Chains of Mist Page 2

  It burned at Drogni’s blood that the Vizier could dismiss this so casually. “Daniel Lester,” he said through gritted teeth, anger rising in his voice. “Tina Galdro. Palis Denar. Sara Westan. Gregory Daalis. Do you recognize those names, Vizier? You should—Rokan Sellas killed them on Hilthak. And for what, Vizier—for what?”

  “We are at war, Commander,” the Vizier replied calmly. “The galaxy may not realize it yet, but it is true nonetheless. We are at war with an enemy more terrible than any you have ever encountered. What happened at Hilthak is just the beginning. I will do what must be done to combat that threat. Do not think that I simply threw away the lives of your soldiers on a whim, or for some perverse pleasure. Their deaths were not meaningless. With each failure, I gain a clearer picture of the evil we face. And I grow closer to understanding how to overcome it. Defeating Rokan Sellas is what matters, Commander. That is all that matters.”

  Some deep analytical part of Drogni’s brain heard the logic in the Vizier’s statement. What were five lives, measured against the billions who would die if Rokan Sellas was not stopped? But the rest of him didn’t care. “Not to me it isn’t. All I know is that five of my people died. While the only man who might have given them a chance remained on Tellaria, cowering in fear.”

  The words slipped out before Drogni had even realized what he was saying. But even as they passed his lips he knew that he did not regret them. There had been a time not too long ago when he never would have spoken that way to the Vizier, no matter how much the man deserved it. But his perspective had changed. I have seen true power, now…and this man, whatever his secrets, does not have it.

  The Vizier regarded Drogni calmly. If he was angered at all by Drogni’s words, he didn’t show it. “Are you through, Commander? Or must I suffer through more childish taunts and fits of fury?”

  “Childish? Childish?” The Vizier’s dismissive tone only served to fuel Drogni’s rage. “People died—good people, soldiers under my command! You call that childish—”

  “Your reaction to it is,” said the Vizier. “Soldiers die all the time. Soldiers die, missions fail, objectives are lost. You of all people should understand that, Commander.”

  Drogni scowled. “This is different, and you know it. This isn’t just some SmugCo op gone wrong. This wasn’t bad intel, or bad planning, or plain old bad luck. We never had a chance—it was a suicide mission right from the start.”

  “Of course it was. I told you as much when last we spoke. It was you who would not listen.”

  “Me—!” Drogni felt something ugly ignite within him. “Don’t you dare blame their deaths on me!” he snarled, half-rising to his feet. “You stelnak—”

  Drogni smashed his fist on the table in front of him; his other hand closed over the hilt of the rune-covered sword. Before he could do anything more rash, however, he felt a hand grasp his arm. Drogni turned towards the man seated on his left. He had a hard, angular face, with reddish-gold hair cropped short around his scalp. He, like Drogni, wore the white and blue uniform of an officer of the Tellarian Fleet. An aura of silent deadliness hovered about him, and his eyes shone with keen intelligence.

  Sergeant Major Aras Makree met Drogni’s angry gaze. The man known as the Black General gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head. Reluctantly Drogni subsided, sinking back into his chair and letting loose his grasp on Ss’aijas K’sejjas. His anger, however, still simmered just below the surface.

  The Vizier did not seem fazed by Drogni’s outburst. “I do not cast blame, Commander. I merely state facts. You are acting as if I withheld crucial information that might have saved your team. That is not true. I withheld nothing, Commander. I told you that Rokan Sellas was in possession of one of the most powerful magical artifacts in the galaxy. I told you that no weaponry in your armada would be sufficient to kill him. I told you that your mission could not possibly succeed. Do you not remember?”

  Drogni froze. His heated reply died on his lips as he recalled the Vizier’s words from seven days earlier: “This enemy is beyond you. You cannot win—you can only die.”

  And Drogni heard his own reply: “I can kill him. I will kill him. Mark my words, Vizier.”

  Drogni felt his anger waver. Guilt and shame crashed over him as the truth of the Vizier’s statement bit into his soul.

  The Vizier must have seen the change in Drogni’s expression. “You do remember. I allowed your mission, but I did not suggest it. I did not approve of it. I certainly did not force you to go. That decision—and everything that came as a result of it—was yours and yours alone.”

