The Shattering: Omnibus

by Van Allen Plexico

  “If you see something the rest of us have missed, Major,” Tamerlane called to Elaro, “by all means, share it.”

  Elaro shook his head. “I wish, General. But I honestly don’t see a way out of this one.”

  Teluria stepped up then. Her hands were clasped about her back and her red robes flared around her. “Perhaps it is time to consider another option,” she said. Her eyes flicked to each of their faces as they looked up at her.

  “What option is that?” Arani began to ask.

  Tamerlane cut her off. “No,” he said.

  “But—”

  “No.”

  “May we at least hear her suggestion, General?” Arani asked, annoyed.

  “I know full well what her suggestion will be,” Tamerlane said, “and I do not intend to entertain it. Not for a second.”

  Arani continued to frown until Elaro leaned over and whispered something in her ear. Arani’s eyes widened and for an instant it looked as if she would speak, but then she frowned and shook her head.

  “You refuse the Exodus Option outright?” Teluria asked, her eyes moving over them one by one. “You would rather remain here and die—”

  “Than have you lead a paltry few of us into the Above?” Tamerlane nodded. “Yes. Yes, I would rather die defending my home than run away and leave all the still-surviving billions to their grim fate.”

  “I have had more than enough of the Above to do me for one lifetime,” Agrippa added with a humorless laugh.

  “I agree,” Arani said after a few moments’ reflection. She sounded as if she were surprising herself. “It’s hard to say that. The thought of turning down a chance to escape the apocalypse…” She trailed off, then shrugged. “But General Tamerlane is right. We owe it to the human race to fight for it until the end.”

  Teluria seemed astonished by this but, after a few seconds, she appeared to accept it as their final decision. She faded back to her position against the wall.

  For several seconds no one spoke at all. They all simply stared at the halo of red that threatened to engulf the human worlds, and the galaxy in its entirety.

  “So that’s it, then,” Tamerlane said. “We fight. To the bitter end, if need be.”

  The others nodded.

  “How soon until the enemy forces reach the Earth?” asked a feminine voice from back along the wall.

  They all looked. It had been Sister Delain who had spoken. This was surprising to nearly everyone present, given that she rarely ever spoke.

  “Three days,” Agrippa said. He gestured with his right hand at a particularly large clump of red dots that were concentrated within a portion of the Inner Worlds sector that didn’t actually contain an inhabited planet. “I suspect that this is their final invasion force. It appeared very suddenly here in the past twenty hours, and there’s nothing of value between it and the Earth.”

  “By the gods,” Colonel Arani whispered. “It’s huge.”

  Sister Delain looked at Agrippa and then at Tamerlane. Neither spoke. She stepped out into the light and frowned at them. “Then what,” she asked, “are we doing here?”

  The others all reacted with surprise at this, but Tamerlane merely nodded. “She’s right,” he said. He looked up at the domed ceiling high above and accessed the Aether link. “Captain Dequoi,” he called. “Set course for Earth. Best speed.” He started to say something to Agrippa, then caught himself and reactivated the link. “Captain,” he said. “Forget best speed. Forget all safety margins. I want to be there immediately.”

  “I’ll set an all-time speed record, General,” Dequoi replied. “Have no worries about that.”

  Less than a minute later, the Ascanius leapt into hyperspace.

  2

  “Everything?” the supply officer repeated, surprised. He squinted back at Tamerlane, the glare from the landing zone’s perimeter lights bright in his eyes. “You want me to unload everything?”

  “Everything,” Tamerlane nodded. He moved a step back as a hovering cargo-carrier floated by with a roar, its bed filled with munitions, supplies, and not a few soldiers crowded on top or hanging onto the sides. It was but one of many units that had already been ferried down from the Ascanius and all the other surviving Imperial ships that had made it back to Earth thus far. After the vehicle had passed, the general moved in closer to the officer again. “All the hovertanks, all the troops, all the—” He frowned. “Do we have any remaining Colossus walkers?”

  The officer considered this. “Five of the larger ones on this ship,” he replied. “General Agrippa’s the one who liked to keep a large collection of—”

  Tamerlane was nodding. “I’m well aware of the general’s predilections for heavy ordnance,” he said. “Unfortunately, those units are all lost behind enemy lines now. All we have is what we have.”

  The supply officer frowned deeply at this. “That being the case,” he said, “if you were to press me on it, I could probably get another two or three of the units that are down for maintenance back up and running pretty quickly. Maybe a week.”

  “The invasion force reaches Earth in less than two days,” Tamerlane said.

  The officer didn’t miss a beat. “I’ll have those eight walkers ready for you later today, sir,” he said without a hint of humor.

  Tamerlane almost—almost—laughed. Instead he saluted and strode away, feeling only marginally better about the utterly lost cause into which he was about to lead the last of the human race’s armies.

  “I keep a few here,” came a deep, resonant voice from behind him.

  Tamerlane turned. Agrippa was striding up, resplendent in his newly cleaned and polished white Deising-Arry power armor. The golden Sword of Baranak hung from his waist.

  Tamerlane regarded him and smiled. “The enemy will surely reconsider their actions when they get a look at you,” he said.

