Hand of the Empire (Rise of the Empire Book 8)

by Ivan Kal

  It would take everything that they had built up in since before Ullax and the rest had contained them. The containment had slowed their advance down, certainly, but more because they hadn’t wanted to waste resources and force Ullax to react unpredictably, than any real threat on the part of her machines. And Aranis could admit that he had given the galaxy time because of his sentimentality. A part of him still remembered Waiss Gast, who had loved Ullax Darr more than life itself.

  “We are here,” Ryaana said, snapping him out of his thoughts.

  He glanced at the viewscreen, seeing that they had already reached the planet. He stood up as the transport lowered gently through the atmosphere.

  ***

  Ryaana walked through the palace, Vas following close behind her. She guessed that since he was the only member of her staff, that made him her second. So she introduced him as such to the palace security. She noticed the strange looks she was getting from the guards as she passed. They bowed, but there was something else in their eyes. Something that she couldn’t recognize. Eventually, she reached the Kar Daim’s briefing room and entered, finding her mother and Dai Sha Garaam already inside waiting.

  A pang hit Ryaana as she saw her mother waiting. This was an official visit by a Sentinel of the Empire to the Kar Daim. Of course Ryaana didn’t need to wait for her mother to arrive.

  “Kar Daim,” Ryaana bowed respectfully. She made herself remember that she was going to be speaking with the ruler, and not her mother—although she had never really seen that much of a difference until their previous meeting.

  “Sentinel,” the Kar Daim answered, then glanced at Vas.

  “This is my second, Vasily.” He, too, bowed low.

  Kar Daim nodded, and gestured for them to be seated.

  “I was told that you have important information to share, something that should not be told through regular channels?”

  “Yes, Kar Daim. I have information on Erasi activities, and because of the nature of information and what it reveals, we are worried about information leaks.”

  “Report.”

  Ryaana pulled the datachip from her pocket and placed it on the holo-desk, activating it with her imp. Holograms blossomed above the table and she scrolled through the files until she found the one she wanted.

  “As you can see, this is a list of targets that the pirates and the liberation force had been instructed to hit by the Erasi. The timetable for their attacks was supposed to begin five months from now. We don’t know yet if us destroying their base of operations is going to force them to discard or change their plans.”

  Kar Daim and the Dai Sha looked through the data carefully, and then looked at each other.

  “This is the confirmation we were needing, complete with a possible timetable for their attack,” Dai Sha Garaam said.

  “I would agree,” the Kar Daim said, nodding. “They do like to create chaos before interfering personally.”

  “What are your orders?” Garaam asked.

  “The Lord Sentinel gave me the authority to execute the plan before he returned if we uncovered proof that an Erasi attack was imminent. And I think that this constitutes exactly that.”

  “Then I shall prepare the Legions, and let the Empire’s Fleet know,” Garaam said.

  “The plan?” Ryaana asked.

  Kar Daim turned and gave her a predatory grin. “Conquest.”

  ***

  Several hours later, Ryaana was sitting in their family quarters in the palace. Across from her, sat her mother and the twins.

  “You did what?” Ryaana asked disbelievingly.

  “I removed you from the line of succession. I’ve decided to make the twins my heirs,” her mother said.

  Ryaana looked at her mother in shock—she had wanted this for so long that now that she had finally gotten what she’d wanted, she couldn’t believe it.

  “Uh… I hope that you aren’t mad, Ry,” Kane said slowly, looking at her as if expecting her to go berserk on him any moment now.

  “Mad!” she exclaimed, jumping up with a large smile on her face. She crossed the distance and pulled her brother out of his seat, enveloping him in a hug and twirling around with him. She finally let him down and looked at his surprised expression.

  “This is exactly what I wanted!” she said and then turned to grin at her mother, who looked at her with an expression of exasperation. But Ryaana didn’t care—she was finally free.

  “You really wanted this?” Kane asked.

