“What happens?” Agrippa asked, still wrong-footed and not certain exactly how to proceed or what to say. “Who are you?”
“This happens,” the twin said. “We meet.”
“Who are you?” Agrippa repeated, more urgently.
“Who do you think I am? Remember—we are in the Above. And you’ve been tracing a temporal anomaly. You didn’t suppose something like this could happen?”
Agrippa took this in and shook his head. “You’re saying you’re me—from the future?”
“If I were you from the past, you’d remember it, wouldn’t you?”
Agrippa felt his anger rising. “Fine. So—assuming that’s true, why are you here? What do you want?”
The twin moved closer. Agrippa in response raised his gladius slightly.
“I have only a few seconds,” the twin stated in a low but intense tone, ignoring the weapon. “My crowd is in a hurry, and your crowd will be looking for you at any moment.” He snorted a laugh. “This conversation doesn’t last long.”
Agrippa nodded once. “Alright, then. What?”
“I need to tell you whom to trust. And whom not to.”
Agrippa didn’t miss a beat. “Solonis?”
“You can trust him. Somewhat.”
Agrippa absorbed this and nodded.
“But.” The twin’s voice dropped even lower; now it was a conspiratorial whisper. “Siklar,” he said. “Don’t trust Siklar. Don’t let him inside the tower.” He paused. “I know it will be difficult, but you must find a way.”
Agrippa’s eyebrows furrowed. “What? Who is Siklar?”
“And Torgon,” the twin added. “You won’t see it coming, but—what?” The twin blinked and looked at Agrippa directly. “That’s right—I don’t—you don’t—know who he is yet.”
“Wait,” Agrippa interrupted, frustration filling him. “What did you say about Major Torgon?”
“If you deal with Siklar, you won’t have to worry about To—”
A shuddering rocked the bleak landscape, causing Agrippa to stagger forward. He reached out, intending to catch himself on his twin’s shoulder or arm—but there was nothing there. He continued in an uninterrupted stumble and crashed to the ground with a muffled thud.
“General!” came a shout from the direction his feet were pointing. Slowly he pulled himself up, just in time to see Major Torgon emerging from the fog. Agrippa noticed that he had one end of a thin cable clasped in his left gauntlet; likely it was a guide line back to the others.
Seeing Agrippa struggling to his feet, Torgon hurried forward and helped him up. “General,” he said, “are you injured? Was there an attack?”
“The quake,” Agrippa said, eyeing Torgon strangely. The words of the phantom twin still lingered in his mind. Something about Torgon doing something to him—something he wouldn’t see coming. And that other name—what had it been? Siklar? He wasn’t certain now. Cursing softly, he looked all around, but the mysterious twin had vanished—and before providing any real answers as to his identity or to why he had come.
“Quake?” Torgon asked. “I didn’t feel anything. Did—?”
“Never mind,” Agrippa growled. He had already accepted the idea that the quake that had sent him to the ground was as much a phantasm as the twin had been. He began to wonder if any of it had happened. Perhaps the vapors in this fog had hallucinogenic properties.
Torgon reeled the guide line around his arm as he led the general back in the direction of the others. By the time they at last emerged from the fog and rejoined the combined human/Dyonari party, Agrippa was ready to believe that his strange encounter had been merely an illusion, a phantasm; a mental reaction to something in the environment, perhaps.
He did, however, mention it to Solonis as they resumed their march, and the seer-god reacted in a quite unexpected manner.
“Might I speak with you in private for a moment?” Solonis asked, loudly enough for the humans and Dyonari surrounding them in the party all to hear.
Agrippa nodded and together they angled away from the rest of the procession. Once they were out of easy hearing range of the others, the seer-god said in a low tone, “Tell me what you saw. Omit no details.”
Agrippa described what he could remember of the conversation. He found even more of it had slipped from his memory, as though it had happened in a dream and now he was awake. He could feel—could almost taste—the remnants of the conversation with the twin, but the specifics eluded him.
