The Shattering: Omnibus

by Van Allen Plexico

  It didn’t arrive at its target.

  Elaro surged forward, moving very quickly despite his size and weight. His right arm came up, blocking the blow before the knife tip could reach the colonel. It struck his arm instead. The smartcloth material of his jacket hardened, bending the point.

  The assassin spun about and produced another blade from within her clothes, tossing the ruined one away.

  Arani drew her pistol and attempted to aim at the attacker, but Elaro was blocking the way.

  “Move!” she cried.

  Elaro blocked the second knife’s swing—this time it had been directed at him—and backhanded the assassin. She stumbled away, blood flying from her smashed nose and mouth. He stayed on her, driving her back, grasping her wrist to force her to drop the second blade. Disarmed now, she shrieked wordlessly at him. He grasped her clothing by the waist and the collar, lifted her high up in the air, and tossed her almost effortlessly across the clearing. She smashed into the wall of the enclosure and lay stunned.

  “I’d secure her before she finds a third knife somewhere in there,” he told Arani, brushing himself off.

  The colonel almost gawked at him for a second, then spun on her heel and barked orders to the I Legion soldiers that had rushed up to her defense—and had done so a few seconds too late to have saved her. “Lock her down!” she shouted. “Check for suicide devices and booby traps. I want her alive!”

  “Very wise,” Elaro said, nodding, when she turned back to him.

  The dark-haired commander appraised him for a moment. “Well done...” She hesitated again, and he could tell she was accessing the Aether for his personal information—in reality the false information he’d planted upon arrival.

  “Elaro,” he told her with a nod.

  “Titus Elaro,” she confirmed, closing out the Aether link. “Former captain in the planetary defense army of Gaurean. Well. I’m very glad you chose to join us, Elaro. And glad you were paying more attention to my safety than I was, just now.”

  He smiled and laughed a quick snort of a laugh. “You had a lot on your mind. It’s your officers’ job to keep you safe.”

  “Clearly they weren’t up to that job,” she replied, eyeing the men in red and gold who now half-surrounded her in a semicircle. Most of them were staring openly at Elaro and regarding him with some combination of curiosity and distaste.

  He shrugged. “What can you do?” he asked rhetorically. “You go to war with the officers you have.”

  “Not necessarily,” Arani replied. Now she smiled at him, and he found himself taken aback by this woman he’d been sent to spy upon. “Sometimes you find your officers—and find them in the most unexpected places.”

  He gave her a quizzical look.

  One of the red-clad I Legion officers leaned in, clearing his throat. “Excuse me, Colonel,” he said, “but there is a call coming in from—”

  Arani shushed the man with a quick wave. Her eyes remained locked firmly on the man who had saved her, appraising. “Report to the officers’ quarters, Major Elaro,” she said at length. And, as he and the others stared after her in surprise, she marched back into the fortress. The heavy iron door clanged closed behind her.

  7

  “You can’t have them,” said the holographic ghost of Ioan Iapetus. “And—with all due respect, General—you’re wasting my time. And yours.”

  Tamerlane was taken aback. He stared at the flickering image of the commander of II Legion standing there before him within the strategium and sought for the most appropriate response. A number of rather inappropriate responses suggested themselves—and did so very forcefully—but, aggravation aside, he knew the situation was so delicate and so critical that he dared not launch immediately into an angry rebuke.

  In fact, he reflected a second later, perhaps that was precisely what Iapetus was seeking to provoke.

  And so Tamerlane calmed himself, breathed in and out, and forced a seemingly warm smile onto his face.

  “I cannot have what, General?” he asked pleasantly.

  “My legion,” Iapetus said. “You wish me to hand it over to you, or at least to place some or all of my troops at your disposal. I will do neither.”

  Tamerlane could not help but be startled by Iapetus’s instant recognition of what lay behind this call.

  “You would refuse to obey such an order if I issued it?”

  “If you issued it? Of course.”

  The anger was surging back already. “Why?”

