Edward Crichton - To Crown a Caesar

Besides, they seem to have nothing but nice things to say about me most of the time.

Anyway, they’ve got the story pretty much caught up at this point, so I’ll get to the point.

Helena’s journal entry was only a few days ago, but it seems that since then, Jacob convinced Galba to help us with this crazy mission of his. We’ve also learned that our primary target, Nero, is also here. Jacob wants to capture him and hold him ransom to get Agrippina to step down — at least that’s what he tells us when he decides to tell us anything at all. Honestly, I’ve never been a fan of the whole capturing a child part of the plan, but I know who Nero is.

He’s bad mojo. Or, at least he will be.

But whatever.

Helena and Jacob are getting ready to plant some demo on Agrippina’s barge before he and I infiltrate it tomorrow.

Agrippina.

Man. Now there was a fine piece of ass. Beautiful. Big boobs. Great body. She threw herself all over me a few years ago, and damn was it worth it. Too bad she’s a freak, and I wouldn’t touch her with a ten foot cattle prod these days, and probably shouldn’t have then.

Whatever. It was worth it .

Hey… Jacob gave me this journal to jot down some thoughts while he and Helena complete phase one of the mission. I told him it wasn’t a good idea, but he said the journal would appeal to a broader audience if it was written from multiple perspectives.

Joke’s on you, buddy.

Wow!

Sorry. Just peeked through my binoculars to check in on the lovebirds, and I just caught an eyeful. Not of Jacob (thanks every god that’s ever existed) but of Helena. Hey, it’s my job to spot for them and Helena really shouldn’t expose herself out in the open like that. Remember what I said about Agrippina? Throw in an actual human being with a soul, and you got Helena. I still can’t believe that dork got that lucky. She’s way too good for him.

Shit. Looks like I went on a bit too long here. They’ve already slipped into the water. I blame Helena.

By the way, if this does get made into a movie, you all know who the real star should be.

Me.

Good luck casting this thing, by the way.

Especially me.

Look me up in a few thousand years. I should be hitting my prime right around then.

Who better to play me, than me?

I looked out over the Rhine and tried to locate where Santino had swam to. He’d left an hour ago, and had hopefully set himself up in a good position to cover our advance to the ship. We weren’t too worried about phase one because the chance of detection was minimal, but it was always good to have backup. I imagined he had to be getting pretty bored by now. Maybe he was even writing in the journal.

Somehow, I imagined his entry looking something like: me Santino. Me like boob. Where knife?

I smiled at the thought. I suppose I wasn’t giving him enough credit. For all I know he may write a beautiful ballad.

In haiku.

Yeah right.

I put Santino out of my mind and resisted the urge to look over at Helena, who was still busy changing into her swimwear. We were going light, not even bothering with our wetsuits, so we’d changed on sight. I used the time to place myself in line with her and where I thought Santino was situated. I didn’t want him catching a peek of something that doesn’t belong to him.

I had already donned my own swim trunks. They were a black, two pockets affair, and were embarrassingly short. Any less of a man might have felt insecure wearing them, but I didn’t have a problem at all. They were standard issue at BUD/S, and were comfortable and liberating. They were all I wore along with a diving knife strapped to my left calve. I also had a pair of flippers, diving goggles with a snorkel, a head-mounted flashlight, and a small, single use SCUBA device, the kind used by lifeguards on the beach. My last piece of equipment was a small rucksack that contained the demo.

Satisfied I’d given her enough time to change, I turned to find her pulling a sports bra over her head. Before she secured it over her chest, she turned away in an act of mock embarrassment, only to laugh it off a second later. I returned her smile and shook my head, but my expression quickly turned south. It always happened when I inadvertently noticed the two scars prominently featured on her body. Both a result of my blunderings.

The first one was on her left leg and was the more obvious of the two. It started on the outside of her thigh, just above the knee, and traversed all the way around the outside of her leg, ending on her hamstring, just below her butt. She’d received during our escape attempt from a terrorist controlled outpost on our first mission back in 2021. During the escape, I had accidently flipped the commandeered truck I was driving, hurling her from the vehicle and through an open window. She’d have the scar for the rest of her life.

The second one was on her lower back, to the right of her spine. It was only the height of a small wallet, but what made it worth mentioning was the mirror scar on the right side of her abdomen. When I closed my eyes I could still see the rebel Praetorian stabbing her with his gladius , gutting her clean through. It came back to me regularly in nightmares and I’ve never truly forgotten who was to blame for it.

I remembered the entire scenario vividly like it had just happened yesterday — me rushing to her side only to reach her too late, with barely enough time to exact some measure of revenge by decapitating her would be murderer. She’d fallen into my arms, sword and all, and I’d cradled her as I felt life fade from her mesmerizing eyes. She’d touched my cheek and apologized, but it wasn’t her fault, it was mine. I had promised her I wouldn’t leave her side in that battle, but I had, and she’d almost paid for it with her life.

I would die before I let something like that happen again.

So, as she stood there wearing nothing but a sports bra, tiny athletic shorts, and a combat knife strapped to her calf, the last thing on my mind was just how perfect she looked in the dim moonlight but how I had almost gotten her killed.

Twice.

I was so wrapped up in the memories of my near failure to preserve her life that I didn’t notice her place a hand on my shoulder. The first few years had been pretty rough for me and I never could bring myself to forgive my lack of action, even though Helena had never needed me to. She’d never blamed me for either injury, not once asking for an apology, but I couldn’t let myself off that easy. Those two events bothered me more than any other in my life.

I tilted my head to look at her, and saw nothing but a look of pure love and compassion. She always knew when my mind wandered back to that moment and how to bring me back from the brink — even after everything that’s happened between us lately.

She smiled again. “Feel better?”

“Yeah,” I replied. I held out my hand and gestured out over the water. “After you.”

Her answer was to put on her flippers, pull down her mask, fix her snorkel to her mouth, and quietly slip into the water. I followed her in.

The water was chilly. Even though it was only April, it had been a warm winter and it had been quite warm since our arrival here a few days ago. I couldn’t complain. The water at Coronado during BUD/S had been just above freezing, and cases of hypothermia and frost bite had not been unusual. Comparably, tonight’s water temperature was practically boiling.

Besides, the slight chill helped keep me focused.

Nearly fifty meters from the ship, I pulled ahead of Helena as we swam just below the surface of the water, the ripples left from our snorkels acting as the only indicator of our presence. About twenty meters out, I angled myself downward, and with only a slight splash on the surface, began my descent into the murky depths. I spat out my snorkel and pulled the small oxygen tank from my belt. With a quick breath I shoved it between my lips and was able to breath normally again. We only had about twenty minutes of air in the things so we’d have to be quick and efficient.