The Complete New Dominion Trilogy

by Drury, Matthew J.

  Siot Rar stepped forward, looking slightly puzzled. “Anything… unusual?” He looked away, considered something for a moment, then returned his gaze to them. “Actually, there is something. Our new arrival. A most fascinating, if mystifying individual. Perhaps you two will know what to do with him.”

  Machiko and Chen exchanged a bewildered glance.

  Siot Rar pointed toward the nearby settlement and beckoned, inviting his visitors to go with him. “Please, come this way,” he said. “I will show you…”

  18

  The Retribution, flagship of the Empyreal Sun, thundered through hyperspace at millions of times the speed of light. The sister ship of the dreaded Malevolence and the second of their massive class to be built, it was quite different from its predecessor, having a large Capital Tachyon Cannon situated at the bow, with three protruding claw-like structures surrounding it. It was also much larger, at almost six kilometres in length. In addition to the main weapon, the ship was also armed with considerable amounts of secondary weaponry; ion bombardment cannons were fitted to both its sides and dorsal superstructure, clustered in large banks to defend against any enemy which managed to avoid the Tachyon cannon. Complementing the ship, multiple wings of powerful Lucifer-class fighters were on board to eradicate enemy fighters. If anything, it was a monster of space warfare. As it tore through hyperspace, the Retribution was followed by the rest of the Empyreal Sun fleet. Their destination: the Sirius Sector, heart of the Nommos Empire.

  Eldo Drakar’s personal chamber aboard the ship was two levels below the main bridge, in a space that housed a luxurious suite. Stepping to the door, Irizon Albrem braced himself, and the door slid open at his approach. In the centre of the room, seated in a duplicate of the Command Chair on the main bridge, was Eldo Drakar himself. He sat motionlessly, his aqua-blue flesh glinting in the dim light.

  “Come in,” Drakar said. Eyes closed to slits, he waved a hand in a small and precisely measured motion. “What can I do for you?”

  “This is treason,” said Irizon Albrem blatantly, speaking his mind. “Your Eminence, we must stop this attack before it is too late.”

  Eldo Drakar opened his eyes fully and fixed his gaze on the young warrior. “I understand how difficult this must be for you, my friend. But it is for the greater good of the Nommos Empire, I assure you.”

  “When you brought me to the Empyreal Sun on Reria, it was with the promise of making peace with them,” Albrem stated. “But it was a lie. Instead, you have allied yourself with the enemy and now intend to overthrow our great Emperor in their name!”

  Drakar gestured for calm. “You know as well as I how the Emperor has strayed from his promises,” he said. “Khonsu can no longer be trusted. Just consider this. He is old, he will not live forever. When he goes to his fathers, I would take the throne anyway. But can we afford to wait until then? Given the leadership he has shown over the past few years, do we truly want him to continue leading us until the end, or even more importantly against the threat of Lord Damarus now that he has returned? We are merely… speeding things up a little.”

  The young warrior’s scarred forehead creased in a scowl. “So you would rather break our oath-sworn word to serve the Emperor to satisfy your own impatience? Should you not respect the changes he has made during his reign?”

  Drakar slowly shook his head. “I just want you to consider my words, nothing more. You also underestimate the power of the Empyreal Sun. By allying with them, I am ensuring the long-term survival of our race.”

  Albrem gave a respectful bow, and for an instant Drakar was not sure if it was a sign of aggression at himself or towards the Emperor and without another word he got up and strode from the room. Drakar sighed with relief as the door closed behind him.

  He closed his eyes to clear his thoughts. The Emperor, by now, must have seen the threat forming. The Emperor must surely have sensed that his brother was actually contemplating the unthinkable, the actual elimination of the Ruling Monarch. Such an act would usually be considered absolutely intolerable by the Nommos people, but with the Emperor being so desperately unpopular among them, it might just be successful. Handled properly, this attack would allow Eldo Drakar to secure his throne and return the Empire to its former glory.

