in Augustus's personal quarters just to watch him throw up. Maybe he's a sadist.
"No, that's just you," Magnus says dryly. "Were you always this way?"
A sadist or cranky? Both, reread my file. Augustus feels his ribcage heave upward in his chest and he spits up for the third time.
Magnus gestures again, and Augustus summons energy to shift over in the bed, allowing just enough space for a seat. The mattress sinks and he feels the warmth of imperial ass against his thigh. Augustus's eyes are closed so he doesn't see when Magnus reaches over to touch him. A light brush of fingers against his chin and his face is tilted upward. "You've changed so much since you first came to me. I called for you before they were ready for your release. What would you have looked like if I had waited?"
Augustus does not look into mirrors very often. He doesn't need to. He's well aware how much he has aged in the space of a year. Knows that the process will accelerate until he reaches the point his pituitary gland thinks he should be at. Or until he dies. Whichever comes first. He risks shrugging, the motion minimal. Magnus's hand leaves his face. "Old, with a much quicker sell-by date."
"How long do you have, exactly?"
"Exactly? I don't know. Mortality isn't an exact science."
"Built for precision, yet in this, you are like the rest of us."
"I'm dying now," Augustus says. He doesn't mean the vomit. The machines welded into his body only give him a short extension on life, if melding two corpses together and making its heart beat is called life. He had died more than once while being created. Died as the body donor, died as Cassius. Then died repeatedly in his incubation tube as they forced machine parts under his skin and into his bones. His body had reacted catastrophically to each new addition. They'd needed entire new sets of organs speed grown from a petri dish more than once with repeatedly tweaked DNA cocktails. There had been others. Out of all of them, he was the only one lucky enough, or unlucky, to have survived.
Magnus snorts, "We all are."
Data pack 82345h3485743hd042:
The Dialogs II.
Numa: A man's loyalty is fickle. Only dog and machine form bonds that are unbreakable.
Magnus: This is an unusual level of pessimism coming from you, Numa.
Numa: Which are you, Augustus? Man or machine?
Augustus: I am not a machine.
Numa: Loyalty is programmed into you. It's part of the directives embedded in your core. Would that not mean machine?
Augustus: Men are enhanced by machines, but one that is controlled by them is hardly a man at all. Regardless of how my body is classified, I, the man, am in control.
Magnus: I suppose the question is then, how much?
Numa: No, the next question is 'What is Augustus implying'? Fickle or a dog?
Augustus: I was created by man in the image of a specific man, using the dead body of another man, both of whom died loyal. The machines within me are programmed to check for unceasing loyalty. In other words, I am that rare, one in a million impossibility – a man that is, also, a bundle of loyalty.
Magnus: And an absolute bundle of joy.
Numa: But if you are programmed, then you did not have a choice and should that programming fail one day –
Augustus: Even if the man wavers, trust at least in Roman technology and understand that I am here standing before you with my head unexploded. No matter what my behavior, it comes out of loyalty to Rome. What does it matter what the source of that loyalty is as long as it exists?
Magnus: Ha. I think my patterner just told you to shut up, let us leave him to serve the Empire. With loyalty.
Seven years, to live or die well or simply keel over on his feet at some undetermined time in the future. He is just starting his sixth year.
Caesar Magnus sends him out into space as if he is a parent trying to get his recalcitrant teenage son out the door. "Go investigate the rumblings we have noticed in the outer reaches," Caesar says, "and then go see what you can do about the fighting near Portus Magnus." Augustus doesn't need to be told twice. He dons his striker and leaves Palatine's atmosphere an hour after stepping out the front door.
He racks up an impressive kill count.
Caesar's name opens every ship's bay and docking area for Augustus. He simply comes and goes as he pleases, attaching himself from one fleet to another. They give him access to their databanks, he compresses intel into workable plans within the hour and is gone a day later. It works for him. He doesn't sit to chat or rub elbows with captains. He doesn't care for commemoration, but one day, an unknown legionary sticks a decal on his striker during a refueling trip. Augustus is not liked. He's amused himself on one too many times, instigated the self-destruct of one too many promising careers. His skills, however, are to be respected and feared.
The kill count climbs and his hull is running out of space.
Augustus is heading to rendezvous with the quinquereme Victoria, flying flank with the Classis Ravennas, when he passes through the wormhole-riddled Myrias system and crosses paths with a large battle-class starship. Initial scans reveals that it is, of all ships, U.S.S. Merrimack.
Augustus recognizes the ship, of course he does. It is captained by the American war hero John Farragut, killer of PanGalactic's patterner, Septimus. His ability to land himself in all the places he shouldn't be and get himself into every sort of trouble has left him a deep nuisance for both Rome and his own Naval command.
The Merrimack is stubbornly hooked onto a smaller disabled craft, a shuttle of some sort, attempting and failing to tow it free from a wormhole. There is an eighty percent chance that the gravitational pull has already crushed the occupants to death, but the Merrimack isn't letting go.
US Naval ships are equipped with forward facing shields. The Merrimack is facing away from him, rear as wide as Numa Pompeii's backside and about as easy a target. He can take that shot and it would be a very, very easy kill.
The moments tick by as Augustus watches, until he is certain the Merrimack has noticed him. It takes another few moments for him to realize that Farragut truly has no intention of turning around to fight him off, a clear threat. That he will not let go of the small, crushed shuttlecraft.
It's so stupid, the sort of thing one would find in a propaganda piece or child's storybook. A small part of his brain finds this display admirable, however, enough that he hesitates and doesn't send that mental signal down toward the gunports to –
and there is sensation, of warm skin and the bristle of close-cropped hair momentarily brushing against his lips.
-MUNDI TERMINUM ADPROPINQUANTE. Now that we are approaching the end of the world, John Farragut.-and you are a patterner- You know. You know. And you're right.-good-bye-
Regret and... gratitude.
