Edward Crichton - To Crown a Caesar

I ignored him, my mind and my heart racing uncontrollably. Diana and I had always been very close. Up until college almost inseparable. Seeing her now made me feel something I hadn’t legitimately felt in a long while.

Hope.

And then reality kicked in.

“Just what the hell are you doing here, Diana??” I asked.

“We got your message, Jacob. Your journal.” She paused, and reached out to grab my shoulders. She looked up at me with her big, dark, doe eyes. “I’m here because they needed someone with Remus’ bloodline, and since I have a higher security clearance than you do, the President called me in.”

Jesus, her short sentence was a lot to take in. Here was someone, other than myself, speaking as though they knew exactly what the hell she was talking about. I wasn’t used to that. It was exciting on another level as well. I guess my journal wasn’t a complete waste of time after all.

“Is that true?” I asked the blond haired leader of the group.

His name was Lieutenant Paul Archer, US Navy. SEALs. About 6’1’’, 225 lbs., the guy was built like a linebacker. He’d been in the same BUD/S class as me and we’d continued our training together at SEAL Qualification Training and had bonded instantaneously. Some of the enlisted men in the class had thought we had interestingly similar names, despite the fact they were completely different. In the rigorous world of BUD/S, participants needed anything they could find to latch onto, and the two of us had figured since everyone else thought we already shared a bond, we might as well make one.

It hadn’t been hard. He’d been a good friend during the intense program. He and I were only two of three officers in the graduating class, and we’d both admitted later that without our friendship, it was possible neither one of us would have made it.

It was at our graduation ceremony where he had met Diana.

Despite being literally planets apart most of the time, their friendship grew into a romance that lasted nearly two years and grew to the point where he’d once considered popping the question. All of which had changed when I’d visited him during the very random instance when the both of us had leave on the same weekend. I’d gone to his California home, sneaking in a window as any good SEAL would sine we only used doors when we were kicking them in.

Inside, I’d found him nailing some floozy.

I remember grabbing him by the neck as he went at it, throwing him out of the bed and against the wall. The girl had grabbed a sheet and high tailed it out of the room before I could toss her out as well. I hadn’t beat the shit out of him like I should have, but I did tell him that our friendship was over, and that I wouldn’t go so easy on him if we ever met again. I’d also told him that if he wasn’t upfront about it with Artie, he was a dead man.

The next day he’d called her and told her the news.

She was devastated. She’d been poised to take the next trip to the US-EU Joint Operation Moon Base later that day. She went, but it had not been easy on her. I remember talking to her via a satellite uplink video conference, watching as her tears floated all around her as they pulled away from her face to free fall in the low gravity. She’d gotten over it, but it hadn’t been easy. That had been three months before I’d transferred to the Pope’s Praetorians. Archer had disappeared in Korea two months before that seminal moment as well.

I don’t remember Diana shedding a single tear.

Archer got to his feet and nodded.

“Give me a sit-rep then,” I ordered. “From the beginning.”

Archer took a look around, clearly not happy at being undermined in front of his men. I looked around as well. My people were gathering closer around where Artie, Helena, Santino, and I stood while Archer’s men closed in as well. I looked at their faces. All were hard, with looks of seasoned military personnel.

“Three days after you and your team went dark,” Archer started, “the President ordered a search and rescue operation to find you. He called us in.”

“The President?” I asked with a sigh.

“Of course,” Archer answered, before shaking his head. “Oh, right. The timeline is fucked up. You guys were working for the Pope.”

“What do you mean by, ‘fucked up’?” Vincent asked. I’d never heard him swear like that before.

The cuss word also brought up another interesting question. How were Diana and Archer even standing here? Let alone speaking English? The guy was talking about being sent by the President, not the Pope. That single change alone was significant enough to suggest the timeline was in some form of disarray. If that’s the case, how also are they exactly as I remembered them?

“We can get to that later,” Archer said politely. “As it stood, you were two days past your deadline. We were sent to your last known location off the Ottoman Coast in Syria.”

Ottoman Coast?

“We found the caves along with plenty of dead bodies. None of them members of the North Atlantic Federation Forces.”

North Atlantic Federation…Forces?

“Most of it had been blown to hell and we immediately feared the worst, but we found two anomalies that made us think otherwise. The first was that your equipment cache was gone. We weren’t sure if it had been taken by the enemy, but it did raise questions. The second anomaly was a locator beacon, transmitting so weakly we almost didn’t pick it up. We found it a few miles east of the cave, next to a lake.”

I narrowed my eyes, suddenly very curious.

“We had to dig about forty feet down. What we found surprised the hell out of us, and we hadn’t even opened it. A standard issue, ballistic grade cargo container, but of a design unfamiliar to us. It also looked as old as God himself. What we found inside confused all of us even more…”

As he spoke, consciousness started to elude me and my head grew foggy. I felt myself start to pass out. I really must have lost more blood than I thought and it was starting to hit me.”

“Jacob!” Both Helena and Diana called out simultaneously as they reached out to steady me. Both women looked at each other, still technically having not been introduced to one another. Santino’s stupid interruption hadn’t even given them the chance to shake hands. Even so, they both helped me shuffle back over to my slab of concrete. Wang stepped over and gave me some water and an MRE cracker.

“Thanks, Wang,” I said with a nod, turning back to Archer. “Sorry about that.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he said.

I was surprised at the lack of animosity between us. Maybe he really had made his peace with Artie.

Helena moved to sit to my right, making sure I wouldn’t fall off.

Archer looked around the ruined building, as if noticing its dire state of repair for the first time.

“Shouldn’t we get out of here, Hunter?” He asked. “This place doesn’t seem stable.”

I hesitated. If the building hadn’t moved after the force of the orb’s activation, it would stand long enough to find Varus. “We can go after we find someone. Have your men look for…” I paused again, looking at Helena. “Have your men look for a head and a body. The body should be wearing a toga. He was with us.”

Helena looked at me curiously.

“Varus…” I whispered.

She gasped and looked at the floor. Everyone else who’d known the man dropped their heads as well. None of them had been as close to him as I was, but they’d all respected him just as much. Varus had been a good man. We had to get his body back to Rome so that his wife and small child could pay their respects.

Archer flicked his hand to verify my request and his men spread out through the rubble strewn room. I watched as they broke glow sticks to brighten the area, their green glows only making the situation more morbid. It made me think of Varus’ family, especially his son. The thought ate at me. His son would have to grow up fatherless.