“Speak sensibly, woman,” boomed an increasingly impatient Agrippa.
The figure in white whirled and stared directly at the big blond general. She gasped. “You!” She stumbled back a step, nearly falling, and Tamerlane had to grasp her by the shoulders to catch her and help her stand. Then, straightening, pulling away, she moved a step closer to Agrippa, her eyes narrowing as she stared directly at him. “No—not yet. Not yet. But soon.”
“What is this nonsense?” Agrippa demanded, scowling.
“Your destiny,” she muttered. “So great. And so dark.”
The big man was perplexed. He turned to the other general. “What is she talking about, Ezekial?”
His focus remaining on the woman, Tamerlane shook his head. “I don’t know. But we don’t have time for all this.” He leaned in closer. “We’re going to need you to be a little more plain-spoken,” he said. “And we’ll need that now.”
“Yes, yes—of course,” the woman in white replied. She paused, as if gathering her wits, and then gave Tamerlane her full attention as she spoke. “I have sought you out because only you can help me. We have an enormous task before us, but I believe I have arrived here in time that it can still be accomplished.”
Tamerlane nodded slowly. “I...see.” He stroked his chin, glancing back at Agrippa. The big man appeared extremely dubious. Then, “And what task would this be? Because, you see, we are already in the middle of a critical mission, and the longer we delay—”
“Your mission is important to you, yes,” the woman said. “But, in the grand scheme of things, it is trivial. It pales in importance compared to what I have come to do. The danger you face is almost insignificant compared to what I must warn you of.”
“Well,” Tamerlane exclaimed. “You certainly paint a grim picture. What is this monumental danger we face?”
“I’ll bet it involves the comets,” Agrippa growled. “But we already know about them.”
The woman laughed sharply. “The Phaedrons are terrible indeed,” she said, “but they are merely a symptom of the larger problem.”
The others all exchanged glances. She knows about the Phaedrons, they all seemed to be thinking at once. Her credibility increased ever so slightly with that.
“Then tell us,” Tamerlane said. “Tell us what danger we face, that makes everything else seem so insignificant.”
“I have come,” the woman said, “to make one last-ditch effort, before it is too late. I have come to try to prevent the Shattering.”
Tamerlane frowned. “The shattering?” he asked. “The shattering of what?”
“The shattering of the galaxy itself,” the woman in white replied.
6
Karsis Station, located in high orbit above Chronos, was not the newest outpost in the Empire, nor was it updated with the most technological innovations as were some of the stations closer to the Inner Worlds. It couldn’t boast the most powerful armaments or the most sophisticated tracking and detection systems. Truth be told, it even smelled pretty bad inside; it contained the musty air of a thousand inhabitants who had come and gone over the years, their various odors remaining behind, seemingly permeating the very walls and floors and ceilings of the crew space.
No, it wasn’t the most glamorous or even pleasant posting for an officer of the III Legion. Nevertheless, Lt. Elizabeth McClure considered it home—it had been her home for some three months now, standard time, and would be for another twenty-one at minimum—and she had therefore resolved to embrace it and to try to think the best of it for as long as she was stuck inside it.
Little did she know how brief that time would turn out to be.
Out of all the glaring and visibly obvious deficiencies of the station, the one that would cost it and its crew the most was its outdated detection sensors. Had Karsis been outfitted with the latest units coming out of the fabrication stations over Tolkar, there might have been at least some sort of advance warning. Alas, no warning came, for those who needed to know, didn’t know, and those who knew, didn’t tell.
And so it was that the blood-red comets streaking in from outside the galactic plane dropped out of hyperspace and entered the Chronos system with hardly anyone noticing them at first. By the time they did, it was far too late.
As the comets closed in on Chronos they slowed, but not by very much at first. Three massive Imperial battlecruisers of the I Legion that rested at high anchorage were first to go, obliterated as the comets struck them like slugs fired from a sniper’s rifle. The huge spaceships ruptured and spewed fire, atmosphere and crew into space as their hulls cracked and split, the several huge pieces that remained tumbling slowly away, either toward the planet’s surface—there to do great harm as well—or off into the endless night.
