The Complete New Dominion Trilogy

by Drury, Matthew J.

  Recognising the uneasy sway of his Zeus, Paramo spread out both of the Mech’s arms for balance and throttled into a slower walk to recover the stricken avatar. Icons danced over his HUD, demanding his attention. But his father had always taught them that it was always better to do something immediate and constructive in battle than debate overlong on the exact right thing to do. Ammold had been an attentive student.

  “Alpha group, hard press.” His order might buy him some time if Denigrand had to deal with a sudden advance.

  His own reticle tracked across the cracked shield, painted by a targeting laser, but for the distance Paramo switched over to his infrared monitor and full computer imaging. Denigrand was on the move, but he bracketed him in a long pull of autocannon fire before ever looking at his HUD for more information. Paramo spent several hundred rounds on empty air but several hundred more into the outline of Denigrand’s Omega. His return fire chipped away armour from its arms and upper chest, rocking it back but not doing enough damage to knock Denigrand off his feet.

  Static whispered into Paramo’s ears as a transmission burst from his subofficers crackled over the speakers built into his neurohelmet. “Alpha group,” the voice identified itself. “We’re through, sir.”

  For a brief second Paramo thought that his armour group had decided to desert him. Then, shaking off the last of his dizziness, he caught on that elements of Alpha formation had penetrated to the rearward lines on this flank.

  A moment later, he realised – Denigrand was right in front of him!

  His Head’s Up Display painted the same picture as he spent several critical seconds in study. Denigrand’s brief move forward, coupled with his return push of Rãvier infantry and armour, had opened up the field between them so that both commanders faced off over open ground. The Denigrian western flank was in chaos, cut off from their commander by a narrow line of Paramo’s own troops. They had two, maybe three armoured vehicles left in the immediate area that might be able to reach the Chancellor’s side.

  “Beta group, smash forward. Tie them up. Alpha, hold your line. Delta, reinforce Alpha.” Paramo rattled off his commands with a confidence born of immediate need. If only he could wait for his reserve infantry in Delta to move up, he might be able to capture Denigrand’s Mech - and wouldn’t that be a fine cap to his already stellar record?

  Throttling into a forward run, Paramo pushed his Zeus ahead at better than one hundred kilometres per hour. Denigrand was already backpedaling, realising his exposed position, but not soon enough. Sporadic fire from his rotary autocannon pecked and pockmarked Paramo’s armour, hammering away barely a ton of protection from the Zeus’ lower legs and torso.

  “Lance seven-zero-one,” Paramo called for the quad of Jousts that had held off the MAWLRs earlier, “detach from Delta.” He’d need them to help put Denigrand down quickly. “Advance at flank speed, engage enemy Omega.”

  At the Jousts’ eighty-six kilometres-per-hour top speed, Paramo left the tracked vehicles behind quickly. They only needed to reach a fair distance, though, to bring their missile racks and extended-range lasers against Denigrand’s Mech, or, if need be, any of the supporting armour the Chancellor had left to him.

  As if realising his error, and that he would never get free in time, Charal Denigrand waited with two armoured vehicles pulled in at his flanks. The computer tagged them as VV1 Rangers, anti-infantry vehicles - hardly the forces one would draw on to hold off a two-hundred-fifty ton Mech.

  Caution whispered at the back of Paramo’s mind and he slowed his pace, throttling down to seventy kilometres-per-hour, buying himself crucial seconds. He knew from experience that Mechs were too rare – too expensive – to risk them with a cavalier attitude. Paramo had lost Mechs for that, and to see Denigrand suddenly hold the line when everything he saw would have him screaming run gave him a long pause.

  But there was nothing new to see. Denigrand’s flanking forces had yet to break free of his two-pronged assault, and except for the VV1’s he had a single Scimitar—class combat bioship and what now looked like a squad of Purifier specialised infantry, with their experimental Tyrant-class Rãvier suits.

  Not enough. Not nearly enough against his quad of Jousts, and Denigrand knew it. He had something else in mind.

  Paramo learned what a moment later.

  “Alpha group. Enemy has disengaged.”

