The Shattering: Omnibus

by Van Allen Plexico

  The others spared only a moment to glance at one another in uncertainty. Then they all quickly followed along behind their commander, weapons at the ready.

  The Kings of Oblivion disappeared into the fog.

  LEGION III:

  KINGS OF OBLIVION

  This book is for John Ringer.

  In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only War. (Eagle.)

  “Those who have lost everything no longer have anything to fear.”

  —Don Juan Matus

  “No doubt the nearness of death and the brotherhood of men-at-wars, at whatever time and in whatever country, always produce an atmosphere favorable to the extraordinary, to all that rises above the human condition.”

  —Octavio Paz

  “If you want to see new vistas of Truth, go question the man who wants to kill you.”

  —Masato Igarashi Storm

  DRAMATIS PERSONAE

  Legion I: Lords of Fire

  Colors: Red and gold

  General Marcus Ezekial Tamerlane, “The Relentless.” Acting supreme commander of the loyalist forces.

  Colonel Niobe Arani, former commander, Nizam Legion.

  Major Titus Elaro, former infiltration officer, II Legion.

  Captain Harras Dequoi, commanding officer of the I Legion flagship Ascanius.

  Commander Ehrens, executive officer of the Ascanius.

  Major Talin Trekiyak, commander of marine special ops team, Ascanius.

  Captain Darius Pettway, special ops marine, Ascanius.

  Legion II: Sons of Terra

  Colors: Blue and silver; later black and gold

  General Ioan Iapetus, “The Unyielding.” Self-proclaimed Taiko and Regent.

  Colonel Berens Barbarossa, “The Daring.” Second-in-command of II Legion.

  Colonel Piryu, officer aboard the II Legion flagship Atlantia.

  Legion III: The Golden Phalanx (Kings of Oblivion)

  Colors: Green, white and gold

  General Arnem Agrippa, “The Golden.” Staunch ally of Tamerlane and I Legion.

  Colonel Yevgeni Vostok, “The Cold.”

  Colonel Selim Iksander, “The Lightning.”

  Major Darius Torgon, Colossus and hovertank commander.

  Captain Felix Dakkan, hovertank commander.

  Holland, Faraday, Harker and Obomanu, members of Agrippa’s Bravo Squad.

  The Dyonari

  Glossis, tank commander.

  Siklar, Commander.

  Merrin, Commander.

  Ralin, Commander.

  Madalena, Co-Commander, covert squad.

  Mirana, Co-Commander, covert squad.

  Vinizan, warrior, covert squad.

  The Old Gods (selected)

  Aurore, goddess of distraction and deception.

  Goraddon, god of persuasion and disciple of Vorthan.

  Lohandar, portfolio unrevealed.

  Lucian, god of evil and mischief who once rebelled against the other gods.

  Moranna, goddess of vanity.

  Solonis, the seer.

  Vorthan, god of toil; later labeled a death god.

  Others of Note

  The Princess Marens, sole surviving heir to the Imperial throne.

  Sister Leisle Delain, Inquisitor and aide to the Grand Inquisitor.

  Amon Rameses, former Planetary Governor of Ahknaton.

  Iyesu Tokugawa, Planetary Governor of Edo.

  Suleyman Mehemet, Planetary Governor of Bursa.

  Twice!

  Twice now I have been countered in my attempts to place a Demon Prince upon the throne of humankind.

  Inconceivable. How could these mere mortals hinder me?

  Tamerlane with his dogged persistence. Agrippa with his arrogance and annoying charisma. And Iapetus—Iapetus with his seeming invulnerability to my persuasion. Even now, as Iapetus has ascended to the heights of power as Regent of the Empire, still he manages to avoid me and my influence. It is maddening. And thus twice have they foiled my most carefully laid schemes.

  There will not be a third occasion for them to try.