Augustus freezes, shakes his head and it fades almost as quickly as it had come. What was that? Not a memory, but it had felt... familiar. Another hallucination? He hasn't had one in years.
Disturbed, Augustus calculates a new trajectory and fires a million in one shot at exactly the right speed and angle to disrupt the wormhole anomaly, freeing the small shuttle. Let Farragut have his dead crew. He has no interest shooting him in the back. The United States and Rome are still at war; there will be plenty of time for them to meet again, face to face. If the man doesn't get sucked into anymore wormholes.
"Next time, when I have a clear shot at something other than your back, prepare to yield to Rome as my prize of honor, or else die for the glory of the Roman Empire," he sends, in case Farragut is stupid enough to think that shot was happenstance.
Merrimack eventually returns fire. But he's long gone.
Augustus conveniently, willfully, forgets all about the incident once the report is filed. I traded fire with an American vessel. Nothing came of it.
Perhaps due the intimacy of repeated observation of a vomiting, half-comatose patterner, as if seeing waste exiting from a man on numerous occasions leads to the destruction of basic social barriers, Caesar Magnus suddenly asks that Augustus supply him with a mind map.
Augustus stares at Caesar, wondering when he had moved from recreational drug use to suicide. And it was suicide, one typically chosen by grieving lovers trying to experience one last moment with a loved one – and resulting in fried brains and as much cognitive ability as a tomato.
"Make a simulation based on your brain scan, something I can plug into a Cube and experience for myself. Leave nothing out," Magnus continues to Augustus's relief. "A single day. No. A single hour. How about the firefight with the Merrimack?"
He doesn't want to but an order is an order and nothing he can question. Augustus shrugs, "Yes."
An hour after Augustus delivers the module onto Caesar's desk, Magnus calls a secret meeting of equally secretive senators and chiefs of staff. He ends the patterner program, citing prohibitive budget costs with unnecessarily high attrition rates.
As if any Caesar had ever cared about bankrupting entire colonies. As if dead men could be counted alive enough for attrition statistics. What motivates you? Augustus wonders. Fear of a patterner's power, now that you've a taste of it, or actual consideration?
Privately, much later, Caesar Magnus pats Augustus's knee before he hands him a glass of wine and some wafers. Augustus is once again supine, his arm flung over his eyes. The ceiling spins and he wants nothing more than to sleep, but forces himself to remain awake while Caesar is present.
"What was that? There was a brief but vivid flash of something I couldn't quite put my finger on."
"Hallucination."
"Are hallucinations common?"
"It's in my file. Happens, sometimes. No idea why. Don't care."
"An interesting time to hallucinate, don't you think? A kiss of farewell for a heroic captain, just as you were about to fire on his starship." There is an edge to his voice. Augustus is ill and cranky but he knows better than to say anything. He pulls his arm down to look properly at Caesar Magnus. He doesn't look angry, merely contemplative, but his hand tightens on Augustus's thigh, enough that the pain actually registers. It's a warning. "Patterner, if I were even slightly less indulgent of you..."
"It was a hallucination. My failsafes–"
"And I am to believe that you have absolutely no way around them?"
"It would be a guard in this room with me, and not you, if you believed that I could do so," Augustus says.
Caesar Magnus is silent, acknowledging. The hand on his thigh loosens.
And then slides up under the hem of his tunic.
Augustus stiffens. He is in his private rooms and his legs are bare.
Caesar's hand is hot, and his thumb strokes a slow, deliberate half-circle against the skin of his hip. "Just look at you. So much power, so much strength and I am to believe it also comes with obedience?" Oh, he is angry. Caesar's hand strokes further up Augustus's flank, rucking the tunic up to his navel. It is the middle of the night, Augustus isn't wearing anything underneath.
"Yes," Augustus says, swallowing back phlegm and half-chewed crackers.
He looks down over the side of the bed at that evening's chosen vessel, an ornate copper bowl shaped as a large goldfish. It was a gift to him, from Caesar Magnus, with understanding that if such a hideous bowl should exist, then surely it was meant to vomit in.
"This is the most quiet you have ever been, Augustus. No sarcasm? No quips?" On the down stroke, Caesar's hand stops just shy of Augustus's cock to press into his pubic hair, thumb tracing along the base. Augustus feels the very beginnings of heat building in his stomach. He might want this, just a little bit.
Augustus has no illusions that what Caesar wants is control, and that is the one way he has never lain with another man. He never had the interest and he only has a year or three left to live; there is very little any man could offer him to make it worthwhile. For once Augustus is at a loss for words.
"It was a hallucination," he repeats, finally. "Nothing more."
Some of his reluctance must show, because Caesar laughs and suddenly pulls his hand away. He leaves the tunic as it is, bunched up over Augustus's hips. "Perhaps later," he says regretfully. Caesar Magnus pats his knee once more, platonically, like a jowly old grandfather of far greater years than he actually is. He gets up to leave. "I want a report on everything you know about the Merrimack and her captain once you are on your feet again."
Augustus nods, then places his head on his pillow. He waits for Caesar to leave before pulling his tunic back down.
Caesar Magnus uses 'later' the same way Augustus does. As it turns out, later never comes.
Of all the nations on Earth, the Rome of a century ago had assumed that would China become its greatest rival or ally. It was with some surprise that it turned out to be neither. The Americans, with the introduction of new resonance technology and a sudden leap forward in industrial development, became the dominant government on Earth and they held onto that dominance with as much irritating tenacity as a bulldog with lockjaw.
They fought Rome's sovereignty with the same tenacity.
And Rome could have won, would have won, if only...
It begins with a singular report of a LEN research vessel traveling through Roman space and then disappearing. Later are the sporadic reports of other missing vessels, the sudden appearance of what might be a new animal species. Distant outposts at the outer edges of Roman settlement suddenly go silent.
Something is happening, only Augustus doesn't have the data or access to the data to make heads or tails of it.
