The Shattering: Omnibus

by Van Allen Plexico

  Again taken aback, Tamerlane frowned at this, considering the ramifications. “But—what of my forces already on Ahknaton?”

  “They are lost,” Teluria replied, her expression hard. “You must realize that—you must accept it.”

  “No!” He moved in closer to her. “Leave it open, for now. I mean it!”

  Her expression sour, Teluria obeyed.

  Quickly Tamerlane called up an Aether link, searching for Colonel Arani’s signature on the other side of the portal. For some reason, he couldn’t get a reading on any of the strike team. Something—some sort of interference—was playing havoc with the Aether as it touched on Ahknaton. Then, almost miraculously, he managed to connect. Before he could “say” a word to her, asking what was happening there, she called back at him, her mental voice frantic. He couldn’t understand most of what she was sending to him. One word, however, repeated several times, came through clearly enough: “Ambush!”

  Tamerlane whirled on Teluria. “You led them into a trap,” he almost shouted at her.

  “I?” Her dark eyes widened in seeming astonishment. “I have done nothing but open a path, just as you requested.”

  Tamerlane bit back his anger as best he could. “Bring them back! Get them back here now!”

  “I cannot bring them back,” Teluria replied, her voice filled with anger. “You know that very well, General. I can only open the way; they must choose to return—and be able to.”

  Furious, Tamerlane hesitated on the threshold of the portal to Ahknaton. The younger, more impetuous side of him wanted to race through it—to gather up his forces, who were being subjected to the gods knew what sort of violence on the other side, and bring them home. But the older, wiser part of him counseled restraint. He did not at all trust Teluria, and suspected she might well choose to close the portal with him on the other side, trapping him in the ambush along with his men, and cutting him off from the rest of his troops, with no way to escape. Torn, he stood there, uncertain.

  The portal rippled, and a figure stumbled through it, falling to the ground at his feet. More came through behind it, many of them bloody and burned.

  The one at Tamerlane’s feet started up, and the general helped him. Seeing the big man’s face, he recognized him as the major that had accompanied Arani— Elaro, it was.

  “What happened, Major?”

  “They were ready for us—waiting, General,” the big man said, in between coughs. “They knew we were coming. They knew exactly where we would appear.” He coughed again, hard. “They were butchering us. One company volunteered to fight a rearguard action while the rest of us withdrew, and—”

  “Where is Arani?”

  Elaro’s eyes widened. “What? She was with me a moment ago—” He straightened and looked all around. Not seeing her, he instantly turned and started back toward the portal.

  “Stop right there, Major,” the general ordered.

  Elaro hesitated, turning back and looking at Tamerlane. “I have to find her—help her,” he said.

  “She can help herself,” Tamerlane replied. “She’s a very good soldier. I don’t need to lose any more men today.”

  Elaro glared at the general. “With respect, sir—you don’t command me. I don’t belong to your Lords of Fire.”

  “You belong to the Nizam Legion,” Tamerlane retorted. “And I command it, too. So I command you.” He stepped forward, grasping Elaro by the upper arm. “Major, I understand that you want to help her. Believe me—so do I. But this isn’t the way. Either she’s dead—”

  “She’s not dead!”

  “—or else she’s held prisoner, or she’s on the run from Rameses. If she’s dead, that’s that. And if it’s one of the other two, we have to think carefully about how to get her—and the others—back.” He motioned toward the portal. “And blindly charging through there isn’t the way to do it. It’s not remotely safe.”

  Elaro gave Tamerlane a vicious look. “Don’t I know that,” he growled. “But—we have to do something!”

  Before Tamerlane could answer, someone else did decide to do something. Sensing movement behind them, the two angry men looked up—just in time to see the black-robed form of Sister Delain racing through the portal.