Standing at an observation port to see these reported comets for herself, Lt. Elizabeth McClure gasped in shock and growing horror as the carnage played itself out before her. The three ships continued to erupt as their fuel and power cells combusted, one after the other, followed by their ammunition stores. The comets that had struck them continued on toward the planet, visibly slowing now, entering the atmosphere of Chronos with descent angles that looked more like spacecraft coming in for a landing than meteors crashing to the ground.
That in itself was a vital clue, and another that those who looked on missed entirely.
McClure stood there, rooted to the spot, and continued to watch as wave after wave of comets shot past, all on a direct course for the planet.
Within a short time, reports began to come in over Karsis Station’s comm links that the comets were reaching the surface of Chronos, but many of them weren’t behaving as ordinary astronomical bodies should behave when striking a planetary surface—that is to say, not all of them were obliterating themselves while blowing out vast craters and causing shockwaves that wiped out life and property for miles in every direction. Instead, the reports went, some were somehow drastically slowing as they fell, hitting the ground hard but not dangerously hard—and they were opening.
McClure turned up the volume and listened more carefully, but what she heard was not clear at all.
The reports grew garbled and uncertain then, filled with what sounded more like the hallucinations of the insane than actual, dependable, factual information. The people on the surface of Chronos—reports were coming in from both military and civilian observers—indicated waves of cold and ice radiating out from the landed comets, and strange creatures emerging. Without exception, the voices of the reporters became filled with horror, then transformed to babbling incoherence.
At that point, the reports all abruptly ended.
McClure recoiled and whirled about, suddenly afraid to look out the viewport of the station any longer. Explosions had been blossoming across the surface of the planet. Based on what she had heard, she felt more concern for the people in the areas not hit by the actual exploding comets. Whatever was coming out of the ones that landed sounded infinitely worse than mere instantaneous annihilation.
Lt. McClure resolved to go to the command deck of the station and ask the commander his opinion on all of this. She looked back out the viewport one last time, seeing the surface of Chronos mottled by impact craters and explosions, and then turned and ran for the lift.
She had made it halfway there when the comet smashed through Karsis Station and utterly obliterated it.
7
“Chaos and death?” Governor Amon Rameses blurted, staggering back. “Are you mad?”
“Mad?” Goraddon gazed at him with amused disdain. He appeared to have grown far larger than his previous, human form; his presence virtually filled the vast throne room of the Heliopolis palace. “Mad?” he repeated. “I am not mad. I am a god!”
Rameses looked from the man in black to Zahir and back. “What—why—” he stammered. For his part, he seemed to have shrunk down to a shell of his former self. “Why my world?” he finally blurted, his voice small and pathetic. “Why me? Why here?”
; “You possessed all the things I required,” Goraddon replied. “A world. A legion of your own. And ambition—rebellious, burning ambition—that I could shape and mold as I desired.” He smiled down at Rameses as an adult to a precocious child. “And so I nurtured you, just as I did the Emperor, to become my willing instrument in this universe.” He reached out, his hand touching the governor’s face, stroking it. “And you have served me well, Rameses.” His expression hardened. “Until now.”
Rameses blanched. He drew back, shaking his head, the honeyed words of the man in black crumbling within his mind as he reasserted his own will again. “No,” he cried. “Stop it! Get out of my head!”
Zahir started toward the governor, his expression wrathful, but the man in black stopped him with a word. “No,” he said. And as Zahir turned back to his master, surprise on his face, Goraddon motioned for him to move to one side. “No more violence here,” the dark man said. “It is unnecessary. The Governor will come around. He will understand.”
“Never!” Rameses cried. He ran to his Sand Kings guards where they stood in perfectly aligned ranks along one side of the throne room and shouted for them to go into action against the intruder and his lackey. Not a one of them moved a muscle.