  Drakar reached over to a side table and poured himself a cup of wine, then quietly ingested it through his gills. There was, of course, more to his plan than he was letting on. If he had learned anything from his study of the humans, it was that there was more than one way to win a war. Direct and brutal combat was the only thing the Nommos really knew and understood. Yet there were so many other ways. It was already evident that the humans were weakening themselves in their foolish skirmishes with the Empyreal Sun. After Damarus was finished with them, the entire Terran Alliance would be crippled beyond all hope of recall. If Drakar could eliminate the Emperor and take control of the Nommos fleet, he could lead it into Terran space and destroy Damarus in his moment of weakness - the humans would most likely capitulate in despair, and the Nommos would reign supreme.

  Thus the true state of things would be preserved. A subjugated race of humans, and the vast resources they controlled, would help in the survival and expansion of the Nommos Empire after this was over. Drakar would be Emperor, and would be remembered in history as perhaps the greatest that had ever lived. Emperor Khonsu had to go, it was that simple. Drakar had no trouble contemplating something that the humans so often practiced in their political struggles but which was generally unknown to the Nommos: assassination of a superior. The humans were so violent and primitive, but also so imbued with a strange idealism.

  As he contemplated, he smiled.

  This was the destiny of Eldo Drakar.

  Up close, Rhino Colony was large and sprawling and had the look of a gnarled serpent hunkered down in the sand to escape the heat. The buildings were domed and thick-walled and curved to protect against the sun, and fronted by awnings and verandas that provided a measure of shade to the workers huddled in their entrances. When they came within two hundred yards of the largest structure, Viceroy Siot Rar signalled for something. A nearby guard brought forward a long animal horn and put it to his lips, trumpeting a message. A moment later, a set of tail doors swung open between the two main towers of the structure. These towers, eighty feet tall, were made of the same material as the rest of the settlement - solid concrete the colour of straw. The perimeter wall, which ran off unevenly in both directions for several hundred yards was only slightly lower than the towers, about the height of a six-story building.

  Siot Rar had sent a few of the nearby guards running ahead, so by the time they had reached the structure’s main gate, a throng of curious onlookers were swarming the entrance. Evidently, they rarely had any guests here.

  “Welcome to Strut Alpha, Administration,” the Viceroy said, a faint smile working its way onto his stern features. “This way, please.”

  Before they were even through the doors, Machiko knew there was no possibility of avoiding an ambush if that is what these people had planned. Inside the structure, the air itself was thick with people. A matrix of footbridges connected the upper floors of a grand entryway, all of them jammed with spectators who could be concealing weapons beneath their long robes. Directly above, an open balcony was flanked on either side by reinforced glass windows. Machiko could see dark figures through the lighted windows, colonists staring down curiously, shoving each other out of the way to get a better view.

  “Never mind them,” Siot Rar explained without stopping. “They’re just curious. We don’t usually get visitors here. In fact, you’re the first in almost a decade now.”

  After a long walk through a series of twisting corridors, the Viceroy stopped at a locked set of double doors with narrow, wire-reinforced windows and motioned to the two guards on the other side. A buzzer sounded, disengaging the lock. Lora and Machiko followed him through, and then found themselves looking at the face of a familiar, rugged-looking figure sitting in a woode
n chair nearby, facing the wall.

  “Here he is,” the Viceroy said.

  For a moment, a moment of disbelief, wild incredulity, Lorelei Chen felt all her pulses stammer and stop. Tears filled her eyes. Could this even be real?

  “Cris…?” she whispered.

  She crossed the floor quickly. “Cris?” Impulsively, she embraced him and kissed him without warning. He, too, was flooded with emotion all at once - this beautiful woman suddenly filling his arms, snatching him from his private thoughts. He felt overwhelmed. Unable to move, even to speak, he held her tightly, his eyes closed fast against all the sordid realities that rushed through his mind at that moment.

  Machiko watched the exchange, stunned into silence. “C-Cris?” she repeated finally. She felt a chill, like a physical sensation, as if her blood had actually congealed.

  “Arrom,” Siot Rar told her.

  Machiko gazed at him with a puzzled expression. “Arrom?”

