Almost undiminished by the distance, the waves spread across the oceans to wreak havoc on a global scale. Mankind had suffered a blow beyond comprehension. Dust and smoke from the collision rose high into the atmosphere, blocking the warming rays of the sun, and injecting sulphuric acid aerosols into the stratosphere. The planet began to slowly freeze. It would take a further ten years for those aerosols to dissipate; over the following decades, massive climate change resulted in the extinction of large numbers of plants and plankton, and of organisms dependent on them (including many animal species). The earth’s surface was devastated, and human civilisation soon crumbled.
By 2180, humans were nothing more than scavengers living on the scorched wasteland of history, mainly scavenging and living in sporadic tribes.
Meanwhile, Cristian Stefánsson slept.
Lorelei Chen lurched upright in bed, gasping, staring blindly into the darkness. The dream had seemed so real, almost like a living memory. The screams of dying people thundered inside her head, blinding her to the contours of the artificially darkened room, deafening her to every sound save the hammering of her own heart. The silken sheets were damp with sweat around her waist. Finally, she remembered where she was.
She half—turned, and Machiko was with her, lying on her side, her glorious fall of blonde hair fanned across her pillow, eyes closed, half a smile on her precious lips, and when she saw the long, slow rise and fall of her chest with the cycle of her breathing, Chen turned away, buried her face in her hands and sobbed. The tears that ran between her fingers then were tears of emotional torment.
Cris…
In a deep silence, she disentangled herself from the sheets and got up. Through the hallway, a long curving sweep of stairs led to the veranda that overlooked her private gardens. Leaning on the rail, Chen stared out upon a magnificent view of the white, flowing, monolithic architecture of the Silver City and the Laputan mountain plateau on the horizon beyond, cloaked in fog.
Chen didn’t know how long she stood there, staring. The city looked so beautiful, so pristine. Undamaged. The complete opposite of how she felt - broken in battle. Stained with darkness.
Machiko Famasika moved more quietly than the evening breeze, but Chen felt her approach. She took a place beside her at the railing, and laid a soft hand along the back of hers. And they simply stood together, staring silently out across the city that had become their home.
Machiko waited patiently for Lora to tell her what was wrong. Trusting that she would. Chen could feel her patience, and her trust, and she was so grateful for both that tears welled once more. She had to blink out, and blink again, to keep those fresh tears from spilling over onto her cheeks.
“It was a dream,” she said finally.
Machiko accepted this with a slow, serious nod. “A nightmare?”
“It was like a memory. A memory of the Apo’calupsis.” Chen couldn’t look at her. “And Cris.”
Again, a nod, but even slower, and more serious. “And?”
Chen stared out across the cityscape. “I… I still love him, Machiko.” Her voice was raw and hoarse as though she’d been shouting all day. “I miss him so much.”
Machiko took Chen’s face between her palms so that she had to look into her eyes, so that she had to see how much she meant every word she said. “It’s okay, Lora,” she whispered. “You carry such a burden with you… nobody could expect any less. Your life, and your destiny, has become intertwined with this man on a level I cannot hope to understand. Just know that I will be there for you, Lora. Always. No matter what happens.”
Chen nodded. “I know it, Machiko. I know.” She pulled gently away and looked at her. Tears sparkled like red gems in the light of the growing sunset.
“Come on, Lora. It’s getting late. We have a diplomatic dinner to attend, remember? We should start getting ready.”
“All right. All right.” Chen found that she could breathe again, and her shaking had stilled. “Just don’t say anything to Paramo, okay? He worries about me too much.”
The banquet hall in the Sacred Palace glittered with candlelight, a charming anachronism that the Nommos dignitaries seemed to take in their stride. Emperor Khonsu II paced slowly, accompanied by his brother, the High Priest Eldo Drakar, and several dozen bodyguards and servant-creatures. The Nommos were primarily an empathic species, communicating by a field of cranial vibrations beyond the range of most human hearing. The most sensitive human ears could sometimes detect the vibrations as a vague, nonsensical singing sound - so in order to facilitate speech between them and their human hosts, all Nommos guests wore a small beige translator sphere connected to their ‘mouths’ by a small tube.