  The report sounded too good to be true, that Denigrand was abandoning the battlefield with his tail between his legs, especially when Beta and Delta echoed the same situation a split-second later. Then the first flight of Long Range Missiles saturated the dead lakebed around Paramo’s position, geysering earth and blackened rock into the air. A dozen scattered missiles slammed into his Mech’s upper body, blasting away armour. The explosions echoed into his cockpit, filling his ears with a stuttering roar.

  Paramo’s alarms screamed from multiple targeting system locks. Other than Denigrand’s small trio, the nearest vehicle was still nearly a half kilometre away – a Strategic Missile Carrier packing along its four racks of long-ranged missiles. It launched a second, full spread of missiles just before it exploded under the concentrated fire of what looked like Paramo’s entire Beta formation.

  The Denigrian armoured forces had disengaged all right. They were completely disregarding Paramo’s troops, falling back through his lines no matter the cost to rendezvous on the Chancellor’s position and concentrate on one single target: Paramo’s Zeus.

  He was being pulled right into a massive strategic trap!

  “Alpha, Beta, Delta, defend my position!” Paramo’s voice held a frantic edge to it, one he’d never used in command of troops before. “Lance seven-zero-one, full assault on enemy Omega.”

  Their lasers were already stabbing out at the Mech as Denigrand advanced now behind a makeshift screen of the two Rangers and Scimitar. Purifier Rãvier troops leapt forward on tiny jets, armed with plasma rifles, and on Paramo’s far right one of the MAWLRs broke free and sped into the killing ground after him as well.

  Missiles churned up the lakebed again. Several rained down on his Zeus’ shoulders, caused him to stumble forward while Denigrand’s rotary pummelled him with fifty-mil rounds. The enemy commander’s autocannon slugs struck all over his armour like hundreds of tiny hammers, each one tolling a death knell.

  Paramo ran through the storm of hot metal, blinking away the tracers’ ghostly afterimage and keeping his finger down on the firing stud of his own rotary autocannon. His only salvation was to take Denigrand down first. Take him down, and then mop up his remaining forces as Paramo’s armoured vehicles hit them point-blank from behind. His stream of non-stop autocannon fire cut through the Chancellor’s Mech’s right arm but failed to make it deep enough into his side to silence the rotary.

  A Rãvier trooper leapt for Denigrand, but he smashed it out of the air with a backhanded swat. One of Paramo’s Jousts cut a molten wound directly over the reactor shielding of Denigrand’s Omega, and on his thermal imaging screen his heat level blossomed to a critical level, but not enough to slow down his rapid-cycling barrages.

  A second Denigrian Strategic Launcher lumbered into range then – on Paramo’s left this time – launching flight after flight of missiles, which hammered down around him until the entire landscape appeared to be shaking itself apart. Denigrand held up his deadly, cutting assault from the front while the Rangers split apart and, with the Scimitar, hit him on three sides simultaneously. An inferno of laser fire and the Rangers’ stinging railguns hammered into him, shaking the massive Mech beyond the capability of its gyroscope or its pilot to compensate.

  Paramo had time for one last burst of fire from his autocannon. Then he stumbled. He fell first to his knees, sliding along in a pose of subjugation, then facedown into the earth, the impact rattling his teeth together. The bioglass shield caved in, its digital picture dropping out large shards that ricocheted through the cockpit on lethal paths.

  He tasted blood, and his vision swam through a mur
ky haze. Fighting for his final hold on consciousness, Paramo levered one of the Zeus’ arms beneath it and pushed against the earth. His shattered cockpit shield scraped free of the baked mud, he looked up over one of the speeding Rangers to see Denigrand also fighting his way back to his feet. Paramo’s final burst had cut into the enemy Mech’s gyro housing, knocking the leviathan over but not out.

  “Still… time…” Paramo told himself, fighting to get his legs under him. His bitten tongue throbbed with each word.

  The fury of missiles and autocannon fire had abated, the calm at the eye of a storm. He heard a light scrabbling, like steel-toed mice nesting inside his Zeus’ armour, and worry stabbed into his mind… but it took an extra moment for the source to register. The Purifiers! Denigrand’s infantry had crawled up from the ground, hooking footholds into his joints and ruined armour, searching for deep wounds to tear into or – worse – his cockpit hatch.

