Taken aback, Tamerlane found he had no real answer for this. He glanced at Agrippa but the big man only shrugged.
“Very well,” the I Legion commander said after a few seconds of silence. He turned away from the other two Hatamoto and called, “Colonel!”
For a moment nothing happened, and Barbarossa looked about in puzzlement. Then the clouds of holographic imagery parted and Colonel Konstans Belisarius, a tall, handsome, dark-haired man and second-in-command of the Lords of Fire, emerged into the open space already occupied by the three Hatamoto.
“Sir?” Belisarius asked, saluting.
“I have a new assignment for you,” Tamerlane said. “You are to go to Earth and meet with General Iapetus. Find a way to convince him to acquiesce to my request for at least some portion of the II Legion to move up to the front lines.”
From his spot off to one side, Barbarossa suppressed a laugh. The others glanced at him but no one commented.
Belisarius took this order in but didn’t reply at first. His Latin features grew darker, his expression confused.
“Something the matter, Colonel?”
Belisarius pursed his lips, started to reply, then hesitated again.
“What is the matter, man?” Agrippa demanded.
Belisarius inhaled deeply, then addressed his superior, Tamerlane. “I have been monitoring the conversation, as you requested, General,” he said, “and I believe I would be of better use traveling to Ahknaton and seeking to persuade Governor Rameses in the way you described.”
Tamerlane frowned at this. “Why do you say that, Colonel?”
Belisarius again appeared to be wrestling with himself and could barely answer. At last he managed, “I’m...not entirely sure, General. But... I feel strongly... that I could make a difference...if I were allowed to go to Ahknaton.”
Tamerlane was clearly surprised by this reaction from his trusted second, but could only agree. “Very well, Colonel. Our need is great, and the time grows short. So, if you feel so strongly in the matter, then fine. You will go and explain the state of affairs to Rameses.” He stroked his chin for a moment, then stepped closer to the man and continued, “Be forceful. Don’t take no for an answer. Make the case very clearly to him that he must answer to the Imperial government. Explain to him in no uncertain terms that this ‘legion’ of Sand Kings he has created—for whatever reason—is as much a part of the Empire as any other unit, and not his personal and private army to do with solely as he pleases.”
“Understood, General,” Belisarius answered quickly, snapping a salute. “I will depart immediately.”
Tamerlane nodded and the colonel moved back through the clouds and out of the strategium.
“Well, that was odd,” Agrippa observed. “Why would he feel so strongly that he should go and talk to Rameses instead of Iapetus?”
“Perhaps he understands what I have been attempting to explain, General,” Berens Barbarossa suggested innocently. “Perhaps he didn’t wish to engage in a pointless mission.”
Tamerlane gave Barbarossa a look, then sighed. “I suppose it’s understandable.”
Silence descended for a moment.
“Are you still thinking of sending someone to Earth to make the case for action to Iapetus, Ezekial?” Agrippa asked quietly. “And if so, who?”
Tamerlane shook his head again. “Sending someone? If what the good colonel here tells us is true, there’s no point.”
“Indeed,” Barbarossa agreed. “That is sensible.”
“So I will contact him myself,” Tamerlane added. “Now.”
As Barbarossa looked on, surprised, Agrippa laughed heartily. Finally the blond man turned to Tamerlane and smiled. “Best of luck with that. I trust you will tell me how it goes. I cannot wait to hear.” He chuckled again, then looked away for a few seconds, speaking to someone off-camera— at his own physical location, but not within the visual holographic field. After another moment he turned back. “The enemy is advancing. Which one it is this time, I have no idea. But, in any case, I am needed with my troops. I believe it is time to employ my heaviest ordnance. I will take my leave now, if that is agreeable, Ezekial.”
“Good hunting, Arnem.” Tamerlane sent a signal through the Aether, ending the recording of their meeting and officially declaring the Hatamoto recessed for the time being.
With a nod and a slight bow, the big general vanished in a sparkle of holographic haze.
Tamerlane issued an order over the Aether link: “Connect me with Earth, please. II Legion command. General Iapetus.”
Barbarossa stepped forward. “Should I excuse myself, General?”
Tamerlane considered this. “No,” he replied after a second’s thought. He motioned toward the shadowy area of the strategium where Belisarius had lurked earlier. “Wait over there, if you would, Colonel.” He smiled flatly. “I suspect I may desire a witness for this conversation. One not affiliated with the Lords of Fire.”
Barbarossa bowed his head and chuckled. “I suspect you may be right about that, sir,” he responded, before stepping into the darkness.
6
Titus Elaro stepped off the Imperial transport craft and quickly took in the sights.
He was a big man; well over six feet tall, with solid muscles and a square jaw. Blondish-brown hair, cut very short, covered his head. His uniform was not of any legion but the neutral tan of a planetary defense militia—in his case, Gaurean, a world far out on the spinward fringe.