Lorelei Chen had always enjoyed visiting the Sacred Palace - there was much that reminded her of her mother’s stories of the Silver City - the tradition, the formality, the emphasis on beauty and art and culture, the sense of being transported into a vital and vibrant recreation of past times. Everywhere you looked, golden magnificence abounded. Elements of zoomorphic symbolism - statues of extinct animals fashioned from gold - and huge crystalline beams covered with extraordinary murals depicting Lord Damarus, were a stark reminder of the past few hundred years of Earth’s history.
Soon, the assembled guests were seated for their meal. Robotic servants darted to and fro, serving the human dignitaries with a rice dish containing savoury oils and shredded meat, mushrooms, and fish, with eggs that had been repeatedly stewed in a mix of spices and air-dried, resulting in a chewy consistency filled with flavour. Meanwhile, the Nommos guests were served a delicacy from their homeworld: dried and thinly sliced squamata skins served with a lumpy paste which they ingested through gill-like flaps on their necks.
Musicians played softly in alcoves upon exotic instruments. Fresh flowers filled the room with a heady scent, and robotic servants moved with quiet efficiency to remove plates and refill glasses. Machiko sat across from Lora, both of them looking resplendent in their evening dresses.
Chen tugged at the laces cinching her waist and looked up to see Machiko observing her. “I’d be happier in a Rãvier suit,” she said ruefully.
Machiko smiled. “No doubt, but you look lovely all the same.”
It was a polite phrase, an expected response. Chen had received similar compliments at a hundred diplomatic affairs. But none had ever set her cheeks flaming. She smiled in return.
“A pattern has emerged in the activities of the Empyreal Sun,” the Nommos Emperor was saying. “In each of their three most recent attacks, an ancient artefact has gone missing, presumably stolen by Xam Bahr.”
The holopresence of Queen Neferneferu’aten flickered in and out of focus as the woman leaned forward, frowning and folding her hands. “Elaborate,” she said.
Eldo Drakar looked at the translucent projection. “The Nephilim carried an artefact known as the Pala’ras Stone in one of its museums. A curious object, constructed from a quartz-like material similar to that seen in Heaven’s Gate. Our historians believed it to have been crafted by the Gate Builders themselves - its exact function, unknown.”
Paramo swallowed a mouthful of food. “I presume this artefact was the latest to go missing, Eminence?”
Drakar nodded, scowling. “Indeed, Warmaster. If not for the failure of your team, we might still have it in our possession!”
Emperor Khonsu gestured for calm. “Please, my brother. Let us not forget, that you failed to apprehend Xam Bahr yourself at the Battle of Omega-5. The man is notoriously adept at escaping capture.”
Properly abashed, Drakar gave a bow of respect. “Forgive me, your Majesty. I… I have simply become frustrated with the entire affair…” He touched two fingers to his forehead. “I have given my blood oath to bring him in.”
“As have we all,” Khonsu reassured him. “But as I have already explained to you, brother, we must continue cooperating with the Terran Alliance to combat the threat of the Empyreal Sun. Bickering will not help any.”
Paramo took a deep brea
th, dismissing the exchange with a wave of his hand. “You said there were three artefacts?”
Drakar looked at him. “Yes, Warmaster. Previously, the Jair’Maral Stone was stolen during the bombardment of Naesha, and the Tak’Drayen Stone at the Oruze Osobnyk incident.”
Machiko frowned. “The Tak’Drayen Stone?”
“Correct,” Drakar said, glancing at her. “The very artefact that you discovered, Machiko Famasika.”
She blinked, remembering the events of twelve years earlier. She had found the mysterious stone in a cave deep beneath the surface of Mars on a rock climbing trip. A garbled, largely indecipherable sound had emanated continuously from within its crystalline structure. The Church of Damarus had refused to allow her to make the discovery public, and sentenced her to a lifetime at Daam K’Vosh in order to silence her. She had assumed that the Church had destroyed the object.