“A temporal phantom,” Solonis said when the general was done. “An echo from the future.”
“I didn’t imagine it?” Agrippa shot him a sidelong look. “You believe it actually happened, then?”
“Certainly I do,” he replied. “I’ve seen similar phenomena myself, many times across the ages.” He chuckled softly. “I do, after all, travel back and forth through time quite often. It’s an activity I am very familiar with—and one that can generate quite unusual situations, such as the one you found yourself in.”
“So that was me, then,” Agrippa said. “Me, from some time in the future—trying to warn me—?”
“And doing a very poor job of it, from what you’ve said,” Solonis replied.
Agrippa scowled at this but bit back a retort.
Solonis grew more serious now, moving closer to the big, armored man as they continued to march through the fog. “This future-you said nothing you didn’t already wonder about, yes? You were already concerned about betrayal. We both suspect the Dyonari have a hidden agenda that may well clash with our own goals.”
Agrippa nodded at that. “It’s the other part that concerned me more,” he rumbled. “My twin alluded to something negative involving Major Torgon.” He shook his head. “I cannot imagine a more loyal officer than Torgon. Such talk makes me less inclined to believe any of it.”
Solonis remained silent for a few moments, perhaps thinking it all through. Then he looked up at Agrippa and spread his hands. “I understand your sentiments, General,” he said. “Still—it will do no harm to at least keep an eye on him. On all of them. Just in case.”
Agrippa reluctantly nodded. “And on you, too,” he added. “The other-me seemed to trust you implicitly, yet called into question the loyalties of my own men.” He leaned in closer to Solonis, meeting his eyes directly. “I am not entirely convinced this was not something you engineered.”
Solonis’s eyes widened. “I assure you, General—”
Agrippa had already turned and was walking back toward the main body of their procession, ending the conversation.
But Solonis wasn’t done. “General,” he called as he hurried to catch up with the big man’s retreating form.
Agrippa glanced back, annoyed. “Yes?”
“Should you at some point in the near future find yourself on the other side of that conversation...” He smiled. “...Do try to be a bit clearer in your warnings, will you?”
7
It loomed up ahead of them suddenly; in the dense and unending fog of this realm of the lower Above, virtually everything did that. It was a column of gleaming silver and dull gray, with glowing spots of light and lines of luminous yellow and green and red traced down its sides in strange, zigzag patterns. To call it a column, however, was to sell short its size: it was more a building or a tower. Its diameter was at least a hundred meters, and perhaps more. Its base was sunk into the flat, featureless soil, and of its upper reaches no one could see, for it towered high above into the fog such that its top—if top it had—was lost to sight.
The Dyonari halted as they drew within sight of it and Agrippa signaled for his own troops to do likewise. For a few moments they all stood staring up at it, human and alien alike, in unabashed astonishment.
“This is it,” Solonis said. “I saw it in a vision, but did not know where precisely to find it.”
“This is it?” Agrippa said. He turned to Commander Merrin. “What exactly is it?”
The spindly Dyonari looked from the round
gray tower to the human and shook his head slowly. “I do not know. Nor does any other of my party.”
“Then why are you so interested in it?” Agrippa asked.
The other commander, Ralin, moved quickly toward them and hissed for them to keep their voices down. “They are watching. And listening,” he added angrily.
“Who are?” Agrippa started to say. But before he could get the words out, he saw two strange, dark figures moving within the fog at the base of the tower. It took only a moment’s glance to recognize they were Skrazzi—the strange, insect-like aliens they had encountered previously.
“I trust you now have a greater understanding of why we are interested in this thing, as you put it, General,” Merrin said. “In addition to it being the only other solid object we have encountered in this realm besides the Temporal Vault, it appears that our enemies are quite interested in it as well. That alone should seize our attention.”
“Like a flashing light,” Agrippa said. “Or a siren.”
