The Shattering: Omnibus Read online

  Of course, Tamerlane was testing that assertion at the moment.

  He raced the length of the corridor, hoping beyond hope that he was in reality where the stolen blueprints seemed to indicate he was. Time was running out—if he was wrong, if he had chosen incorrectly back in the first shaft, he was done, finished.

  The corridor opened onto a long, broad, high-ceilinged space with lights lining every surface. The center of the room was nearly filled by a plinth in the shape of a long rectangle, rising to waist-height. Its top surface was covered in a material like black velvet.

  Upon it lay the single most valuable, most priceless object known to man.

  Despite the press of time, Tamerlane could not resist standing there for a moment, staring down at it.

  It gleamed golden in the bright white light. Its edge appeared as sharp as ever it had been. The curving lines inscribed into its surface matched the records in precise detail.

  Despite himself, despite everything he’d been through on this insane, unwanted operation, Tamerlane smiled.

  He took a small, black cube from one pocket and squeezed it, and quickly it expanded into a long, narrow carrying bag complete with shoulder strap. He opened it and lay it on the plinth.

  Then, full of reverence, he reached down and lifted the Sword of Baranak.

  Tamerlane floated back up the shaft on waves of magnetic/gravitic repulsion. The sword was secure within the bag he’d brought for it, hanging from his back.

  A quick check of the Aether connection told him the computer virus would be overcome in mere seconds.

  He reached the top of the shaft, and for once found the maintenance tunnel there just as it had been described to him—this time, thankfully, at full height, so that he wouldn’t have to crawl. His boots touched the floor again and he raced along, reaching the far end and the doorway that led out very quickly. Four access panels covered the wall on the left just before the door, and he pulled the one on the bottom open, drawer-like, as the plan had called for him to do. There was a hollow space there, between rows of electronic components. He pulled the black bag containing the sword off his back and wedged it into the space—right where the highly trusted and skilled agent currently posing as a maintenance man for the facility would find it in a few days, once things had died down a bit. That man would have no trouble picking it up from its new, much less secure hiding spot—especially now that its trademark radiant energy signature was blanked by the super-high-tech insulating bag that now contained it. He would carry it out and smuggle it aboard a ship that would take it away from Candis for good. And deliver it to he who had ordered the theft in the first place.

  Tamerlane stood, removed his belt and unzipped his deflector suit. He bent down again and stuffed those items into the space next to the sword. He pushed the drawer closed, straightened up, and smoothed out the uniform he’d been wearing beneath the black suit. Then he opened the door and stepped out. A ping via his Aether connection indicated that the computer virus had been eliminated—alarms were blaring to life all over the complex.

  The staff was good, there was no disputing that. Armed men were already racing about as he moved smoothly away from the doorway he’d just exited and strode for the central office. As he arrived, he was met by an official of the local administration; the man’s face was pained, his eyebrows knitted.

  “Colonel Tamerlane! Sir!”

  “What’s the trouble?” Tamerlane asked, feigning confusion.

  “We’re getting readings that there’s been a break-in,” the man replied, his expression betraying his bewilderment. “Someone has apparently penetrated all the way to the innermost levels of the facility.”

  “What?”

  The man’s face was reddening. “And—even worse, Colonel—the section they have accessed is part of the Imperial collection. The Emperor’s crown jewels!”

  “The jewels?” Tamerlane made himself appear shocked to hear this. He took a step backward, his eyes widening. “But—is that even possible? No thief could get anywhere close to this far in. Candis is impossible to rob. Everyone knows that.”

  “Of course, yes,” the man said, his agitation ratcheting upward as reports came in across the local network; Tamerlane was intercepting them via his own connection, which he’d secretly hacked, and was reading them just as quickly, so that he knew virtually everything the complex’s staff knew. “I’m certain it must be a mistake—an error in the system, somehow. And yet—” If anything, his expression grew even more distressed as more reports came in, now that the virus had cleared the network. “By all of Those Who Remain—something has happened…”

  “Alright, see to it, then,” he told the man, releasing him to frantically scramble away, seeking more information. He couldn’t help but feel sorry for the guy; Candis had never been robbed on any real scale in all the centuries of the complex’s existence, and certainly not of an object of the incalculable value of the Sword of Baranak. Heads would roll—of that, there was no doubt.

