But all visions of soaring beauty and wealth, no matter how stately, must be grounded somewhere, and Einek was no exception. Below the lowest stratum of air traffic, beneath the illuminated sky-walks and the glittering facades, lay another view of Einek; its dangerous Undercity, constantly policed by Sentinels and military personnel, forever shaded from natural sunlight. This was the part of Einek that Lorelei Chen now found herself.
Where she knew she would find him…
She stood easily on a ledge, a hundred stories and more up from the street below. She wore a black veil fashioned from silk over the bottom half of her face; rather than a statement of modesty or fashion, it served more as a practical implement, used to hide her aging features, should anyone happen to recognise her. That was something she couldn’t afford, not right now, not in this time. Einek was her home city, where she’d grown up and lived as a younger woman; at this point in the timeline, she would still be regarded as a ‘missing person’ after her self-imposed exile to escape her abusive husband.
Lorelei Chen was forty-eight years old, and desperate. It had been a long road, a lifelong journey, just getting here, to this exact moment in time, but everything would culminate here: what she hoped would be her final act on this perilous and maddening journey. Perhaps once this was all over, she could finally rest, safe in the knowledge that history had been changed for the better…
Or perhaps I am just fooling myself, she thought, hot tears flooding her cheeks. How can I be sure this will have any effect on the timeline other than just skewering it further?
Her perch seemed somewhat precarious, considering the strength of the wind at this altitude, but to one as agile and experienced as Chen, this was nothing out of the ordinary. Right on time, a public airbus pulled up on the street far below and hovered there, awaiting passengers.
The moment was upon her.
Carefully, she sank into a comfortable firing position, or as comfortable as she could expect to be given the situation, and her weapon – a Lat’ari rifle loaded with ten 9.64 armour-piercing projectile rounds – was readied for action on its bipod. It was an unseasonably cold night – the ledge had almost completely stiffened with frost – but the adrenaline racing around Chen’s system anaesthetised her to the cold, to the icy flint of the ledge, to everything except her own intense concentration.
She waited.
I have to try. For everything. For Kimberley. For me.
Under the dark evening sky, the superstructures around her seemed to become gigantic natural monoliths glistening under the twinkling starlight. All the vast and majestic buildings that dominated this city were now amplified green, with light bleeding through the millions of tiny windows, their edges blazing with it. After her actions tonight, Chen wondered what would eventually, inevitably, become of the great city and the great civilisation contained within it. The future would be uncertain.
After some time, Cristian Stefánsson emerged, walking slowly in the direction of the airbus. He was carrying a holocube, just as she’d expected, and was looking lost and confused.
Get ready to die, you bastard, thought Chen, her heart thumping hard at her ribs. Get ready to die.
Gently exhaling, Chen aimed the weapon’s sight just above Cris’ shoulders, and moved a gloved finger over the trigger. Inhaled. The sight focused just forward of Cris’ ear.
She hesitated, licking her lips. Was this really the right thing to do? He looked so young, so innocent… all the bad things he was going to do hadn’t even happened yet. He was still the Cristian Stefánsson she’d fallen in love with all those years ago. Just like the man she’d killed in 2012.
Where did that get me?
She blinked, watching his youthful features through the scope. She had been so young back then, when she’d first met him and fallen in love… but her feelings had been genuine. She loved this man with all of her heart, and to ask herself to destroy him now was, again, too much to bear.
Her face was suddenly contorted with grief, fresh tears streaming down her face. She felt more desperate than ever. If she did this, it wouldn’t stop the Combine from infesting the multiverse. There was another way, of course – another chance, another way to change things. A way to stop it all. She knew what it involved, but for so long now she’d been in denial – had not wanted to face the inevitable finality of the truth.
He couldn’t die yet.
It was the Eidolon who had to be destroyed, not Cris. Destroy the Eidolon, change history. Stop the Combine.
I have to separate them…
There is no avoiding it.
I have to face Damarus at Laputa.
It is the only way!
“I still love you, Cris,” she wept, and cursed herself. She thought of the things her future self, and Cris, had both told her recently. About her fate. Her destiny. How she would use her own life as a gambit to separate Cris from his Eidolon, in order to destroy it from beyond the grave…
It sounded so ridiculous to her. It always had.
“Damn you,” she muttered.
Cris had reached the airbus by now. As he got there he seemed to mouth a single word to the mechanised driver, and the door opened – a blare of green-white light. After another moment, the light extinguished and he was inside.
Chen took a deep breath. She had decided to let him go, for now.
There would be another chance to set things right. And that chance would be on Laputa – at the Sacred Palace. She knew, deep down, that the time had finally come. The moment she had dreaded with all of her being for the past twenty years, the moment she had been convinced could have been avoided – was now fast approaching, like a runaway train.
Damn you all.
But wait… before she went to that final encounter, there was something she knew that had to be done. Something very, very important, which would ensure nobody else would ever have to experience the same horrendous torment as she had over the past ten years. Sighing heavily, she slipped her rifle back into the stolen hovercar which awaited her nearby, then bent low and squeezed in, soaring off into the Einek traffic lanes.
