The stiflingly hot air of the courtyard cracked suddenly with the sound of gunfire, followed immediately by cries and screams from the prisoners and from the bystanders.
Rameses lurched reflexively to the handrail and stared down in shock.
The soldiers had opened fire, executing every one of the prisoners.
The crowd that had a mere moment earlier surrounded the scene below was now fleeing en masse, through the arches and back out into the Heliopolis complex of Anakh that surrounded the pyramid. Only the soldiers of the Second Imperial Legion remained alive in the courtyard, some twenty-four dead bodies sprawled before them.
Rameses took this all in, swallowed hard, and whirled on Iapetus. The colonel was cool as ever; he had taken a pack of cigarettes from his jacket pocket and was lighting one as he gazed down evenly at the scene.
Rameses wanted to shout, wanted to vent his raw anger at the man, but he quickly reined himself in. He knew from long experience that he had to calm himself and gather his thoughts before saying a word, or he would dissolve into sputtering anger and frustration and merely embarrass himself instead of putting the fear of Imperial wrath into the colonel.
Iapetus dragged on the cigarette and then blew a thin stream out in the other direction. As Rameses started to speak to him, he raised a hand between them in a “just a moment” gesture, clearly receiving a private communication via the Aether link. He nodded to himself and said aloud, “That’s fine, Major—excellent work. You men head back to the camp at the landing site—I’m sure the governor will be happy to dispose of the waste for us.”
Rameses blanched and felt his anger rising all over again. Who was this man—this lowly colonel—to make assumptions and to issue orders on his behalf, without checking with him first? What monstrous arrogance could possibly—
Iapetus had severed the link and now faced Rameses directly for the first time—something that once again broke Rameses’ train of thought.
“I trust you are satisfied with how this was handled,” the colonel said, blowing smoke off to the side.
Rameses felt his face darkening. “I—no, Colonel, I cannot say I am satisfied.”
“Oh?” Iapetus did not seem concerned by this news.
“You simply ordered an execution,” Rameses barked. “Ordered it yourself!”
Iapetus regarded him coolly, as if visually appraising him for the first time. “You wanted to do it? You wanted to be the one to issue the order?”
Rameses scowled. “No—that’s not what I’m saying at all. Not that I wanted to.” He paused for a moment, gathering himself again. “I mean that, in legal terms, if it had to be done—and I’m not convinced that it should have—I should have been the one to—”
“I acted within my authority,” Iapetus interrupted smoothly, “as ranking Imperial military officer on-site, present at the express order of His Majesty himself.”
“Well, but—” Rameses stammered, then, “You had not yet persuaded me of their guilt.”
“I didn’t need to.”
“There was no trial—”
“I had already issued my judgment.”
Involuntarily, Rameses tightened his grip on the crooked Egyptian-style staff he held in his left hand. He felt his blood boiling over and had to restrain himself from actual violence.
A second later, the doors on the far side of the room opened and four more soldiers of the Second Legion entered, marching smoothly and swiftly across to the balcony, their boots resounding as they struck the marble floor. There they took up positions behind Iapetus and stood at attention. Their weapons were slung or holstered but clearly they were at the ready, and the threat and potential of violence hung like heavy smoke in the air.
He had called them, Rameses understood then. He had signaled for them to come, over the Aether link, while the two of them had been talking.
What is this man up to? Just what is he capable of?
But then, as if in direct counterpoint to the show of force, Iapetus raised a hand in a placating gesture toward the governor and his heretofore hard expression softened somewhat. Rameses watched it happen and couldn’t immediately decide if it was an act or sincere.
“Governor,” the man in black said, his voice now gentle, “I apologize if I have acted in a manner contrary to your wishes or expectations. That was not my intent.”
I seriously doubt that, Rameses thought to himself—but he did find himself somewhat mollified by the words and the apparent conviction behind them. Then he glanced at the four armed soldiers standing like statues behind the colonel and for the first time he wondered where his own guards had gone off to.