  Drogni felt as if his insides had turned to ice. The Vizier was right. Damn it, but he was right. It was my mission from the start. I brought them to Leva. And when that plan failed I was the one who refused to accept it. I rushed headlong into the most dangerous place in the galaxy. I was so consumed with killing Rokan Sellas that I was willing to pay any price to do it.

  And they were the price. Their lives for my rage.

  While that realization sank in, the Vizier spoke again. “Do not blame yourself, Commander. They made their own choices, and they knew the costs that those choices might require.”

  Drogni looked up. “Is that supposed to make me feel better?” The words came out more bitter than angry.

  “No.” There was no pity in the Vizier’s voice, no traces of sympathy or comfort. “But I need you to remain sharp, Commander. I need you focused. Wallowing in self-pity will not bring those soldiers back. Nor will it kill Rokan Sellas.”

  Drogni said nothing. He heard the Vizier’s words, and knew them to be true. He took a deep breath and tried to consider the Vizier’s words from a logical perspective. But he couldn’t do it. He just couldn’t. Nor could he drive away that crushing sense of guilt. Whenever he tried, he saw their faces in his mind, saw their twisted, empty corpses. “It’s not that simple. They were under my protection, and I let them down.” He eyed the Vizier, searching for any sign of empathy or compassion on the big man’s face, but found none. “I don’t expect you to understand.”

  “Don’t I, Commander? Perhaps I understand all too well.” The Vizier let that statement hang in the air for a few moments, then gave a wave of his hand. “But that is irrelevant. How you come to terms with what happened on Hilthak is your business, Commander. What happened on that moon is in the past; it is time we look to the future—”

  “Is Justin still alive?”

  The voice was quiet, but it cut through the Vizier’s words like a laser scalpel. All heads swung towards the man seated at Drogni’s right. He wore civilian clothes, their comfortable casualness a sharp contrast to Drogni’s and Makree’s uniforms and the Vizier’s finery. His shoulder-length brown hair hung unkempt and matted, and his face was shaded with dark patches of stubble. He looked as though he had not slept for days, and he had a wild look in his eyes. “You heard me,” said Austin Forgera. His voice was louder this time, with the slightly frenzied sound of someone who had been waiting to speak for some time and could contain himself no longer. “Is he still alive?”

  As the Federation Ambassador’s question echoed through the silent room, a new face rose in Drogni’s memory: delicate-boned, with short dark hair and gentle eyes. Justin Varenn, who, like Forgera, was a member of the Ambassadors Guild based on the Federation capital world of Davin, had been the final member of the party that had set forth to Leva. He had been with them in Rokan Sellas’s throne room on Hilthak. After Rokan Sellas had disposed of Galdro, Lester, Denar, Westan, and Daalis, he had turned his attention to Varenn. He had seemed to be about to kill the soft-spoken Ambassador, but had taken him prisoner instead. The two of them had vanished into a cloud of foul dark mist, leaving Drogni, Forgera, and Makree alone in the throne room.

  The Vizier regarded Forgera for several long moments. Finally the big man nodded. “Your friend is alive.”

  Relief washed over Forgera’s face. “What does Rokan want with him?”

  The Vizier’s expression gave
away nothing. “I am not sure.”

  Forgera’s expression darkened, and his eyes narrowed. His reply was not loud, but it carried a sting that would be the envy of any military commander. “You expect me to believe that?”

  “I expect you to believe whatever you want to believe,” replied the Vizier icily. “It matters little to me. But when I say that I do not know what Rokan Sellas intends for your friend, I am telling the truth.”

  “Stek,” snapped Forgera. The expletive sounded very odd coming from the lips of a man who, in the short time that Drogni had known him, had been nothing but polite and respectful. Then again, watching your friend be captured by the most evil man in the galaxy can have a…freeing…effect on a person’s vocabulary. “That’s a galaxy-sized pile of stelnak dung, and you know it,” continued the Ambassador. “You sent us—sent him—to Leva, when there was no reason for him to be there. You knew this would happen—no, you wanted it to happen. So don’t stand there and lie to me. Just…don’t.”

