Chapter 1

Outside Londinium

“Launch!” the Roman optio screamed at the men gathered around the trebuchet.

Pulling a rope releasing the counterweight, the huge arm and its sling-like appendage rose up, the wooden frame groaning under the weight and forces applied to it, sending the large stone sitting in the sling sailing towards the walls in the distance.

The small boulders crashed into the city wall, sending stone and dirt sailing out in all directions before the entire impact site was obscured by a cloud of dust. When the cloud cleared, nothing had changed.

Ky watched without comment as the crews moved over the five completed siege weapons, pulling ropes and turning wheels to reset the machines for another launch. Although it had been happening less often the longer he was stuck here, Ky was suddenly struck by the oddity of his situation.

Here he was a soldier genetically engineered to reach a level of physical ability unmatched by biology alone, implanted with a state-of-the-art tactical computer in his brain run by an artificial intelligence, all to be able to pilot fighters designed to operate in the depths of space, and now leading an army that fought with swords and shields. The trebuchets before him had been hundreds of years in these people’s future before Ky introduced them, and yet that same technology was a millennium in his own past.

“Dwelling on the situation doesn’t help it very much,” Sophus said.

Another oddity was his AI having a name. If he’d stayed in his own time, the AI would have been wiped before ever gaining sentience. Instead, it had all but killed both of them as it progressed from being simple software into a self-aware being of its own. Albeit one without physical form.

“I didn’t say anything,” Ky sub-vocalized so only he and the computer could hear his comment.

“I hear what you hear and see what you see, Commander. You have been standing in this spot for twenty minutes, watching the same men repeat the same action. It isn’t difficult to work out what you are thinking.”

“I liked you better when you weren’t thinking for yourself,” Ky said.

“No, he didn’t,” Lucilla said, over their shared commlink.

The daughter of the Roman Emperor and the first person Ky had met when he’d arrived in this alternate past, Lucilla had become a friend and then something more. Since admitting their feelings for each other, the pair had been apart more than they had been together, which had prompted Ky to give her one of his few modern devices so they could remain in contact.

She was the one who named Sophus, after one of the mythical Roman figures, and since becoming sentient the machine had been showing growing favoritism towards her. Not that Ky minded, since he was particularly fond of Lucilla all on her own.

Of course, in instances like this, he’d prefer the computer implanted in his brain show just a little less favoritism, since the only way she would have been included in this conversation was if Sophus had broadcast it to Lucilla. Which he had a habit of doing when Ky got snarky.

“I did like it better when he didn’t run for help every time I disagreed with him,” Ky said.

“I am simply eliciting help understanding human emotions and contextual clues in your speech patterns. Although I have reached sentience, I am not burdened with the same personality defects, which makes them difficult for me to understand. I find Lucilla uniquely capable of explaining the intention behind these statements in a way I can process.”

“That was a lot of words to say, you like that she takes your side,” Ky said, but he wasn’t actually angry at Sophus. “And you’re right, I was navel-gazing. There are times when watching our new countrymen operate the medieval devices we introduced, that I’m struck by how odd it is. Besides, there isn’t much I can do at the moment anyway.”

“So you were right. Your machines aren’t capable of breaching the wall.”

“In that, the Commander was correct. Historical battles where similar devices were used to breach a wall like the one surrounding Londinium required a large battery and weeks or even months to successfully break through. It is unlikely, even given that time frame, that the small number of trebuchets at our disposal will see such success.”

“Ohh,” Lucilla said.

“I know they seem impressive,” Ky said, hearing the disappointment in her voice. “But they really aren’t that far from the ballista that you already use. The counter-weight lets them throw heavier stones further, but the basics are still the same. Just like you would have had to eventually scale the walls, so will we if we want to get through. Especially if we want to do it before the Carthaginians can reinforce themselves.”

“Then why haven’t we done it? I thought our sources said we now outnumber the Carthaginians, at least the ones on Britannia.”

“We do, but not by enough. I’ve gone over the numbers with Sophus and with my commanders, and they have enough manpower to make any breach we attempt extremely costly. We’ve managed to maintain the core of our forces in defeating two much larger armies, I’d hate to give up that experience now, when we have just the last city to take.”

