The Shattering: Omnibus

by Van Allen Plexico

  “Where are the seers?” Commander Siklar demanded of anyone within hearing distance. “We must have more information before we can safely proceed.” He became aware then of the warriors poking the comet with their swords and sent a powerful telepathic order for them to desist. Chagrined, the two backed away, still holding their weapons at the ready.

  In truth, Siklar acknowledged internally, it was miraculous that his soldiers were holding up as well as they were. The level of pure psychic energy—most of it very negative, very malignant, very hateful—that radiated from this comet, and presumably from all the others, was almost enough to send him running away, gibbering mindlessly all the while. Only by sheerest force of will were any of them managing to behave in a reasonable, professional manner. That was a credit to his troops and to himself for having trained them in both physical and mental discipline.

  A message brushed his mind, coming from behind him. He turned even as he heard the words within his mind: “The seers have arrived, Commander.”

  Siklar looked into the crowd of terrified citizens crowded just behind him. They were Dyonari whose curiosity about the strange attackers just barely managed to overcome their fear and caution, bringing them out here in the street to look. He wished they would leave—would go home and seek refuge until he had the situation better in hand—but for now he could only ignore them. He had other matters with which to attend besides crowd control at the moment.

  As he looked on, the crowd parted and two elderly Dyonari moved into view. Each leaned heavily upon a long, slim staff and each walked very slowly and deliberately.

  “Seers,” he said, addressing them without preamble. “What do you sense?” he asked each immediately and in turn, ignoring the traditional protocol of working one’s way slowly to the point of the conversation. There was simply no time.

  The nearer of the two seers gave him a look of annoyance at the impertinence but the other, perhaps comprehending the urgency of the matter, caught the eye of the first and waved the slight away. “There is great and continuing danger here,” the old Dyonari intoned. “There is an intelligence within each of these objects, and it lingers still.”

  “An intelligence?” Commander Siklar frowned at the elderly seer and then turned back to gaze at the rough, glowing sphere of ice. “I myself can sense...something...inside, but—”

  “More than one,” the other seer interjected sharply. “Several points of intelligence within each. Restless, furtive, and filled with hatred.”

  “This is so,” the first seer agreed, nodding his long, slender head. “Five of our cities have been utterly destroyed in the time since the attack began, and all I can sense within this ball of ice is a desire—an overwhelming desire—to destroy still more.”

  “Hatred,” the second seer said. “Pure hatred.”

  Siklar blinked and shook his head in incomprehension. “Who, or what, are they?” he asked. “Why do they hate us so?”

  “I believe,” the first seer said a few seconds later, “it is not specifically us they hate. It is all life in general.”

  “Nihilists?” Siklar instinctively gripped his sword more tightly.

  “And they are not done with us yet,” the second seer added, his eyes entirely white and glowing now as he reached out with his psychic power to touch the comet. “Not at all. They—” He gasped suddenly and fell backwards; one of the soldiers rushed forward and caught him, supporting him as he moaned softly.

  The first seer looked at Siklar and now a sense of surprise and fear radiated from him. Siklar’s mouth twisted in disgust at what he was seeing and sensing. He turned to his officers. “That’s it,” he called. “I want this...thing...and all the others like it off our city-ships now. Now!”

  Uncertain but obedient, the soldiers acknowledged his order and started forward. Even as they moved, however, a new wave of fear washed out, striking like ripples in a pond caused by the impact of a very large rock at the center. Those waves struck the surrounding Dyonari with full force, driving the civilians back and causing even the advancing warriors to pause.

  “It is opening,” the first seer cried, pointing. “They are emerging!”

  Siklar gaped as a crack formed down the side of the huge ball of ice, widening rapidly. “Weapons at the ready,” he called, both mentally and verbally. He used his voice because of the enormous psychic feedback now washing over all of them; he doubted anyone had heard his telepathic order.

  Baleful red light spilled out from the crack in the ice. Awful shapes drenched in shadow moved within it.

