“I see it all now,” the leader of the Necromonger movement murmured. “This world, this Helion Prime, first. Soon, the rest of this system, for with their primary world taken, the others will fall with nary a fight. Then, battling on through the dwindling outposts of man; world after world, system after system. And then—the Threshold. I can sense it. Rising on the foundation laid by all the previous lord marshals, I shall be the one to at last achieve that goal. Under this regime, we will all cross the Threshold.” He did not raise his voice. He was only stating what he believed to be self-evident.
The Purifier was more cautious. It was incumbent on him to be so. One of his tasks was to convey reality to the excessively enthusiastic. “Intending no disrespect, but you are not the first to believe thus. Others have had your vision.”
“But not with such clarity.” The Lord Marshal’s gaze rose ceilingward, toward the unseen reaches beyond the Basilica’s immense hull. “I tell you, I have seen it! There have been many lord marshals before me. Great men, all, who performed nobly for the cause. There will be none after. There will be one last lord marshal. And he is right here.”
The Purifier did not respond. There was no point in trying to apply reason to absolutes. Also, by questioning the Lord Marshal he had performed a useful service. Arguing further with him would gain nothing. Except, perhaps, consideration of a new senior purifier. This man might really be the last lord marshal. His vision might be true. If so, there would be no need for additional purifiers. As for himself, he had no intention of surrendering his office prematurely.
Imam slowed as he neared the plaza. Ziza was walking on her own once again, holding tight to Lajjun’s hand, her small fingers entwined tightly in the woman’s stronger ones. The delegate turned to them both.
“Ahead—just ahead.”
Exhausted and filthy, they slowed to a walk. The next corner brought the broad plaza clearly into view.
It was empty.
Buildings lay flattened on its perimeter. The trees and flowers that had decorated the broad, open space in patterns of green and gold and crimson had been snapped in half or blown away. A few frantic shapes appeared on the plaza’s far side, quickly vanishing into the rubble. Normally crowded with hundreds of strollers and businessfolk on break, the circular meeting place was deserted.
Too young to be intimidated, too bold to keep silent, Ziza tugged on her mother’s hand. “Where is everybody? This is spooky.”
Her father shot her an irritated look, but said nothing. The eerie silence was compelling.
It was almost as silent in a back alley nearby, where debris and dust were rising from the ground, caught in the fringes of a gravitational eddy. Abruptly, armored figures scattered the dust, riding their unloading field to the ground. Armed and ready, the platoon was but one of many being disgorged by the transport craft that was advancing slowly over the rooftops nearby, seeding armored death as it passed.
Once assembled, the platoons split up and headed off in different directions, each on the lookout for resistance. One of them carried a device that was a miniature of the conquest icon. Far too small to serve as a launching pad for warcraft, it had another, equally disturbing function, albeit on a smaller scale.
Blade concealed but ready, Imam took a deep breath and headed out across the plaza. Though the sky was still full of fire and destruction, both had lessened considerably in volume and intensity. Nothing fell on him, nothing descended to wipe him from the pavement. Fast as they had run, he knew that the time remaining to him and his family was finite.
Reaching the central rotunda, he crouched low and performed a circular scan of the immediate vicinity. In better times, music had blared from this small, decorative structure. Better times might come again, he felt, but not soon. And that would not matter, if he and his wife and daughter were not around to witness it.
Satisfied that the area seemed safe, he straightened and motioned across the empty pavement, beckoning Lajjun and Ziza to join him. They could wait in the rotunda until he had scouted out the other half of the plaza. He started to rise.
It was difficult to tell who arrived on opposite sides of the plaza first: the platoon of Necromonger soldiers or the brigade of Helion fighters. Though outnumbered and outgunned, the Necromongers did not hesitate. Nor did they attempt to take cover. Instead, they unlimbered their sidearms and rushed straight toward the much larger number of Helion defenders. To someone trained in conventional military tactics, it would have looked like a suicide charge. Initial developments did nothing to dispel the validity of such an observation. In no mood for a display of politesse, the Helions opened fire immediately.