  “I knew that your friend was important, somehow.” The Vizier seemed as unperturbed by the Ambassador’s cursing as he had been by Drogni’s earlier displays of anger. “I knew that he was destined to be more than some common diplomat. But I also knew that darkness was spreading, and quickly. I could not afford to wait for Justin Varenn’s destiny to come upon him through the natural course of events. So I intervened. I sent him to Drask; I sent him to Leva. I placed him in the path of destiny…and destiny, it seems, has found him.”

  The Vizier fell into another maddeningly calm silence. Forgera waited, his expression growing ever more incredulous. “That’s all you have to say?” he finally blurted out. “‘Destiny has found him?’ What is that even supposed to mean? What destiny?”

  “I do not know for sure.” The Vizier somehow managed to make even this admission of ignorance sound arrogant. “I cannot see every detail of every possible future, but I do know this: if Rokan Sellas is to be stopped, then Justin Varenn will play a vital role. Your friend is part of something larger than just himself. He has been chosen, his path set in front of him. That path will be dark, dangerous, terrible. But perhaps it will end with Rokan Sellas’s defeat.”

  “And it might also end with Justin’s death. It might—” Forgera suddenly gave a mirthless laugh. “What am I saying? ‘Might’ end with his death? It will, won’t it? You seem to think you can see the future—he doesn’t survive this, does he? Tell me—and don’t even think about lying.”

  “All paths end in death, Ambassador,” said the Vizier. “Now or a hundred years from now; in battle or at home. That cannot be prevented. Your friend has a chance to make his death mean something. To make his life mean something. Maybe even to save us all.”

  Forgera’s expression twisted into something ugly. “That’s not good enough. That is not good enough, by stek!”

  “What would you like to hear, Ambassador?” asked the Vizier. This time he sounded almost amused at the other man’s impertinence.

  Forgera threw up his hands. “I don’t know! An apology would be nice, I guess. Maybe an admission of guilt. Something to show that you feel bad about sending an innocent man to his death.”

  “I will admit to my responsibility for Justin Varenn’s current predicament,” said the Vizier. “Anything more than that would be a lie. I will not apologize for trying to save this galaxy from an unspeakable evil. Besides, as I mentioned before, your friend is not dead. He may have been taken by Rokan Sellas, but he is also in the hands of fate. And that is a grasp that even Rokan Sellas cannot break so easily.”

  Forgera did not appear particularly comforted by that thought. “If you can see the future, then you know where Justin is. You know where Rokan Sellas took him.”

  “No,” said the Vizier.

  Forgera’s retort was immediate. “Stek.”

  “No,” repeated the Vizier. “But even if I did, what then? It is a fool’s errand to rescue him. Rokan Sellas did not capture your friend on a whim; he will not easily relinquish him.”

  The Vizier’s voice carried a tone of finality, an indication that he thought the matter closed. But Forgera obviously disagreed. “I can’t just wait here, not while that monster has him. Not while…” The Ambassador’s voice trailed off into despairing, anguished silence. His face drooped, his eyes downcast.

  Something in the Ambassador’s expression stirred Drogni from silence. “So that’s it, then? That’s your advice? That we just give up? Walk away—go home?” He slammed a fist on the table with a sound that all but shook the small conference room. “No. No! I refuse to accept that.”

  “I did not say that we should stop fighting,” said the Vizier. “On the contrary; we must continue to fight, to struggle against this enemy for as long as we draw breath. But we must do so intelligently. We must be disciplined. We must do our duty.”

  “Duty? Pah!” Drogni gave a hollow laugh that twisted to bitterness in his mouth. “What do you know of duty? What could you possibly know—?”

  “I know more than you think.” The Vizier’s deep voice was still impassive, but irritation verging on anger suddenly flashed across his dark eyes. “But what I know of duty is irrelevant. You know that I am correct. They did their duty. And now it is time for you to do yours.”

  Drogni did know his duty. He was the Supreme Allied Fleet Commander of one of the largest military forces in the galaxy. Billions of lives depended on him. He could not allow this conflict to become personal; he needed to keep his own feelings out of the equation. He certainly could not go charging off on a single-minded crusade that could very well end in his own death. Instead, he needed to be the one sitting behind the desk with a tactical datascreen in his hand, sending others into danger, all while he remained safely behind on Tellaria.

