“Major,” the nearest one—a sergeant—greeted her. “That was you just now, on the Aether? What’s going on?”
“It’s a trap,” she hollered. “Everyone pull back!”
The sergeant blinked once, twice, and then whirled about and began shouting orders at the troops surrounding them. “Everyone back! Back to position three! Now!”
Arani was turning in a circle, looking all around, trying to see past the soldiers.
“Major,” the sergeant said, trying to get her attention again. “You need to come, too.” He frowned. “What are you looking for?”
She saw them. “There!” She pointed frantically.
The sergeant followed her gesture. He saw what she was pointing at: three figures in black robes rounding a corner further down the street.
Arani was already sprinting that way. The sergeant hesitated, then issued orders to the nearest group of troopers. “Come on!”
They all ran after Arani.
A second later, the building exploded.
Arani rounded the corner and what she saw there forced her to come to a sudden halt: The three black-robed men were standing there, as if they were waiting for her. The big one drew a blast pistol from his robes. Arani started to leap to the side, to try to avoid the shot that was surely coming, when the explosion hit, nearly knocking her off her feet.
Her head spinning, she struggled back to her feet. Her first thought was for the sergeant and his men, behind her—had they survived? But that thought quickly took second place as she remembered that she was about to be shot by the cultists. Dropping into a fighting stance, she looked up, her eyes trying with difficulty to focus on what lay ahead of her. She gasped.
Two of the cultists lay unmoving on the ground. Standing over them was a third figure—but it was no longer a robed and hooded terrorist. It was an officer in the First Legion. He was tall and slender, with very tan skin and dark hair. His nose was long and narrow and his eyes dark. He held a blast pistol and was gazing down at the two men he had obviously just shot.
Arani approached slowly, carefully. She looked from the officer to the two cultists and back to the officer. She started as she realized just who he was.
“Colonel! Colonel Barmakid. What—?”
The man looked up at Arani and nodded.
“These two attacked me as I was approaching,” he informed her. “Cultists, trying to escape, obviously.”
A shiver ran through Arani then. She’d never spoken directly with Colonel Barmakid, the adjutant to General Nakamura, before. His voice gave her the chills, though at first she couldn’t have said why.
“They’re dead?” she asked.
The colonel snorted a sharp laugh. “When I’m attacked, Major—particularly by lunatic terrorists—I don’t hesitate to defend myself to the maximum.”
“Of course, sir,” she said with a nod. Then she frowned. “Two?” She looked around. “You didn’t see a third?”
“Third?” Barmakid regarded her sidelong. “I saw no third cultist, Major. No.” He looked around, then pointed toward an alleyway nearby. “Perhaps he ran that way, before I saw them.”
“But he was at the rear,” Arani murmured, frowning, looking around as well.
“What was that, Major?”
At that moment the sergeant and his squad rounded the corner and approached. They appeared soot-stained, bruised, and dazed, but were generally intact. Arani saw them and felt enormous relief that they were still alive.
The sergeant saw Barmakid and hastily snapped a salute, then addressed Arani. “Major,” he said, “thank you for the warning.” He pointed back toward the building where she had been held captive; it was now a pile of blazing rubble. “We were going in there…!”
Arani nodded, glancing at his name tag. “Glad you’re still alive, Sergeant Garner.”
“Sergeant,” Colonel Barmakid said, from where he was kneeling down over the two bodies. He had stripped the black robes off both of them and set them aside in a pile, and was patting down the remaining clothing they wore. “Have these two carried back to headquarters.” He stood and backed away to allow the soldiers to move in. “I want every inch of them and their clothing gone over, down to the molecular level. Whatever can be found out about them, I want it found.”
The sergeant saluted again. “Yes, sir.” He motioned for his men to move up.
“Wait,” Arani said.
The sergeant and his men hesitated. Colonel Barmakid frowned.
“What’s the trouble, Major?” Barmakid asked.
