Muses of Roma (Codex Antonius Book 1) Read Online Free Page A

again.”
    “Centuriae, they're escaped slaves. We can never enter Roman space, much less get a Roman contract, with them on board. Daryush doesn’t have a tongue, and Dariya may as well not have one either; her Persian accent, at best, marks her as suspicious. Why should we eliminate half of humanity from our client scrolls just to keep two Persian twins from—?”
    “Enough,” Kaeso said, his headache worsening. “Everybody on this damned ship is fleeing from something. Right, Legionarie ?”
    Lucia set her jaw and turned to her pilot’s console. Kaeso knew he wounded Lucia every time he brought up her past, but he knew it was the surest way to stop her screeds against Dariya.
    “Dariya may be a pain in the ass sometimes, but she—and especially her brother—are valuable members of this crew. Just like you.”
    Lucia said, “Gravity’s out in Bay Two. And it just went out in the crew quarters.”
    Kaeso groaned. Right on cue, the panicked voice of Gaius Octavious Blaesus thundered from the com.
    “Centuriae? Centuriae! The gravity's out in my quarters. My maps and books are all over my cabin. I think I'm going to be sick. You know I can't take zero gravity!”
    “Calm down, Blaesus,” Kaeso said into his collar com. “Go to the corridor, it’s still on there.”
    “For now,” Lucia muttered. Kaeso pretended to ignore her.
    “All right...all right...yes, good,” Blaesus said. “But all of my research has turned into a cloud of papers. I just organized the landing site maps. Vallutus will be here in a half hour and it will take me at least that long to—”
    “Dariya and Daryush are working on the grav now,” Kaeso said. “In the meantime just grab as much as you can.”
    “I can't go back in there, Centuriae! Not unless you want to show Vallutus maps and proposals flecked with vomit.”
    “We can call up the maps and proposal from Caduceus's network.”
    “Maybe the maps, but not the proposal. I wrote it long-hand on scrolls and now they’re floating around with all my clothes.”
    “You were a Roman Senator, for Jupiter’s sake. You can make up a speech in your sleep.”
    “Yes, I am a brilliant orator. But that’s only after I've studied my material, practiced counter arguments—”
    “ Cac .” Kaeso unbuckled himself from the pilot's chair. “I'll be right there.” He floated to the hatch, then said over his shoulder to Lucia, “Don’t pester Dariya. I don't want another hissing match between you two while she fixes the gravity.”
    “I'm your trierarch,” Lucia said. “First officers are supposed to pester the crew.”
    “And stop pouting. Ping me when Vallutus is at the hatch.”
    Kaeso floated down the ladder well, pulling himself hand over hand down the rungs. As he neared the bottom, he felt the second level gravity tug at him, so he swung his body around and climbed down feet first. The full single gravity held him when he hopped down onto the corridor floor.
    Now in a normal grav corridor, Kaeso’s head did not pound as much as it had in the command deck’s zero grav. It did not improve his mood though. His ship was breaking down minutes before he met with the biggest client he ever had. He needed that client’s job to pay for docking fees at Reantium’s way station. And fuel, air, food, water...
    Nestor Samaras ducked his head through the pressure hatch just as Kaeso entered.
    “Blaesus just said the gravity is off.”
    “Dariya’s working on it.”
    Nestor was about to speak, but closed his mouth and stepped back to allow Kaeso to move past. The quiet Greek medicus was good at reading Kaeso's moods, for which Kaeso was grateful at the moment. But he didn’t want the medicus keeping a potential surprise to himself just to avoid Kaeso's ire.
    “What is it, Medicus?”
    “I wanted to request a line of credit to buy more raptor gizzards for the way line jump rituals.”
    “We're out?”
    Nestor nodded. “We used up the last one for our jump here.”
    Kaeso