Octavia

  Octavia tapped the locking mechanism impatiently as the door hissed shut beside her. She weaved a simple encryption packet into the system while catching her breath; it wouldn’t stop áine but it would be enough of a dey for the demigod to get a head start. As she turned to flee across the hydroponics chamber she now found herself in, she could hear the muffled expletives of her mentor and oldest friend through the bulkhead.

  For weeks áine had hounded her daily, desperately trying to convince her to remain focused on the gate project. The rest of the team was already reporting deys in up-scaling the generators and no doubt are as desperate as áine is for her to stay on. Most everyone who works in the Lovers had a faith in her, that she could solve any problem that was pced before her. Most did not understand that her attentions were transient and absolute; when her mind moved on, there was no stopping her. As the only one who truly understood it, áine’s frustration had grown every day that Octavia avoided the discussion

  Octavia reached the next door and gnced back to find áine sprinting toward her like a storm rolling into port. She cursed under her breath and spped the locking mechanism; a complex stream of data jammed up the digital lock. She snickered to herself; áine may be able to override it. Eventually.

  Next she cut across a workers’ food court, one of her least favorite pces in the city. Hundreds of engineers and technicians milled about zily on well-earned breaks as she slipped between them like water between rocks. The din of dozens of conversations washed over her; it threatened to overwhelm her senses. She hated to be in these crowded spaces, but knew she couldn’t be picky when it came to escaping áine.

  Octavia rounded a gap in the bulkhead that opened into an equally crowded footpath as áine’s voice rose up behind her, “For FUCK’S sake, woman! Get your skinny ass back here!” The chase could not continue; she knew that unless she changed tactics, áine would soon catch her. Without giving thought to which she chose, she pushed through the throngs of people and ducked into one of the adjoining conference rooms. Her eyes held firmly shut, she pressed her body against the wall and held her breath.

  Muffled through the thick wall she could hear áine’s long stream of curses. The older woman’s temper was as legendary as her kindness and Octavia listened to her profanity den shouts fade into the distance. Once the sound is gone, she let out a sigh of relief and slid down the wall. With a grin on her face and her head in her hands, she cackled to herself; her insistence on avoiding this confrontation would only make the inevitable conclusion more painful, but it is her nature.

  A man in the room with her cleared his throat as she ughed; her eyes shot open, realizing for the first time that the room was not empty. About thirty people of varying ages sat around the room; two neat rows of little tables, all facing a rge projection of the sor system at the end of the space. Each orbital body was beled in triptych; Roman names fnked above and below by local and ancient names. The map felt terribly familiar to Octavia.

  In front of the map stood the most beautiful woman Octavia had ever id eyes on.

  The rest of the room simply ceased to exist. Her eyes darted across every inch of the divine creature, recording every minute detail from the curve of her neck to her ample hips. She was an exile, like Octavia, but unlike the demigod she still dressed like she was on Terra. The patricians of Rome dressed in outndishly revealing outfits; the dress she wore was bcker than space and composed entirely of simple, overpping geometric shapes. It was a single piece that attached to a colr around her throat and reached the floor, but the flow of the shapes left countless pces to view her divine skin

  So much skin…

  Octavia traced the maddening lines of her thighs, the ttice of her dress like a honeycomb, revealing skin paler than the surface of Proserpina. She struggled and failed to tear her eyes away from those legs several times before she finally remembered the rest of the room.

  “Ha, uh… Oh— Hi, don’t mind me!” Her mind raced at the sudden realization that she wanted to make an impression on the divine woman. “I—I’m just sitting in today,” she squeaked out as she took an empty seat in the back row next to a young man no older than eighteen. She smiled at him sheepishly; his response was an eye roll as the other teenagers in the room snickered.

  The woman at the head of the room cleared her throat. “Alright, settle down. Anyone is welcome to join.” She turned to the projection and used a stylus to manipute the map, zooming until only the fourth pnet was projected above them. “Cailen, can you pick up where you were.” She turned back to the room. “Oh, Angel honey, please share your book with our visitor, if you don’t mind.”

  The teenager sighed and pushed the book in front of her, clearly not interest in it in any way. A wicked grin stretched across Octavia’s face as she recognized the book.

  She wrote it.

  Cailen— a tall man built like a bcksmith who spoke with an Etrian accent— struggled to read Basic. The passage he worked through discussed the conquest of Etrus as the Romans pushed their influence out from Terra for the first time. The pnet was Rome’s most profitable acquisition, the food basket of the sor system with a corporate dictatorship that was barely distinct from Augustus’ authoritarian Imperium. She considered this to be her driest, worst written book.

