Agrippina

  I stared at the ceiling of our cabin for several hours before Maxima came into the room. She carried a tray of breakfast in one hand and a folded wheelchair in the other. In a way that was reminiscent of the goddess in my dream, she smiled sadly at me. "Good morning, my love. I brought you food; from the officer's mess, just for you." She set the tray beside me on the bed: a pte of fruit, grown on Etrus and reserved for the Centurions. It was a very sweet gesture, but the idea of eating real fruit with Father standing by the door made my stomach turn.

  I picked up a piece of toast and was shocked to discover that it was real bread. I devoured it greedily, only pausing to sneer at Father. "It's very fucked that the Primus hauls around this much produce and then wastes it on your cohort." This elicited a deep guffaw from the demigod, the first thing to make me smile since—

  I immediately vomited up the meager meal as the gym flooded back to me. Bread and bile is followed by clear liquid mixed with small amounts of blood and music. Maxima rubbed my back while I sobbed, before saying, "Have you looked yet?" I shook my head and she pulled the soiled covers off the bed, revealing my legs. The sight made me a little ill, but there was nothing left inside my gut. My knees were both ruined; the ship's medical team must have cut all the nerves in my hips because I could not feel anything below. There were a series of external joints, a simple exoskeleton drilled into my flesh to enable me to walk with difficulty.

  She continued, "When we get you back to the provinces, we can get an appointment with Regenetrix. You don't have to leave this room without me next to you until then." I winced at the pity in her voice. "He won't dare to send someone here for you, and we are headed for the Sling. I will be your shield, until then."

  I didn't entirely believe her, but I also didn't entirely understand why I was still alive. One of the gods whispered into my dreams that I would be executed, yet here I was. If my dreams came from Apollo, who evidentially wanted me dead, was it a trick? Was he taunting me? I had always trusted my dreams and the gods who spoke through them, I had never considered the possibility of war between them. I tried to steady my voice when I spoke. "I need you to help me adjust to these joints, quickly. We will see battle soon, the safest pce for me will be in the couch and I will not have the others see you carrying me around."

  She frowned and handed me a sonic towel—the absurd Roman name for a device that vibrated every atom in my body until I was clean and irritated. "Who would stand against your gods now, little one?" She asked as she walked to our lockers and pulled two exercise jumpsuits for us to wear. I clipped the bracelet to my arm and felt every inch of my skin trying to jump slightly to the left as vomit and dead skin were shaken from my body. I couldn't remember how the device worked, but I hated it almost as much as I hated the ghost in the corner.

  "Believe it or not, Jupiter himself." She raised an eyebrow at me as she helped me into the baggy jumpsuit. Once it was secured to me, I tapped a button in the colr and it shrank to fit my body perfectly. It was the only piece of polycloth that I had other than my pilot suit. "Mars and Apollo rally with him, but Diana remains undecred. Venus said that Minerva stands with her. She visited me—or I visited her, I guess. I don't really know how it works, but we weren't around Sol any longer." I did not tell her that my goddess wore my skin and kissed me with my own lips. "We spoke to each other."

  Maxima nodded with faux understanding. I appreciated that she humored me when she didn't believe my dreams were anything more than dreams. "And she told you that the ship was going into battle?" She tried to hide her amusement when I sighed heavily at her tone. "Sorry, it's fine! I believe you, even if I don't believe your gods."

  Slowly, she worked the artificial joints. The metallic bones in my knees were gone, but the mesh that weaved in and out of my skin moved the flesh all the same. I could feel something like a tickle past my upper thigh, where the incisions were, as well as something like pressure where Maxima's hands touched me.

  We continued like this for an hour until I could move on my own, with crutches. There was discomfort and pain to adjust to, feedback from the point where my nerves gave way to cybernetic mesh. While Maxima unfolded the chair; I could probably have limped my way to the gym in that state, but it was better for me to conserve my stamina.

  I would need it.

  ***The attack came the night we reached the Sling. I was not prepared.

  We were in the gym, one of the few pces that Maxima would let me leave the cabin for. She brought me my meals, always from the centurions' rations, and as far as I knew, no one asked for me when she attended drills. She was by my side the entire way, setting the gym to private and running exercises with me like she is my physical therapist. We even sometimes sparred, though Maxima treated me like a fragile doe.

  For my part, I felt like a clumsy newborn more often than not. Rather than fading like the medical staff cimed, the feedback only worsened. By that night, it was a near constant ache. The signals left the cybernetics leaden and clumsy, causing me to hobble like a woman three times my age.

