Instead of the furious rant he had likely been about to unleash, Tamerlane breathed in and out once and then said in a level voice, “Governor Rameses. I know not what you had planned for your newly-expanded army; perhaps you’d thought to engage in open, armed rebellion, and perhaps not. But that is beside the point now. The Empire faces its most dire challenge, and all of us—all of us, and all of our worlds—risk being overwhelmed very soon. I therefore order—” He caught himself, thought better of what he was saying, breathed again, and started over. “I therefore ask that you contribute your forces to the defense of the Empire. Immediately.”
The holographic image of Rameses glared back at Tamerlane with kohl-rimmed eyes. “No,” he said.
Tamerlane’s own eyes widened. “No? You’re simply rejecting outright the order—the request—and the entire concept of defending the empire of which your world is a part?”
“I am rejecting you, Tamerlane. You and your corrupt, illegitimate regime.”
All pretense of politeness evaporated from Tamerlane’s demeanor at that. He darkened. “This is your last warning, Governor,” he hissed, “and your last chance.”
As Rameses started to issue his inevitable retort, Delain leaned in and whispered something quickly into Tamerlane’s ear. Upon hearing it, Tamerlane instantly cut the governor off.
“Wait, wait.” He raised a hand. “What exactly are you up to, Rameses? What game are you playing that involves cosmic energies?”
“Excuse me?” the suddenly wrong-footed and very suspicious governor replied, frowning. Now the slender man in red robes moved into frame again, whispering to him.
“Sister Delain tells me that a rift in the fabric of the universe has opened on your world, in your capital city—within your palace itself! And someone or something is somehow channeling massive amounts of cosmic energies through that rift and into our universe. It appears to be disrupting spacetime itself.” He paused, scowling. Then, “I can only assume you would be aware of something of that magnitude, happening right inside your palace,” he added sarcastically.
“What I am doing within my own palace, on my own world, is none of your concern,” the governor snapped. He listened to one last bit of advice from the man in red, then straightened. “I have made my position clear, Tamerlane,” he stated flatly.
“Indeed you have,” the general replied. “And you will receive my own...shall we say, official response shortly.” He leaned in closer. “I very much doubt you will like it when it arrives.”
Rameses scowled and cut the connection at last.
Tamerlane laughed, but it was a bitter laugh. He turned to Delain. “We cannot have rebellion within our borders if we are to defeat the many enemies outside them,” he said.
“What will you do?” the Inquisitor asked, her voice soft but strong.
“I will unleash a legion upon Ahknaton,” he replied.
“A legion?” she inquired, visibly surprised. “My understanding was that all your legions are tied down on the borders.”
“One remains unengaged,” the general stated. He offered her a half-smile. “I will, as they say, kill two birds with one stone.”
The Inquisitor raised one eyebrow in curiosity, waiting.
“I will dispatch the Sons of Terra,” he said, before turning and striding through the doorway of the strategium. “One way or another.”
Delain watched him go for a few seconds before gliding along after him. What she thought of his declaration, however, she kept to herself.
6
“It is done, master,” Teluria whispered as she knelt in her quarters aboard the Ascanius, her head bowed as if in prayer. Patterns of ice formed and slowly spread on the floor all around her. “Iapetus has been shown the comets, and the danger to the worlds he is sworn to protect,” she said. “I cannot imagine he will budge now—no matter who asks, or even orders, him to do so.”
“Excellent,” came a voice from nowhere, dry as old leaves blowing in the breeze. “You have done well.”
“Thank you, lord.”
“But I think it is not enough.”
“What?”
“Iapetus is a wild card. He is a powerful piece on the board—a capital piece, at least—but I cannot yet tell which side he plays for.”
“I suspect he plays only for himself,” Teluria said.
A pause. “Yes. I believe that is true. As such, he serves only to disrupt the game.”
“I have neutralized him, sire.”
“It is not enough,” the voice repeated. “I would see him dead.”
