The Depths of Neptune - Chapter 14

Devnum Docks

“Join the Praetorians, they said,” Mettius Volusa Carantus griped, as water poured off his helmet. “See the Empire, they said. The only part of the Empire I’ve seen is this stinking city. You can’t farm in the fields in weather like this, meaning I could have stayed inside where it was warm and dry. Well, at least dry.”

“If you’d stayed working for Servius Gratius, you would have been complaining about that. At least we don’t have to listen to him huffing air through that fat head of his anymore.”

“But we’d be dry,” Mettius said, although more to just whine than anything else.

He’d learned quickly in training that complaining was one of the best ways to pass time as a soldier. Admittedly, he hadn’t stayed a soldier long, or at least not a legionnaire, but the same method worked well for a Praetorian. Desiderius wasn't wrong though, he was glad he didn’t have to listen to Gratius and his yelling any longer. It was strange to think that a year ago he and Desiderius had been slaves, working in Gratius' fields, barely fed, living a life with no future. Then the Sword had come and changed everything. He freed them and told them they were vital in the fight to save the Empire.

Gratius had tried to convince them to stay, offering wages of half what the factories were paying, not that Mettius wanted that any more than he wanted to stay in the fields. His father had done manual labor as a slave his whole life, the brutal end of which Mettius had been forced to watch. Injured and without the hand that he’d lost in the accident with the plow horse, Gratius had thrown him out to starve, which he hadn’t been far from before he was thrown out. Mettius had found chances to visit him in the poor house, taken in by the Daughters of Spes, who did their best to help the poor and sick in the city. Every visit he’d looked closer and closer to death's door, until the time a daughter pulled him aside to tell him that his father had succumbed to the wasting disease that had swept through the poor house.

No, Mettius had vowed to not end up like his father, giving his physical health over to make someone else rich. He’d heard that the legions were taking in freed slaves. He and Desiderius left the day they were told of their freedom, with only the clothes they were wearing, to join the legion. It had been an experience, but he’d also had better clothes and more food than he’d had in his entire life. True, the Battle of Venonis had been terrifying, pushing with his shield against what seemed like the entire world trying to break through, but he’d survived. And then came the chance to move to the Praetorians.

Himself, a child born to slaves who were themselves children of slaves, was now a monitor, second in command of dío Contubernium, éna Maniple, twenty-third Praetorian Centuria, guarding the Devnum dockyards. Of course, one day he might make it to decanus, in charge of the contubernium, and he’d be the one sending men out into the rainy night while he ‘took care of something.’

“Let’s go check on Voconius and Mattavius and make sure they haven’t slipped off to some place dry, leaving their post unguarded,” Mettius said.

He’d hesitated putting those two together, but the south side of the docks was usually the quietest and in this rain he wanted his best men watching the north side. The morning patrols had reported unusual activity on that side of the dockyard, and Mettius didn’t want anything happening on his watch.

He’d wished he had more than the ten men in his contubernium to patrol on a night like this, or nine rather, with their commander staying inside the guard hut where he could stay dry. It could be worse, Mettius contented himself. After the Battle of Venonis, the guard had been changed to the new unit structure as a test for the legions, which meant increasing the contubernium from eight men to ten. On a night like this, two more men was a lot, considering how large the dockyard was.

Mettius could only imagine what having a full maniple and its five contubernium would have meant for patrolling the dockyards instead of just the one. Fifty men would have made this a lot easier to cover. Unfortunately, the Praetorian Guard was still stretched thin, with only two cohorts assigned to cover all of the Roman province, which was not enough. He was just contemplating being promoted to optio in charge of a full maniple when movement caught his eye.

At first, he thought it was an animal or maybe a trick of light from the shadows being thrown off by the lantern he carried.

“What?” Desiderius said when Mettius pulled his horse up, leaning forward and staring into the night.

“I thought I saw something,” he said, still trying to make out shapes in the inky darkness. “Ride around that way and cut back towards the berm.”

Desiderius gave a nod and pulled his sword as he rode away, following instructions. Mettius didn’t look to see where he went, trusting Desiderius to understand what he wanted as he cut in the other direction. He could almost make out Desiderius coming back towards him when he saw it. The form of a man hurtling over the berm.

