All that, just for the new Ecclesiarch? she wondered. I mean, I know it’s an important office, but still—that looks like a set-up the Emperor himself would—
She frowned. There still had been no official word from higher up as to exactly whom this service—whatever it was to be—was for. She had been assuming it was to announce or swear in the new head of the Church, but...
Surely not, she thought. Surely not him. Wouldn’t they have told us?
The main doors opened. They were huge, metal and wood affairs inlaid with gleaming gemstones and golden filigree. They moved slowly, and it took a remarkably long time for them to open all the way in. When they finished moving, a blast of horns echoed out, and everyone who had been milling about far below in the sanctuary or main hall moved quickly to attention and bowed.
By Those Who Remain, Arani thought, shocked. It is him.
Janus IV, the Emperor himself, strode through the entrance, surrounded by his vast retinue of aides, assistants, bodyguards, and assorted other hangers-on. Along with him came the Empress herself, Lisbeth Salome Rahkmanov, and both of the royal children—the teenaged heir apparent and the little princess. The huge Emperor’s Guard troopers, impressive as ever in their brightly-colored synthetic crystal armor, stomped along in the wake of the party.
What is he doing here? Arani wondered. What could possibly be happening that would merit his traveling out here, to the heart of the Ecclesiarchy’s domain?
The Imperial party moved at a slow but steady pace along the broad red carpet that led from the entrance to the huge table in the center of the sanctuary. Light streamed in from the arches spaced around the lower section of the dome high above, giving the entire affair an ethereal quality—doubtlessly the intent of the original architects, some two thousand years earlier.
Hypnotized by the sight of such royal splendor, Arani jumped when a voice suddenly called to her over the Aether: “Arani, are you in position? Are you at your assigned spot?”
“I am,” she replied reflexively. Then, puzzled by the informality of the contact, she asked, “Who is this?”
The doors to the balcony behind her burst open. A silent hail of deadly dart flechettes sprayed out at her.
8
Tamerlane leaned over to Nakamura, speaking in a whisper. “General, I know you didn’t wish to harm any of our people—and I consider even the Ecclesiarchy to be ‘our people,’ as I know you do, too. I didn’t want that Reichenbach guy dead—though I’ll admit I did want to beat the stuffing out of him. But, I have to ask…” He raised his hand and flames flickered across his fingertips. “Would you actually have done it? Were you bluffing, or would you have unleashed the fire on them?”
Nakamura met the colonel’s eyes, then looked down at his own hand, flexing it slowly as the feeling returned to it. “I don’t know, Ezekial,” he said. He looked up and met his adjutant’s eyes again. “Would you?”
Tamerlane considered this for a second, frowning.
“I would have, yes,” he said. “I would’ve hated it—and I hate that those people were killed anyway—by their own stupidity!—but, yes. The overall survival of the Empire must come first. And I honestly do believe we are on a holy mission now, sir.”
“You believe Stanishur’s propaganda, then? That we’ve been touched by the gods—gifted with their holy fire, for some special purpose?”
“Maybe so. There is without question a vast conspiracy unfolding around us. The Emperor may be in the process of making himself an absolutist dictator, or else someone near him is exerting a tremendous amount of control over him, forcing him to do these things—and placing him in grave danger in the process. We have to expose this—this person, this conspiracy, whatever it is—and bring it out into the open, where it can be dealt with.” He offered a slight shrug. “If someone—the gods, whatever—have given us an extra advantage in order to fulfill that purpose, I say we use it.”
Nakamura took this in, chewed on it, and nodded.
“We have to believe that, Ezekial,” he replied at length. “We have to. Every bit of it. After all, the alternative is that we—all of us here on this ship—are possessed…” He squeezed his eyes closed and brought his hands up to his face, then shook his head firmly. “You have to be right—we must be acting in the direct service of the gods now. The alternative is simply too horrible to contemplate.”
9
Major Niobe Arani leapt out over a quarter-kilometer drop of empty space. She leapt for dear life.
She had been ready for an attack, having made up her mind before landing on Ascanius that it wasn’t paranoia if they really were out to get you—and that someone really was out to get her. She had been poised to respond to an attack from behind, and had done just that. However, she hadn’t expected a projectile attack, assuming that anyone who wanted to kill her would also not wish to draw the attention of the people down below—the very important people, now entering for some sort of religious ceremony.
A silent projectile weapon, though—that’s what got her. Or rather, almost got her.
As soon as it fired, she understood what it was: A flechette sprayer. Not much good over any distances but utterly devastating up close. Most importantly, it was almost silent as it fired its barrage of high-velocity razor blades.
She leapt, in the only direction that seemed safe. Ironic that “safe” should mean “out over a balcony’s edge and down toward a marble floor very, very far below.”
She didn’t fall that far, of course. She scarcely fell far at all. Her short, ninjato-style sword was already unsheathed and in her hand as she moved, and she jabbed its virtually frictionless blade into the ancient woodwork of the balcony, swinging down and around by its handle and thus allowing the hail of blades to pass just overhead. Her momentum carried her back around in a gymnastic arc that brought her back onto the balcony a few feet to the left of where she’d been a second earlier.