  “Of course!” Ryaana said as she saw the look on Kane’s and Vaana’s faces. They hadn’t really believed her when she had told them before. The two of them were Shara Daim to the core. They couldn’t understand something like not wanting to be the heir.

  “But…why wouldn’t you want to be the heir?” Vaana asked.

  Ryaana smiled at her sister. “The fact that you can’t understand is exactly why you are better suited for it than me.”

  She stepped away from her brother and looked at her mother, whispering a silent thanks. She was free.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Krashin system

  Adrian sat in the Herald of War’s shuttle transport on his way to the Krashin ship. Somehow he had managed to communicate with them, although he still was not sure if he was interpreting correctly. He had accepted their offer “to be consumed-of-life-understanding to drain and learn.” If he was right about what that meant, they might be able to establish proper communication. If not, well—he would probably have his brains drained, he thought with a slight smile. His staff and crew had objected vehemently to his decision, citing that if anyone was to go, it should be one of them. Adrian had refused them, of course, as he was the only one powerful enough to do something if he was wrong.

  In the end they had settled on a six-man guard, two of whom were Sha commandos. Although Adrian himself was more powerful than all of them put together and more, it was never a bad idea to bring backup. The Herald of War loomed over the Krashin ship, ready to blast it to pieces if anything went wrong. The rest of the Krashin task force had pulled back to a short distance, still in range, but they had clearly made a peaceful gesture.

  It had taken a bit for them to coordinate and make the arrangements, but in the end Adrian had managed to understand that they wanted a meeting in person. Another point that gave credence to his conclusion.

  Slowly, as their shuttle approached, the Krashin ship opened like some great maw, and Adrian ordered the pilot to take them inside. For a moment he wondered if he had made a mistake, and if they were about to become food for some massive beast. Then the maw closed behind them, and they found themselves in a completely closed pocket. He felt a twinge of panic from his pilots, but then the sensors told them that air was being pushed into the pocket. A few moments after the pocket was filled, the other side opened and they entered a large hangar-like chamber. He instructed the pilots to land. As they did so, he noticed shapes moving at the end of the chamber, in the tunnels that lined the far wall.

  He turned and walked toward his people.

  “Keep your weapons ready, but don’t antagonize them. Keep them pointed at the ground. Don’t act unless I explicitly order you to. Understood?”

  A chorus of, “Yes, Lord Sentinel!” answered him.

  Adrian triggered the helmet of his armor to close around his head and opened the shuttle doors. They stepped into a dark room, lit up from the ceilings by soft blue lines. The atmosphere reminded him of caves with natural bioluminescent life forms hanging from the ceiling. He took the lead and walked forward toward the shapes that had exited the tunnel and were slithering toward him slowly.

  The fact that no one was shooting at them was a good sign, or at least he thought it was. The leading Krashin came to a stop in front of him, and Adrian looked up at it. It was large, looming over him, and well muscled—power radiated from it. It had a long scar running from the side of its face down its neck and across its chest to end just below the slits of its secondary appendages. H
e opened his Sha sight, seeing the Krashin in the shades of twisting shadows. It was powerful, very powerful; he could see that from the amount of Sha inside of its body. But it also felt different to his sight, somehow unique.

  The Krashin studied Adrian in turn, and after several moments of them studying each other, he heard its voice in his mind.

  “Consume-of-life-understanding to drain and learn?”

  Adrian steeled himself and took a step forward. He felt his people tense up behind him and shot them a message: “Don’t interfere.”

  Adrian looked at its four eyes, which seemed to glow faintly in the dimly lit chamber. He took a deep breath and opened his mind, lowering his walls. He reached for the Krashin. The Krashin noticed immediately, and Adrian felt him grasp the tendrils that Adrian had extended. Every instinct he had told him to raise his shields back up, but he persisted, inviting the Krashin in.

  He felt the Krashin accept, and then just as Adrian felt the Krashin’s mind seeping into his own, several tendrils reached and pulled him out of his own mind and into the Krashin’s. In that moment, the human Adrian Farkas-Reiss ceased to exist.