  Maxima had pinned me to the mat when her wrist dinged, marking the end of our hour of exercise. She softened her grip but did not release me. "You know, I used my seal on the door. No one by Acinus could open that door. We have the room all to ourselves." She ground her hips against me as she kept me pinned. I tried to stifle a moan as Father frowned at me from near the door.

  "Hnngh—I'm not really in the mood, Max." I could feel her trying to affect a pout, her lips against my shoulder. She released her grip and started to stand; as I rolled over to face her, I continued. "It's not you, baby; I'm just tired. It's hard to think with the feedback." I flexed and stretched the muscles in my thighs. Her stoic face as she turned to grab my crutches melted me a little. "Wait," I called after her as I tapped the colr of my jumpsuit, loosening it. "You can take care of yourself, still. In front of me."

  She grinned like a wolf and tore her own jumpsuit off as I slipped out of mine. I drank in her body as she sat across from me on the sparring mat and spread her massive knees apart. Her body was covered in thin and curly dark hair that grew as thick as a jungle around her sex. I tried to put the disgust on Father's face out of my mind, spreading my legs so that she could see my body.

  Maxima's eyes traced every inch of me as she licked three of her fingers. My mind went momentarily bnk, imagining three of her fingers inside me. She slipped a finger into herself easily. "You are what I fight for in battle, woman." Her breath grew ragged and I could feel my own heat rising. Gods, I loved to listen to her.

  "I will kill a million— mmhh— I would kill every man in arms just t—to fuck you." She slipped a second finger past the first, her chest heaving. "The only goddess I sacrifice to is you." My own hand had found my cunt slick, despite my better judgment. She moved in herself forcefully, like a beast rutting with a strength that would split me in half. She groaned as she brought herself nearer and nearer—

  Kxons sounded.

  The ship shuddered just as we reached the door of the gym, our jumpsuits sucking into their form-fitting state. A second kxon filled the hall—the signal for boarding parties. "Fuck," Maxima growled as a section of the wall slid open to reveal a collection of weaponry. She handed me a harness, which I quickly fastened to my chest and activated. Energy thrummed around me like a second skin as the shielding flickered into life. Next, she passed me a sidearm and a gdius; I slid both into loops in the harness. They were uncomfortable at my sides—I hate fighting in my own skin. Her voice was tense and cold when she spoke again, "The sidearm won't pierce the bulkhead. Stay behind me and do not engage."

  I nodded numbly. Almost a decade in the legion, and we'd never been boarded before. Legios didn't get boarded. Unless—"It's another legion. Kinetics will be useless against their armor, same as ours." Maxima sighed and nodded but grabbed a sidearm for herself anyway. We both took positions on either side of the door. She activated her harness, tapped the door control, and then prowled into the corridor like a mythical predator.

  We met no resistance for the first few minutes as we crept toward the spoke that led into the main body of the ship. The corridor filled with the rest of the men who bunked in the ring, each of them cd in their own repelling gear. At Maxima's order, they formed a wall of men three deep—the air crackling with energy from their shielding—and began the steady march across the spoke into the cruiser proper. Our magboots compensated for the weaker gravity as we walked.

  At the end of the spoke, our little column was hit.

  I could not see it, but I hear a wet scream from ahead of us. The horrifically sweet smell of cooked flesh— like the fattened calves sacrificed to Mars when I was a child—wafted back into my face. There are shouts as the front row engages in combat; a few moments ter, there were 6 crumpled corpses rocking gently in the room with us, boots still magnetized to the bulkhead. Two belonged to our legion—not the Second, I did not recognize either—and the other four wore golden uniforms trimmed in bck, with their insignia reading Legio IX Graecia.

  "There isn't a ninth legion in Graecia." Urbicus— the centurion of the Sixth—said to Maxima. He was a slim but very tall man, the same height as my demigod. One hand rubbed his chin as he looked at the bodies. His face was almost entirely pseudoskin, his lips glittering as he spoke. "The ninth should be in the Hermiad suppressing rebellions, not in Olympus boarding their own fucking ships."

  "Something has clearly changed." Maxima said matter-of-factly, "We need to push to the throne room." The contingent saluted and continued down the passage, five across, with Maxima and me in the rear; she covered potential withdrawal while I struggled to focus through the pain.

