The Shattering: Omnibus

by Van Allen Plexico

  He sincerely hoped quite the opposite—that he would not have to do battle. Not this one time. Not if, as the Dyonari leader had seemed to imply, a mutual foe threatened them both.

  In the distance, a panel opened on the side of the crystal alien vehicle that faced him, and one of the Dyonari stepped smoothly out.

  The Dyonari were truly as alien as anything the human race had encountered since first venturing out into the galaxy, back in the days before the fabled Terran Alliance. Tall they were—taller than most humans—but almost impossibly thin, with elongated skulls and probing, sharp-pointed fingers. Whenever they were encountered by humans, they wore armor, and that appeared to be made entirely of glass, like their vehicles and their weapons. This representative of their people that approached Agrippa was no exception, though his armor was decorated in particularly ornate fashion. Agrippa mentally paused there, thinking, “Is this creature a he? A she? Perhaps simply an it?” After mulling that over for a moment, he decided to go with “he” until presented with evidence to the contrary. Besides, the term “it” seemed to carry too much negative connotation, and Agrippa was sincere in his efforts to reach out in as friendly a manner as possible under the circumstances.

  Still, he intended to be very, very cautious.

  When the two were roughly twenty yards apart, Agrippa stopped and held up one hand. “That’s far enough, for now.”

  The alien looked at him sidelong, his head moving in eerie fashion, and halted as well.

  “You are the one called Glossis, leader of this force—yes?”

  The alien bowed his bizarre head. His voice sounded entirely within the general’s head. “I am.”

  Agrippa saw the long, curved, glasslike sword hanging at the alien’s waist. He nodded toward it. “I left my weapon back there,” he said, pointing toward the nearer of his two tanks where it hovered above the mud. “Did I err?”

  The Dyonari didn’t move, didn’t make a sound, didn’t react—but, a second later, another of the species hurried up from their vehicle and waited respectfully as the leader drew his sword and handed it, pommel-first, to him. The underling hurried back out of sight with it, leaving his leader apparently unarmed.

  “You come for the comet,” the Dyonari said then. He spoke aloud this time, but the voice still sounded louder in Agrippa’s mind that it did to his ears.

  The blond general nodded, his bulky helmet moving along with him. “I’ve been ordered to investigate,” he replied. He considered saying more, but decided to wait and see what the alien might reveal first.

  “You sense its evil—its wrongness,” the Dyonari went on.

  Agrippa frowned at this and hesitated. He hadn’t exactly attempted to quantify it yet, but there was no question that something—something in the very air itself, in the atmosphere, in the ground they stood on—felt wrong now. Had felt wrong ever since the comet had fallen. It was as if the planet itself had been wounded by the impact, and was not yet recovering. “Yes,” he finally said. “I think that’s fair to say.”

  The Dyonari looked at him for another few seconds, as if somehow appraising him. As if reading his insides as well as his outside, even through the plate armor. Then he nodded once. “You...understand. I sense it. For all your...bluster, human, you are with...the light.”

  Agrippa considered this. He thought he might understand. “I suppose so, yes. With the light.”

  “We, too...battle... the darkness,” the Dyonari said. “We should be allies in that fight.”

  “Fine by me,” Agrippa said. “But of course this planet we’re standing on right now is Eingrad-6, a human world—part of the Empire ruled by my superior, the Taiko, Hideo Nakamura. And you are trespassing.” He smiled flatly. “So, much as I’d love to be friends with you, it’s sort of hard to see you and your people as entirely innocent and deserving of some kind of alliance when you yourselves have gone and invaded part of our territory.”

  The alien appeared to be thinking this over for a second, and trying to come to grips with it, as if Agrippa’s statements were so foreign as to be almost impossible to understand. “Ah,” he said at last. “But you see—we do not—consider this world—to be your territory. Or anyone’s.”

  “It’s not yours,” Agrippa said. “There’s never been a single claim to preexisting sovereignty over it.”