  “You are not the Taiko,” Iapetus said with a slight shrug. “Nor—despite all the propaganda emanating from high command—are you a god. As we both know.” He clasped his hands behind his back and leaned in, his holographic form now only a matter of inches away from Tamerlane. “You may command I Legion, but you have no authority over me or my army. You are not my superior officer—and you most certainly are not my god. Or anyone else’s.”

  “The god thing was not my doing,” Tamerlane conceded, “and I will not argue with you about it. But,” he went on, “the rest is debatable.” He faced Iapetus squarely and didn’t flinch. “When Nakamura headed I Legion, he held authority over all Imperial forces, and now that I have assumed that role—”

  “You are not Nakamura,” Iapetus interjected, “and the circumstances—as you are well aware—have changed since then.”

  “Not entirely,” Tamerlane said, his voice now a low growl.

  “Oh, I believe they have—and in more ways than you might imagine.”

  Tamerlane didn’t respond to that.

  “But, at least in terms of issuing orders to me or to the Sons,” Iapetus concluded, his cold, dark eyes peering out of the holographic mist, “they most certainly have.”

  Tamerlane looked from those cruel eyes to the golden one emblazoned on the man’s black uniform—the new uniform the officers of II Legion had adopted following Iapetus’s rise to command of it, and his re-christening of it as the Sons of Terra. Watching, always watching.

  He met Iapetus’s gaze again. Neither spoke for a long moment. Finally Tamerlane crossed his arms and offered the other man another humorless smile. “Given the present dire circumstances faced by our empire,” he said, “we can perhaps agree to disagree about that point—for now. The larger issue looms, however: I require at least a portion of your legion. The Empire requires it. Our very survival is at stake!”

  “The Empire will survive or it will not. Neither is my direct concern.”

  Now Tamerlane’s eyes widened. “What?”

  “My task—my sworn duty—is the defense of sacred Earth and its environs. Your precious Taiko, Nakamura, assigned me that duty himself.” Iapetus paused, then, “Let us be frank here, General—he wanted me out of the way, safely ensconced on the homeworld while your legion and Agrippa’s were free to go wherever you like, here and there across the galaxy. I agreed to that arrangement—to every bit of it—and I intend to live up to the obligations it entails.” He crossed his arms over the golden eye—the effect was of the eye closing, shutting Tamerlane out. “My Sons of Terra defend the Earth. Period,” he said. He stared back at Tamerlane with his own eyes with undisguised contempt. “If the rest of the Empire falls in the process, then the rest of the Empire be damned.”

  Tamerlane almost gawked at him. “You...come close to treason, General,” he said at length, his mouth dry.

  “I disagree,” Iapetus replied. “I do my duty. Nothing more and nothing less.”

  Tamerlane licked his lips, his mind racing. This man was even more stubborn, more intransigent, than he’d expected. He glanced over at the shadows, where Iapetus’s second, Colonel Berens Barbarossa, watched and listened. He could imagine what the man must be thinking. He was right all along, Tamerlane realized. He said there was no way Iapetus would comply. I didn’t fully believe him, but he was right. And he can justify everything in such a way that I can’t order his arrest for disobeying orders, because he’s right—he is obeying the prime order the Taiko issued to him.
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br />   The Taiko, Tamerlane thought then. If only Nakamura were himself; if only he would snap out of whatever this condition is that has bewitched him. He could order Iapetus to comply. Tamerlane resolved to make the case again to Nakamura—and even more forcefully, this time. The Empire could no longer afford for its Taiko to avoid the issue. The galaxy was burning down around them.

  As if reading his mind, Iapetus spoke up then. “I assume that since it is you making this request, and not the Taiko,” he said—and Tamerlane noted the use of the word request and not order—”you yourself are acting outside of Nakamura’s orders. That being the case, I believe our business here is concluded.” Iapetus made to sever the connection.

  “Wait!” Tamerlane called. He couldn’t let it end like this. It could mean the end of everything.

  Iapetus halted midway through turning. His holographic image looked back at Tamerlane. “Yes, General?”

  “All of these issues between us can be resolved in time. But, for now, will you at least contribute something to the defense of the Empire? Anything at all?”

