The Shattering: Omnibus

by Van Allen Plexico

  Erricht laughed, thinking the reply a joke. “Funny—it doesn’t look like the Sword of Baranak.”

  The man regarded him with dead eyes.

  “Sorry,” Erricht mumbled, looking away. “It just—it doesn’t look like it could kill a fly.”

  “It kills gods,” the other man said, his expression remaining utterly flat.

  Erricht gawked at him. He felt his bowels go soft.

  The man returned his attention to the pistol. Opening a small chamber on the top, he looked inside and nodded. He clicked the trigger a couple of times and nodded again. Then he frowned and gazed directly at Erricht. “What about the other thing?”

  Erricht frowned for a moment, then brightened. “Ah! Yes. The gemstone. Of course.” He reached into the pocket of his tunic and drew out a small black bag, handing it over with an ingratiating smile.

  The man took the little bag and opened it, reaching inside. He drew out a jewel barely more than a centimeter in length. It sparkled red in the dim light of the bar. Carefully he slotted it into the pistol’s chamber; it fit perfectly. Satisfied, he drew the stone out and returned it to the bag. It vanished into one of his pockets.

  “You’ve done well,” the disguised soldier told him. “Come and take your reward.”

  The man in the black uniform stood and began to walk away from the table. Erricht was on his feet instantly. He looked down at the table and the drinks he’d already finished, empty glasses standing in a small semicircle, then hastily enacted a transaction via the local commercial Aether to pay. That done, he ran after the customer.

  The man had already passed through the doorway and out into the cool Candis evening. Erricht pushed the door open and followed him out.

  Twin bright lights shone at him, nearly blinding him. Because of that, he nearly ran into a virtual wall of black-clad soldiers, all carrying blast rifles aimed his way. He stopped himself in his tracks in rather cartoonish fashion and gawked.

  At the center of the formation stood the man with whom he’d just met. That man was handing the briefcase and the little bag over to another, rougher, tougher looking man who accepted it without comment or expression.

  “Umm,” Erricht began. He continued to stare in shock and growing fear at the soldiers pointing their guns at him. “I—I haven’t been paid yet.”

  For a long moment no one made a sound. The wall of soldiers stood unmoving and unyielding, their eyes all dark and piercing. Erricht despaired of ever being paid for this transaction; at this point, all he really hoped to depart Candis with was his life—and even that wasn’t looking like a strong possibility at the moment.

  Then the man at the center—the one now holding the case and the bag—stepped forward. He handed the two items over to a woman behind him who wore the same uniform. Then he looked back at Erricht.

  “You found these for me?” the big, rough man asked, and his voice was not unkind.

  “I did,” Erricht replied almost defiantly. He couldn’t help but sneak glances at the soldiers lined up, firing-squad-style, behind the man. This is it, he thought to himself. You always knew that, sooner or later, you’d attract the wrong customer. And that would be that.

  He met the other man’s gaze, and a glint of recognition echoed through his mind. He’d seen this man somewhere. Somewhere…

  The man reached out a hand. “Then you have my thanks.”

  Astonished, eyes wide, Erricht automatically took the hand and shook it. The grip was strong and firm—almost too strong.

  When they had unclasped hands, the man gestured casually to one of his compatriots. That one—the woman who had accepted the two items moments earlier—approached Erricht. She reached out and for an absurd moment he thought she wanted to shake hands, too. But no—she was carrying a small plastic card which she handed to him.

  “Payment in full,” she said.

  “I—” Erricht stared down at the plastic square in his hand, then up at the woman. For a second he thought she was smiling. Then the expression was banished. She turned on her heel and moved smoothly away.

  “Good luck killing your god,” he blurted after her, barely aware he was even speaking. Then, to himself, “Of course, who isn’t one, these days…”

  Another second and then the twin lights snapped off. When his eyes had adjusted and he could see again, the veritable army of statue-like soldiers was gone; the street outside the bar was empty.

