The Complete New Dominion Trilogy

by Drury, Matthew J.

She leaned against the nearest pillar, feeling uneasy and out of breath. A familiar sensation of Déjà vu swept over her.

  Suddenly, a youthful hand shot out, and she felt fingers touch her flesh, jarring her away from those depressive thoughts. A hand was clasped around her wrist, jerking her forwards and downwards, taking her off guard. She stumbled out from the shadow of the pillar and into the light, instinctively drawing her disruptor pistol from its holster with her free hand.

  There, dressed in a sleek-looking and pristine Rãvier suit, was her past self – aged just twenty-seven years, looking youthful and full of life and hope. Chen blinked a double take, refusing to believe she had ever been so beautiful.

  “Who are you?” her past self was saying, looking pissed off. “What are you doing here? Are you trying to sneak up on me?”

  Chen put a finger to her lips, looking intently into those emerald-green eyes. “Shhh!” Then she lowered her voice to a whisper. “Lora, please be quiet. No-one else knows I’m here…” She moved towards her a couple of paces, forgetting that her face was covered by a veil.

  Younger Chen blinked sweat from her eyes, raising her eyebrows. “That’s close enough. I asked you a question. Who are you?”

  Chen realised her plight, then reached up and pulled the veil away from her face. Her aged, sun-damaged features caught the light, but that intense, emerald-green stare was as strong as it had ever been.

  Her younger self seemed to stare bug-eyed at her. “Are you my future self?” she blurted.

  “Yes,” Chen said simply, staring into her eyes.

  The young woman swallowed, wiping cold sweat from her forehead. “Okay. This really is the strangest day of my life. So what’s your story? Are you three hundred years old too?”

  Amused, Chen held up a hand, silencing her. She blew out her breath slowly and wearily. “No. I am you, twenty-one years from now. There isn’t much time to explain, so I’ll keep this short.”

  “This is all very confusing,” Younger Chen moaned.

  “Listen,” Chen said. “We have control over what happens to us in the future. There is no destiny or fate. There is nothing that will happen for sure.” She remembered the words of her future self at the City of the Combine as she spoke. Wavefunction collapse cannot occur, so naturally, all possible alternative histories and futures are real, each representing an actual universe… “We determine our future from what we do now, our actions now. We make our own future from our own actions, and nothing or no one else is responsible.”

  “Then how do you explain Damarus?” her younger self countered.

  Chen’s mind whirled. She wondered if anyone could ever really explain what he was. “He is a temporal paradox,” she said, “a convergence of multiple universes, nothing more than an anomaly in space-time. The actions committed in various time travels have actually overlapped one reality with another.” Powerful emotions threatened to overwhelm her. “Cris, the man you love, is not necessarily destined to become him – your actions can still prevent it.”

  Younger Chen still seemed confused. “Why should I? If we prevent Cris from becoming Damarus… the world wouldn’t ever recover from the Apocalypse. He saved our people…”

  Chen shook her head, disgusted at the naivety of her younger self. Had she really been that stupid? “There is much you still don’t know about him,” she urged. “Cris is… changed… after what happens to him on the other side of the wormhole. Damarus is evil, for lack of a better word. Yes, evil.” There was no other word for it. The Eidolon was like a demon that had possessed his soul. “Purest evil.”

  “I can’t believe that,” Younger Chen said.

  “Believe what you want,” Chen told her. “But just remember what I have told you. You can change things. It doesn’t have to be this way. I know you are thinking of leaving, of running away and hiding from this situation. But you have to play your part in this – you must go with Cris through that wormhole, and stop him from changing into that monstrous entity.”

  “I love Cris too much to abandon him now. And I’d never allow any harm to come to him, you should know that. I can’t believe you came back through time just to tell me such things. Why are you really here?”

  Chen gritted her teeth and straightened, gazing toward the exquisitely-crafted doorway to Damarus’ throne room. Her thoughts turned to the Eidolon, and what the Combine planned to do. “Unfortunately, in my universe, I was never able to stop him. Perhaps there is still a chance for you yet. But here, and now, I’m going to end the reign of Damarus, once and for all.”

