“No,” said Pompilius Niger. “It won’t be forgotten. Lots of things aren’t forgotten.” He reached out slowly.
Vibulenus poised to act if needs must, but the bovine, childish-looking centurion only drew the tip of his index finger down the face of the Commander. The guild officer shuddered but could not draw away against the grip of the strong men holding him.
“I’ll never forget Rufus, your worship,” Niger added with the gentleness of a chamois whisking over a swordblade.
“Bring him into here,” said Vibulenus, walking toward the Commander’s quarters as he spoke. “The Medic — both of them, bring them too.”
The tribune’s right hand hurt from the strain he had not noticed when he was gripping the crewman. He felt a momentary hesitation — mental, not quite transmitted to his body — before he stepped through the doorway. In this place there could be deadfalls — or the vessel’s dreadful equivalent of them, invisible partitions that would sizzle away the blood and bone of an intruder.
But Quartilla was at his side, and if he paused she would be the first into . . .
A forest in which the air was unexpectedly warm and dry, and where several of the trees shot up to a height of several hundred feet unless that were an optical illusion. No snares in the doorway, no lethal barriers.
There was nothing which suggested the guiding or working of a ship either.
“What does he have to do with making the ship go places?” the tribune asked without looking over his shoulder. He was bending his right fingers back against his wrist with the other hand. “The Commander?”
“He just . . .” the Medic said. “I mean, I think he just orders him —”
“What are you doing?” demanded the guild officer in rising inflections that pierced like the voice of a senile woman. “You’re safe now if you’ll stop this mad —”
The voice cut off.
Vibulenus turned. No one had touched the Commander. Niger was pointing a finger at the blue-suited officer’s face and smiling.
The Medic reached out toward the Pilot’s head to steady and direct it. The slighter-bodied crewman was standing upright again, but his face bore mental and physical vestiges of the punishment he had received.
“Hey!” said the soldier holding the Medic’s right elbow. He jerked his captive back sharply.
“Tell us,” the Medic begged his fellow. “He doesn’t set any controls, does he?”
“Him,” mumbled the Pilot. He tried to rub his face with a hand but was prevented by the overzealous legionaries gripping him. “He just tells me it’s my fault the other bastard got cut so he has to take over this zoo again. Have me demoted, he says.”
“Your choice, Publius,” the tribune said softly to Pompilius Niger. “He was your cousin.”
“Yes,” said the stocky junior centurion.
Niger had been staring at the guild officer. Now he reached out to the crewmen, taking each man’s chin between the thumb and forefinger of a hand. The Medic froze. The Pilot struggled reflexively; but he could not move his head against the two-finger grip, and the attempt brought him back to full consciousness.
“Now. . . ,” said Niger, letting his eyes travel from one crewman to the other. “We’re going to give you a demonstration of why you will obey every order which Gaius gives you, without argument or hesitation.
“We call it crucifixion.”
The Commander began to scream. The screaming went on for a long time.
“This was the last unit, sir,” said Julius Rusticanus at the doorway of the Commander’s quarters.
“Very good, First,” said Gaius Vibulenus, giving the first centurion an upward nod which exhaustion kept from being as crisp as he would have liked.
Quartilla, empathetic or just lucky in her timing, began to massage the tribune’s neck and shoulders. The black certainty of the laser still lay across the woman’s lap.
“March them out then,” Vibulenus continued, relaxing visibly, “and await further orders.”
“Century —” Rusticanus roared.
“Century!” repeated the centurion of the particular unit, Sixth of the First, in a pale echo of the first centurion’s incomparable bellow.
“March!” Rusticanus ordered, and bare feet slapped the floor as the century exited the forest scene in close order and perfect step.