The Shattering: Omnibus

by Van Allen Plexico

  Zahir’s eyes met Rameses’ and held them. The temperature in the room dropped noticeably. Ice began to form on the stone floor and along the walls. “Yes,” the dark man said, his voice hard now. “Yes, precisely. You follow no one. For, as far as this empire is concerned, I do not exist— I am indeed no one.” Though not a tall figure, Zahir now seemed somehow to loom over the governor—to tower over him.

  Eyes wide, Rameses shrank back, shivering from the cold. A moment later, his face slowly relaxed. At last he nodded. “Yes. Yes, of course. I—I will follow.”

  Zahir stared at him, his dark eyes cold and penetrating. “What of the girl?” he asked, his voice intense.

  “The girl?”

  The dark man said nothing, merely waiting, his gaze seemingly locking the governor to the spot.

  “You mean the princess, of course,” Rameses said, as if remembering something long-forgotten.

  “Indeed. The Princess Marens. My master gave her over into your care.”

  “Yes. It didn’t take long for us to discover who she was.”

  “You have kept her safe?”

  “Yes, yes—she is fine. Too young to fully understand what has happened. Growing impatient to see her family.” He snorted at that. “But still firmly under control, of course.”

  Zahir continued to hold Rameses with his eyes for a long second more, as if judging his words. Then he released him and turned away.

  Rameses blinked, gasped, then exhaled slowly, his face darkening. “You—how dare you—?”

  Zahir ignored the anger and gestured toward the palanquin. Now his voice was relaxed and almost casual in its tones.

  “My master sends his greetings, his regards—and three gifts. Gifts of immense value.”

  “Gifts?” Recovering himself, Rameses turned back to the rectangle where it now sat on the floor. “Well. Most generous of him.” Squinting, he moved closer, as though trying to get a better look at what sat upon it. “But—I only see two objects here.”

  “Yes. The third will arrive shortly.” Zahir paused. “It will not seem a gift at all at first. But shortly thereafter, you will learn to your wonder and awe that it is the grandest gift of all.”

  Zahir strode over to the palanquin and reached down, grasping the crimson cube in his clawlike right hand. He held it aloft, the frightening smile back on his face. It began to glow, brighter and brighter by the second, as if from some hidden internal source of light.

  “Only twelve of these were ever made, when the Ancient Ones were at the height of their power and their craft. Most have been lost for eons. My master gives you this—one of the very few remaining—as his first gift.”

  Rameses moved forward and frowned, his eyes locked onto the object, his expression one of deep desire. He tried to sound flippant as he replied, “A lovely music box or puzzle, I’m sure”—but there was no conviction in his voice. He was entranced by the box, with its dazzling radiance and swirling intricate patterns across the surface.

  “Take it,” said Zahir, holding it out for him.

  Rameses needed no further prompting. Greedily he seized the cube and clutched it to himself. He had no idea what it could be, but something about it utterly entranced him.

  For several seconds nothing happened—though that scarcely seemed to bother Rameses, as he appeared content merely to hold the thing. Then the light radiating from within it spread, quickly enveloping his entire body. It flared almost blindingly bright for a moment. Crying out, the Sand Kings guards—now recovering their wits, at last—hurried forward, at the defense of their ruler. But the brightness faded as quickly as it had appeared, and Rameses still stood there, unharmed.

  Unharmed—but different. The Sand Kings all exclaimed in surprise and astonishment.

  Rameses, planetary governor of Ahknaton, now stood encased in a dark red metallic armor that nearly covered his entire body. Only his face was exposed from within a helmet that blended seamlessly into the rest of the suit. His musculature appeared drastically increased, bulging against the seemingly pliable surface of the suit. The ornamental line work that had covered the cube now covered the armor. The arms and legs featured dull rivets along the sides, epaulets stood out at the shoulders, and two vanes or blunted blades protruded out from either side of the helmet. In sum, the armor appeared at least as impressive as anything worn by the Imperial Legions, and far less bulky and heavy than the crystal armor of the old Emperor’s Guard.