“Dead?” Teluria frowned. “That—would be exceptionally difficult, my lord. I could perhaps—”
“You will dispatch someone else to tend to it. I have other plans for you.”
“I—see, sire.”
“Send your best agent. Have Iapetus taken somewhere that it can be done as an…accident. We do not want his death to serve to rally his legion. Quite the opposite. I desire a lonely death for him and a loss of spirit for his Sons of Terra. I want them tied firmly to Earth, when the time comes.”
Teluria considered this. “Very well, sire, if that is your wish. I will see to it.”
“Indeed.”
She hesitated a moment, waiting. Then, “You said you had some other task for me?”
“Yes,” the voice hissed. “I have recently become aware of another threat—another legion. A secret legion, being assembled without the knowledge of most of the Imperial government.”
“Another legion?” Teluria was startled at this revelation. “Assembled by whom, sire?”
“By one who has thwarted my designs before,” the voice replied. “One who must be dealt with once and for all.”
“Yes. What am I to do, then?”
“You will offer your assistance, of course, as any Ecclesiarch would. And then…”
Teluria listened to the words of her master. Slowly, a smile crept across her face.
“It will be as you say, master.”
“Of course.”
The connection broke.
7
Waves of heat. Clouds of smoke. A glaring red light radiating from somewhere ahead in the distance. And, overlaying all the rest of it like some thick, palpable fog, a sense of disturbance, of danger—of fear. None of the men and women of the Bravo Squad spoke of it, but they all felt it, and they all wondered what it meant. They worried what it meant.
As the lead hovertank came to a halt approximately a kilometer away from the site, Agrippa raised the hatch and peeked carefully out, wanting to appraise the situation with his own eyes. What he saw disturbed him greatly.
A wasteland, even here in a region of a planet already battered and beaten down by a prolonged war. Whatever buildings had stood here once were now shattered and broken and almost entirely gone. Trees, grass, and the like were also churned under. Only a sea of dirt and mud lay ahead, sloping gently down into what, from this distance, clearly was a shallow valley filled with impact craters. And all of this under a sky grown dark and angry from days of bombardment hurling tons of particulate matter into the atmosphere.
“That’s definitely where it all came down,” Agrippa growled back down through the hatch opening. “In several fragments, it looks like.”
Indeed, the comet had separated as it passed through the planet’s atmosphere and at least seven distinct pieces had crashed down, all confined to this area.
“Contact,” called the trooper manning the scanner. “East by northeast.”
Agrippa instinctively turned to face that direction; the Aether link confirmed that he was facing the right way. He squinted but could see nothing. He considered donning his helmet just for the enhanced optics it offered, but before he could reach down for it where it lay inside the tank, the scanner man snapped, “Check that. Reading has vanished.”
“Vanished?” Agrippa asked, puzzled.
“Yes, General. Possible ghosting from atmospheric effects, or—”
“Or some kind of di
stortion field,” he finished for the man. “Or cloaking of some other kind.”
A pause, then, “Entirely possible, sir. Scanning again.”
Agrippa nodded, waiting.
“Still nothing, General. Scope is clear.”
Agrippa pursed his lips, then nodded his head forward once. “Alright. Let’s move in.”
At the controls, and as deft at driving a tank as he had been at directing the path of a Colossus walker, Obomanu re-engaged the drive. The big armored vehicle surged to life, its small but massively powerful fusion engine directing barely-contained energies into the propulsion system. As it zoomed into the valley, the second tank cruised along in its wake.
“Are you reading anything unusual back there, Major?” Agrippa called over the link.
“Unusual?” Major Torgon’s voice conveyed almost a sense of disbelief at Agrippa’s question. “You mean, sir, aside from the obvious?”
Agrippa snorted. “Yes, Major. That’s precisely what I mean.”
“Well, then—no, nothing at all unusual here, sir,” he replied.
