Edward Crichton - To Crown a Caesar

The cable had a small monocular attached to the end, with two rings encompassing the device. Santino held it up against his eye, manipulating the rings to twist the lens beneath the door left and right, and to focus it. We used to have a fancy version that connected to our computers and projected images directly to our eyepieces, but I broke it two years ago. Stepped on it. Santino had not been happy.

Apparently satisfied, he pulled it back and tucked it into a pouch on his rig. He sent a nod to Titus, who slowly gripped the simple ring door handle and carefully opened the door inward. Wang stood just to the side, sticking his UMP into the opening. With a quick nod, Santino and Titus moved in, Wang following, with Alpha and Charlie behind them.

Laid out before us was a simple walled city, no more than a village by modern standards, and like any good Roman city, it was easy to navigate. Built along a simple grid pattern much like any legion fort, the city possessed five main roads that ran along its length. Its center road was twice the width of any two of the others and ended at the steps that led to the largest building in the town, Agrippina’s villa. Bisecting these roads were maybe twenty shorter ones that ran parallel to each other.

Along these roads were a series of smaller buildings. During our recon, we hadn’t noticed movement from anyone other than Agrippina and her Praetorians, so we weren’t sure what they were meant for. Whether the town had been abandoned prior to their arrival or if they had evacuated the city at the same time, we couldn’t determine. Either way, dozens of buildings were left scattered throughout that could contain any number of hidden problems.

I led Alpha team to the very first of these buildings, Charlie stacking up behind us while Santino directed his team to a building opposite the road we’d emerged onto. I kept one eye on my eyepiece to keep track of the patrol’s progress as I peeked around the corner to get my first real look at the villa.

It was huge, almost half as wide as the town itself, its bulk cutting off the inner two roads that flanked the main road. Our UAV scans had shown that it sat in the back half of the city from our position, and dominated everything around it. Maybe six or seven stories high, its peek offered a three hundred and sixty degree view of its surrounding area. The view must have been spectacular, with the Mediterranean Sea to the East and nothing but scrub desert as far as the eye could see in every other direction.

I nodded to no one but myself as I completed this analysis in a thought. I pulled my head back, but something caught my eye and I had to force myself from doing a double take. It seemed that many of the villa’s surrounding buildings were incomplete, or in various stages of construction. Some were completed, but the majority consisted of little more than a roof and its support structure. While, nothing seemed out of place by the scene, something about it tickled me in a bad way. Maybe this was a new town under renovation, but something felt off about its varying stage of completion.

Before I could think on it more, I felt Helena’s hand squeeze my shoulder, indicating everyone was ready to move out. I reached back and tapped her leg, confirming I understood her gesture. With another glance at my eyepiece to confirm the patrols were out of sight, I rounded the corner and set off into the town.

I pushed forward, my rifle held out in front of me in a ready position, my eyes partially focused through my scope. Walking us forward at a quickened pace, my team and I swept the roads for previously unknown assailants, stopping at every intersection we encountered. Our objective was to avoid contact before entering the villa by not drawing attention to ourselves. There were too many Praetorians patrolling the exterior grounds to ensure we remained undetected if we started dropping bodies.

It was child’s play. Back in 2021, even the most primitive of guerilla forces could be equipped with signal jammers that could block our communications or low level disruptors that sent out the briefest of EMP pulses that could short out everything from our UAV to our red dot sights. Needless to say, infiltrating this town was even easier than sneaking into the Roman provincial compound back in Caesarea.

But that didn’t mean I thought our infiltration would be effortless. We were about two thirds of the way to the villa when my eyepiece indicated one of the patrols was about to turn a corner and put them into direct line of sight with our line of movement. I raised a fist to signal a halt and shook two pointed fingers towards the wall to my right. Like most of the buildings, it was in a state of near construction. Built of clay, adobe or some such material, the building had multiple large windows cut into place. I leaned to my right and rolled myself over the lip of the sill and into the empty shell of a home. I crouched and leaned against the inner wall, keeping an eye on my eyepiece and waited for the four red dots coming up behind us to pass by.

Their progress was slow, calculated, and when they moved near enough for me to hear them, I heard nothing but the shuffling of their feet and the subtle clinking of metal on metal, be it armor, sword or both. No words were exchanged, nor was there any sign that they were doing anything but their jobs. It was almost disconcerting the level of discipline they were putting on display tonight. They were dedicated beyond reproach, stalwart warriors without equal. Either these guys were the last of Agrippina’s original Sacred Band, recruited from the best and most loyal Praetorian ranks, they themselves recruited from the best of the legions before that, or her new band of miscreants were more formidable than we thought — a thought that gave me further pause for thought. Roman legions trained and equipped in the art of modern warfare would be something worth considering. A few thousand of them wouldn’t sway the course of a world war, no, but they’d be an interesting variable thrown into the mix.

Something worth considering for the book I’ll have to write some day.

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Helena and Vincent rise to their feet. A quick glance at my eyepiece confirmed the patrol had passed by us and were moving towards the villa. I rose to my feet and climbed over the ledge more carefully this time. Santino and his team emerged from a similar house across the road and stacked up, my team and Charlie doing the same. Without a word, I started moving again, following a safe distance behind the roaming patrol.

I could see them ahead of us as we approached the villa, their capes billowing in the light wind behind them, their feet marching in silent union. We paced them like patient panthers stalking pray, and I watched as the large villa loomed into view. It seemed far bigger than the aerial recon first indicated; the equivalent of a six, maybe seven story building, wide and long. It was an intimidating structure.

After another minute or so, the patrol peeled off in front of the villa and moved to the opposite side of the town. I paused at the last intersection until they were well out of sight, checked my eyepiece, and picked up the pace towards the villa’s outer wall. It’s most obvious entrance was up the exterior main staircase that pointed in the direction we had just come from, but it was too exposed. Maybe thirty yards long, the staircase rose almost a third of the way up the building and was well lit by torches that lined the steps.

A far more suitable entry point was on the side of the villa, a door Santino had identified when a small numbers of heat signatures entered and exited from that point at consistent intervals during our recon. The next use of the door wasn’t scheduled for another hour, plenty of time for us to access it.