  Lord Damarus was sitting on his throne when the two Chens came into the room, walking side by side.

  “Lora!” Cristian Stefánsson blurted. He was standing in front of the throne, at the base of the stepped platform, looking tired. “What the hell is going on here?”

  “Long story,” the younger woman muttered.

  “Lorelei Chen,” Damarus said in his eerily-flanged, booming voice, addressing the older woman as they stopped at the base of the throne, beside Cris. “I have been waiting a long time to see you again, my love.”

  Chen sneered, and raised her disruptor weapon toward him, playing her finger over the trigger. Her heart was pounding in her chest. She was absolutely terrified, but refused to show it. Calmly, she said: “And so we find ourselves in this situation – again. What a perfect circle these events have formed. Have you told our younger selves how you have sent out an army to crush the resistance movement?”

  “I didn’t think it was relevant,” Damarus said.

  “Resistance movement?” Younger Chen said, frowning. “What are you talking about?”

  Chen turned to look at her, remembering this conversation as if it were yesterday. “Many of the world’s factions, as we speak, are sending a grand army, led by Queen Anacksu’namon and your friend Ammold Paramo, to overthrow Damarus as the sovereign ruler of this planet. You know how much discontent there is among the peoples of this world, having this… thing… dictate and rule over them for so long.”

  “I thought that only a small handful of people…”

  “You’re lying to yourself, Lora,” Chen barked in a commanding tone. “You know that most of the population fears Damarus and his iron rule, you’re just too afraid to admit it. Too afraid of divine retribution, because you are so wrapped up in those religious beliefs that it has blinded you to the truth.” She paused, realising that she was ranting and becoming increasingly frustrated. “Damarus is not divine. He is just a man, who became twisted with evil power and took advantage of our people when they were at their most vulnerable…”

  Cris blinked. “Wait,” he said. “Wait, this isn’t…”

  Damarus got to his feet. “Lora,” he said. “Do you honestly expect that disruptor weapon to kill me? Surely you know better than that.”

  “No,” she said bluntly. She didn’t want to die. “But I’m going to try, just the same.”

  Damarus turned to Cris then, and gestured toward the doorway. “This is where we part ways, Cristian. I’ll take this from here.”

  “W… What?” was all the man could say.

  “Take Lora, and get yourselves to my personal launch bay, a little further down the Grand Corridor. There you will find the Thunder, a prototype ship capable of hyperspace travel. It was originally commissioned for a colonising mission to Tau Ceti, but it is yours to take. It is the only ship that can withstand the gravimetric forces within Heaven’s Gate without being destroyed. Take it, as I once did, and go through the wormhole. Your destiny awaits you on the other side.”

  Younger Chen frowned, and looked across at her older self, who was still pointing her weapon toward Damarus. “What about you?” she asked.

  “I’ve been waiting twenty-one years for this moment,” Chen said in a grave tone. “This is between me… and him. Go. Do as he says. Just remember what I told you.” She gave her younger self a cursory glance, then returned her gaze to her masked target.

  The two lovers hesitated,
like the naïve youngsters they were.

  “Go!” Damarus roared. “And don’t look back!”

  They ran.

  “I wonder,” Chen said slowly, her disruptor pistol still raised toward him. “Did your wife, Alexis, know that she married a man who was capable of mass genocide?”

  Damarus didn’t move, but something dark and ugly seemed to flicker through him.

  Chen pressed harder, trying to reach the humanity that she knew was still buried deep within him. “When you tucked Kimberley into bed… do you suppose she ever imagined that her father would one day kill millions as casually as he kissed her good night?”

  For a moment, Damarus seemed vulnerable, haunted by memories. Chen felt a stirring of hope. Then, in a brittle tone, he whispered, “Nice try, Lora. But to use an old American idiomatic expression, you’re barking up the wrong tree. You should not have come back…”

  Chen squeezed the trigger on her disruptor weapon then, sending a snake of brilliant green light thrashing across the room, so bedazzling she was forced to momentarily avert her gaze. The energy beam struck Damarus on his mid-torso, vaporising part of his black cloak. The shifting, warped energy of his non-corporeal form below was exposed, and he laughed heartily. Astounded by what she had just seen, Chen tried firing again, but before she could discharge another disruptor blast, something – something unseen yet incredibly strong – tore the weapon from her hand and sent it flying into Damarus’ outstretched palm. Calmly, the shadowy figure placed the weapon down on the dais at the foot of his throne, hissing through his metallic mask.