  Octavia’s mind and eyes began to wander back to the woman in front. She held her own copy of the book in one hand and used her stylus to show locations as they were read aloud. Her hands moved with nervous grace, a prey animal in a meadow who has yet to notice the hunter. Octavia lost track of time thinking about pinning those hands to a wall.

  Cailen, having found his footing as he went along, reached the end of the section, “—the beginning of the fourth century, most of the rest of Etrus was c—culturally Roman.” He looked up at the woman expectantly and she smiled behind her lens-less gsses before regarding the rest of the room.

  “Can anyone think of a reason why it is so important to the Romans to turn their subjects into themselves?” She gnced around at some of the adults, her eyes begging for more participation. A girlthing in the middle of the room raised her hand. “Cordelia?”

  “It is a form of control. If the popution is culturally Roman, it is easier to manage them.” Her accent was a rich mix of pces, most likely a refugee for most of her life. She held the book up to her face. “The author says her that ‘religious conversion is particurly important. With people legally banned from worshipping ancient gods outside of Tarchna, within a few generat—”

  Octavia’s mind wandered again to the woman. Beyond her fashion choices she carried herself like a patrician, possibly even a member of the nobility. There was a softness in her expressions that would feel out of pce on Terra. A woman like her on the homeworld wouldn’t even acknowledge the existence of the refugees in the room, but here she was leading an integration group. The incongruity made her a puzzle.

  Octavia loved puzzles.

  About the moment she decided that she had to fuck the woman, and argument broke out between one of the teenagers and Angel. His tone was acidic and dismissive. “I don’t see any reason to believe this author has a better grasp on pre-Roman history than the Romans do.”

  The young woman who was arguing with him sighed heavily and flipped through the book. “The Alexandrian Protocols!” She looked at the woman for approval and then grinned smugly when she received a nod. “Before they were conquered, the university on Alexandria station collected and disseminated a database of every source known to humanity. A good amount has been lost since then but the republics of the inner rim and the Spartiad preserved more than enough to tell us that what the Romans teach is little more than fantasy.”

  Angel scoffed and switched to Neo-Latin. “If the author believes she can trust corporate historians, she is an amateur fool.” At the front of the room, the woman looked horrified and gasped. She gnced at the demigod and was surprised when Octavia cackled— she’d written this book at the age of fourteen and was, by her own admission, an amateur fool.

  Her voice was full of mirth when she spoke, also in Neo-Latin. “You’re not wrong to distrust the Protocols, there is a lot of bias in exactly what sources have been preserved over the years. It’s impossible, though, to dismiss the conclusion that the Imperium is steeped in its own propaganda. Their society is backwards and superstitious, no matter how advanced their technology gets.” She switched back to basic as she bowed here head slightly at the group’s leader. “Forgive me for interjecting.”

  The woman eyed her with curiosity and smiled, “It’s no bother, the group is open to everyone’s thoughts. We’ve all come to the Underworld for our own reasons but we are united in wanting to learn.” She cleared her throat and tapped the stylus, dismissing the projected map. “That is enough for today, though. We’ll all meet again here in two days, to finish the chapter.”

  Most of the room’s occupants shuffled out of the conference room. The woman walked from person to person, hugging some and exchanging kind words with everyone. Octavia leaned against the table with her arms crossed in front of her; her eyes never left the woman flirting like a hummingbird from flower to flower. She cataloged every atom in the woman’s body and her hindbrain created an exploding database of raw information.

  The woman was, somehow, mathematically perfect.

  When all but Angel and Octavia had left the room, the cosmically impossible woman came to stand in front of Octavia with a smile. She gnced toward Angel who sat with his own arms crossed, his face as disinterested as it was sullen. “You should try to make friends with the others your age, baby. I’m sure someone would love to show you around.” He groaned and heaved his body toward the door, dismissively waving both of his hands in the way that Terrans expressed whatever.

  Her eyes met Octavia’s as soon as he was out of the room and her smile grew, becoming… hungrier. “Thank you for staying in the group.” The smell of honeysuckle and citrus seeped into Octavia’s nostrils, triggering one of her earliest memories:

  Her mother making pastries, wearing an apron covered in flour. Octavia, sitting in front of the ancient stone oven, giggling at the way the heat felt on her face. Both of them, eating treats together under the big fruit tree. Modeling her mother’s slippers and hat while her mother cpped and cheered.

