The Rise of The Dominion: A Dominion War novel

by D. M. Marshall

  Raichel shook her head. “No, Brams, you won’t. I won’t even need to stop you. You are better than that. Havalor was better than that. Give them more time. He will break him eventually.”

  Brams screwed his face up briefly. “I’m not the man you think I am Raichel.”

  “What does that mean,” she asked, suddenly focused on him.

  “Nothing. It means that I am not above doing whatever I need to in order to save the Dominion.”

  She looked at Brams with worry. “I hope not, Riccard.

  “I’m sorry to disappoint but there are billions of people in the Dominion that deserve better. I will see to it that they get what they deserve.”

  Raichel stared at Riccard for a short while. “I’m a big believer in that everyone ultimately gets what they deserve.”

  Brams swallowed and looked away, towards the man who had information he so desperately needed. Raichel was right. He did have his limits, but she didn’t know that the deaths of her Edo fell within them. Even though he felt pretty sure that he knew who the mole was, he knew Raichel would find out sooner or later how he had used them as pawns and that thought made him very sad. Very sad, indeed.

  “That vile machine disrupted the entire operation,” said Doyen Niettha, his partially shadowed face showing a glimpse of the angry boiling within. “Your vile machine.”

  Weststar resisted but his throat rebelled and swallowed. He cursed it, knowing that his bobbing throat would reveal his nerves. Strange how even though he always visits me here at home I always feel like it’s me visiting him, he thought. How does he do it? Weststar took a small sip of his liqueur.

  “Is that so? Our spy said that the ‘vile machine, as you put it, was the only one who managed to even at least injure Ison.”

  Niettha almost snarled. “Had it - “

  “And,” Weststar said, talking over Niettha, “I might add that it didn’t allow itself to get captured alive.”

  Doyen Niettha sat very still. Weststar’s mouth suddenly felt very dry.

  “Make that the last time you interrupt me, Doyen Weststar,” whispered Niettha, so softly that Weststar had to strain to hear him, even in the quietness of his drawing room. “Or it will be the last time you ever interrupt someone. Is that clear?”

  Weststar knew he should laugh and dismiss his comment, show bravado worthy of his position and power. Instead he felt afraid. More afraid perhaps of the man sat so still and so silent as to be a statue than any man before in his life.

  “I’m sorry, Doyen Niettha,” he stammered, “I will not let that happen again.”

  The shadowy figure smiled menacingly. “I know you won’t, Amos. Tell me, what is being done to silence the captive.”

  “He is being held inside a detention facility within the Imperial Stronghold where he is being interrogated. There are three times the usual numbers of guards and shock troopers defending the facility and very few people are being allowed access to him.”

  “That did not answer my question,” said Niettha, displeased again.

  “I’m sorry,” blurted Weststar. “I mean to say that we are working to get an agent onto the security detail. We can’t shoot our way in so that seems to be our only option.”

  “Really? How long will it take to get an agent in?”

  Weststar hesitated. “It could be weeks.”

  “That will not do, Amos. With every passing minute the chances of him breaking increases. Yes, he does not know that much but what he does know is enough to implicate me and that really isn’t acceptable.”

  Niettha stood, somehow still in shadow. “I hold you responsible. Find a way to gain access for either of us. If you don’t, I will have to deal with it myself, and you really won’t like the consequences of that. For you, or the Dominion.”

  Chapter Ten

  “Here he comes,” whispered Kaliko Savina, eyes closed. Jake glanced over at her. Again in their usefully-dark Fists of the Dominion outfits, her blond hair was tied up under a black cap. It showed how fine her features were that even the severity of how her hair was drawn back made no difference to her beauty. The three long scars on her forehead could not detract from it. Strange how he had not really noticed until recently, or appreciated Kaliko for the beautiful yet incredibly capable woman she was.

  Kaliko opened one of her eyes and peered over at him. She teased him. “Are you watching the house or me, Jake?”

  He looked away and blushed slightly. “Sorry, I thought there was something on your face.” She didn’t reply, just smiled slightly.