  Rameses looked down at himself in shock. He raised one arm, flexed the fingers, then did likewise with the other. He moved his head back and forth—there was no resistance, as if the material were smartcloth and not some hyper-dense and strong metal, as it appeared. Then he looked up at Zahir. A smile slowly formed on his face.

  “You approve, then?” the other asked.

  “I—yes,” Rameses answered. “It is remarkable—marvelous. But—why?”

  “There is more to that armor than you yet know,” the man answered. “Patience. All will be revealed soon.”

  Rameses nodded. “Very well.” He moved as if to pull the gloves of the armor off, only to discover that there were no seams, no divisions in the cool metal material. “How—how do I—?”

  “You have but to desire it.”

  Rameses frowned, then closed his eyes. A second later, the armor was gone from him, and the crimson cube back in his hand. Holding it aloft before his face, he smiled at it, then at Zahir. “Well,” he said. “One can only hope all of your master’s gifts are so interesting.” And saying that, he looked back at the palanquin, and the golden basin that still rested upon it.

  Zahir motioned again, and two of his servants lifted the object. They carried it off the palanquin and set it down gently on the marble floor at the center of the chamber, a short distance away from the steps leading up to the throne.

  Rameses followed them and stared at it, studying it. Broad and round and golden, it looked like a sort of overgrown bowl or dish, more than two meters in diameter and less than a meter high. Its sides sloped gently in and down toward a depression at the center. Leaning down and reaching out, Rameses ran his fingers along the edge.

  “So—what is it?”

  Zahir smiled. “It is a doorway.”

  Rameses reacted to this news with a start. “A doorway? It’s the strangest looking doorway I’ve ever seen.”

  “And the most marvelous doorway you will ever see.”

  Zahir leaned out over the basin and stretched out his clawed hand, moving his fingers in a series of odd gestures. Then he reached into his robes and brought forth a gleaming silver knife. As Rameses and the Sand Kings looked on in alarm, he drew the blade across his palm. Blood dripped out and down into the basin—blood that sparkled and shimmered with some sort of contained energy.

  As the drops splattered onto the shining surface of the bowl, the air suddenly seemed filled with a soft, persistent, buzzing sound. Rameses and the others looked around, half-expecting to see swarms of insects descending upon them. But that was not the case. The buzzing, as they quickly realized, was coming from all around—from the air itself. From reality itself, as it was being torn asunder.

  A flash, a blast of fire erupting from the basin. When it had died down, a shimmering circle remained floating vertically in the air above it.

  “A doorway,” Zahir repeated.

  Rameses gawked. “A doorway,” he said, agreeing now. “But—to where?”

  “To everywhere,” the pale man answered.

  5

  “Am I to understand, General Tamerlane,” the big, blond man boomed across the Aether connection, “that our Taiko is unaware of this meeting?”

  Tamerlane smiled humorlessly and nodded once. “That is correct, General Agrippa.”

  The blond general floated as a holographic ghost directly across the strategium chamber from Tamerlane. He seemed somewhat distracted, if not downright annoyed—a condition Tamerlane chalked up to his being called away from an apparently increasingly bad military situ
ation in order to sit in—virtually—on a sort of committee meeting. Tamerlane could hardly blame the man for such an attitude, given the circumstances. He studied Agrippa, noting with a degree of relief how the man appeared to focus at last on the matter at hand. After a moment’s consideration, Agrippa shrugged. “If what I have heard of late is even half-true,” he said, “it is probably for the best that he doesn’t know.”

  A reaction of surprise at such blatantly disrespectful talk instantly appeared on the face of the third and final member of the Hatamoto—the top circle of trusted advisors to the Taiko. Just to Tamerlane’s right stood Berens Barbarossa of II Legion, in the flesh. Only a colonel, he had been selected by Nakamura for this role over the higher-ranking General Iapetus simply because Nakamura did not like or trust Iapetus. He’d needed the mercurial general on his side, however, and he’d known it, so he’d assigned him and his Legion to the defense of the Earth and its near environs. Iapetus had immediately rechristened II Legion the Sons of Terra—and, by all reports, effectively shut Barbarossa out.

  “What do you mean by that, General?” Barbarossa demanded. “For the best? How?”