  “It is—not ours—nor is it—yours—nor is it—anyone’s,” the Dyonari replied. “That, I believe—is the root—of our—misunderstanding—here.” He spread his hands, his impossibly long fingers fanning out wide. “No world can be owned. Not in the sense that you mean it. Worlds belong only to themselves.”

  Agrippa got it now. He smiled. “A fine sentiment,” he boomed, his voice amplified to the outside world by speakers in his helmet. “Very nice. But, unfortunately, perhaps, that is not the galaxy—the universe—we live in. Territories are claimed by the various governments and races, and treaties are assembled, and we must all live with their provisions.” He chuckled. “It keeps things simple and clear for everyone—especially for military people like me. If we can’t draw a line, I won’t know when someone has crossed over it, and needs to be put back in their place.”

  “Yes,” the Dyonari said—and Agrippa felt he could detect a softening of the stance, the body language, of the alien now—”I believe we have found the root of the disagreement between our peoples.” The Dyonari made a motion that might have been a shrug. “But we cannot solve such cultural problems here today, nor should we try.”

  Agrippa laughed. “We’re soldiers—and thank Those Who Remain for it. We don’t have to work out solutions to sociological and religious differences. We just do as we’re told—which, often as not, means blowing things up.”

  “Quite so,” the alien called Glossis agreed. “And, as soldiers, we must be forever preoccupied with defending our people. That being the case, you must be aware that other, more immediate dangers now threaten us both.”

  “The comets,” Agrippa suggested. “You mean, somehow—whatever they are—they’re a danger to both our peoples.”

  “Indeed.” The alien looked at him more closely. “And you are suggesting you do not know what they represent? What they are?”

  “Suggesting?” Agrippa shook his head. “I’m outright stating it.” He no longer felt the need for guile. Unless this alien was doing something very subtle and probably telepathic to him, to influence his thinking, he felt the guy was being pretty forthcoming and honest. He wanted to reciprocate as best he could. He reached up and unlatched his helmet, pulling it off. He breathed in and out. The air had grown cooler than it had been the last time he’d been outside the tank, only a short while ago. “All I know,” he said to the alien, now in his own voice, “is that the comets are moving in on a number of our planets even now.”

  The Dyonari appeared to be taking this information in and considering it.

  “So, anything you can tell me would be much appreciated,” Agrippa continued, being as restrained and diplomatic as he was capable of being, “and might go a long way toward improving relations between our respective governments.”

  “Tell you? Can you not feel it, human?” the Dyonari asked. “Can you not sense the danger—the terrible, terrible danger—now present here?”

  Agrippa could feel something, alright. A wave of... anxiety? Something like that, anyway, creeping over this portion of the battlefield. A sense of dread. Of danger, as the alien was suggesting. He could feel something, that was certain—but he simply wasn’t convinced yet about its source.

  Before answering, he noted that the air had grown considerably colder in the past minute or two. He looked down and blinked in surprise. Ice, all around.

  Ice? But it was warm. Or, rather, he corrected himself as a cool breeze struck his uncovered face, it had been warm earlier. True, the temperature had been dropping in the last little while, and pretty rapidly. But, still...

  “You see it now, yes?” the alien asked.

  Ice now covered
a good portion of the formerly warm mud all around, and it was spreading fast.

  Spreading out—out from the crater area.

  Something nagged at Agrippa’s mind as he stared at the thickening patches of ice. Something from the recent past... But.... he couldn’t quite recall...

  “Perhaps we should pull back a bit, if we are to continue this conversation,” the big general told the alien, snapping out of his momentary daze. “I’m concerned that being this close to—to whatever it is, down there—could be hazardous to our well-being.”

  “Did you not come to investigate, as we did?” the Dyonari asked. “We suspected, oh yes—but we wished to be certain.” Spindly fingers motioned toward the nearest crater. “Do you not wish to see the foe we both face?”

