WARLORDS OF ANDROMEDA

Chapter 5

"I tell you the rumors of Nefaru's death are true. The weasel Nero-his one begotten son-cannot hold this empire together. He's too weak. Either we take the throne from him, or someone else will. I'd much rather it be us." Titus Emperius was both entitled and imperious, and his name suited him well. If he could have known how much he resembled Nero up close, he would have chosen his words more wisely, perhaps his name, too. He wasn't happy unless he was plotting and scheming, and was forever impatient with climbing to the top when the moment was right, and not a moment before.  

He had no patience for empire building, and he knew it. The limits of his own impetuosity had cost him his arm in a fight with a Numerian soldier. His eye in a charge on a Farrel freighter. His leg had been taken away from him from some creature because he'd forgotten to look where he was placing his feet in the mad charge to do in the Cronat insurgency on Vitar. Each robotic replacement of his human appendages only emboldened him further toward new heights of impetuosity. After all, wasn't he getting stronger with each new enhancement? Maybe he would finally end up with a body that could survive his foolhardiness.  

But his inability to learn from experience did not endear him to Crackus Nefarius. Like the other new-empire-ruler wannabes, he too had taken his name from a grander time and place. The Roman era was the last period mankind had seen true greatness, to his way of thinking. He felt the subsequent several thousand years of history was a bit of a dark ages for nobility. Of course, he was building a tower to his ego, not a monument to humanity. If only he could count on Titus to lend adequate support in that enterprise. But the real thorn in his side was Dargan, a real Alexander reborn, and the true heir to the throne of Lord of Empires. Crackus would yet find a way to eclipse him if it was the last thing he did.  

Dargan's lion heart gave him a brilliance on the battlefield. But that same big heartedness came with a love for humanity that would be his downfall. He would not let innocents be slaughtered en masse so he could gain a patch of ground, even if it was the strategic highpoint in the battlefield. Or the battle upon which the rest of the war turned. All Crackus had to do was make the tradeoffs painful enough, and Dargan would back down on the battlefield and cede victory to Crackus.  

Let Nero try to catch Dargan up in webs of intrigue. Crackus couldn't beat Nero at his own game. But he could play winner-take-all by availing himself of his own main strength -- sheer ruthlessness. Unlike Nero, there was no cowardice in his bloodline. Crackus was a walking calculator of strategic advantage encumbered not so much by his own limitations as by those of others. For he happily employed anyone's talents to his ends, and they were usually only too glad to leave the strategizing to him, knowing full well no one did it better. His wins were theirs. He shared his dominion over the lands with his overlords, giving each a province to play with. It was how he kept their allegiance.  

But Titus... Titus was running short on usefulness. Still, there would always be need of some fool to charge up a hill at a crucial time when no one else would, knowing it would be sheer suicide. There was always a time in any battle when success turned on the deployment of just such a fool. So Titus breathed because he had survived death more than once. That was his claim to fame, his ability to somehow survive his own foolhardiness. He may not have been much on brains, but he had a will to live second to none that kept him alive long enough for them to rebuild him time and time again. That will to life - and paradoxically his willingness to forfeit it at a moment's notice - kept him at Crackus's side.  

Though it was doubtful Titus understood this, for he could hardly disguise his disdain for him. If he hadn't tried to take Crackus's head off himself it was because, by Crackus's side, there would be no shortage of opportunities to throw himself into the fire. As to why the fool felt some compelling need to do that, Crackus just worked with the tools God gave him. He was one hell of a psychologist, and nothing less was needed of a field general who had to motivate his troops when nothing less than sublime sight into the darkest recesses of men's minds would do the trick. But that didn't mean he had all the answers.