  “Doubtful,” Agrippa replied with a snort. “But perhaps after I decapitate a few dozen of them…”

  Tamerlane nodded. “That’s the spirit.” He hesitated, then lowered his voice. “Speaking of spirits—what’s the morale like among your troops?”

  Agrippa shook his head. “It could be better, Ezekial, there’s no doubt. They know the odds they’re facing—what we’re going up against. But…I believe they also understand what’s on the line. What this is really all about.”

  “And that is?”

  Agrippa pursed his lips. “Honor,” he said. “It’s about honor. It’s about how we conduct ourselves as we go to meet our fate—whatever that fate may be.”

  Tamerlane considered this and finally nodded. “I’d like to believe we have some kind of chance, though.”

  Agrippa shrugged. “Perhaps. I would never rule it out entirely. Still…”

  “Yeah,” Tamerlane said. “I know.” He nodded back in the direction Agrippa had come—the direction of the III Legion landing fields. “Now—you said something about having a few Colossus walkers hidden away here?”

  Now Agrippa grinned. “A dozen,” he said. “I kept them secret because I didn’t want Iapetus and the Sons getting their hands on them.”

  “I’m very happy to hear that,” Tamerlane said. “Where are they?”

  “I hid them in the one place I guessed Iapetus would never think to look.” Agrippa consulted the chronometer linked via the Aether. “They should be along any moment, actually,” he replied.

  A few moments later, massive horn blasts sounded from behind them. The two generals—and everyone else in the vicinity—turned and looked. What they saw took their breath away.

  The landing fields currently being used by the three legions to ferry down troops and equipment partially surrounded the vast Old Palace complex that occupied the center of the European continent. Ages ago, thousands of square kilometers of landscape had been leveled and rebuilt as curving rows of massive arcologies—buildings the size of cities, each towering over a kilometer into the sky and holding millions of citizens. The arcologies swept in a semicircle around a cen
tral point—the location of the Old Palace, residency of the emperors of old and the bureaucracy that ran the Empire, the Terran Alliance before it, and whatever existed before that, since lost to history. The Old Palace itself covered more than a dozen square kilometers, with vast domes and spires just visible beyond its towering ramparts. A pair of dull metal gates some five hundred meters in height provided the only visible point of access to the palace, and those gates had been firmly shut from the time Tamerlane’s and Agrippa’s shuttles had begun to land some hours earlier.

  But now as the horns sounded again, the two gates parted and began to swing slowly open. In astonishment those thousands of soldiers and support crewmembers working in the front courtyard gazed up and attempted to come to grips with what they were seeing.

  Through the now-open gateway strode a Colossus walker—huge, man-shaped, and so tall it nearly scraped the top of the gateway with its head. Its body was painted mostly white and green, indicating it belonged to the III Legion. Plasma cannons, missile launchers, beam projectors and many other oversized weapons covered its arms and shoulders. It was awe-inspiring to behold. But what truly shook the minds of the onlookers was what came behind it: another Colossus walker…and another…and another…

  The procession took some six minutes to pass through the gateway. In all, twelve of the gargantuan war machines strode out onto the landing zone and lined up in formation, like a small group of soldiers, but moving in what seemed like slow motion and all out of rational scale.

  Tamerlane took this spectacle in without comment, but when it was done at last he turned to Agrippa, grasped him by the shoulder, and smiled. “Thank you,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  Tamerlane laughed. “Whether we have any sort of chance or not, none of our troops could possibly look at this display and not feel we are throwing everything imaginable at the enemy.” He clapped Agrippa on the back. “This, my friend, is honor. This is going out with a bang, not with a whimper. This is punching the enemy hard in the face even as they drag us down.”

  “Oh, have no doubts about that,” Agrippa replied, smiling back now as he gazed up at his walkers. “These will most assuredly punch them. And punch them hard.”

  3

  In towards the Earth streaked thousands of elongated, organic-looking, mottled black starships. Dim red lights shone from their viewports and tendrils of energy trailed from their guns. Skrazzi warships and troop transports, they had emerged from hyperspace just beyond the outer fringes of the solar system, accompanied by a scattering of a few dozen of the blood-red comets that contained their masters—the hideous, telepathic creatures called the Phaedrons.

  The Sons of Terra had prepared to resist as best as they could, though the aliens didn’t know and didn’t care about the identity of those opposing them. For them, all humans were the same: a nuisance; a bother; a weed to be ripped out of the garden. Their nihilist garden of death.

  The II Legion defenses just beyond Mars tore into the Skrazzi fleet with the savage ferocity to be expected of troops that had been trained by Ioan Iapetus. At last free to vent their ferocity and fanaticism unchecked, they hurled nuclear warheads, particle beams, solid projectiles, hard light, and every other variety of advanced and not so advanced weaponry available at the enemy. The toll the Sons wrought upon the aliens was vast and fearsome indeed.

  It scarcely slowed them down.

  The Skrazzi blasted their way through and past the Mars Line the Sons had established with little trouble and continued inward, again not even slowing as waves of Imperial battleships—anything that could be lifted into orbit and fitted with a gun—flung themselves against the oncoming tide of darkness.