  He looked at her. “Where have you been, Lora? Where did you go? You look much older than you were before, on that day you left me stranded on Deadworld…”

  “I never imagined you would escape from there,” she gasped. “I was sure that without the Thunder, you were trapped there forever. I can’t believe how stupid I was. How young…”

  “You underestimated me,” he told her. “I was able to use a piece of technology, a marvel of the ancient city on Deadworld, to leave that planet and go back through Heaven’s Gate. The same piece of alien technology, in fact, that now keeps this island afloat, and is able to transport the Silver City wherever I want it to go, anywhere in the world.”

  “I know that now.”

  “When I arrived through Heaven’s Gate, I found that I had travelled back through time, through hundreds of years, just as I predicted I would. I had arrived only a few decades after the impact of Asteroid 2007 VK184. It was post-apocalyptic. The world, as I had known it from my own time, had ceased to exist.”

  “So you took advantage of the poor people who had managed to survive,” she shook her head. “Just like you did with the Sirkharins, but on a far more ambitious scale.”

  “I was welcomed with open arms,” he said matter-of-factly. “They were looking for some kind of spiritual awakening after the disaster. They needed me. There were those who believed me to be a long awaited Messiah. I simply played into their mythology, their fantasy, bringing enlightenment to them in the process. I helped them, bringing our great civilisation back from the brink of extinction. And they loved me for it.”

  “You deceived them. Brainwashed them. You were nothing more than an Antichrist, perhaps.”

  Damarus chuckled. “Lora, I could stand here and argue with you about that claim all day long, but it won’t change the fact that people genuinely believed in me, and my power. There were those who thought just as you do, of course. The Bellum Sacrum Wars were fought over it, bloody and drawn out like the Crusades of old. But the establishment of my New Dominion soon saw the end of such ridiculous ideas. Lora, you were raised to believe in me. Why not just accept the truth?”

  “Because I know what you are now. You are just a man. Paramo was right about you. He was right about a lot of things…”

  A wave of anger passed through him. “We’ll see about that. But you haven’t answered my question, Lora. Where did you go when you abandoned me? Clearly, you didn’t just take the Thunder straight back to Earth. Somehow, I suspect you have been time travelling…”

  “Where have I been?” she snorted, exasperated. There was so much he didn’t know about her, about the two decades of emotional torment she had experienced. “You would not believe what I have been through all these years,” she said. Thoughts of the Combine and Asterites, and exploding worlds flooded her mind. “The journey I have been on and the things I have been forced to do just to get here. To this time.”

  “Three centuries have elapsed from my point of view,” Damarus said. “But you’re from the future, a future I have yet to see…”

  “Actually, I did take the Thunder straight back to Earth,” she smirked, old memories resurfacing. “I just haven’t arrived here yet, from your point of view.”

  “Interesting. So why are you here, now? Still trying to change history?”

  She gritted her teeth, and took a deep breath. “I had a good teacher…” she said with heavy irony. In the same breath, she suddenly felt desperate to reach out to him again; perhaps it was possible to separate Cris from the Eidolon without resorting to such drastic measures. “Damarus… Cris,” she pleaded. “I have travelled through time and across entire universes because for twenty-one years I have believed that there is still hope of redemption in you. I believe that there is still a good man deep down behind that impossible façade, waiting to be found again. Come back to me. Please. I’m begging you.”

  Damarus gestured, and his expressionless mask began to retract, peeling back section by section until it was gone, revealing the chaotic, anomalous energy form beneath. “There is nothing left now of the dead man you refer to,” he said with a sinister chill. “I will crush the Resistance, and my rule will last for tens of thousands of years. The people will learn to love me again, just as they did before.”