Listening in, the others in the tank’s cabin laughed—but it was a tight, tense laughter, and Agrippa understood it. They were venturing into the unknown, and the tension was high among them. And beyond even that, there was something...
The two hovertanks, each floating almost two meters above the shell-scarred ground, rocketed down into the valley, their gun turrets traversing this way and that, in search of foes or ambush. Just ahead, the crimson glow radiated brightly from the craters where the comet fragments had crashed down to the surface of Eingrad-6.
“Contact,” shouted the scanner officer again, this time more definitively. “Sir, there is definitely something off to our right.”
Agrippa was still looking that way. “Still not seeing anything,” he muttered. “How far back?”
“Approximately half a click.”
“I’m getting something, too,” came the voice of Torgon from the other vehicle. “I think it’s—”
Impact. The blast struck like lightning and skewed the tank around sideways as it continued along its path. Inside, Agrippa had to grasp the sides of the open hatch with both hands to keep from being hurled out. The other troopers cried out and the metal tank rang like a bell.
“What in the Above and Below was that?” the general demanded.
Obomanu recovered quickly and seized the tank’s controls, wrestling them into submission. Within a couple of seconds, the heavy vehicle was back under control, and he slowed its velocity, curving around to aim in the direction of the attack.
“Riyahadi tank, almost on top of you,” Torgon called over the link. “They’re bearing down, but I think I can—”
The second blast was only a glancing blow. Obomanu was using every evasive trick in the book to keep the big metal vehicle from making itself too easy a target.
“Whatever you think you can do—do it!” shouted Agrippa over the link.
As Agrippa’s tank topped the rise again, coming back out of the valley, the Riyahadi vehicle suddenly appeared in their path, about half a kilometer ahead. Its gun—a larger piece than the one atop their tank, Agrippa could see immediately—was aiming right at them.
“Brace!” the general cried.
A vivid, nearly blinding blast struck the Riyahadi tank and blew a chunk out of its rear left corner.
“There you are, Torgon!” Agrippa shouted, grinning. “I don’t think he saw you back there. Give him another!”
Before Torgon’s tank could fire again, however, Harker took aim and blasted away with their cannon. The enemy vehicle, already becoming aware it had interposed itself between two opponents rather than simply ambushing one, was caught with its gun halfway between the two, trapped in indecision about which to fire at next. The column of violet energy that speared out of Agrippa’s tank’s gun skewered the enemy dead center, carving its way through layers of metal and ceramic armor. An explosion blossomed as the fusion drive was hit. Torgon followed this a second later with his own second blast, which sheared the main cannon off at the turret.
“She’s done for, sir,” Harker reported as he peered through his gun sight scope. “They’re abandoning ship!”
The hatch was open and three survivors were scrambling out, their white and gold Riyahadi Caliphate robes fluttering around them. They were barely clear before the tank went up in a horrific blast that hurled them forward and down into the mud.
“I’ve got them, General,” Torgon called over the link. His tank zipped around and positioned itself alongside the three Riyahadi survivors.
“What’s our status?” Agrippa asked Obomanu. “How badly are we hurt?”
The driver checked a series of displays and looked up at the general. “It’s not great, sir, but we can still move. And fire.”
Agrippa nodded. “Very well. We—”
There was a sudden sound of gunfire over the link, and shouting.
“What happened, Major?” Agrippa demanded once the sounds had died down.
Silence for a moment, then, “Two of the Riyahadi tried to get cute, sir,” he said. “They wanted to take a few of us with them. Suicide fighters. They definitely got the ‘suicide’ part right, but the rest didn’t work out too well for them. We’re okay.”
Agrippa acknowledged this. Then, “You said two of them...?”
“We have a prisoner, sir. He doesn’t seem as anxious as his two brethren to move on to the afterlife.”
“You have him secured?”
“Yes, General.”