The attacker—a figure clad all in white, with a hood and mask covering most of his face—was startled by this move and stood motionless as she landed before him. Belatedly he brought his gun up to fire again, only to have it knocked from his hand by Arani’s sword. Blood splattered across the elegantly-carved wall of the balcony, and the man in white, eyes wide now, whirled and fled.
Arani tried to access the Aether, to report what was happening and to call for assistance—but she was not at all surprised to find she could not link in. At first she thought the signal itself was being jammed, but then she realized it was still there—she had simply been locked out of it.
Cursing, she crouched down and then sprang through the doorway from the balcony back out into the corridor, keeping low to avoid another possible attack. None came. She looked up and saw the figure in white racing away down the dimly lit hall.
No one else was going to help her, she knew. No one would possibly even believe her. They might even accuse her of planning to shoot someone from her assigned perch—the Emperor, even. The gods only knew what punishment the Inquisition would create for that crime.
No—she needed to catch this guy. She needed to ask him a series of questions, and she needed to present him to the highest possible authority she could find, as proof of her innocence.
She just had to hope that, whoever that higher-up was, he or she wasn’t part of the conspiracy, as well.
10
The Inquisition ship Confessor cleared the last line of Imperial picket ships and angled down toward the surface of the planet below. Aboard it anxiously waited five individuals—individuals who might be seen as patriots or as renegades, depending upon one’s point of view.
Whether those five could successfully make their way past layer upon layer of Imperial security and actually set foot on Ascanius had depended entirely upon two things: One, that the conspiracy against them was confined to a few individuals near the top of the power structure, who had been issuing very specific and secret orders against them to only a small number of operatives such as Reichenbach,
and two, that the combination of Nakamura’s fame, Stanishur’s cunning, and Tamerlane’s hands-on knowledge of Imperial security could allow them to talk their way past or otherwise overcome any resistance they did encounter. The odds for the one had seemed good; they had monitored the Aether net from the time they had left Adrianople and there had been no alerts, no declarations making them outlaws in the eyes of any imperial personnel. The conspiracy, it seemed, was indeed limited. As to the second, they had breezed past security with remarkable ease simply by claiming that Nakamura and Stanishur were aboard, that the attendance of both had been requested by His Majesty—a most logical assumption, if in reality a lie—and that they were running late for the start of the Council and had no time to waste. Once their identities were confirmed, they were allowed to proceed with no delays.
Thus at no point in its journey to Ascanius was the Confessor boarded by naval warships or blown out of space, and eventually it settled to the ground on a broad, flat landing field that stretched on for miles in every direction.
The field had been blasted out of former farmland and forest and paved over just for this occasion, and it was already nearly covered in carefully-parked rows and columns of ships of all shapes and sizes; ships that had flown in from all parts of the Empire.
The occasion was the Council of Ascanius, the greatest convocation of Imperial religious, political, and military leaders in living memory. And it convened inside the only structure in the Empire glorious enough to merit so momentous a gathering: The Chuch of the Reliquae.
That church was in actuality a massive cathedral constructed in ancient Byzantine style, with a huge interior space topped by a towering dome that loomed almost a kilometer above the plain. The entire building was encased in a gleaming shell of pink-veined marble and inlaid with gold and precious stones. No expense had been spared in creating this, the finest cathedral to the gods in all the Empire.
No sooner had the Grand Inquisitor’s shuttle landed in its hidden space to the rear of the great complex than he was up and moving toward the exit hatch, urging the others along quickly as well. The five hurried out of the ship and across a narrow metal bridge to a wooden door that was almost entirely hidden from view. Stanishur produced an ancient-looking metal key from somewhere in his robes and unlocked it, and with the help of his acolytes got it to swing open with a resounding creak.
“I like having ways in to places that cannot be overridden by some technician at a console a thousand light years away,” he informed them as they passed through and into the church. He shoved the door closed and its manual lock clicked shut again.
When the door closed, they were plunged into darkness. A moment later, flames sprang to life in braziers set at regular intervals against the wall along the length of the corridor.
“I also like lights that cannot be turned off by anyone but me,” he added.
Tamerlane gave Nakamura a quick smile. “I’m beginning to wonder how we ever got anything done without the Inquisitor on our side,” he said.
“I’m wondering how he hasn’t already taken over the Empire,” Nakamura responded, only half in jest.
Stanishur turned back to them as he led them along the hallway. “Gentlemen, please. I have no desire to do anything but serve the Holy Inquisition. My ambitions have always begun and ended there.”
“Thank goodness,” Tamerlane said.
This time even the Inquisitor chuckled.
They continued on through a winding labyrinth of cross-cutting corridors for some time. Tamerlane and Nakamura had no idea where they were now, but Stanishur never faltered.
“I know every inch of this facility, gentlemen,” he stated when Nakamura finally dared to bring that point up. “I’ve been coming here since I was a small child, raised by my predecessor in this office.”