Ignoring the burst of gunfire and waving his arms wildly, Imam started toward the ruined building where his family awaited. “No!” he screamed as loudly as he could. “Keep back, stay there, don’t—”
The furious fire from the Helion defenders would have tracked and eradicated him as a possible enemy combatant had not a pair of hands grabbed him and pulled him down. He fought briefly against the pull, and futilely. It was as if he had been caught and dragged down by limbs of metal instead of flesh. Effortlessly, but with care, they slung him into the deep shadows of the rotunda. He still held the knife. Rolling furiously, he started to come up and face whoever had tackled him. A flash of dim light on goggles stopped him. He knew those goggles.
Crouching opposite Imam, Riddick quietly contemplated his old acquaintance. As always, it was impossible for Imam to tell if the big man was irritated, angry, or merely indifferent.
“Are you following me?”
It would not have mattered if Imam had been able to come up with a sensible answer. Anything he might have said would have been drowned out by the roar of gunfire as the Necromonger platoon clashed with the much larger Helion force.
Attacking with what seemed to be more bravery than military sense, the Necromongers pushed in on the Helion soldiers—and were cut down, one by one, as repeated shots reduced armor and bodies to ruin. In the end, only the soldier carrying the small conquest icon survived—just long enough to plant his burden in the ground and deploy a release mechanism. There was a soft poomph as the head of the icon cracked open. Something missiled out and up, to pause overhead.
Wary but increasingly confident, the Helion soldiers advanced beneath it. Spinning, levitating, the lambent orb of pale energy resembled some kind of aerial marker, or perhaps a distress signal. If the latter, it had been deployed too late. Every member of the Necromonger platoon lay dead or dying on the plaza. Watching their perimeter, the Helion force continued to advance across the devastated plaza.
Within the shadows of the rotunda, Imam struggled to rise. “Lajjun and Ziza—they’re out there.”
“Out there where?” Riddick asked him.
Restrained in the big man’s grasp, the delegate could only flail helplessly in his family’s direction. “Southwest side, under a broken roof. I’ve got to get to them. They don’t know what’s happening, don’t know where I am. Just let me—”
Riddick held him back, the way an owner would a puppy. “When it’s over.”
“When it’s over? When it’s over?” Rising as much as Riddick would allow, Imam gestured in the direction of the recent firefight. “Didn’t you see what happened? This group of invaders, they’re all dead. It is over, at least for the moment.” He struggled to rise. “Let me go . I need to be with—”
“When it’s over,” Riddick repeated. Despite what Imam implied, the big man had seen what had happened. And it hadn’t made any sense to him. No thinking fighter, however well motivated or brain-washed or drugged, went marching stoically into the face of visibly superior firepower without some purpose in mind. Distraction, perhaps. Something more—they would know, as he had told Imam, when it was over. Which to Riddick’s way of thinking was Not Yet.
The rotating energy orb did not dissipate, nor did it change position. Increasingly convinced that, whatever it signified, it might be something more threatening than
a distress signal, the officer in charge of the Helion unit ordered his troops to back off. They would go around the plaza. Standing out in the open any longer than was necessary was an invitation to attack. Voices crackled in his suit communicator. Something about something—behind them.
The Necromonger soldiers who had appeared behind the Helion brigade had materialized as silently as their comrades in the plaza had died. Now perhaps a hundred of them blocked the street the brigade had used to enter the plaza. A check of another street revealed another hundred or so of the enemy had already taken up defensive positions there.
Approaching from across the plaza came a third group. Threatening and unexpected, but not invincible. All they had to do, the Helion commander realized, was attack any one of the three columns and reduce it while defending themselves against the other two. They were outflanked, but not outnumbered or outgunned. Inclining his lips toward the pickup in his helmet, he prepared to issue the necessary orders.