  Agrippa hesitated, then stepped forward. His boots didn’t squish in the mud as they had when he’d first gotten out of the tank. Now they crunched over the thin but hardening layer of ice. He walked past the Dyonari and right up to the edge of the crater, looking over and down. The red glow was much brighter down there.

  “I can’t really see anything specific,” he told the alien. “Just that strange light.”

  The Dyonari joined him at the edge and gazed down. “As we feared,” he said. “They form their own spacecraft around them as they travel through space. Ice. It accompanies them wherever they go. A side effect; residue of their psychic energies. They somehow channel that power for propulsion and for life-support—if they are, indeed, truly alive at all, in any sense that you or I would understand.”

  Agrippa shifted his eyes from the red glow in the crater’s depths to the tall and slender alien in glass armor that stood beside him. “Okay, enough,” he said, growing testy. “No more mysteries.” He jabbed a thick finger toward the bottom of the crater. “Who is down there? What is down there?” He shivered, though whether it was from the weather or some other strange phenomenon, he didn’t dare ask himself. There was no question it had become very cold now. “What am I supposed to fear so much?”

  The alien leaned over farther and looked down into the light that almost floated like a pool of liquid in the bottom of the crater. “The worst thing there is,” he replied.

  Another wave of fear washed up and out of the crater. The ice hardened. The very air itself now crackled around them with the cold. And something changed. Something very subtle at first, but very real. A presence. Aware of them. Watching them.

  The Dyonari moved back a step. “No,” he murmured. “No—this cannot be correct. Even they are not so powerful.”

  Agrippa half-turned toward the alien. The Dyonari was backing away now, clearly growing more and more agitated as it went.

  “No,” he cried, even louder—and a psychic echo of that word bounced around in the general’s skull, nearly knocking him over with its sheer force and vehemence. “No!”

  Agrippa turned his back entirely on the crater and the red light and started toward the Dyonari, growing very concerned for the alien’s condition. “What’s wrong?” he asked. “Do you need help? Can we call for your people to come and—”

  The Dyonari screamed an unintelligible scream, whirled about, and ran back toward its vehicle.

  Agrippa started after it, then hesitated.

  Doors all around the alien craft were opening and more Dyonari—these all very clearly armed—were getting out.

  The general had no idea what was happening, but he had more than enough experience to recognize a hostile party when he saw one. He also understood enough to know he needed to get back to his own troops and their vehicles as quickly as possible.

  Before he did, though, he turned back and looked down into the crater one last time. The red light was almost blinding now, but he managed to focus his eyes and tried to discern anything tangible, anything material within it. After a couple of seconds of effort, he found he could just make out something. Something...unearthly. Unholy.

  A face.

  Yet, somehow, not a face.

  More like a skull.

  An alien skull.

  Silver and mottled and leering, a skull glared up at him. A cloud of black billowed up, surrounding it, and the malevolent red light seemed to wash around and over it.

  Icy fingers of utter dread gripped Agrippa’s heart.

  By the hardest, by sheer force of will, he pulled his eyes away from the thing in the crater. He turned and raced back toward his squad, moving his big, muscular body and its covering of metal plate armor as quickly as he’d ever moved in his life. As he trudged across the ice, nearly slipping down on numerous occasions, he could hear the sound of the Dyonari troops behind him moving into attack positions.

  He opened a link to his men and attempted to warn them, but the interference was still too great, even over so short a distance.

  He had almost reached the cover of the nearest tank and was calling aloud to his squad when he heard the sound of the Dyonari behind him bringing their weapons to bear and charging them.

  They opened fire.

  12

  Colonel Arani and Major Elaro were about to lead the strike team onto the two waiting shuttles when the very fabric of reality tore itself asunder.

  “We’re under attack!” shouted someone from behind them. Elaro instinctively drew his blast pistol and clicked off the safety, his eyes flicking this way and that, searching for enemies. Simultaneously he reached out with his other arm to pull Colonel Arani out of harm’s way—but she wasn’t there. She’d already leapt forward, her athleticism on full display, and rolled behind cover, coming up with her own pistol at the ready.