  “Stop!” shouted the general, but it was too late. She was through to the other side. Tamerlane cursed and turned to Teluria, but what he would have said to her, no one would ever know. For at that instant a barrage of energy blasts erupted from the mouth of the portal, coming from the other side. Staring into that swirling abyss, Tamerlane could make out the shapes of Sand Kings troops rushing his way, quad-rifles and energy lances up and firing. He opened his mouth to issue an order—but before he could say a word, Teluria gestured sharply and the portal slammed closed, vanishing as if it had never been, entirely severing the link with Ahknaton.

  Tamerlane dropped to his haunches and cursed again, dust and debris and the smell of sweat and blood swirling around him. He looked up at the stricken Elaro and shook his head wearily. Along with Arani and Delain, more than two thirds of his army was gone.

  15

  Aboard and around Agrippa’s hovertank, they all braced for impact.

  It never came.

  The sounds of weapons fire—of blasts from alien energy pistols and rifles—was almost deafening. But those blasts, beams and bullets didn’t streak out toward the humans.

  Realizing the shots weren’t connecting with him or his Bravo Squad, Agrippa halted in his headlong race for his tank and turned, looking back toward the Dyonari position, trying to determine what was happening.

  In the smoke and gloom, it was hard to tell. His eyes flicked frantically here and there. His heart was beating quickly, his respiration ragged. Fear clawed at his insides. Desperately he tried to calm himself. I am General Arnem Agrippa, he told himself with a firm determination. I do not panic on the battlefield—or anywhere! He pulled his helmet off and gasped in air. What is the matter with me? I have never reacted in such a way before. Never!

  The light. It had been the red light. And—something within it. A face. A skull-face, rising. But even that—possibly a simple holographic illusion by the Dyonari, or someone else—shouldn’t have been enough to frighten him. Not like this! Not at all!

  Something else. Something...telepathic. Psychic. A force of pure fear—of pure evil—rising up out of that crater.

  He looked down. Ice. Ice all around them. Sheets of it, covering the ground and growing thicker by the moment.

  The Dyonari are psychic, he reminded himself, but not like this. There’s never been any report of them creating fear—terror!—in their enemies. Certainly not an artificial fear that begins to dissolve as soon as one recognizes its presence.

  Agrippa frowned, shaking his head to clear the last of the psychic residue.

  “What are they doing, General?”

  Agrippa looked back. Obomanu, his driver, was leaning out the hatchway, staring out across the murky valley.

  “They’re shooting one another, it looks like,” came a voice from the other side of the vehicle.

  With a whoosh of air, the second hovertank, commanded by Major Torgon, glided around Agrippa’s vehicle and came to a halt just next to it. Torgon was standing in the open top hatch, studying the Dyonari position through high-tech field glasses.

  “Shooting each other?”

  Agrippa leapt up onto the second tank and took the field glasses from Torgon. He pointed them toward the odd, crystalline vehicle that had carried the alien force.

  “I realize this isn’t proper spacing for battle conditions, sir,” Torgon was saying, “but I was growing frustrated with not being able to contact you via the Aether.”

  Still looking through the glasses, Agrippa nodded. “You did well.” Then he grunted. “You’re right, Torgon. They appear to have gone insane. They’re firing their weapons at one another. Using those swords on one another. Fighting hand-to-hand with one another!”

  “What should we do, General?” T
orgon asked.

  “I...honestly don’t know,” Agrippa breathed, watching the alien soldiers slaughtering one another. “Perhaps we should—”

  “The enemy,” came a now-familiar voice within Agrippa’s head, “is driving us mad. Making us kill each other—kill everyone.” Glossis, the leader, sounded much more strained and strident than he had before. “We Dyonari are especially susceptible to psychic influence. It is our greatest weakness as a people. The enemy is exploiting it now—driving us into a rage. It is taking all of our remaining reserves of psychic restraint to avoid firing at you.” A pause, as Glossis seemed to gather his wits and his strength. Then, “You must leave this place at once!”

  “We do not run from a fight, Glossis,” Agrippa mentally replied. “And if we can help you, we will do so.”

  “You do not know this enemy, General.”

  “No, we do not. And I am still waiting for you to enlighten us. What do we face here?”

  “The worst foe imaginable.”