  The main doors to Doyen Weststar’s home opened and the dark man appeared. Again, alone, and again his black repulsor car approached.

  “Get ready, Jake,” said Kaliko.

  “I got this,” he said, confidently aiming his strangely weak-looking rifle at the vehicle. He waited until the man was just entering it and then fired. The weapon made almost no appreciable sound.

  Kaliko pulled out a device, twisted a knob. The vehicle rose up and speed off. “Looks like we have a confirmed signal. Good shot,” she said, smiling at Jake. He smiled back, a bit lost in the moment.

  “Shall we go, then,” she said after a moment, an eyebrow raised.

  “Uh, sure,” said Jake, blushing a bit more.

  They sprinted with Channel-boosted speed back to their repulsor car and jumped in, Jake launching the vehicle before they were fully seated.

  “Stay within tracking distance but far enough back so that he doesn’t see us,” said Kaliko. “Let’s find out where this man lives. The more I sense him, the less I like him.”

  Jake glanced over and winked. “Uh oh. I’ve seen what happens to people you don’t like. This guy has had it.”

  “Thank you for allowing me to use your comms projector unit, Riccard,” said Raichel, hugging Brams briefly.

  “Of course, my dear, any time. I am in your debt,” replied Brams, reaching to touch her arm, clad in linwort bandages. More than you know, he thought. “Go on through, it is a secure unit. You may speak freely.”

  Raichel smiled her thanks and walked through to a separate room containing just the comms projector unit itself and a comfortable chair. She seated herself, keyed in the details Val had given her and waited for him to connect from his end.

  While she waited she considered how her mission had gone so far. The deaths of Malene Zhao, Sys Bramion, and Elen Ney weighed heavily upon her. Their bodies had been sent back to their respective homes so that their families could carry out their customs, whatever they might be. Malene Zhao was heading back to Vynter, to the Withering Wilds clan. Bramion back to Egerice, and Elen to Velad. It had shamed Raichel to discover that she hadn’t known where either Sys Bramion or Elen Ney had been born, and though she knew of Malene Zhao’s heritage, so did everyone else. Admittedly, Raichel and the rest of the Edo had had little time to get to know each other better but was that really just an excuse? Why had she spent so little time with them?

  What made her feel even worse was that so far they had not achieved much, and she feared that their lives had been sacrificed in vain. With the captured agent this would hopefully change soon, and they knew that the two Doyens Weststar and Niettha were meeting regularly, but they were still a long way, or so it seemed, from helping Brams win his cold war.

  She longed to be back with Jase. To feel his arms holding her, to rest her head against his chest. To discuss having children with him. It seemed like every time they had a chance to truly settle down and be husband and wife something tore one or both away. As a child she had harbored considerable resentment towards her parents for being away so often, but now, realizing how difficult it was being a Blake, she was amazed that they’d had chance to have her or her brother.

  Her brother. The thought slammed into her. Memories and emotions burst forth like an erupting Vynterian volcano. Tears welled in her eyes. She fought briefly but gave in, tears flowed down her face, over the linwort pad still attached to her cheek.

  She had not thought of
her brother in a long time. Tyler, who had fallen to the Deep, becoming the Skave Overlord Kraiden, before finally being defeated in a battle that involved more than a dozen Edo. She had been one of them.

  A great, wracking sob shook her. At the end, just before Michael Silverdell finally ended Kraiden’s reign of terror, he had returned to being Tyler Blake, Edo Askari, and had sought forgiveness. Though she knew logically that he had only given up on the Deep when he knew he had been defeated, emotionally she felt that she been complicit in the murder of her brother, not Overlord Kraiden.

  Her feelings would have been much less complicated had Tyler not fallen and had she not been involved in his death. Tyler becoming Overlord Kraiden confused everything. She could not pity him, was glad that she had helped end Kraiden’s reign, but at the same time she missed her brother terribly. She could perfectly recall his last moments as if they were just a heartbeat ago. Raichel didn’t think she would ever come to terms with what she had done, as necessary as it had been, and so she pushed it away with all her might.