  “Weapons!” he cried again, this time only with his physical voice. No one could have heard a mental order, he knew. He could scarcely hear himself think at the moment, so great was the psychic interference from the things inside the comet.

  And then they emerged.

  Siklar stumbled back a few steps in shock. He couldn’t help it. None present could have stood resolute in the face of the menace revealing itself at that moment, and none did.

  The first to emerge was a bizarre figure all of black, with an insect-like head and limbs, seemingly covered in a chitinous exoskeleton. It gazed out at the Dyonari with multiple glowing red eyes and it raised each of its two forelimbs in a threatening gesture; one was in the form of a long, curving, sharply pointed blade, while the other took the shape of a long, narrow cylinder. Siklar had little time to ponder the purpose of the second limb. As soon as the creature raised it and pointed it, a low hum filled the air and the Dyonari directly ahead of it began to cry out and stumble away. Siklar rushed to the warrior’s aid, but it was already too late. The soldier’s glass armor had shattered within the first two seconds and now fell away in shards, even as blood gouted from his mouth and eyes.

  “Beware!” cried Siklar. “The round limb is a gun of some kind—a disintegrator.”

  Another Dyonari warrior leaped to the attack, his long sword swinging around in a confident arc. The blow was blocked however by a lightning-fast counter by the insectoid, moving its blade-limb up to parry. As the surprised Dyonari stood motionless for the merest instant, the creature lashed out with its cylinder-arm, using it as a club, knocking the warrior aside. As the Dyonari leapt to his feet once more, the insectoid’s blade-limb stabbed out, skewering him, slicing upwards, eviscerating him in one smooth stroke.

  The other Dyonari looked at one in horror and disbelief.

  Siklar repressed the need to vomit. He drew his own pistol, aimed and fired. The shot did no apparent damage. “Fall back,” he shouted to the others, firing again. “Fall back!”

  Soldiers took the arms of the two seers and attempted to hustle them away from the area of danger, but the first seer resisted for a moment. He caught the commander’s attention and said in barely above a whisper, “I can read their thoughts, rudimentary and primitive as they are. They are known as the Skrazzi. And they are not from our galaxy.”

  “Not from this galaxy?” Siklar blinked as he absorbed this information. “Why are they here?” he asked.

  “As we first believed,” the seer replied, his eyes wide and his expression one of horror verging on surrender. “To kill. Simply to kill.”

  Siklar shook his head slowly. “Why? Why do such a thing? What—?”

  “What of it?” the elderly Dyonari asked by way of answer. “Is it not enough that they wish to slay us all—and that they have come here, now, to do so?”

  Siklar started to reply but found that he had nothing to say. He turned back toward the big chunk of ice, surveying the scene. The soldiers ahead of him were crying out and backing away, some dragging the bodies of their fallen comrades along with them as they came. No one was firing back at the invader. The situation was getting very rapidly out of hand.

  “Stand firm,” he called out. “Defend the city!”

  It was not immediately clear if anyone heard him, or cared.

  Now more of the black insectoids were emerging from the ice. Three more joined the first, and together they advanced on the cro
wd and the soldiers, all of whom had already been psychically driven to near-hysteria by the combination of the waves radiating from the comet and from what they had just witnessed. The hum of the Skrazzi disintegrator-arms sounded in chorus, followed immediately by the cries of the victims—some of them soldiers, some the last of the civilians who had not yet fled.

  “We may yet stop them if we rally and fight together as one!” Siklar shouted. Even as the words escaped his thin lips, however, he knew no one would take heed. Terror was upon them now, and they sought only to flee—even his finest soldiers. He understood. It was all he could do not to join them in headlong flight. All that kept him standing there, a rock in the stream of retreating Dyonari, was the fact that enough of his rational mind remained that he could form the thought, “Flee to where?”

  Siklar turned back to the warriors who were serving as escorts to the seers. The first seer appeared shaken but resolute; the second seer yet remained in a semi-conscious state. “Get them out of here,” he ordered. “Get them to safety. Somewhere.”