  Unfortunately, one of those heads might well be Tamerlane’s own. After all, he wasn’t just the thief who had stolen the sword. He was also the senior Imperial officer assigned to keep it safe. He had, in effect, stolen it from himself.

  The only thing stranger than that was the identity of the party he had stolen it for.

  “This is what you get for accepting the ‘promotion’ General Nakamura arranged for you,” he whispered to himself as he strode toward the central command office. “This is what you get for ever moving up the chain of command at all, when you were perfectly content as a mid-level legionary. You’re now both the most wanted criminal in the galaxy—though nobody knows it was you, hopefully—and, as Imperial liaison here, the guy who let the most valuable object in history get stolen from right under his nose—and from the most secure vault in the galaxy.”

  He walked into the command center—and into utter chaos. Just before he immersed himself in it, ready to put on the performance of his life, he asked himself one last thing:

  I wonder why the Emperor ordered me to steal the sword in the first place?

  BOOK ONE:

  THE ROAD TO DAMASCUS

  1

  Is it true what they say, Major?” asked the lieutenant as he snapped his flight pack onto his belt.

  “What’s that, soldier?”

  “That you’re descended from Those Who Remain,” the lieutenant replied, as the other three figures in the room looked up from their own work, intrigued. “That you’re a child of the gods.”

  Marcus Ezekial Tamerlane snorted a sort of half-laugh at that.

  “Don’t believe everything you hear, Lieutenant—” Tamerlane paused, leaned forward, and pretended to read the man’s name off the patch on the chest of his dark blue uniform. “—Singh.” He smiled then, not mockingly but with genuine warmth. “Stories get around. Take them all with a, whaddyacall it—”

  “A grain of salt,” Singh supplied. He looked somewhat abashed. “Yes, sir. Understood.”

  “You’ll have to forgive Lt. Singh, Major,” came the voice of a female soldier behind them. “He watches all those celebrity and gossip shows. He’s convinced half of humanity has divine origins.”

  “Hey, Dalton,” Singh protested. “It’s true. Have you seen the new lady that co-hosts the sports show on Five? I’ve heard they’ve got proof she’s descended from one of the main goddesses, but they’re keeping it from the public.”

  “She’s not really my type,” Lieutenant Dalton said, snorting and shooting Singh a look. Her straight, medium-length black hair shimmered as she moved.

  “Alright,” Tamerlane interrupted them. “At ease, lieutenants.” He winked. “I’m pretty sure it’s more about the latest augmetic surgical techniques than it is about having Karilyne as your great-great-grandmother.”

  “Is that your secret, too, Major?” Dalton asked with a wink.

  “I’ll never tell,” Tamerlane chuckled.

  “Major,” came a voice over the Aeth
er connection at that moment, “we’re down.”

  Tamerlane nodded. “Thank you, Captain Radikov.” He smoothed out the wrinkles in his own bright red uniform, gold insignia gleaming in the ship’s artificial lighting. He gazed momentarily at the major’s emblem he wore—an insignia that only saddened him, since it represented his demotion several weeks earlier—and then turned to face his team. “Everyone ready?”

  One last quick check of environment and flight packs, and then the four soldiers signaled in the affirmative.

  Tamerlane checked the power level on his holstered Mark IV service blast pistol—a weapon capable of firing a blob of extremely dangerous superheated plasma over a remarkably long distance—and confirmed that it was fully charged. He didn’t expect to find trouble here on this barren rock, but one never knew. Then he looked to Singh. “How about the sensor unit?”

  Singh patted the big black cube that rested beside him. At his mental signal, its lifter units engaged and it rose to hover a foot or so above the deck. “I’ve got it,” he said.

  “Then activate your protective fields, everyone, and let’s go.”