His days and nights blur. If he is not plugged in, riding the data streams, he's recovering under the influence of drug cocktails of increasing intensity as the pain in him doubles and triples until he is half-convinced the implants that make up an integral part of his body are attempting to mass reject themselves. It's only a borrowed body. He pushes himself further.
They eventually put a name to Augustus's suspicions. Hive. There is hardly a more appropriate term for an alien mass that eats everything in its path like a swarm of locusts.
They contain it. It is, after all, relatively small. A localized event.
But then it adapts, learns from everything they throw at it.
Two entire worlds and three legions gone.
Three colonies lost, four more legions.
Fifth colony lost and a munitions depot, jump discs and six more legions reduced to a pile of armor and teeth as the Hive learns it can turn Roman robots against their own makers.
Days feel like years when he's crunching data, so what he subjectively experiences are centuries as he plugs in and barely comes out long enough to keep his body alive. He is searching for all relevant data. All possible patterns. Only to discover that there is none, or rather, there is one and it is simple. The Hive is attracted to resonance, that thing that all their technology uses. It searches and it eats. It is a simple directive with breathtaking flexibility. Augustus does not know when it will hit next. He only knows where it has been.
Sixth world lost, more lives, more legions.
And then a second Hive appears.
Augustus comes out of that drug and data induced haze to Caesar Magnus saying easily, as if he is merely asking for someone to pour another glass of wine, "We will surrender." Numa Pompeii chokes, but Caesar waves him silent before he can begin shouting. "To the Americans. If they put up half the amount of fight they have against us, perhaps the Hive will find them a tastier morsel."
Numa explodes, voicing his objections loudly and at length.
"Yes, we have the will and we could continue to fight this thing but we no longer have the numbers." Caesar says quietly. "The Americans do. We must evacuate our people from the outer colonies."
He glances sidelong at Augustus. "No, on second thought, not to the Americans. Ship captains have sovereignty over their ships and are acting representatives of their government, are they not? How about one of their war heroes? This John Farragut is a military man with a simple reputation. He will be easier to deal with than his government."
And so Rome racks the eagles and surrenders.
Meeting Farragut again for the first time face to face leaves Augustus unimpressed. He is a large man, for an American, built like a bull and oozing the sort of cowboy self assurance that Augustus both hates and grudgingly admires. He is charismatic.
That minute amount of respect doesn't last long.
Farragut demands the Subjugation and Augustus very deeply, desperately regrets not having killed him when he had the chance.
There are a number of things that Augustus is unable to forgive.
That he was brought back to life against his will.
That Caesar Magnus is stupid enough to think the Americans will understand when he gives Augustus away to them, that he is giving them one of Rome's greatest weapons. That they will appreciate his worth and put him to use. That they would understand that Caesar doing so was his voluntarily signing his own death warrant.
He doesn't forgive Farragut for turning around and fobbing him off to Navy Intelligence without thought, as if he is an unwanted toaster.
Augustus takes his frustration out on the Navy Intelligence people. The Naval Admiral's fist to his face brings temporary satisfaction, but he can't believe, and can't forgive what comes after.
Data pack 5347kj3b4394836yj-3929685A:
The Dialogs III.
José Maria: Have you truly never looked back? Though your creation is a crime against human decency and morality, there are many who would see this as a chance to do things over- to rectify their past mistakes.
Augustus: I do not make mistakes and a dead man's are not mine to fix. We live, we die, there are no do overs.
José Maria: No, with your shining personality, I didn't think you would think otherwise. I suppose that means you don't believe in time travel.
Augustus: Time travel is theoretically possible but functionally pointless to speculate. It would have no impact on our lives. Any changes in our time-line would have already happened and we would be unaware of them.
José Maria: So you are saying we could have lived a million lifetimes but we wouldn't know it.
Augustus: Yes, but it is a waste of time to thing about. We have no other point of reference for it to matter.
José Maria: Young man, I agree with you. But somehow it sounds terribly pessimistic when you are the one saying it.
It has long been known that the effects of trauma imprints itself onto the human brain, permanently scarring it, changing how things are perceived or a person's reactions to their environment. The original brain that had belonged to the body Augustus is now housed in had been discarded, but each time Augustus activated his patterner mode, he traumatized himself repeatedly over the course of eight years.
He has become used to seeing and thinking in certain ways, in patterner ways, and it isn't something he can simply shut off.
When one's mind is deprived of interaction, a constant source of new information, it begins to create its own patterns.
It isn't quite solitary confinement, but it's close. He is given collections of books with publication dates from several hundred years ago, he is fed and he is allowed time and space to exercise. The walls are white. The furniture is cheap, mass-produced, beige office furniture that isn't meant for anyone of Augustus's size. The food is bland and rubbery. His guards have strict orders not to speak to him.
He doesn't need interaction for him to get at anyone. He burns through two sets of guards and one handler, all of are them forcibly transferred elsewhere for attacking a surrendered enemy officer. They attempt total isolation. They give him board games and a video player with no outside access to keep his mind stimulated.
It isn't enough.
He goes a little stir crazy, his version of stir crazy, rearranging the bookshelves multiple times a day to send obnoxious messages to his observers. Rearranges them until he's flirting with the idea that the books are sending messages to him.
By itself, that wouldn't be so bad, except they've taken his drugs.
He seizures. CIA medical staff puts a stop to that and gives him his drugs back.
He fucks a nurse and his supervisor. They both like it enough to not complain, but are transferred out a week later.
Augustus medicates himself into a stupor out of sheer lack of anything else to do.
Months, half a year later, someone finally decides that a half-conscious patterner in lock up is a waste of resources. They loan him out.
Augustus is standing in a field in Kansas, under a tree, with a dead woman hanging off a complicated scaffolding with flowers and filigree embroidered directly into her skin and her hair woven into a bird's nest. There are live, bleeding birds sewn to it.