“What’s the connection between these artefacts?” Paramo asked.
After a moment, Emperor Khonsu lifted his gaze to Paramo’s face. “Nobody really knows. According to Nommos legend, they are the component parts of a great engine, a machine, left behind by the Gate Builders millions of years ago, divided into five and scattered across the galaxy so that none may ever use it.”
“Xam Bahr has three of these pieces,” Drakar continued. “All stolen from Nommos museums. But the remaining two pieces have never been discovered, to our knowledge.” He turned to Paramo and then waited for the Warmaster to grasp the significance of this.
Paramo nodded. “We can only assume then, that the Empyreal Sun intends to find the last two pieces, and put the machine together. To what end?”
Khonsu hesitated. “It remains unclear.”
After the meal, the crowd gathered as the musicians played a number of classical Einekian pieces at Machiko’s request. She took Lora by the hand and executed a formal bow. “May I have the honour of this dance?”
Lorelei Chen smiled and nodded. They merged into the swirling crowd, Machiko leading her through the elaborate steps. Chen danced with singular grace and fierce, absolute concentration, as they worked their way around the room. After a while they moved toward the doors. They emerged into the hallway outside, hand in hand, grinning like mischievous children.
On impulse, Machiko planted a kiss on Chen’s mouth.
“Now that,” Chen said, “was lovely.”
“Just remember what I told you, Lora,” Machiko said. “I will be there for you. No matter what happens.” Then she plastered herself against her in a friendly hug.
4
On the water-washed, wind-lashed world of Reria, far beyond the most remote edges of inhabited space, a planet-encircling ion storm traveling at thousands of kilometres an hour battered the upper atmosphere. The magnetic phenomena composed of ionically charged particles created vast, clumpy clouds about 1000 km in size, and lightning 10,000 times more intense than any seen on Earth - which forked across the horizon with a continuous, frightening rapidity. There was little more to see on this violent world, other than rolling waters where giant, monstrous tentacled creatures roamed, and constant downpours.
Xam Bahr and Sai’bot stood on a balcony of shining black metal, overlooking the assembled ranks of the Empyreal Sun’s warriors. They were on the lowest platform of one of the great shard-like floating structures of Reria City, suspended by an antigravity pod approximately 180 km down from outer space - a habitable layer of atmosphere where the temperature and pressure made it ideal for humanoid life, and the perfect hiding place for the Empyreal Sun’s base of operations.
Dressed in distinctive black armour consisting of a padded undersuit, armour plating, and a wide helmet with two thin projections to the sides, Xam Bahr had pale skin, a chalk-white, skull-like face, and red catlike eyes, a skeletally thin body and long, thin hands with unnaturally long fingers. His appearance was ghastly, but no more so than the hunchbacked creature who flanked him. Sai’bot had the rather horrific appearance of a monstrous foetus, with massive, diamond-shaped scales, and abnormally contracted limbs with folded, cracked skin. At length, they both appeared as grotesque caricatures of human beings, though neither of them belonged to the species.
Below them, hundreds of thousands of Empyreal Sun warriors stood in tight formations, clad in identical body armour, with thousands more emerging from the landing ramps of huge military assault ships, in a massive display of loyalty.
A deep sadness marked the freakish features of Sai’bot, but when he looked over at Xam Bahr, he saw there a grim determination.
“Inquisitor,” Sai’bot croaked, his voice muffled in the noise of the wind. “We are one step closer to achieving our dream. After all this time, it will not be much longer now.”
Xam Bahr nodded. “By the grace of our Lord, we will succeed.”
“Praise Be,” Sai’bot muttered fervently.
Bahr turned, manipulating a Vei’nl in his right hand. “Let’s see what our illustrious benefactor has to say about our most recent success…” he said. The air around them was lit then, as the organic, arthropodic-looking device projected a real-time holographic representation of Eldo Drakar before them. Smooth and silky, Drakar’s voice oozed through the shadowy ether.
