“General,” he said, leaning close toward Nakamura, “this is not good.”
The spools abruptly stopped spinning. A second later, the technicians near the portal were exclaiming in horror, with half of them dashing about here and there between equipment banks. The other half merely stood in a semicircle before the big rectangle of the gateway machine. They were staring down at something on the floor.
Nakamura barked orders for everyone to get out of the way and let him pass. Tamerlane hurried after him. Shoving their way through the crowd of lab-coated men and women, they were at last able to gaze down and see what had everyone there in such a state of agitation and shock. When they saw it, they understood.
There at their feet lay all nine of the tether cables, each of them cleanly severed and lying flaccid on the floor just before the gateway.
9
“Make ready!” shouted Nakamura, turning his back momentarily on the gateway rectangle and the gaggle of scientists who flanked it, in order to address his troops. “We depart immediately!”
Everyone in the chamber looked up at Nakamura in shock. The members of First Legion, however, instantly went to work, checking their weapons and ammunition and testing their Aether connections. Quickly they began to congregate around Tamerlane as he motioned them over.
Suddenly the Inquisitors were there again, directly in front of Nakamura. Stanishur glared at the general with an awful intensity.
“Departing?” the cadaverous man bellowed with a voice that belied his slender frame. “You cannot be serious! You are simply leaving?” His eyes burned with a palpable wrath as he leaned in, his two assistants both visibly outraged behind him. “Where in the name of the Above and the Below do you think you’re going?”
Nakamura regarded the man with a thinly-veiled contempt. He jerked a thumb in the direction of the gateway rectangle—the path taken nearly an hour earlier by the Emperor and his honor guard.
“Through there,” he said.
The Inquisitor froze. He blinked, his mouth opening and closing once. When he spoke again, his tone was much softer, his demeanor vastly more restrained.
“You—you’re going through the portal? You’re going after them?”
“Of course,” Nakamura replied, and Tamerlane could only laugh to himself as he watched the confrontation out of the corner of his eye. He knew precisely what the general would ask next—though the reply he received was not exactly what he expected.
“You’ll be joining us, of course,” Nakamura added. “Won’t you?”
The Inquisitor blinked again. He half-turned away, as if to consult with his two assistants, but then apparently thought better of it and halted, turning back to face the general. Standing up straight to his full stature—a height that all but dwarfed Nakamura—he replied, “Yes. Yes, we will be joining you.”
Nakamura must have been surprised by this; Tamerlane certainly was.
“We have no choice,” the gaunt man went on. “The Emperor has dared to set foot into the realm of the gods themselves—a realm we of the Holy Inquisition are charged with defending and preserving and keeping sacrosanct. He appears to be suffering the consequences of that brash act. We have no choice but to see this folly through to its conclusion.”
Namura pursed his lips at this, then nodded once. He looked to Tamerlane and his men. “We’ve wasted quite enough time already,” he barked. “The Emperor may be in the gravest danger. I want my team through that portal in the next sixty seconds!”
Tamerlane acknowledged the order, then reacted with surprise as a deep voice addressed him from behind, rumbling, “Colonel.”
He turned and found himself staring up—very definitely up—at the features of his counterpart in the Third Legion, Beyzit’s adjutant. “Colonel Agrippa,” he said, offering a grim but sincere smile. “What can I do for you?”
The big, muscular man returned the smile, also in grim fashion. “I imagine you and General Nakamura intend for this expedition to be comprised of First Legion personnel only,” he rumbled. “That’s Nakamura’s right. But I’d like to volunteer, anyway. I believe I could be of some assistance—”
Tamerlane’s smile grew warmer. He’d always liked Agrippa, and thought highly of him as a soldier. This act only added to the regard he felt.
“That is appreciated,” he replied, “and I’ll pass the word to the general. But I’m sure it won’t be necessary.”
Agrippa nodded, clearly understanding that he was being turned down. “I respect that,” he said. “It’s Nakamura’s call. And yours.” He reached out with one big hand, and Tamerlane grasped it. They shook. “Good luck, Colonel,” the blond giant said. “And good hunting. Bring him back alive.”
“Thank you, Colonel. Will do.”
The two men parted and Agrippa moved back across the room to stand with his Third Legion compatriots. Tamerlane meanwhile huddled with the technicians, discussing the tactical aspects of the mission. After a rapid-fire discussion, they concluded that the severed ends of the tether cables could be attached to the belts of the new expedition personnel. It wouldn’t be as dependable as before—they would have to be attached in a makeshift manner, given the time constraints—but it was probably better than not having lifelines at all.
Seconds later, Tamerlane and Nakamura, along with four of their specialists of lieutenant rank and the three Inquisitors, had all been outfitted with the silver discs that provided energy shielding around their bodies. The tether cables were crudely tied onto their belts, while one of the lieutenants, by the name of Keefe, accepted a small device that the techs promised could track the Emperor through whatever environment they found themselves in. Nakamura, meanwhile, refused the atmospheric suits offered by the techs.
“Won’t we be needing those?” Stanishur asked, somewhat taken aback.
“They’re constricting, they’ll slow us down, and there’s no evidence they’re necessary in the Above,” Nakamura said with finality.
