I Rule Rome with a God-Tier AI-Chapter 216: A Message From the Queen

While Alex grappled with the unnerving evolution of his silent partner, Gaius Maximus was fighting a much more tangible, grinding war of attrition at the Noreia mines. His days were a suffocating routine of feigned incompetence and masterful delay. He would spend mornings drafting elaborate, overly cautious reports for Lucilla, detailing phantom geological instabilities that required new, deeper support beams. His afternoons were spent placating the restless miners, assuring them that their safety was his paramount concern, even as he knew his obsession with "safety" was the very thing keeping their families on the brink of hunger.

His secret dispatches to Alex painted a grim picture, but also one of success. Sabina’s economic blockade was a masterpiece of strangulation.

"The squeeze is working," Maximus had reported a week prior. "The grain shipments from the south have stopped completely. I have heard reports of small-scale bread riots in the market at Virunum. The local Celtic tribes, who once saw Lucilla as a provider, are growing restive. Their loyalty was bought with full bellies, and those bellies are starting to empty. She is forced to use the silver from the mines to buy grain at exorbitant prices from black market smugglers operating out of Gaul, which is draining her treasury at an alarming rate. Her new state is starting to fray at the seams."

Maximus was playing his part perfectly. He was the stoic, honorable, and intensely safety-conscious commander, a hero to the local populace and a trusted, if frustratingly slow, servant to Lucilla. He was also a cancer in the heart of her operation, and she had no idea.

The precarious equilibrium was shattered by the arrival of an envoy from Virunum. It was not a common courier, but Quintus Fabius, one of Lucilla’s senior tribunes, a man from her inner circle. He arrived with a small cavalry escort, his demeanor urgent and self-important. He demanded an immediate private audience with Maximus.

They met in Maximus’s command tent, the general’s spartan quarters a stark contrast to the opulence of Lucilla’s palace. Fabius was carrying a heavy, sealed scroll case.

"General Maximus," Fabius began, his tone conveying the gravity of his message. "I come bearing new orders directly from the Proconsul. She entrusts this task to you, and you alone. She believes you are the only commander with the authority and the martial spirit to see it done."

The flattery was a thin veneer over a core of desperation. Maximus maintained his stoic expression, motioning for the scroll case. "The Proconsul honors me with her trust."

He broke the multiple wax seals and unrolled the thick parchment. As he read the elegant, flowing script of Lucilla’s own hand, his blood ran cold. He felt a chill that had nothing to do with the mountain air. He had expected a demand for more iron, an order to cut corners, a frustrated summons to Virunum. He had not expected this. This was a shocking, terrifying escalation.

Lucilla’s solution to her grain problem was not to be found in trade or diplomacy. She was not trying to break the blockade. She was simply going to conquer a new source of food.

The orders were clear, unambiguous, and breathtaking in their audacity.

"To my trusted General, Gaius Maximus," the letter began. "It has become clear that our province is being deliberately starved by the jealousy of southern merchants and the strategic incompetence of the Emperor. A true Roman does not beg for bread; they take it. We must secure our own food supply if we are to be the bulwark against the darkness in the North."

"Therefore, I command you to do the following: You will leave a skeleton force to oversee the rebuilding of the mines under your most trusted centurion. You will take the full fighting strength of your own Legio X Fretensis and two of our finest cohorts from the Legio II Norica. You will march west at once."

"Your destination is the neighboring province of Raetia. Your objective is its capital, the city of Augusta Vindelicorum. The city is a major hub for the imperial grain dole, and its granaries are full. The garrison there is weak, a single auxiliary cohort, as the Emperor has pulled all regular forces south for his ’Iron Cocoons’."

"You are not to present this as an invasion. You will approach the city as a protector. You will inform the provincial governor that, due to the Emperor’s ill-advised retreat, his province is now vulnerable to raids from the very horde we are fighting. You will state that you are there, on my authority as Proconsul of the North, to offer them our protection and stability. You will place the city and its granaries under your ’protective custody.’ If the governor resists, you are authorized to remove him from power and install a new administration loyal to our cause. Secure the grain, secure the city, and await further orders."

Maximus read the last line again, a cold sweat breaking out on his brow. It was an invasion. A thinly veiled conquest of another Roman province. It was an act that moved far beyond political rivalry and crossed the line into open civil war. She was using the very excuse of Alex’s retreat, his grand strategy, as the justification for her aggression. It was diabolically clever. She was daring Alex to stop her, to be the one who officially declared war on a sister who was only trying to "protect" Roman citizens and "secure" food for her people.

Fabius watched him, a smug look on his face. "The Proconsul is brilliant, is she not, General? She turns the Emperor’s weakness into our strength."

Maximus slowly, deliberately, rolled the scroll back up. He had to force his hands to remain steady. He was trapped. This was not an order he could delay with feigned incompetence or bureaucratic excuses. It was a direct command to march, to conquer. To obey would be to make himself the tip of the spear in Lucilla’s civil war, using his own loyal legion to attack other Romans. It was an unthinkable betrayal of everything he stood for.

But to refuse... If he refused, his cover would be instantly and irrevocably blown. He was deep in her territory, cut off from Alex’s main forces. His legion was isolated. A refusal would be a confession of treason against her. She would have him arrested, likely executed, and his legion would be surrounded and disarmed. His entire mission, his role as the Emperor’s hidden blade, would end in catastrophic failure.

He looked at Fabius, his face a mask of stone, betraying none of the raging turmoil within. "The Proconsul’s plan is... bold," Maximus said, his voice a gravelly baritone. "I will need time to prepare the men and requisition the necessary supplies for the march."

"You have forty-eight hours," Fabius replied, his tone making it clear that this was not a negotiation. "The Proconsul expects your legions to be on the road by then. I will remain here to observe your preparations and ride with you."

He was being watched. Trapped. The serpent had not just coiled; it had struck, and its fangs were in him.

As soon as Fabius had left the tent, Maximus turned to his most trusted, secret aide. "Prepare a cipher. The fastest rider we have. He leaves in five minutes."

He began to dictate his frantic, desperate message to Alex, each word a plea from a man caught in an impossible snare.

She has ordered me to invade Raetia. She is using my legion to conquer Augusta Vindelicorum for its granaries. This is no longer a war of sabotage; she is initiating a civil war, and she has made me her weapon.

I cannot obey this order. It is a betrayal of the Empire. But if I refuse, she will know I am a traitor. My legion is deep within her territory, cut off from you and your forces. I have forty-eight hours before I am expected to march. I am trapped.

I need new orders, Caesar. I need them now.

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