Throam knew that look. Caden was staring through the view.
“Hey,” he said. “Come back to the world.”
The Shard seemed to return from a place far, far away.
“‘Shaeld Hratha’, that was what Morlum said. What in the darkest worlds is that?”
“Never heard it before today,” Throam said.
“Me neither.”
“You certainly had a way with words in there,” Throam ventured cautiously. “Got him to talk, didn’t you?”
Caden gave him a look that discouraged following that line of conversation.
For once, Throam thought, I’m going to find out what happens when I ignore that look.
“You knew Prem would kill him, and you made him tell you anyway.”
“Lives are at stake.”
“We could have separated them.”
“Could we?”
“Probably.”
“At the time, ‘probably’ wasn’t good enough.”
They stared at each other for a few moments.
Caden spoke first. “Throam, something big is happening. I don’t know who’s behind all this, but you heard what Morlum said: these ‘Rasas’ are everywhere. They have a head start on us. They probably know us inside out. I really need to know that you’re in my corner.”
“Like you even need to ask.”
“I am asking. I’m asking because you’ve never questioned me like this before, and I have a feeling that Morlum was the tip of the iceberg. This is going to get much worse before it gets better. So are you with me?”
“Always,” said Throam.
“Good,” said Caden. “Now where the fuck did we leave Eilentes?”
— Epilogue —
Omin ran along the earth that was embanked against the base of the battered wall, ran through the wreckage of Camp Camillion, ran as fast as he could towards the steps that would carry him up, up, up to what remained of the battlement.
Directly above him, the stars were as bright and sharp as diamonds set in a black velvet sky. Not a single wisp of cloud marred the perfection of the firmament on this night, and the band of the Milky Way snaked overhead enticingly.
Breathing heavily he reached the first step, stumbling towards it and scrabbling forwards with both his hands and his feet.
“Come on!” A shout high above him. “You have to see this!”
As he climbed the steps, the sound came again. The greatest sound he had ever known. A sound from the end of the world.
“You’re missing it!”
He found his footing and raced up the steps, careful not to fall on those that had been knocked out of place. Vibrations from the ground-shaking sound shook stones and clods of dirt loose, sent them skittering past him into the darkness below.
He reached the top at last, where Junn Delanka crouched behind a block of stone. Omin knelt down next to him, and saw that in the distance a great wall of cloud appeared to stretch across the width of the world, in defiance of the otherwise clear night sky.
“At the horizon,” said the private.
Omin looked out into the night, saw what Delanka was pointing towards, and his mouth flopped open.
“What… what in the many worlds are those?”
“I don’t know,” Delanka said. “But they just keep coming. Watch.”
Moments passed in which Omin could do nothing but stare out into the night, mesmerised by the structures that had transformed the distant landscape entirely.
It was impossible. They simply could not have just appeared there, and they were far, far too big to have been built since the evening light had faded.
Delanka pointed to the clouds as the sound began to build up again. “Here comes another.”
The noise rose to a thunderous crescendo.
It was as though the very heavens were crashing to the ground, in the final apocalyptic moments of the fall of creation itself.
— Book Two —
List of the Dead
— Prologue —
Splinters
Almost another full day passed before the bone-shaking quakes ceased, before the air grew still and silent. Gradually, after nearly another hour had gone by, the birds began to take up their calls once more. The electric thrum of insect life returned just as cautiously, eventually contributing to a sense that nothing was out of the ordinary whatsoever, that nothing strange had happened.
But it had.
Junn Delanka was still on watch. It was not that he did not trust the young couple to wake him if anything happened; Omin had shown himself to be both resourceful and brave, and Halfre was doing a remarkable job looking after the Camillion survivor. The simple fact was that since the falling had started he had not been able to tear himself away from the view.
The survivor. He should probably go and check on him; Halfre couldn’t be expected to debrief the poor man when finally he regained consciousness.
Delanka scanned the landscape one last time, although he was not sure what he expected to see. There had been no movement on the ground whatsoever, and no new splinters had dropped from the sky for a long time now. Before, when they had been falling, they had come at regular intervals. He was almost certain that the phenomenon had now ended.
The splinters stared back at him impassively; brooding, silent, and enigmatic.
From the battlement wall of Camp Camillion he could see clearly across the grasslands all the way to the horizon, in the direction of the distant capital. He had come that way with Omin and Halfre, and he shuddered to think what might have happened to them had they crossed the grasslands just a few hours later.
What had once been a tranquil plain of reeds, grasses, and small shrubs, was now a technological forest of the macabre.
The splinters had dropped from the sky — presumably released by some parent craft concealed within the clouds — and they now stood motionless, for all the worlds as if they had always been there. Each one of them had grounded upright, piercing the soft surface and throwing up huge plumes of soil and plant matter. They had each embedded about half of their considerable length in the ground, and not one of them had broken apart or toppled.