  Paramo’s Heads-Up Display blinked and stuttered, occasionally wiped itself with grey-snow static, but it looked as if two of his Jousts were now out of commission. Through his shattered bioglass shield he saw a ruby-coloured particle beam slice deep into Denigrand’s left leg. It did not keep the Chancellor from pulling back to a solid stance. A deep, metal echo banged into his ears – the sound of infantry on his outer hatch. Swallowing against the taste of blood, and his own worry of failure, Paramo braced himself up into a three-point crouch and drew his targeting crosshairs over the centre of Denigrand’s Mech. His targeting computer locked onto a bleeding-thermal wound, the reticle burning a golden bull’s-eye over the enemy commander’s reactor.

  Gambling for one last shot, Paramo thumbed the firing stud.

  Then something exploded around him, and the world turned white. Racked by a spasm of pain, he coughed, a deep gurgling sound emanating from his lungs. Fresh blood flecked his lips. He felt calm in that moment; nothing but pleasant calm. There was no pain. He stared sightlessly up at the sky, a pane of the setting sunlight illuminating his features. All suffering and urgency seemed suddenly to leave him; his expression grew reflective, peaceful. In the distance, he saw something.

  A tunnel of Light…?

  And then his faint smile abruptly vanished, replaced by a look of infinite amazement, infinite wonder. “Oh my,” he whispered, eyes wide.

  Then King Ammold Paramo was no more.

  13

  The slight breeze brushed the lazy drizzle lightly over Lorelei Chen’s face. It was right that the world wept on this day. Unconsciously she hunched her shoulders, less in reaction to the chill air than to the chill of standing graveside watching a casket being slowly lowered into the dark ground. She pulled at the two ends of the belt holding her black trench coat closed, tightening the knot that imitated the one in her stomach.

  The priest standing at the head of the grave smoothed down the page of his prayer book. “Ammold Paramo, into this earth we commit your earthly body, returning it again to the dust from which all men are made. We are confident you now dwell in heaven with our Lord, and will remain there for all eternity, forever and ever, amen.”

  “Amen,” Chen echoed, crossing herself as the others did, but not moving away as the rest of the mourners departed one by one. She remained there alone, staring down at the casket but with her thoughts far away. Time passed unnoticed, and it was only the touch of a hand on her shoulder that brought Chen back from her reverie.

  “Lorelei, thank you for coming.” Queen Esme Mazzic, clad in mourning leathers as grey as the storm clouds overhead, gave Chen a tight-lipped smile that died almost before it was born. Esme, who had been born a Princess of the Silver City almost a century earlier, but who had been bound under Damarus’ strange powers and become known as the Šamán of Monsula, or Witch of the Shadowlands, did not look nearly as strong or terrifying as those rumours had painted her. Now that her curse was lifted, she appeared as a beautiful woman in her early twenties – though grief at the loss of her husband, her lifelong lover Ammold Paramo, had humbled her. She looked so incredibly sad now, Chen thought.

  She looked up, then nodded slowly. “Thank you for permitting me to attend, your Majesty.”

  “You do us great honour by coming here, Lorelei.” Esme moved stiffly forward to stand beside her. She offered her left hand, palm facing downward, which Chen lifted gently and kissed. “Of all the protégés that Ammold trained over the years, you were always the one he favoured the most. He thought so highly of you. Like a daughter, in many ways.”

  Chen nodded, suppressing a shiver. She felt a lump rising in her throat and swallowed it back down again. “He was like my father. He was the only one who understood me, the only one who saw my fate.” Her gaze was distant. “While I was absent from his life for most of the past decade, returning only when I must, my feelings for him remained unchanged. I loved him, Esme. Coming here today has been a painful duty, and your grief is my grief. I must confess, though, that I am not here only because I honour you. I am afraid I usurped a bit of this service for my own ends.”

  Esme looked her in the eyes and Chen felt an electric tingle run through her soul. “Of course, for your grandfather, Doci. I understand, and I am yet more honoured.”

