Muses of Roma (Codex Antonius Book 1) (3 page)

“Dariya,” Kaeso Aemilius said into his collar com, “why’s there no gravity on the command deck?”

“We are in space, sir,” Dariya’s voice squawked from the com.

“Dariya—”

“We are fixing it, sir.”

“Vallutus will be here in a half hour.”

“I could be fixing it now if you stopped hounding me, sir.”

“Just get it done.”

Kaeso floated to the command couch in the ship’s cockpit and strapped himself in. He had been standing behind the couch checking the navigation systems when the gravity cut out. He was glad he finished his hot Arabian
kaffa
a few minutes before. He would've had to replace the systems in the entire command deck instead of his First Engineer.

He glanced out the command deck window. His old freighter
Caduceus
was docked to a hollowed-out asteroid way station above the Lost World Reantium. Like most way stations, this one sat in geosynchronous orbit above a world the gods had blessed with an interstellar way line. Reantium was an impoverished world in an impoverished star system, populated with less than a hundred thousand Roman and Zhonguo political dissidents who were simply happy to be out of prison.

The one valuable commodity Reantium did have was its single way line jump to Roman territory and the world that might hold Kaeso’s next job.

“What happened to the gravity?”

Lucia Marius Calida floated up through the ladder well in the command deck’s rear. Kaeso's pilot was dressed in the white uniform of a Liberti merchant officer. While Kaeso did not force his crew to wear the merchant uniforms, he did ask they put on their best jumpsuits when a client came aboard. He appreciated Lucia's attempts to bring some semblance of military discipline to the crew. She would never stop being a Legionnaire, despite the unpleasant circumstances of her departure.

“Dariya's working on it,” Kaeso said. “And by that I mean Daryush is working on it.”

Lucia scowled. “Bet Dariya kicked a switch, or something.”

“Let’s hope it’s that simple. Gravity's gone on the command deck only, right?”

“And Bay One. And the forward quarters.”

Kaeso closed his eyes again.
The
Caduceus
is an old ship,
he reminded himself.
Old ships have old problems.

“Centuriae, it’s the third time this month Dariya has screwed up,” Lucia said, pulling herself into the pilot's couch next to Kaeso. “If she’s the reason we lose this contract—”

“We don't know what happened,” Kaeso said. “Reserve judgment until you know the facts.”

“I know. All I'm saying—”

“I'm not having this discussion again.”

“Centuriae, they're escaped slaves. We can never enter Roman space, much less get a Roman contract, with them on board. Daryush doesn’t have a tongue, and Dariya may as well not have one either; her Persian accent, at best, marks her as suspicious. Why should we eliminate half of humanity from our client scrolls just to keep two Persian twins from—?”

“Enough,” Kaeso said, his headache worsening. “Everybody on this damned ship is fleeing from something. Right,
Legionarie
?”

Lucia set her jaw and turned to her pilot’s console. Kaeso knew he wounded Lucia every time he brought up her past, but he knew it was the surest way to stop her screeds against Dariya.

“Dariya may be a pain in the ass sometimes, but she—and especially her brother—are valuable members of this crew. Just like you.”

Lucia said, “Gravity’s out in Bay Two. And it just went out in the crew quarters.”

Kaeso groaned. Right on cue, the panicked voice of Gaius Octavious Blaesus thundered from the com.

“Centuriae? Centuriae! The gravity's out in my quarters. My maps and books are all over my cabin. I think I'm going to be sick. You know I can't take zero gravity!”

“Calm down, Blaesus,” Kaeso said into his collar com. “Go to the corridor, it’s still on there.”

“For now,” Lucia muttered. Kaeso pretended to ignore her.

“All right...all right...yes, good,” Blaesus said. “But all of my research has turned into a cloud of papers. I just organized the landing site maps. Vallutus will be here in a half hour and it will take me at least that long to—”

“Dariya and Daryush are working on the grav now,” Kaeso said. “In the meantime just grab as much as you can.”

“I can't go back in there, Centuriae! Not unless you want to show Vallutus maps and proposals flecked with vomit.”

“We can call up the maps and proposal from
Caduceus's
network.”

“Maybe the maps, but not the proposal. I wrote it long-hand on scrolls and now they’re floating around with all my clothes.”

“You were a Roman Senator, for Jupiter’s sake. You can make up a speech in your sleep.”