"What is this?" Augustus asks, half to Agent Cho, FBI, standing next to him and half to the CIA agent monitoring on a wrist band. Cho looks up at him, expressionless. He's short and very muscular. Clearly ex-military. Handsome. He has a sense of humor as dry as one of Palatine's desert moons. Augustus could almost like him, if he wasn't American.
"I thought you were the consultant," Cho says.
"For a murder."
"Yes."
There it is again, the rage. It builds, white hot and then cold. There are other things he should be put to use for. Things that aren't serial murders in the middle of some small rural county in a country he hates. But what choice does he have? He is for the Americans to use, that was Caesar Magnus's last orders.
Agent Cho wisely watches him, waits, until the anger ebbs a little, before he begins to rattle off facts, blandly, emotionlessly, with a voice like melted butter. Augustus wonders how much it would take to make him crack.
The coroners think the dead girl had still been alive until just before they found her.
He's not allowed access to any computer or electrical equipment, but he doesn't need either. He creates a profile and they solve the case in under a day.
He doesn't say it, but he is gratified when, a year later, Farragut comes and takes him from the CIA, with his belated fury and guilt. Another colony is dead.
Caesar Magnus is dead.
I told you so, he wants to say, unsure of whether it is Captain or Caesar he is directing it to. So he says it to both.
Data pack 237kj34536yj-6i67867:
The Dialogs IV.
Farragut: So let me get this logic straight. Your Caesar willed for your creation. Caesar is man. Man is your god. And Magnus gave you to me. I'm a man too. Does that mean now I'm your god?
Augustus: No.
Farragut: Aw, come on. It wouldn't be that bad, would it?
There are days Augustus wishes Farragut is Roman, if only so his growing respect for the man is less complicated.
Is it possible to despise everything about a man, yet still like him?
From his happy go-lucky, can do, punch 'em up attitude, to his leadership style, to his sunny good looks, everything Farragut does or says grates, itches just under Augustus's skin.
He wants to stomp on him, tear him apart in front of his men and humiliate him by showing everyone what a false, weak man he is. But everything Augustus has thrown at him to get under his skin just... bounces. No matter how personal, no matter what dirty little secret he digs up, Farragut just takes it and lets it slough off, like nothing can stick to him.
"You're disgusting," Augustus says, and Farragut pauses mid-drink to check the front of his uniform. Still clean, he hasn't spilled coffee on himself or anything.
"Yeah, my wife used to say that too."
"You disgust me."
"Y'know, you keep saying that, but I know I'm wearing you down," Farragut says, oozing camaraderie and good-will. He settles down, leaning against the nearest torpedo rack like he has no intention of leaving. "Maybe I'll get you liking me enough you'll shoot me instead of slitting my throat."
Augustus has seen what men of charisma can do. Half the Senate is filled with such men and women. Romulus led by cult of personality. Men like Romulus are hollow. It is easy to find the outer edge of their weaknesses, peel it back and show how they lack substance. It's near impossible to find Farragut's weakness.
"I'm serious, though, what is it? You're thinking about something serious and if my ship ends up blown up, I'm not going to be happy."
"I'm trying to decide whether you're a statistical rarity or a computational error."
"I know how those go. If I'm a computational error, does that mean you can't stop thinking about me?"
Augustus gives up and turns his back on Farragut, ignoring him, but not without saying a few vulgar things about Farragut's mother and his dog. He does this in silent protest. Refuses to stand up, refuses to face him or greet him. Farragut isn't fazed and simply directs all his orders to Augustus's back, confident that they will be followed. In this way, aggravatingly, he is like Caesar Magnus had been. Like he is a collection of the best and worst parts, the indulgence, the confidence, the balls of steel, all of it. So similar but reconfigured into a completely new shape. And just enough like home that Augustus sometimes finds himself obeying without thinking, purely on instinct. He hates this the most.
The worst of it is, Farragut is winning. The part of Augustus that is still Cyprian, the youth that dreamt big and wanted nothing more than fight and die for Rome – to that old, dead part of Augustus, Farragut is an inspiration. The sort of shoot-from-the-hip man many soldiers want to be lead by. All of Merrimack loves their Captain, and Augustus can feel that love oozing under his nails and hair and getting into his pores like some kind of disease.
Augustus isn't blind. He can easily see why. Farragut doesn't give unnecessary orders. He remembers the name of every man and woman on the ship. He cares when they die. He cares when the Roman legions he's commandeered dies. He cries when he finds the remains of dead Roman children.
There is a creaking sound of shifting metal and Augustus assumes that Farragut has not left and is in fact sitting on a torpedo.
He prefers the civilian, José Maria de Cordillera. Can stand him for longer periods, he's more intelligent, a better conversationalist and the old man knows to leave when he isn't welcome. Farragut has to be the smartest dumb man Augustus has ever known, and when it comes down to Augustus's personal space, he simply doesn't care.
"So, I've been meaning to ask," Farragut begins, "How much of you is programmed and how much is you?"
Augustus rolls over and looks at Farragut who has his arms folded over his barrel chest and a fixed stare on him. Much like Caesar Magnus had used to stare at Augustus. He hadn't thought much of it then, about the midnight visits and not-quite sexual physical contact that had been so common place they eventually stopped registering.
But now Augustus remembers that last night, when touch became far less innocent and he'd been surprised by the force of Caesar's emotion. In retrospect, how blind he had been to the pattern for so many years, and now... "Everyone always asks that, but it doesn't matter."
How many times have you already come to my berth, determined to ignore how I am equally determined to despise you?
"Of course it does. Choice matters."
"Don't pretend that most of humanity operates completely autonomously and free of any influences. Most carry their own forms of 'programming'. Some of mine comes from complex machinery, but it's not that different, and it doesn't mean I'm any less capable of independent thought."
"Oh, don't worry, we all know you've got lots of thoughts. I don't think anyone's going to argue with that. Unless something comes over and hacks you. There aren't a lot of regular people that can say that's a hazard for them."