  I had been on my feet too long already: every connection between my nerves and the metallic weave was on fire. My head felt like it was splitting in half—some sort of sympathetic ache for the nerves in my thighs. The edges of my vision began to shimmer with the pain. I could vaguely recognize that men were fighting, the smell of burnt flesh filling whatever space we were in. We were continually bolstered by more and more centuria. Through it all, Maxima towered over them in command.

  She was exchanging blows with a spear-wielding boarder when I heard the beat of enormous wings behind me; my vision cleared and every other sensation melted away. I turned toward the sound and barely avoided a gdius a centimeter from my chest. The shocked man holding the gdius was a member of the Seventh. Acting with a will of their own, one of my hands gripped his wrist and the other took hold of his elbow. I pulled his arm into a tight hug and wrenched until the sword dropped to the floor. He growled at me through gritted teeth. "Mars comes for you, abomination."

  My brain flooded with unfamiliar signals, the adrenaline and stimunts of my combat impnts suddenly supplemented by something new and strange. My body curled and I tossed my assaint into the bulkhead. There was a satisfying crunch as his spinal column impacted upon itself. As fast as they filled me, the chemicals flushed from my system and the feedback in my thighs came rushing back like a tide.

  Maxima met my eyes and then gnced at the corpse of my assaint and shook her head. She said something to Urbicus that I could not hear; he led the rest of the contingent forward, pushing toward the command deck. She took me by the arm and began to lead me in the opposite direction. "We are headed to the couches; we need to stake out their command deck. I have an idea, but you're not going to like it." She grins at me reassuringly.

  I grin back. "Sweetheart, I like all of your ideas."

  ***"This idea sucks." I shivered as I floated above the couch. Without the pilot suit, nudity was the only way the ship could reach my access ports and connect me to the swarm. "I've never connected to more than a couple dozen at a time. For all we know, controlling an entire century could kill me."

  Maxima sighed heavily and pushed me toward the interface. Dozens of wires and tubes snaked out to connect to my body and reel me into the crescent-shaped machine below me. "I know, but you will need the overwhelming force. And I will sve my own system to yours, which should lighten the load." I brought tactical data up into my retinal dispy; the other cruiser sat less than a kilometer away, its rotation cut and unch tubes facing the Legio I. It was practically spitting distance in space combat. "If we kill their officers, we can just absorb the rest of their legion."

  I nodded my head, knowing she was right. She squeezed my shoulder once and then moved to take her pce in her own couch. With the Primus distracted, she would have to run the command programs herself. "Unlocking cmps in 60… Mark. You're unching mid-rotation; get your bearings and then drive hard."

  I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. My body filled with the same crity that I experienced when I was attacked, like there was something inside me shepherding me toward something important.

  "Cmps release, unch in 15… Mark." My mind filled with pings as each drone connected to me. The connection felt off—something deeper and more intimate than any other time I've connected to the swarm. Like I was an ocean, and I could feel every drop of water that I was composed of.

  "Launch!" My drone bodies oozed out of the side of the cruiser, spraying at the other ship as we spun. Nearly a hundred tentacled nightmares sliced silently across the void. I focused on the image of the enemy cruiser, a bright white light suddenly projected from the observation deck. I felt myself being called to it; I heaved the flow of my swarm toward it.

  One by one, my drone bodies pummeled against the observation deck. Metal buckled and atmosphere streamed out of the Legio IX as the swarm began to dwindle. Maxima unched more and more drones to compensate, keeping my numbers steady around eighty drones. "More." My voice hardly sounded like my own. "I can handle it, Maxima. Launch more of them." She complied, and the swarm bloomed, more and more drones adding themselves to my body. I could feel them as they became a part of me, and I could feel the hole they left behind as they detonated inside the enemy cruiser. Approaching two hundred drones under my control, my mind felt full to bursting; like at any moment, everything that was me would be lost within everything that was us.

  We moaned in ecstasy.

  Our body wound itself through the arteries of the other cruiser, tearing through bulkheads and bst doors toward the command deck. We cw, rend and devour anything in our path. Within a minute, we were screaming at the bst door leading to their bridge, a writhing mass of tentacles and ser fire that yearned to feast on viscera. We bore through with our fléchettes.

  Moments ter, everything was stillness. Our body rests amongst a command deck awash with red. We have fulfilled our purpose; the ninth legate and his staff are dead. We set ourselves to retrieval mode and disconnected from the system, becoming myself again as I began to float away from the couch. I was now alone.

  I was small.

  Father was gone.