“Yes, I am a brilliant orator. But that’s only after I've studied my material, practiced counter arguments—”

“
Cac
.” Kaeso unbuckled himself from the pilot's chair. “I'll be right there.” He floated to the hatch, then said over his shoulder to Lucia, “Don’t pester Dariya. I don't want another hissing match between you two while she fixes the gravity.”

“I'm your trierarch,” Lucia said. “First officers are supposed to pester the crew.”

“And stop pouting. Ping me when Vallutus is at the hatch.”

Kaeso floated down the ladder well, pulling himself hand over hand down the rungs. As he neared the bottom, he felt the second level gravity tug at him, so he swung his body around and climbed down feet first. The full single gravity held him when he hopped down onto the corridor floor.

Now in a normal grav corridor, Kaeso’s head did not pound as much as it had in the command deck’s zero grav. It did not improve his mood though. His ship was breaking down minutes before he met with the biggest client he ever had. He needed that client’s job to pay for docking fees at Reantium’s way station. And fuel, air, food, water...

Nestor Samaras ducked his head through the pressure hatch just as Kaeso entered.

“Blaesus just said the gravity is off.”

“Dariya’s working on it.”

Nestor was about to speak, but closed his mouth and stepped back to allow Kaeso to move past. The quiet Greek medicus was good at reading Kaeso's moods, for which Kaeso was grateful at the moment. But he didn’t want the medicus keeping a potential surprise to himself just to avoid Kaeso's ire.

“What is it, Medicus?”

“I wanted to request a line of credit to buy more raptor gizzards for the way line jump rituals.”

“We're out?”

Nestor nodded. “We used up the last one for our jump here.”

Kaeso sighed. “How much?”

Nestor pulled on his short, black beard and licked his lips. “Five hundred sesterces for a ten-canister case.”

“Five hundred—!”

“Centuriae, raptors are not native to this star system so they are hard to come by on the waystation. They must be imported from a Roman aviary, or a Lost World. The closest Lost World aviary is four way line jumps away.”

Kaeso rubbed a hand over the coarse stubble on his head. “Can't we just this once skip the ritual?”

Nestor paled. “We cannot jump without the gods approval or protection, Centuriae. We could get stuck between realities, thrown off course into unknown space or a star or a planet—”

“Fine,” Kaeso said. “Talk to Lucia and she'll send the funds to your tabulari. But only buy enough for this jump. We'll need the rest of the money in the ship's purse for bribes when we get to Menota.”
If Vallutus still hires us once he’s seen the ship.

“Yes, Centuriae. Thank you.”

Kaeso walked on, then turned. “Don’t go into Bay Two. Gravity's out there.”

Nestor stopped. “Do you know when it will be fixed? I need to get a new delta generator battery.”

“Why not recharge the one already in the machine?”

“It's not taking a charge anymore. I just checked.”

“The one in Bay Two is our last battery.”

“Do you want me to buy a new one when I get the raptor gizzards?”

Kaeso thought a second, then shook his head. “We'll just have to take our chances for this job. We can't afford it until we get paid. Maybe luck will be with us for a change.”

Nestor smiled. “There is no such thing as luck, Centuriae. Only the will of the gods.”

“Right.”

Kaeso squeezed around a corner and arrived at the crew compartments. Blaesus stood outside his quarters staring inside. The former Senator wore the usual outfit he wore for potential clients—a ceremonial white toga over his white Liberti merchant jump suit. Kaeso thought he looked dressed for a funeral.

“You almost got it, boy,” Blaesus said.

“This one?” a voice responded from inside.

“No, the one next to your left foot. Yes, that one. There you go.”

A scroll flew out of the room, hit the wall behind Blaesus, and then dropped as it encountered the corridor’s gravity field. Blaesus picked it up, unrolled it, and sighed.

“I knew that boy was good for something,” Blaesus muttered to Kaeso, “besides the arena.”

Kaeso stopped next to Blaesus. Flamma Africanus floated in the zero grav inside Blaesus’s hatch, reaching for the maps and scrolls bumping around the room. The tall, lanky Egyptian cursed every time he knocked his head on the walls or ceiling.

“At least there’s more room in the arena,” Flamma grumbled.

“You never set foot in an arena, my boy. Your golems did.”