Augustus shrugs.
"Let me guess, you don't care. Is there anything you do care about?"
"The day I can watch you crash and burn?"
"Not gonna happen," Farragut says immediately, like it's an old joke, even though it is obvious from his expression he knows Augustus is serious. Farragut looks like he's been given a direct challenge and, punch-happy as he is, he likes it.
Augustus shifts position in his torpedo rack, kicking off a sheet to stretch a leather-clad leg off the side in preparation of standing. He is in uniform, Flavian black and red. He stops as Farragut's gaze immediately switches to his leg and then slowly up the entire length of his body. Not the first or even third time he's done so. At least this time, Augustus isn't waking up with a full bladder and morning wood to greet the good Commodore. He stands and Farragut's eyes work their way south.
Augustus takes it in, stands quietly under Farragut's unconsciously roving eyes as he files this new revelation away.
He could use this ammo. Augustus could...
Or he couldn't. Some deep seated part of him, the Cyprian part of him balks. Thinks maybe he should play with Commander Steele some more instead, but for some reason it doesn't hold the same appeal it used to.
Data pack 5347kj3b4394836yj-3929685B:
The Dialogs V.
José Maria: I do agree, that when something is meant to happen, it will happen, even if the expression of it changes. But if we are going to indulge in flights of fancy, I suppose in the greater scheme of God and universe, time travel could serve its purpose.
Augustus: You believe in a god that sees all and has written every man and woman's path before they are born. What purpose would he have for allowing his creation to be rewritten over and over?
José Maria: Giving man the chance to get it right, perhaps?
Augustus: Stop the universe repeatedly for every single person in humanity to 'get it right'?
José Maria: It's not unthinkable – Alright, what if it is an option for a single man? You have no trouble accepting that time travel may have happened and, in fact, may have already affected our lives. Yet you can't go one step farther and say it may have happened repeatedly for a reason?
Augustus: You believe in God, I do not. Stop the universe for one man?
José Maria: It could be as simple as placing that man in a star system full of wormholes. Then it would only be a matter of whether he dies while blundering through, don't you think? Give a particularly slow man the time he needs to find his path. Whether he lives eight years or one hundred, physical, human life is momentary, but, give him the ability to do everything over again, repeatedly, then he'll go from having no time to having all the time in the world.
Augustus: Without knowledge or memory.
José Maria: The soul prevails. It would know.
Augustus: Well, I wouldn't know, I have no soul. And what you're talking about is reincarnation. Isn't that against your religion?
José Maria: You say reincarnation, I say amnesiac time travel. Religion, like science, is a system. Imagine blind men, each touching different parts of an elephant and drawing conclusions based on what they observe in their own vocabulary. Some are more correct than others, but that doesn't mean they are entirely incorrect. After all, they all are observing the same elephant.
Augustus: And if the elephant is a lie? These metaphorical blind men would find greater fulfillment if they focus on more constructive things than feeling up an animal.
He blames José Maria when, later, when he dreams of alternate time lines. It's an old one he hasn't had since his earliest days just out of his birthing tube at the facility on Ostia. Rome and Caesar survives there. He is still dying. Rome is whole but still in lockstep with the Americans, as if he is unable to dream of a universe where Rome successfully claims Earth or the US as its rightful colony. But at least there Rome retains sovereignty. The Empire hasn't been decimated, swallowed nearly whole by the Hive. Caesar Magnus is still alive.
Augustus hasn't simply been given away. There, he leaves voluntarily, because it is necessary and he has a purpose.
Farragut is no different. He is still buoyant, still irritating and completely unpredictable.
The Myriad, Myrias on Roman star charts, is a system riddled with wormholes. And in this dream, he watches as an alien king pops in and out of them like a crazed mole with the Merrimack chasing after, always too slow, too late to stop him.
The dream chases him into waking, as the dream Merrimack had chased after a desperate, mad king determined to travel through time to save his people. Augustus has no need for time travel. I've already lived two life-times. I have no need to suffer through another.
As if the universe can hear his thoughts, Farragut finds him later, to order him, of all things, to never try to kill himself while he is still under his command.
Augustus resents this deeply. It's his life, his choice how to live or die in it. But he had been given to Farragut, Augustus cannot ignore such a plainly worded order. He wants to punch him. Nearly asks him how many soldiers he had failed and lost for him to even contemplate giving orders like this. But Augustus doesn't say it. He asks instead, "And the moment we return to a hot war?"
"Then you can go jump off a bridge," Farragut says glibly.
Augustus blinks. Had done it already. It wasn't all it was cracked up to be.
At least Farragut finally understands what sort of weapon Caesar Magnus had given him. So very slow for such a realization, but it is better late in coming than never. He gives the Admiralty the run around and then turns around to give Augustus a long lead. It feels good to finally, finally do as he wants, to have a playing field completely wide open for him.
Faking his death is easy. Later, he will tell Farragut that he had no choice. That the politics set in motion and Farragut's own orders for him to not be reckless had tied his hands. This would not be an outright lie, but there were other options. More difficult ones, but other options did exist.
He chose this path because he wants to see what it will do to Farragut.
Suffering the discomfort of his new living space behind the torpedo racks is made easier when Farragut refuses to issue orders for Augustus's things, the statuary, the crimson drapes, to be taken away.
He can see when Farragut comes in to hurl his abuse at the walls, to rage at Augustus for disobeying orders and self destructing. His rage is real, as is his grief. He cries only once.
The unexpected fondness Augustus suddenly feels is near overwhelming.
Later, he remembers that expression, the repressed tears making their way almost unseen down Farragut's face. He masturbates to it. Wonders if he can get him to look like that again. Later, he thinks, regretfully. If there is time.
He has been ordered to live, but in return, he makes sure that Farragut's life will continue as well. Farragut doesn't see it the same way Augustus does, as retribution. His expression is shaky and grateful as he turns from the assassin lying on the deck and back toward Augustus. For him, his life has been saved. For him, perhaps, it is a sign that there is something reciprocal.
