Santino had been in the military a few years longer than I had, and being a member of Delta was the ultimate adrenaline rush. The guy would walk into enemy territory and meander around like he was a local, trying to gain intel as he went. Exposed and alone, it had to be the most nerve wracking job on the planet.
Helena, on the other hand, had lived a life of luxury and opulence, even though it had hardly been a life worth living at all. Her first taste of combat, and the rush that went with it, came with our first operation back in 2021. She hadn’t been involved in the infiltration part of the mission, which had its own kind of tension, but she’d told me months later, after we had gotten to know each other better, just how much of a rush it had been. She’d shot two wild drivers with two fantastic shots, and combined with a half dozen more conventional shots earlier in the night, had been the first kills of her life.
She hadn’t been happy with what she’d done, but she did admit a certain amount of pride in her endeavors. She’d participated in an operation meant to capture or eliminate a man responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands, and had single handedly protected the lives of her teammates. Now that was something to be proud of, and she’d grown hard over the years, perhaps, in some ways, too hard. But at least she found a way to keep on loving me.
Without that, I had no idea where I’d be in this world.
Probably dead.
The boredom was killing me.
So much so, that as my mind sat idle, unconsciously reminiscing about countless things, it was unable to register the fact that my chin was about to slip off the hand that supported it. A few seconds later, when it finally slipped, my mind had no explanation. I looked around, thankful that neither Santino nor Helena were paying me any attention. Helena had her back to Santino and me, slipping on her combat fatigues, while Santino tried to flip and catch his knife again, only to let it slip through his fingers. The knife implanted itself in the wooden floorboards and he snapped his fingers in defeat before retrieving it. He put it back in its sheath.
We were bored and antsy.
Then, all of a sudden, we heard the sound of overly seductive women trying to ensnare their next meal ticket. Not soon after came a series of insistent knocks on our door.
I immediately reached for Santino’s HK416 beneath the table.
We weren’t expecting company tonight.
“Wait!” Santino said emphatically, leaping from his chair and over the table in the direction of the door.
He walked carefully towards it and put an ear against it. I looked at Helena, who had put on her combat fatigues and was now leaning against our wardrobe, her arms crossed. She looked at me and shrugged.
Santino reached out tentatively and returned the knocks, two quick ones, pausing briefly before a third one. Almost immediately, a reply knock sequence came back, four knocks with a pause in between the first and second ones. Santino whistled the tune to “Hail, Britannia” with each knock.
I rolled my eyes while Santino opened the door. Gaius and Marcus rushed through.
“See,” Santino said as he closed the door behind them. “These guys must watch their spy movies.”
I ignored him and picked up my chair and moved it to the other side of the table, offering it to one of the Romans. I moved over to sit on the bed and Helena joined me while Santino sat with our visitors at the table.
“So?” I asked. “Any new developments?”
“Yes,” Gaius answered. “We’ve found the seller and have already arranged a meeting with him.”
“Great!” Santino exclaimed. “We’ll get the thing tomorrow, have one last meat-on-a-stick, and be home in time for the Fourth of July.”
“It’s not that simple,” both Gaius and I told him at the same time.
I looked at Gaius. “Wait… why not?”
“You didn’t think it was going to be as easy as walking up and purchasing it, did you?” Marcus asked.
“Well, no,” I replied. “Things are rarely that simple.”
“And they certainly won’t be now,” Gaius intoned. “Had we been the ones to track down the supplier, it may have been, but we were not. Another Octetus did. However, we were able to later inform the dealer that another buyer is present in Byzantium. You. He now expects to auction it off to both parties two nights from now.”
“I assume the other buyer is one of your fellow Praetorians?” Helena asked.
“Correct,” Gaius answered. “However, he has yet to be informed of this, and I do not look forward to telling him. He is an angry man.”
“So we’ll have an opportunity to bid for the orb two nights from now,” I said, mostly to myself. I rubbed my chin with my hand before directing my attention back at Gaius. “You should know that if we are to participate in this auction, we will come ready. If we see any of your friends sneaking around, putting one of us at risk, we will kill them.”
Gaius and Marcus exchanged glances.
“We know,” Gaius answered, “but we also feel that we owe you this opportunity. Even at the expense of our partners.”
“Honestly,” Marcus interjected, “we have no feelings of friendship towards those men anyway. We are but a few of the remaining original Sacred Band, as most of Agrippina’s new band replaced those who Caligula enlisted. We have trained with them, yes, but in that time, Gaius and I always felt something off about them. Most of Agrippina’s new Sacred Band seem… odd, in some way.”
“In what way?” I asked.
“They’re ruthless bastards,” Gaius answered for him. “Before Agrippina, Caligula’s Praetorians were honorable men. Men with valor and principals. Men from the legions. But Agrippina’s recruited her new Praetorians from prisons and the streets, looking for criminals, cutthroats, and thieves.”
“If I were you, I would be more afraid of being killed by them, than by anybody else,” Helena offered.
“One would think, yes,” Gaius agreed, nodding approvingly at her. “But the empress is not stupid. She still has many loyal and honorable men in high places that keep this new breed in check.”
Made sense.
“Where and when’s this auction going down?” Santino asked, back to business.
“Two nights from now, an hour past midnight, outside the hippodrome at the southeast side of town,” Gaius answered. “The dealer asks that each party only bring one representative, but with the range of your weapons and your communication abilities, that should not be a problem for you.”
I smiled. “We’ll be fine.”
“Good,” Marcus said, getting to his feet. “We have to go. We can’t be gone long.”
“Wait,” I said, leaning back over the bed and grabbing a gear bag from behind it. I picked one up at random and rummaged around inside before I found what I was looking for.
“Take these,” I said, holding out two small devices, each the size of a wallet. “If you find yourselves on the rooftops during the transaction, attach these to your clothing and open the shutter like this…”
I demonstrated how to open and close the shutter, which kept a rectangular bulb at the top of the blocky device hidden when closed.
Both Romans accepted their gifts, turning them over in their hands questioningly.
“Thank you, Hunter,” Gaius said tentatively, “but what are they?”
“Here,” I said, holding out a pair of NVGs for them to wear. I nodded at Santino, who doused the candles we had burning, plunging the room into darkness. “Put these on.”
I couldn’t see the Romans now that the lights had gone out, but when they managed to successfully place the goggles over their eyes, I heard one of them stumble into the door, while the other almost knocked me over, surprised at their newfound ability to see in the dark.
“This… this…” Marcus started.
“Is amazing,” Gaius finished, his head glancing about wildly as he tried to drink in as much detail as he could. I waved in his direction, and he quickly came to his senses.