  “Cris, I still love you,” Chen said, tears rolling down her cheeks. “Doesn’t that mean anything to you? Isn’t there still a chance for us?”

  “It’s too late, Lora,” was his simple reply.

  She nodded, her face contorted and shoulders buckling with heavy emotion. In that moment, her worst fears had been realised.

  No alternative.

  God, help me.

  It was a heartfelt prayer, a prayer of absolute desperation. But the only response was darkness, a deeper darkness yet… and she felt like she was spinning, endlessly falling, sucked down and down… Memories of the last twenty-one years flashed quickly before her eyes. Memories of Lenton, of a time before her soul had been ripped apart. Now, there was no choice. “So be it,” she mumbled. “I never thought it would really come to this, but you’ve left me with little real option.” She slid her left hand into the vertical slit on her combat suit, pulling out her .32 pistol.

  “Really?” Damarus said, amused.

  “Really,” she breathed. Nodded. “You unimaginable bastard. If you’re going to rule for tens of thousands of years, then you’re going to have to live with this.”

  Without another word she put the barrel of the gun directly into her own mouth and squeezed the trigger. The explosion was loud and amplified in the large throne room, lapping against the hard walls and splashing around in a fierce echo. The round lit her cheeks like a firecracker, chopped out some front teeth and blew the back of her head all over the floor and the empty row seats behind her. Blood sprayed.

  Lorelei Chen did a twisting jig and collapsed to the floor, dead instantly.

  22

  Light.

  Brightest, dazzling white light, omnipresent, permeating everything…

  The All.

  She lay facedown, listening to the silence. She was perfectly alone. Nobody was watching. Nobody else was there, and she was not perfectly sure that she was there herself.

  A long time later, or maybe no time at all, it came to her that she must exist, must be more than disembodied thought, because she was lying, definitely lying, on some surface. Therefore she had a sense of touch, and th
e thing against which she lay existed too. Almost as soon as she had reached this conclusion, Lorelei Chen became conscious that she was naked.

  Convinced as she was of her total solitude, this did not concern her, but it did intrigue her slightly. She wondered whether, as she could feel, she would be able to see. In opening them, she discovered that she had eyes.

  She lay in a bright mist, though it was not like mist she had ever experienced before. Her surroundings were not hidden by cloudy vapour; rather the cloudy vapour had not yet formed into surroundings. Everything was filled with the immense light; it poured from every conceivable direction and erupted from every misty curve and surface, brighter than a thousand supernovae. Dazzling, overpowering her senses… yet pleasant and tranquil.

  The floor on which she lay seemed to be white, neither warm nor cold, but simply there, a flat, blank something on which to be.

  She sat up. Her body appeared unscathed. She touched her face, and realised it was intact and flawless. No gunshot wound. Then a noise reached her through the unformed nothingness that surrounded her: the small soft thumpings of something that flapped, flailed, and struggled. It was a pitiful noise, yet also slightly indecent. She had the uncomfortable feeling that she was eavesdropping on something obscene, shameful.

  For the first time, she wished she were clothed.

  Barely had the wish formed in her head than white robes appeared a short distance away. She took them and pulled them on. They were soft, clean, and warm. It was extraordinary how they had appeared just like that, the moment she had wanted them…

  She stood up, looking around. Where was she? Was this Heaven? All she could see was light, nothing but sublime empyreal beauty. All was hushed and still, except for those odd thumping and whimpering noises coming from somewhere close by in the mist…

  Lora turned her head, and recoiled. She had spotted the thing that was making the noises. It seemed to be a sort of monster, of a form which only a diseased fancy could conceive. It resembled the hybrid of an octopus, a dragon, and a human caricature, but such description was not faithful to the hideous spirit of the thing. It appeared to be half-sunken in the ground, bones broken and snapped, writhing and squirming in tormented agony. A pulpy, tentacled head with human-like eyes and face surmounted a grotesque and scaly body; but it was the general outline of the whole thing which made it most shockingly frightful. It made a sound like a human baby, repugnant and disturbing, gasping for breath.