  As they switched on the little boxes at their belts that generated human-compatible spheres of air pressure and atmosphere around each of them, Tamerlane sent a command through the Aether and in response the door that constituted almost all of the rear wall of the cabin slid open. They stared out into a gray dawn, a howling windstorm, and very little visibility.

  “NM-156 is such a lovely planet,” Dalton observed dryly.

  “So lovely, they haven’t ever bothered to give it a proper name,” Reilly muttered.

  “Shields to full power,” the major ordered. “Looks like this stuff could cut right through us if we’re not careful.” A pause as he stared out into the swirling chaos for another couple of seconds. “Communications via Aether,” he added needlessly; they wouldn’t be able to hear one another speak verbally in this environment over a distance of more than a couple of feet. “Go to visual scanning mode. Our target is somewhere out there, but the captain hasn’t been able to pinpoint it precisely with the ship’s sensors, so it’s up to us.”

  Without waiting for any responses, Tamerlane simply leapt from the dull gray metal deck of the Imperial starship Donbas and out into the storm. His boots never touched the ground; his flight pack engaged instantly, generating shimmering blue electromagnetic waves of force around him that held him aloft and propelled him forward.

  Dalton followed hot on his heels, just ahead of Specialists Westerfeld and Reilly. Singh watched them go, envious, then frowned down at the big box that floated beside him and was his responsibility. “Come on then, you,” he muttered to it, pulling it along behind him.

  At the front of the procession, Tamerlane lofted as high as the flight pack would allow, spinning in a slow circle to take in the surroundings. The storm actually served to hide the worst of it all, for this was an ugly place; all rugged grays and washed-out browns. Desert terrain under an unforgiving mud-smear sky. No vegetation to be seen—no life at all—not even when he switched to deep scans.

  “Anybody reading anything?” he called back to the others over their Aether link. “It has to be around here somewhere.”

  The ship’s sensors had registered a power surge—a single point of intense, exotic energy—while still in orbit, but had not been quite able to precisely locate it. From one moment to the next, the readings had fluctuated from powerful to almost nonexistent. And since what they were here looking for would quite likely show up on sensors as just that—one small object of immense power—they had hurried down to investigate.

  “Nothing so far,” Dalton responded. The others echoed her report.

  Tamerlane cursed. How could the reading have been so intense way up in orbit, but not show up at all now—right here on the ground?

  Dalton continued, “Major—if I may ask—what makes anyone think there’s anything of value on this rock? I mean, odd energy readings are one thing, but—?”

  “The word came from higher up the chain of command, is all I know,” Tamerlane replied. “An ancient and very powerful artifact might be here.”

  “And the Ecclesiarchy wants it,” Westerfeld growled. “So here we are.”

  “You didn’t hear me say that,” Tamerlane replied. But everyone could hear the acknowledgement in his tone.

  “The Sword,” Dalton interjected. “The Sword of Baranak.”

  “What?” Westerfeld sounded incredulous. “You don’t seriously believe that rumor—that somebody actually stole the Sword? There’s no way!”

  “I’ve heard it from more than one source,” Dalton shot back.

  “That just means you have multiple bad sources,” retorted Westerfeld.

  “The government itself hasn’t said it was stolen,” noted Reilly.

  “Of course they haven’t,” Dalton replied. “They don’t want to admit how badly they’ve screwed up, allowing something that important and valuable to be taken. It was all over the news outlets just as a rumor. Can you imagine the media firestorm if the government came right out and admitted it was true?”

  “It just couldn’t happen,” Reilly insisted. “Nobody could get into the Imperial Palace. The security has got to be just unimaginable there. It’s a joke to even think about.”

  “If it was in the palace,” Dalton said.

  “If? Okay, well then—if it wasn’t there, where was it?” asked Westerfeld, scorn now filling his voice. “According to your unimpeachable sources, that is.”

  “Candis.”

  A moment’s silence, and then both Westerfeld and Reilly snorted laughter.

  “Okay—that’s even funnier,” Westerfeld chuckled. “If it really was stored on Candis, that would only make it harder to steal. It’s secure from both human and supernatural thieves!”

