“It’s far from the only one, captain,” Tamerlane replied, his mental voice filled with defeat. “There’s nowhere else to go.”
“If only we could fit the whole galaxy into Solonis’s time vault,” Agrippa muttered. “Perhaps we could—”
“Time?” Iapetus looked up from where he had been hunched over, brooding. “That—that just might be the solution!”
Tamerlane and Agrippa looked at one another, puzzled. “What? You can’t just move the entire galaxy through time,” Agrippa said.
“No,” Iapetus replied, beginning to type again, “but I can divert the axis somewhat—from horizontal to vertical, so to speak. I can move this overload in time.” He hesitated, looked up at them, and added, “Perhaps.”
“What are you talking about?” Agrippa asked.
Iapetus didn’t reply. He was working more frantically than ever now.
“How much longer do we have?” Colonel Arani asked, leaning in and watching Iapetus working with renewed enthusiasm.
“The zero-moment will arrive in approximately fifteen seconds,” Iapetus said. “And—as you might suppose—we will know immediately afterward if I have been successful with what I am attempting.”
The final seconds ticked by. Tamerlane and Agrippa glanced at one another and shrugged. “Here’s hoping he knows what he’s doing,” Tamerlane said.
“And may the gods help us all,” Agrippa added.
“You don’t need the gods right now,” Iapetus stated as he furiously typed at the controls. “You need something much better. You need me.”
Titus Elaro looked at Arani and held out his hand. Arani hesitated, then took it.
The zero-moment arrived.
35
And the galaxy did not shatter.
At least, not at that moment.
Iapetus raised his hands from the controls and exhaled slowly and deeply. He looked like a concert pianist completing a particularly long and grueling piece.
“You did it, then?” Tamerlane asked, not quite believing it.
“We’re still here,” Arani said, looking around. Then she looked down at Elaro’s hand holding hers and abruptly pulled free.
“What did you do?” Agrippa asked.
“I did precisely what I said I would do,” Iapetus replied. “I sent the blast through time, along two already-existing faults in spacetime. Um. Among other things.”
“You did what?” Tamerlane said, shaking his head in confusion. “You sent it where?”
“You mean, ‘When,’” Iapetus corrected him.
Tamerlane grunted. “Fine, then—when? The past or the future?”
“Both.”
Agrippa suddenly looked up, his eyes wide. “Oh,” he said. “Oh! I believe I understand now.” He frowned. “At least, somewhat,” he added.
Tamerlane, surprised, turned to him. “You do? Then would you care to explain it to me?”
“This was the moment Solonis was searching for,” Agrippa said. “The splash in the pond.”
“The what?”
“That central moment, from which the waves of destruction radiated out into the past and into the future simultaneously.”
Tamerlane shook his head. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Agrippa shrugged. “It’s...well...complicated,” he said. “Solonis could explain it better.”
“Too complicated for me,” Tamerlane said. “But, in any case, we are still here and the galaxy didn’t blow up. That’s good enough.” He tapped into the Aether link. “Captain, how does it look from up there?”
“Everything has settled back down, General,” Dequoi replied. “And thank the stars for it.”
“Again—not the stars, not the gods,” Iapetus growled. “Just me.”
Tamerlane ignored him and passed the good news on to the others. “Now,” he said to Iapetus, “I have a great many questions for you.”
“I expect that you do,” Iapetus said, “but I have little time. I will answer what I can.”
Tamerlane frowned at this. “Little time? You have all the time in the world. You no longer command II Legion.”
“Indeed I do not,” the other man replied. “I resign my commission outright.”
“I’d already stripped it,” Tamerlane said.
Iapetus shrugged. “Either way.”
Tamerlane was taken aback by this. “Colonel Barbarossa commands the Sons now.”
“Of course he does. And he will do a fine job.” Iapetus hesitated. He stood from the control seat and leaned in close to Tamerlane. “But I wouldn’t trust him too terribly far,” he said in a lower tone. “You should keep an eye on him, Ezekial. As often as you can.”