  “You said that before. Who is it?”

  “They do not want me to tell you. They are exerting great psychic influence to stifle me. They enjoy having yet another advantage over their enemies. That is why I have been unable to name them thus far. But—I am fighting it. I will—” Glossis cried out, and the sheer mental force of his anguish nearly took Agrippa’s feet out from under him. Reeling, he steadied himself against the armored plating of the tank.

  “General! Are you alright?” called Torgon. He started to climb out and hurry to his commander’s side, but Agrippa waved him back.

  “No, no—stay at your post, Major. We may yet need all of our firepower—and at a moment’s notice.”

  “Yes, sir,” Torgon answered. He followed that with, “Sir! The battle seems to be over.”

  Agrippa looked out toward the alien vehicle. He could still see movement here and there; perhaps they hadn’t all killed one another.

  A second later, Glossis’s voice returned. It was steadier now. “They are no longer provoking us, General,” the alien said. “Only a few of us survive.”

  “Why have they stopped?” Agrippa asked.

  “I believe they... no longer care... if I divulge their identity to you. Apparently they have grown supremely confident of their power, and of their chances of victory.”

  “Then who—?”

  “They...are called... Phaedrons,” Glossis stated. “Masters of psychic combat. The ice comets invading your worlds are simply outer shells that form about their ships as they travel, as a side effect of their mental powers.”

  “I...see. Where do they come from? We have never encountered their like before.”

  “They come from outside of our galaxy. We fought them, ages ago—we and the other, older races. We believed them to have been banished forever. But something has stirred them up—driven them back into our galaxy.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There is another force at work, beyond just the Phaedrons,” Glossis said. “We have felt it. We know it is there, but we do not know what it is. But it is powerful, and it is driving the Phaedrons forward, urging them to attack all in their path—perhaps, we fear, as a vanguard for some larger invasion.”

  Agrippa absorbed this information, his expression grim. He thought of what he had seen in the crater. Of the absolute and utter terror that had surrounded that bizarre, skull-like face.

  At that moment, Glossis cried out across their mental link. “They are coming! You must flee!”

  A visual image flooded into his mind: A metal, skull-like face, swathed in black and shot through with baleful red light, in the depths of a crater. And it was rising... rising...

  Glossis’s soundless voice had become unhinged. “The Phaedrons come!” he cried within Agrippa’s mind. “They rise! They rise! Flee!”

  The link was severed.

  “Sir! The Dyonari—they’re—” Torgon was watching them through the glasses. He shook his head. “What are they doing?”

  Just beyond the crystalline vehicle, a shimmering circle of light had formed. The surviving Dyonari soldiers were very quickly climbing back aboard their craft.

  “Sir—look there!”

  Agrippa shifted his eyes to where Obomanu was pointing. Despite himself, he gasped.

  From out of the craters—all of the craters, all dozen of them—black clouds were rising, billowing up. And the red light that blazed up from each of them was growing brighter and brighter. The temperature dropped again; it was growing intolerably cold now, even within the heavy plate armor.

  “The Dyonari have opened some kind of portal—a dimensional gateway, like the gods can do,” Torgon said, pointing toward the aliens’ position. “They’re going through!”

  Indeed, the crystalline alien vehicle spun about on its axis and zoomed toward the shimmering circle of light.

  “A portal.” Agrippa didn’t hesitate. He leapt back onto his own tank and dropped halfway inside. “Follow them,” he barked. “Quickly!”

  For their part, Obomanu and the driver of Torgon’s tank only hesitated for the tiniest of moments before slamming the big hovertanks in gear and racing along after the alien craft.

  “What are we doing, General?” called Torgon aloud from the second tank, his voice barely carrying over the roar of the engines. “Pursuing the Dyonari—or fleeing this new foe?”

  Agrippa bit back an angry retort.

  “We cannot contact our other forces because of the psychic interference blanking out the Aether link,” he barked. “And right now we are the only humans, as far as I know, who have any information whatsoever about this new enemy. We have to get that information to General Tamerlane and the Taiko—immediately.”