  “It’s what we call him,” Rar explained. “It means ‘naked one’. That’s how we found him in the desert, several weeks ago.”

  Chen took a startled step away from the seated figure. “He doesn’t remember me. Cris? It’s okay. It’s me, Lor…”

  Cristian Stefánsson reached up a hand to silence her, and she stood there for a moment, frozen.

  “Don’t you recognise me, Cris?” Chen was fast becoming distraught, confused. Intimations were rushing at her like wild owls out of the night, their wings brushing her cheek, their talons catching her hair.

  He frowned, giving a slight shake of his head in the negative. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t remember much of anything, other than my own name.” He turned away.

  Lorelei Chen’s mind was filled with questions and doubts. She felt like somebody had stabbed her in the gut with an ice pick. She shook her head hard. “Not even me?”

  “Please leave me alone.”

  Machiko stepped forward then, ignoring him. “I’m Machiko Famasika. This is Lorelei Chen. And, barring some freakish similarity, you are Cristian Stefánsson.”

  “This settlement is all I know,” Cris told her. “These people, they’re all I know. Before I woke up in the desert, I don’t remember anything. I’ve tried, I’ve tried to remember who I was before. Sometimes I think it’s right there, floating in front of me, and all I have to do is reach out and grab it. I try… and it’s gone.”

  “You and I were together,” Chen said, giving Machiko a wounded glance. “You’re a… very close friend of mine. Ten years ago, you died.”

  Cris frowned, taking a deep breath. “I’m dead?”

  “Well, obviously not,” Chen rasped. “You just sort of died. Actually, you… ascended… to some other plane of existence. You became Damarus.”

  “Damarus?”

  Viceroy Siot Rar gasped in surprise. “Lord Damarus?”

  “Yes, it’s a long story,” Chen said. “Anyway, obviously since then, you’ve retaken human form, somehow. I…” She stopped, blinked and shook her head. “This must sound a little unusual…”

  Cris’ eyes widened. “A little? Why am I here?”

  Machiko snorted. “Hey, why are any of us here? Honestly, we don’t know, but there has to be a reason for it. We believe we were led here by forces we do not yet understand. You have to trust us. You are the same Cristian Stefánsson that Lora is talking about. Think of it this way: out of all the planets in the galaxy, why lead us here if not for us to find you?”

  He nodded thoughtfully. “So you’re saying a higher power had a hand in putting me here?”

  “I don’t know,” Machiko said. What was she saying? Was it even possible?

  Cris sighed, then looked at Chen. “What did you say your name was again?”

  “Lorelei, but you can call me Lora,” she said. “This is incredible. After all this time, I can’t believe you’re actually here. Cris, I… I have so much to tell you. You must be dying to know all about who you are.”

  He shrugged. “I am… and I’m not. This has been troubling me over the past few weeks. What if I don’t like who I was? What if I don’t want to be that person? What if I don’t have it in me to make up for something I’ve done wrong?”

  Chen looked pale. “I have to admit, that never occurred to me. Look, we all thought you were dead. It has been one of the hardest things I have ever been through, losing you. I… I love you, Cris. You were… you are… one of the most caring, passionate people I’ve ever known.”

  “Well, that doesn’t sound so bad.”

  “If you had one fault,” she continued. “It was that you wanted to travel back through time to save the people you loved so badly, y-you wanted to help those people so much, that it tore you apart when you were unable to make that difference.”

  “That actually sounds kind of hard to live up to.”

  Chen smiled. “All I know is that if I were you, I would definitely want to get to know me… you.”

  “I get it.”

  Machiko nodded. “Come back to Earth with us. Let us show you who you are instead of just telling you.”

  “If you remembered your name, the rest must be in there somewhere,” Chen insisted. “It wouldn’t be the first time, either. We have access to facilities that can help you remember.”

  “Give me some time to think about it, Lora.”

  “Okay.”

  They went outside and stood in the adjoining hallway with the Viceroy. Chen immediately pulled Machiko into her arms, embracing her warmly. “I feel so torn apart. I’m sorry, Machiko. I wasn’t expecting this.”

