The Complete New Dominion Trilogy

by Drury, Matthew J.

  He reached out to her, touched her gently. “I cannot forgive myself for abandoning you,” he said. “I did what I felt had to be done… but if I’d known it would cause you this life of pain, things would be different. I would have come back for you.”

  “It matters not. Our son is dead. You cannot change the past…”

  His mind reeled. He blinked, thinking of Lorelei Chen, and the encounter with her future self. “Some would disagree…”

  “And I would not let myself believe that anything could be more important than our lives together. Blindness and ambition. Fate has not been kind to us.” She nodded at the mirror. “My memory weakens with age, Ammold. I had forgotten much of this, and it hurts to remember.”

  Paramo looked at her with a determined expression. “Your vision can be a gift to me, Esme. You are the finest seer I have ever known.”

  The old woman looked at him, her emotions changing to curiosity. “What can I see for you, Ammold Paramo? What is so important that you seek me out after all this time?”

  He gritted his teeth. “Xam Bahr is searching for artefacts, the component pieces of an ancient device created by the Gate Builders. He already has three of them. I need to know the location of the final two pieces.”

  She sneered. “Useless, dangerous knowledge.”

  “I need to know.”

  For a terrible instant he thought her old anger would overcome her again, but her voice stayed calm, her expression benign. “Are you still fighting the Holy Church, Ammold? I thought you said Damarus had been ousted.”

  He nodded. “Xam Bahr escaped this planet after the fighting stopped, and carved out a sizable piece of space for himself. There, he set out to create a utopian state dedicated to the preservation of the One Religion. He called it the ‘Empyreal Sun’. Harmless enough, at first, but as the religion grew and mutated, however, it gathered more fundamentalist followers. They began using blood in their rituals and turned to grisly practices of worship in the name of Damarus. More recently, they have resorted to terrorist violence and murder in order to achieve their goals - namely the acquisition of the artefact pieces I mentioned.”

  “Poor Xam Bahr,” she said thoughtfully. “Always subservient to the Holy Emperor, even in his absence.”

  “Help me, Esme,” he pleaded. “Help me to stop the Empyreal Sun before any more innocent lives are lost. The location of the missing two pieces?”

  She sighed. “How well I remember that relentless sense of purpose. I was a weak diversion for you at best, Ammold. You are a fanatic when it comes to the resistance of the Church. Perhaps your cause is worthy, but I doubt it. Still, I will tell you what you wish to know. You will find one of the pieces, the Easesash Stone, on the planet Jun’Ko in the constellation Scorpius.”

  Paramo licked his lips. “And the other?”

  She closed her eyes, concentrated for a moment, then opened them again. She shook her head. “You will be too late to find the other. Xam Bahr is already descending on its location. Your one chance… lies with the Easesash Stone.”

  He nodded. “Thankyou, Esme. I wonder… can you tell me what purpose these artefacts have? What is the exact nature of this ‘engine’ that all five pieces form when joined together?”

  “The five ancient artefacts form a relic of great power… the Xeilig Ark, created by the Gate Builders to contact the god Lagai through an alternate realm called the Aetherium. The Ark is possessed of mystical properties and abilities, and the bearer can use it for a great many things. It can control time and space, power machines, and manipulate life force itself. But this knowledge is useless to you and those who travel with you, for you cannot leave here to impart it to them. Many have come, a few have entered, but no man has ever escaped the web.”

  Paramo grimaced. “Somehow I must do so. Help me, Esme.” He glanced at the clepsydra. Of itself it was nothing: a transparent timepiece in which time was measured by the regulated flow of liquid into a vessel. A seemingly inanimate object, yet somehow bestowed with an almost mystical power by the Holy Church. Right now, what it stood for was everything.

  Esme followed his gaze. “Very well. I will help you, but only because my heart tells me to.” She filled the clepsydra again. “Hurry now, or your time will be wasted.” Her face showed the emotional strain she was under.

  Paramo approached and took her hand, then embraced her quickly. He held her tight, a hot tear falling down his cheek. “Goodbye, Esme.”

