The Twice and Future Caesar by R. M. Meluch Page A

or planting.”
    Cain Salvador brightened. “Aye, sir. Sir? Do you know who that pirate looks like?”
    â€œNo,” the captain said—hard—like Cain Salvador better just forget he ever thought that thought. “He does not.”
    Flight Sergeant Geneva Rhine took her watch with Dak Shepard and Twitch Fuentes standing guard outside the hatch of the Spit boat, SPT 1, in which the unconscious prisoner had been isolated. Rhino suggested to Lieutenant Cain Salvador something accidental involving the prisoner and the Spit boat’s life-support system.
    â€œDon’t go there, Rhino,” Cain said. “You’re a soldier, not a sniveling Roman assassin.”
    To an all-American mutt like Cain Salvador all Romans sniveled. All Romans were assassins.
    Cain added, “Soldiers kill. They don’t murder.”
    â€œIt’s not murder if you’re doing it for your country,” Rhino said. “The guy’s a traitor to the United States.”
    â€œThat’s a fuzzy line. Don’t go near it,” Cain said. Rhino was tenacious, even for a bulldog. So to be perfectly explicit, Cain told her, “Do not kill without orders.”
    Rhino whispered between clenched teeth,
“So order me.”
    â€œFlight Sergeant.”
    When Cain called you by your rank, he was done foxtrotting. Rhino backed down. “Sorry, Cain. You know I hate Romans.”
    â€œWe all hate Romans,” Cain said.
    The Roman Empire and the United States of America were close kin. One nation had founded the other, though neither nation could agree which one was the mother country and which the ungrateful traitorous breakaway colony. On board the U.S. space battleship
Merrimack
there was no question.
    The prox alarm shrieked. Something was way too close to the
Merrimack
.
    The deep thrum of beam generators wound up with the hiss of outgoing fire. The Navy gunners were shooting—all banks from the sound of it. Sounded like a star spray of shots, like you do when you can’t see your target.
    The Exec’s voice on the loud com was calling for siege stations again.

    Part of Calli’s mind leaped into clarity, and she was barking. “Shut down!
Reel in the guns!
Lockdown! Execute! Yesterday!”
    Her order closed
Merrimack
’s force field to near impenetrable. The order for “yesterday” meant do it faster than you think is possible.
    The space battleship’s prox alarm kept blaring. A deep buzz sounded from all around.
    â€œTactical! What is setting off the prox alarm?”
    â€œI don’t have a plot,” Tactical said.
    Dingo pointed up. “I know this sound.” The buzzing was all around them.
    Calli recognized it too. It was an outside inertial field coming in direct contact with
Merrimack
’s inertial field. “He’s not registering on the sensors and he’s
on
us,” Calli said. “That’s a Xerxes.”
    Dingo called for running lights.
    â€œLights, aye.”
    The running lights were used on parade or when coming into a space station.
    The external lights shone, visible through the ship’s portholes. Calli couldn’t see anything out there but the ship
Merrimack
herself and the stars flatly shining.
    Tactical said, “I’m not detecting anything.”
    â€œThen what is the prox alarm picking up?”
    Dingo answered, “It has to be the contact. Something is
on
us. It’s touching our inertial field.”
    â€œSystems. Locate the contact point.”
    Systems shook his head. “Negative resolution.”
    Another alarm sounded. Engineering reported, “Field fault! Enemy is attempting starfish!”
    In a starfish maneuver a hostile ship
insinuated
a thin tendril of energy through an enemy ship’s solid force field. Once through the field, the energy tendril could be widened. The enemy could send anything in through the created breach.
    Marcander Vincent spoke at the tactical