The Complete New Dominion Trilogy

by Drury, Matthew J.

  Chen felt a strong obligation to protect the girl, to keep her safe from the Combine’s reach. If not for her actions, the child would never have come to the attention of the Combine in the first place, so she felt a vicarious thrill at the idea of keeping her away from them… interfering with their plans further. She needed to do everything in her power to ensure the girl’s safety.

  It’s what Cris would have wanted…

  Determined and filled with new worry, she turned away from the window.

  Soon, familiar-sounding voices echoed through the room from somewhere ahead – somebody talking in the shadows – and she froze. It was as if the blood had been drained from her; Lorelei Chen was suddenly an empty vessel, echoing and cold. In all her years of battle in conflict zones across the galaxy, in those moments when death had been a heartbeat away from claiming her, she had never felt the same slow, sickening shock that swept about her now. This was it, a moment she had expected to happen eventually, but never really thought was possible. Carefully, she moved slowly toward the voices, then took a deep breath and shouted: “Over here! It’s okay, I’m a friend!”

  She swallowed dryly, hoping she’d chosen the right words. The voices stopped, obviously shocked by her unexpected presence. She stepped forward again, out of the shadows, and abruptly a wave of dizziness swept over her. She caught the bridge of her nose with her thumb and forefinger and closed her eyes until it passed. It was just anxiety and the rotten air, she told herself. The circulation system was probably malfunctioning, or something. Or maybe this was all just too much for her to handle.

  Whatever the case, a moment later her younger self was standing just a few feet away from her, her expression frankly disbelieving, with Machiko beside her, looking equally baffled.

  Machiko…

  Chen could not help but note the lines of tension etched on each of the younger women’s expressions, beneath their careful composure. Taken aback by how… young… the other Chen looked, she opened her mouth to speak again, spreading her arms wide. “I was wondering when you were going to show up,” she said. “I’ve been waiting here for some time now, but I knew you’d get here eventually, because you…” She looked at the younger Chen. “… are me… some years in the past, of course. I did a pretty good job of disabling those particle cannons, don’t you think?”

  Machiko Fặmasika’s voice relayed an undercurrent of excitement. “My God!” she blurted. “L…Lora?”

  Younger Chen cried out in disbelief. “My future self,” she said. “I never thought I’d see you again! I thought you were dead…”

  Chen took another step forward, her expression warming. “Actually, this is the first time I’ve ever encountered myself in the past,” she admitted, unable to keep the pitch of her voice from rising. “That stuff with our future self which happened ten years ago from your perspective, still hasn’t actually happened to me yet. The encounter with Damarus at Laputa. The encounter where I… where we die.” She shuddered.

  Machiko’s expression and voice were carefully composed, professional, but her eyes failed to entirely hide her frustration. “I’m sorry. You died at Laputa?”

  The younger Chen looked at her. “I’ve been meaning to tell you that, Machiko. My future self at the time… committed suicide, we think. A self-inflicted projectile gunshot wound to the head.”

  “We think? Who else knew about this?”

  “Paramo. I was going to tell you, at some point. I really was.”

  “You told me she disappeared. Committed suicide?” Machiko couldn’t believe it. She shook her head, unable to comprehend what was going on. Her gaze went back to Chen. “Okay, so you’re Lora… five years from now? Six?”

  Chen smiled. “Seven.” Then a distant, saddened look came over her features. She remembered back to the moment, seven years earlier, when she had witnessed Machiko Fặmasika die aboard Damarus’ flagship, the Retribution. She took a deep breath, trying to conceal her emotion. “It’s so good to see you again, Machiko. I miss you so much.”

  Machiko didn’t answer.

  “So you’re… I’m… a time traveller in the future?” Younger Chen asked. “I still don’t understand that. Why are you here?”

  “Time traveller?” Chen laughed, completely unaware of her younger self’s downward spiral into fear. “I remember thinking the same thing. Of sorts, I suppose I am, but that description makes it all sound so… so easy, romantic, straightforward. So… intentional. Nothing about the past seven years has been easy, Lora.” Her expression darkened again with despair.