Tamerlane blinked. He wasn’t sure whom he was speaking with anymore. Had Iapetus been possessed, in the manner of Solonis’s human body, or Torgon? He asked Iapetus this outright.
The former general only laughed. “No, no,” he said. “I am still myself, I assure you.” He pursed his lips and looked up toward the ceiling for a moment. “Let us say I have merely had my consciousness expanded. Tremendously.”
“You and the gray guy were doing drugs?” Tamerlane asked, almost laughing.
“Actually, we were—in a manner of speaking. He had some very powerful ones. I don’t recommend them, though, if you plan on going back to your old way of thinking and living.”
Tamerlane brought his hands up to his eyes and rubbed at them distractedly. “I don’t know what to make of this,” he said at length. “Agrippa is explaining cosmic metaphysics and Iapetus is happily resigning from his own legion. Maybe the galaxy did get blown up, and I’ve been hurled into the backwards-universe or something.”
Iapetus chuckled at this while Agrippa dropped heavily into the control seat that Iapetus had vacated.
“My time grows extremely short, General,” Iapetus said. “You had other questions?”
“Where are you going?” Tamerlane asked, staring openly at the new uniform the other man now wore. “For whom are you working?”
“I now serve the master of this facility.”
“Aliens?”
“No. Not precisely. No.”
“But you have a new ‘master’ you will be working for.”
“Yes.” Iapetus chuckled again. “As do both of you.”
“We do?”
“In a manner of speaking. You’ll see.”
Tamerlane waved this away. “Enough with the riddles. You said you sent the power overload into both the future and the past. If you sent it into the past, why are we still alive, here and now? Why does the galaxy still exist around us?”
Iapetus nodded at this. “It is a puzzle, I’ll admit.” He stroked his chin, thinking. “My best guess is that I was successful at funneling it into either the Above or the Below as it traveled back in time.”
Tamerlane’s eyes widened. “You mean you just blew up the Above?”
“Or the Below. But not necessarily. Physics work differently there, in each of those realms. And whatever happened back then, it always happened.”
“What?” Tamerlane frowned.
“The explosion, or overload, or whatever ended up manifesting itself back then—it has always happened that way. As we were born and grew up and lived our lives up until this moment, it was always that way.”
Tamerlane struggled to comprehend this. “So—so you’re saying whatever happened in the past, you didn’t really change it. You just caused it to happen back then, as it always did.”
“Precisely.” He chuckled. “You’re catching on, Ezekial.” He sobered. “So that means, for example, that we didn’t just wipe out the Golden City.”
“That’s a relief,” Tamerlane said. He paused. “I think. Maybe.”
Iapetus was staring off into the distance. “In fact,” he said, “it could very well be that the blast I sent backwards in time could have gone into the Above, thousands of years ago, and ripped open the very fundament of...”
Tamerlane stared back at him as
his voice trailed off. “Oh. Oh, no,” he said, shaking his head. “No—you can’t mean you think that you blasted open the hole in the Above that became the Fountain...?”
Iapetus shrugged. “How could we know for certain? But it is one possibility.”
Tamerlane gaped at this idea. He could have just been complicit in the actual creation of the Fountain in the Golden City—the power source of the gods. “But—but that would mean that the gods themselves are not really divine, but merely—”
Agrippa interrupted them. “Gentlemen,” he said, “it’s all well and good to consider what the blast that went backwards in time caused. But—given that it clearly did not destroy us—I am far more concerned about the blast that Iapetus sent into the future—because that one still looms ahead of us.” He explained to them quickly what Solonis had said—what the seer-god’s time-traveling spirit form had seen in the distant future. “All of this—everything my legion and I have done since coming here—has been to avoid that very fate. Are you telling me it’s still going to happen?”
Iapetus darkened. He looked down at the control panel and the readouts. “I can’t be certain,” he replied after a few moments. “Perhaps such things are simply unavoidable. Unalterable. Written into the fabric of reality.” He shook his head. “Even with an expanded consciousness, I still don’t understand the universe.”
“It does seem as if, in attempting to avoid the shattering of the galaxy in the future, we have inadvertently made certain that very thing will happen,” Agrippa grumbled.