  “There are no issues between us, General,” Iapetus replied with a smile that was at once both warm and chilling. “There is only duty. I seek to do mine; you seek to divert me from that.”

  Tamerlane forced himself to breathe evenly. “Again—we can discuss that subject at a later date. But, as to my... request?” He hated himself for using the term Iapetus had substituted, but the safety of the Empire’s billions of inhabitants had to come first.

  “I have already sent you one, General,” Iapetus replied.

  “One?” Tamerlane frowned. “You’ve sent me one what? One division? One regiment?”

  “One Son of Terra.”

  Tamerlane blinked at this, uncertain at first what the other man meant, unable to speak for a second.

  “And he is there now, lurking in the shadows, no doubt.” Iapetus chuckled. “I hope you have found this conversation enlightening and useful, Colonel Barbarossa. And I hope General Tamerlane can put you to good use.”

  Before Tamerlane could respond to this—and he had no idea what he might say, in any event—Iapetus cut the link. The strategium fell into darkness.

  For a long while no one spoke. Tamerlane stood there, half his mind poring over possible actions, the other half still in shock at Iapetus’s attitude and refusal to help. And he knew Barbarossa was there, he thought. Has he infiltrated my own legion? Or is he just that canny—that smart?

  Barbarossa moved forward a tentative step and coughed softly.

  Tamerlane chewed his lip for a moment, still lost in thought, then turned to the colonel. He regarded him, seeming to size the man up.

  “Shall I return to my legion, then, General?” the colonel asked, after waiting for a few seconds.

  “No,” Tamerlane replied, pursing his lips. He was still deciding exactly what to do next. “Not just yet,” he said at length. “Since General Iapetus has been good enough to lend you to I Legion for a time—and since you are, in fact, the sum total of all the assistance he appears willing to provide—I’d like to make use of you.” He smiled. “I have another assignment in mind.”

  “Might I ask what that is, General?”

  Tamerlane laughed.

  “I’d like your assistance and advice on a small matter,” he said. “It directly pertains to General Iapetus. You have been in his presence on a regular basis, correct?”

  “Daily, General.”

  Tamerlane moved in closer, sobering. “I have enough on my plate, dealing with officers I believed perfectly rational and reasonable only weeks ago. I don’t need trouble from the ones I have never trusted. So—with regard to the good General Iapetus: Would you describe him as sane? As stable?”

  It was a startling question, asked about a commander of one of the three legions of the Empire, and asked of a man who served as second in command of that legion. And yet, despite those facts, Barbarossa did not answer immediately. He took the question in, appearing somewhat taken aback, and frowned for a few seconds. At length he replied, “I’m afraid, General, that any answer I could give would be highly subjective.”

  It was Tamerlane’s turn to be surprised. “How so?”

  Barbarossa began to speak, and now his voice was much softer, lower. “One’s view of General Iapetus’s sanity very much depends upon the context involved. Is he the most normal, the most conventional of men? Certainly not. But—” He paused, thinking carefully, choosing his words with equal care. “But is that what you want, occupying his role? Is there anyone better equipped—in every sense of the word—to defend our mother world? To fight to his last breath, his last drop of blood, for it?” The colonel shook his head. “Iapetus is perhaps eccentric, but he’s also brutally efficient and effective.”

  Tamerlane considered this. Reluctantly he nodded. “Yes. I believe that’s what the Taiko saw in him. Sees in him. All right. That will do for now.” He paused, then added, “Perhaps we will revisit the topic when the present crisis is over. If anyone’s still alive then.” He hesitated, then, “In the meantime, Colonel,” he said, leaning in and speaking in a softer voice, “I would be interested in hearing any additional impressions you gain of him.”

  Barbarossa stared at the general, considering his words. “Sir, are you saying what I think you’re saying?” He gave Tamerlane a half-smile. “You wish for me to spy on Iapetus for you? To spy on my own commander?”

  Tamerlane at first appeared taken aback by Barbarossa. He eyed the other man strangely, as if attempting to ascertain his true reaction. “Spy?” he said at length. “I wouldn’t use that term.”

