Bread and Circuses

Summary: Based on the TOS episode of the same title, but set in the AU with a slight change of cast - Kirk, McCoy and my OC: Security Chief Sam Giotto.

Rating: T

Disclaimer: I own nothing but my gratitude for being allowed to write in this universe

When in Rome…

Cmdr. Sam Giotto examined the remarkable replica of a Roman gladius in his hand. Given how closely everything else on this planet resembled an Imperial Rome with industrial age technology, he decided he shouldn't be surprised that the swords used by gladiators would be the same except for a superior grade of steel. He could only hope the techniques were the same, and that he could translate his past experience with other types of short sword - this would be far from the first time in his roughly 30 years in Starfleet that Sam would be grateful that security officers were required to have a working knowledge of ancient weapons.

It would also be far from the first time he would wonder just how he got himself into these situations, although in this case the answer was at least partially clear. Giotto had, after all, been the one to object that sending both the Captain and the first officer down to investigate the disappearance of another ship's crew was completely outside the bounds of prudence, let alone regulations. Of course, rather than taking the hint to stay on the ship for a change, Kirk had decided the remark had merit only insofar as a Vulcan probably would be conspicuous in a setting where intercepted television transmissions indicated that hats were not common place. And the Captain had jumped to the further conclusion that Giotto's known interest in history would make him the perfect replacement. There were times when Sam really hated 'Hodgkin's Law of Parallel Planet Development'.

So now Giotto stood in a holding area waiting to experience first hand what had passed for entertainment among his far distant ancestors while trying to give the Doctor enough pointers in sword and shield work to stay alive. However, the Doctor had paced most the previous night, worried about what had become of the Captain. Being asked to consider the rudiments of sword work was only making him more agitated.

"Dammit, Sam, I'm a doctor, not a gladiator!"

"Doctor, if you don't focus, what you're going to be is dead." Giotto tried to keep his voice calm and level, but he was becoming a little frustrated himself. He could probably hold his own against two men if he was the only target. There were a lot of ways to make two or more opponents interfere with each other if you could keep any one from getting behind you. It was the sort of thing he made sure his people practiced on a regular basis and he had never yet required something of his subordinates that he couldn't do himself. However, keeping two men – especially two experienced gladiators – busy when another target was available would be orders of magnitude more difficult.

"I sew people together dammit." McCoy slammed the hilt of his sword into the wall in frustration. "I do not hack them apart."

Giotto took a deep breath. It was becoming tempting to knock the Doctor out to keep him out of the arena, but he was afraid their captors would just execute McCoy if he was found unfit to compete. "I am not asking you to hack anyone apart, Doctor. Just try to keep them from doing it to you."

Guards dressed in traditional praetorian costume, but sporting automatic weapons, arrived cutting off further discussion. Giotto and McCoy were escorted to a television studio complete with a painted arena backdrop.

"Stand by. Ten seconds," said the voice of an announcer. "And first tonight, ladies and gentlemen, a surprise extra: in the far corner, a pair of highly aggressive barbarians. Strong, intelligent, with strange ways, and I'm sure full of a lot of surprises. And facing them: two favorites here from previous encounters, Achilles and Flavius."

Canned applause sounded in the studio. McCoy looked like he wanted to retch and Sam certainly sympathized. This was taking the whole miserable reality show concept way too far.

"Victory or death? And for which of them?" the announcer continued. "Well, ladies and gentlemen, you know as much about that at this moment as I do because this is your program. You Name the Winner."

As they were prodded onto the sound stage, the question of the Captain's whereabouts was answered. He was seated, manacled, between the former Captain Merick and the Proconsul Claudius, a fat little man obsessed by a cult of manliness in which he could not possibly compete without the power of his office. When he'd started spouting macho nonsense during their first meeting, Sam had exchanged a look with McCoy and known that the doctor was severely tempted to ask Claudius about to his need to over-compensate.