Tamerlane started at that and glanced over at the general; he realized that to some degree it gave the Inquisitor and him something in common. He’d never expected to be able to say such a thing.
Nakamura finally called a halt to their movements and the five of them gathered in a loose circle at an open intersection of brick-lined corridors. The flames on either side of them danced and sent shadows cavorting across their features.
“This is a delicate situation,” the general stated to the others. “It’s worth a few moments to consider what we face, and what we know.”
Tamerlane nodded. He and the general wore their dress uniforms of red and gold while, across from them, the Inquisitor and his two acolytes remained in their usual black.
“On the one hand, we are some of the highest-ranking officials in this empire,” he went on. “On the other, none of us was invited to this event. I have no idea how we will be treated when we encounter anyone else present. Will they obey our orders? Will they report us to whomever is behind this...”
“Conspiracy?” Tamerlane supplied.
Nakamura shrugged. “As good a word as any. Or—will they simply try to capture or kill us? We don’t know.”
“That is why I am presently attempting to get all of us to the central chamber unobserved, via my secret ways,” Stanishur interjected impatiently. He motioned toward the hallway ahead. “So, if we might—?”
“I understand and appreciate that, Inquisitor,” Nakamura said. “Nonetheless, I don’t like the idea of skulking about down here in the shadows. It makes us look guilty, I fear. Guilty of… something, at any rate.”
Tamerlane considered this; it was a thought that had crossed his mind, as well.
“I believe we should make our presence known sooner rather than later,” the general concluded. “Known to the Emperor.”
Stanishur laughed. “Yes, I take your meaning. Start at the top—because if he is involved in this, as well, then we truly have no hope at all.”
No one could argue that.
“Very well,” the Inquisitor said at length. “I will lead the way to the main sanctuary. We can emerge through the doors of the eastern nave. No one should see us before then, but we will not suddenly come upon His Majesty like hidden assassins that way, either.”
“There will be snipers in the main hall, positioned high up,” Tamerlane noted. “If even one of them is part of the conspiracy, they will shoot us down before we can get halfway to the Emperor.”
“I believe I can address that concern,” the Inquisitor stated.
“Oh?” Nakamura considered this, glanced quickly at Tamerlane and received a shrug and a nod, and turned back to Stanishur. “Very well,” he said. “I don’t know how you could do it, but I’ve seen no reason so far not to take you at your word.”
Stanishur merely laughed.
“We will look awfully much like assassins, no matter how we approach the Emperor,” Tamerlane said after a second. “If I was there, as part of the security detail, and I saw a group like us emerge from out of nowhere and try to get close to the Emperor, I’d give the order to open fire. I wouldn’t think twice. I doubt they will, either.”
Nakamura closed his mouth in a tight line, then nodded. “Yes. That’s so.”
“Here’s another thought,” the colonel added. “Let’s just come out and say it. No point in being coy at this stage of the game. Let’s hypothesize for a moment that our worst and darkest secret fear is true—that we were all possessed by demons while we were in the Below.”
“Ezekial,” Nakamura began, agitated.
“Let him finish, please, General,” the Inquisitor said quickly. “I’d like to hear this.”
Tamerlane shrugged. “Just say that it’s true. If we were—and if our goal was to kill the Emperor, or possess him somehow, or whatever—wouldn’t we be behaving exactly, precisely the way we all are right now?”
No one said a word for several seconds. They all exchanged glances.
“Yes,” Stanishur said finally. “Yes, Colonel. We would.”
Tamerlane looked up at him, his normally smooth face lined with concern.
“But,” the Inquisitor went on, “we a
re not. We have not been possessed. And the actions we are taking are in the best interests of the Empire and of the Emperor himself.”
“You’re sure about that,” Tamerlane stated flatly, though he meant it as a question.
“I am,” the Inquisitor replied, his eyes steely and cold.
Nakamura inhaled deeply and exhaled slowly. “Very well, gentlemen,” he said, and, “lady,” nodding to Sister Delain. She favored him with a very tiny half smile. “Let’s go. Let’s get this done. The gods will decide our fate—and that of the Empire we all serve.”
Their resolve once more in place, the five started off down the brick-lined passageway again.
A second later, the wild-eyed soldier appeared in their path, bloody sword swinging back to strike.
11
Tamerlane’s pistol was aimed directly at the woman’s head, his finger ready to squeeze the trigger.
She looked a fright; only a bit over five feet tall, her long mane of black hair was tousled and standing out, and blood streaked her right cheek. She held a short sword of some sort with both hands, ready to swing. Her expression was a frightening mixture of frantic and furious.
“Who are you people?” she finally blurted, after a very long couple of seconds in which no one moved or spoke, waiting to see what would happen next—and what needed to be done.
Nakamura studied her uniform—jet black, with matte gray insignia designed not to gleam in darkness and give her position away. “Major,” he said. “Special Forces. Of my army, it would seem,” he added.
Tamerlane recognized the insignia then and nodded his agreement. In fact, her name was embroidered on a patch over her left breast: ARANI.
The Shattering: Omnibus Page 21