“He went over,” Mettius yelled, sliding off his horse and throwing himself over the berm after the figure, holding the lantern high as he slid down the sandy slope, trying to keep the light from going out.

He could see the person running south, away from him as he landed and pulled his sword. The man must be desperate, because here on the beach, he had nowhere to go. Maybe he panicked and hoped they hadn’t seen him clearly, thinking that going over the berm would hide him. It hadn’t worked, and he was now caught between Mettius and Desiderius, who was running towards them, with the ocean to one side and a steep sandy climb to the other. The man halted as he saw Desiderius, allowing Mettius time to get close enough to see him clearly.

He was dressed in a worker's trousers and tunic, and had the look of someone who spent a lot of time in the sun, but Mettius was certain this man didn’t work at the docks. Besides the fact that work halted in the evening when the light dropped too much, Mettius had seen a lot of dock hands over the last several months, and this man had the wrong look for one of those. If he had to guess, he worked as a farmer or something similar. To an outside observer, dockworkers and farmers might have the exact same look of manual labor, but Mettius had worked in the ground all of his life. He could see the difference.

“Halt,” Mettius said, holding his sword up. “What are you doing here?”

The man looked at Mettius and then Desiderius on his other side, at their swords, and then over Mettius’s shoulder and towards the berm. Mettius could see the man contemplating how to get away and if he could make it over the sand and back into the night before they skewered him through.

“I … got lost,” he said, stumbling over his words. “It was dark, and I thought you were brigands.”

“This close to Devnum, wearing legionary armor and liveried horses? Where were you lost from? Where is your farm? Or do you work on one of the larger estates?”

“I’m from Clo … what farm?”

Nothing the man said sounded true. The question startled him, and he’d almost answered, proving Mettius’s guess, before clumsily trying to cover it up.

“I think you should come with us.”

“That’s not necessary. I’m sorry for the trouble, but if you’ll just let me go, I’ll …”

“You can either come with us or I can put this gladius through your chest,” Desiderius said. “Which do you prefer?”

The man threw one last panicked glance at the sea berm before Mettius watched the fight go out of him, his shoulders and head dropping.

***

Devnum

“I’m sorry to bring you out this late, but I thought you’d want to see this,” Ramirus said as Lucilla came through the door, her clothes rumpled and disheveled looking from hastily being thrown on, pulling off a soaked cloak that she had thrown over herself as protection from the rain.

“They said you caught someone?” Lucilla asked waving off his apologies.

“Yes. The Praetorians patrolling the dry docks found a man near them that shouldn’t have been there.”

“In this weather?” she asked.

Ramirus worked out of the palace complex, so Lucilla had only had to step outside briefly to cross between buildings, and her feet and sandals were soaked and muddy from that short journey.

“That is what made the guards suspicious in the first place, and he was in the dark without a lantern or torch. He then ran from them, but didn’t make it far before they caught him.”

“Do we know who he is?”

“Not yet. We’ve just started the questioning, but I didn’t want to wait until we finished to let you know what was happening. One of the guardsmen grew up as a field slave before the Consul freed him and says he is pretty sure the man is a farmer or works on one of the large estates.”

Lucilla gave a sigh and Ramirus nodded. She’d been pushing hard for Ramirus to catch and deal with the last of the insurgents, but so far they had only been able to identify small pockets, and knew they were missing a lot, including Decius Sestius Gorgonius. They’d captured and executed his son, but the current leader of the insurrectionists was still in hiding. Ramirus had gotten close to him a few times, but the man moved constantly, making it hard to pin him down. What they did know was that most of Decius’s support came from the large landholders outside of the city. Men who’d lost the most when the slaves were freed and were benefiting the least from the new technology and materials the Consul had introduced.

Ramirus had already proven several treasonous and had their land and property seized by the Empire, but they were certain there were several they had missed.

“Do we know who he worked for? What he was doing out there?”

“Not yet, but it’s still early. The interrogation has just begun. By the morning, we’ll know everything he does.”

“Which means next to nothing, if he’s anything like the others we’ve caught.”