“Rest assured that you have witnessed the lawful execution of known terrorists and cultists,” Iapetus was saying. “This is a good day for the Empire, and the cooperation of your forces in their capture is much appreciated.”
Rameses almost reluctantly nodded in acknowledgement. “They were cultists—that much is certain?”
“Most assuredly,” Iapetus replied, dropping his cigarette on the marble tile and crushing it with a black boot.
Rameses considered this and nodded. “Then you did well to kill them. Being rid of worshippers of the foul god Vorthan is something any citizen of the Empire can rightfully accept and appreciate—no matter how it was carried out. They are simply too dangerous to—”
“They were not Vorthan cultists,” Iapetus said.
“What?” Rameses blinked, meeting the colonel’s eyes. “But then, who—?”
Iapetus shrugged—a miniscule, almost undetectable motion—and looked to one of his soldiers. The man spoke up: “They were followers of Korvak.”
“There you are,” Iapetus said with a nod to the soldier.
“Korvak?” Rameses was taken aback. “Korvak has never had cultists—he has some few devotees scattered about the Outer Worlds, but nothing like—”
“The new Korvak. The false god.”
“What?”
“Someone—a man—claiming to be Korvak has recently begun popping up on worlds along the fringe of the Empire,” Iapetus explained, making it clear from his tone that he felt extremely put-upon to have to present this news to a mere planetary governor. “This man—” and he strongly emphasized the word man again— “is a liar, a deceiver. He lures victims into his cult with wild promises and claims of godhood.” Iapetus snickered. “We will see just how much of a god he truly is, when I capture him and fire a pulse-blast into the side of his head.”
Rameses started at this.
Iapetus’s lips twisted slightly with distaste. “Any of the gods could become a threat, but I worry far more about those who pretend to their status—and to the poor unfortunates, like these—” He motioned toward the bodies lying lifeless in the courtyard below. “—who place stock in them—in their lies, their deceptions.”
“Whether Korvak is a god or a man,” Rameses argued, trying to hold his returning anger in check, “his followers have never caused problems for the Empire—have never acted as terrorists.” He rounded fully on the colonel. “When you came here, when you told me what your mission entailed, I naturally assumed you were pursuing the twisted devotees of Vorthan the godslayer.”
“I will not abide cultists, or rebels, or terrorists of any stripe, Governor,” Iapetus snapped. “Whether Korvak is a god or a man, he is usurping the power of the Empire, subverting its citizens and destabilizing its society.” He moved in close to Rameses and his eyes burned bright. “I will not have that. I will crush it out wherever I find it. Without mercy.”
Rameses was filled with wrath and tried to respond but found that he could not.
“Those people were cultists,” Iapetus said with finality. “Terrorists and rebels. Now they’ve been eliminated. And I will do it again—over and over again, if I have to—to protect this Empire.”
Before Rameses could formulate a response—or unleash an uncalculated and emotional one—Colonel Iapetus gestured sharply to his soldiers and they spun in unison
on their heels. The five men in black crossed the chamber rapidly and exited the far doors.
Rameses hurried after them, wishing to summon his own guards but unable to locate any of them. As he reached the open double-doors on the far side—the doors through which Iapetus and his retinue had just passed—and moved out into the broad hallway beyond, he saw his own Sand Kings elite troopers, resplendent in their fancy dress blue-and-gold uniforms, standing against the wall, disarmed, hands raised, as a veritable battalion of Second Legion soldiers held their silver guns on them. Once Iapetus was past, his men lowered their weapons and followed him out.
The Sand Kings looked up at Rameses in shock and humiliation.
“Rearm yourselves, fools!” the governor shouted, waving his crooked staff at them to emphasize the point.
The guards quickly snatched up the pistols they had been forced to cast aside. The commander stepped forward and offered the arms-crossed-over-chest salute of the Sand Kings. “Shall we follow them out, Governor?” he asked, anger and resentment clearly dueling with embarrassment on his dark face. “Should we arrest them?”