“I saw through their eyes. I felt their pain—
Cac!
” Flamma rubbed his head where he’d slammed it against the bulkhead. “Need anything else? I’m more beat up grabbing your scraps than I ever got in the arena.”

Kaeso grinned. “You boys have things under control here. I’ll check on that gravity fix.”

“Please do, Centuriae,” Blaesus said. “I’d like to sleep in my quarters tonight.”

“Oh, and Blaesus, don’t wear the toga around Vallutus. Romans make him nervous. Especially politicians.”

“Centuriae, the toga is who I am. You might as well ask me to cut off an arm.”

“I'll do it,” Flamma said, landing in the corridor. “Ax or saw?”

Blaesus frowned. “Your bloodlust knows no bounds, gladiator. Centuriae, a toga shows I respect a client enough to wear the best clothing I have. Lucia is wearing her old Legionnaire uniform, am I right? Now
that
would make any barbarian nervous.”

“She's wearing her Liberti merchant whites,” Kaeso said. “Quite different from Legion red.”

“Still too militaristic for my taste,” Blaesus said.

“Stow the toga, Blaesus.”

The old Senator heaved a great sigh. “Very well, Centuriae. But only if you get the gravity back on in my quarters. I won't go in there again until I can walk in.”

“Working on it,” Kaeso said. He brushed past Blaesus and headed to the back of the crew deck.

“Because I will not store it in anything other than the sacred box it came in when I was voted into the Senate,” Blaesus called after Kaeso. “It would be blasphemy to do otherwise.”

Kaeso waved a hand over his shoulder as he reached the end of the crew deck, and then climbed down the ladder well to the engineering deck. He was greeted with metallic clanking and Persian curses. While Kaeso's Persian was limited to simple greetings and requests for directions, he had no trouble understanding Dariya's shouts.

In the engine room, Daryush worked at a tabulari, his large hands deftly moving windows and components around the interface. Behind him, Dariya swung a large wrench at a compartment door. The clang upon impact was deafening even in the noisy engine room.

“What are you doing?” Kaeso yelled over the humming engines and Dariya’s swings.

Dariya looked up, annoyance plain on her dirty face. He almost wanted to back up and leave the room before she came at him with the wrench.

“I told you we have it under control, sir,” she said.

“Looks like it. Why are you beating up my ship?”

“This son of a whore compartment door is corroded from the leaking grav fluid behind it. I cannot open it to fix the leak. Thus, the beating.”

She took another swing at the door and the clang was even louder. Daryush didn’t flinch, and kept moving windows on the tabulari interface.

“Use the torch,” Kaeso said. “Grav fluid won’t catch fire.”

“Your ignorance would amuse me if it would not kill us all. Sir.”

“Then educate me.”

“The fluid is not flammable, but the torch could damage the generator itself. I do not recall any spare grav generators laying around,” Dariya said. “Or spare anything.”

Daryush grunted from the tabulari, then raised both arms in triumph. The white teeth in his big smile contrasted with his dirty face. His grunts and gestures told Kaeso he’d done something for which he was proud.

Dariya went and checked his readout. “'Ush, you are amazing. We have gravity, sir.”

“What did he do?” Kaeso asked.

“He shut down the grav generator and redirected the inertia cancellers to simulate gravity. We should be fine as long as we don't make any sudden accelerations.”

“Shouldn't be a problem while we're docked at the way station.”

Daryush turned to Kaeso with a proud smile.

Kaeso clapped him on the back. “Very good.” He turned to Dariya. “When can you get the grav generator leak fixed? We'll need the inertia cancellers once we undock.”

“As soon as I can open this son of a whore compartment.”

“Fine. Just make sure Daryush's fix doesn't short out any other systems.”

Dariya looked at Kaeso as if he just said he could breath in space. The fraternal Persian twins had been aboard
Caduceus
little over a year, and Daryush's fixes had never made things worse. They had made an old, broken-down star freighter run well past its expiration date. Despite Dariya's gruff attitude and Daryush's lack of a tongue, Kaeso thought they were the best engineering team in the Lost Worlds.

Especially for their price, which was virtually nil compared to other engineering teams he’d interviewed when he first bought
Caduceus
. Kaeso hated paying the twins a tick higher than indentured wages, but he had to pay his entire crew the same. It was a condition of working on a ship that specialized in smuggling services amidst tight competition from criminal syndicates in both Roman and Liberti space.