Chapter 8

Lucilla was in the charred remains of the plaza she’d walked so many times with Ky over the last few months, training with her guards. There had been some discussion among not only her guards, but her father and his advisors when she’d first expressed an interest in training.

There was a strong stigma against women participating in what most people saw as ‘manly arts.’ That went doubly so for her, since she was so much in the public light, and anything she did reflected not only on her, but on her father and his entire rule. Although she hated having men discussing what she should be doing, there had been a long conversation on where she could go to train that had enough room to be effective but wasn’t where people would see her easily.

Originally, it had been decided that the Colosseum was the best place for it, since other than times when events were happening, it was completely empty, its gates barred to the public. She’d practiced there with her guardsman every day she’d been in town, right up until the insurrection. She’d actually been preparing to head to the coliseum that afternoon right before the insurrection happened, and it was only chance that had delayed her. Had she been there, or worse in transit, when the rebelling legions entered the city, she likely would have been captured, and possibly even executed before Ky and the loyal legions could get the city back under control.

Since then, her father demanded she stay closer to home when she practiced, so a new training ground had been needed. Staying close to home made it harder. She could have, for instance, gone out to the legion camps, where the commanders would almost certainly clear an area for her to train more or less unhindered, but that increased the amount of time she would have had to travel every day in order to train.

Instead, the only open area large enough was the plaza in the middle of the palace complex. The entry points into the plaza could be blocked off with some of the city guardsmen and, for now, the entire complex was off-limits to the general public, so it wasn’t hard to stay out of the public eye while practicing. Unfortunately, it was still badly damaged and several of the buildings already had scaffolding going up for the repair work to begin, which meant workers were in and out all day long. Although she was able to keep her original schedule today, since the work hadn’t actually started, she’d have to start her training in the very early morning, just before sunrise, and finish before the workers began arriving.

She wasn’t thrilled about it, but it was what she had to do to keep training, which she wasn’t willing to give up. She was done being in danger and scared. If it meant she had to get up with the sun every day, then that’s what she’d have to do.

All of which led up to her being in the plaza at dusk to see Ramirus sprinting across the plaza towards the rear of the palace, which was still standing and in which her father was still holding meetings for the day.

“Ramirus!” she called out, pulling him to a stop. “What’s happened?”

“Lucilla,” he said, slightly out of breath as she caught up to him. “I’m headed to report to your father. We’ve had another murder. A senator this time. It was ... unpleasant.”

“Who was it?”

“Tiberius Norbanus Sabinianus, one of the merchant senators. He was one of the first to publicly back Ky’s new laws, which is probably what got him targeted in the first place.”

“Where did it happen?”

“A few blocks from here. Some of the guards said they saw him here, near the forum, an hour ago. He was found partway between here and his house here in town, so he must have been on his way home.”

“It happened in broad daylight? I thought we’d agreed to notify all government officials about the armed insurrectionists still being in town. After the body at the Colosseum was found, I’m not even sure he should have needed us to tell him things had become dangerous.”

“He had a guard, of sorts. His brother hired one of the local toughs to protect him. We found his body a few feet from the senator’s.”

“Warnings aren’t enough. I want major members of the government to get protection starting now. Tell Faenius I want a hundred more men to be assigned as bodyguards while the crisis still persists. He’ll complain that he already gave up all of the veterans he could spare and none of his recruits are ready for service yet. Let him, and then tell him what’s expected of him. He’ll do his duty. Recommend that none of the senators travel alone for the time being, and none travel after dark. I know this attack was in the daytime, but it still limits their opportunities.”

“I was just on my way to report to your father,” Ramirus said again, casting a look towards his destination.

“Isn’t it lucky for you that I was able to intercept you and save you the time? I’ll talk to my father, but we need to get these men protected sooner rather than later. If you’re uncomfortable taking orders from a woman, take a moment to remember that I have been made the Consul’s proxy while he’s away. Besides, you know as well as I do that these are the same precautions my father would ask you to take once you had the chance to see him and repeat the same thing you just told me.”

