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any attention.”
    Stef shrugged. “People are people. Everybody has their own problems, I guess.”
    â€œYes,” said the ColU. “What we must do is leverage those problems to our advantage.”
    Stef said, “ColU, that messenger told Quintus there was trouble at the
colonia.
You think that’s what this place is?”
    The ColU murmured in her ear, “It was the Roman practice to plant colonies of veteran soldiers in a newly occupied province. An easy way of enforcing imperial discipline, an example of Roman culture for newly conquered barbarians, a military reserve, an occupied fortification. Maybe that’s what’s being set up here. Many of these legionaries, with their families, may not be going home again when the
Malleus Jesu
leaves this world. Evidently that’s what they’re grumbling about.”
    â€œA fortification against what?” Stef thought back. “We’ve seen some mighty ruins here but no sign of an extant civilization. No animal life even, those clucking chickens aside. What are these legionaries going to wage war against, a slime mold?”
    Yuri grinned tiredly. “This is an alien world, Stef. I guess it depends on the slime mold.”
    â€œAnd also,” the ColU said, “if these Romans can reach this world, so may their rivals.”
    â€œThey speak of the Xin,” Stef murmured. “Chinese, do you think?”
    â€œThe name ‘China’ has a root in the name of the first dynasty to unify the country. ‘Xin’ could be a corruption of that.”
    â€œAnd the Brikanti, whoever
they
are.”
    â€œI am Brikanti.” The woman in the poncho who had been standing with Quintus came striding over. “Whoever
you
are.” Her language, audible under the translation, was Latin but heavily accented. “I had heard a rumor that Quintus had discovered strangers by his brand new Hatch.”
    â€œRumors travel fast here,” Stef said.
    The woman laughed. “In a Roman camp, of course they do.” She leaned closer to inspect Stef. Her hair was a deep, proud red, and cropped short; she looked perhaps forty years old—maybe a quarter-century younger than Stef herself—but her face, weather-beaten, made it difficult to tell her age precisely. Her eyes were an icy blue. She said, “You dress strangely. You
smell
strangely. I will enjoy hearing your lies about your origin.”
    Stef grinned. “You probably wouldn’t believe me if I told you the truth.”
    â€œHa! That bull-headed centurion might not; we Brikanti have subtler minds. One thing is certain—you did not stow away to this world aboard the
Malleus Jesu.
”
    â€œHow do you know that?”
    â€œThe ship is mine. This mission is a joint venture of Rome and Eboraki—and if you don’t know the Brikanti, you won’t know that Eboraki is our capital. In the orbit of the sun we have our own fleets, Rome and Brikanti, but we cooperate on missions to the stars. Quintus Fabius commands the mission and his Roman louts, but I, Movena, command the vessel and its crew. The Roman term for my role is
trierarchus.
The ship itself is Brikanti, of course.”
    â€œI . . . think I understand.”
    The older man in the toga leaned closer to her as she spoke. “It’s remarkable, Movena. She speaks softly, in a tongue that, to a stranger like me, sounds like your own, mixed in with German perhaps. Yet that—thing in her ear—repeats her words in Latin. But what if we remove it? If I may?” He reached up to Stef’s head.
    She was uncomfortable with this, but she hardly had a choice. She glanced over at Yuri, who shrugged. She let the man remove her earphone.
    Movena grinned easily. “Don’t mind Michael. He’s the
medicus
, the ship’s doctor. A Greek, like all the best doctors. And like all Greeks, endlessly curious about trivia. I’m speaking in my native