Tamerlane exhaled and shook his head. “The future can tend to the future. We saved the present, and that’s my main area of concern. That’s enough, for now.”
Agrippa didn’t argue the point but he didn’t look terribly convinced.
“And now,” Iapetus said, “if you gentlemen will excuse me, I have work to do.”
“Here?” Tamerlane said, still reeling at the thought of Iapetus simply walking away from his old life and his old ways. “You’re staying here?”
“For now,” the other man replied. “There’s work to be done here, and then at other facilities across the galaxy.”
“There are more places like this?”
Iapetus laughed. “Oh, many more, Ezekial.”
Tamerlane frowned. “Should that concern me as much as I think it should?”
“No. Quite the opposite.”
Tamerlane started to argue, then bit back his reply and shook his head again. “Alright, fine.” He nodded to Agrippa, who slowly pulled himself up from the big seat. “We have pressing matters ourselves, don’t we?”
“Indeed,” the big man replied. “We were in the middle of losing a war, last I checked.”
Iapetus grinned at that. “Oh, I wouldn’t give up just yet,” he said.
“And why is that?” Agrippa asked as he and the others moved toward the tower’s exit. Ahead of them, Titus Elaro and Colonel Arani led the captive Torgon/Siklar toward a shuttle.
Iapetus shrugged theatrically as Tamerlane followed Agrippa out, the last of them to go. “You never know,” he said. “There’s always hope.” He turned then and watched as the big, blond general paused and stared off into the distance. Iapetus called, “Agrippa.”
The big general turned and looked back.
“Your warning never makes any difference. There’s no point in going wandering off in the fog, trying to find yourself. Just let it go.”
Agrippa appeared extremely puzzled for a moment, and then realization came to him. He started to say something back, then seemed to think better of it. He merely turned and walked toward the shuttle.
Iapetus only laughed at this. He saluted Tamerlane in Legion fashion one last time, then stepped back inside, and the door to the tower slid closed for good.
Tamerlane stared at that door for a good ten seconds, but he had no idea what to think or to say—and now no one to say it to, if he had. Shaking his head, he turned and jogged the rest of the way to the last of the shuttles.
“Arnem,” Tamerlane said quietly as he climbed inside and seated himself a short distance away from the other general, “Did we just score a great victory—or suffer a tremendous defeat?”
But, for once, Agrippa had nothing to say. He was staring down at the floor of the craft, his expression grim. At Tamerlane’s prodding he merely shook his head. “I failed on every level today, Ezekial,” he said. “The Shattering still happens. I lost Torgon. And we’re still losing the Empire.”
Tamerlane took this in and unexpectedly he found Iapetus’s final words to be something of a comfort—more than he would have expected. “There’s always hope,” he repeated. And, “It’s not over yet.” He considered for a second before adding, “Alien invasion; the fall of the Empire; the destruction of the galaxy… At least it can’t get any worse.”
BOOK TWELVE:
EMPIRE IN ASHES
1
Two weeks later, it had gotten far, far worse.
Tamerlane stood at the center of the strategium aboard the Ascanius. Against the curving wall ahead of him were Agrippa—finally out of his heavy armor and clad in a much more comfortable standard smartcloth uniform of white and green—and Niobe Arani, along with Titus Elaro, Sister Delain, and the Lady Teluria, plus certain other officers and technicians. They watched in grim silence as Tamerlane controlled the huge holographic display with motions of his hands.
“They are moving past the Inner Worlds without overrunning and conquering each of them completely,” Agrippa observed, his voice a low rumble. “Their numbers are so great, they are slipping past our pickets and defensive positions and converging—”
“On the Earth,” Tamerlane finished for him. He zoomed the three-dimensional galactic map in tighter on the Inner Worlds—the dozen Imperial planets closest to the Earth. Some were further in or out along the plane of the galaxy; others were above or below Earth, relative to their current view. The enemy fleets—waves of comets, now joined in recent days by actual spacecraft—were each represented by a tiny red dot.
The display was filled with tiny red dots. They appeared like a gigantic swarm, surrounding and penetrating the Empire in a great, fuzzy sphere that was steadily constricting toward the center. Toward Sacred Terra.