  “Why are you here?” Machiko repeated, in a more demanding tone. “And how?”

  Chen released a strained sigh. Thoughts of the Combine flashed through her mind. Thoughts of Asterites, dying planets, and alternate timelines. “There is no easy answer to that question, Machiko,” she said. Her gaze went to her younger self, and she saw turmoil there, the same turmoil she remembered feeling at that age. The uncertainty, the lack of understanding. She felt a sudden urge then to reassure her younger self, at least from the limited knowledge she had of things. “Lora,” she said softly, “I need to let you know… that death is never really the end. Sometimes it is the only way forward. I know how much pain you suffer at the thought of your own death, at the thought of shooting yourself in the mouth on that day. You feel an emptiness inside you that will not heal. But try not to despair. It is difficult to explain, but you must not think that the encounter at Laputa, where we die, is the end of the road for you, because it’s not.” She blinked, remembering what her ascended self had told her. “It’s really not. Lorelei, you are the stone that splits the stream of time in two, not Cristian Stefánsson. The story doesn’t end on that day. Do not lose sight of the faith inside of you.”

  “I don’t understand,” Younger Chen said. “How is my death not the end?”

  “Was it the end for Cris?” Chen retorted. “You will understand, and soon. In a week from now, Lord Damarus and the Inquisition of the Empyreal Sun will invade the Sol System, and you will be among those who confront him aboard the Retribution. There, he will meet his fate, and so will we. At the same time, you will be forced to use this… ” She pulled the Xeilig Ark from her bag. “…to travel through time. It will be the only way out.”

  Machiko sucked in air. “What is that thing?”

  “It is the Xeilig Ark,” Chen told her. “You will find it aboard the Retribution.”

  “Are you serious?” Machiko exclaimed. “That thing is tiny! How can something so small be the Xeilig Ark…”

  “The device has assumed many different physical configurations in all the years it has been in my possession,” Chen said matter-of-factly, interrupting, causing Machiko to subtly recoil and narrow her eyes in surprise. “Remember that it is composed entirely of Lambda particles. It will not look this way when you find it.”

  “None of this makes any sense,” Younger Chen complained. “You’re saying that everybody meets their fate soon, Damarus… me… and that I will travel through time. Seven years from now I come here to tell myself these things, and then in another three years I’m at Laputa, shooting myself in the mouth? And that’s not the end?”

  Chen nodded, unsmiling, her expression a mixture of sadness and irritation. “I know how confusing it sounds, Lora. Believe me, I felt exactly the same way when I was in your shoes. But it will become clear, aboard the Retribution. At least, the path to clarity will present itself. I don’t have all the answers because, hey, I’m still on the road to those final events myself, and there are still things that even I don’t fully understand yet.” She sighed heavily. “But I know that everything will come to a head aboard that Empyreal Sun mothership, one week from now. You will see something there that will explain this, something… beyond words. It is a fixed point in the space-time continuum that cannot be changed or altered without damaging reality. Trust me, Lora. Everything will make sense.”

  Younger Chen grimaced, her eyes filled with tears. “Okay,” she manage
d finally.

  Machiko wiped sweat from her face. “You said that you missed me. Does that mean I’m going to die?”

  Chen averted her gaze. She had always wondered what she would feel at this moment, knowing that Machiko’s death was inevitable. She found that the answer to that was almost ridiculously simple - she was sad, especially as she realised she would outlive her lover by another decade. At that instant, she ceased struggling against tears and permitted them to course unwiped down her cheeks. “I would not like to tell you, either way, Machiko. I miss you because seven years of travelling through time has been a very solitary and lonely experience for me. I haven’t seen you, and I will probably never see you again.”

  Tears ran down Machiko’s face. She stepped forward and embraced Chen without warning, squeezing her tightly. Chen didn’t resist, holding Machiko warmly, wishing the embrace could go on for eternity. It had been so long since she’d held her, and she knew it would be the last time.

  “That’s so sad,” Machiko muttered.

