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remaining populations from the Deep End. Rome ceded all their liabilities to their enemy.
    Except one.
    There had only ever been one occurrence of the Hive in Near Space. That had been on the Roman colony of Thaleia.
    No new generation of Hive had erupted on planet Thaleia.
    So the new Hive threat was confined to the Deep End. Rome counted on the United States’ self-interest to hold it there.
    The Hive was a U.S. problem now.
    That placed the United States in a two-front war— fighting the Hive in the Deep and Rome in Near Space.
    Captain Farragut turned to his XO and his IO at the briefing table. “We’ve got two Roman ships of war out here in the Deep End and unaccounted for. Do we have anything on their heading?”
    Colonel Z shook his head. “Wherever Gladiator and Horatius are, they’re running dark. They may be headed back to Palatine, but who knows? We can’t ignore the possibility that they could be lining up a strike on Fort Ike. In the first scenario, we don’t need to worry about them for another three months. The other scenario would be ugly.”
    Numa Pompeii’s warship Gladiator and the legion carrier Horatius had been members of Commodore Farragut’s Attack Group One. His comrades in arms were suddenly enemy combatants.
    General Numa Pompeii had been a powerful man during the reign of Caesar Magnus. Caesar Romulus had sent Numa to the Deep to get him out of sight and out of popular mind.
    Marcus Asinius, astrarch of the Horatius, was cousin to the late Legion Commander Herius Asinius, whose teeth were interred down below on the planet Telecore. Legion Draconis was not a favorite of Caesar Romulus either.
    Neither Numa Pompeii nor Marcus Asinius were fervent Romulus supporters, but they were staunch Romans. Marcus would not question authority, like it or not. But Farragut would not put it past Numa to play Lucifer and storm the gates of Roman heaven.
    Numa was a cagey political animal, arrogant, popular. Farragut could not guess what Numa’s plans were.
    Farragut ordered, “Gypsy, contact Fort Ike. Make sure the Fort’s on Condition Watch Two. Advise them to be on the alert for Gladiator and Horatius. And let them know there is a rogue patterner armed with a Striker out here who could take the left antenna off a mayfly from five light-minutes away.”
    Kit Kittering lifted a finger to insert a comment. “Captain, I kinda doubt Augustus’ shooting is gonna be that good. That old Striker was built for someone else and it’s sixty years old. Strikers are custom jobs. He’s just not gonna run as well in someone else’s custom shoes. Patterners don’t just pilot Strikers. They kind of wear them.”
    Kit had crawled through both Strikers. She knew each machine as well as she knew Merrimack.
    “It’s not gonna to be like our last fight with a patterner.” Kit’s hand found its way to her midriff as if she could still feel the hole.
    A patterner named Septimus, piloting his own Striker, had fired a shot straight through Merrimack, through her force field, through Kit Kittering, and out the stern.
    “Can you calculate the best speed of this Striker to make it across the Abyss?” Farragut asked his engineer.
    The Abyss was two thousand parsecs of relative dark that separated galactic arms of the Milky Way. The Abyss lay between the Deep End and Near Space.
    “Seventy standard days.” Kit said with a head tilt to either side to indicate some give or take. “He might even get there sooner if he pushes it, but then he would arrive dead. Or vegetablized. Can we suggest it to him?”
    “He may not live to see the other side of the Abyss anyway,” said Farragut. “He shouldn’t be alive now.”
    Life expectancy of a patterner was limited. When Caesar Magnus gave Augustus to Captain Farragut, Augustus had already outlived his expiration date. He had not been expected to live long enough to become the loose cannon he was now.
    “Something else to consider,” Colonel Z said. “That Striker