  “Safety?” one of the soldiers blurted, seemingly shocked by the very concept. He wilted under Siklar’s reproving gaze and nodded once—”Yes, Commander!”—then moved to help the two elderly Dyonari retreat from what had become a battlefield. Or a killing ground.

  Is it over already? Siklar wondered. Have we fallen so easily? Are we finished as a people? He gritted his teeth and fought to keep his wits about him. His eyes moved from the four black insect-creatures to the still-widening crack in the ice behind them. Something more was happening there. Something else was stirring. Dark shapes, hideous and horrific—somehow far worse even than the insectoid Skrazzi.

  “You sense them, do you not?” came the mental words of the first seer, even as he and his still-silent counterpart were being led away by the guards. “You sense the masters, within the ice, only now making their presence known, now that victory is at hand.”

  Siklar nodded, pointlessly. “Yes.” His mental voice was flat now, as flat and hopeless as his spirits. He knew that he was only a moment away from death. But he was determined to stand firm, and to die face to face and toe to toe with these insidious invaders. If nothing else, it would mean that at least one Dyonari died facing his enemy and not running away from it.

  “They are the Phaedrons,” the seer told him. “They are worse than anything we have ever encountered.”

  “You know this how?”

  “They no longer guard their thoughts,” the seer explained. “They sense inevitable victory.”

  “They are correct, are they not?”

  A pause, and then the seer responded, “Yes.”

  Siklar nodded. It was over. All of it, over. He could see that clearly now. His people, his civilization, was one of the oldest and greatest in the galaxy; it had endured for millions of years and reached heights of success undreamed of by almost any other race. It traveled across the slowly-spinning swirl of the Milky Way in vast snowflake-like city-ships and observed all there was to see, learned all there was to know. And now, at the hands of a foe from beyond that galaxy, it had reached its end at last.

  “Phaedrons,” he repeated, tasting the name, sensing its inherent wrongness, feeling the malice that dwelt within the sound itself. “These Skrazzi are but footsoldiers for them, aren’t they?”

  “Yes,” the first seer agreed. “The Phaedrons are a curse upon the universe. A virus. I fear there can be no stopping them. Ever.”

  “They hate our people so?”

  “They hate all life. I sense it even now. A new wave of these comets, sweeping all across the galaxy. Our people will scarcely be the only ones to fall in the days to come.”

  Siklar absorbed this with grim resignation. “The only ones that matter,” he said.

  Ahead of him, the four Skrazzi insectoids had spread out, pushing forward, slaughtering the insensate Dyonari, most of whom had by now been rendered insane by the raw psychic energy that washed over them. Behind them, having fully emerged from the crack in the ice, shambled two massive figures apparently draped in black. It hurt to look upon them, but Siklar forced himself. Their faces were gleaming silver metal, formed in the shape of alien skulls. Glowing red eyes peered out and surveyed their handiwork. Slender claws twitched from under the black covering, grasping at nothing. Something within Siklar’s deepest intellect snapped upon gazing at them and he began to lose his nerve at last. He backed away, his sword still raised, fear now overcoming him.

  “Commander!” came a shout within his mind. “Listen to me!”

  Siklar regained his senses and understood that he had given way to madness for a few seconds. His eyes had grown wild and his intellect had slipped beneath the surface. Only the telepathic cry—he realized immediately that it had been the mental voice of the second seer—had been able to snap him back to reality, if only for the moment. “Yes?” he responded, in some ways angry at being called back to rationality. “Yes, elder? You have come back to us?”

  “I have recovered sufficiently to warn you. You must fall back. You must—”

  “Why?” Siklar scowled at the oncoming Skrazzi. “Why not go down fighting—with honor?”

  “Because there is something you must do,” the second seer replied, urgency powerful within his telepathic “voice.” “Something critically important.”