At the front of the Necromonger column that was advancing on the plaza, a senior officer halted. Vaako was a favored commander, unusually young to have achieved such a high rank. For an instant, he observed the preparations taking place among the Helion force. It appeared that they were going to make a charge, in his direction. Another officer in a similar battlefield situation might have been concerned, might have rushed to prepare his own troops to withstand the frontal assault.
Instead, Vaako removed from one pocket a compact signaling device. It was small in size, but not in import. Unhesitatingly, he raised his gaze until it was focused on the pale orb of energy that continued to drift above the plaza. It was significant not for what it displayed, but for what it represented. He pressed the single button on the mechanism, transmitting a certain signal to his assembled troops.
Strange thing, gravity. Abstract in concept to all but mathematicians and physicists, when wielded by guiding instrumentation it could move mountains. Or crush them. The Necromonger soldiers who had encircled the area fired—not on the Helion defenders they had surrounded, but toward the hovering orb. Absorbing the combined energy of the discharged weapons fully activated the device. When the sphere of now massively increased gravity descended, it punched a neat, perfectly round hole in the plaza to a uniform depth of half a meter. Within its circumference, everything was crushed to a thickness of less than a millimeter. It was as if the ground had been painted with a smeared combination of metal, pavement, bone, and blood—an abstract vision of ghastly color gratefully muted by the night sky. Within that circumference had been decorative paving stones, railings, and every one of the Helion soldiers. Now all that remained was a multihued stain barely thick enough to scrape.
Having raised his head just enough above the rim of the rotunda to witness the shockingly sudden massacre, Imam found himself stunned and sickened by what he had seen. In contrast, Riddick was nodding slowly, his expression neutral, his opinion of what he had seen wholly unemotional and professional.
“Beautiful. Clean, quick, no mess.”
Sitting on the hard floor of the rotunda, his back pressed against the curving inner wall, Imam stared at his companion. He really didn’t know anything about this man, he realized. Drawing him here had been an expression of desperation leavened with faint hope. A last-minute thought before the darkness descended, as it was doing even now. And very possibly, a waste of time.
Time. Time was something he had always had, but was now rapidly running out of. But what to do next, how to proceed? Especially given the horror he had just witnessed.
Unexpectedly, Riddick had a suggestion. He was not one to dwell on the past, even if that past was only a matter of days. Understanding, if not sympathizing, with why Imam had conspired to draw him here, he rested an arm on one knee while dividing his attention between his companion and the mob of Necromonger soldiers that was forming up to leave the plaza.
“I’ve got a ship; she’s ready to roll. Come ride bitch if you want.”
Didn’t the man realize he had other concerns? “No, no, I’ll stay to fight. This world has been good to me, and I owe it that much. But I just need to get my family across the river first. There’s an underground facility there, built to shelter citizens displaced by severe weather, where they’ll be safe.”
Impatient, Riddick interrupted him. “You’ll never get there.” He jerked his head in the direction of what had once been the Helion system’s center of power. “Too many ships, too many scans. Too many guns. If one of them doesn’t shoot you, one of your own’s liable to.”
Imam looked at him: pleading not with words, but with his eyes. “I have to try. I could go with you, but they can’t.”
The unspoken implication behind the man’s words being, Riddick knew, You take too many chances, I don’t really trust you with my family, and what kind of existence would they have in your company anyway even if you could make it out of here? The big man was not offended. Reality never offended him.
“You know, I’m sure God has his tricks. He plays them often enough. But getting outta hellified places no one else can? That’s one a’ mine.” He smiled thinly. “I prefer practice to prayer.” He glanced briefly over the rim of the rotunda before nodding tersely in the other man’s direction. “Get your family, Imam. Stay low, move fast, and tell ’em to keep their mouths shut.”