  She closed her eyes as if in sudden pain. “Goodbye, Ammold.”

  He backed out of the cocoon, flushed with sadness, and as he did so it seemed that his last sight of the chamber was not of an old woman slumped over a table, but of a lithe, delicate young princess. Then he wrenched his gaze away and started out across the web. The spider suddenly halted, once again frozen in place by an unseen power.

  Ammold Paramo hurried down the sticky cables, putting his memories behind him.

  8

  It was raining heavily over Sieda’Kaa, the bright centre of government on the planet Nommon. At length, the Nommos capital city resembled a riotous garden: a seeming mishmash of ferns, conifers, and other flora; verdant growth nudged through mist in valleys which contained kilometre-high megastructures grown from organic material. Nommon was primarily a harsh, humid, swampy planet, mostly covered in shallow marshland, interspersed with stifling forests and a single large green ocean, but despite all this, the city of Sieda’Kaa had always been a technological sierra. The name, roughly translated, meant ‘Crèche of the Gods’, and it was here that Emperor Khonsu II ruled the gargantuan Nommos Empire from his rainbow-winged Great Tower, over the most important precinct of the city. The rain fell unrelentingly, sounding like a thousand drummers pounding out different rhythms. Huge raindrops spattered the dome of the Hall of Confluence and the stately, organic bridges that linked the hall to other consecrated places. The air around the Royal Citadel reeked, and the ground was slippery with wet, alien insects. It was an atmosphere inhospitable to human beings. Meanwhile, the atmosphere inside the Great Tower was sombre.

  A place of assembly for the Nommos Royal Family, it was defined by a curving roof supported by pillars sculpted from ancient bone. Broad at the four doorways where the high caste entered, the hall attenuated at the opposite end, where Emperor Khonsu sat on a pulsing crimson throne, propped by clusters of a chitin-like material. The architecture provided a sense of gravity, of uphill walking, increasing the nearer one came to Khonsu’s spike-backed seat. And yet the atmosphere inside the hall was moody and silent on this day.

  Eldo Drakar kneeled reverently before the throne, waiting for the Emperor to speak. The brooding silence was fractured by the sound of the torrential rain striking the roof.

  “You are asking yourself, where have we erred?” Khonsu said at last. “How can it be that Xam Bahr has managed to elude us for so long? Are we being tested by the gods, or have we been abandoned?”

  Drakar lowered his gaze. “I will not deny my frustration, brother. As you have no doubt already heard, Saani Zhet, the Fleet Commander who recaptured the Nephilim from the Empyreal Sun, was killed in a bioship crash this morning. Sadly, the tracking data pertaining to Xam Bahr’s current whereabouts was also destroyed…”

  Khonsu’s features suggested a somewhat godly aspect: eyes widened, forehead elongated, earlobes stretched, chin narrowed to a point, like the Hall of Confluence itself. And blazing from his eye sockets, vision-enhancing Av’ell implants, which changed colour according to Khonsu’s mood. The fingers of his huge right hand grasped an illustrious staff that was the Sceptre of Power. “So once again,” he said, “Xam Bahr escapes our clutches. The crash of Saani Zhet’s bioship cannot have been an accident.”

  Drakar nodded. Little did the Emperor know, he thought, that the crash had been his own doing. “The enemy has many spies,” he said. “It would seem they have even infiltrated Nommon, moving silently among us. Their very presence profanes our holy ground, brother.”

  Khonsu w
aved his empty hand in dismissal. “The Empyreal Sun are nothing more than a pestilence - a plague of bugs we will eradicate soon enough. We must work more closely with our friends from the Terran Alliance if we are to combat them. Peace and cooperation is the key to our success.”

  Eldo Drakar bowed again in mock gallantry. “Are you sure that this is wise, brother, in light of the recent failures of Warmaster Paramo in capturing Xam Bahr? Allying ourselves with these humans may pose a greater threat to the long term future of the Nommos Empire than that posed by the Empyreal Sun themselves.” He smiled inwardly.

  “Nonsense,” the Emperor said. “The Alliance is important to us.”