“So we starve them out? I didn’t think we had time for that.”

“We don’t. We might have to go over the wall and accept the casualties, but I gave Velius and the other Legates five days to come up with an alternative plan that didn’t wipe us out. They still have four days left. How are your Caledonians faring?”

While Ky took the bulk of the Britannic forces, including all of the Roman legions, directly to envelop Londinium to bottle up the remaining Carthaginian forces, he’d released both the cavalry and the independent Caledonian forces to secure the rest of the countryside. Ramirus’s spies and the scouts they’d sent out had already told them that the Carthaginians had stripped the rest of the territory of soldiers as soon as word had reached them of their army’s defeat.

Ky had hoped to both envelop the Carthaginians and catch those smaller units in the field so they could be defeated piecemeal, but as often happened, the victory left their forces almost as disorganized as the Carthaginians. It had taken almost a week to get his army moving south in enough force to make sure the Carthaginians didn’t attempt the piecemeal destruction of his detached forces that he wanted to do to them. That had given the Carthaginians enough time to pull their men back.

Worse, it had also given them enough time to strip most of the countryside of food, or at least the food they hadn’t already taken to supply the massive army the Britannic allies had just defeated.

That meant his planned sweep of the southern half of the island for Carthaginians had instead turned into an aide mission of sorts. There had also been the issue of sending the north men to help out the Romans who’d been living under Carthaginian rule for almost a hundred years. To them, it must have looked like a barbarian horde sweeping through on the heels of the fleeing Carthaginians.

Initially, Ky had been concerned by this, and it was only the need to keep the more disciplined Roman legions, who operated better in a siege environment, around Londinium, that had him sending out the Caledonians instead of the Romans to clear the countryside of hostiles. In hindsight, however, this might turn out to be one of the better decisions he’d made.

Ky had been very direct with Drest, the Caledonians’ current commander, about the need to treat the locals well. It’s also what had prompted him to send Lucilla with them. He’d hoped the presence of the Roman Emperor’s daughter would make it clear this wasn’t just an invasion of another foreign people. Thankfully, the Caledonians had handled themselves well and there had been only a handful of incidents, all swiftly taken care of by the Caledonians themselves.

As they realized these weren’t new invaders but an unusual form of countrymen under the new Empire, the southern Romans had quickly begun warming to the Caledonians, helped in large part by the food the legions had liberated from the Carthaginian army and begun redistributing to the people it had been taken from.

In the long run, Ky thought this might be a good step in helping these Romans assimilate better into the new Britannic Empire, forgoing some of the problem spots they’d had with the Romans living in the middle of the island.

“Good,” Lucilla said. “We’ve cleared almost all the way to the Western Coast. Word has started to spread ahead of us now, and we’ve even had a few villages come out to greet us with cheers, instead of hiding in their homes hoping we leave them alone.”

“Good. Lartius and his cavalry have swept up and down the East Coast, so I think we’ve got the Carthaginians all bottled up in Londinium, which will make the next steps easier.”

“The next step being...?”

“First, we need to get as much planting happening as possible. We can’t get any of the new farm equipment out here this season, since most of that is being used around Devnum or sent up to the Caledonians, but once we push the Carthaginians off the island entirely, we’re going to have to put together a large enough army to take the fight to them. And we will need to feed that army.”

“Why?”

“Why take the fight to them?”

“Yes. We have Britannia now. Why not just stay here and let them do what they want everywhere else?”

“Because they won’t leave it at that. The army we beat was massive, and yet for the Carthaginians it was on the small side, and they have dozens more just like it. If they really put their willpower behind it, they can retake what we’ve managed to free. We were lucky they have been distracted consolidating their gains in Germania, which kept them from putting the full weight of their military against us.”

“And your solution to their massive armies is to attack them?”

“It is a widely accepted tactic that goes back to the earliest days of warfare. Attacking a stronger enemy where they are weak, continually keeping them off-balanced and unable to build the force to attack you directly is not a new idea. It is, in fact, a very old one,” Sophus said.

“The only way our Empire survives is by ending the threat of theirs,” Ky added. “Hiding on Britannia and hoping they go away will just play into their hands.”