---

From the port viewing window, the curvature of the Earth shone, miraculous in the empty blackness of space. From this vantage, the ancient superstition could at last be dispelled, unequivocally: the Earth was round.

Using the digital camera attached to a swivel on the ship’s hull, Praefectus Cassius Aurelia snapped a few photos and sent them back toward home.

Beside him, Praefectus Quirinis Centillius observed the automatic landing sequence, hovering over the text of a computer screen, his face a ghostly blue in the light.

Cassius turned to him. “Quirinis, you must steal a look.”

Quirinis hesitated, but then kicked off the far wall, and floated over to the double paned window. He allowed himself only a few seconds to marvel at Saturn’s perfect creation.

“Astounding,” he whispered, in awe,and floated back to his station, the ghostly light of a dim screen casting his face in blue shadows.

Cassius could not take his eyes off of the Earth. There on that blue marble was everything he had ever known.

There was a saying at home: “No citizen need fear, for Rome is everywhere.”

Not here, thought Cassius, not yet.

---

“T-minus 1 minute.”

Cassius’s heart raced, and he knew he would soon get a call from mission command. Not a moment later, it came. “Eques, your vitals are spiking.”

Cassius responded over the radio, though by the time the response was received, they would be on the lunar surface. “Just a little excited Legate. I’ll take some deep breaths.”

Outside the port view Cassius saw the gray dirt approach at a disconcerting speed. “Quirinus, are we coming in hot?”

Quirinus shook his head almost imperceptively, “Relax, all systems are optimal. T-minus 30 seconds.”

This was the moment Cassius had trained for his entire adult life. On Earth the Empire awaited their victory. Today Rome would take the next step in its inexorable expansion.

“Today Luna, tomorrow the stars.” Cassius spoke the words aloud.

Quirinus did not notice. He began the final countdown. “T-minus 10, 9, 8, 7”

Cassius heard the thrusters before he felt them, and then the jolt came as their quick descent onto the surface was slowed.

“6, 5, 4, 3,”

Here was the central moment. If Quirinius misjudged the thruster burn, they would find themselves not landed, but floating again out into space, and without enough fuel to get back into a return trajectory given the current orbital position of the moon. It was a risk they all accepted in order for the mission to proceed sooner. Cassius held his breath as the capsule rumbled.

“2, 1, touchdown.”

A mighty shaking rocked the capsule and, just as suddenly as it came, ceased. There was a moment of silence until, certain of success, Quirinus slowly looked up and turned towards Cassius, his face opening up into a broad smile.

“We’ve arrived.”

---

Cassius stood at the airlock. Behind him the capsule’s interior door was still sealing shut, sucking the precious oxygen out of the intermediate chamber.

Cassius looked down at his bulky pressure suit, colored in the reds and golds of the Roman military. In his right hand he held the flag which had traveled so far, ordained by Julius Caesar himself, so many centuries ago. It’s purple silk still shone, as it would have flying above Caesar’s vanguard.

A profound sense of purpose and pride welled in Cassius’s gut. It was his 30th birthday, the second of August, 1401, and he was about to receive the greatest gift imaginable – immortality.

Quirinis’s voice came over the internal speaker. “Opening airlock.”

With a final hiss, the last vestige of air zipped into space, as the external door opened, sliding aside, and revealing the panorama of Luna’s legendary home, the place which shared her divine name.

With hesitance, every fiber of his being vibrating in excitement, Cassius stepped out of the capsule, until his foot impacted the soft – so soft – lunar dust. He lifted his boot and saw the imprint of the Roman Eagle embossed in his footprint.

At home, a few minutes from that moment, Roman citizens around the world would see what Cassius was seeing now.

In awe, Cassius took a few more steps, raised the pole of the flag into the air, and brought it down onto the dusty surface, twisting the auger until the flag was securely fastened in the gray dirt.

Looking up at the flag, almost perfectly still in the meager lunar wind, Cassius made the first transmission from the lunar surface, one which would go down in Imperial history.

“A Roman walks on Luna. Luna is Rome!”

---

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THE DEMON’S CANTOS	INCIDENTAL SUPERHERO
BENEATH	THE HUMANITY SAGA
THE TRAVELER	I, LYCANTHROPE

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