  “How about we focus on the job at hand, people,” Tamerlane said, breaking into their conversation. “Word is the Emperor himself is interested in what we accomplish here, so let’s take this seriously.”

  Even as he spoke the words, Tamerlane regretted having to withhold so much of the truth from his team. If only General Nakamura hadn’t reassigned me a year ago to Imperial Security, and thus gotten me mixed up in this insanity, he thought bitterly. I wouldn’t have had to be the one to steal the Sword. I wouldn’t have caught a bunch of the blame afterward for letting it get stolen. And I wouldn’t have been busted down to major, and stuck on a rock like this—still neck-deep in whatever the Emperor is up to with the Sword. But, as always, I follow orders—I do as I’m told. And so here I am…

  “No readings at all, Major,” Reilly reported, breaking Tamerlane’s train of thought.

  “Okay, let’s form a perimeter and circle around,” Tamerlane ordered after a few more seconds. “We’ll divide up the area and—”

  “Major,” Westerfeld signaled, interrupting him. “I think maybe I have something here.”

  Tamerlane switched to tactical view, the Aether now displaying for him in his vision a layout of the area as they had mapped it so far, with glowing points for each of the troopers. He found Westerfeld’s mark and saw that the man had already circled around somewhat to the west.

  “Alright—everyone converge on Westerfeld,” he ordered. “Singh—you and the box still with us back there?”

  “I’m coming along, Major. It’s a little slower going for me—for us. Be there in a minute.”

  Tamerlane sent a string of commands via the Aether link to his flight pack and swooped down towards where Westerfeld was standing. As he approached, the swirling waves of dust parted enough that he could make out a vast cliff face just beyond. He blinked at that—if he’d kept flying along as he’d been doing, he quite possibly would have run smack into it.

  Dalton and Reilly landed behind him and they hurried forward to see what Westerfeld was pointing at. Tamerlane paused to locate Singh, still a good distance behind them, then turned and stared at what had been discovered. Involuntarily he took a step
back.

  It was a doorway. That much was very apparent. And it was big—a perfectly smooth, rectangular opening in the cliff face, at least fifty feet tall and thirty feet wide.

  “Wow,” Dalton muttered.

  “…Yeah,” Reilly agreed. “Not a natural phenomenon, I’d guess.”

  Both of them stood stock-still, heads inclined backwards, gazing up at it.

  Tamerlane snapped a small scanner from his belt and held it up, pointing it at the opening. He ordered his Aether link to bring up the results and share them across the network.

  “The readings are fluctuating,” Dalton observed. “There’s…something…in there, but it’s not constant. Almost like it’s…”

  “Shifting in and out of existence,” Westerfeld suggested.

  “Or in and out of this universe,” Tamerlane said. “Singh—get a move on.” He switched channels. “Captain Radikov. We’ve found a kind of doorway into the side of this mountain. We’re going to check it out.”

  “I’m seeing the images now, Major,” Radikov responded from aboard the Donbas. “I’m sure I don’t have to suggest that you and your team take care.”

  “Safety is our top priority,” Tamerlane replied with a smile. “We’ll get back to you when we know more.”

  As Tamerlane switched off the link to the ship, Singh’s voice noted, “I thought finding the source of the energy readings was our top priority, Major.”

  “That’s second, Lieutenant. If we get ourselves killed somehow, finding whatever-it-is won’t do us much good.” He gazed up at the gaping entryway again, then added, “Hurry up!”

  “I’m here, sir,” Singh replied, and Tamerlane turned to see the man trundling up, the big black floating box still in tow. “Be fair—you guys had it easy, getting to fly.”

  Tamerlane ignored him and motioned forward. Together, the five of them passed through the doorway and entered a darkened cave.

  Within a couple of seconds everyone had switched to infrared and sensor, but there simply wasn’t much to see. Readings indicated they were inside a vast, hollow space, definitely man-made—or at least made by something sentient and very good with tools. The ceiling was so far up as to not register on their equipment.