Panic, sharp and immediate, lanced through the sterile, ancient air of the cargo hold. Sabina ripped the smoking glove from her hand and threw it to the floor, where it continued to smolder and dissolve into a foul-smelling black sludge. Her skin beneath was red and blistered but unbroken, saved by the thickness of the leather.
"Get back!" Maximus roared, shoving Sabina behind him and drawing his gladius, his soldier's instinct to meet any threat with steel.
"Don't touch it!" Alex yelled, his mind racing. "Lyra, how do I close the pod?"
The same sequence, in reverse, Lyra's voice commanded, calm amidst the chaos.
Alex lunged forward, his heart hammering against his ribs, and quickly tapped the pressure-sensitive symbols on the pod's surface in the reverse order. The bio-corrosive fungus, which had begun to visibly grow and spread across its container, seemed to recoil. With a final, reluctant hiss, the pod's cover slid shut, the turquoise light within fading back to a soft, dormant green. The immediate threat was contained.
They stood there for a long moment, their breath coming in ragged gasps, the adrenaline coursing through their veins. The beautiful, glowing chamber no longer felt like a place of wonder. It now felt like a minefield. They had been fools, children playing with the tools of the gods, utterly ignorant of the dangers.
"We're done here," Alex said, his voice firm, his decision absolute. "The risk of contamination, of unleashing something we can't control, is too great."
Maximus nodded in grim agreement. They worked with a new, frantic urgency, grabbing the few dozen amphorae they had already filled with Lyra's prioritized "safe" seeds. They made a hasty retreat, scrambling back through the cargo hold, their lanterns casting wild, dancing shadows that now seemed to hold a lurking menace. They squeezed back through the hatch, sealed it from the outside, and ascended in their bronze bell, leaving the silent, sleeping horrors and wonders of the starship to its millennia of darkness.
The moment they reached the surface, Alex gave the order. "Flood the caisson," he commanded the waiting engineer. "And then collapse it. Bury the hatch. Seal it off, permanently." He would not risk another expedition. He had his seeds, his one chance. It would have to be enough.
The precious amphorae were transported back to the palace under the heaviest guard, treated with a reverence usually reserved for the imperial treasury. Alex's small, experimental garden on the palace roof was no longer sufficient for the task at hand. He needed a dedicated, secure, and expandable facility.
He used his emergency powers, the authority granted to him during the famine, and the vast funds seized from the proscribed senators to launch a massive new project on the Palatine Hill. On a terraced slope just below the main palace, a plot of land that had once been slated for a new bathhouse, his engineers and laborers began to work at a furious pace. They were constructing a vast complex of greenhouses.
Publicly, the project was announced as the new "Imperial Agricultural Research Center." Its stated purpose was the cultivation of "new, blight-resistant strains of wheat and barley" that Alex's agents had supposedly discovered in the remote corners of Syria and Egypt. It was a plausible and popular lie, an emperor seen to be taking direct, innovative action to solve the food crisis.
Secretly, they were alien nurseries, the first of their kind on Earth.
Alex knew he could not manage the project alone. He needed a new kind of priesthood, a team of dedicated, trustworthy individuals who could guard the incredible secret. He did not choose senators or generals. He chose a small, hand-picked group of his most intelligent Greek scholars, freedmen who owed their position and their loyalty entirely to him. He put them under the command of Hero of Alexandria, the clever engineer who had already proven his discretion with the thermoelectric project. And as his own personal overseer, the one person with the authority to come and go as he pleased, he appointed his young acolyte, Timo.
Alex gathered the small group in the first completed greenhouse. He showed them the strange, alien seeds. He did not tell them the truth of the starship. He told them the story he had been building, the myth that was becoming his new reality.
"These seeds are a sacred trust," he told them, his voice filled with a solemn gravity. "They are a gift from the gods, rediscovered from the time of the heroes. They have the power to end the famine and to make Rome strong forever. Their cultivation is not just a job; it is a holy duty. The secrets of this garden must be protected with your lives."