  Light sprang from the Comms projector unit and Edo Mushur Val Nordin’s upper torso and face materialized above it. Raichel quickly wiped her face and ran through a fast Edo calming technique.

  “Raichel… have I caught you at a bad time?” He looked concerned. Raichel knew that Nordin had always had a soft spot for her, ever since she’d almost become his Neophyte. She shivered at the thought. With Nordin’s on-off dalliance with the Deep, would she have also fallen as Tyler did, becoming the second Blake to gain a Skave Lord name? Tyler had lacked her military experience. Would she have been able to accomplish what he could not? She pushed away the notion, revolted at herself for having thought it.

  “No, I’m fine,” she replied, forcing herself to become serene. I am an Edo Mushur, she thought to herself. I have faith in the Astrals.

  Nordin said nothing, clearly not convinced.

  “How goes the hunt for the Skave base?”

  “Badly,” he said, “hence the call. I have learned of the Skave that you have captured. I must be allowed to speak with him. I will obtain the information that we both so badly need.”

  Raichel understood the implication, and grew cross. “And how, exactly, Mushur Nordin, would you achieve what we have not yet been able to?”

  “I have my ways, Raichel,” he said, ignoring her formality.

  Raichel shook her head. “No, Val. I will not be complicit in your Deep activities.”

  Nordin exploded. “What? How dare you!”

  “Don’t give me that Val. You know as well as I do how you are prepared to use Deep techniques to get what you want. I will not help you fall to the Deep.” She looked hard at him, and then quietly added, “Remember Nanidu.”

  Nordin’s nostrils flared and his lips pressed together until they were nothing but thin lines. Even through the comms projector she could sense his anger. He fought to control himself, which, Raichel, admitted, was better than the old Val, who would have sprang into a blind rage.

  “Will you allow me to see the captive or not?”

  “I am sorry, Val, but no. I lead this mission, which, you’ll remember, you asked to be no part of. Your presence within the Dominion would be incendiary if it ever became public knowledge. I cannot allow it.”

  “Raichel…”

  “No, Val. Look, I promise to let you know as soon as we get anything from him. But we do this my way.”

  For a long while Nordin didn’t reply, just stared at her, almost through her. Raichel wondered if it would be too rude to just switch off the projector.

  “Very well,” he eventually said. “Have it your way. If we lose, if many die because we didn’t act quickly enough, or emphatically enough, then remember that it was all your fault. Tyler, Malene and the Neophytes’ blood that is on your hands will have just been the trickle before the flood.”

  “I’ll remember,” she growled.

  Kaliko frowned. She traced back the route Niettha’s repulsor car had taken since leaving Weststar’s mansion.

  “Jake, I think we have a problem.”

  He looked over at her. The traffic at this time of night was light, so Jake was having no problems following Niettha. “How so?”

  “I think someone’s taking us for a pair of Grunch. I’ve just checked the route he’s taken and it’s not the way you would go to get anywhere. I think he knows he’s being followed.”

  “Skavespit. How? We’ve been careful, stayed out of visual range and taken different streets. Maybe he’s paranoid and always takes a convoluted route?”

  “No,” said Kaliko slowly, thinking hard. “Stop the hover.”

  “But what if he goes out of signal range?”

  “Trust me,” she said. “I have a strange feeling that won’t happen.”

  Jake brought the hover to a slow stop and Kaliko concentrated hard on her scanning device.

  “Well, just call me Admiral Karadon,” she gloated, showing Jake that the tracking signal had ceased its own movement.

  “Huh,” said a nonplussed Jake. “How? Surely we’d have felt anyone following us?”

  “You’re right, we would. I think there’s more to this Doyen than we previously thought. Take us in, Jake.”

  Jake quickly drove them towards the signal, which now remained stationary, and as they drew into its deserted street they saw that the black repulsor car was hovering by the side of the road, door open. They threw a concerned glance at each other. Jake parked up, a short distance away.

  “I don’t sense anyone inside,” said Jake as they cautiously approached.