“Indeed.”
At some silent, unspoken signal likely transmitted via telepathy, the two alien commanders simultaneously looked up and to their left. Agrippa followed their gaze. There he could see a number of additional figures approaching through the swirling fog. He reached for the grip of his gladius, but Merrin motioned for him to relax. “They are with us,” the alien officer said.
Indeed, the new arrivals turned out to be yet another group of Dyonari warriors. They greeted their fellows with quick bows and salutes. Seeing the humans standing alongside them, they regarded Agrippa and his squad with surprise and suspicion.
“You brought them here?” demanded one of the newly arrived Dyonari—the one who clearly held the highest rank of any of them, based on his armor and insignia. He said it aloud, clearly intending for the humans to hear him.
“This is the one from the Temporal Vault, High Commander,” Ralin said, gesturing toward Solonis the seer-god.
The new Dyonari regarded the loincloth-wearing Solonis with open contempt. “This one? This is the one supposedly so critical to the operation?” He made a sound that was almost a laugh.
Solonis simply stared back at him, eyes level.
The Dyonari slowly shifted his attention from Solonis to Agrippa and the other armored humans. “What about them?” he asked. “Why bring them here?”
“They found the Vault before we did, High Commander,” Ralin said nervously. “This one—Solonis—had already emerged from it. He was with these humans.”
“I see...”
“Their mission is similar to ours, High Commander,” Merrin added quickly. “We felt them to be natural allies.”
The High Commander shifted his narrow gaze from Merrin to Agrippa and then back. He appeared unconvinced.
“And, had we simply abandoned them back there,” Ralin said, “they likely would have followed us here on their own.”
Agrippa snorted at that. He smiled. “Very likely,” he agreed aloud. “Your people seem to know what they’re doing here much more than we do. We’d like to be of assistance. And then, perhaps afterward, we could be provided with a way back home.”
“I will provide you a way back to your worlds now,” the High Commander said quickly.
“No, no,” Agrippa waved the suggestion away. “We intend to be a part of this operation. To help you as best we can.” His blue eyes locked with those of the tall, slender alien. “We insist,” he added, his voice lower and harder than he’d made it in a while.
“As do I,” Solonis said.
The High Commander looked from Agrippa to Solonis and back again, clearly sizing them both up. He said nothing. After a moment, he nodded once and turned, walking in the direction from which he had come. The other two Dyonari leaders exchanged uncertain glances, then hurried along after him. “Follow us,” Merrin called back to Agrippa.
“General,” Torgon said quietly, leaning in, as they marched along behind the aliens. “That guy makes me nervous.”
“I concur,” Agrippa said, his voice barely above a whisper. “Pass the word along to the squad: Treat these Dyonari like allies. Allies of convenience. But don’t let your guard down for an instant.”
“Yes, sir,” Torgon said. He drifted back in the formation and began whispering to the next legionary in line.
Agrippa meanwhile returned his gaze to the leader of the alien forces, who was now conversing with the two commanders. You’re up to something, he told himself, eyes narrowing. Something even your own officers don’t know about. But what?
Setting the matter aside but keeping it firmly in mind, he set out after the Dyonari. His squad of Kings followed along behind him.
How many kilometers have I marched today already? he wondered. And how many more before all of this—whatever it is—is done?
8
“Ah,” said the strange voice in Tamerlane’s dream. “I had been hoping to catch you asleep and traveling through hyperspace at the same time. It has proven remarkably difficult to do so.”
Tamerlane heard these words and shifted in his bed, his still-sleeping mind wondering if he was actually awake. The voice hadn’t sounded like a dream. It had sounded all too real.
“I have an important message for you, General,” the voice continued. “So please pay attention.”
“Who are you?” Tamerlane asked, his consciousness slowly emerging.
“That’s better,” the voice said. “I need you to focus.”
“On what?”