“I’m sorry, my lady. It was simply a matter of habit. I, of course, have no issue with your instructions and I’ll do it right away.”

“Good. When you’re done, come back and find my father and me. We need to discuss how we can find these people and put a stop to their attempts to destabilize my father’s government. I know you’ve already had men out looking for them, but it isn’t enough. I’m done reacting to these people every time they decide to kill another public servant. We need to take the fight to them.”

“As you say, my lady,” he said, giving a half-bow of his head.

“Good. Go,” she said, dismissing him with a wave and returning to her guards to hand over the training sword, so she could deal with the matters at hand.

Forty miles south of the Northern Border It was barely dawn when Ky got up, a buzzing in his ear. Ever since getting his implant Ky didn’t dream, but in his groggy partially awake state his first thought was the sound had been in his imagination. It was only when he started to come more fully awake that he realized both that he wouldn’t have dreamed it and that the noise was still happening.

The other thing he noticed was that he was fairly certain it wasn’t environmental. He wasn’t ‘hearing’ it from the world around him. The sound was inside his head the same way he heard the AI when it spoke to him. It took another moment to realize how unusual that was. His internal clock was well-tuned and he normally didn’t oversleep, and the times he had the AI had forcibly woken him up, usually by speaking at full volume to him.

“What is that?” Ky subvocalized.

“In my studies of humans and your responses, I found mentions in the documents in my system that people prefer to gradually regain consciousness. I was attempting a more subtle form of alarm.”

“Don’t. I thought something might have broken and I was about to be paralyzed again.”

“Noted.”

“We aren’t set to march for another hour and I don’t remember asking you to wake me up at this time. Has something happened?”

“Potentially. I have continued to run progression models and sever connections into your central nervous system to limit further expansion into your brain. Original models showed expansion only along existing connections points, which allowed me to preemptively place some blocks to maintain my connection to you in those areas while severing connections to less critical points, limiting my possible expansion. This morning, my network initiated new connections into previously unaffected areas of your nervous system, in areas where my systems have never had a physical attachment before. All of my models suggested that this should not have been possible and its existence calls into question all of the models I have run to date. I continue to attempt to sever these connections, but the possibility of my being unable to halt the eventual expansion has reached a level of probability that I believed you should be notified of.”

“You’re saying you can’t stop it?”

“While none of my models have reached a hundred-percent certainty, this appears to be correct.”

“How long?”

“That is still a question I am not able to answer, more so now that all of my existing models have to be called into question. It could be hours or it could be months. At its current progression rate, any time frame greater than six months seems unlikely.”

“So I could just drop dead at any time?”

“I do not believe it will result in your death, at least not your physical death, at least not immediately. Hard-wired fail-safes will continue to run your organs and vital processes. The most likely external evidence that something has happened is a seizure or coma-like state, based on reports from early failures before AI takeover was a known phenomenon.”

“I see, but I’d still be dead, right? Once that happens, I don’t really care what the rest looks like.”

“Correct. A practical understanding of the effect, from your point of view, would be death, although your physical form would continue on.”

Ky was quiet for a while after that, just staring ahead, lost in his own thoughts.

“Commander?” Sophus queried.

“What?”

“You stopped responding suddenly without issuing additional instructions on how to deal with the information presented.”

“That’s just how people respond when you’re told you’re going to die and there’s absolutely nothing we can do to stop it. What kind of instructions do you think I should give? I’d be dead and you’d be trapped in my body until I starve to death.”

“Without the availability of an IV, the most probable cause of physical death would be dehydration, barring physical damage when motor control fails.”

“That’s what I mean by not helping.”

“I am detecting elevated heart rate and body temperatures which indicate you are under stress.”

“You may be gaining sentience, but you need to learn to understand tones of voice if you want to make it as your own being. Of course I’m under stress, and I’m pissed. You tell me I’m dying and then ask me why I’m upset? Here’s a hint, if someone says they’re worried about starving to death, pointing out they’ll die another way quicker isn’t exactly going to make anyone feel better.”

“I apologize if I have caused you discomfort. Understanding human reactions is a new experience for me and there is limited data available on the subject.”