  Agrippa rankled at being spoken to in such a manner by a lower-ranking officer, but he refrained from issuing a rebuke. From the very beginning, months earlier, the understanding among the three of them had taken root that rank would be set aside while they met as the Hatamoto. Here, in this formal gathering, each held equal voice and equal power. Consequently, Agrippa’s flickering form merely replied, “I trust Ezekial will make that clear presently.”

  Tamerlane grimaced at the degree of rancor that had crept into their dealings, even here amidst the gathering of the Hatamoto. He motioned to the other two men to settle down.

  “No one here intends disrespect toward the Taiko,” Tamerlane stated firmly. “We all love him greatly, and none more than me. But we also all have eyes and ears, and have heard and seen what is becoming of our Empire.”

  “Yes,” Agrippa agreed, his insubstantial eyes flickering from Tamerlane to Barbarossa and back. “Something must be done. Actions must be taken. And I fear our beloved Taiko is, for whatever reason, unable to take those actions.”

  Tamerlane had to nod. “And so it falls to us.”

  Agrippa nodded at this.

  Barbarossa shook his head. “This might be considered treason,” he suggested, his voice tremulous.

  “It is not treason,” Tamerlane barked back at him. “Treason would be a betrayal of the Empire and its people—a betrayal of Nakamura. This is quite the opposite. We are acting to preserve the Empire and protect Nakamura, despite his own...weakness, of late.”

  “The fate of the Empire—and of untold billions of lives—is at stake,” Agrippa added, his voice deep and sonorous and very compelling.

  Barbarossa bit back a reply and looked at the other two, considering. After a few seconds he asked, “So—what are you proposing, then? Not that I am granting my consent, of course.”

  “Not yet, no,” Tamerlane acknowledged. “But explaining why you should is one of the reasons I asked you here.” He gestured and the holographic display expanded to fill the strategium, surrounding himself and the other two men. Now their entire sector of the galaxy was laid out in three dimensions all around them. In rapid succession Tamerlane pointed out the many key locations where the Empire’s enemies were pushing inwards, subsuming the outer worlds and moving into position to threaten the inner ones.

  “These are the key points where the incursions must be resisted and halted,” he stated after the display had slowly spun about them once. Red arrows marked the locations he was indicating. “The problem, of course, is that we lack the troop strength to boost our numbers at more than two or three of those theaters of war.”

  “General Iapetus has been privately discussing a different option,” Barbarossa stated in a quiet voice.

  “And what would that be?” both Tamerlane and Agrippa asked simultaneously.

  A small smile crossed Barbarossa’s features at that. “He believes that a pullback—a strategic withdrawal of elements of both your legions from the Outer Worlds—would yield many thousands of new troops with which to defend Earth and the Inner Worlds.”

  Tamerlane parsed this statement out, then frowned at Barbarossa. “You’re saying Iapetus would have us abandon the Outer Worlds—simply give them up to the enemy without further struggle?”

  “Not as such,” Barbarossa said, gazing off to one side. “Not entirely. At least, not permanently. Perhaps.”

  Tamerlane was shocked. He turned to the image of Agrippa, only to see that the big man did not appear entirely discomfited by the suggestion.

  “Perhaps Iapetus has a point,” Agrippa said. “Perhaps—”

  “You, too, Arnem?” Tamerlane asked, eyes wide. “You would have us simply hand over the Empire?”

  “Of course not, Ezekial. But perhaps some degree of strategic withdrawal from less important areas is warranted.”

  “And who decides what areas—which worlds, with our people living on them—are ‘less important?’”

  Agrippa frowned, looking down at the floor. He nodded slowly, sadly.

  “I for one am not ready to give in to the enemy,” Tamerlane insisted.

  “That’s just it, General,” Barbarossa said, leaning toward him, his voice intense. “There is no single enemy. The ‘enemy’ you speak of is comprised of virtually every other human empire and alien government that shares a border with us. We cannot fight all of them at once. We simply cannot.”

  “To even contemplate withdrawal galls me, too, Ezekial,” Agrippa stated in deep, stentorian tones. “But the alternative is that we could lose everything. Everything.”