“On this: General Agrippa is currently working to prevent the destruction of the galaxy, just as the goddess Aurore described to you. And he needs your help.”
Now Tamerlane focused. “Agrippa? Where is he?”
“I am sending you the coordinates now.”
“Alright, but—who are you? Why are you telling me this?”
“My name is Solonis. You know the name?”
“The seer-god, yes. But how do I know that—”
“The fact that I am able to speak to you inside a dream, from halfway across the quadrant, should fully satisfy you as to my bona fides.”
Tamerlane thought about this. “You make a good point,” he said.
A pause, then, “Your ship is emerging from hyperspace,” the voice of Solonis said. “Outside of it, I can no longer reach you telepathically; I require the amplification it provides.”
“I understand.”
“You have the coordinates. I trust you will hurry.”
“Yes, we will—”
The voice, and the presence that had accompanied it, disappeared from Tamerlane’s dream. His mind swam in a sort of half-sleep, and part of it began to believe he had imagined the entire conversation—that he had truly dreamed it.
A chime brought him fully awake.
“General,” said Harras Dequoi from the bridge, over a commlink connection, “we have dropped hyper in a location I believe to be safe—for now. I await your orders.”
Tamerlane sat up, blinked—and the entire conversation came back to him. Now he knew it had been real.
“I’m on my way to the bridge,” he said over the link. “And I have the coordinates of our destination.”
“Very good, General,” Dequoi replied, sounding mildly surprised.
Tamerlane closed the link and sat on the edge of his bed, frowning. It truly had been Solonis, the seer-god, contacting him—in a dream. He was certain of that now.
And that meant the danger to the galaxy was real, too. And that Agrippa was fighting to prevent it—and needed help. And likely every second counted.
Tamerlane pulled on his boots and ran for the bridge.
9
A short time and a shorter hike later, the Kings and their alien companions arrived at the forward position where the remaining Dyonari troops were hiding. Agrippa made a quick and unofficial head-count and determined that there were approximately thirty of them. There was no question that it was a formidable force, all told, but the numbers were still low. He turned to M
errin. “I’m assuming the goal is to get to or inside that structure,” he said, nodding toward the round tower in the near distance. “Do you have an idea as to the number or disposition of enemy forces?”
Merrin’s dark eyes moved across the tower and across the strange, exoskeletoned creatures that guarded it. “They seem to have placed a garrison here, to guard it,” he replied. Then he motioned to another Dyonari nearby; this one had been there all along. For a couple of seconds neither made a sound as they engaged in telepathic communication. Then Merrin said aloud, likely for Agrippa’s benefit, “Have you determined the enemy’s strength during my absence?”
The junior officer looked from Merrin to Agrippa, seeming uncomfortable in the close proximity to a human. Getting ahold of himself, he shook his head once. “Not precisely, Commander Merrin. The High Commander estimates perhaps two or three hundred of the Skrazzi. They have continued to circulate about the structure.”
“Two or three hundred?” Agrippa breathed. “Of those insect-things?” He shook his head and frowned. “What of the others—the telepathic ones?” He thought of those horrific silver faces rising out of the red light of the comet impact craters. His blood froze.
“The Phaedrons,” the junior officer said. “No—we have seen nothing of them here.”
“Thank the stars.” Merrin shuddered.
Agrippa nodded at that. “If more than one or two of them were present,” he said, “I would suggest abandoning the operation now. They are...formidable.”
“Just what is the operation—if I may ask?” Major Torgon interjected from one side. “Since we seem to be involved in it now.”
Agrippa introduced the major and then said, “It’s a valid question. Beyond simply saying, ‘There’s a big silver tower and nothing else around here, and so we want to capture it.’ If our mutual goal here is to prevent a galactic cataclysm, I assume that means you believe the cause of the disaster—and its prevention— can be found inside that thing.”
“The former, very possibly, based on the information we possess,” Merrin said. “The latter—who can say?”
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