Rameses started to agree to the suggestion, then hesitated. He considered things carefully.
“No, Commander,” he said after a few seconds. “Let them go.”
The commander clearly wished to object, but knew better than to openly challenge the governor’s orders. He swallowed with some visible difficulty and waited.
“Get your men back to their normal positions,” Rameses said at last. “And leave me alone.”
The commander saluted again and issued sharp orders to his men. Within a few seconds, the Sand Kings had all hurried from the hall.
Rameses inhaled deeply and exhaled slowly, then turned and walked back across to the balcony. There he stood again, this time gazing upward. As expected, a few moments later, he saw the transport ship and fighter escorts of Iapetus’s retinue rising into the sky. Seconds later, they had streaked away, gone from visibility, on their way back to their ship riding high in orbit over Ahknaton.
“This is for the best,” Rameses whispered softly to himself. “All I wanted was that madman and his soldiers gone from my planet, as swiftly as possible. If I had sought to detain him, whether to have him arrested or simply to debate with him any longer, there would have almost certainly been violence, with who knows how many dead on both sides. And he would still be here.” He gritted his teeth. “And who knows which side the Emperor would’ve taken in this? Who can predict how that man will react to anything?”
He leaned his staff against the side wall and rested both hands on the railing, gripping it so tightly he idly wondered if he might actually crack the masonry.
“But what happened here today can never be allowed to happen again. Never again.”
He inhaled again, then looked down and saw the cigarette butt where Iapetus had stepped on it. Quickly, reflexively, he kicked at it, knocking it over the side and down into the courtyard; the same courtyard where some two dozen citizens of his planet lay dead. Dead because they had kept alive the memory of one of the gods. One of the decent ones.
“I must never lose control of the situation—of my own capital, my own palace, my own quarters, my own men—again,” he whispered. “Whatever it takes, this must never happen again.”
A trio of Sand Kings had emerged from the archway to the right and were taking it upon themselves to begin dragging the bodies away, one by one. Rameses watched them work for a time, thoughts and plans rapidly racing through his mind.
“I must never again allow my men to be shoved aside or intimidated by outsiders,” he growled, his teeth grinding. “Whatever it takes, from this point forward, I must be in control In absolute, unquestionable control.”
He gazed up at the sky, where Iapetus’s ship had passed a few moments earlier.
“And I will not forget you, Colonel,” he added. “There will be a reckoning between us, one day. Have no doubt about that.”
He looked back down. The bodies were nearly all gone now. One of the Sand Kings looked up, saw him on the balcony, and saluted. Rameses returned the gesture.
“Never again,” he repeated to himself. “Never again.”
5
Tamerlane leaned against the smooth metal bulkhead of the Imperial starship Edo and gazed out through the thick layer of molecularly-altered transparent alloy at the darkness of space that lay beyond. The stars he could see felt unfamiliar, alien to him, even though he’d just been here only weeks earlier. In his two-plus decades of service to the Imperium of Janus IV Rahkmanov, he’d traveled across vast swathes of the galaxy, but nowhere else had quite creeped him out as much as this region. Something about it just didn’t feel right. His experiences with the crew of Donbas had increased that uneasiness exponentially.
“What are we doing here?” he whispered, while the vast bulk of the Imperial battle cruiser Monrovia came into view as three linked silver cylinders gleaming in the void. “What foolishness could bring the entire royal court to the middle of nowhere?”
“That’s what I aim to find out, Ezekial,” came the smooth, steely voice from behind him. “And you’d better not let anyone else hear that kind of talk.”
Tamerlane turned about quickly and saluted as General Hideo Nakamura strode onto the observation deck. “Absolutely, General,” he replied, somewhat abashed. “My apologies.” Subconsciously he smoothed at his dark red dress uniform as he nodded at the man’s words.