Arani squeezed past the soldiers and knelt where Barmakid had been crouching a few seconds earlier. She studied the two figures who lay dead on the street; they seemed the right size for the two that had attacked her. She looked up at the colonel. Then she looked at the pile of robes. She reached out for it.
“What are you doing, Major?” Barmakid asked, a sharp and suddenly hostile tone to his voice.
Arani turned to Sergeant Garner. “Sergeant, arrest Colonel Barmakid.”
Garner opened and closed his mouth soundlessly but otherwise made no sound.
“Have you lost your mind, Major?” Barmakid asked, speaking almost casually now.
“I think I almost did, for a minute there,” she answered. “But I can see much more clearly now.”
“And what is that supposed to mean, Major?”
By way of response, Arani lifted the pile of robes. She let one drop to the pavement, then another.
She was still holding a third. A third.
“Arrest Colonel Barmakid!”
It took Sergeant Garner another second or two to grasp the significance of what he was seeing. Then, eyes widening in astonishment, he directed his weapon at the colonel.
Barmakid already had his gun leveled.
No one moved. No one breathed.
Seconds ticked past. The tension was unbearable.
Then finally Barmakid smiled and relaxed. He turned his pistol around and offered it to the sergeant. Garner, surprised yet again, reached out and took it from him.
The colonel regarded Arani with what looked to her like an odd combination of respect and contempt.
“Well done, Major,” he said. “You might have quite a career ahead of you.” He laughed. “At least, until my lord Vorthan returns, frees me, and consumes you in fire and death.”
As the soldiers led him away, he laughed again, long and hard.
Arani watched him until he vanished around the corner. Then she exhaled slowly and dropped to a sitting position on the street. She stared up at the smoke-occluded stars high above and shook her head in wonder.
“Barmakid,” she whispered. “Colonel Barmakid—the general’s own adjutant—a traitor and a cultist. Has it come to that? Are we that far gone?”
She breathed in and out slowly, the air acrid with smoke and gunpowder and ozone from energy weapons fire, trying to reacquire her bearings.
“Major Arani,” came a voice over the Aether a few seconds later. At least the jamming had apparently ceased. “Major Arani. Come in.”
“Arani here,” she answered wearily.
“Report to rendezvous point delta immediately for new assignment.”
Arani bit her tongue, balled up her fists, and then sent back, “Acknowledged.”
Climbing slowly to her feet, she dusted herself off, consulted the Aether for her present location, and started walking toward point delta.
Around her, a city—a city whose name she hadn’t even bothered to learn—continued to burn.
3
“I apologize for my outburst, General,” Tamerlane sent over the Aether connection after regaining control of his emotions, “but—with all due respect to the Emperor and his advisors, who doubtlessly labor day and night in the service of the realm—have they all lost their minds?”
This was actually a question the colonel had asked himself on numerous occasions in the past six months. It was the first time, however, that he’d expressed the sentiment alou
d, and to his longtime commanding officer. But he couldn’t help it; here they were—Tamerlane and his commanding general—caught in the middle of a firefight on a mostly insignificant planet. And the reason they’d been ordered there in the first place remained for the most part obscured.
General Hideo Nakamura started to reply, but Tamerlane would never know if the response would have contained the general’s truthful feelings about such orders, or a simple admonition against questioning the priorities of their political leaders. For, even as the general tapped the Aether link to send his message, a blizzard of energy bolts perforated the air—and the wall just above and behind him and his troops. As they all instinctively ducked, shards of masonry and clouds of dust descended on Nakamura and his staff of support officers.
From his position a relatively short distance away, Tamerlane could see what was happening. The enemy forces had broken through the lines almost directly ahead, and the First Legion’s defenses were collapsing. What had started out as a simple scouting maneuver had become something infinitely worse, and their position had become the front line of the invaders’ assault.
“Pull back!” the gray-haired general ordered over the link to his forces. “Ezekial—get them back!”