  “No,” Barbarossa said.

  “But if, as Iapetus likes to say, he and his legion are ‘always watching,’ does it not make sense that someone else, in turn, watch him? I believe the old saying is, ‘Who watches the watchmen?’”

  Eyes narrowing, Barbarossa nodded slowly.

  “You are in possibly the best position of anyone to...evaluate Iapetus on an ongoing basis,” Tamerlane went on. “I would appreciate your thoughts along those lines, from time to time.”

  “I see,” the colonel replied.

  Tamerlane continued to study Barbarossa for another few seconds, then gestured toward the holographic display of the galaxy that still filled the center of the chamber. It showed the main deployments of the three official legions, the markers highlighted in their traditional colors of red, blue and green. Enemy units of many different other colors overwhelmingly outnumbered them. “As you can see,” the general said, “and as you surely knew already, we suffer from a lack of troops. I need every unit at the Empire’s disposal to fight this war. I have to be able to count on every legion equally—including the Sons of Terra. I have to have confidence that they will respond when I call for them— that they will obey orders that are issued to them.”

  Barbarossa smiled. “Of course, sir. I understand.”

  “I thought you would. You are a loyal soldier of this Empire, and a dedicated member of the II Legion.”

  “Indeed I am, General.”

  “And all of us, regardless of our legion affiliation, serve the Empire and the Taiko above all else.”

  “Certainly we do, General,” Barbarossa said. His smile deepened. “Certainly we do.”

  8

  The comet filled the nighttime sky of Eingrad 6 like some blood-red herald of the apocalypse.

  It had appeared suddenly, as if dropping through a heretofore-unseen hole into our universe from out of some other, nightmare realm. That description was, as it turned out, not entirely inaccurate.

  Beneath it, moving in what at first appeared to be a slow, deliberate, plodding gait, towered an Imperial Colossus—two hundred meters of gargantuan war machine, cunningly crafted in the general shape of a man but fitted out with massive weapons and defenses. Mostly painted white, the green and gold of III Legion adorned its scarred and pitted metal surface here and there as trim and detailing.

  Within what passed for
its head rode three human beings, two seated at the controls and the third standing behind them, issuing orders and occasionally consulting the holographic tactical display that filled the balance of the small cabin. The two working the brightly lit and tactile-sensitive control board wore helmets that completely obscured their heads and faces, generating an immersive three-dimensional operating environment for them as they steered the mighty machine. The man who stood behind them, however, wore no helmet, and his blond hair and rough-hewn, handsome features were easily recognizable to anyone in the Legion: Arnem Agrippa, recently promoted general of the Third—the Golden Phalanx, better known in casual parlance as the Kings of Oblivion.

  Oblivion was indeed what they and their Colossus were delivering to the enemy at the moment, leading the charge as the Phalanx blasted its way through the defensive lines of the Riyahadi. Massive plasma cannons arrayed around the right forearm of the Colossus took aim and fired repeatedly, as quickly as permissible given the awful accumulation of heat with just one volley. Each blast tore into the ranks of the foe with the force of divine lightning, melting hovertanks and evaporating whole rows of infantry with instant and horrific suddenness.

  Enemy fire deflected harmlessly from the crackling defensive fields that protected the most sensitive sections of the huge walker, while ricocheting off the ultra-hardened upper limbs and torso. Weapons existed that could hurt a Colossus, but the Riyahadi Caliphate apparently had not, it appeared to Agrippa, deigned to deploy them here in the Eingrad theater of operations. And for this, the big man was exceedingly grateful.

  After rechecking the general condition of all systems for the hundredth time since the attack had begun, the General spun the holographic display to reveal the situation directly behind them. He frowned.

  “The others are falling behind,” Agrippa barked as he took in the tactical situation.

  “Should I slow our advance, sir?” asked the helmsman, Obomanu.

  Agrippa considered this for a moment, weighing the dangers of becoming isolated with the success they were having by pressing their advantage. “No,” he replied. “I will deal with this quickly enough.”