  “What?” Siklar meant only to humor the old Dyonari; to go along with his mad ravings until the alien attackers reached him and he was given one last opportunity to test his curving blade against their hard black shells. “What could possibly be so important now, here at the end of all things?”

  “You must help me to save the galaxy.”

  Siklar had no idea what to say to that. He watched as the nearest Skrazzi struck down another Dyonari warrior and then took notice of him.

  “Do you hear me, Commander?”

  “Yes, I hear you, elder. But I do not understand.”

  “I have dared to read their thoughts—to venture inside the minds of the Phaedrons. I have learned great and terrible things. And I have seen the future they bring with them.”

  “You—you went inside their minds—?”

  “I did, though it nearly destroyed me,” the elder replied, and for the first time Siklar could sense just how weak and frail his mental voice had become. “For now, you must gather up what remains of your warriors and meet me at the starport deck.”

  “But—”

  “You must,” the first seer interjected. “He is sharing his vision with me now. I understand. All of existence is at stake.”

  Frustrated but ever the obedient soldier, Siklar agreed. Yet even as he broke the mental connection to the elders, the Skrazzi nearest him rushed forward, blade-limb up and swinging round. Siklar reacted with all the instinct, skill and ability afforded him by centuries of training. He brought his sword up, blocking the blow, then kicked out at the midsection of the invader. The kick did little or no damage but did send the Skrazzi stumbling back a step. Clearly infuriated by the resistance Siklar was offering, the Skrazzi chose to mindlessly charge forward again rather than to utilize its disintegrator weapon—and this time it ran itself directly onto Siklar’s sword, impaling itself.

  The Commander managed to pull his blade free by the hardest, only to see that the Skrazzi was not dead—not by any means. It lay on its side but was already struggling to rise. From beyond it, a fresh wave of fear emanated from the Phaedrons, threatening to hurl Siklar back into the depths of insanity. He resisted, turned tail, and sprinted away, shouting for any surviving warriors to join him.

  Arriving some moments later at the relative safety of the starport deck, Siklar looked all around. He had gathered up some two dozen of the surviving Dyonari soldiers—clearly the most mentally resilient they had to offer, given that these had not yet yielded to the insanity pushed upon them by the Phaedron invaders—and brought them along with him. To his left, he spotted the elderly seers being all-but-carried along by two more troopers. One of the old
Dyonari had been wounded, he saw; blood pooled around his left side, despite the field dressing his escorts had made for him.

  “Quickly,” the second seer said to them, now using his spoken voice. “We have little time, and I may well be dead soon.” He ordered for the escorts to lay him down on the surface, and the others gathered in a circle around him. The blood continued to run. “I have much to share with you,” he said, “so clear your thoughts—as difficult as that might be at this moment—and prepare yourselves.”

  The others moved in closer around the seer and he managed a slight smile as he gazed up at them. Then he sent forth a telepathic wave that nearly knocked them all off their feet.

  2

  “You hear me, do you not, Commander?

  “I—yes, I do,” Siklar managed to answer. He understood instantly that he was speaking telepathically, and doing so with the seer. “You have information for us?”

  For you, Commander. The others are receiving a general set of thoughts and images concerning our foes—as will you— but this conversation is for you alone. The others will not understand. They will have to be manipulated. Are you up for that task?

  “Manipulated?” Siklar hesitated. “What do you mean?” And then, “Seer—do we have time for this? Shouldn’t we be moving along?”

  The entirety of this conversation is happening within the space between two heartbeats. We have more than enough time.

  Siklar digested this. “Very well,” he said. “What would you have of me?”

  I would have you understand the full breadth of your mission. It is such that you may have to carry its secret alone, your fellow warriors kept from the full knowledge until the end.

  “And what is the full breadth of my mission?”

  See.

  -FLASH-

  Siklar staggered. Had he been interacting with the seer in the physical world instead of purely on the psychic plane, he likely would have fallen down. Instead he quickly sorted his thoughts and recovered. As he did so, the full magnitude of the seer’s vision unfolded itself before his inner eyes.