The men, already predisposed to believe in their emperor's divine connection, accepted their new role with a fervent, religious zeal. They became the first priests of a new agriculture, guarding their secrets with the devotion of a mystery cult. The narrative of their work was filled with a sense of wonder and hope, as the first alien seeds were planted in the rich, carefully prepared soil of the imperial greenhouses.
While the seeds germinated, Alex made his boldest political move yet. He knew that simply growing the food was not enough. The crisis had exposed the fundamental weakness of the Roman state: the private grain merchants and corrupt officials who controlled the Annona, the city's food supply. As long as they held that power, Rome would always be vulnerable. He had to take it from them, permanently.
He went before the Senate. He stood on the rostrum, no longer a boy on the defensive, but an emperor in absolute command.
"Honorable Senators," he began, his voice ringing with an authority that allowed no argument. "The famine has taught us a harsh lesson. The greed and corruption of the private grain merchants have held our city hostage. The people have suffered while a few men have profited. This cannot be allowed to happen again."
He paused, letting his gaze sweep across the chamber of terrified, silent men. "Therefore, by my supreme authority as Emperor and my sacred duty as Pontifex Maximus to provide for the Roman people, I am hereby, effective immediately, nationalizing the Annona. All of it."
A wave of shocked murmurs went through the hall.
"I am creating a new department of state," he continued, his voice overriding the whispers. "The Cura Annonae Imperialis—the Imperial Grain Trust. This body, under my direct authority, will have absolute control over the purchase, storage, and distribution of all essential foodstuffs in the empire. It will set the prices. It will manage the granaries. It will oversee the harvests from our new imperial farms."
Then came the final, revolutionary stroke. "And when the first harvests from our new, blight-resistant miracle crops are ready," he declared, "they will not be sold in the marketplace. They will be distributed to the citizens of Rome, for free, as a right of their citizenship."
He was not just ending the famine. He was making the Emperor the sole, permanent provider of the people's daily bread. It was a move of staggering, Augustan ambition. He was taking the old, informal system of "bread and circuses" and institutionalizing it, making the entire populace of Rome completely and irrevocably dependent on his personal authority and benevolence. The Senate, terrified, powerless, and faced with an edict that was wildly popular with the masses, was forced to ratify it on the spot.
Weeks later, a fragile, tense peace had settled over the city. The new Grain Trust, led by the ruthlessly efficient Sabina, had imposed strict rationing of the last of the old grain, ending the riots through absolute control. In the new greenhouses on the Palatine Hill, the first of the alien crops were beginning to sprout, their strange, non-terrestrial leaves unfurling in the Italian sun.
Alex sat in his study, reviewing the progress reports. Lyra's voice was a calm, steady presence beside him.
Crop Alpha-7, the Tau Ceti grain analogue, is showing a three hundred percent faster growth rate than terrestrial wheat under the greenhouse conditions, she reported. The nitrogen-fixing properties are already measurably improving the soil. At this rate, we will have a viable first harvest in less than one month. The famine will be broken.
He had done it. He had stared into the abyss of his empire's collapse and had pulled it back from the brink with secrets, steel, and seeds from a distant star. A profound sense of triumph, of accomplishment, washed over him.
It was in that moment that a messenger was shown in, a dusty, hard-bitten Speculatores officer, just arrived from the eastern frontier. He carried an urgent dispatch from General Maximus.
Alex broke the seal. "Caesar," the message read. "Our agent, Marcus, has sent word from Ctesiphon. As you planned, Osroes's rebellion has begun. The Parthian civil war is now a reality. But there is an unexpected, and deeply unsettling, complication."
Alex's brow furrowed as he read on.
"A third faction has entered the war. A mysterious warlord has emerged from the eastern steppes, from the lands of the Scythians, leading a large army of nomadic horsemen. No one knows who he is or where he came from, but he fights with a discipline that my agents say is eerily Roman. He carries a personal standard we have never seen before. It is a single, dark star on a grey field."
Alex read the final line, and the blood drained from his face.
"And his name… the name he calls himself is 'The Traveler.'"