  ***

  First came the light, then the cold, and the warmth, and the sensation. Each movement brought only pain. And then it was enveloped, it felt safe, and the pain disappeared. It knew that all would be right in the world.

  It had grown to be the strongest of its brood. It had been given a name, the Seeker, for its desire to seek knowledge. And it had learned much. It knew that it was born of the Krashinar, from the wombs belonging to the Seventh. It did not know exactly what that meant, but it was certain that it meant something. It didn’t worry; in time it would learn the meanings behind everything.

  The Seeker had decided that it wanted to be a tamer, and to be a good tamer one needed to first know how the majestic beasts were spawned. To understand them down to their basest form. The Seeker had been granted a spot within the Seventh’s personal spawnery. An honor to be sure, yet the Seeker knew that the honor had been given because it had been spawned from the Seventh. It did not feel worthy of the honor—but it would not refuse it. The Seeker would prove its worth to the Seventh who had spawned it from its own womb.

  The Seeker had learned well the craft of the spawners, and had finally been granted permission to become a tamer. Finally it would taste the freedom of the void. The Seeker would seek knowledge and new tests—it would know everything.

  The Seeker rejoiced with the rest of the Krashinar when a scouting pack had encountered life in the galaxy. And it was not a single new organism, but rather a pack of many different ones. They were strange, living in their hollow beasts, grown of metals and cold. Communication was hard, they could not really understand each other; but there was time, and the Seeker would seek that knowledge.

  Communication with the Visitors had been established, and the Seventh itself had met with them and extended the friendship of all the Krashinar. Communication was still not perfect. The Visitors refused to share their lives so that they could learn of one another. But the Seven did not want to press, as the Visitors had their own beliefs. And the Seven did not wish to offend them.

  The Visitors had made them an Oath of Friendship. The Krashinar rejoiced upon hearing the news, and the Seeker had as well. And the Visitors told them of their problems, a clear sign of trust and friendship. The Visitors warned their new friends of another race that lived close to the Krashinar territory, a vile one that preyed on those weaker than themselves. The Visitors did not have the strength to fight them, as they said their territory is far away. By the time they could send for enough forces, the Vile Ones would kill many packs. The Seven had decided to offer their help.

  The Seeker led its void beast as its packs hunted the Vile Ones. Its void beast had killed many, and the Seeker itself had walked the ruins of the worlds the Vile Ones had possessed. And something nagged on the Seeker’s mind—a wrongness that seeped into its being.

  The Seven refused to believe the proof before their eyes, and the Seeker itself was the same—for the first time in its life, it began to fear knowledge. The Seventh had retreated to its core world, its packs following. The rest of the Seven had done the same. They returned to their core worlds and contemplated their past actions. How had they not seen the truth? Where had they gone wrong?

  The final proof had come when the hollow beasts of the Visitors arrived. They were moving on the Seventh’s core world with numbers too great even for the Seventh’s Great Pack. The Seeker readied its beast, whispering encouragements, more for itself than for the beast.

  They were not the hunters—the Visitors had made them the prey. They had cornered them across the system. Crippled the Great Pack, killed the Hunt-masters. But the Seeker still lived, and it watched as the Visitors cleaved the Seventh’s world in half. The Seventh’s warmth disappeared, leaving only the last echo of its final scream. The Seeker and its beast heard it, as all the remnants of their Great Pack heard it. They felt the scream in their minds still. The Seeker threw its mind to the void, calling out to every wounded beast, and every tamer. A cornered prey is most dangerous when it knows it is going to die. The Betrayers of Oaths would pay.

  The Seeker watched as the hollow beasts of the Betrayers burned, and its own beast was at its deaths door. But still it fought, still it listened to the Seeker’s pained voice. A gash across the Seeker’s length pulses in pain as its life blood drains away. The Betrayers were many, and the Seeker would most certainly die. And then a new song came: one of revenge, and a price of blood. Six Great Packs had come. And in each the Seeker heard a song of mourning. The rest of the Seven had arrived, but they were too late.