  “But—where are we going?” Torgon asked, as Agrippa’s tank closed in on the circle of light.

  “I don’t know,” Agrippa replied, though he was unsure now if the Major could still hear him. “I don’t have any idea. But—if the Dyonari think it a safer place than the one we just left—the Dyonari, who are never afraid of anything—then that’s good enough for me.”

  The two tanks roared into the portal. Just after they passed through, the circle closed, vanishing from the surface of Eingrad-6.

  Agrippa and his men plunged through darkness—the darkness between the stars.

  16

  “I don’t know how you’re doing this—how you’ve done any of the things you’ve done,” Tamerlane was saying to Teluria, even as he clasped her hand in a firm grip, closed his eyes, and concentrated. “But there is obviously more to you—much more—than you’ve let on.”

  The mysterious woman in red only smiled enigmatically.

  “Whose side are you on?” the general asked her, opening his eyes and meeting hers. “In truth.”

  “You must concentrate, General,” the woman replied. “Focus all of your thoughts on Colonel Arani.”

  Scowling, Tamerlane closed his eyes again and did as he was told. “As soon as this business is resolved,” he murmured, his voice already growing distant, “we will have a reckoning between us.”

  “As you say, General,” Teluria said. She didn’t appear particularly concerned.

  They sat at the table inside Arani’s office tent. Elaro, meanwhile, had been ordered to reorganize the remaining troops for immediate action. Tamerlane, though, had been determined to make one more attempt to contact his missing soldiers and Inquisitor Delain before they took any new action. If any of those forces remained alive, the intelligence they might offer could make the difference between a repeat of the ambush they’d walked into the first time and actual success.

  “Arani,” Tamerlane whispered, even as he pushed that thought through the Aether in what he hoped was the direction of far-away Ahknaton. “Can you hear me?”

  Channeled through the higher dimensional realm of the Above, the Aether provided a virtually instantaneous link across great distances of the normal universe. No one, though, had ever tried to send a message through it across anyth
ing like the distances involved now. Or, if they had tried, they had entertained no hope of success, and had found none. Tamerlane, however, believed that in this one case he might be successful. Teluria had demonstrated remarkable powers when it came to manipulating the fabric of reality; one might almost describe her as a god—as one of Those Who Remain. If so—if she truly was a creature of that variety—she must possess untold personal reserves of power—of the Power. The Power of the gods. With that energy now at Tamerlane’s disposal, as he clutched the woman’s hand, he hoped it might act as a sort of booster to his own signal, forcing the message through to—

  “General!”

  Tamerlane recoiled, nearly severing the connection. Arani’s voice had come loudly—very loudly—back through the connection. He clung to Teluria’s hand and called back over the untold light years, “Yes! Arani! Yes, it’s me! Are you alright? What’s your situation?”

  A pause, then, “I’m sorry, General—your signal is barely reaching me. But know: I’m still alive, as are some twenty-four other soldiers of the Nizam Legion. Sister Delain is with us, as well. She has done an amazing job of camouflaging us, helping us to avoid the Sand Kings patrols.”

  Tamerlane’s guts churned at this news. Arani and Delain—alive! And with a decent-sized force behind them. It was the first good news the general had received in quite some time. But—so many others were dead. So many.

  “We are just outside the city,” Arani continued. “We can see the Heliopolis clearly from here.” She read off a string of coordinates. “The Sand Kings have moved on to other areas in their search for survivors, so we should be safe for now. We await further orders or an extraction attempt.”

  Tamerlane’s grin only grew. Safe, he thought. They’re safe, and it sounds as if they can remain that way for at least a little while. He started to reply, then considered the situation. It appeared their connection was somehow able to convey her messages to him much more clearly than it carried his words to her. He opened one eye and glanced across the table at Teluria; she was pale and sweating under the strain, and he guessed she couldn’t hold a connection of this distance open much longer. He had to consider what he was going to tell Arani carefully and convey it in a very concise manner.