I stared down at her. “Do you have any idea what you’re into here, Harper?”
She shook her head, expression moving not a whit. “No, ma’am, and if it’s all the same to you, I’d prefer to keep it that way.”
I exchanged a look with Scott, who shrugged. “Fair enough,” I said.
“Laser is in place,” Janus said over the speaker. “Err … oh … I mean, the target is painted. Is that the code phrase? Gods, but I’m rubbish at these communications protocols. Can we not speak plainly?”
Harper sighed audibly and flipped the switch. “Negative, MARS ONE. While the presumption is that these channels are secure, adding an additional layer of communication security is—”
“Pipe down, MARS ONE,” I cut her off. “Just do your job.”
“Job done,” Janus said sourly, and then his voice switched to a stiffer-sounding octave. “Will await further instructions. Over.”
“Now that they’ve painted that warehouse window with the laser,” I said, “does that mean we can—”
“Yeah,” Harper said, cutting me off again. She flipped another switch on her console and another series of voices came on. They sounded a little farther away, a little tinny, but I could understand every word they were saying.
“—two days,” came a female voice with an Asian accent. I couldn’t quite place it, but she was speaking English. “We just need to wait until then.”
There was a pause, and I spoke. “So this is what’s being said right now in that room?” I gestured to the infrared display where the three people were talking in the warehouse room.
“Correct,” Harper said, precise. “The laser your people are shining onto that window from a few blocks away is picking up the vibrations of their speech on the glass pane of the window and transmitting them to us via a transceiver in the unit—”
“Nifty,” Reed said, again with the sour. “You’re just finding more ways to illustrate my point about—”
“Can it,” I said, waving a hand at him without looking up from the display.
“How many of them are coming?” a man asked. His voice sounded vaguely European.
“All of them,” came the Asian woman’s voice again.
“Here?” the guy asked.
“Not here, exactly,” she said. “A little further out. Somewhere more isolated, secluded. I—” She paused, and I didn’t like the sound of it for some reason.
“Can they detect the laser?” I asked. “Could you see it, a little red beam dancing over the walls?”
“No.” Harper shook her head. “It’s outside the visual spectrum.”
“It’s a laser,” came the woman’s voice, cold and clear.
“What the hell?” Scott asked.
“Shit,” Harper said, more than a little chastened. “I have no idea how they would have picked that up.” There was a rustling in the room and the sound of a door opening, followed by shouts of alarm in an echoing room I took to be the warehouse proper.
“Janus, get out of there,” I said, then looked at Harper. “Can he hear me?”
“Negative,” she said, and flipped a switch again. “MARS ONE, are you receiving?”
“—coming right for us!” Janus’s voice came through the speaker, more than a little panic edging out of it.
“Whoa,” Scott said, and he took a step forward. “They’re fast if they got there in seconds—”
“The audio from the warehouse was on a delay while I answered your questions,” Harper said, looking pained. She was punching buttons and pulling up visual imagery. I saw the infrared catching five human figures moving swiftly toward the town car, and then a flare of white in the shape of a ball that flew from one of the people at the fore and—
The town car glowed as it hit, and the screen went white.
Chapter 28
North of Rome
280 A.D.
Marius could hear the legions in the distance. He stood upon the hill, Janus at his side with others, watching the coming of Proculus the Usurper’s army. They were so very, very many, and it made Marius wonder. The fires of war burned around them, thick and smoky. He could almost taste the meat he had become accustomed to in the last months, could nearly taste the flavor of roasted flesh on his tongue from the fires. It was an ill omen in these environs, he reckoned. Even in the summer heat, it sent a chill over his flesh.
“Be not afraid,” Janus said quietly from next to him.
“Do you see how many of them there are?” Marius whispered back. “I cannot even count them, they number so many.”