  “Doci Chen was a Paladin, who died when Paramo was banished to the Shadowlands,” Chen said. “He was executed for refusing the divine nature of Damarus, for claiming that no true prophet of God would ever do the damnable things he did in His Name. But I only learned this through Paramo himself, decades later. My own father told me a lie… to protect my innocence I suppose… that my grandfather died a hero in the Battle of Oneiland. After I discovered the truth, about a year after Damarus’ ousting, I did make a pilgrimage – though visit is probably the more correct word – to Doci’s grave outside Einek.”

  Esme nodded solemnly. “I knew your grandfather personally. What Doci Chen endured, the sacrifice he made in defence of his personal beliefs, make him worthy of such reverence. He was a good friend.”

  Chen’s face darkened a bit. “Even though I visited his grave, I never really had a chance… I…”

  Esme reached out with her left hand and squeezed Chen’s right shoulder with more strength than the other woman would have thought possible. “I understand. None of us begrudge you the opportunity to say goodbye properly, Lora.” She looked up and around at the newly turned mounds of earth dotting the green bowl of the graveyard. “We’ve been saying goodbye to many of our dead, both recent and long departed.”

  Chen again felt her throat thicken. “My mother and father died when I was twenty. It was a horrific accident. My husband at the time, Lenton, told me he would look after me – or, at least, he understood me. But I always knew he put on a brave face for me, telling me he was proud of me without really believing it inside.” She averted her gaze. Bad memories resurfaced. “Our marriage was arranged, but I thought I could make him truly love me. But then…” Her eyes half-closed and her face tightened. “He let me down.” I just want to sleep, she thought. A coma would be nice. Or amnesia. Anything, just to get rid of this, these thoughts, whispers in my mind. Did he rape my head, too? “So I ran away.”

  “Ammold was there for you when nobody else was,” Esme said, nodding. She patted Chen on the shoulder. “He was so proud of you, Lora. Proud of your successes in the Special Frontier Force. During his time as Warmaster you chalked up an impressive number of victories.”

  Chen nodded respectfully to the older woman. Paramo would have been pleased with her military record, but would he have been proud of her obsession with altering the timeline? With blowing up planets in parallel universes? “My personal war against Cristian Stefánsson made for many changes. I’d like to think the changes in me were for the best, but it’s hard to know.”

  Esme’s expression eased, but Chen felt her withdrawing. “War brings change and brings regrets. The Bellum Civile is over now, the fighting has stopped and diplomacy has resumed… but because of it I have lost my husband. I would wish it different, but I acknowledge that
it cannot be so. I am certain you have similar regrets.”

  “Comrades dead and friends lost, yes.” Chen hesitated for a moment as, unbidden, the image of the blonde-haired Machiko Fặmasika came into focus in her mind’s eye. “There are times when learning the lessons that war teaches us about ourselves drives us apart from those we love. Deny the truth of the lesson and we can live in a kind of peace, but the truth will lurk in us and fester, erupting to destroy our lives without warning.”

  A curious look passed over Esme’s face for a heartbeat, then she nodded. “As much as we would like it, Lora, we can never again be the people we were before these events transpired, nor should we want to. War has stripped us down to our cores. It has revealed to us what we are, what we were born to be. We cannot turn from it, because if we do, someone else will find a way to use it against us.”

  Returning Esme’s steady gaze, Chen felt the unspoken bond of similarity between them, yet knew how different was the way of life each one must follow in order to be who she must.

  “It has been a long time since I have heard warriors philosophising.” Esme glanced at the grave into which her husband had been laid, then shrugged wearily. “I have seen too much conflict in my lifetime, but what I have seen reminds me that life continues after it. In adversity we find facets of ourselves that we never suspected. We form new relationships and draw new insights from the time in the crucible.” She nodded toward Chen. “At one point, Ammold thought you were lost to him, but you returned from your time travels, and with a wonderful woman at your side. In the midst of death and destruction you found a key reason for living.”

  “Kimberley,” Chen breathed, nodding. “I have an obligation to protect her. But I pity her, Esme. Despite what Cris wanted, she and her father can never be together, never.”

  “Never is a word that often turns out otherwise, Lora.” Esme Mazzic gave a cryptic smile. “Your journey is not over yet.”