Flavius and Achilles entered from the opposite side of the stage. From their first meeting, Giotto had felt a certain kinship with Flavius, the gladiator-turned-sun-worshipper. Or at least the universal translator rendered it 'sun' but Sam knew enough history – and had once been forced to learn enough catechism - to have his own suspicions about the identity of a dying/rising deity who preached selfless love and brotherhood (and he briefly wondered what his Jesuit uncle would make of the idea). For now a quick look between them was all the exchange necessary to signal that Flavius would take McCoy and try to make it look good without actually killing him.

The Master of the Games, costumed as a centurion, called "Begin!"

Flavius dashed toward McCoy to canned cheers. The home audience would expect the former favorite to choose the younger and presumably stronger opponent. However, he pulled his first swing when it was obvious the Doctor didn't know how to block and parry.

The announcer's voice sounded in the studio. "Flavius may be getting off to a slow start, but he's never disappointed this crowd. Oh! A close one. The older barbarian seems to be in trouble."

Achilles had driven hard at Giotto, clearly trying to draw the camera's focus back to him. In earth's Rome, gladiators had also been slaves, but had often started as free-born men so impoverished they were willing to sell themselves to a gladiator school in exchange for decent meals for as long as they could survive. Despite the danger, gladiatorial slavery was more attractive than other options. A good gladiator could win his freedom and have a comfortable life as a trainer or even an owner. And while still a slave he could enjoy the fringe benefit of noble ladies who paid clandestine visits to gladiator schools (if Claudius had a wife, she was probably a regular). Achilles had the look of someone motivated to put on a good show for those sorts of ratings. His style was flashy and he seemed to be trying to stay in front of the cameras. Although he had the build and stance of an experience fighter, Achilles displayed the arrogance of a young one and he seemed more concerned about posing for his audience than any danger posed by the graying 'barbarian' in front of him. Sam danced back and made him face away from the cameras just to annoy him.

"Fight, barbarian!" Achilles yelled.

Giotto and McCoy were both frustrating their opponents and the audience, albeit in different ways. Whoever was in the sound booth played cat-calls and hisses.

The Master of the Games lashed Flavius with his whip. "Fight! You bring this network's ratings down, Flavius, and we'll do a special on you."

Flavius struck at McCoy. "At least defend yourself."

"I am defending myself!" the doctor growled.

"Not like that, you fool. Hold your weapon higher."

"Listen to him, Doc!" Giotto stepped back closer to Flavius. "What would they do if I grabbed the centurion?"

"The praetorians on either side of the stage would shoot you both." Flavius replied. "If Maximus dies, one of them gets promoted."

Giotto edged almost back-to-back with Flavius, trusting the clash of steel to cover his words. "If I can drop one of them, can you get McCoy down and hit the other?"

"The one in the stand will kill Kirk."

Giotto blocked a stroke with his shield and diverted his swing to catch Achilles a ringing blow across his helmet. It bought him a moment to look at the Captain. The guard with the weapon was watching the fight and Kirk was leaning close to the Proconsul. It would be hard to shoot one and not both, especially if the Captain seized the opportunity the way Sam expected him to.

"Kirk's hard to kill. Can you do it?"

"I won't kill anymore, but I'm not afraid to die," Flavius answered with more real Roman virtus than the Proconsul could ever dream of possessing. "I'll act when you do."

Giotto switched from simple defense to pressing an aggressive attack. Surprised by the sudden change, Achilles was driven back almost to the edge of the stage. When they were close enough, Giotto blocked the next strike with his shield, but instead of the straight blow Achilles was expecting, Sam rotated around the shield, coming behind him and slicing across his heel. Cutting the tendon seemed an appropriate way to take out a gladiator who styled himself Achilles.

Sam paused as The Master of the Games came toward them, ready to enforce whatever decision the Proconsul might render on Achilles' life, and then he slammed the edge of his shield into the praetorian holding the machine gun, dropping him.

Several things happened at once. Before the centurion could draw his ceremonial sword, Giotto was on him, grabbing his arm and getting his sword to the man's throat. Flavius knocked McCoy aside and charged the other gun-toting praetorian, clouting him with the pommel of his sword while blocking his attempt to fire on the rest of them. In the stand, Kirk threw himself aside before his guard could refocus from the spectacle on stage and swung the chains from his manacled hands hard across the man's face. The guard fell, firing wildly into the TV crew and making the whole studio scramble for cover.