As he turned his imposing head this way and that, his eyes moved across a sea of other soldiers milling about on the broad landing field. A short distance away, the nearest set of half a dozen transport shuttles was lifting off in smooth, choreographed movements after having disgorged another cadre of recruits. Beyond them stood a smooth gray stone wall, the outermost defenses of a towering, ancient fortress that lay beyond and within. In all, not the most imposing of locales at which to gather a collection of mercenaries, disaffected soldiers, pensioned guardsmen and trainees from all across the Empire. And yet that more or less described the crowd that had been aboard the transport with him. All of them here because they’d heard a scrap of a hint or a whisper of a new force being gathered; each of them seeking to make a new start in a new army—a Nizam Legion, itself a secret and with a secret commander—rumored to be outside of the normal chain of command. All of them, of course, except for Elaro.
Elaro very unobtrusively studied the faces and clothing of a quick random sampling of the men and women around him. A few of them matched with one another in ethnicity and dress, and those tended to stand together in little clumps; likely they had departed the same homeworld together and had arrived here together, and were clinging to the familiar—to each other. The rest of the crowd though... Elaro studied them a bit more closely and allowed himself a tiny smile. They were from all over the Empire.
Elaro’s smile was for one simple reason: his first gamble had paid off. He’d been forced to hope that, whatever this gathering was intended to be, it was made up of personnel from all across the Empire that had never worked or fought together before. If that was indeed the case, no one could stand out as a stranger, because it would essentially be a gathering of strangers. No one would suspect where he actually came from, or for whom he worked.
The danger wasn’t over yet, of course. Not by any means. Elaro quickly looked for the people in charge. He figured, if he was going to be caught and exposed, better to get it over with quickly.
It didn’t take long to find the individuals running the show. A table had been set up some distance away on the tarmac and two officers in the red smartcloth uniforms of I Legion were checking in the arrivals. A sign on their table read: TRANSMIT ID CODE TO SGT VALUS.
Elaro moved away from the transport and followed along with the flow of troops. A heavyset man wearing sergeant’s stripes who had been observing the crowd just as carefully but much more openly turned his full attention in Elaro’s general direction. The man’s eyes flicked from one soldi
er to the next, and Elaro realized they were following the instructions and sending him their identification code. Ah, Elaro thought. That must be Sgt. Valus.
So. The first test of the skills of the covert action division. Elaro had been assured he was fully prepared for any contingency, but one could never be certain of such things until they were put to the test in the real world.
Elaro met the stare of the sergeant and accessed the Aether. Instantly a red square appeared in the corner of his vision—Sgt. Valus’s icon. He focused on it and transmitted the file he had been given that contained his forged identity codes. Valus looked at him, blinked, and shifted his gaze to the next man behind him.
Elaro didn’t sigh with relief, didn’t smile, didn’t do a little dance. He simply continued to shuffle along with the crowd. The line at the officers’ table was long but it was moving rapidly. Most of the business was handled via the Aether link, and Elaro figured the two men behind the table were merely a sort of formality. He stepped up, seventh in line now, and rehearsed his lines just in case they asked him anything specific. He felt ready to—
“You there!” came the cry from behind him. “Stand out!”
Elaro tensed, but he kept himself entirely contained. He waited a moment before turning and looking back. By that time, nearly everyone else was doing it.
A soldier in the red and gold of the Lords of Fire was approaching at a good clip, his hand moving down to his sidearm. Instinctively, Elaro’s hand moved down for his. He spared a half-second to take in his immediate environment, realizing that whatever happened next, it would cause quite a few people to be killed and do a great deal of damage to the facility.
The man stalked right past Elaro. He roughly grasped a shorter, older man nearer to the front of the line and yanked him out into the open. Angry words were exchanged; Elaro heard something about a robbery aboard one of the shuttles. Accusations and denials flew back and forth. Finally a pair of men who were very clearly military police arrived and took the older fellow away.
Elaro waited, still tense, to see if anything further developed. Time seemed to move very slowly, and he couldn’t hear a thing. In situations like this, he tended to almost turn off the senses he wasn’t particularly using, as though that allowed his other senses to become somehow heightened. Was the danger over? Was that man the only one they were looking for?
“Do you hear me? You’re next, soldier,” the officer on the right side of the desk was saying.
Elaro looked up, coming back to reality. The officer had called him twice now.
“Yes—sorry, sir,” he said, flashing a white smile as he stepped up and turned to face the men behind the table.
The officer who had called him was frowning. He nodded to Elaro’s right hand; it hovered over his belt in the spot where his gun would’ve been holstered, had it been permitted here.
Recovering quickly, Elaro moved the hand away and smiled again. “Don’t like thieves, sir,” he offered by way of explanation.
The officer regarded him for another second, then nodded distractedly. He marked Elaro’s ID code via the Aether link and gestured for him to continue on past the table. “Next!”
“I’m in,” Elaro whispered to himself as he strode casually from the landing field and into the camp proper. “Everything they promised me would work—actually worked.”
He passed through an arched entryway and into a broad, flat courtyard covered in ancient-looking, rust-red cobblestones. A dozen or so armed soldiers wearing I Legion uniforms stood at roughly equidistant spaces around the perimeter. The number of recruits crowding into the center was hard to estimate, but Elaro guessed it was something like a thousand, at least.
“What’s this all about?” one of the rougher-looking men to Elaro’s left asked, almost rhetorically. The man clearly didn’t expect to receive an answer and Elaro didn’t attempt to supply one.