“You know you haven’t offended me,” the general told him with a mild snort. “But, just remember—we’re about to be thrust into an entirely different environment than the one you’ve been used to lately. A, shall we say, highly-charged, political environment. If one of His Majesty’s fancy sparkledy Guardsmen heard you say something like that, you’d find yourself put head-first out the nearest airlock.”
“I understand, sir.”
General Nakamura continued to stare at him with hard, flinty eyes for another few seconds before moving past him to take up the same position he’d just occupied at the viewport.
“The Monrovia. Well. It’s not every day you see one of the Emperor’s precious yachts this far out along the fringe.” The general pursed his lips as he watched the massive vessel grow larger and larger as they drew nearer, quickly filling the entirety of the view.
Tamerlane considered saying something, then bit it back. He trusted the general implicitly and knew that Nakamura in turn liked and trusted him. But, that aside, he hadn’t achieved his present rank by flagrantly questioning the orders of his superiors—and certainly not those of the Emperor himself.
It was too late. Nakamura had already turned away from the port and was regarding him fully, seeming to size him up, even though the two of them had known one another and served together in the Imperial military for more than two decades.
“What is it, Ezekial?” the general asked at last. “I can tell you’re simply dying to say something.” He hesitated, then allowed the thinnest hint of a smile to play across his lips. “And if it’s sedition, far better to bring it up now, before we rendezvous with the royal yacht.”
Now it was Tamerlane’s turn to smile. “You mean you don’t mind sedition, sir?”
Nakamura shrugged, then pointed to his sidearm. “I figured I could simply execute you for it here, cleanly, and avoid having to involve a full hearing before the Inquisition. Not to mention troubling the Emperor himself.” His smile had spread into a grin. “The gods know I’ve heard enough of it from you lately, anyhow.”
Tamerlane cringed and rubbed at his eyes and the bridge of his nose. “You don’t exactly create the most open and accepting of environments for frank discussion, if you don’t mind my saying so, General.”
Now Nakamura actually laughed. “When have I ever held that reputation?”
After a moment Tamerlane finally relaxed a bit and started to speak. Even so, he found himself leaning in close and using a soft tone.
“Why exactly is the Emperor coming
all the way out here?” He motioned toward the viewport, and toward those strange, alien stars. “What does he want out here in the middle of nowhere? At, interestingly enough, the same planet where I was recently commanded by him to secretly throw the Sword of Baranak through a dimensional portal?” He hesitated, then, “And why didn’t he tell you, of all people, that he was coming?”
The general didn’t speak for a long moment. His dark eyes met Tamerlane’s and held them. Then, “You have many questions, Ezekial,” he stated.
“And answers haven’t exactly been forthcoming, have they?” the colonel responded. He was making no effort to break the other man’s stare. “General, you know as well as I do that something very, very strange is going on.”
It was Nakamura who finally looked away, staring down at the dull gray metal deck plating. “I know,” he said softly. “And I wish I knew what to tell you. But I don’t. I’m a loyal officer in the Emperor’s First Legion. If he gives an order, I follow it. No matter how strange it might seem to me.”
“That’s right,” Tamerlane replied. “I know all about following strange orders. I’ve carried out quite a few lately.”
Nakamura looked at him sharply, then exhaled and nodded. “And suffered the consequences, yes, I know.” He rubbed at his chin for a moment, then, “As best as I am able, Ezekial, and without bringing down the full brunt of the Emperor’s wrath upon us, I intend to find out exactly what’s going on. Believe me.”
Tamerlane considered this in silence for several seconds. His frown deepened by the moment. At last he looked away, gazing back out at the big royal yacht as a docking tube slid smoothly out of the surface of its central cylinder section. It waited to connect with their ship. Tamerlane suppressed a gasp. He’d never seen it up close before, and he had to admit the vessel was truly spectacular—far larger even than he had been led to believe by first impressions from a distance. Battleship-sized. A sweeping sculpture wrought all in silver and gold.
The Shattering: Omnibus Page 7