As the Captain leaped from the stand to join them, Sam threw the centurion hard into the nearest camera. He ran to collect McCoy, so they could make an escape, but the doctor was crouched over Flavius, trying to staunch the blood flowing from bullet wounds in his side.

"Stop!" the Proconsul yelled. He had grabbed the machine gun from the fallen guard.

Giotto moved to place himself in the line of fire, hoping the Doctor and Captain would take the chance to run. If they crucified rebellious slaves in this 20th century version of Rome, he'd rather die by gunfire anyway.

The tell-tale chirp of a communicator sounded in the suddenly quiet studio. "Emergency beam out," Merick ordered, throwing the communicator to Kirk just as the Proconsul spun and riddled him with bullets.

In the next moment, they dissolved in a shower of golden light and were on the transporter pad. The Doctor yelled for his surgical team as the life ebbed from Flavius beneath his hands.

McCoy was among the best, but after a lifetime in security Giotto had seen too many men die. Even in the 23rd century, there was a point of no return. There was only one thing he could think to offer the man who had sacrificed his life for theirs. Sam knelt beside him and made a sign on his forehead, reciting half-forgotten words.

The dying man looked up at him with serene smile. "Brother," he whispered before going still. Nurse Chapel had just arrived and the monitor she activated showed flat lines.

"Dammit," McCoy growled in frustration.

She gently put a hand on his shoulder. "I think maybe just the opposite, doctor."

"Yes," Kirk said, looking at Giotto strangely. "That was some sort of blessing, wasn't it?"

Sam nodded, a little embarrassed. It had given comfort, but he wasn't a 'brother', or at least not really; not for a long time now. "I learned a little Latin once upon a time. It seemed like something he'd want to hear."

McCoy's brows knit. "Last rites, Sam? But the man was a sun-worshipper."

"Not last rites," Giotto shook his head. "I'm certainly no priest. But I don't think he worshiped some extremely benevolent version of Apollo. Another way to say 'sun' is 'light of the world' or at least that's the connotation that I got from the universal translator."

"Caesar and Christ," Kirk said, nodding slowly. "It makes sense. They had them both too, but the faith is spreading only now. It will replace their imperial Rome, but it will happen long after their twentieth century."

"It may," Giotto agreed even if he halfway hoped not. In many ways, on earth the church had fallen to Rome as much as Rome fell to her. A Church Militant conducting Crusades with advanced technology didn't bear thinking about and while Sam was never likely to become a pacifist, he could at least admire the faith held by the outcast slaves they'd met on this planet.

"Oh no," McCoy looked up with a troubled expression. "The cameras were rolling when we beamed out. I know the Beagle's crew already muddled the Prime Directive, but to most of the population down there it must have looked like we were all bodily assumed into heaven."

Giotto didn't care much for the notion of himself as a saint (and hoped being identified only as the 'older barbarian' would keep him from any such undeserved honor) but he rather liked the idea that this world might have a St. Flavius. In Sam's opinion, he certainly qualified, at least if whatever passed for gospels in this world included the phrase 'Greater love than this hath no man, that he would lay down is life for another'.

AN: The TOS episode Bread and Circuses was both strange and ingenious for poking at mid-20th century values and network politics. Much of the dialog is lifted from it and Hodgkin's Law of Parallel Planet Development was introduced in that episode. It is also, as far as I recall, the only TOS episode to portray religion in a positive light (Gene Roddenberry was a devout atheist).

There really is a St. Flavius, but he was the uncle of the Emperor Domitian who had him beheaded for being a Christian. (Domitian was nasty piece of work, he probably would have found an excuse to kill his uncle anyway).

I'm a bit of a history buff and I recently had an interesting conversation about history, theology and martial arts with a clergywoman (obviously not a Roman Catholic) who is testing for her black belt soon. Sometime afterward this story was born. I'm posting it as a one-shot because it is not one of my usual Giotto stories, which tend to end on a lighter note even when the topics are serious.

Like it? Hate It? Please r&r.