  It was intoxicating; it overwhelmed.

  Octavia gave her a little smile, suddenly sheepish. “I— I have to be honest about something. I was avoiding someone, this was just the first door I ran into.” Why would I tell her that she wondered as the woman giggled and covered a grin with one hand. She looked back up into Octavia’s eyes.

  “I could tell. Avoiding a mob of beautiful women, I’m sure.” Octavia blushed. “You didn’t have to stay, though, and you didn’t have to engage with the group.” The woman ran her hand through her long blonde hair. “Not many authors want to hear what y people have to say about their work.”

  It somehow hadn’t occurred to Octavia that the woman would know who she was. Her cheeks were burning up. “I wouldn’t call myself an author… I just published my graduate thesis because it got popur on the station where I went to uni. It’s more of a commentary on other people’s work than anything else.”

  “Oh? And what about the other twelve?” The woman ughed a small ugh, sounding like the coo of soft birds. “I never expected you to be so humble, too.” She grinned as she held her book up to the st page, pointing to the space beneath the author’s portrait. Taken when she was 14, the year she returned to the Underworld and became a demigod. “Would you sign my copy?”

  The woman produced a pen as Octavia took the book from her. She chuckled nervously. “I’ve never actually signed a copy before. No one cares much about history, in times like these.”

  The woman leaned close as Octavia started to write. “So I’m your first.” Her tone was flirtatious; it caught Octavia further off guard. She was sure her face was bright red. The woman giggled in a way that vibrated inside Octavia’s rib cage. “If it’s not too forward, I’d love to pick your brain sometime. Maybe you could show me one of the gardens? We haven’t been on the station long enough for me to explore.”

  Octavia’s mouth was as dry as the red pnet on the book’s cover. “Uh— Yeah, I’d l-like that a lot.” They both exchanged shy smiles before Octavia turned back to the signature. “I don’t know your name. Uh, for the autograph.” She looked up and locked eyes with the other woman, the hunger burning brighter than before.

  “Caecilia, darling.”

  ***Before they reached the park, they had kissed six different times. The third time, Octavia pulled Caecilia into a janitorial nook and fingered her through her dress. The little woman screamed the named of seven different gods so loud that Octavia was certain someone someone heard them. In the elevator, she sucked on a nipple while Caecilia moaned like a wild beast.

  The park was peaceful and beautiful. Almost a kilometer below the surface of the pnet. They walked hand-in-hand past carefully cultivated trees, artificial light peeking through the leaves above them. Caecilia was enamored with every speck of blue that she could glimpse, but Octavia’s eyes never left Caecilia. The other woman— barely an adult by free sensibilities, unmarriageably old in Rome— giggled as she talked about her journey to the Underworld. “—I love the food on Triton! They have an artificial ocean on the moon so the station has every kind of seafood you can imagine. Even things that went extinct on Terra!”

  Octavia’s voice was warm, but without nostalgia, “I remember eating tuna, when I was still a child on Terra. Mother said it came from ‘an ocean that touched the Underworld’. We could not visit it when we can here, though. Everyone used the Sling at Olympos in those days.” Octavia couldn’t stop telling this woman everything about her life, especially things about Terra that she’d hardly remembered before. Something about the way Caecilia smiled made her want to bare her soul.

  The pair stopped to appreciate a small family of geese. They were quite lifelike, but entirely docile; real geese are ill-tempered she thought as she took some feed from a nearby receptacle and tossed it into the pond. A dozen cybernetic goslings squeaked as they leapt in after the pellets. The adults honked zily after the children.

  Caecilia leaned her head against Octavia’s arm and sighed. “We could not afford any imports. It was hard enough for Mother to even afford Etrian goods after my father…” Her voice cracked. “Uh, the st war. The invasion of the st holdouts in the Hermiad. A few years after his dishonor, we were exiled.”

  There was a long moment as Octavia searched for something to say. Caecilia cleared her throat and stood on the tips of her toes to kiss the bottom of Octavia’s chin. It sent an electric shock through the taller woman’s spine. “Sorry, darling. I guess its hard to talk to gals like us without touching some heavy stuff. Octavia looked down into her eyes and felt the sensation of drowning. Caecilia bit her own lip and smirked, looking away as she blushed. “It’s like to see where you sleep, Octavia Vibianus.”

  Her body felt like it was on fire. She needed to devour this woman, to worship her like a supplicant. “I would like to show you, Caecilia.”