  “Forgive me,” Drakar said, almost to himself. “But with the enemy on our doorstep, the people feel that we are under assault. The social order is cracking apart, they want reassurance and someone to blame…” Despite his best efforts, Eldo Drakar began to quiver.

  “I see that our Alliance with the humans frightens you, Eminence. Perhaps you think they smack of heresy. But let me tell you: as long as I am Emperor, we will remain close friends of the Terrans. This will not change. If the people want someone to blame, let them blame Xam Bahr. He is the real enemy here, not the humans. I will hear no more of this ridiculous nonsense. Now go.”

  Drakar bowed and stalked off, feeling dejected. He was unhappy with the direction his brother had been taking the Empire over the past decade now. Before the fall of Damarus, Khonsu II had been a respected leader, ruling just like their father, Khonsu the Great, had done for hundreds of years previously - promising to preserve the established order that Drakar (and many others) had believed in, and fought for many times. Now, with the threat of Damarus gone, the government of Khonsu II had made sweeping radical changes, leading an economic, social, and industrial reconstruction of the Empire which, in Drakar’s opinion, was a blatant disregard of millennia of Nommos tradition. Drakar’s frank assessment was that the promises of Khonsu II, made on the Day of Coronation, had been broken. Increasing ties with the Terran Alliance, and sharing more Nommos technology with them, as well as military secrets… brought more chaos than it did order. There was too much destructive conflict, by far, to suit Drakar - especially now the Empyreal Sun had emerged as a significant threat. The Nommos Empire wasted its resources endlessly pacifying rebellious elements in the human-inhabited parts of the galaxy. The only viable solution, therefore, had been for him to work closely with the Empyreal Sun, in secrecy… with the goal of destabilising the fragile alliance with Earth. Eldo Drakar, of course, would never let any of these thoughts and secrets leak out to his brother. They were far too dangerous. Khonsu must never know that Drakar held closely guarded desires to take over the Empire and correct its course. If he knew, Drakar would surely be executed.

  The Emperor’s physical decline had given Drakar hope that perhaps the throne would be vacant before long anyway. It would make for an easy solution… and there could be a smooth transition to Drakar as Emperor. However, he could not wait that long. Drakar had already decided, therefore, that Khonsu had to die. How and when would depend on how events played out over the coming weeks. There was still so much to do…

  Eldo Drakar forced himself to be patient and to wait for his chance to rule the Nommos Empire.

  His moment of triumph would be here soon enough.

  Ammold Paramo, deep in concentration, sat motionless on a soft chair of stuffed fabric in a softly lit museum. The walls and domed ceiling were covered with flat paintings, a few of them vaguely human-looking but most of distinctly alien origin. Various sculptures were scattered around, some freestanding, others on pedestals. In the centre of the room was a double circle of repeater displays, the outer ring slightly higher than the inner ring. Both sets of displays, at least from what Paramo could see, also seemed to be devoted to various pieces of artwork, with a short introductory hologram which spoke about the disarray and turmoil of the reign of Damarus. And in the centre of the double circle was the display case he studied, the centrepiece of the exhibition: containing the metallic mask and black cloak of Lord Damarus himself, perfectly preserved behind the glass. Here the dim lighting worked in conjunction with the clear glass to create a sense of intimacy that allowed the observer to get up close and personal with each object. This intimacy enabled an appreciation of the fine detail invested in them, such as the fastening brooches on the cloak, the detail in the carvings of the mask. Such details would have gone unnoticed while Damarus ‘wore’ the objects, hidden away in his Throne Room…

  Since his appointment as Warmaster of the Terran Alliance, Paramo had spent many hours in the darkened room, contemplating the ghoulish artefacts, trying to imagine what had happened to their otherworldly master on that day more than ten years ago. In a way, it seemed to him like a strange mirror, reflecting his own fate, the way he would die. He knew it was irrational, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that Damarus was still out there somewhere, that he would have to face him once again. He sighed, trying to put the silliness out of his mind.

  “What happened to you, you bastard?” he muttered.

