Calcutta, the jewel of the British Raj, had fallen without a fight. The city, which had once been the second city of the British Empire, a bustling hub of commerce and colonial power, was now unnervingly quiet. Its British masters had fled in a panicked, undignified exodus, and its Indian population now watched from behind shuttered windows as the disciplined, silent columns of the New Qing Army marched through their streets.
Marshal Meng Tian had established his headquarters in what had, a week ago, been the Viceroy's Palace. He stood now in the center of the grand ballroom, a place of gaudy, unrestrained European luxury. Towering marble columns, gilded mirrors, and crystal chandeliers that had once reflected the glittering jewels and immaculate uniforms of the British ruling class now reflected only his own solitary, unadorned figure. The opulence of the room, meant to project an image of unassailable power, felt hollow and pathetic to him now. It was the shed skin of a dead snake.
An aide entered, his boots clicking on the polished marble floor. He saluted, his face glowing with the triumphant zeal that filled the junior officer corps.
"Marshal, a telegraph from Delhi. General Duan has accepted the formal surrender of the last British garrison. The city is ours. All of India is now under the control of the Dragon Throne."
Meng Tian nodded, his expression unchanging. He had done it. He had conquered the Indian subcontinent, a feat that would make Alexander the Great weep with envy, and he had done it in a matter of weeks. His legions had swept across the plains of Bengal and into the heart of Hindustan like a flood, their advance all but unopposed. The British Indian Army, once a formidable fighting force, had dissolved into a panicked rout, its will to fight utterly shattered by the news of what had happened at Fort Invincible.
There was no triumph in him. There was no glory. He walked to one of the tall ballroom windows and looked out over the sprawling, hazy city. His victory felt like a counterfeit coin, glittering on the surface but empty and worthless within. He was haunted by the memory of the glassy crater where a mountain had been, by the image of a grey dusting of ashes on a silent, empty ocean.
His victories, his brilliant flanking maneuvers, his perfectly executed envelopments—they were all meaningless. He had not conquered an empire. He had merely scavenged in the footsteps of a wrathful god, collecting the pieces of an enemy that had already been spiritually and psychologically annihilated.
He thought of his first life, of the long, brutal, and glorious campaigns to unite the warring states. He remembered the Siege of Xianyang, a battle of wits and steel against a worthy opponent that had lasted for months. He remembered the fierce joy of out-thinking a clever general, the grim satisfaction of a hard-won victory earned with the blood and courage of his men. Those had been real wars, fought by mortal men. This… this felt profane. It was the work of an executioner, not a general. The honor and art of war, the things he had dedicated both his lives to, had been rendered obsolete by a single, terrible flash of light in the sky.
The aide, still present, cleared his throat. "Marshal, there is a second dispatch. A direct command from the Emperor himself." He handed a sealed cylinder to Meng Tian.
Meng Tian broke the seal and unrolled the parchment. It was not a set of military commands for the occupation of India. It was a summons. He was to select his ten finest legions, the most battle-hardened and loyal veterans of the Siberian and Indian campaigns. He was to march them to a specific set of coordinates in the heart of the subcontinent, a vast, open plain near the ancient city of Varanasi. There, the Emperor himself would meet them for the final "pacification" ceremony.
A cold dread, an unfamiliar and unwelcome sensation, settled in Meng Tian's gut. Pacification. He knew the Emperor's mind. This would not be a victory parade. It would be a demonstration. A final, terrifying object lesson to the three hundred million souls of India, and to the rest of the watching, terrified world. He suspected, with a chilling certainty, that the Emperor intended to use the weapon again. Not on an army or a fortress, but on the people themselves, to burn his authority into the very soul of the land through an act of absolute, divine terror.
The honorable general, the man who had died defending the civilized world at the foot of the Great Wall, the man he thought had been buried forever beneath the cold, efficient shell of the Shinigami, began to stir.
High above the clouds, a military transport aircraft, a lumbering, four-engine beast of German design, droned its way south over the vast, patchwork quilt of the Chinese countryside. Inside its cavernous, echoing fuselage, chained to the floor and surrounded by armed guards, was the "special artillery unit." And watching over it, her face pale and drawn in the dim light, was Dr. Chen Linwei.
She was on a desperate pilgrimage, a final, suicidal gamble to save the world from the very man she had sworn her life to serve. In a lead-lined case clutched tightly in her lap were the data slates, the rows of neat, terrifying calculations that proved the final, horrifying truth: the Emperor's weapon was not just killing him; it was tearing a wound in the fabric of reality itself. One more use on a grand scale, and that wound could become a fatal, world-ending cancer.
She knew she could not reason with the Emperor. She had tried. He had looked her in the eye and told her he accepted all risks. His ambition was a fire that would gladly consume the whole world to forge it anew in his own image. Her loyalty could no longer be to his ambition. Her final, truest loyalty had to be to his life, and to the continued existence of the world he sought to conquer.
There was only one person left in the Empire who might have the strength, the authority, and the will to stand with her. The one man whose loyalty and honor had been forged in the same ancient fire as the Emperor's own. Marshal Meng Tian.
She was terrified. She was about to commit the most profound act of treason imaginable. She was going to reveal the Emperor's greatest secret—his creeping mortality and the world-ending nature of his power—to his chief general. She would be counseling insubordination against the Son of Heaven himself. The penalty for such a crime was not a quick death, but the slow, agonizing extermination of one's entire family line.
She remembered the final, tearful conversation with her father in their Beijing laboratory before she had left.
"Linwei, this is madness!" he had pleaded, his old, scholarly hands gripping her arms. "You cannot do this! If the Emperor discovers what you intend, he will not just execute us both! He will put our entire family, to the ninth generation, to the sword! He is the First Emperor reborn! Have you forgotten the histories?"
She had looked into her father's frightened eyes, her own filled with a terrible, resolute calm. "And if I do nothing, Father," she had replied, her voice a steady whisper, "there may be no families left to execute. There may be no world left to record our histories. His ambition will unmake us all." She had gently removed his hands from her arms. "I have to believe that the hero who died defending the Great Wall still lives somewhere inside the Shinigami. I have to believe that when he understands the true cost, he will listen to reason. He is my only hope. He is the world's only hope."
The transport plane began its long, slow descent, the pitch of its engines changing. Dr. Chen looked out of the small porthole window. Below her, stretching to the horizon, were the vast, hazy, brown-green plains of India. She clutched the case containing her terrible calculations to her chest, its cold, hard edges a comfort against the frantic beating of her heart. She was a woman carrying a truth that could either save the world or see her condemned as the greatest traitor in the history of the Empire. Her rendezvous with Marshal Meng Tian, and with the fate of all existence, was at hand.