Even at this distance a dense white mist was visible, curling sluggishly around the bases of the splinters and reaching out across the surrounding land. Whatever the splinters were for, and whatever they had delivered, Delanka knew instinctively that they spelled trouble for those who had survived the first assault.
He tore himself away from the vista, and carefully descended the steps to the empty space between the old outer wall and the Bremer barrier. Marks in the ground told him, loud and clear, that the sections of the temporary wall had been moved hastily into place perhaps two days ago: the soldiers stationed at Camp Camillion had apparently been expecting a sizeable ground assault, and they had used the reinforced concrete blocks to create a kill zone within the outer perimeter. But the damage to the rest of the base suggested that when the attack had come, it had been from above.
It made sense. Attacking civilians and local barracks already softened by artillery bombardment was one thing; an assault on a live MAGA training facility was something else entirely. Without orbital support from the Vehement, Camp Camillion would have received no overhead cover. Only an idiot would have charged its most resilient line of defence instead of exploiting that vulnerability.
He hopped over one of the fallen Bremer sections, a T-shaped chunk of concrete longer than he was tall, and passed through the gap it had left when it was toppled from behind. He glanced down as he stepped onto the thick concrete and saw that it was blackened, cracked, and pitted with nicks and indentations. Nearby, a gaping impact crater was gouged in the earth; this section of the wall was probably knocked out of place by the force of whatever ordnance had slammed into the ground.
He picked his way carefully through the debris that littered the bare earth, and threaded a path between what remained of the shelter modules. Here was a crumpled barracks block, there the remain
der of an armoury; even the reinforced walls that surrounded those structures had been torn open as though they were no more resilient than paper.
After a few minutes of carefully avoiding craters, sharp plasteel edges, and the oily smoke from smouldering wreckage, Delanka at last reached the low building which was just intact enough to serve as a temporary refuge. He took a long, slow look around, satisfied himself that nobody was watching, and ducked inside.
Halfre’s voice helped him locate her before his eyes had started to adjust to the gloom.
“What’s happened?”
He could just make her out, kneeling on the ground near where the others lay.
“Nothing. Nothing at all; it’s all quiet out there. They haven’t changed since they dropped.”
“Oh.” Disappointment dragged her voice down. “I was hoping you’d say help has arrived.”
“I wish I could, but there’s been no sign of any air traffic. Theirs or ours.”
His eyes were adjusting gradually, and he could now see that Halfre was sorting through items which she had laid out on the floor in front of her. They looked like the contents of a field medical kit, and some ration blocks. She was taking inventory; good for her.
Delanka knelt down and nodded towards the unconscious corporal.
“How is he doing?”
“Okay, as far as I can tell.” She pulled the blanket back carefully, exposing the corporal’s shoulders and chest. “It wasn’t so bad once he was cleaned up. Most of these are old injuries; he’s been hit by something though.”
Delanka nodded slowly, as Halfre pointed to where a large and ugly bruise had bloomed across the soldier’s chest.
“Looks like he was knocked down by an explosion. Winged by flying debris, and probably banged his head when he hit the ground.”
“He could be in a coma for all we know. Maybe we should try to wake him up?”
“His body is trying to limit the damage. He’s not bleeding, and he can breathe, so we should leave him as he is.”
Halfre looked unconvinced. “He could be bleeding internally.”
“If he is, there’s nothing I can do about it. How about you?”
She shook her head.
“We leave him then.”
He could see that she was not entirely happy, but she seemed to accept there was nothing they could really do. He changed the subject.
“Omin?”
“Sound asleep.” A smile crept back to her face. “He was exhausted.”
“I’m not surprised. I’m more surprised that you aren’t.”
“I am,” she said, “but one of us had to stay awake. He was complaining so much I thought it’d be easier to let him sleep first.”
“Complaining?”
“Headaches,” she said. “The slightest thing triggers them. He’s been breathing in smoke and dust, not to mention all that pollen from the grasslands. I think he was probably understating how bad they were.”
“Fair enough. And her?”
Halfre followed his gaze to the small pile of blankets in the corner, which rose and fell softly and ever so slightly.
“Asleep as well.”
“Has she told you anything?”
“She’s not said a word since we got here.”
“Poor kid,” Delanka said. “Probably saw things that will haunt her for the rest of her life.”
“I think we all did.”
Delanka nodded silently. He could well imagine that Omin and Halfre had seen terrible things during the onslaught against their town; he had seen enough himself, and combat was his business. He tried not to think about the fate of those who had been on the Vehement when it tumbled from orbit in a mass of burning fragments.
“How about you?”
“Hmm?”
“Your injury,” she said.
He rolled his shoulder self-consciously, testing his side with slow caution.
“Just a flesh wound. I won’t be much good in a fight, but I don’t think I’m in any real danger.”
“Do you need anything for the pain?”