“We’ll know what he was doing out there,” Ramirus countered.

“We know what he was doing out there. He was either trying to gather information on our ships to send back to Carthage or trying to destroy or damage some of the ships under construction, or maybe both. It’s why we have the guard patrolling the docks in the first place. What it isn’t doing is getting us any closer to the people planning these attacks and coordinating everything. We still have no clue who took those documents from Hortensius’s factory, and yet you and Faenius have been investigating for more than a month. I know you are stretched thin with operations here and on the continent, in preparation for our next campaign, and I know Faenius is still short on men, but we need results.”

“We are trying, my lady,” Ramirus said, looking decidedly nervous.

Lucilla rarely lost her temper. She believed in giving her people time to do their jobs and she tried not to expect the impossible from them, or at least not hold their feet to the fire when they fell short of the impossible. Her patience, however, had worn thin.

Ramirus had promised he would track down the insurrectionists when they killed a senator, when they made the first attempt on her life, when they burned a warehouse of military supplies, and when they’d made the second attempt on her life. Faenius had sworn his men could keep facilities vital to the Empire’s war effort safe. Both had failed at their promises. She was lucky she’d survived the first two assassination attempts, and doubted she’d survive a third. More importantly, she didn’t know if the Empire and everything she’d fought for would survive if the insurrectionists managed to get the designs of these new technologies to the Carthaginians or killed someone important to their plan.

So far, they’d been focused on her, but Hortensius and Sorantius were both incredibly vital to the future of the Empire. They hadn’t figured it out yet and she already had guards watching the manufacturer, but someday the rebels would realize they could do just as much harm killing Hortensius as they could by killing her, and he was not nearly as protected.

No, the time for patience was at an end.

“Not hard enough. I don’t care what you have to do, but you and Faenius need to put an end to their operations now, before they can cause any more harm. You have worked for my father your entire life and you know how much you mean to both of us, but if you can’t do the job, I will find someone else who can. This isn’t an idle threat. Stop them or step down.”

“I …” Ramirus started to say, and stopped.

She had clearly rattled him, which was good. That was exactly what she had been trying to do. She’d tried patience and gentle pressure, and that hadn’t worked, which left only blunt force.

“I can try to set a trap for them,” he said, his mind clearly racing as he tried to think of something he could do.

“We’ve tried that, haven’t we? I seem to remember multiple attempts at trapping their people and we got, what, two low-level members who knew no one and a courier who wasn’t even part of the movement?”

“We were playing it safe with the bait, I think. Maybe what we put up wasn’t worth the risk of them using anyone notable? Perhaps, if we used something more tempting, they would feel the need to use someone more senior. Someone connected to them who could tell us where to find the leaders.”

“That sounds like a lot of maybes,” Lucilla said. “So what, exactly, is your plan for bait?”

“We could plant new documents. They are clearly trying to find information on some of our new technology to send back to Carthage, so we set something up that they will want to get their hands on.”

“That’s …” Lucilla started to comment, and paused. “That should be fine. Go ahead and do it, but I hope you get some results.”

“We will,” Ramirus said, bowing and hurrying out, either to continue the interrogation or start setting his plans in motion.

“Lucilla, it is unlikely that the people behind the thefts and attempts on your life will be fooled by making documents suddenly accessible, especially after so many new security procedures have been put in place to protect what documents we have.”

Lucilla stepped outside and followed an outcropping around the side of the building to stay dry, gesturing for her guards to give her some space.

Turning her head so they couldn’t see her mouth, she said, “I know. Ramirus is very good at organizing information sources and gathering information, but counter-espionage is not his strong suit. The Carthaginians never gave the practice much thought, I think, preferring to rely on brute force for every solution. If I had to guess, I’d say my brother was behind this. But, that means Ramirus doesn’t have the experience to deal with this like he does in collecting information. He’s panicking, trying to throw everything he can at the wall, to see what sticks.”