  Machiko closed her eyes tightly against the words, against her tears. To no avail. It all washed over her, now, and through her. “It’s all right,” she nodded. Openly she wept. Then she stood back, her face hot, her mind swimming in an emotional storm.

  “You seem to know much about this man that I do not,” Siot Rar said. “Perhaps it is indeed best if he goes with you.”

  “Thankyou, Viceroy,” Machiko said, nodding.

  “Please, Machiko… just hold me,” Chen whispered. She didn’t want to talk. She just wanted to be held.

  Machiko just held her.

  19

  48 hours later

  … Remember…

  When he regained consciousness, Cristian Stefánsson found that he was no longer in Proserpina’s bleak administrative facility but in a luxurious suite somewhere with attractive - and steadily changing - images on the walls. Some of these were famous and familiar paintings; others showed land and seascapes that might have been from his own time, though he couldn’t be certain. Soft ambient music played from a hidden loudspeaker. There was nothing alien or upsetting: that, he guessed, would probably come later. The important thing was that he remembered who he was now - at least, for the most part. He was born in 1979. He remembered growing up in the United States of America around the turn of the millennium, marrying Alexis, and the birth of his daughter Kimberley. He remembered being diagnosed with bowel cancer, and then being cryogenically frozen at the Cryonics Institute… only to wake up centuries later in a world completely alien to the one he once knew.

  His present surroundings had obviously been carefully programmed to reduce the stress on his mind as his memories returned: he wondered if there was the equivalent of a plasma television screen somewhere (how many channels did the Twenty-Fifth Century have?) but could see no sign of any controls near his bed. There was still so much he had to learn in this new world: he felt like a savage who had suddenly encountered civilisation.

  But how did he even get here?

  I died.

  I remember dying. On the other side of the wormhole…

  Heaven’s Gate.

  Light…

  His memory was clearly incomplete, or flawed. He frowned, unable to remember anything since then. How he’d suddenly reappeared on Proserpina, ten years later, was a complete mystery. And it was only thanks to the natural language processor, still embedded in his brain somehow from all those years ago
, that he could understand the words spoken around him over the past few weeks at all; not even the advent of sound recording, already more than a century old when Cris was born, had prevented major changes in English grammar and pronunciation over the five centuries since he was frozen. There were also thousands of new words, mostly from science and technology, though often he was able to make a shrewd guess at their meaning through the context of their use. His time on Proserpina had been a most confusing and unnerving experience, and he hadn’t fully understood why until now.

  Now his memory was restored.

  The door opened then, shaking him from his private thoughts. Lorelei Chen emerged, and he was delighted to see her. She looked incredibly beautiful. Her dark hair was tapered into the head around the back and sides for shape, smoothed down through the front to compliment her pretty face, while the crown was teased and spiked up and out for texture. Beneath, her emerald-green eyes glittered in the lights. She wore a light dress of peach-coloured shimmering material that left her tanned, long legs exposed.

  “Wow,” he said, smiling. “Now this is a sight for sore eyes. It’s good to see you again, Lora.”

  She smiled warmly at him. “It’s good to see you too, Cris,” she said. “How are you feeling? Do you remember anything?”

  He nodded. “Yes. It’s all coming back to me now. I remember everything - at least I think I do.”

  “What is the last thing that you remember?”

  He took a deep breath, his eyes darting, as if searching. “We had taken Damarus’ ship, the Thunder, through the Heaven’s Gate wormhole, and landed on a desolate world on the other side,” he told her. “We discovered the ruins of an alien city there. I remember walking through the city, and then…” He shifted uncomfortably, frowning at a stab of pain which thundered through his head. “Falling. Falling through a great chasm, before…” he clutched frantically at his abdomen then, as if expecting to find horrific wounds there. “I was impaled. Impaled on sharp rocks. I… died, Lora. And then, there was a tunnel… a tunnel of great white light…” He shook his head, sighing. “After that, there’s nothing. The next thing I know, I’m waking up naked, in the middle of the desert, on Proserpina, a few weeks ago.”