“Their leaders in the field—the Phaedrons—are psychic creatures,” Agrippa noted. “Their primary weapon is fear—the fear they create in their opponents.” He stepped into the holographic cloud image and strode across to stop next to Tamerlane. Before the two of them floated a tiny representation of Earth. He reached out a big hand and cupped it with a delicate touch. “Perhaps they understand that threatening the sacred homeworld directly is a very effective strategy for generating fear. And fear in turn might aid in the final collapse of all organized resistance.”
“Not just the homeworld,” Titus Elaro added, his expression grim. “The palace.”
The others looked at him.
“I know the Empire hasn’t used the Old Palace as its capitol in centuries,” Elaro explained, “and the Rahkmanovs never did. But the princess is there now. And the symbolic value…”
Agrippa nodded slowly. He looked up at Tamerlane. “He could be right. Capturing the ancestral homeworld and seizing the Old Palace—or destroying it—could shatter whatever morale remains among our troops and our people.”
Tamerlane considered this and shrugged. “Whatever their rationale, the end result is the same. If Earth falls, this is all over. We’re finished.”
“Finished?” Colonel Arani sounded incredulous.
“For the most part, yes,” Elaro said. “Think of it. The human race would have been swept from all its worlds, including its birth world. We would be a vagabond people, wandering about the periphery of the graveyard of our old domain, likely pursued by the victorious aliens and their forces.”
Arani simply looked at him for a moment, then shook her head and turned back to the generals. Her face was flushed. “That can’t be allowed to happen,” she said with firmness. �
�It cannot.”
“Colonel,” Tamerlane said to her, not unkindly, “trust me—I fully agree, and I intend to do everything possible to avoid it.”
Arani blinked and then nodded. “I know, sir,” she said. “I just—”
Tamerlane gave her a reassuring smile and raised a hand. “I know, Colonel,” he said. “This is all very hard to hear, I’m sure.”
“It is infuriating,” Agrippa growled. “I can’t help but think that things could have turned out differently if Iapetus and the Sons hadn’t held back so very long.”
“Well, they’re not holding back now,” Tamerlane said. He pointed to several small rows of blue dots arrayed just beyond Earth. As sparse as they were, they represented the largest single set of units representing human forces visible within the display. “They’re manning the front lines.” He chuckled. “Barbarossa has proven remarkably…adaptable to his new circumstances.”
“You mean he’s obeying your orders,” Agrippa said with a snort.
Tamerlane laughed once and nodded. “That’s one way to put it.”
“What of the princess?” Arani asked.
Tamerlane shrugged. “She’s fine. Had no idea what was going on. She’s young. She simply did what the adults told her to do. And of course Iapetus and his crowd treated her well.”
“They wanted her full support,” Agrippa noted.
“There’s that, anyway,” Arani said. She paused, then, “I heard Barbarossa even gave back the Sword of Baranak.”
“That’s correct,” Tamerlane replied.
She looked from Tamerlane to Agrippa, not seeing it. “So, what’s become of it?” she asked.
Tamerlane gave a half-grin and turned to Agrippa. The blond general in turn smiled.
“I gave it to someone who will get the best use out of it,” Tamerlane answered.
“Indeed I shall,” Agrippa said. “It’s safely stored for now, but I will bring it out before the end. Never fear.”
Titus Elaro moved forward and appeared to be studying the waves of red dots more closely. Their hollow sphere—hollow at the center, around the unconquered Earth and its environs—now encompassed the entirety of the rest of the human realms. The Anatolian Empire was nearly gone, and the Riyahadi Caliphate and the Chung worlds were naught but red smears. The chaotic panoply of DACS worlds was a mixed bag, with the enemy having passed many of them by entirely in order to head straight for the heart of human space. Beyond, the vague area where the Dyonari Star-Worlds were known to frequent was half-overrun, with occasional and generally very garbled reports coming out of that sector that spoke of tragedies and atrocities. Of the Rao sphere of influence, only a few worlds remained clear of the red–dot invader.
The Shattering: Omnibus Page 86
