The Twice and Future Caesar Read Free

operating at the back of the Outback, at the edge of the galaxy, where it wouldn’t do to have a half battalion of Fleet Marines under the command of a mere rate. It would take two months or more to whistle a real officer out here from Earth. So
they—
the “they” who made those decisions
—they
had gone and field-promoted Cain.
    Nothing was right in the universe. Colonel TR Steele should be up there on the command deck, and Cain Salvador—
Flight Leader
Cain Salvador—should be in here in gun bay twenty-five with the rest of us Alphas.
    Should be
was another way of saying
ain’t.
    The buzz of the ship’s energy guns vibrated the gun bay.
    There’s Kerry Blue kicking her heels like a squirmy child. “Well,
some
one’s got trade.”
    â€œAin’t us,
chica linda
,” said Carly Delgado.
    â€œI think they’re just shooting in the dark,” Shasher Wyatt said.
    Dak Shepard: “Can’t
we
do that?”
    â€œI’m with Shash,” Kerry Blue said. “Know what I’m not hearing?”
    Dak and Carly called it at the same time: “Incoming fire.”
    Listened to the ship’s beam gunners raking surrounding space with concentrated hellfire. Didn’t sound as though they connected with anything.
    â€œHelm. Take us to FTL.”
    â€œFTL, aye.”
    At the captain’s order the space battleship jumped out of normal space to faster than light.
    The stars disappeared.
    â€œChange course, random vector.”
    The pilot acknowledged. “Random vector, aye.”
    â€œJump down to sublight.”
    â€œSublight, aye.”
    The stars reappeared in the
Merrimack
’s portholes.
    â€œPosition of the bogey!” Captain Carmel demanded.
    Tactical reported, “Bogey does not register on the tactical screen. Bogey does not appear to be in normal space.”
    Merrimack
’s attacker had apparently dropped out of FTL to take its shots and immediately jumped back to FTL space. There was no knowing where the enemy was in FTL space. But here in normal space
Merrimack
was a sitting target.
    The captain said, “Dingo, I want to be somewhere else.”
    The ship’s XO, Stuart Ryan, was a lean, hard-strung man from the land of Oz, eager as a wild dog. Dingo Ryan gave the orders, “FTL jump. Random vector.”
    â€œFTL, aye. Random vector, aye.”
    Traveling FTL was dangerous inside a planetary system, but
Merrimack
had collision avoidance programmed into her otherwise random choices to prevent her from crashing through anything massive. Not that she couldn’t survive a collision with just about anything short of a black hole.
    Safe again at FTL, Calli Carmel rounded on Tactical like a hissing swan. “Tactical! Identify bogey.”
    The ship’s systems would have got a read on the hostile plot in the instant of its appearance while in normal space. Tactical had since had time to process the data.
    Marcander Vincent at the tactical station reported, “Bogey reads like a Roman Accipiter. Negative hull identifiers. But it posted a Roman flag.”
    â€œHelm. Change course. Random vector.”
    No one could track a plot moving FTL. But technology never stood still, and Calli Carmel took no chances when dealing with Romans. She assumed
Merrimack
was being tracked even while traveling in FTL space.
    â€œRandom course change, aye,” the pilot responded.
    Calli looked to the tactical station. “Mister Vincent. Was the bogey sending IFF?”
    â€œNegative IFF.”
    â€œNegative transmissions while the plot was sublight,” the com tech added.
    â€œDingo. Lock us down.”
    â€œHelm. Systems. Full lockdown.”
    Her XO gave the orders to make it happen. In full lockdown,
Merrimack
was almost invulnerable. The list of threats that could fit through that “almost” was getting longer by the year.
Merrimack
was still a grand ship, but not a new one.
    â€œLockdown