  I have decided to wipe the board clean and begin anew. I have commanded all of my extra-galactic forces—the bloodthirsty, insectoid Skrazzi and their psychic masters, the Phaedrons—to sweep across this galaxy en masse, to bathe it in blood, and to leave no survivors in their wake. Their comets already descend like a cleansing rain over the worlds of Man. But not just Man—no, all the dominant life forms of the mortal realm will be destroyed. The human worlds lie mostly in ruin, yes, but the process has begun elsewhere, as well.

  And once they have all been eliminated—all the humans and their allies and foes combined—and once my soldiers stand triumphant upon the homeworld of humanity, then I can begin again. I can begin the long, slow process of bringing Hell to that world called Earth—and to this galaxy.

  Now watch, as everything burns…

  —Unattributed fragment from the archives of the data storehouses of Ahknaton

  PROLOGUE:

  The ghost of a god stood on a dead world and screamed his frustration at the shattered stars.

  It had happened. Despite all his hopes, all his efforts, all his travels and his labors, it had happened. The galaxy had been torn asunder—broken to pieces by cosmic forces too vast and powerful to contemplate.

  He gazed out at the ruins of the old empires and the wreckage of starships beyond counting—to say nothing of the dead, in their incomprehensible numbers. He could feel the vibration in the very fabric of reality; he could sense the shockwave that had traveled here and now, from the dim past, to wreak this disaster.

  Futility. All of his feelings as he confronted this cataclysm could be summed up in that single word: Futility.

  It could have been different. But for a tiny happenstance here and there, it would have been different. It all would have been avoided, and the galaxy would have continued on as it had before—as it deserved to.

  But no. For all his knowledge and experience and power, he had been unable to shift the course of galactic history by even the tiniest bit.

  Time now to give up, then? Time to declare his labors a failure? Time to accept the course of history as it seemed to be irrevocably written? In a galaxy where so many untold trillions had died—where even the gods themselves could die—was it time at last for him, too, to lie down and die?

  The temptation was great. His energy was ebbing; his corporeal form could not long endure. So easy to just give up, to let it all go. To let the galaxy die.

  But no. No, he could not accept that. Not so long as life and energy remained to him. Not so long as some measure of the Power yet resonated throughout the cosmos.

  No, he would try again. He would pick himself up and go back again and this time—this time—he would succeed. This time he would correct all those little things that had caused his failure. This time he would get it all right.

  He moved then, a ghost drifting over a graveyard—but a ghost with purpose. Perhaps the most ironic purpose of all, for one of his sort: the purpose of preserving life.

  He would need a way to get back—back to the critical moment. Back to the great cosmic splash whose ripples had led him this far into the future, and to their ultimate result—a shattered galaxy. He would need a conveyance back through time.

  He could build such a device. He knew he could; somehow he knew he had done so before. The components could be found easily enough, amidst the wreckage of so many great star empires. It would not be easy—but then, nothing about his mission would be easy. He would construct a sort of temporal vault; a time tomb, to carry his body back to the proper time and place.

  His body. He looked down and recalled that he truly was a ghost now. His ephemeral self could not travel within such a machine.

  Fine, he told himself. First things first.

  To begin, he would need a new body...

  BOOK NINE:

  THE GOD IN THE TOMB

  1

  Gritting his teeth, t
he golden eye emblem on his chest tarnished but still gleaming, General Ioan Iapetus gripped a matte-black blast pistol in either hand and fired a continuous barrage at the oncoming enemy forces. As he did, he called over the partially jammed and heavily distorted Aether link, “That’s it—fall back! You men upstairs—get the Princess to the shuttle! Now!”

  To his left, Colonel Berens Barbarossa glanced over at him and frowned, even as he, too, kept up an onslaught of blaster fire. “The shuttle? We are retreating, General? Abandoning the Imperial capital world?”

  Iapetus offered the colonel a withering look. “I have no interest in holding this world purely for sentimental reasons, Colonel,” Iapetus replied. “Our positions here are compromised and soon even our routes of withdrawal to orbit will be cut off.” The black-clad general fired another barrage down the hallway, taking out a pair of insectoid alien Skrazzi that had been charging. The remaining enemy fighters dropped back into cover momentarily, giving the humans their first respite since their shuttles had landed. “We are therefore leaving,” Iapetus said, “the moment we have the Princess in our custody.”