A few minutes later, a big guy in red tramped up a metal stairway to a sort of stage at the far end of the area and surveyed the crowd. At the bottom of the stairs, almost lost in the sea of muscular bodies, stood a young, dark-haired woman in a skin-tight smartcloth uniform of dark red and black. Seeing the two of them, the recruits buzzed louder in speculation for a few seconds, then quickly quieted down.
“Welcome to Mysentia,” the big man on the stage boomed. He gazed out at them, waiting as they muttered to one another at that particular revelation. Elaro realized then that he hadn’t even thought about what planet they were on, and no one before now had bothered to tell them. His every thought had been about the mission, and about overcoming the many security hurdles. The actual location he was traveling to hadn’t mattered to him at all.
“This is a nice world,” the soldier continued when the crowd quieted down. “Maybe not one of the Seven, but it’s civilized, and all that. So—try to act that way yourselves. Best behavior. Or else.”
“Else what?” asked a recruit close to the front of the crowd.
“Else the fines start kicking in.” The soldier snorted. “You’ll find it doesn’t take more than a few violations before your entire paycheck is gone.”
The recruits mostly nodded or mumbled grudging assent. Elaro almost laughed. They wanted to cut up. They were as rough a crowd as he’d ever seen. But they wanted to be paid even more than they wanted to cut up.
“You’ll be shown to your billets in a few minutes,” the soldier said. “But first, our commander has a few inspiring words for you. So listen up.”
The recruits all looked around, attempting to spot the commander. No one was prepared when the young woman in the tight uniform sprang up the steps and stood before them, her dark eyes peering out with grim appraisal.
“I’m Colonel Niobe Arani,” she told them. Her voice was strong and clear but not terribly loud; nonetheless they found they had no trouble understanding her.
“She’s the commander?” muttered the man next to Elaro who had spoken earlier. Again Elaro didn’t figure the guy expected an answer and didn’t volunteer one. To himself, however, he thought, No. She can’t be. She’s just a colonel. And I’ve never heard of her. There has to be someone else—someone above her.
“My officers have devised a very demanding series of tests for each of you,” the dark-haired woman was saying. “Those of you who fail the tests will be expelled. Your memories will be wiped. You will not remember any of this. You will wake up on one of the Outer Worlds with a severe hangover and a wad of consolation pay in your pocket, wondering what you were doing for the previous week.”
A smattering of grumbling from the crowd.
“If that scenario disturbs you overmuch,” the woman stated, “you can drop out now. You’ll still be mind-wiped, but you’ll only have a day or two to wonder about. And a much tinier wad of pay.”
The grumbling settled down.
“Those of you who make the cut will be allowed to become a part of the greatest military force in the galaxy. And I don’t mean the Kings of Oblivion,” she added. “Or the Sons of Terra. Or even the Lords of Fire.”
The crowd buzzed at this. The man to Elaro’s right snorted. “So we’re joining the Sand Kings, then?” This time Elaro deigned to look at him, and the expression he wore shut the man right up.
More buzz. The woman, Arani, raised one hand and the crowd quieted.
“As you have doubtlessly come to understand by now, this entire operation is top secret. Your ability to keep it secret will directly impact your acceptance into its ranks—or your rejection, hangover, and small wad of money.”
Now the crowd actually laughed. For his part, Elaro smiled. The woman was winning them over. He found himself somewhat impressed.
“You will be separated into three divisions,” she continued. “Three majors will be chosen and designated from your ranks after careful evaluation of your skills and abilities, to lead them.”
“What’s the mission?” one brave soul in the thick of the crowd shouted.
Colonel Arani gazed out in the ge
neral direction of the voice, then shrugged. “A fair question. Unfortunately, not one I am able to answer quite yet.” The grumbling reappeared, and Arani held her hand up again. “Rest assured—if you make the cut, you will know. And you will not be disappointed.”
With that, she hopped down from the stage and stood to one side as the big soldier moved up into her spot. “Check your Aether displays,” he shouted. “You’ll see a number now. If you have a one—over there.” He pointed. “Twos in the middle. Threes over there.”
Slowly the crowd began to divide itself into three clumps as the recruits found their number floating in their artificial vision. As they parted, Elaro suddenly had a direct and unimpaired view of Colonel Niobe Arani, roughly a dozen meters ahead of him. She was striding forward with purpose, clearly deep in thought, mostly oblivious to the soldiers in their mismatched uniforms all around her. Acting on pure instinct, Elaro took a step in her direction, and then another. He wasn’t sure why he did it.
She looked up and became aware of him, standing like a roadblock in her path. She started to frown.
Movement from her left and just ahead of her. A scuffle. A shout.
Time slowed down. Elaro’s vision acquired a strobe effect.
Someone—a woman in dark green, with very short, blonde, almost white hair—was emerging from the crowd. She had something in her right hand.
A knife.
She swung it at Arani.
Arani, distracted by her own thoughts and by Elaro’s presence before her, didn’t fully appreciate the danger in time. By the time she realized what was happening, the blade was on its way down, toward her chest, her neck.
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