Chapter 25: Hermes’s Blessing
"Hmmmm...."
Ethan sat behind the desk, watching the woman across from him. Amanda.
She had shown up unannounced, claiming she was close with Chief Barry, and had spent the last twenty minutes asking detailed questions about his work here.
How the supply chains ran. Who handled the credit allocations. What the daily routines looked like for the staff under him.
He answered them, every single one, but something about it felt wrong. The timing felt too convenient. If she was truly aligned with Chief Barry and the official structure, there should have been some prior word. A heads-up. A note in the system. There had been nothing.
Is she... trying to act like a revolutionary?
Ethan had been placed here by the revolutionary network, and so far the only people who knew his real position were the ones who had to know.
Amanda was asking the kinds of questions someone would ask if they were checking for cracks.
He leaned forward, resting his forearms on the desk. The office was plain, standard-issue furniture, a single terminal, a sofa against the far wall where she now sat with her legs crossed, waiting for his next answer. He decided to stop dancing around it.
"What do you think about the revolutionaries?" he asked, directly.
The question hung there. It was risky. If she was loyal to the empire, this could end badly. If she was one of them, it might force her hand. Either way, he needed to know where she stood.
Amanda didn’t answer right away. She looked at him for several seconds, measuring him the same way he was measuring her. Finally, she spoke.
"Waste of effort and manpower," she said. "The empire isn’t standing alone. It’s protected. Apollo shields it. Hera nurtures it. Ares leads it. There’s no stopping the Roman Empire. Anyone who thinks otherwise is throwing lives away for... nothing."
Ethan nodded slowly. "You’re right. Those gods stand with the empire, and we remain strong because of it. But what if that changes? What if other gods have already stepped away? Athena. Hermes..."
He saw it then, just a flicker. The name Hermes landed harder than the others. Her expression tightened for less than a second before she smoothed it over.
He kept going nonetheless, watching her carefully.
"What if even the Big Three decide the empire has gone too far? Zeus. Poseidon. Hades. What happens then?"
Amanda was quiet for a moment longer. Then she smiled. It wasn’t the polite smile she’d worn when she first walked in. This one had an edge to it.
"I came here to test you," she said. "Instead, you turned it around and tested me." She stood up from the sofa. "I’m impressed. I feel like you have a bright future here..."
Ethan let out a quiet breath. He hadn’t blown their cover through carelessness. That much was clear now. She wasn’t some loyalist fishing for traitors. She was checking whether he was competent enough to be trusted with more.
Step. Step.
Amanda walked to the door, then paused with her hand on the frame. She looked back at him.
"If the three main gods oppose the empire," she said, "then the empire will oppose them. Simple as that. Good day to you, Mr. Ethan."
She left without another word. The door shut behind her with a soft click.
Ethan sat back in his chair and stared at the closed door. The empire was getting bold. Overconfident. They believed their position was permanent, that the gods would always favor them no matter how far they pushed.
He didn’t mind that. That kind of arrogance created openings.
The revolution had been waiting for a moment like this, when the empire started believing it could ignore the old balances without consequence. The timing was right.
Knock! Knock!
A knock came at the door a few minutes later. Marcus stepped in without waiting for an answer.
"Yooo..."
His face was tight, the same frustrated look he’d worn since they arrived at this base. He dropped into the chair Amanda had just left and rubbed a hand over his face.
"They sent us here to steal the yearly salary credits," Marcus said. "That’s what this is. The donations from the Athena family aren’t enough for them, I think.
The legion is too big. Too many weapons. Too many mouths that need feeding."
Ethan watched him. "How much are we talking about?"
"Millions of gold credits, maybe more. Enough to keep the war machine running for another cycle.
That’s why they put us in here. Access. Timing. We’re supposed to move the money before the next allocation locks in."
Marcus leaned forward, elbows on his knees. For a second the frustration eased into something closer to hope.
"Or maybe it’s not just about the credits," he said. "Maybe there’s more to it. They wouldn’t risk putting this many of us in one place just for a theft, would they?"
Before Ethan could answer, both of their wrist terminals chimed at the same time. The sound was sharp and simultaneous.
They looked down. A new message had arrived, flagged with the highest internal priority the revolutionary network used.
Ethan opened it. Marcus did the same.
The title was clear:
Operation Prometheus.
The details followed. Not just a theft, a coordinated extraction of the salary reserves, timed with internal disruptions across multiple departments.
The goal wasn’t simply to take the credits. It was to create a visible failure in the empire’s logistical backbone while the money disappeared into channels the revolution controlled.
And there was a meeting scheduled for every revolutionary currently inside this base.
Location and time were listed. No excuses for absence.
Ethan closed the message and looked at Marcus. The earlier frustration on Marcus’s face had hardened into focus.
"May Hermes bless us," Ethan said.
Marcus nodded once. "Yeah. May Hermes bless... our conduct."
They sat in silence for a moment after that. The office felt smaller. The operation had a name now. A structure. A deadline. Whatever doubts Marcus had carried into the room were now secondary.
The work was real, and it was starting.
***
Across the base, Amanda walked back to her own office without speaking to anyone.
The corridors were busy with the usual afternoon traffic, clerks moving data pads, junior officers arguing over requisition forms , but she kept her pace even and her expression neutral. No one stopped her. No one could.
Once inside, she locked the door. She powered down the main terminal, closed the shutters, and killed the overhead lights.
The room went dark except for the faint blue glow of her personal wrist terminal. She raised her arm and accepted the incoming secure channel.
A hologram formed above the device. The image resolved into the upper body of a man in a general’s uniform. His face was lined, his eyes flat and assessing. He did not waste time with greetings.
"Centurion," he said.
Not Tesserarius. Centurion. The rank correction was deliberate. She noted it and did not comment.
"Report," the general continued. "Any revolutionary activity on your end?"
Amanda stood in the dark, the hologram casting hard light across her face.
"Yes," she answered. "We have... company."