Even now, Augustus sometimes hears water, oxygen quietly bubbling past his ears as life passes before him in distant slow motion. He sees that now as he looks Farragut in the eyes, blue eyes, and with mild surprise, wonders.
Perhaps, there is.
The machine of Roman politics is unforgiving, there is no more time.
Augustus knows now who killed Caesar, his Caesar, and he knows now exactly how this will play out.
Romulus will declare war. Maybe not now, but soon, and when that happens, Augustus will be a single Roman on an American ship – a Roman that has had unfiltered access to nearly all their databases, all their codes and their secrets.
The order comes later than he expects it, but it does come and Farragut is a terrible actor. The halls are empty, the first sign that something has changed. Farragut's footsteps are deliberate and heavy, then suddenly soft as he approaches the hatch to Augustus's billet. He's come to do the deed himself, Augustus thinks without surprise. He is that kind of commander. Augustus's far better at silence and he surprises Farragut from behind, his cable-enhanced limbs half-crushing him before he even gets the gun out of his pocket. Farragut is built for power the way a bull is, with thick arms and chest. If Augustus had been fully human, even with his foot and a half of extra height, he would have been hard pressed to keep him still. But he's not fully human, and pinning Farragut in place is easy. He likes it, the way Farragut bucks in his grip. Wishes that he could feel that again under less hurried circumstances, but he has to go now.
He crushes Farragut's larynx with his fingers before he can shout, watching as his face reddens and his mouth falls open, gasping for oxygen that can't make it past the abused throat. Augustus stands there, a little too long, watching him. It's possibly even more arousing than his tears.
He doesn't want Farragut dead, though, so he pinches his esophagus back open. The damage will keep him from speaking, but he won't suffocate. That should give him enough time to get to his Striker before the bridge crew notices that something is wrong. Augustus slings the Commodore over his shoulder and carries him up eight decks when, suddenly, alarms start going off all over the ship. The massive hatch doors on every deck begin their slow slide shut. Too late. It seems they've noticed. They will want to keep him on the ship. He's too great a danger if he gets off. One well-placed shot from a patterner can take down a starship with full shields.
Unfortunately for them, he has Farragut. He uses Farragut's retinas and hands to bypass security.
When he reaches the Striker, he boards it and turns around long enough to look behind him, feeling a little wistful. A part of him wishes Farragut had had the chance to fight back, hit him back harder, if only so he could experience it. What would it feel like to be able to lose?
But, that wouldn't happen even if he weren't a patterner. Bred bigger, better, stronger. Against a Roman, how could an American compete?
Of course, irritatingly, just as he is about to leave, Farragut tries to get in the last word. He stares up at him with bruised throat and knowing eyes, mouthing words Augustus has to read his lips to hear.
Those last moments stay with Augustus the entire month he is spacebound. Through the Abyss.
Back to the place he first died.
Back to the Corindahlor Bridge.
The patterns in Augustus's life haven't escaped him.
He's spent his precious few years testing one weak man after another, until he finds the strong ones that don't bend. The good ones that can withstand his strength. The powerful that don't become corrupted.
Then turns around to give them the one thing he has that is truly his, his life.
It's just his luck they always want his body instead.
José Maria de Cordillera might have a few things to say about this, some of which might not even be pure crap.
José Maria had a point, though, during one of their past conversations. He's died once already. Lived the same cycle three times at the least, even without ridiculous things like time travel to muddy up the narrative. In the grand scheme of the great macrocosm, who's to say he hasn't lived this life a million times more?
Ridiculous, I'm smart enough I can get it down much sooner than that. Augustus puts down his third bottle of wine and finishes his wiring of the Corindahlor Bridge monument. It's his final trump card, a farewell gift of sorts, for Farragut when he will inevitably make his way back here.
Romulus has spectacularly pissed away his father's sacrifice and any lingering good will the Americans may have had. Killing their President will do that. There will be an invasion. Romulus will do everything he can to spin the situation into his favor and he will fail. Augustus will make sure of it.
He will have revenge.
Cordillera, I am dead stinking drunk, which is the only reason I will, even for a minute, contemplate half the crap that came out of your mouth. This life is reaching its zenith and my end is already decided.
Next life. Should the universe grant me one, I will seize that life and live... if not right, at least fully.
Until then, I will see you in the Deep.
Augustus snaps the last two wires into place and stands. His Striker is refueled and rearmed.
It's time.
Data pack 238rsf923847000u02040057384321:
The Dialogs VI.
Augustus: John Farragut. When we cross paths again, know that I will not hesitate to kill you.
Farragut: Yes, you will.
Starships darken the earth as they come down, pushing cloud and air from beneath their great bellies as they ponderously lower themselves through the atmosphere. Mechanized units drop like streams of birthing roaches from their hatches to land and skitter away.
Augustus is unsurprised that an American attack on Palatine's capital city would be spearheaded by the Merrimack. He'd anticipated it. Looks forward to it.
Augustus comes in high under cloud cover and half-obscured by the thick, black smoke billowing from a destroyed power plant. The Roman squadron just ahead of him notices him anyway and they, like any good Roman, follow their standing orders to shoot him on sight. The closest ones turn from their American targets and open fire. Augustus dodges.
Strikers are worn, not driven the way a typical aerial fighter unit would be. They are custom fitted both in form and function to each patterner and as such, are hellishly difficult to replace. Augustus misses his old Striker. He feels like he's wearing another man's bespoke suit. It fits, yet not the same way, not in the right way. The technology is older, the computer's processing is slower, the speed it can reach isn't quite comparable. It's fast, but without the stability he is used to. The shields feel different. The guns are in all the wrong places.
That doesn't mean he has any difficulty piloting Secundus's Striker. He's not about to have his performance effected just because he's riding around in another man's coffin. Augustus is far, far better than that.
