The Triumph of Venus - Chapter 36

Carthage

Ky walked through the ruined halls of the Carthaginian emperor’s palace, amazed by its sheer opulence. After a lifetime growing up in the spartan and utilitarian barracks and space stations, he’d always considered the Roman palaces and temples to be the most extravagant places in all of existence. Seeing this, he realized he was wrong.

Thanks to the Carthaginian Emperor’s decision to conscript nearly every adult male in the city and across the countryside, they’d managed to take Carthage itself without a fight, sparing it from so much of the devastation that the rest of the western world experienced in this war.

“How is it?” Lucilla asked him as he entered the emperor’s massive personal rooms, which they had begun to turn into a headquarters for the legions.

“So far so good. After what happened in Sicilia, I’m still having squads go door to door, spiraling out from here to the rest of the city, just in case. I’ve cordoned off several blocks in all directions around here as a safe zone for our men to operate out of until reinforcements begin to arrive. The priests are up in arms about being ousted, but they were the only ones who worked in this region. Or at least the only one still living. Once we get more men, we’ll start pulling back the martial law and letting people operate a little more freely.”

“And the hospital?”

“Set up. I already sent a message back home requesting some of the imperial physicians be sent with whatever chemicals Sorantius can spare to begin setting up something more proper, but the medics with the legions have enough for now.”

“Good,” Lucilla said, and then did a slow turn, looking around the room. “It’s hard to believe it’s really over.”

“I know. The cost was high, but we managed to end it once and for all. Britannia is safe.”

“The cost was high,” she said. “Two thousand dead. Twice that many injured. We’ve managed to kill a generation of our most loyal men. It’ll take us decades to recover.”

“I think you’ll be surprised by how fast we rebuild,” Ky said, thinking of some of the images from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries Sophus had showed him when Ky had expressed a similar sentiment.

“I hope you’re right.”

“I’m not saying it will be easy. We’ll need to occupy the region for an extended period. The people here are still hostile. Even if they had no love for their emperor, there isn’t a person here that avoided losing someone.”

“There is some good news, at least.”

“Yeah?” Ky asked.

“Yes. The last supply ship had messages from Medb. We’ve received reports from our allies, who are equally thrilled to learn the war is over. Most of the major regions have begun to coalesce into more stable political entities. She and Ramirus are already putting together a large meeting of all of our allies to begin discussing what things look like now. From what they’re saying, I believe the alliance we have now, or at least partnerships, have a good chance of not only holding, but becoming something more in the future. Some kind of alliance we can really build off of, like what you described to me.”

“Those parallels weren’t exactly close. Most of those were nations with an inherent identity when they formed their alliance. I know Gaul, Germania and the like are starting to set up something like that, but it’s still not particularly centralized, which will make any kind of large scale, region or multi-region wide alliance difficult to maintain.”

“We can at least try,” Lucilla said. “We have the model we set up which, at least for now, is working.”

“That doesn’t even consider Persia, Italia and Greece. Considering its proximity to Germania and Gaul and its position in the middle sea, we can keep men in Italia for some time, but Greece and Persia will both be in chaos for a long while, and I’m not sure how anyone would feel about us becoming involved in another large scale project like that, especially so far from home.”

“No. We’ll leave them to their own devices, aside from maybe having Ramirus make enough contacts to keep an eye on them and Valdar’s ships patrolling the region. I think, eventually, they will stabilize. The only region that I’m really concerned about is Egypt. They got away more or less intact, have made agreements for us to sell them equipment, but have been very cagey as to what they’re willing to agree to. Ramirus will have to keep an especially close eye on them. But... I still think this all bodes well for the future. With so many allies and no major enemies outside of bandits and whatever warlords set up in Persia or Greece, it seems likely we’ll manage security and peace. Finally.”

“Maybe. There’s still the people who were supplying weapons to the Carthaginians. We’ve only been able to find a handful of witnesses who saw the envoys and messengers. The emperor’s entire noble class and inner circle were wiped out by the emperor’s religious zealots after his death, and any military leaders mostly died in the battle.”

“You said they were very far away, further than even Alexander conquered, beyond mountains and deserts,” Lucilla said.

“They are, but they’ve managed to send a lot of supplies this way. With the new sailing ships, which according to Valdar they have also more or less built, the world is much smaller than it once was. Beyond the fact that they had openly chosen a side to support, since they never contacted us or our allies to sell supplies, their level of technology is very concerning to me. The cannons they supplied to Carthage were far ahead of what they should be able to produce. I don’t understand how they managed to develop such advanced weapons, and it could be a problem.”

“I thought they reverse engineered our designs.”

“It seems unlikely, Your Majesty,” Sophus said. “Having an opportunity to examine what was left of the Carthaginian stores, it seems clear the designs and construction techniques used in their weapons are different from ours. They exhibit elements that we chose to skip over in favor of more advanced models.”

“Then we’ll deal with that when we have to. As you said, their construction methods were inferior to ours, right?”

“For now. Just because these weapons weren’t reverse engineered doesn’t mean they can’t still do that. Actually, since they could get this far on their own, it’s more likely. We lost enough material in the last several years fighting that, considering how close their relationship with the Carthaginians really was, they might already be doing that.”

“None of us ever believed that defeating Carthage would end all conflict in the world. We’ll figure out the mystery of their suppliers, but for now, our focus should be on patrolling our region and recovering from the war. The death toll, across Carthaginians, Britannians, allies, and civilians, numbers in the millions. It will take a long time to overcome that loss. Aside from that, many of our allies are still operating at the same technological level as Rome when you first arrived. There’s much work to be done before we need to worry about external threats.”

“True. I just don’t want us to ignore a possible threat, assuming we solved everything by defeating Carthage.”

“And we won’t. But for now, we focus on rebuilding and strengthening our alliances. We share our knowledge and technology with those who are willing to learn and adapt. We establish trade routes and encourage cultural exchange. Strengthening the west and our alliances is the best thing we can do to counter any potential eastern threat. In the meantime, we keep an eye out for any new information. Ramirus and his network will continue to investigate, but our priority should be the stability and prosperity of our people.”

“And if they come for us before we’ve recovered?”

“Then we’ll handle it like we’ve handled everything else the last few years,” Lucilla said, crossing the distance between them and putting her hands on his chest. “We’ll deal with it together.”

“I can work with that,” Ky said, leaning down and kissing her.

The End

(until Imperium, Volume II)