  The time did nothing to ease the echo of the Seventh’s dying scream. The Six had proclaimed a long hunt against the Betrayers. They called out to the Seeker, the last hunter of the Seventh. It was its duty now to see their revenge through. It agreed, but it was no longer the Seeker. The death of the Seventh had taken with it its desire for knowledge. It cared nothing for the beauty of the Universe now, not when there was such wickedness within it. The hole in its being had healed, leaving only the scar. And that was what it had become—The Scar.

  ***

  It stumbled backward, its back caught by something or someone. It turned its head to look—yet it felt strange.

  “Lord Sentinel, are you all right?”

  It—no, he understood the words, yet it felt as though he had not heard the words in a long, long time. He… Adrian, his name came to him, as the rest of the shock slowly seeped away. His mind reasserted itself, pushing the memories he had lived through back.

  “I’m fine,” Adrian said, and stood on his own.

  This was something that he had never felt before. His mind was a mess. He had lived through the memories of the Krashinar before him. He had been it. The memories were fading now, but they were there still, like the memories of a vivid dream. That wasn’t supposed to be possible. The telepathy of all the races he had encountered didn’t work like that. Even the Sowir, who shared memories in a similar manner, needed to reconstruct the older one, to add their own flair to them. Adrian, however, had lived the Krashinar’s entire life, from his—no, its birth, its spawning in the womb of the Seventh to the moment the two of them met. Adrian had lived through thousands of years of life, every moment of it. At the time it had felt as real as anything that he had experienced in his own life. Now, he knew that those were not his own memories, not his own life. It had to be an ability unique to the Krashinar.

  He looked up at the Old Scar, and saw that it too had been affected. Adrian knew that it had lived through his life, just like Adrian had its. Now, Adrian knew the Krashinar. But more importantly, he knew the being in front of him. After all he had been it, he knew it as well as he knew himself.

  Adrian opened his mind and reached out to the Old Scar. “So, tell me, Old Scar: Is the trial of conformation satisfied?” he asked. For a lifetime he had spoken the language of the Krashinar. There was no do
ubt in Adrian’s mind that now there would be no misunderstandings between them.

  “Yes, Adrian, it is. And I agree to speak on your behalf with the Six.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Several hours later—Herald of War

  “That was extremely foolish, Lord Sentinel,” Commander Ruiss said with frustration.

  Adrian had returned to his ship after a short talk with the Old Scar. It had been suggested that they should both rest. They had just lived through each other’s lives, and they would need time to get their own minds settled. In a week’s time, they would start official negotiations.

  “Not really,” Adrian answered.

  “That alien could’ve killed you!”

  “Trust me, Ruiss, I can defend myself. It would’ve taken a lot for him to kill me,” Adrian said, though he wasn’t as sure as he made himself sound. The Krashinar were natural telepaths, just like the Sowir, and their telepathy was slightly different than that of every other race. It was possible that he might’ve had some difficulty.

  “In any case, it is done with,” Adrian said. “And now we have a reliable way of communicating with them.”

  “You still haven’t explained exactly how and why you are suddenly able to understand them,” Ruiss said.

  “We shared…knowledge. I gained their language, and they gained mine. My mind now understands how theirs work, and can now adapt and translate their words into things that I can comprehend. I believe that the same is true of it.”

  “Are you certain of that? We can’t afford misunderstandings.”

  “I am certain.”

  “Fine; I will not pretend to understand. But I will take your word for it. You said that you exchanged knowledge—so what else did you learn about them?”

  Adrian closed his eyes as flashes of memories rose to the surface. Quickly he pushed them down—ever since their encounter Adrian had been working tirelessly to contain the memories and isolate them inside his mind construct. He had been forced to craft another room inside his mountain, a fairly large one. It had to be in order to store all those memories. Adrian didn’t want them interfering with his life, but they were useful, so isolation and containment was his best option. He would still be able to access the memories whenever he wanted inside his mind construct.