  Lightning flared. The sky rent. And just ahead of them all, in the center of the courtyard and training grounds, a vertical seam appeared in midair. It split up and down, until it touched the dusty stone tiles and extended some twenty meters up into the sky. Then, slowly, it spread, opening into a gaping maw. After only a few seconds, it came to resemble the open end of a tunnel, with bright light spilling out from within.

  A figure appeared in the opening then, coming through from the other side—wherever that was.

  Elaro and Arani both trained their weapons on it—and then, as the figure emerged into the bright noonday sun, they lowered them. Eyes wide, they glanced at one another, then back at the person who had just made such a grandiose entrance. He was an olive-skinned, black-haired man in his late thirties, wearing a dark red uniform with gold trim. His face was one known all across the Empire.

  Arani gasped. “General Tamerlane?”

  Seeing her, he smiled. Then he saw the reaction his method of arrival had caused. He raised both hands. “My apologies,” he called in a loud voice. He smiled. “I assure you all—I come in peace!”

  Smiling too, now, Arani stood and moved out from behind cover, hurrying over to him. The other members of the strike team lowered their weapons and looked at one another, puzzled.

  Elaro holstered his pistol and moved up behind Arani, studying the famous general as unobtrusively as someone of his size and appearance could manage.

  “General—how...” Arani pointed to the tear in reality that still stood there, gaping, light shimmering around and within it.

  Tamerlane laughed. “Not exactly the conventional means of transport you were expecting me to take, is it?” He motioned in the direction of the portal, appearing to be summoning someone else through it. “Come ahead, please,” he called.

  Two additional figures appeared within the swirl of light and fog, moving forward. They stepped through onto the surface of Mysentia. Each of them wore hooded robes—one in blood red, the other in black—and each exuded calm, quiet authority. And—there was no mistaking it—each was female.

  The woman in red drew back her hood and stood regally, haughty, her back arched and her hands on her hips, as if she were the late Empress herself. She regarded the soldiers before her with what seemed to be icy contempt. Tamerlane nodded toward her. “This is Teluria,” he stated by way of introduction. “She is our new Ecclesiarch and also vi
zier to the Taiko. She has agreed to assist us in this mission.”

  Teluria radiated an almost palpable sense of power, of danger. The soldiers regarded her with a mixture of curiosity and wariness.

  Arani nodded to her. She waited for additional information, but Tamerlane left it at that.

  What kind of assistance is he talking about? she wondered. Then she gazed at the gaping mouth of the cosmic portal that still stood open behind them and she pursed her lips, thinking.

  Meanwhile Tamerlane motioned toward the woman on his other side and she, too, reached up and grasped her hood, pulling it back. While she took a more casual stance, her dark hair and piercing eyes caught everyone’s attention immediately.

  “This is Sister Delain of the Holy Inquisition,” the general announced. “She has been...loaned...to I Legion for the duration of the present crisis.” He nodded respectfully to her. “I have no doubt she will prove of great value to our efforts.”

  The general turned slowly, taking in the courtyard and the gathered strike team in their advanced khaki uniforms, their blast pistols and other high-powered weaponry in hand. “I’m pleased to see the Nizam Legion is prepared and ready for action,” he called to them. “I’m sorry I haven’t been able to check in on your progress personally before this. But I was confident that, in the hands of Colonel Arani, you would be forged into as fine a military force as exists in the galaxy.”

  A slight cheer went up at this. Most of the soldiers were still coming to grips with the idea that their secret benefactor and patron all this time had been General Ezekial Tamerlane—the leader of I Legion, the famous Lords of Fire.

  “Our Ecclesiarch here,” the general continued, speaking so that all around could hear, “is going to provide transportation for you all, directly to the objective. There will be no interminable sitting around aboard a transport ship.” He smiled. “And no danger from the orbital defenses, of course. She will open a doorway and you will walk through and be there.”