She looked around again to make sure the sound of the rain was covering her voice. None of her guards seemed to flinch and the palace guards were mostly in doorways, trying to remain dry. She was already getting wet, even though she was partially protected by the outcropping, and tried to look contemplative, like she was thinking the problem through. She knew her guards had probably figured out she ‘talked to herself’ sometimes and had gotten used to her weird behavior. It was more the palace servants and guards she was hiding from than her own people.

“If you do not expect his plan to work, then why would you not stop him and direct him to different methodologies that will work?”

“Because the insurrectionists are going to be looking for a response. If they don’t know already, they’ll figure out soon that we have their man. I want them to see Ramirus’s trap for what it is. I have found that once people find what they’re looking for, they tend to stop looking any further.”

“You have your own plan to catch the perpetrators?”

“Yes. Yes I do.”

***

Factorium

“Consul, you have amazing timing,” Hortensius said, meeting Ky at the entrance to the main steel factory.

It wasn’t, in fact, amazing timing. Lucilla and he had been in near constant communication for the last week, mostly discussing her insane plan to catch the insurrectionists, but also with intermittent updates on the new ships starting construction, the chemical works, and upgrades to the hospital, now that real disinfectants were becoming available, and on Hortensius’s assembly of the steam engine. On Valdar’s latest resupply run, Ky stayed behind instead of continuing to monitor the progress of that training.

It had been a productive few weeks, and Valdar had it in hand now. The gunners were still not hitting their targets as consistently as Ky wanted, but they were now at least hitting the target part of the time, which was a significant step up from where they’d been when they first launched the ships and started training. He knew this process was going to take time, but they were running short on it. The assault on the Isle of Mann, or Insula Manavia as the Romans called it, had to happen in the next several weeks if they were going to make their new timetable.

Unfortunately, he’d have to leave it in Valdar’s hands to see that the gunners could handle their part of the job; just as he’d left the training for the amphibious landings to Velius and Bomilcar, who hopefully hadn’t killed each other yet. The pace of military operations may have slowed down, but the scope had increased significantly, which meant that technological progress had to follow suit. And the first step to that was getting the steam engine online.

“I got word that the steam engine should be done,” Ky said.

“I bet you did,” Hortensius said, all but winking in response. “Still, I just fitted the last parts on today, which means your timing is still amazing, even with your spy.”

“Good. I’d hoped that would be the case. Getting this working is going to open up a wide range of new products that we’re going to need by the end of winter, or hopefully before winter's end, if you can pull off some miracles.”

“I’ll do what I can. Let me show you what I’ve managed to accomplish.”

Hortensius lead Ky through the factory to a room he’d started building as soon as Ky had explained the purpose and function of the steam engine. Ky also noticed that much of the additional machinery needed in the ceiling of the factory was already going into place as well. Crankshafts, belts, and branching machinery to allow the one engine to work multiple machines and allow that work to stop for some lines but continue for others was beginning to fill the rafters in a dizzying display. Ky had been unsure if these would all work when writing out the instructions, but Sophus had promised him that this equipment was in use for hundreds of years on his earth and all of it was well tested.

The steam engine itself was massive with a giant, cylindrical boiler taking up a large part of the room, as well as a large furnace. Its smokestack stretched up and through the ceiling.

“Impressive.”

“Isn’t it,” Hortensius said, standing back and placing his fists on his hips. “I can’t wait until I can get more of these made and installed in some of our other factories. Just looking over that last batch of documents you gave us is giving me all kinds of ideas.”

“I’ll bet! Although, you know the next version you make will be much smaller. This design has to be large because, as steam engines go, it’s fairly inefficient. We didn’t have much choice with this one, since the power we had limited how precise we could be and the strength of the material we could operate with. With this, we can build the tools to make metal stronger and thinner, cut precision parts that are identical every time, and grind the steel to make a better-finished product. That’s just here. Once we get the second version running in the steel plant, we’ll be able to increase our output and make an even better steel.”

“That was one of the documents I was thinking about,” Hortensius said.

It made sense. Before Ky’s arrival, Hortensius was primarily in the metal-making business and only got into the manufacturing because he couldn’t sell enough of the raw product to others. He’d shown amazing talent at producing the weapons and equipment the Empire needed, but his heart was in the iron itself.

“Alright, let’s fire her up,” Ky said.