“I’m afraid your soldiers are not so strong-willed as you are,” Goraddon told him after the governor had run from one statue-like Sand King to the next, failing to persuade any of them to move—or even blink. “They all fully understand our cause, and are fully committed.”
“They understand nothing! They are brainwashed,” Rameses shouted. “You’ve taken control of their minds!”
Goraddon shrugged. “It amounts to the same thing,” he said. He turned his attention momentarily to the ranks of soldiers, and in particular noted the six most elaborately-uniformed ceremonial guardsmen clad in gleaming gold accented with deep red and blue. “You six—stay,” he ordered. “The rest of you—out of here. Await further orders. Go!”
“You cannot order my men around as if they—” Rameses’ voice trailed off as the ranks of Sand Kings soldiers turned as one and marched out of the throne room, closing the huge double-doors behind them. The six ceremonial guardsmen remained standing, trancelike, at attention.
Rameses cursed. He cast his gaze about the chamber frantically, looking for anything that might help him. He saw the golden basin and thought of what he had endured while being wired into it these last few days. “I am a god, myself,” he shouted. “Or very nearly so. Perhaps you didn’t know—Zahir has been giving me treatments in order to—”
“You are an insect,” Goraddon replied, seemingly amused by the entire performance. “Acting under my orders, Zahir has made you into a slightly more formidable insect, that you might wear the armor and bear the Sword as a soldier in our army, protecting the demon lord until he has fully formed and the princess has secured the throne.”
“The armor!” Rameses blurted, ignoring the rest. He saw it then: the red cube, resting where he had set it earlier, atop a granite pedestal. He ran for it, snatched it up, held it out before him. No one made any move to stop him. Goraddon even smiled faintly.
Rameses closed his eyes and concentrated. The crimson light flared brightly. When it receded, he was again clad in the gleaming, not-quite-metal, seamless armor of the ancients. Artificial muscles bulging, he strode forward, confidence growing as he glared at Goraddon and Zahir.
“I want the two of you off my planet,” he shouted, his face almost as red as the armor. “And I want you off it now!”
Goraddon’s smile widened. “Excellent,” he whispered. “At last you are ready to perform your remaining tasks for me— to fulfill your final destiny.”
Rameses blinked at this. He scowled, starting to protest. He never got the chance.
Goraddon, his eyes burning with an eerie, internal fire, raised his left hand and snapped his fingers. Rameses, staring back into those eyes, stopped in his tracks. His arms slumped to his sides and his eyes glazed over.
Zahir glided forward and walked in a slow circle around Rameses, inspecting him carefully. “He is yours again, master,” the vizier reported with a grin.
“Of course.” The man in black moved closer to the governor. Clasping his hands behind his back, he leaned in. “Rameses—do you hear me?”
“I—yes,” the governor replied, his expression impassive, his eyes unfocused.
Goraddon nodded. “Good. I have allowed you some small measure of free will beyond mindlessly obeying my orders.” He tapped the side of the governor’s skull. “There is still a tiny bit of Rameses inside there.” He chuckled softly. “I don’t dare trust you with much more than that. You have proven to be more difficult to control than I expected.”
The man in the crimson armor continued to gaze straight ahead. His only response was a slight gurgling sound.
“Still,” Goraddon said, turning away from him and toward Zahir, “that should be more than enough for what remains to be done.” He stepped back, sweeping his eyes around the vast throne room, spotting the large screen off to one side that displayed the waves of starships in high orbit above the planet. “Listen to me carefully, Rameses, for my time here grows short. I have other duties to tend to before the game is complete.” He snapped his fingers again.
Rameses coughed, blinked his eyes, and seemed almost to come back to himself again. He turned and saw the ships on the monitor.
“Your forces were never adequate to legitimately challenge both Tamerlane’s and Agrippa’s legions,” the man in black explained. “You needed help, and I have given it to you.” He continued to watch the fleets of ships flash past on the monitor. “Your Sand Kings were no match for two full legions plus Tamerlane’s secret ‘Nizam’ army,” he said. “And so I took steps to see that at least one of those was utterly destroyed. To see that they were led directly into my trap.”