  The legion would take time to devour our fallen enemy. Maxima helped me pull the jumpsuit back on; I did not realize until she was next to me that I was sobbing. The feedback was gone for the moment, floating in the nothingness of zero G, and I felt so incredibly empty. She wrapped her arms around me and started toward our cabin. "We'll put you to bed. You did good, flower of mine. You need to rest."

  I reached up to touch her face as we entered the main corridor. Neither of us cared at that moment who saw us. I felt a void yawning inside me, and I needed her to fill me.

  "And rob me of my plunder, Centurion?"

  ***Maxima snored peacefully beside me, her beautiful frame drenched in cooling sweat. I ran a finger along her arm with a smirk; for the first time in my life, I had exhausted my demigod. The upgrades to my cybernetics continued to surprise me; it was like I was inside her head, able to pluck the strands of exactly what would please her. I let out a sigh of contentment and scanned our cabin; Father remained exorcized.

  He was gone.

  I slipped into the dream more smoothly than I had in months. Sleep embraced me like a lover returned from war. I found myself standing amongst an endless panorama of columns, in every direction. Between the columns were infinite shelves, bursting with pages in every nguage ever written. The path stones at my feet emitted a soft light that cast odd-angled shadows across my path. Ahead of me, the stones brightened slightly; they lit a path that led to another pce in the library. I walked past rows and rows of written words that I somehow knew had not been read in generations. It was a primeval forest of human knowledge.

  There was a glimpse of movement between the shelves. I rounded the corner to find a corpse on the floor with something enormous tearing into its flesh. My legs carried me past more shelves until I stood before her. Almost three meters tall, she straightened above the corpse to swallow some of the pallid flesh in her mouth. She moved like a vulture but in the form of an owl; composed of chrome mechanical components of varied provenance. Some of her appeared to move by simple machines, with cogs and steam. Other parts of her seemed so lifelike—other than the color, like quicksilver—that I felt compelled to feel the feathers.

  She ceased tearing at the corpse and regarded me with a blue eye. "Hello, little one. I apologize that I am te, but I am pleased that you are not dead." The eye twinkled, masking the calm hunger beneath. "I appreciate your sacrifice."

  I tilted my head at her. "Sacrifice?"

  She tilted her head far more while tittering mockingly. "Oh. My sister left it a mystery." She turned back to the corpse and resumed her meal. "You are here too soon. I have not finished cleaning up the previous occupant. You shouldn't have to see this." I stepped closer to see the face of the corpse, though I knew who it was immediately. She slowly devoured Father, bones and all, while I stood at her side and watched. My eyes did not leave his face until she started to work on that, too.

  When she had finished her meal, she began to preen her feathers. "Your mother—the goddess, not the woman—has allowed me the use of her temple. You will be my vessel into the underworld to find my champion and rey me to her."

  Her feathers were clean, and her body began to change shape. Machine and feather converged upon one another, folding infinitely until she stood before me as a woman cd in gleaming silver breastpte and long, flowing robes of white. She carried a spear—as tall as her owl body had been—and a round shield like those of the Spartiad. Her hair was the same shining silver as the breastpte. A helmet obscured her face, something ancient that I could not recognize, but her piercing blue eyes burned through the slits.

  "You should find things easier now that Apollo's shade is dealt with, but you cannot let your guard down." She put her spear into her shield hand and held her palm up. A sor map—like the strategic map on a Legios command deck—showed the enormous gas giant that we were accelerating around. The trajectory of the cruiser appeared, a red x at the tail end. "You must take the Spartan ship—the one you captured—as soon as the cruiser's acceleration cuts. We will get ahead of it and reach Plouton a day early." The map bnked out of existence, and she straightened herself. "Plenty of time for us to find her."

  I nodded in faux-understanding, but in truth I comprehended little of what she was saying. She frowned and shook her head while she removed her helmet. Her face was striking, all sharp angles like a bird of prey, and she was breathtakingly gorgeous. Her eyes were pis zulis, an ocean that threatened to drown me if I swam too deep. I was struck suddenly by the impulse to lick her lips, and she grimaced at me. "Try to contain yourself, woman. I am not my sister, I have no interest in debasing myself with your passions." My cheeks burned bright red.

  "This is the face of my demigod. Memorize it. She must be delivered from the agents of Apollo and the war machine of Mars." She reached out to pce her free hand on my shoulder. Her touch burned me like a brand, but I did not let her see me flinch. "I have given you a data packet to take control of the corvette."

  The sound of wings filled my mind as I was pulled suddenly away from her, her voice echoing through the vast cavern. "You have five hours."