“No, I’ll manage. We should conserve the meds for when we really need them. I just need to make sure this doesn’t get infected.”
“Okay. You should change the dressing.”
Halfre resumed her inventory, stacking the blocks of rations in groups of five and pushing each complete stack away from her. Delanka could see what she was doing: working out for how many days the five of them would be able to eat.
He watched while she worked. During their flight from the town they had not had much of an opportunity to get to know each other, and he had only got so far as establishing that Halfre and Omin were a couple. Dirt aside, she was a pretty young woman, and he felt a strange sense of gratification that she was involved with someone as instantly likeable as Omin. He found himself wondering who she had left behind.
“Did you… lose anyone?”
Halfre’s hand paused in mid-air, hovering momentarily over one of the last few uncounted blocks. She stayed like that for a moment, then carried on.
“I can’t… I’m just not ready for that.”
“Okay. I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault.”
There was a low moan from one of the bunks.
“He’s waking up.” Halfre said.
“Pass me some water.” Delanka moved to the side of the corporal, and twisted the cap off the hydration pouch Halfre handed to him.
“Where—?”
“Don’t try to move too much. Here, drink some of this.”
Delanka lifted the corporal’s head gently, and pressed the nozzle of the pouch against his lips. The corporal sipped gratefully.
“You’ve been out for a day or two,” Delanka said. “Do you remember what happened here?”
“I remember we got our asses handed to us.” The corporal’s voice was hoarse and quiet. “I must have hit my head pretty hard to have been out for that long. Feel like I’ve been sparring with a Rodori.”
Delanka smiled. “I’m Private Delanka, Second Platoon, 104th.”
“Corporal Suster, Twenty Seventy-Ninth. Permanent training staff.”
“What happened here, Corporal?”
“Call me Staff; everyone else does.”
Suster raised himself onto his elbows, exertion and pain showing clearly in his face, then turned on to one side. He winced, but bore the pain.
“Are you okay, Staff?” Delanka said.
“Yeah, just… really tender. I seem to remember a wall flying towards me.”
“And before that?”
“Well… word spread pretty quickly when the gate stopped responding; camp leaders were right in the middle of a training brief from Command. But nobody knew what was happening. We got a very chaotic burst from the Vehement, then nothing.”
“They came down in flames,” said Delanka.
“Shit,” said Suster. “We thought they might have jumped out, seeing as we got left to fend for ourselves. Guess we were wrong on that.”
“What happened next?”
“When we heard orbital strikes in the distance we knew something big was happening. We sent fighters to recce the capital, but they didn’t come back. Comms were jammed at their end, and we couldn’t raise them. That’s when we started to prep for an attack.
“Camp Camillion is just a training base. We have a few air defence turrets, but barely any live rounds. So all we could do was build up the perimeter. We took apart the training area and used the sections to make an inner wall.”
“I saw,” said Delanka. “I’m guessing that was a waste of time?”
“You can say that again. Water?”
Delanka again helped the corporal to take a drink. This time, Suster was able to take in much more. He almost drained the pack.
“I could drink ten of those,” he said. “Yeah, they hit us from the air. It was pretty fast. Fast, and brutal.”
“What happened to everyone?” Halfre asked.
Suste
r looked at her as if seeing her for the first time. His quizzical gaze travelled from her to Delanka.
“This is Halfre,” Delanka said. “Civilian survivor. There are two others with me.”
“Well, Halfre, I’m not sure what you mean. I would have thought it was obvious.”
“This is a big camp,” she said. “But apart from you, we’ve only seen a few bodies. There should be many more, yes?”
Suster looked at Delanka again.
“I was going to leave that part until you were back on your feet,” Delanka said. “But she’s right. I counted eighteen, apart from you.”
“Eighteen? We had the better part of two battalions here.”
“You don’t know what happened to the others?”
“No. The attack started, and there were explosions all around… I remember everyone running about, then a shell came down almost right in front of me. It hit a building dead on and I took a piece of wall in the face. Then I woke up here.”
Halfre and Delanka looked at each other, and he knew what she was thinking. They had both seen the special interest that the enemy showed in those who were not killed outright.
“Speaking of which,” Suster continued, “my skull feels like it’s breaking apart. Do you have anything?”
“Here.” Halfre handed him a couple of tablets. “These should help.”
Suster took the pills gratefully, and popped them into his mouth, swigging them back with the last of the water.
“Thanks,” he said.
“You should rest up,” Delanka told him. “We’re probably safe enough here for the moment.”
The corporal nodded slightly in agreement and sank back down, his eyes closing. He raised one hand and massaged his brow gingerly.
Delanka looked across to Omin’s sleeping form and sighed. “Guess I’ll go back on watch.”
“Are you sure? How long have you been awake now?”
“Doesn’t matter. I think I’m getting my second wind.”
Books One to Three Omnibus (Armada Wars) Page 26