Agrippa frowned at this but nodded. He wouldn’t admit it, but he would have preferred that all three of them attempt a foolish action of that type, so they could all be justifiably eliminated. He wasn’t really in a position to tend to a prisoner at the moment. Nonetheless, a prisoner he had, and he’d deal with that as best he could.
“Very well, Major. Let’s get back to business, then. I’m assured that my tank is still operable, so we’re headed back into the valley.”
“Right behind y—”
A squawk of static.
“Major? Torgon, are you there?”
More static. Then, “—hear you, sir. Something is—” White noise.
Agrippa gritted his teeth in frustration and glanced over at Harker. “Are you hearing Torgon?”
“Just barely, sir,” the gunner replied. “How is that possible?”
“Something is interfering with our Aether link,” the sensor officer reported. “Some kind of outside signal or wave. And it’s growing stronger.”
“How is that possible?” Harker repeated.
“I don’t know and, at the moment, I don’t care,” Agrippa snapped. He glared at the sensor man. “Whatever it is, I want it eliminated.”
“Working on it, sir,” the officer replied quickly, with just a hint of fear, before turning his full attention to the interface boards in front of him.
Agrippa thought for a moment, then turned to Obomanu at the main controls. “Let’s go,” he barked.
The hovertank raced forward in the direction of the valley and the craters.
They had barely traveled two hundred meters when the scanner man called out, “Contact! Dead ahead!”
“Again?” breathed Agrippa. “Is this a Riyahadi base or something?”
“Not Riyahadi, General,” the scan man stated. “Alien.”
“Alien?” Agrippa raised one eyebrow and looked over at Harker. The gunner in turn brought the main weapon controls on line again and stood ready.
“You—are General—Agrippa. Yes?”
The voice had sounded within his head, very much the way an Aether connection worked. But it hadn’t come via the still-jammed Aether. Agrippa stood up straighter, his upper half still projecting out of the tank’s upper hatch, and looked around.
“Who is there?” he said aloud.
Obomanu and Harker looked up at him. “What was that, sir?”
“You didn’t hear it?”
Th
e two men exchanged glances, puzzled.
The voice came again. “You wish...that all...can hear. And see. Very well.”
At that same moment, Harker spoke up: “There’s the contact, General. And—oh...”
Directly ahead of them hovered a gleaming vehicle of very otherworldly design. Agrippa stared at it and almost gasped.
It was circular and smooth and looked as if it had been formed entirely of glass. It hovered only centimeters above the ground; its transparent hull radiated every color of the rainbow in waves of light so pure and clear they almost hurt the eyes to look upon them. Agrippa recognized it. It could hardly be mistaken for anything else.
“Dyonari,” he whispered.
“Indeed,” came the voice in his head. “We are that which you call the Dyonari.”
Agrippa nodded. His fingers flexed involuntarily and he glanced down at Harker to make sure the gunner was prepared and ready to fire. “And you’re looking for a fight, right?”
“Not at all,” the ethereal voice replied. “I am—Glossis. You would know me as the commander of this unit.”
“Why are you inside my head, Glossis?” Agrippa asked, suppressing his anger at the seeming violation of it.
“I am communicating with you in this manner—mentally—because of the effect that is preventing both our parties from accessing the lowest level of the Above—what you call the Aether. In short—we are, both of us, being jammed.” A pause. “A fight—as you put it—may well be coming—and that for both of us, as well,” the Dyonari went on. “But—not... with... each... other.”
“Not each other? We have a common enemy?” Agrippa found himself, if not entirely willing to accept this, at least willing to listen. Given that the Empire was currently at war with virtually everyone around it, the likelihood seemed not so remote. “And who might that fight be with, then?” he asked.
The image of the blood-red comet appeared in his mind then, doubtlessly placed there by the Dyonari. A wave of very palpable fear washed out over the general and his men, and all of them shuddered. Beneath Agrippa’s fingertips, a thin layer of ice began to form around the ring of the hatchway.
The Shattering: Omnibus Page 41