“But—the Emperor wore one,” Inquisitor Delain protested, having watched a recording of the Emperor’s departure.
“No one here was going to take any chances with him,” Nakamura said. “Beyond the gigantic chance he was already taking.”
The Inquisitors didn’t appear happy about that, but they accepted it in silence.
Nakamura motioned to General Attila and the big, bald, muscle-bound man approached.
“Esteban, you are in charge here until we return.”
The Second Legion general’s small, dark eyes glinted under heavy brows. “Understood.”
A second later and the six soldiers and three Inquisitors had taken position just before the black-framed doorway. The lights on it were shimmering again, the white swirl at its center growing in intensity.
“Any last concerns before we go through?” Nakamura asked, his blast pistol out of its holster and held at the ready.
The others shook their heads.
“I have to admit I’m curious to see what could have defeated an entire squad of elite Emperor’s Guard,” Tamerlane noted with a wry smile. He cradled a quad-rifle in both arms. “And how it will fare against us.”
The two younger Inquisitors exchanged nervous glances, but Stanishur’s expression only hardened. “Let us proceed,” he hissed.
“By all means,” Nakamura agreed. He stepped forward, into the white light. Tamerlane followed immediately on his heels, the others pushing forward behind them.
The universe they knew dissolved into nothingness at their backs, and an entirely new one swallowed them whole.
10
They were floating.
Tamerlane fought to retain his equilibrium as his inner ears went mad.
He became aware very quickly that his feet were not touching the floor. He looked down and understood why: There was no floor.
Below him, emptiness extended forever. Not the deep, dark depths of space; simply a blankness, a void.
His head spun even worse. He thought he might be sick, b
ut fought back and got his stomach under control.
A gagging sound from nearby revealed that someone else was not so lucky. He turned his head to his left in the direction of the sound and saw that it was one of the two younger Inquisitors—the boy—who was throwing up.
Turning back the other way, he found that his entire body was slowly rotating, for now the rest of the group was moving into view. They were drifting about, arms and legs moving in slow motion as if they were attempting to swim, or to catch themselves from falling.
Tamerlane inhaled deeply and found that the substance they floated in wasn’t precisely air, but it wasn’t a liquid, either—he could definitely breathe it. That was a plus, anyway. He tried calling out, but his voice sounded weak and filled with echoes. It didn’t seem to be carrying at all.
“Test,” he said, both aloud and internally, accessing the Aether—the mental subspace data and communications link that all Imperial soldiers shared. Essentially a telepathic link, under normal circumstances it could cover great distances instantaneously. These were, however, not normal circumstances. “This is Tamerlane,” he sent across the network. “Testing.”
A crackle that sounded not so much in his ears as in his head caused him to wince, and then, “I hear you, Colonel,” said Nakamura, “speaking” across the link from only a short distance away. “We appear to have extremely limited local Aether connections.”
“Limited is better than nothing, sir,” Tamerlane replied. “Everyone sound off.”
The other four soldiers—Lieutenants Torval, Keefe, Ling, and Landau—reported in, their voices scratchy and overlaid with static.
“What about those three?” Ling asked, pointing toward the three Inquisitors who floated nearby.
“The Inquisition isn’t part of our Aether network,” Tamerlane said—but he’d barely gotten the words out, or rather gotten them sent, when a somewhat familiar insignia popped up in the corner of his vision. It was an identifier mark, being transmitted into his virtual-reality view. He looked at it and recognized it and frowned. Then he twisted around so he could see the Inquisitors where they floated nearby. They were staring back, waiting.
“General, are you seeing this?” Tamerlane asked.
There was no question that Nakamura knew exactly what he was referring to: a narrow black rectangle, which might also double as the capital letter “I.”
“Indeed,” the general said. “Go ahead and accept the link.”
Tamerlane focused on the Inquisition symbol and ordered the Aether to make the link with it, then instructed the lieutenants to do likewise.
“How about that?” they heard Nakamura saying as the connection was made. “You have your own network—and can link into ours.”
“Of course,” Stanishur stated. “We could scarcely function as an effective arm of the Imperium without it.”
Tamerlane noted that three little black icons had joined the five red ones along the edge of his VR-vision. Like it or not, the Inquisitors were now an integrated part of their expedition and not just tagalongs.
“That’s fine, then,” Nakamura said. “In this environment, anything that helps us to communicate is a plus.” He realized he was drifting again and slowly spinning to face away from the others, and gyrated his arms and legs to fight against it; it would have looked ridiculous if not for the fact that several of the others were having to do the same. “Obviously,” he added, “we now need to figure out how to move. And quickly!”
“I’m working on that,” Tamerlane reported. “The techs were trying to explain it to me but there wasn’t time for me to fully grasp it or test it out.” He was holding his arms out from his body and angling his knees and elbows, like a parachutist. Slowly—very slowly at first, but with gathering speed—he started to move forward. He looked back at the others and grinned.
“How are you doing that, Colonel?” called one of the lieutenants.
“Show us all,” Nakamura added.