Tamerlane acknowledged the order, though he wasn’t exactly certain how to go about such a thing, and stuck his head up again to get a sense of their current tactical situation. The words “rapidly deteriorating” came to mind. Another volley of energy blasts also nearly came to his mind—and the rest of his head—as well, and he quickly ducked back behind the remains of the stonework where he’d found refuge.
He and Nakamura had landed on this planet—Kampong, an outpost along the fringes of the Anatolian Empire, which they both served—to investigate rumors of new incursions from Riyahad, the neighboring empire in that galactic quadrant. Oddly enough, it lay in the same general sector as the barren NM-156 where Tamerlane had headed up the portal expedition. No sooner had boots touched the ground here than a wave of Riyahadan forces had launched a full assault on their landing grounds. With Nakamura’s support fleet in orbit caught up in an engagement far overhead, the soldiers under his command on the ground were left to fend for themselves.
Tamerlane tried to peek out again but the level of enemy fire coming at him and the others was simply too much. They were all pinned down, here in the outskirts of a bombed-out city that contained nothing of value. Even the intelligence reports that had drawn them here with promises of double-agents and secret information had been wrong. Now there was nothing left to do but get as many members of First Legion out alive as possible.
“Aren’t you glad now that I managed to get you recalled back onto my force?” Nakamura called from his own hiding place. “You could’ve missed out on all of this!”
“Thank you,” Tamerlane replied back, deadpan. “Thank you so much, General.” He looked around as best he could without revealing himself, taking in the tactical environment. It wasn’t good. He and the general and another dozen or so troops were scattered within the shattered front of a large concrete building. The main street ran past just beyond them. Enemy soldiers were advancing from the left as Tamerlane could see them. They wore the thin, loose-fitting robes of Ryahadi soldier-fanatics, and each of them carried both an energy rifle and a dagger. They all had murder in their eyes. The Anatolian Empire and the Riyahadi Empire had never been close—politically, socially, or even religiously—as the long string of wars between them over the centuries attested to. These guys, Tamerlane knew, meant to kill them quickly—but to be captured alive by them would be even worse.
He started to issue the set of orders he’d just formulated for a hasty but careful retreat, when a blood-curdling cry of bloodlust arose from the Riyahadi forces. They charged, a headlong sprint forward, guns firing into the fronts of all the buildings along their side of the street.
Tamerlane cursed. His idea for an orderly withdrawal had been stillborn. There was simply no way his small band of fighters could hold off a well-armed Riyahadi mob for very long, while the bulk of Nakamura’s army slipped away. Their only chance now was simply to flee—to flee this battleground as quickly as humanly possible, and by any means possible.
He gave the word—”Retreat! Back to the shuttles if you can!”—and then leapt out of concealment, rolling and dodging, blasts flashing and roaring all around him, to get to Nakamura. Somehow he survived long enough to make it.
“Come on, General,” he shouted, grasping the older man by the shoulder. “We have to get you out of here.”
The general pulled himself up from his shooter’s stance—he’d taken out a half-dozen of the attackers already—and hurried after Tamerlane. The colonel motioned to two troopers he spied off to their right to come over and join them, but the men never made it even halfway. In a flash of green, two of the Riyahadi soldier-fanatics leapt over the rubble and landed just in front of them. The two First Legion men were caught completely flat-footed. Blades flashed and the soldiers fell.
Tamerlane instantly moved around in front of Nakamura, positioning himself between the somewhat short, stocky general and the Riyahadis. His energy pistol was in his hand, at the ready, and he fired as the first of the attackers rushed forward. His first shot missed slightly wide and the blade came up. Now Tamerlane could see the man’s face: the lower half was obscured by a scarf-like cloth, but dark eyes blazed just above. Surprisingly, the man didn’t utter a sound as he leapt, dagger flashing—and he made no sound when Tamerlane’s second shot caught him in the face and brought him down hard and unmoving on the dusty floor.