She gritted her teeth, ignoring the maelstrom of emotions which thundered through her system, taking the hovercar across the city, right into a line of giant cargo-hauling trucks. Around and around she went, cutting fast corners through the traffic, over the traffic, under the traffic, and around the buildings, until finally she reached a seemingly abandoned industrial district, filled with gargantuan factories and refineries, vast monolithic machines and power generators.
The hovercar glided down, its organic wings folding delicately as it went to its more conventional thrusters, settling easily inside the broken pavement of a neglected chemical plant building. Chen climbed out, stepping lithely onto the pavement, breaking into a run. She scuttled like a rat through the gut of a smelting facility, vast machines churning untended above her, and then moved onto a landing next to one of the smelter crucibles. Molten steel glowed bright orange, and heat shimmered the air, giving everything a hallucinatory quality.
Gasping for breath and sweating profusely, Chen opened her leather bag and took out the Xeilig Ark. It was about the size of a human hand now, and appeared to be constructed of lightweight, bright untarnished golden metal – though she knew it was actually comprised entirely of Lambda particles, and its appearance and size would change randomly every now and then. Why, nobody knew. Viewed from one perspective, the device currently seemed to resemble a large, three-tined fork – until she looked again. Two tines or four? Or maybe three again? The thing just wouldn’t settle down in her field of vision, giving her, instead, the beginnings of a headache when she stared at it too closely or for more than a few seconds.
Perhaps it was aware of what she was going to do…
Without another thought, Chen grunted, and threw the Ark toward the lake of molten steel below her. She watched it topple in, exhaling, her eyes watering, then drew another breath as it vanished beneath the lava.
“
Never again,” she muttered.
Unexpectedly, a moment later, the Xeilig Ark reappeared above the molten steel. It was screaming. A terrifying, inhuman siren of a scream. It was changing, morphing, transforming into anything and everything it could – its shape shifting into various polygonal configurations… a shape every few milliseconds until the Lambda particles merged into one bizarre construct.
The Xeilig Ark screamed again, then slipped beneath the surface of the molten steel.
Horrified, Lorelei Chen saw what looked like liquid gold running in dissipating whorls over the superheated surface… until it vanished, swirling into nothing, particles forever unbound, never to be reconstituted.
The Ark was gone, and with it her ability to travel through time and space.
Now, she was on her own. It was up to her. There was no turning back now.
This would end, one way or another.
As she watched thoughtfully through the heat ripples, her heart thumping hard with anticipation, Chen smiled.
I’m coming for you, Lord Damarus.
AD 2505 (209 ND)
Dimensional jump completed, the Dyàus Pítah stood up, expectant. A tremor of excitement coursed through her. Involuntarily the blades on her arms extended and she felt saliva filling her mouth. She waited, heart racing as the jump point confirmation flashed across the holographic main screen of the Combine Mothership’s battle bridge. Optical scanners swept space and then finally locked on to what Kimberley was seeking. Magnification and biological computer enhancements kicked in and the image zoomed in, expanding.
Earth floated in the middle of the screen. A growl of triumphal shouts echoed from the battle bridge, a total breakdown of discipline that she was willing, at least this once, to ignore and forgive, as her own howl of triumph mingled in with that of her brood.
“Today we shall watch Earth burn,” Kimberley roared. “Long live the Overmind and the Eidolon. Standard battle formation, advance full speed ahead!”
The advance was straight on with a defiant certainty. There was no elaborate manoeuvring, no attempts at tactical ploys. The battle fleet of the Combine Swarm surged forth in a solid mass, arrogant in its overwhelming power.
“Launch all drone fighters and attack craft.” Kimberley turned away from the screen, a tingle of excitement coursing through her as the fighter launch signal sounded through the ship. Before her stood Tsathoggua. “You do not look thrilled about our impending victory, overlord.”
Tsathoggua merely snarled, looking at the Dyàus defiantly.
“I have a little assignment for you, overlord.” Kimberley said.
“What is it?” And as Kimberley told him the golem overlord’s eyes went wide with shock and rage. “It is useless, senseless, O Dyàus. The Overmind has ordered you to preserve this planet for use as a Hive World.”
“There are a hundred other worlds to choose from once this is done,” she told him. “Now ready the Asterites, as I have commanded. All of them.”
Tsathoggua looked coldly at Kimberley, then stormed from the room.
She ignored him, then looked back at the main screen and psychically ordered the forward picket ships to send back enhanced optical scans. She waited for the visuals to be returned, watching the display. More and more blips of enemy ships were appearing, moving out from behind other ships which had been masking them.
“They are civilian ships, Dyàus,” a golem reported. “Numerous light craft, personal ships, light business ships of corvette size, shuttle craft, and civilian interplanet transports.”
Kimberley nodded. “They’re throwing everything in as a screen to waste our weapons on while they rally their military. Order the outer wave of drones to ignore them and to concentrate on the incoming fighters and cruisers. Once their offensive capability has been smashed we can turn our attention to this chaff they throw out and destroy them.”
“We are also detecting capital ships, Dyàus.”