  “I—yes, sir,” Barbarossa said. His expression clearly betrayed his uneasiness at that decision, but he wasn’t about to question Iapetus—at least, not publicly. In any case, it wouldn’t have mattered; the general wasn’t paying him any attention. He was engaged in a terse conversation with another unit of II Legion, elsewhere in the palace.

  Iapetus looked at him as soon as that exchange had ended. “The extraction team upstairs is cut off. They’re trapped.” He was already moving in the direction of the central foyer—and the grand staircase it contained—as he called back, “Let’s go!”

  With a grunt of frustration, Barbarossa abandoned the barricade his soldiers had hastily erected only a short while earlier and hurried after Iapetus.

  They dashed along the main central hallway of the Royal Palace, ignoring the fires burning in places where the opening salvos of the attackers had smashed through the ceiling and walls. Rubble lay everywhere, partially blocking the way and causing them to have to weave back and forth to avoid the larger piles of debris. Smoke was beginning to clog the air, and some of the soldiers ahead of Barbarossa were coughing as they ran.

  At the head of their little formation, the general was in no mood to waste time now and Barbarossa had to sprint to avoid falling farther behind. He caught Iapetus and the others as they reached the end of the long central corridor and emerged into the vast open space of the grand foyer. Gold and silver and jewels beyond counting decorated nearly every surface, and the floor was of veined black and white marble. The main staircase—a broad, purple-carpeted affair that led up to the royal residence halls—lay just across from them. Before they could start toward it, however, a deafening cacophony of sound washed from the hallway opposite, and out stormed a horde of Skrazzi, their black carapaces gleaming in the dim light. Some leapt to the attack, stabbing and slicing with their deadly curved blade-arms. Others held back and aimed their disintegrator-cannon arms at his soldiers from afar, willing to take out their own comrades in order to score a few hits against the enemy.

  The Sons of Terra had to dive for whatever cover was available to avoid being shredded by the multiple beams that knifed out from the techno-organic weapon-limbs of the horrific aliens. Some of the legionaries didn’t make it in time and could only scream in agony as the disintegrator waves tore through armor, smartcloth and flesh.

  The low hum of multiple disintegrators had alerted Barbarossa to dive for cover just in the nick of time. An instant after he did, a massive tapestry hanging on the far wall disappeared in a puff of threads and dust. He cringed at the thought; that could have been him.

  “General,” he called over the Aether link. “We have to get out of here NOW. They’re using their disintegrators.”

  Silence for a moment, and Barbarossa waited, continuing to fire at the alien creatures as they emerged into the open on the attack. His pistol was hot now; the grip was almost impossible to continue to hold. Then Iapetus came back, “We have to get the Princess out. We are not leaving without her.”

  Barbarossa stifled another curse and started to respond with a reasoned but passionate argument for doing just that, when he was interrupted by the sounds of a small crowd of men and women just behind him crying out. As he whirled about, he expected to see the Skrazzi at their throats, but this was not the case. Instead, about a dozen of his fellow legionaries that had accompanied them from their previous position were now climbing over rubble and charging directly at the stairs.

  Barbarossa bared his teeth as the low hum began again, and from multiple sources. The disintegrators were firing. The Skrazzi were aiming their deadly distance-weapon limbs directly at the soldiers who were running for the stairs.

  The suicide squad—for that, in truth, was what they had become—made it very close to the stairway before the first of them screamed in agony and fell to the floor. Blood was spraying out from multiple spots on his body, from head to toe, where the disintegrator waves had struck. His uniform was simply gone in places, as was the flesh beneath it. Bare bone shone through in numerous spots. He rolled about on the floor, screaming, until a Skrazzi leapt upon him and, in an almost merciful action, drove its curved blade-arm down into his chest.