  There was no response from the inanimate objects behind the glass. Not that he had expected any. Just what had really happened to Damarus was maddeningly obscure, and both he and Lorelei Chen had often exchanged whispered theories of the wildest kind. Had Damarus escaped into a place beyond space and its dimensions? Had he gone somewhere altogether unimaginable?

  Some moments later, Paramo perceived with a sudden start that something outside the museum room’s cathedral-like bay window had commenced a damnably rhythmical piping sound, as if in unison with the last breaths of a dying man. It was enough to send a cold chill across his entire body.

  He stood up nervously. He was wholly alone, and his first act was to walk across the threshold to the balustrade and look dizzily down at the endless, bustling metropolis that was the Silver City, almost two thousand feet below the building’s superstructure. As he listened, a rhythmic confusion of faint musical pipings, covering a wide tonal range welled up from the abstract-shaped streets beneath, and he wished he could easily explain the source of the noise. The sight turned him giddy after a while, so that he would have fallen to the pavement had he not clutched instinctively at the lustrous balustrade. His right hand fell on one of the projecting sculptures nearby, the touch seeming to steady him slightly. It was too much, however, for the exotic delicacy of the metal-work, and the spiky figure snapped off under his grasp. Still half dazed, he continued to clutch it as his other hand seized a vacant space on the smooth railing.

  But now his over-sensitive ears caught something behind him, and he looked back toward the glass display housing the mask and cloak. He blinked. Nothing was out of place, but he was certain he could sense… something… in the room with him.

  Then, that damnable alien sound changed, becoming guttural, as if adapting to the acoustics of the room, changing, becoming a whisper:

  “Paramo!”

  His emotions became a maelstrom of horror. He felt a gnawing, poignant abhorrence shoot through his gut. What did all this mean? To what extent could the laws of sanity apply to such an occurrence?

  Unable to answer such questions, Ammold Paramo screamed and ran away mindlessly, overwhelmed with self-doubt.

  The alien whispers soon dissolved into peals of hysterical laughter.

  It was a scene of simplicity, of children playing and adults sitting quietly under the warm sun, or gossiping across neatly trimmed hedgerows. It was a scene of absolute normality for the everyday denizens of the Silver City, but it was nothing like Lorelei Chen had ever witnessed. In Einek, there were no streets like this one. There were no hedgerows and trees lining the ground, just titanic skyscrapers and arcologies, like immense castles built into curling, abstract shapes, impossible ribbons reaching up into the sky. People did not gossip, with children running carefree about them, at least not that she had experienced. To her, it was a scene of simple beauty.

  She was back to wea
ring a dress, her Rãvier suit discarded for the time being. Machiko Famasika walked alongside her in a simple blue dress that only seemed to enhance her beauty. Chen kept glancing her way, stealing images of her to burn into her mind, to hold forever in a special place. Machiko could be wearing anything, she realised, and still look beautiful.

  “There’s the house!” Machiko cried suddenly, startling Chen from her pleasant thoughts. She followed her gaze to see a simple but tasteful structure, surrounded, like everything in this beautified area of the city, by flowers and vines and hedges. Machiko started off immediately for the door, but Chen didn’t follow right away. She studied the house, every line, every detail, trying to see in it the environment that had produced her friend and lover. Machiko had spent her childhood in Einek, just like Chen, but had relocated to the Silver City when she was just eleven years old. She had told her many stories of this house during their years working together under Paramo, and Chen was replaying those tales, seeing them in context now that the gardens were in view.

  “What?” Machiko asked her from some distance ahead, when she noticed that Chen was not following. “Don’t tell me you’re shy, Lora!”

  “No, but I…” the distracted Chen started to answer, but she was interrupted by the squeals of two little girls, running out from the gardens toward her companion.

  “Aunt Machiko! Aunt Machiko!”

  Chen’s smile went as wide as Machiko had ever seen it and she rushed ahead, bending low to scoop the pair, who looked to be no more than a few years old, one a bit taller than the other, into her arms. One had hair short and blond and curly, the other, the older of the two, had hair that resembled Machiko’s.