“It’s simple.” Tamerlane explained that if they focused via the Aether on the silver disks they’d been given, they could access the controls and reshape the electromagnetic fields it projected around them, such that they could create a sort of propulsive effect. “It’s like skydiving, sort of,” he noted. “You just form the field so that it’s at an angle, and then you slide through the air—or whatever we’re in—like a wedge.”
Within moments, the others were doing it; some taking to it quite naturally, others somewhat clumsily.
“That’s good enough,” Nakamura declared after a couple of minutes of everyone testing it out. “Let’s get going.” He spun around and looked to Keefe. “Lieutenant, you were given the tracker, yes?”
“Yes, General,” the blond woman—the only other female member of the expedition—replied. She was holding the small, square device the scientists on the station had given her. “It’s tuned to pick up on the unique energy signature of the Guard’s crystal armor.” Tamerlane watched as she stared down at it for a couple of seconds, doubtlessly using the Aether to connect with it in similar fashion to the way they’d accessed the silver disks. Then she pointed ahead. “The readings are very weak, but—that way.”
They angled their fields—some figured it out more quickly than others—and the entire group slid forward, slowly at first but with gathering momentum.
Time passed, though in this strange no-universe its passage seemed oddly disjointed. Tamerlane soon had lost all sense of how long they’d been moving. He checked the chronometer in his VR vision but the numbers there seemed random, skipping forward and backward, fast and slow—they made no sense at all.
Keefe had them change direction three times in fairly quick succession, and she seemed somewhat bewildered by the readings she was getting. Tamerlane meanwhile kept glancing back at their tether cables. He had no intention of losing the way back out, while everyone else was focused on what lay ahead.
“Could they have really gone this far?” asked Ling after a timeless time.
“How far is this far?” Landau countered. “I can’t tell if we’ve covered much distance at all.”
It was true, Tamerlane had to agree. The seemingly endless depths of pale light all around them made a mockery of any attempts to judge distances.
And then, quite suddenly, that entire situation changed.
“Are you men feeling that?” asked Tamerlane. He frowned as, against all of his efforts, he began to sink below the others. Keefe, who had been out front with the tracker, was dropping even faster.
“It’s almost like… gravity,” Ling said as he started down just behind them.
“Try to stay together, everyone,” Nakamura barked. “Keefe—are we being pulled off the trail?”
“No, General,” the blonde lieutenant called back and up to her commander. “The Emperor’s party seems to have gone this way, too.”
“Fine, then. Stay sharp.”
Tamerlane spared a look back over his shoulder and saw the others following along behind Keefe and him in a ragged line, the Inquisitors at the tail.
“There’s something ahead,” Keefe called back to them.
In the zero-gee environment, Tamerlane had fastened the big quad-rifle he’d been carrying to his back, allowing it to be towed along easily behind him. Now, as the sense of gravity increased, he reached back and grabbed it, holding it at the ready. It was a massive weapon, and he held it awkwardly; it was better suited for someone big and strong and wearing combat armor, like the guys in Agrippa’s Golden Phalanx, than for a man in nothing but smartcloth. But, in an environment like this, he’d wanted whatever advantage he could gain. He simply hoped the gravity wouldn’t increase to the point that he could no longer effectively carry or use it.
Some sort of fog was creeping around them as they continued along, and visibility dropped. The light dimmed; the depths of the strange environment darkened as though a thunderstorm were rolling in.
“Tighten up the formation,” Nakamura ordered. “Let’s don’t lo
se sight of one another.”
“Detecting some odd radiation readings,” noted Landau. “Straight ahead. No—wait. All around us now.”
“We can’t worry about that right now,” Nakamura said. “Trust the disks to protect us from anything too harmful, and keep going.”
Tamerlane spared a quick glance down at the silver device clipped to his belt and offered a quick prayer to whichever of Those Who Remain might be watching him now to keep that little machine working.
A few moments later, the fog beneath Tamerlane had thickened to the point that it could have hidden an imperial battle cruiser just ten meters away from him with him being none the wiser. And then, as he was noting that fact, something even more surprising than a battle cruiser was revealed beneath his feet: the ground.
Keefe was already impacting the surface—such as it was—and tumbling over to one side, like a skydiver landing in slow motion. Tamerlane had only an instant to call a warning out to those above and behind him before he, too, made contact with what was definitely a hard surface. He tucked and rolled, protecting his weapon as he went.
Grunts and exclamations erupted from the others in rapid succession as they landed, a couple of them getting slightly tangled in their lines. Tamerlane climbed back onto his feet and hurried toward Keefe. He found the surface was relatively easy to move across; slightly spongy, which had probably prevented the entire expedition from suffering multiple broken bones, but firm enough to hold his weight easily.
“I’m alright, Colonel,” Keefe reported as she accepted his help in getting up. She still clutched the tracking device in her right hand, and offered him a wry smile when she realized that was what he was most concerned about. “It’s safe and sound, sir.”
Nakamura ordered everyone to report in and gather around. No one had been injured, including even the almost elderly Stanishur—a fact that somewhat surprised Tamerlane, who had feared they’d be carrying him on a makeshift stretcher.
The Shattering: Omnibus Page 11