  Chen stepped back, blinking, her shoulders buckling under heavy emotion. Then her thoughts turned to Kimberley Stefánsson, and the responsibility she had to protect her. She would need to act soon if she wanted to stay ahead of the Combine. “I have to go now,” she said. “There are things I need to do.”

  “What things?” Younger Chen asked. “Where are you going?”

  She shook her head. “You’ll see. That journey still lies ahead of you, Lora. Just remember my words. You are the stone that splits the stream of time in two.”

  “Your words raise more questions than they answer.”

  Chen smiled, then raised the Xeilig Ark to her lips. She whispered softly to it, thinking of Kimberley, then closed her eyes. Catching her breath, she exhaled, then seemed to pass out of their vision like a sunny wind blowing to another sky. Her body shimmered, and she disappeared, jumping once again through time and dimension.

  ACT EIGHT – METAMORPHOSIS

  10

  AD 2505 (209 ND)

  SILVER CITY, EARTH

  King Ammold Paramo, Chief of State of the Terran Alliance, once considered the Chamber of Paladins his final refuge.

  Some of that was simple architecture, a testament to its illustrious creator. To his mind, the Chamber possessed a mixture of senatorial grandeur and ancient legend. Thick doors of silver ashwood letting onto a tall, domed room, brightly illuminated with gold and precious stones. A wide, crystal glass skylight that opened up into a large Perpendicular-style nave. All surrounded by white stone and blue-grey marble walls, much of it carved in ornate decoration and often inlaid with delicate gold and silver filigree depicting Lord Damarus at the height of his power. The Chamber of Paladins was one of the few original features of the Sacred Palace which still remained; following the Earth Siege of 202 much of the original building had been destroyed, and it had undergone intense reconstruction since then. Stepping across the threshold now, guarded from the Sacred Palace’s Rotunda by nothing more than velvet ropes, Paramo had traded the minute cares and worries of the day for loftier goals, walking softly on runners of plush, crimson carpet as he made his way to the Executive Offices.

  As a former member of Lord Damarus’ Holy Guard he’d spent many years in the Chamber of Paladins. Large enough to seat over a hundred people, the gallery seating circled the outside wall on a set of shallow risers. Elevated to the rank of Holy Guard when he was just twenty, Paramo had then taken his place at one of the seventeen private stations arranged on the main floor. Here the Holy Guard – or Paladins as they were formally known – met, reported, and worked together to protect the ideals and tenets of the One Religion, as well as the personal security of Lord Damarus himself, grand architect of the Terran Alliance.

  Ten years of service. Ten years of his life spent defending something which, ultimately, deep down in his heart, he suspected to be false – a cunning deception intended to suppress the population and satiate Damarus’ unnatural thirst for power and glory. The more time he spent with Damarus, the more he became convinced his suspicions were true, that Damarus’ claims to divinity were fabricated. He rallied support among his fellow Paladins, including Doci Chen, but their views were not held secret for long. Walls have ears, as they say.

  Everything changed in 159 ND, when Damarus caught wind of what was happening. Doci Chen was executed, and Ammold Paramo was outcast from the Silver City, stripped of his ranks and privileges, and forced to live a hermit’s life out in the Shadowlands, labelled a blasphemer and heretic. Over the next thirty years, he obsessively plotted to overthrow Damarus in secret, plans which later gained momentum as a global Resistance Movement formed in 192, thanks largely to the efforts of the Einekian Queen, Anacksu’namon.

  Damarus was ousted that same year.

  Five years later, the Democracy of the New Senate elected Paramo to the Terran Alliance military’s highest post of Warmaster. As the man presiding over the Alliance’s darkest hours, he knew little peace and even less rest after ascending to the role. One crisis followed after another, including the Inquisition of the Empyreal Sun led by a resurrected Lord Damarus and the infamous Earth Siege of 202. Now, having married the elected Queen Esme and becoming King Consort of the Silver City in 205, Paramo dreaded setting foot in the Chamber, to hear what the paladins had to report, or suggest. The room would never again be the sanctuary it once was.