Tamerlane heard scuffling sounds even as he turned around to check on the general. To his shock, he realized that the second Riyahadi had somehow slipped past him in the brief moment that he’d fought the first one, and the savage killer was now struggling with Nakamura. The general had managed to block the first dagger swing and was grasping the man’s left forearm with both hands, holding the dagger at bay. The right hand, however, was rising, preparing to swing around and club the general in the head. Tamerlane didn’t hesitate—he fired, from only a few meters away. The Riyahadi’s right hand exploded.
The soldier-fanatic screamed and whirled around, waving his bleeding stump, his scarf falling away to reveal his entire face. His dark features were lined with pain and hatred, and his eyes locked onto those of Tamerlane and burned with fire and murder. He started forward.
Nakamura clubbed him in the back of the head with his rifle butt.
Tamerlane was on him before he hit the ground. He seized the man and rolled him over, face up, holding him by the collar—only to see that the Riyahadi had bitten into a poison capsule and was already dead.
The colonel looked up at the general. Nakamura shrugged. “There was nothing of any use we could’ve learned from him,” he said.
Tamerlane let the body slump back down to the ground and glared at it. “You’re right,” he said. “It’s the higher-ups in our own military that I have questions for,” he replied, angry.
Together the two men hurried through the ruined building and out the back. After a quick look around, checking for the safest path back to their ships, they jogged north. They could see other members of Legion I similarly slipping from one point of cover to another, evacuating as ordered. The enemy seemed to be confining itself to the street in front of the buildings, at least for the moment. That was good; it meant most of the unit might be able to get away. Even so, Tamerlane had the distinct feeling, honed from years of operations against the Empire’s enemies, that a major assault was coming at any moment.
As soon as the transport ships came into view, Nakamura motioned for them to halt. He nodded toward a shattered wall to his right. “We can set up a perimeter defense here,” he stated. Accessing the Aether, he issued orders to his troops, attempting to sculpt order out of chaos again. Tamerlane did likewise, issuing specific replies to questions coming in from the various sub-commanders.
As soon as he was done, Nak
amura switched off the link and cursed violently. “I hate retreating,” he spat. “I hate it, Ezekial. I want to go back and fight those people.”
“I know you do, sir—and so do I,” Tamerlane replied. “But we both know the first priority is pulling the First out intact. Our tactical situation here is just too shaky to do anything more. At least for now.” He gazed out at the rubble- and ruined-building-filled space between their position and the seemingly-now-halted enemy line, and could make out the other First Legion soldiers hurrying back in their direction. “They’re not pressing their advantage at the moment, for whatever reason. Nothing we can do for now but sit tight here, and wait for everyone to get regrouped at the ships. And hope they don’t suddenly realize they could overwhelm us all pretty easily if they launched a full-scale attack.”
Nakamura scowled but nodded. Then he looked more closely, more intensely, at Tamerlane. “I heard what you said about questioning the higher-ups. Believe me, I have some questions for them, too. But—Ezekial—you mustn’t say that in front of anyone else.”
“Somebody needs to say it.” Tamerlane gestured around at the ruins of the city. “For starters—who thought this was a good idea? Sending us down here, into this mess?”
“You’re right, of course. But—do you have any idea how difficult it was for me to get you reinstated? To get you your rank back? Do you want me to have to go through that all over again?”
Tamerlane couldn’t speak for a moment. Finally he managed, “I’m very grateful for all that you did, General.”
“I know. I know you are. But my point is—” He reached out and patted Tamerlane on the shoulder. “—You are far too valuable an asset to lose. And I certainly don’t need you self-destructing. So—keep your mouth shut with regard to the insane orders we received today. Understood?”
“Understood, sir,” Tamerlane answered quickly and crisply. He considered for a moment, then ventured, “Might I speak freely, sir?”
The Shattering: Omnibus Page 5