  “Me either,” replied Kaliko. “What’s that?” she said, pointing at something on the road, just before the door to the vehicle.

  “A datapad, I’ll get it, you hang back.”

  Kaliko Savina laughed. “No Jake, I’m not some helpless woman who needs protecting.”

  Jake stopped and looked at her, eyes comically wide. “Trust me, I would never ever think that about you. I just reasoned that if it’s a trap and there’s a bomb then at least one of us would survive to report back to Raichel.”

  “Oh,” she said. She kicked at an imaginary scrap on the road, an embarrassed distraction. “Good idea. Go on then. Be careful. I wouldn’t like to have to scrape you up off the ground.”

  “Your concern is touching,” he laughed. Then, he grew serious, and Channeled, a sense-heightening technique. Nothing seemed untoward. His danger-sense was silent. Shrugging slightly, he walked over and picked up the pad. He read the short message, checked out the empty inside of the black vehicle and then walked back to Kaliko. He passed over the datapad and she read it.

  “Edo. Cease. This is your only warning. Charming, isn’t he?”

  “About as charming as an Urtwarchan sucking on a citrus fruit. How did he know we were following him, and how did he know that we are Edo?”

  “I have a growing suspicion, and if I’m right then things are much worse than we thought. We need to get back to Raichel as quickly as we can.”

  “Race?” said Jake, waggling his fingers at both repulsor cars.

  Kaliko smiled broadly. “Race.”

  Weststar sat waiting at his personal comms projector unit, deep inside his mansion. Another crystal glass of Deniroe Boff sat forgotten next to the unit.

  The last meeting with Doyen Niettha had left him unsettled, and worried. Amos was not sure how much longer he could work with the man, who was becoming increasingly threatening towards him. He needed to bring the situation back under his control and to his mind he could only think of two options available to him.

  The first was why he was now waiting for Riccard Brams to answer his comms projector call. Even though the man had played straight into his hands by bringing in the Edo as Niettha was so sure he would, he was still not to be trifled with. Brams had come to power after the Emperor, on his death-bed, had proclaimed Brams as the new Emperor. Brams had risked the wrath of the Emperor by agreeing only if he took the title of High Doyen, rath
er Emperor. Since then he had worked on his plans to make the Dominion a republic, must to the horror of the Doyen council. Despite not being Emperor, the High Doyen could act unilaterally, without any necessary permission from the Doyen Council. Which meant, of course, that should Brams decide to be done with him, or with anyone, he could just simply click his fingers. The stunning of Doyen Urnit was a clear example of this.

  Support for Brams was waning quickly; many of his most loyal supporters from his Admiralty days had flocked to Weststar’s side and had even helped coordinate the ‘terrorist’ attacks. It was only time before Weststar had enough support to guarantee a successful coup. Unfortunately, time was something that seemed to be slipping away from him, like sand through his fingers. So, here he was, and action was required, one way or another.

  He sat, and waited, and thought.

  Finally, after a long enough delay to ensure that Weststar knew he had been purposefully kept waiting, Riccard Brams’ face formed before him, the blue-white light giving Brams a deathly pallor. A look I rather hope to impose upon him shortly, thought Amos.

  The two opponents stared at each other. Brams raised a single eyebrow, enough to demand that Amos respond.

  “High Doyen, thank you for accepting my call. I appreciate how busy you must be what with coordinating your pet Edo and fending off all these foul terrorists.”

  The only tell-tale sign that signaled Brams’ anger was a slow blink and some creasing around his eyes. Only by destabilizing Brams could he hope to gain what he needed.

  “Indeed, I am, and that doesn’t even include all the effort I’m putting in to deal with all the traitors in our midst.”

  Weststar had expected a comeback along those lines so he was unfazed.

  “Yes, I wish you every success with that. In fact, your success in apprehending one of your would-be assassinators is why I am contacting you.”

  Brams smiled, knowingly. “Really? That does surprise me.”

  One way or another, Brams, thought Weststar, I am going to wipe that smile off your face. Permanently.