  Again the enemy swept through and onward, losses mounting to a level that would’ve been considered catastrophic to any rational army or navy but barely noticed by the Skrazzi.

  At last the invaders reached far Earth orbit and encountered the last—and the toughest—of the defenses. While still in command, General Iapetus had positioned his largest lasers, railguns and beam projectors on massive platforms above the Earth, as well as on the planet’s moon. Together these batteries opened up a sustained fire that proved to be overwhelming and devastating.

  The aliens stuck back, first directing extreme-velocity projectiles and disintegrator beams from their organic ships—disintegrators almost identical in effect to the weapons engineered into their own bizarre physiology, though many times larger and more powerful—at the platforms. When this stratagem yielded limited results, and results that were not fast enough to satisfy their masters who lurked behind the front waves of the fleet, they resorted to kamikaze, suicide attacks against the orbital defenses. While costly, these proved more effective and eventually resulted in the destruction of nearly all the platforms. The way to Earth now lay open and undefended.

  With over half their fleet shredded or vaporized but their goal in sight at last, the Skrazzi began to release their landing pods for the planetary invasion. Their ultimate target, because of its psychological value as well as its strategic importance, was the Old Palace that occupied a sizable portion of continental Europe. The Imperial Princess dwelt there now, as well as the top military officers of the Empire. It had to fall, and fall soon, to yield maximum value for the attackers. They dared not bombard it from orbit, for they wished above all else to seize it intact. That meant a troop landing would be next.

  And so the first few Skrazzi scout forces began to land, their foul insectoid claws stepping out of their descent craft and touching the soil of Sacred Terra. Meanwhile, still in orbit, their ever-cautious Phaedron masters turned their powerful psychic minds outward for the first time in days, reaching for the ambient signal of their own master, to commune with him and share the news of their impending and total victory.

  To their astonishment, they found that his signal was no longer there. It had vanished. It might as well be that he himself had vanished.

  And that was when the Phaedrons, those creatures so adept at creating and sustaining a deep and irrational fear in their enemies and intended victims, began to taste some small measure of fear themselves, for the first time.

  Summoning up their resolve, they put the issue aside and pressed on. The order was given. The invasion of Earth began in earnest.

  4

  Colonel Niobe Arani watched from atop the Old Palace’s walls as the great conflict unfolded.

  Some in the ranks were already calling it the Nightfall War, the Last Stand, or simply the Apocalypse. They thought of it as the greatest tragedy mankind had ever faced. She understood that, of course. But for her, personally, it was different. For her—and she never would have admitted it to anyone else—it was almost clarifying.

  Staring certain death in the face had a way of doing that, she supposed.

  She had wrestled with her feelings for Titus Elaro for weeks now, ever since meeting him, coming to care for him, and then discovering him to be a spy put into place by Iapetus and the Sons of Terra. For a time she had walled him out completely. But he had switched his allegiance to Tamerlane’s I Legion, pledged his loyalty, and been nothing but sincere and helpful ever since. For days she had wrestled with this—with whether or not to warm up to him again. Then had come word of this invasion, and suddenly such things scarcely mattered any longer. Friendships, relationships, love—what did any of that matter, in the face of such implacable, overwhelming hate?

  In fact, as she thought about it, the entire mission to defeat Rameses and liberate Ahknaton now, in hindsight, took on the air of a pointless enterprise. At the time nothing had seemed more important. Of course, at the time, bringing Rameses back into the fold seemed a key component in helping to present a more united front against the dark enemy. But now, with nearly all of the Empire crushed under the merciless heels of the invaders, their partially-successful mission on Ahknaton had become a mere footnote.

  The grim blackness that hung about her was obvious to the men and women under her command
, and so they mostly left her alone. So she stood there atop the walls, in the position Tamerlane had assigned her, watching as the enemy comets and landing craft descended and the Colossus walkers, hovertanks and infantry moved out to meet them in the field.

  She had thought briefly to complain—to protest this assignment. Clearly Tamerlane had placed her here, within the walls of the Old Palace, in an effort to keep her safe. She’d started to request—to demand—to be allowed to lead the last of her old Nizam Legion and any other troops that could be given to her out into the fray with the first wave. But then she’d reconsidered and simply accepted the orders. Her reasoning was simple: Everyone here was going to die today—everyone—and it scarcely mattered whether she stood in the field or on the walls when it finally happened.

  The glare of the blood-red comets streaking down from the sky caused her to squint. Their numbers had increased tremendously in the past few moments. That likely meant the legion ships in orbit above the Earth that had been shooting many of them down as they dropped from hyperspace were now being overwhelmed or destroyed entirely. If the planetary defenses and the fleets in orbit were gone or nearly gone, she expected the numbers of enemy forces on the ground to rise accordingly. The only thing that surprised her so far was that the enemy had not simply resorted to orbital bombardment. But then, she knew they wanted to claim the Old Palace intact. Additionally, they hadn’t used that strategy in any of their campaigns prior to attacking the Earth. They seemed to prefer to take out the space-borne defenses and then land boots—or hideous alien feet—on the ground, so that they could do their dirty work in the flesh. Or in the insectoid exoskeleton.