  In other words, to be just like the Vizier.

  Drogni knew all of that in an instant. And he found that he did not care. All he could think of was Rokan Sellas; all he could see was that scarred face, that cruel smile. “I’ll kill him. I’ll kill him if it’s the last thing I do.”

  “Is that so?” asked the Vizier softly. “Why, Commander? Why are you so willing to throw your own life away, to turn away from your duty chasing a man that you cannot defeat? Not just because of loyalty to a few soldiers, I think.” The Vizier studied Drogni intently, as if he were an exhibit at a museum…or a specimen on a dissecting table. “No…there is more to this story, Commander. This is not just about those who died on Hilthak. Nor is this about what happened at Denlar. There is something else. Something…new.” A smile curled the corner of the big man’s lips, the expression predatory rather than comforting. “What aren’t you telling us, Commander?”

  Drogni said nothing. He couldn’t even bring himself to meet the Vizier’s eyes, for fear that, by doing so, he would reveal the darkest secret of all. The secret that he had left out of his retelling of the events of Leva and Hilthak, the one that he could not bear to hear himself utter.

  In his mind, Drogni found himself once again back on Hilthak. But this time he strode through the darkened halls in a suit of black combat armor, dealing death to all he encountered. He laid waste to waves of Coalition soldiers and carved bloody swathes through Mari’eth warriors like a demonic executioner. Unbridled fury coursed through his veins, and an intoxicating feeling of invincibility infused him. He surrendered to his rage without hesitation and convinced himself that he was right to do so.

  As the bodies piled up around Drogni, Rokan Sellas’s sibilant voice whispered in his ears: “You are the Destroyer, Ortega. You are the Sword of Chaos. You are the Sword…and I am its wielder.”

  Drogni felt a shudder run through him. He heard the dying screams, felt the crunch of bones beneath his blade, tasted the fear and panic and chaos that he wrought. Revulsion rolled through him, but he did not allow himself to block out those memories. He needed to remember. Hiding from the past would not erase his actions; instead, it would simply make him more likely to let his guard down in the future,
to make the same mistake he had on Hilthak…and with the same disastrous results.

  He had slaughtered them all. And he had enjoyed it.

  Once again, the Vizier was right. This wasn’t just about the soldiers Rokan Sellas had killed on Hilthak, nor even the thousands more he had slain with his treachery at Denlar fifteen years ago. There was one more reason why Drogni could not simply let this go. One more reason why he could not rest until Rokan Sellas was dead.

  One more reason why I need to be the one who kills him. Because of what he did to me on Hilthak. The monster he turned me into.

  But even as that thought crossed his mind, Drogni knew that he was lying to himself. Angrily he forced himself to confront the truth. No. There was no transformation. He didn’t turn me into a monster. I am the monster. The killer.

  All he did was set me free.

  Drogni banished those thoughts with an angry shake of his head. “It doesn’t matter what it is,” he said, his voice low and deadly. “He’s still just a man. I can still kill him. I will still kill him.”

  The Vizier gave a short, derisive laugh. “Then you have learned nothing, Commander. You have seen what Rokan Sellas has become. You have seen what he can do. What makes you think that you can succeed this time?” The big man gestured derisively as Ss’aijas K’sejjas. “Do you think that that Mari’eth blade will save you? It shines brightly, and has some power, but it is a mere trinket compared to one of the Chalas Peruvas. The Fireblade will sweep it aside like smoke. You survived Hilthak because of luck, nothing more, and you would do well to remember that.”

  Drogni had to admit that the Vizier had a point. His last battle against Rokan Sellas had not been close. He had felt firsthand the power swirling within the red gem known as the Fireblade, a power that sent shivers through his blood even to think about it. According to the Vizier, the Fireblade was one of a collection of ancient magical talismans known as the Chalas Peruvas; whoever wielded it could summon forth unthinkable power. Power enough to rend galaxies, destroy planets, snuff out stars. What do I have? An alien sword that I don’t know how to use and which barely saved me last time. How will that be enough?