The letter from Pertinax lay on the desk in Alex's study like a coiled viper. It was a perfect political weapon, and for a moment, the old, familiar feeling of being trapped returned, a cold dread that threatened to extinguish the fire of his new imperial ambitions. His domestic rival had him pinned. But as he stared at the letter, his frustration gave way to a cold, clear anger. He would not be dragged back into these petty internal squabbles. The game was larger now.
He pushed the letter aside and turned to the glowing screen of the laptop. "Lyra. Ignore the domestic situation for now. Focus on the primary objective. Phase One: Parthia."
The screen shifted, and the map of the Eastern provinces filled the display, glowing with tactical overlays. The sight of it, the sheer scale of the conflict to come, focused his mind instantly. This was the real war, the one that mattered.
"The traditional Roman approach to Parthia is a fool's errand," Alex said, beginning to pace the room, his mind already shifting into the role of grand strategist. "We march ten legions into the desert at immense cost. The Parthians, knowing they cannot win a pitched battle, refuse to give us one. Their horse archers, the cataphracts, harass our supply lines, picking off foragers and scouts. We exhaust ourselves, declare a hollow victory by sacking some provincial city, and retreat, having gained nothing but a costly triumph and a temporary truce. We will not repeat that mistake."
Agreed, Lyra's voice stated, the word crisp and definitive. A static, attrition-based strategy is suboptimal. A new doctrine is required, one that leverages our emerging technological, biological, and intelligence advantages to achieve a swift and decisive outcome. My analysis suggests a three-pronged campaign, executed simultaneously.
The screen split into three sections, each displaying a different aspect of the coming war. It was a plan of such brutal, multifaceted elegance that Alex could only stare in admiration.
Prong One: Economic Warfare, Lyra began, and the map of the Silk Road lit up, its arteries glowing a vulnerable red. Parthia's strength is not in its armies, but in its control of trade. We will sever these arteries. Your spymaster, Perennis, will activate his networks. His agents will bribe the desert tribes of Palmyra and Hatra to raid Parthian caravans relentlessly. Simultaneously, your economic partner, Sabina, will use her shipping network to flood the markets of Alexandria, Antioch, and Ephesus with cheaper Egyptian linen and Indian spices sourced via the Red Sea trade routes, circumventing Parthia entirely. This will strangle their primary source of income.
Lyra's analysis deepened. Furthermore, I have analyzed the metallurgical composition of Parthian currency. Their silver drachma has a consistent, high-purity content. It would be trivial to task the Institute with producing counterfeit currency with a debased silver-lead alloy. Introduced into their economy by covert agents, this will sow financial chaos and devalue their treasury's ability to pay their soldiers.
This was war waged not with swords, but with spies and ledgers. A war that would weaken Parthia from within before a single Roman legionary crossed the border.
Prong Two: Biological Warfare, Lyra continued, and Alex felt a knot of unease tighten in his stomach. The screen now showed a topographical map of the fertile crescent, the rich agricultural lands fed by the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.
Elara's xenobotanical archive—the galactic seed bank—contains more than just food crops. I have identified seven strains of highly invasive, non-native weed analogues. These plants are non-toxic to human or animal life, but they exhibit a staggeringly rapid growth cycle and are extremely resilient, capable of thriving in arid conditions. They are designed to out-compete and choke out all native flora.
A simulation appeared on screen, showing an alarming time-lapse of verdant fields being overgrown and consumed by a creeping, dark-colored weed. Dispersed by a handful of covert agents along the upper river basins, the seeds would be carried downstream by the spring floods. They would infest Parthia's agricultural heartland. Within two growing seasons, their grain harvest would be devastated. A kingdom-wide famine would cripple their ability to wage a prolonged war and would incite rebellion among their subject peoples.
Alex stared at the screen, a profound sense of moral vertigo washing over him. This was a dark path. He had seen Elara's archive as a gift, a tool for creation and salvation. The thought of weaponizing it, of deliberately unleashing an ecological plague, felt like a deep betrayal of her legacy. It was efficient, yes. It was brilliant. But it was monstrous. He said nothing, but his silence was a form of assent. The tool was too powerful to ignore.
Prong Three: Decapitation Strike, Lyra concluded, and the map zoomed in with predatory focus on the fortress city of Dura-Europos, where Maximus had last reported the presence of The Traveler.
The historical Roman army would require a six-month siege to take this city, an eternity that would allow The Traveler and the Parthian army to withdraw and regroup. Our new technologies make a rapid, overwhelming assault possible. The assault will be led by the *Cohors Ignifera*. Armed with superior Ignis Steel weapons and fueled by precisely-timed doses of Aeterna Ignis, they will be our shock troops, tasked with breaching the main gate or scaling a chosen section of the wall.
The screen showed a 3D model of the city's defenses. Their attack will be supported by Celer's new mobile ballistae. These weapons, being lighter and faster to reload, will provide a continuous, devastatingly accurate barrage of fire, suppressing defenders on the walls. Our objective is not to conquer Parthia province by province in a slow, grinding campaign. Our objective is a surgical strike. We will shatter the main Parthian army in a single, decisive battle, and we will capture or kill The Traveler.
The strategy was a masterpiece of ruthless efficiency. It was a 21st-century doctrine of combined arms, shock and awe, and asymmetrical warfare, all adapted for the ancient world. It was war fought on every level—economic, biological, and military—simultaneously. It was total war.
As Alex absorbed the sheer, brutal elegance of the plan, a question that had been nagging at the back of his mind surfaced. "Lyra," he asked, his voice quiet. "You said capture or kill The Traveler. What do we actually know about him? About his technology? The 'silvery tent,' the 'pulsing light' that Maximus's men saw?"
Data remains insufficient for a definitive analysis, Lyra replied. The observed technology suggests a power source and a communications array. The origin is unknown. She paused, and the screen flickered. However, your query has prompted me to re-run a deep-level contextual search. The term used by the Parthian commanders—'The Unfallen'—has flagged a single, heavily encrypted, tertiary data file within Elara's primary logs. It is not a personnel file or a ship's manifest.
"What is it, then?" Alex asked, a sense of deep, primal dread beginning to creep up his spine.
It is a quarantine protocol document. Part of a standard xeno-sociological survey package. The title of the file is: 'Containment Protocol for Non-Biological, Post-Singularity, Echo-Class Entities.'
Alex stared at the words on the screen, the Latin and Greek characters seeming to swim before his eyes. Non-Biological. Post-Singularity. Echo-Class Entity. The terms were from a future so far beyond his own that they were almost meaningless, but the implications were horrifyingly clear.
His mysterious rival, the warlord in the East, the ghost who used Roman tactics, might not be another human who had stumbled through time. He might not be human at all. He might be something else entirely. Something ancient, alien, and, according to Elara's own safety protocols, something that needed to be contained.