  The others of the squad continued on, and one after another of them dropped before reaching the stairs. Two more made it to the bottom flight and started up, only to be shot in the back and then pounced upon by the Skrazzi. Smoke was filling the corridor, its smell mingled with the coppery tang of blood. At that point Iapetus intervened and ordered the assault abandoned.

  The surviving legionaries managed to regroup in secure positions just in time to unleash their own barrage on the first group of Skrazzi to attempt to go for the stairs themselves. The Sons of Terra punched gaping holes in the black bug-creatures with their blast-rifles and pistols, driving the survivors back into cover.

  “A standoff,” Barbarossa noted, staring across what had been an elegant foyer but was now no-man’s-land. “We can’t go for the Princess, but neither can they.”

  Now Iapetus was truly angry. He accessed the Aether and mentally “spoke” with the detachment upstairs, ordering them to stay where they were—their escape route was now cut off. He took a quick look around, assessing the situation. Then, after a string of profanities, he barked at Barbarossa, “If I had expected an invasion force to land and attack the palace so soon after our arrival, I would have brought down a much bigger force.”

  Barbarossa started to ask if they could simply call down reinforcements from the Atlantia, high up in orbit above them, but then he realized how useless that would be. The aliens were here, now, on the attack. By the time an assault team from the flagship could be scrambled and loaded onto a shuttle, not to mention flown all the way down to them and unloaded again, they would all have been dead for quite a while.

  “Times like these are when I most regret allowing Teluria to escape me,” he growled, eyeing Barbarossa. “It was inexcusably stupid.” He shook his head. “She could’ve simply opened a portal and we could have walked right out of here.”

  Barbarossa had worked with the general far too long to think it wise to say anything back to that.

  “Ah, well,” he said. “No sense in worrying about it now. She will be back under our control soon enough.” He issued another set of orders, this time telling the upstairs contingent to keep the Princess safe and otherwise block off the stairs. Next he designated half a dozen of his troops there around him to stay in position and defeat any attempts by the aliens to try again for the stairs. Finally he turned to Barbarossa and motioned in the direction they had just come. “Back this way, Colonel,” he said. “The rest of you, too. Let’s go.”

  “This way, sir?”

  “Back to the shuttle,” Iapetus called back, already hurrying along the grand hallway.

  Barbarossa was shocked. They were leaving? Without the Princess?

 
“General,” he shouted, very concerned now, “I don’t believe our troops back there can hold out for long.”

  “Then you’d better run faster, eh, Colonel?”

  Barbarossa reddened but picked up his pace, trailing along behind Iapetus and five other soldiers in black.

  They had to fight their way back out of the palace but, after that, fortune was with them: their main shuttle was still intact on the broad concrete parking lot. The boarding ramp lowered as they approached and they all hurried aboard. Before the last soldier had even seated herself in the passenger compartment, Iapetus had already moved to the cockpit and yanked the pilot out of his seat. The pilot dropped into a spare co-pilot’s spot and looked on in wide-eyed wonder as the supreme commander of II Legion began to operate the controls of the vehicle like a seasoned pro, lifting the little ship off the ground in seconds.

  “Where is she?” Iapetus called over the Aether. “Where is the Princess? Is she still safe?”

  “We have her, General, and she’s fine,” came a response from one of the II Legion units in the royal suites. “We have been cut off, and are preparing to fight our way out.”

  “No,” Iapetus almost shouted aloud. “No—do not endanger her. Stay there. We will come to you.”

  “Come to us?”

  Iapetus ignored the question and devoted his attention to the controls, pivoting the shuttle around to face the palace. At that moment a horde of Skrazzi emerged from the same doorway the legionaries had just used. They waved their blade-arms and emitted blood-curdling roars. In response Iapetus remotely accessed the anti-personnel guns along the bottom of the shuttle and opened fire; the Skrazzi disintegrated in puffs of black dust and blood as energy pulses tore through them.

  The Aether was now abuzz with calls from both the troops at the bottom of the stairs and the ones guarding the Princess. It seemed the enemy was in the process of launching a major assault.