“You surprise me, Xam Bahr,” Drakar whispered thoughtfully, hidden within his priestly robes. “I did not think you were foolish enough to use an Alcubierre-Sel’varis Drive this time around. Now it is only a matter of time before they trace you.”
“I have nothing to fear,” Bahr offered quickly. “My armies are more than ready for the campaign ahead. Soon, the Terran Alliance will regret the day they ever turned from the true Messiah, Lord Damarus.”
Drakar’s eyes glimmered. “Hallowed be His Name. But exercise caution, Inquisitor. Until the final two artefacts are in our possession, our plans are still at risk. Do not underestimate the enemy.”
Bahr sneered. “Your Eminence, it is the enemy who still underestimates us.” He closed the communication link, and the hologram faded. He smiled thinly at Sai’bot, then looked out over the balcony at the assembled troops.
Speaking into a microphone which amplified his voice across the distant horizon, Xam Bahr roared, “You are the Children of the New Dominion. Empyreal Sun warriors. You are the instruments of His conquest!”
Then, the deafening rapture of hundreds of thousands of voices chanting in unison thundered back at him:
“Hail Damarus! Hail Damarus! Hail Damarus!”
How beautiful the universe was, Ammold Paramo thought. How beautifully flowing, glorious and aglow like the robe of a queen. Ice-black clean in its emptiness and solitude, so unlike the motley collage of spinning rocks men called their worlds, where the organisms throve and multiplied and slaughtered one another for dominance. All for control of a resource, or an idea.
In depressed moments, he felt sure that happiness didn’t really exist, that there was no happy living organism on any of the worlds of the Terran Alliance, or the Nommos Empire beyond. Only a plethora of destructive sentient diseases which fought and raged constantly against one another, a sequence of cancerous civilisations which fed upon its own body, never healing yet somehow not quite dying.
A particularly virulent strain of one of those cancers had killed a close friend of his, Doci Chen, simply for denying the divinity of the Holy Emperor. Amongst countless others, it had also taken from him Doci’s granddaughter, the woman he had learned to respect more than any other, the future guise of Lorelei Chen.
Although he had seen the empty cloak and mask of Lord Damarus in the now-obliterated throne room of the Sacred Palace, he could not be certain the wraith-like tyrant was truly dead. With no actual ‘body’, his disappearance had left only empty air in its wake. That Damarus had departed this plane of existence was unarguable. What no one could tell was what level of existence he had passed into. Maybe death and?
Maybe not.
There were times when Paramo experienced an agreeably crawly sensation, as if someone were lurking just
behind him. That unseen presence occasionally seemed to move arms and legs for him, or to supply incoherent thoughts, images and feelings, when his own mind was helplessly blank. Sometimes, he heard a sound - a whistling, haunting sound that seemed to penetrate the air, a muffled piping, quite unlike any other sound he knew.
Unseen spirits or not, Paramo reflected grimly, if there was one thing he was sure of it was that he could never admit this to anybody. He would be brandished a madman and stripped of his title as Warmaster. For ten years he had suffered with these sensations in silence, as he had with the foreknowledge of Lorelei Chen’s death. Painful and difficult things to keep to himself, for sure, but he knew it was ultimately for the best. He had no choice but to take these secrets to his grave.
He looked up at the frowning white stone façade of the sprawling Palace Hall, seat of government for the planet Earth and the Terran Alliance, cursing his old age. He might have been the most senior and respected figure in the Alliance military, but he was no spring chicken. At eighty-two years of age his days of seeing action and combat were over. He mounted the steps at an awkward pace, irritated at their shallow rise and exaggerated width. The strides he took would not usually have been possible for him without a walking stick, but the Rãvier suit he wore offered the extra strength he needed. The suit was coloured a dark grey and matched his grim mood.
The Complete New Dominion Trilogy Page 29