  Tamerlane took this in, his mouth open but no sound coming out. Finally he looked to Agrippa and said, “We would not be in this predicament if other forces were available to us on the frontier.”

  “And you know of some?” the big man replied. “I would love to hear of them.”

  “I know of two different possibilities, actually,” Tamerlane said. His gaze shifted from Agrippa to Barbarossa. “If their commanders can be persuaded to bring them directly into the conflict.” He waited.

  Barbarossa looked mystified for a moment. Then recognition dawned in his eyes. “Ah. You speak of my own legion. The Sons of Terra.”

  “That is one, yes,” Tamerlane said.

  Barbarossa smiled at this and even chuckled a bit.

  “Something is amusing, Colonel?” Agrippa asked, annoyed, reverting to calling the man by his rank even though they met there as Hatamoto.

  Barbarossa met Agrippa’s hard blue eyes with his own brown ones. “In point of fact, and with all due respect, sir—yes.” He turned to Tamerlane. “The thought that you include II Legion in your calculations is, to me, amusing.”

  “Amusing?” boomed Agrippa, his annoyance growing.

  Tamerlane waved this aside impatiently. “You think that Iapetus will refuse to deploy them as I request?”

  “I know he will refuse, General.”

  “And if I order?”

  Barbarossa merely laughed again and shook his head slowly.

  “He will refuse a direct order?” Agrippa asked, almost glaring at him. “You are so certain of this?”

  “Absolutely certain,” Barbarossa replied, turning back to the big blond man. “He will not budge.”

  Tamerlane and Agrippa exchanged troubled glances. No one spoke for a moment, and tension filled the air.

  Barbarossa raised a hand. “If I may—you said there were two possibilities. What is the other?”

  Pushing down his anger, Tamerlane forced himself to set all thoughts of the Sons of Terra and Barbarossa’s statements about them aside. He turned and pointed to a location in the holographic display above him and to his right. At his silent signal over the Aether link, one star there began to flash bright red.

  “Ahknaton,” Barbarossa said. “Of course.”

  “The Sand Kings have, by a
ll reports, grown quite formidable of late,” said Agrippa. “They are no longer a mere planetary defense force but an actual army now, with troop strength and weapons to rival any of the legions. That being the case, we must insist that Governor Rameses do his share in the defense of the Empire and bring them into play.”

  “He had no business expanding their ranks or their armaments in that fashion, of course,” Tamerlane pointed out, “and certainly not without the permission of the Taiko.”

  “It’s treason,” Agrippa summarized.

  “We can prosecute him for his actions in creating essentially his own legion after the war is won,” Tamerlane said. “For now, we should make use of them for the good of all.”

  Barbarossa had listened to all of this and considered it, and now he nodded slowly. “Alright,” he said, “I understand the gravity of the situation and the particular strategic plight we face. If the Taiko is not acting to address it—”

  “He is not,” Tamerlane interjected.

  “—then yes, we must move. Immediately.”

  Tamerlane smiled grimly at him. “Good. I’m glad we are all in agreement.”

  “So you will speak to Iapetus, then,” Agrippa’s holograph said. “Persuade him to add the ranks of the Sons of Terra to our new offensive.”

  “No,” Barbarossa replied.

  The other two men were dumbstruck.

  “What—what do you mean, ‘no?’” Agrippa demanded a moment later, as Tamerlane looked on, puzzled.

  “I mean what I said. I will not bring such a request before General Iapetus.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I know precisely what his answer will be. So there is little or no point in asking.”

  “But—”

  “Additionally,” the colonel pressed on, “I have worked very hard these past few months to earn some degree of trust with Iapetus—to secure my place as a somewhat valued member of II Legion. Your request for me to come here in person was not well-received by him, and I have work ahead of me simply to recover from it—from what is effectively a secret top-level meeting that excludes him.” Barbarossa paused, then, “Were I to go to him with your proposal, knowing full well that he will reject it, he would think me a fool. He would turn the request down flat, and afterward he would effectively banish me from the Legion—restrict me from any position of power within it.” Barbarossa looked from Agrippa to Tamerlane. “And then what use would I be—to him, or to you?”