  Yadsen Erricht stood there for approximately three more seconds, peering into the darkness. Then he took one more look down at the payment card in his hand, jammed it down into his hip pocket, and ran back into the bar, making a direct line for the bathroom.

  BOOK FIVE:

  THE BLEEDING SKY

  1

  His back arched, his square chin jutting out, General Ioan Iapetus stood like a god at the center—at the very heart—of the galaxy. Stars twinkled all around him, obscuring his extremities like clouds of mist floating all about. The great spiral arms of the Milky Way extended out in slow curves, with him at the epicenter.

  The commander of II Legion—the Sons of Terra—was, as always, clad in black. His short, dark hair was brushed back and his expression was grim. A golden stylized eye emblazoned on the chest of his uniform gleamed in the simulated starlight. Watching, always watching.

  He turned slowly, eyes sharp, seeking one particular region of that cluster of a trillion stars. He found it easily; it rarely strayed from his thoughts or his plans. There, along the farthest reaches of one galactic arm, lay the homeworld of Mankind and the core of all of humanity’s conquests.

  Up came his right hand, making a quick, sharp gesture in precise fashion. In response, the holographic image zoomed in until the human-occupied portion of the galaxy—the Empire and its three major rivals—filled most of the space around him. The broad, circular room in which he stood now held only hundreds of stars instead of trillions.

  He smiled as he located a particular yellow sun near the center of this array. Brushing it almost lovingly with his left hand, he then cupped its attendant blue-white planet. He peered down at the little world, as though he himself had transformed into some wrathful deity, weighing its worth and passing divine judgment.

  “Show me the strategic overlay,” he called, his voice echoing through holographic space.

  The stars around him darkened into various colors, representing the human and alien empires that controlled each of them. Turning slowly, he took it all in. His frown deepened as he considered just how precarious the situation had become—how precarious it had been allowed to become.

  Once easily the largest of the four human empires, the Anatolian Empire had been eroded in recent months by attacks from her three rivals: the Riyahadi Caliphate, the Chung Federation, and the Dominion of Allied Core States—a bastardized conglomerate of smaller powers that went by the absurd acronym of DACS. Beyond those incursions, the two alien races that generally gave humanity the most trouble had also become more hostile and were now engaging in border raids further out on the fringes of the Empire. The technocratic Rao were an ever-present threat and always had been, but now even the ancient, enigmatic Dyonari had begun to behave like some young, immature, land-hungry force. It all defied Iapetus’s understanding. It was as if something—or someone—had stirred them all up simultaneously, causing everyone who might be in a position to cause the Empire problems to all attack at once.

  Whatever the cause, though, the resulting situation was clear enough. Iapetus turned once around again, slowly, weighing priorities as he saw them.

  “Nakamura is a fool,” he stated in a loud, clear voice—and the treason of the statement sent an electric thrill through the room. “If he wasn’t before, he certainly has become one since ascending to the role of Taiko—and ascending to godhood.” This last he spat with contempt. “Godhood. Well.” He turned slowly to face the officers arrayed around the room, his expression sour. He nodded toward the stars that danced in his grasp. “The galaxy at my fingertips,�
� he said to them with a flat smile. “That, gentlemen, is as close to godhood as I will ever come.”

  “How is he a fool, General?” asked one of the II Legion officers who stood along the edge of the strategium.

  Iapetus didn’t bother to look that way. He simply chuckled. “Our great Taiko is fighting this conflict as if it’s all one single war. Sending his forces everywhere at once—but never enough to get the job done in any specific theater of operations. As a result, he is losing everywhere.” Iapetus stepped around to regard the galactic display from another angle. “We have passed the tipping point. The Empire is lost. It is beyond saving.”

  No one responded to this statement. Iapetus waited patiently for his words to sink in, the galaxy spinning slowly around him.

  “Why do you suppose we are being attacked by everyone at once, General?” came the same voice again from the sidelines, after a long and uncomfortable silence.