He drops the Striker into a tight, controlled dive and jinks left, then back up again. The squadron's formation splits down the middle and they peel away on either side to loop around and try to get him from either flank. They're too slow. So slow. It takes a moment for a man to think, then translate that thought into movement and from that movement to activate the controls they grip with their hands.
Augustus doesn't have to, he's directly interfaced with his Striker and, for him, there is no lag between thought and movement. He turns, he spins, then flips around like a dancer sliding through the spaces between people in a crowd. Two fighters collapse into fire and burning metal parts as their pilots miscalculate his speed and distance, crashing headlong into each other. A third slams nose first into the side of an American drone, sending both spiraling wildly out of the sky. He simply outruns the rest. Up, he goes, threading through the rain of pink and yellow lasers lighting up the pre-dawn sky. Up through the atmosphere and into space chasing the bright, massive tails of the invading starships as they finish their damage-making and pull back.
He has no intention of shooting his own countrymen, so he dodges, darting away in short bursts as he shoots their missiles out of the air and destroy them before they can reach him.
The moment he comes within range of an American ship, he opens fire. Single shot through the single point of weak shielding on the aft side of the destroyer, piercing it through and through. The Roman fighters shooting at his tail suddenly switch targets and converge on it, firing thick and fast, opening the ship to vacuum.
It's not the ship he wants, though. He loops back, then around, dodging past U.S. beam fire.
There it is, the Merrimack.
He knows Farragut can see him. Can't help showing off a little. Augustus turns and slings missiles up the gun port of another ship. The ship's own missiles ignite and its shields collapse as it balloons outward from the force of the explosions chaining down its side from the inside. Augustus finishes it off, ripping it in half with his beam cannon.
And finally, finally the Merrimack turns, changing course to head toward him.
It all comes around to this. Him, facing down an American at the other end of a big gun.
He's been waiting for this since the very first day they met.
He shoots at the Merrimack, knocking off a small piece to get Farragut's attention. But then he is forced to dodge in circles as Roman fighters converge on him from every direction.
Augustus jinks wildy and makes a run for it. The Merrimack follows.
He keeps his distance at equal velocity on the opposite side of Palatine's moon. Farragut is a cowboy, through and through. He'll know what to do next.
Do it, he thinks as he lines up his Striker with the Merrimack, both obscured by the moon between them. A million possibilities and this is the one he wants because it brings him back to the beginning.
His purpose is served and he is dying. His Caesar is dead. He wants this.
He wants Farragut to be the one to live.
What I have to give you, John Farragut, is my death. Will you weep for me again?
They leap free of the moon. Merrimack's main gun is already turned and locked onto him. And every other gun as well.
He waits.
Merrimack fires.
The universe lights up, and for a moment, all he sees is a brilliant light, white as the sun.
It is cold. He can't move, can only feel the thump, thump of his heartbeat and the shifting movement of his ribs over his lungs. He knows he is naked, recognizes he is submerged in a large tank filled with pink healing gel. Distantly, he understands that he is still alive. Shouldn't be. Deadened by drugs, the thought barely summons any emotional interest in him. There is anger. A small, thread of anger that goes as quickly as it comes. It is quiet, the only sounds are the faint beep of machinery and the blub of oxygen rising through viscous liquid.
He doesn't know how much time has passed, but it is dark, and then it is not dark. There is a man, a large, blond, bullish figure standing outside and looking at him with an incomprehensible mix of emotion on his face. He has a hand pressed against the tank, his fingers spread wide and sweaty palm leaving grease marks against the glass.
I know him, he thinks with a rush of fondness, of irritation. Maybe a little respect.
The man stops looking at him and turns to speak to someone. Another man, and older one, appears beside him. I know him too.
Then it is dark again.
When he wakes again, properly this time, it is to the sound of a classically trained guitar. He takes a moment to orient himself, he is in a familiar medical bay, wearing a plain off-white smock the same color as the sheet that covers him. José Maria de Cordillera stops playing abruptly and hits a button on the console beside bed. Then, offers lukewarm sweetened water from a straw. It's disgusting, but apparently what he needs. His throat is dry as sandpaper and feels about as painful.
Not long after he finishes the last careful sip, there are thudding footsteps and John Farragut careens into the room like a stampeding animal.
"Cyprian Flavius Cassius?" Farragut hazards.
It takes a couple tries, but he manages to reply, voice rasping out like rocks rolling from a barrel, "I told you, I'm not him. He's dead." It sounds strange, similar yet not to what he is used to hearing, and he isn't sure whether it is entirely due to his parched state.
"Bullshit." A moment later, he's wearing Farragut. Feels the press of hot tears against his neck, but when Farragut pulls away, there is barely any trace on his face. "Legally, you are. Dead," Farragut says quickly. "But we can figure that out later." He pauses to look Augustus over. "You look different. We almost didn't recognize you when we found you."
A mirror is produced and Augustus looks at himself. He does look different. The height seems to be the same, more or less, at least from his half-supine position and his feet still hang off the end of the double-extended medical bed he is lying in. Augustus is still lean. A little narrower in overall frame, perhaps. The difference is in the face. His face is longer, nose decidedly more hawkish and his black hair is no longer curled, but loose with thick waves. He's also lost about fifteen, twenty years, probably more. He looks like he could be somewhere in his late twenties, maybe early thirties.
It is suspicious how similar he is both to his original body and Cyprian's, as if this current body formed the link between the two, making them brothers. Roman cloning technology is not that specific. It is possible to tweak the genes for basic characteristics like height and perhaps the color of the eyes, but there is no telling how the rest of it will be realized. Most corrective procedures happen after puberty. It is easier to tweak what is already there, not what has yet to be.
Augustus silently returns the mirror. José Maria offers helpfully, "The results are still coming back, but you seem to be healthy. We're not sure what was done to you, or what exactly are the collection of implants you have yet." The unspoken question, how was this possible?