“Your...trap?” Rameses continued to stare at the man, but his expression was slowly dissolving from robotic apathy to puzzlement.
“Yes, of course my trap,” Goraddon barked. “I had Teluria lead them here, and I ordered your forces to set up the ambush that killed them.” He smiled. “Meanwhile, I...persuaded...the crews of all the ships you see above Ahknaton now to come here—to serve in my cause. They have swarmed like flies about me for all the long journey here. They come from a hundred different worlds, but they all serve me now. Now—and for a little longer.”
“Because the endgame is beginning, is it not, master?” asked Zahir, gleeful.
“Indeed,” Goraddon stated. “With Tamerlane’s secret legion wiped out and with these new ships here to assist Rameses, the two sides are in balance at last. The carnage, the destruction, will be utter and complete.”
“What—” Rameses choked out. “What—of—”
Goraddon frowned and moved closer. “Yes?”
“What—of—Iapetus?”
Now the man in black laughed long and deeply. “Ah. The Sons of Terra.” He shook his head in mock sadness. “I’m afraid the II Legion is pinned down on Holy Earth—” he pronounced those last two words with profound scorn and sarcasm—”and the other Inner Worlds by the threat of the comets—and our friends who ride inside. They have been quite effectively removed from the board, until such a time as other matters are settled and I am ready to turn my attention to them.”
Rameses appeared to comprehend all of this. His eyes almost looked normal again, and his movements were growing less robotic.
“And now,” Goraddon said, “I am needed elsewhere.” He turned to Zahir. “Events are coming to a head. The pieces are being set up for the endgame. Victory is assured.” He leered at Zahir and at Rameses, and his next words were spoken very, very softly. “The victory of chaos and death.”
Zahir bowed deeply. Rameses coughed and blinked, as if fully waking up from a deep sleep.
“Wait, master,” the vizier said suddenly. “What of—the artifact? Was it not your intention that our black king—” here he nodded toward Rameses—
“should have it in his possession for the final confrontation?”
Goraddon looked back at the pale, slender man and laughed. “Oh, he will have it—fear not, my servant.”
“But—?”
The man in black shook his head. “You must learn to have more faith, Zahir.” He chuckled. “You will see. In short order, the great and mighty Taiko himself will hand the sword over to you—or, rather, to the dark king.”
Wide-eyed, Zahir bowed again. “It will undoubtedly be as you say, master.”
“Undoubtedly.” Goraddon raised his left hand and, a short distance away across the throne room, the fountain erupting from the golden basin expanded into a coruscating, cascading sphere of shimmering light. Hovering at its center, vertically, a black circle formed; a null, blank, dead space that just as well could have been the doorway into Hell.
“You know what to do, Zahir,” he said as he walked past the vizier and toward the swirling portal he had opened. “Do not fail me.”
“You know that I will not, master.”
Goraddon chuckled. “I know that if you do, you will suffer unending, unimaginable tortures.”
Zahir blanched, his pale flesh growing even whiter. He bowed again, lower.
The man in black stepped through the dark circle and he, along with the circle itself, vanished. The fountain returned to its usual gentle tinkling.
Zahir turned to the governor. “So now you understand,” he said—and it was not a question. “Now you see that each of us is but a pawn in our lord’s great game. The game of chaos and galactic entropy!”
His muscles returning to his control now, Rameses coughed again and then looked away from the other man, staring instead down at the streaked marble floor. “I care nothing for your master’s game, though I am now compelled to help see it through,” he managed to croak through dry lips from a dryer throat. “But he has indeed left me some small measure of myself—my own free will—within this body. I will do as he commands, but I will also do as I desire.” He looked up, his gaze settling on the monitor that displayed wave upon wave of starships circling Ahknaton. “If the end of everything has truly come— the end of my ambitions, of my world, and of the human race itself—I will gladly take my revenge upon Iapetus and Tamerlane and all the others along the way.”
The Shattering: Omnibus Page 52