‘And on Mars,’ the ColU put in, ‘the observers detected a kernel bed. A primordial deposit of the kind we found on Mercury, Stef Kalinski, though not on our copy of Mars.’
Knowing the ColU’s own obsession Stef prompted, ‘And where there’s a kernel bed—’
‘There’s probably a Hatch.’
The ColU said no more, but Stef understood. Some day we need to get to Mars, and through that Hatch, in pursuit of Earthshine. But, looking at image after image of worlds transformed by industrialisation – Gnaeus even showed huge mines on the moons of Jupiter – and given the power and reach of a civilisation that had gone so far in mastering their whole solar system, she wondered how and when the chance to do that might ever come.
Quintus said, ‘So we have a solar system of integrated industrialisation, of intense use of material resources, and, I presume, energy.’
Gnaeus nodded. ‘Mostly kernel-based, but not entirely; we’ve seen sunlight captured by huge sails. There are tremendous flows of raw materials, mostly from the asteroid belt inward to the inner planets. Evidence of widespread organisation and control. And we see no signs of current conflict, incidentally. As if all this is run by a single, unitary government. One empire, sir.’
Quintus snapped, ‘Whose empire? Who’s benefiting from all this? And where are they? The planets, even Terra, barely look liveable.’
‘Save by toiling slaves, probably,’ said Titus grimly.
‘Cities in space,’ Gnaeus said now. ‘That’s where we think the people must be. Cities – or fortresses. We had a few such settlements, habitats capable of supporting life. Observation platforms, docks for spacecraft and so on. The Xin too.
‘But here, wherever here is, the sky is full of them.’
He produced images of structures in space, grainily realised, cylinders and spheres and wheels, and some more angular structures.
‘They cluster around the major planets, or trail them in their orbits around the sun. And they come in all sizes, from units the size of small Roman towns, Centurion, to much larger. There may of course be smaller constructions below our ability to resolve. Some of them, near the asteroids or planets, may be habitats for workers: construction shacks. Others may be the equivalent of military camps, permanent forts – and cities, places of government and administration. We can only guess, for now. We have barely begun to study these objects. One thing that might help us, sir. The smaller habitats are very diverse. There’s a variety of designs, technological strategies. And although this “Quechua” is their dominant language, evidently the official one, we hear scraps of many other tongues – including bits of Latin.’
Quintus scowled. ‘So how does that help us, exactly?’
‘We can hide, sir. If we have to. Or at least be camouflaged. Some of those habitats and ships are not unlike the Malleus in size and shape.’
Quintus waved his hand. ‘I take your point, optio. And given the challenge of the bookkeeping of an empire on this scale, if it’s anything like our own, there will be room for concealment.’
‘That’s it, sir. And then there’s the big one, the one we’ve been calling the Titan. At the very top end, only one of a kind, the largest structure we have observed in the system by far … The big beast resides in a Shadow of Terra.’
‘He means, it’s at L5,’ the ColU told Stef. ‘Trailing Earth at a Lagrange point.’
Quintus waved his hand. ‘You’re beginning to bore me, oracle, and not for the first time. Show me that big monster, optio.’
Gnaeus obeyed.
It was a blunt cylinder, its exterior scuffed, returning muddled highlights from a distant sun. This was shown against the background of the self-illuminated Earth.
Quintus drifted to the front of the room to inspect the ‘Titan’ more closely. ‘That doesn’t look so special. Looks a bit like Malleus, in fact.’
‘It’s a little bigger than that, sir. You’re not grasping the scale of this thing – with respect, Centurion,’ he added quickly. ‘We’ve made guesses about its layout. It is spinning, around its long axis, not quite three times an hour.’
‘To provide spin weight inside that big ugly shell.’
‘Yes, sir. We’ve seen ships approach, along the long axis, where there must be docking ports.’ He pointed. ‘Just there, in fact.’
Quintus frowned. ‘I see no ships. Must be tiddlers.’
‘Sir, there are plenty of vessels larger than the Malleus itself; we see them coming and going … You still don’t see the scale.’
‘Tell me, then, you posturing fool.’
‘Centurion, the cylinder is nearly three thousand miles long.’
‘Three thousand—’
‘That is more than the diameter of Luna, sir. The end hubs alone could swallow a small moon. The land area within must be similar to that of the whole of Asia …’
Titus Valerius, muttering a blasphemous prayer to Jupiter, floated before the image of the great habitat, inspecting it more closely, casting shadows on the screen. He pointed to a blemish on the hull. ‘By God’s bones. That looks like a crater.’
‘Yes,’ Gnaeus said. ‘We’ve spotted many such scars. The structure may be old – centuries old.’
‘What a monster. No wonder they had to take poor Luna apart to build such things.’
Gnaeus said, ‘The question is, of course, who would live in such a structure—’
‘I can tell you that, optio,’ Quintus said. ‘That’s where the emperor will be. And the very rich. Living off the huge rivers of goods that flow between the worlds.’
‘An emperor become a god,’ Titus said. ‘I wonder how you could ever get rid of him?’
Quintus grinned back. ‘Good question, Titus. All right, optio, thank you. Well. We’ve seen enough. Now we need to decide what we’re going to do about all this.’
Stef had to smile.
The centurion growled. ‘Am I amusing you, Colonel Kalinski?’
‘I’m sorry, Centurion. I’m just admiring your boldness.’
‘I’m a Roman,’ he said, to a muttered rumble of support from his troops in the room. ‘And that’s what Romans are. We are bold. We take control. Although,’ he said, ‘to get through this crisis we may have to behave in ways Romans aren’t particularly used to.’
The men looked more uncertain.
‘Look – we’ve been out here four days, since Mars. And our time is already running out. Why? Because our supplies are. Our mission was supposed to last only weeks, at most. Soon we’ll need to land somewhere.’
Titus Valerius said, ‘Sky full of rocks out there, sir, among the Tears of Ymir. We could find a place of our own. Kick out a few Quechua speakers if we have to. We could call some of those other Latin speakers the optio heard out in the dark. Start building another Rome, to replace that hole in the ground we saw.’
Again Stef heard rumbles of approval.
‘I admire your spirit, Titus Valerius. But the problem with that plan is simple. Not enough women. Most of us didn’t bring our families on this mission, to my eternal regret. But then none of us knew what was going to become of us, did we? You know how things would go if we tried to make do with the ship’s population as it is.’
Stef laughed. ‘Even I would get a date.’
The centurion eyed her sternly. ‘Stef Kalinski, we would destroy ourselves within a few years at best. That is, if these Quechua speakers didn’t seek us out and destroy us first. Think about that, Titus Valerius. You remember our strongest enemy. Even now, Carthagio is a powerful memory for us all, the campaigns gone over again and again during training. Do you imagine these Quechuas, these Incas, will have forgotten Rome?’