  Iapetus shrugged. “You will recall that our late Emperor, in his complete lack of wisdom, chose in the recent past to seize territories from our neighbors and engender conflict with most of these other governments. In short, our Empire brought this upon itself.” He smiled grimly. “I believe the ancient term is ‘blowback.’”

  “What should the Taiko do, then? Sir?”

  Iapetus shrugged. “He must be willing to let the Outer Worlds go—write them off as lost—and focus on defending that which matters most.” Iapetus gestured to several clusters of stars closer to the Earth. “At this stage we can only pull back—back to the Inner Worlds, those closest to Holy Earth—and dig in there, protecting what is most vital to us. At least until this fever of conflict and expansionism all around us burns itself out, as it quite likely will.”

  “What if the situation doesn’t change, though, General? What if it continues indefinitely? What if retreating—even strategic retreating—only emboldens the enemy? All the enemies?”

  Now Iapetus looked up, gazing out through the clusters of holographic stars to the ranks of officers and techs who stood along the edge of the room. He found the speaker easily enough; he’d recognized the voice from the start.

  “Colonel Barbarossa,” he called to the man across the gulf of simulated space. “You live up to your nickname—’the Daring’ indeed. But I do not consider your questioning of me impertinent. I welcome it.” His gaze moved slowly from the Colonel back to the star field. “So—you believe I am misreading the situation entirely?”

  “Not misreading, General,” replied the tall, brown-haired officer. “But perhaps misdiagnosing the illness, and thus the treatment.”

  “How so?” Iapetus asked—not roughly but with a sort of mild curiosity evident in his tone.

  Berens Barbarossa stepped forward, the pale light illuminating him somewhat as he stood on the fringes of the display. “I believe the Taiko is correct in viewing this as—how did you put it? As one single war. A single conflict spread across a number of fronts.”

  Iapetus scoffed at this. “Impossible.” He shook his head. “A coordinated attack? How could it be? Three different human empires—three that hate each other at least as much as they ever hated us—and two alien races that regard one another with utter contempt? No—there is a difference between antagonizing several of our neighbors at once and facing a coordinated set of opponents. This cannot be the latter. It cannot.”

  “So this is all some random coincidence, then?”

  “What else could it be?” Iapetus shook his head again. “Nothing in the universe could pull all of those forces together in a unified effort.”

  “Under normal circumstances, I would agree, General,” Barbarossa stated. “But, as you yourself have admitted, these are hardly normal circumstances. And if you are wrong, then pulling back to the core of our Empire will only draw our unified enemies in closer and closer to the heart of our civilization—and eventually to Earth itself.”

  Iapetus appeared to consider this for a moment. Then he faced Barbarossa directly. “Let them come. If our enemies dare approach the sacred Earth, there they will find the Sons of Terra arrayed against them.” His voice deepened, almost booming. “And the gods help them all.”

  The officers around the chamber murmured their approval of Iapetus’s words, and even Barbarossa couldn’t help but smile at them.

  “Before that can happen, though, General,” Barbarossa continued after the sound had died down, “do you think the Taiko will come to you for assistance along the borders? Will he ask for II Legion to step up as a frontline force?”

  Iapetus snorted. “I have no doubts that they will come to me. Nakamura will come—as will Tamerlane, his lapdog. They will have no choice. Their armies are being ground down on a hundred battlefields at once, all along the borders, and they are losing control of our own governors and territories within the empire as well. The fool Rameses on Ahknaton is but the first; more will follow.” He offered the officers who were watching him an elaborate shrug. “But what is to be done? What help can II Legion offer? We are the Sons of Terra. Our job—our stated mission, made quite clear by the Taiko himself from the beginning—is to defend the Earth and its immediate environs. To preserve humanity’s homeworld and the heart of our civilization, even if all the rest of the Empire should fall.”