Of course, Farragut comes right out and says it, "Speaking of dead, how are you not dead?"
Just off the top of his head, Augustus has a number of suspicions but doesn't give voice to them. Those are Roman secrets and he is still a posthumous Roman citizen no matter their current status with Earth and the United States. He remembers suddenly, an innocent conversation in between senate meetings where Caesar Magnus had turned and asked him, "Do you have no desires about the future? Anything you would do with yourself if you could live longer?" His reply had been facetious and obliquely sexual, but now he wonders. Imagines rows of adult clone bodies, not born but floating in over-sized incubator tanks, waiting to be put into use. The American military is not the only one with a saying about redundancy.
"We thought maybe Magnus had set something up," Farragut says. Augustus shrugs. "Don't worry, your existence is still a crime against humanity and the Geneva convention. We just don't know how or what was done to you. You're not a patterner anymore. At least we don't think so."
"Obviously." Augustus figured that out early on. Aside from his overall weakness, he feels maybe a little soreness. He is tired. But that chronic, unceasing pain that he had dealt with every day for over eight years, that is completely absent.
"Numa is Caesar now."
As expected. Gaius Americanus is the better leader and politician, and he has the personality. But he doesn't have the image of overwhelming might that Rome loves.
"How much do you remember?"
"I don't know. I suspect not everything." Faragut is opening his mouth, so Augustus talks over him. "I remember making plans but... not the execution of them. Not completely."
"Well, it worked."
"I knew you would be sentimental."
They are silent, Farragut acknowledging his sentimentality and Augustus meeting his gaze head on.
"Well, if it was Magnus, he had hell of a way to go about it. A good thing we got you too because the place was set on a timer and rigged to blow not too long after we got you out of that tank. Any chance of figuring out what the hell was being done there's gone."
"Caesar Magnus didn't want any more patterners to be created."
"But he did, sort of. Resetting?"
"Maybe."
José Maria had once discussed with Augustus about the nature of faith, Augustus remembers. Something about how functioning on faith isn't necessarily lesser than making decisions based on gathered data. He'd scoffed at him at the time, but now, he feels a little like he's lost a bet.
I'm alive again, he thinks. Whose universe was written over this time?
Might as well take the bull by the horns. Augustus reaches out a shaky hand, his whole arm feels weak, and grasps Farragut by the wrist. A small tug and Farragut is moving closer with a questioning look. Augustus turns his arm, wrist up, and hesitates. Farragut's arm is the pasty skin of a man who's spent a much of his life on a ship under bad lighting instead of the rays of a sun.
Augustus leans in and presses his lips against the soft part of Farragut's arm, near the elbow. The warmth is familiar.
"I could have sworn I had a dream kinda like this," Farragut says, looking oddly at Augustus. "Didn't appreciate it, then. I don't lean that way."
"I know."
"Generally." Now, that is a surprise. "Y'know, I was about to go mack on some gorgeous lady with legs a mile long, amazing hair and a great set of teeth. I was gonna marry her after. But then, José Maria here shows up with a letter from dead Magnus sent from the grave and I dropped her like a hot rock. Ran straight to find you floating half-dead in a casket, full of tubes, on a station rigged to blow. And despite all that, you still looked like the tallest drink of water I'd ever seen. That's gotta count for something."
Augustus blinks.
"I'm a legs man," Farragut says doggedly. "And you've got the longest pair this side of the galaxy."
And because Augustus knows the type of man Farragut is, "You only just thought of all this, at this moment."
"Yes," Farragut says truthfully. "It would have been completely inappropriate while you were still under my command, but now..."
But now, he is just a man, recently resurrected. Rome and Earth have not returned to war. Farragut apparently now has thoughts in his head. Augustus closes his eyes. I am still yours, even though I am no longer a patterner. No one took back the orders. He still wants to crush him. Bend him and make him hurt. Maybe, just maybe, be hurt in return.
ET ITERUM INCIPIAT MUNDANI The world ends and begins again. John Farragut, I was given to you. I fought you and against all odds, you found your own way around even my best efforts. You killed me and with those same hands, you brought me back into the world. How much more of me would you have?
"Masochist," he says instead. He half means himself.
"Thank you for believing in me before you even knew me. Thank you for not shooting my back at the Myriad, and for not killing me a whole bunch of times," Farragut says, completely ignoring him. The words come out in a rush, sounding as stupid as the expression on his face. Augustus looks sideways at José Maria de Cordillera who looks guilelessly back as he cradles his guitar in his lap. It is a different one, not the one Augustus had taken. Of course he had told Farragut once Augustus's death was verified.
José Maria starts playing again with a smarmy expression on his old face as he plucks out the first few bars of an old love song. Now, this is definitely against your religion, old man. The priests will have you doing penance for the rest of the year.
But José Maria is easily as sentimental as Farragut and never hid that fact.
Feeling the first inklings of discomfort, Augustus resists at first as his grip is reversed and his fingers are taken up in a large, warm hand. Farragut's palms are callused and Augustus is startled to realize that his own are smooth and soft. Untouched as a baby's. How long has his body been growing?
"We'll talk, later. Get some rest. That's an order," Farragut says, squeezing his hand.
"I'm not yours to order anymore," Augustus says.
Farragut grins, then adds soppily, "I missed you."
For Augustus, 'later' is just the easiest way to put off inconvenient conversations he doesn't want to have. From Farragut, later is a promise.
Augustus decides to ignore both of them and closes his eyes. Later he will learn about what happened after his death. Later he will figure out what he will do with himself now that he apparently has more than one year to live. Later he might have the energy to try to make Farragut bleed. But for now, he drifts off to sleep (because he is tired and not because Farragut has ordered him to do so). For the first time in a very long time, Augustus doesn't hear the distant bubble of water or dream of death.
He dreams instead of possibility, of new worlds and unmappable futures, their patterns varied and far reaching as the ever expanding universe.