Kimberley stirred, ordering that this new sighting be highlighted on the main display. Several of the blips started to blink bright yellow. It was of no concern; the Combine were superior in every way and were holding back over a hundred thousand craft – unmanned and controlled completely telepathically. Their numbers would be overwhelming to the Terrans. She would absorb and totally destroy the offensive fleet, eliminating their pathetic defences. Then she would smash through with a totally annihilating second strike, smashing their world with an entire cluster of Asterites. The Earth would be irradiated, completely stripped of its ecosystems, left as nothing more than a worthless husk in space.
Her revenge would be complete…
Lorelei Chen had destroyed her Earth. Now, Kimberley was simply returning the favour.
“Just concentrate on the closest ships for now,” she said. “Then we slaughter the rest.”
Mobit Akhragan tried to purge the anguish, to block it out. His friends, his comrades were dying. Flickers of light filled space straight ahead and to starboard a hundred and fifty clicks away. The Broadsword strike was going in. His tactical screen traced the attack. The first wave of Broadsword—class ships, what few were left, was slowing, hovering. Going through the agonising thirty second countdown to launch. And one after another their transponders winked off, the blue blips replaced by brief flashes of light and then disappearing.
He switched to strike two’s main communications channel.
“Ten seconds, nine, keep them off, keep them off…”
“I can’t eject, I can’t get out, oh God I’m burning…”
“Six on your tail, Maria, break, break…”
“Yellow three, torpedo lock failed, am…”
“One… Launch! Launch!”
The signals became fewer, space ahead flashing with hundreds of points of light. The second wave, going towards the enemy capital, was straight ahead now, slashing into a storm of weapons fire. At the same time, a hundred Combine fighters were hitting into his own attack wave and ships were dying, and he didn’t know how much longer this could go on.
“Blue One, we’ve got company coming.”
Akhragan tore his attention away from the dying attack and saw a wave of fifty fighters coming in from above and slashing into the wingmen behind him. He held course, looking over his shoulder. Nearly a thousand craft were spread out around his position. Off his port quarter he saw a civilian interplanetary liner trying an evasive then disappearing in an explosion after a single burst of neutron bolts from a light fighter.
It was madness, and he had to harden his heart to the realisation that the Combine were taking no prisoners here; they had no qualms at all about the slaughter of civilians in their push to conquer Earth, and the forces of the Terran Alliance military, who were grossly outnumbered, were nothing more than sitting ducks.
Space around him was pure chaos. Thousands more Combine fighters were swarming in, moving like vast flocks of birds. Dozens of Terran ships and assault craft were vaporising every second in the slaughter.
A civilian liner twisted in front of him, blocking the rush of three incoming ships, diverting their shots. His own wingman dived under the liner as it exploded and then lined back up on their target.
“The capital, go for the capital!”
“We’ll never make it!” Akhragan roared. “This is folly! Let’s nail the destroyer to port!”
“Damn it!” the sound of his wingman’s voice trailed off into an electronic gargle as his ship exploded with a volley of enemy fire.
Mobit Akhragan blinked sweat out of his eyes.
They never really stood a chance here. This enemy was too strong.
They were going to lose.
21
SILVER CITY, LAPUTA
AD 2488 (192 ND)
Lorelei Chen moved cautiously through a deserted corridor.
It concerned her that thus far she had not been stopped for questioning. No one had asked her for landing permits, identification papers, purpose of visit. No one in the Sacred Palace seemed at all c
urious about who this woman in the combat suit might be – or what she was doing there. It all seemed rather ominous, and Chen was beginning to feel very uneasy. But then it occurred to her – Lord Damarus was actually expecting her, had been expecting her for three hundred years from his perspective…
Suddenly she heard a sound at the far end of the corridor. Chen halted, pressing herself close against the corridor wall. She then peered around a corner and saw a group of Paladins – Holy Guards – approaching from a side hallway. Leading the group was an imposing figure in a battered Rãvier suit and helmet, and Chen realised it was Naael Itsyamin, the future Warmaster, looking so much younger than she remembered. She smirked, watching the group pass, then ducked out from her hiding place and continued into the Grand Corridor. The kilometres-long hall was eerily vacant. Nothing stirred beneath the multitude of banners representing each of the Twelve Factions, and the Terran Alliance’s Outer Colonies. The entire area was deserted.
Absently, Chen noted how the architecture of the Grand Corridor consisted entirely of polygons and contained no curves. Gigantic grey granite pillars were the only things standing as far as she could see, placed every dozen metres or so. After a while, she stopped a short distance from Damarus’ Throne Room and waited, keeping behind one of the pillars, out of sight. She stayed there for over an hour, shifting between pillars and practising hand-to-hand combat moves to keep herself from falling asleep. While the dreams had faded somewhat since she’d left Erebos, they still invaded her mind frequently, still demanded her attention; she was being forced to watch as the Combine Swarm began its invasion of the Sol System. For as long as possible now, she simply tried to stay awake, to stay focused on what she had to do.
Plenty of time to sleep when I’m dead…
The Complete New Dominion Trilogy Page 73