  It was hardly recognisable now. It still looked the same, but the inviolate calm had been stripped away by an invasion of aides and clerical staff and harried secretaries who served the working paladins. Indeed, the paladins themselves now served just an honorific role as Royal Guards, their importance much less than it once was with a democratic republic now in place. The place was now more of a war room – a crisis centre for dealing with the recent threat of the Denigrians – than any refuge of thought and spiritual debate. Sullied. Poisoned, perhaps.

  “Not that fate has given us much choice,” Paramo muttered. Then he sipped from the nutrient drink his chief of staff had thrust on him, and made a face. The frothy, green beverage tasted like grass. As always.

  “Your Majesty?”

  Warmaster Naael Itsyamin waited at Paramo’s side, looking up from the Vei’nl he’d loaded with reports of the latest fighting and clean-up efforts all across Earth. The oldest Warmaster to date, at one hundred four years of age Naael Itsyamin had the vitality and strength of most men fifty years his junior. Snow white hair and a weathered face, perhaps, but a strong bearing and still a dangerous, catlike grace when he moved.

  “Apologies, Naael,” Paramo said. “Fatalistic thinking has no place here.”

  The venerable warrior shrugged. “Things change,” he said.

  But not always for the better.

  “You were saying?” Paramo cradled the steel mug in one hand, brushed flat the front of his robe. “Another month?”

  Itsyamin hesitated. Then, “Less, I’d think. With the Third Faction Guards on hand, we’ve moved harder and faster against the Denigrian holdouts than I’d originally estimated. If you would care for a formal report?” The Warmaster gestured to the Chief of State’s dock. A raised dais at the focus of room, surrounded in a half-circle by the paladins’ stations. Once used as Lord Damarus’ formal ‘chair’ for presiding over the chamber.

  Paramo shook his head. “I will never sit in the same chair as Lord Damarus, Warmaster. You should know that by now. Something just wouldn’t feel right about it.” He felt the muscles tighten and pull at the back of his neck. “To be honest I don’t know why that thing wasn’t pulled out years ago…”

  Itsyamin glanced awkwardly between his Vei’nl and the King. Then he gestured towards the station on the far end of the wide arc where Mobit Akhragan, one of the younger paladins, worked diligently over a Zara’moth holographic computer system. Lady Zou stood by to assist him. “Very well. I believe Mobit has most of the data plugged into a world map.”

  The way Itsyamin said it, he might as well have called Akhragen
‘the boy.’ Though in an avuncular kind of way. Mobit had certainly proven his chops in the recent fighting, after all. It was a vote of confidence that Itsyamin deferred to the younger man, and solidarity among the ranks of the military was a desperately needed commodity in these days of civil war.

  Also, Paramo was always happy to spend time in the company of Ariana Zou.

  He nodded, and the two men stepped over to Akhragen’s workstation. Paramo also caught Paladin Hiram Parsa passing by. With a gesture he pulled her into the small gathering. Of all his paladins, he trusted these three the most. And while it dug at him to make such distinctions these days, it was a point that the paladins had not proven immune to the politics of destruction currently being played out across the Terran Alliance.

  Ariana Zou stiffened to formal attention as Paramo stepped up behind Mobit Akhragan. Her dark, almond-shaped eyes held tiny flecks of gold in them. She glanced sharply at the Gallery, and the door, no doubt expecting to be dismissed.

  But Paramo ignored her for the moment. He watched as Akhragan continued to work, fully absorbed in his assignment and all but oblivious to the monarch’s presence. The younger man had only recently ascended to the small circle of paladins, but already the stress told on him. Heavy shoulders. Weary eyes. Akhragan would come out the far side of these hectic months a great deal stronger, or utterly ruined.

  “Where are we, Mobit?”

  “Your Majesty,” Mobit said. But it took the young paladin a moment more to put the finishing touches on his project. He waved his hands over the console and stepped back as the holographic projectors built into his workstation erased the user interface and instead projected a fully formed globe of Earth into the air above the lectern-style desk.

  The world rotated at an accelerated pace, turning fully around its axis every twenty seconds. A great golden star centred over the Silver City, capital of Terra and the seat of power for the entire Terran Alliance. Several political districts around the world flashed with cautionary amber. One in danger-warning red.