  Barbarossa gazed back levelly at Iapetus. “So, you are saying that even if the Taiko himself comes to you and asks for—or orders—II Legion to move up and fight in the current theaters of action, your response will be—”

  Iapetus didn’t blink. His face was cold and his eyes hard. “What,” he asked by way of reply, “do you suppose my response will be?”

  Barbarossa stared back at the man for a long moment, saying nothing. No one looking on could predict how the confrontation would end—but, perhaps fortunately for both men and for those others in attendance, they were interrupted by a tech who entered the room, almost breathless.

  “General,” he called. “You need to see this, sir.”

  Iapetus turned slowly away from Barbarossa and regarded the short, stocky man in the white lab coat. His voice was cold as ice. “Yes?”

  The tech seemed to shrink down to an even tinier size. “Um—there are comets approaching a number of Imperial worlds…” His voice trailed off under the withering glare of his commander.

  “Comets?” Iapetus was incredulous. “You interrupt the strategium for…comets?”

  The little man gathered up his resolve and stood straighter. “You—you need to see them, sir.”

  Iapetus raised one eyebrow.

  The tech signaled to his brethren behind the glass and the holographic display that filled the room gained another layer of depth. Now numerous red streaks could be seen closing in on stars all along the edge of the Empire’s anti-coreward border. The image zoomed in on one of them at random; now Iapetus could see that it was indeed a comet—a massive conglomeration of ice and rock moving at high speed inward toward the local star, and the Imperial planet that orbited it.

  “Their courses are all very precise,” the tech stated. “Each is headed for one of our planets.”

  “Another coincidence, General?” Barbarossa asked, the skepticism evident in his voice. “A coincidence that those things—whatever they truly are—are headed directly into the Empire?”

  Iapetus shot him a look but then returned his attention to the comet. “Pull back,” he barked.

  The holographic image returned to displaying the local region again, as it had done moments earlier. Iapetus counted nearly two dozen of these comets.

  “What do you make of this?” he asked Barbarossa and the other officers.

  No one replied.

  “Why was I not informed sooner?” he asked the tech.

  “We only spotted them in the last few minutes, General.”

  Iapetus stared at the man, almost dumbfounded. “You’re saying you only just noticed these things? Comets do not normally move all that quickly, nor do they carry stealth technology. How could you possibly have not not
iced them until now?”

  The tech hesitated. “We, um—” He bit his lip. “We believe they all just dropped hyper a few moments ago. All at the same time.”

  Now Iapetus appeared completely astonished. “These…comets…dropped out of hyperspace? Out of the Above?”

  “Err—yes, General.” The man was sweating profusely. “It all seems rather—unusual. We thought you should know.”

  “To say the least. How soon until they begin to reach our worlds?”

  “The first will enter the Eingrad system in the next twenty-four hours.”

  Nodding, the General strode in a slow circle around one of the comets, frowning down at it.

  “Pull back further,” he said then. “Show me the entire galaxy. And leave the comet overlay in place.”

  Everyone’s equilibrium was momentarily disrupted as the image lurched, and suddenly they were back where they had begun the meeting—viewing the entire spiral of the Milky Way as it nearly filled the round room. But now the image looked strikingly different. Now a veritable wave of dark red streaks invaded it. Many more than the few that were already closing in on Imperial worlds. And all coming from beyond—from outside the galaxy itself.

  And there were hundreds of them. Perhaps thousands.

  Iapetus swallowed slowly, blinking at this unexpected and unprecedented revelation. Then he gestured toward the techs. “Enough. Get rid of this. Lights.”

  The strategium’s main lights came on, their bright yellow glare replacing the dreaminess of the galactic holography—and the eeriness of the crimson streaks invading it. The officers who stood on the opposite side of the room blinked and shielded their eyes from the rapid transition; Iapetus seemed unaffected.

  “So,” he said. His flinty eyes met those of Barbarossa. “Colonel. I’m now willing to admit that your position may hold somewhat more merit than I was previously willing to allow.”

  Barbarossa couldn’t help but smile at that. “Should we alert the Taiko?”