No one thought to recheck the rotunda that sat in the center of the plaza. It was too small to provide a refuge for Helion soldiers, and civilians were not yet a prime interest of the invaders. Having assembled an appropriately impressive ground force from the three columns of soldiers, Commander Vaako was now leading it across an approach bridge. On the other side lay the capitol dome, purposely left intact by his forces. An appropriate place for accepting the capitulation of the planetary government.
He could have surrounded the place with drop-ships, but marching up in good order across the bridge would be far more dramatic. It would also serve to testify to the complete dominance of the Necromonger force, and to its indifference to any defense the locals might still think of mounting around their capital. Show was important, Vaako knew. The idea was to crush resistance as quickly and ruthlessly as possible, so as to preserve as many enemy fighters as possible. Preserve them for purification and incorporation. A good many of the troops now formed up behind him—armor glistening, weapons at the ready, were converts from previously conquered worlds. Soon Helion Prime, too, would contribute its share.
A quick, efficient glance at his surroundings showed several gravity orbs still circling above different parts of the city. From time to time, a deep-throated booming would echo over the streets as one was activated and dropped. The Helions were good fighters and there was still some resistance. All the more reason to secure the government’s unconditional surrender as rapidly as possible.
He checked his posture, straightened. It would not do for the man inside the armor to appear less impressive than his suit. It was important to make a good first impression. It was important that the locals fear him on first sight.
Time and time again Riddick found himself having to slow down to allow Imam and his family to catch up. While he was not even breathing hard, they were sweating profusely and gasping for breath. To her credit, the little girl did not complain. Only once, when she stubbed her foot. As her mother brushed at her tears and tried to quiet her, Riddick came over and stared down. Meeting his eyes, Ziza quickly went silent.
Lajjun looked up at him uncertainly. “Do you have a way with children?”
He shook his head curtly. “Only with real people. She qualifies.” Turning, he resumed leading them onward into the night.
They moved as fast as the woman and the girl could manage, avoiding obstacles that included ruined buildings and dead soldiers—the latter mostly, but not exclusively, Helion. Imam felt they were making excellent progress, when Riddick suddenly spied something approaching and motioned them to move back. There was an urgency to his gestures that barred dissent.
Well h
idden in the rubble, they did not see the creatures that came loping slowly up the cross street. Riddick had spotted them just in time. While he was not familiar with and did not recognize their specific physical configuration, he had seen enough in that split second to suspect their purpose.
First one lensing Necromonger and then a second appeared, followed by a specialist squad of soldiers. The lensors were troops who had lost their faces, or parts thereof, in battle, but who through the application of modern military medical technology remained—salvageable. Eyes and ears gone, mouths replaced by injectors, even noses blasted away, they had been converted into tracking devices whose melding of human biologics and electronic enhancements could not be equaled by equivalents that were either purely organic or wholly mechanical. Eerily silent, they led the way along the thoroughfare, single-mindedly searching for survivors. In ancient times, humans had used specially trained dogs for such purposes.
Leading this particular mop-up team was a Necromonger warrior of singular size and reputation. He was not called Irgun the Strange because of his distinctive facial features, his manner of speech, or even his sometimes peculiar personal affectations. Rather, he had acquired the name because during one especially intense battle on a long-since conquered world, he had received a knife in the middle of his back. This very low-tech manner of attack had importunely struck and penetrated so close to his spine, the blade curving slightly but critically as it entered, that even Necromonger surgeons felt it could not be removed without considerable risk. That, however, was not what had inspired the singular nickname.
It was the fact that he had chosen to leave the knife—blade, hilt, and all—where it was. It protruded from the center of his back like a flag, a rallying point for his fellow soldiers and a warning to any enemy. Here is my pain, it declared for any and all to see. I welcome it, I embrace it, in the service of the faith. In its utilitarian appearance, in its owner’s indifference to its presence, it was more frightening to an adversary than any deformity of face or body. On observing the injury, the Lord Marshal himself had praised Irgun for his defiance of pain, and had insisted that the blade remain forever where it lay.