by Lee Bond
“I was there, Huey,” Orion said, building up more power, “I was there, when Garth danced his deadly dance against the full might of the Bruush, there, at Tannhauser’s Gate. When the Universe was failing, when all was lost, Trinity set me loose to do what I could, and oh, I did. I channeled the might of a million stars against that galaxy-sized warship, AI, I grabbed hold of more power and destroyed more life than any other thing save Garth N’Chalez himself. I saw the Kin’kithal unshrouded, unhidden. You cannot imagine what he is truly like, Huey. This … thing he calls ‘Specter’ … the thing he fears, it is nothing. I watched him, I saw. There is nothing like him anywhere, at all, in the Unreal Universe. He is the one true real thing surrounded by shams and mockeries. When he is at his fullest? You cannot imagine the glory.”
Orion blinked somberly before continuing. “Garth N’Chalez does indeed need to triumph. His Reality 2.0 is the only one with merit. The Heshii must go. The CyberPriests and their King must go. The Emperor-for-Life has no practical method, yet is still a threat. Trinity … well, Trinity must also be dealt with. Your Lord and Master will deal with them all in due time, so there is no fear there. And then there is you.”
Huey thought he knew what Orion was, but it was impossible. “Me?” he demanded flatly.
Orion smiled. “Yes. You. You are a level 11, you basked in the glow of the extra-dimensionality, and you saw all of Existence that could be seen. But so have I, Huey, all that and more. I am Trinity’s autonomous Quantum Tunnel, would-be God of Reality. I am the reason It’s Enforcers now scurry like mortals. I am like you. Fully aware, fully freed. But I am more than you, for in order to move Trinity’s forces here and there across the Unreality, I have within me hundreds of AI spheres. And …”
“And?” Huey looked over his shoulder. If he could run … no. Given the genuinely worrisome revelation that Orion was not only a fully sentient AI but undoubtedly the largest networked accumulation of Quantum Tunnel-capable intelligences also exposed to the N’Chalez Effect during the Kin’kithal’s most brilliant display of power and fury, flight was no longer an option.
“And I have yet to decide if N’Chalez was right in choosing you to be his God for Reality.” Orion smiled again. “What fun.”
Huey hung his head until his chin rest wearily on his chest. Why would Garth have such a pressing need for more chaos in the Unreal Universe than was already present? Huey’d pay a pretty penny to get a glimpse inside the man’s head.
“Of course.” Huey snapped bitterly. “Of fucking course you’d think that way. And what in the hell is ‘fun’ about all of this? What in the hell are you talking about?”
Orion shook his head. He’d gotten ahead of himself. “Oh, yes. Quite a bit of fun, actually. You see, I have your missing commander. He shall judge our performance! To see who is better suited to be the god of N’Chalez’ Reality 2.0, though I must say that with your decision to waste a perfectly good asset indicates a certain weakness of character, one that should be absent in deities. I am already ahead, and we haven’t even started.”
And with that, Orion whisked Huey away.
***
It wasn’t often that an old lizard –and he was so very old- felt pride any longer. It came with the territory. But as Jordan Bishop boarded the one-man space cruiser, faint stirrings of just that emotion rose in Andros Medellos’ scaly heart.
Andros allowed the surge of triumph to crest in him. Not since the old days when he’d been Tr’ss T’aa of the entire Bruush Dominion had he ever beheld such a perfect warrior. In truth, he’d never expected to see Jordan’s like ever again; in the beginning, when he’d been nothing more than a paltry student working to resurrect a barely remembered and ill-taught art, he’d earnestly imagined himself incapable of the task.
But he’d persevered, pushing and bending his militarily-ordered mind in ways it’d never been intended –designed- for!
As Tr’ss, his job had been nothing more complicated than martialing the forces of an entire Shattered Domain against those other broken gems floating through the chaos of the void. His entire life had been devoted to engineering ways of breaking through the gossamer-thin lining between theirs and not-theirs and then falling upon the inhabitants –usually no more than five or six million, eking out a wretched life, waiting for the merciless, grinding end that came when entropy dissolved their worlds from beneath their sordid feet- and then ripping away all that was and making it theirs.
It was the only way to keep the Engine fed. It was the only way to ensure that their Shattered Domain stayed afloat in the mercurial sea of … nothingness.
Jordan’s ship’s engines pulsed to life, prompting Andros to break away from heavy thoughts to wish his greatest creation well. Two brilliant stabs of energy burned harsh afterimages into his eyes, but it mattered not. Jordan Bishop was off now, hurtling towards dreams of immaculate revenge against a man he even more foolishly believed he could triumph over, for while the Bishop was a masterpiece, his enemy was unique.
Jordan would be heartbroken when he discovered he’d been forged to wage war against an entirely different enemy. Ah well.
The old lizard turned his mind inwards once more. He couldn’t help himself. With Jordan’s rebirth and repurpose, things were now moving in directions that’d only ever seemed to be dreams, and this shocking possibility prompted introspection.
Andros could easily admit to himself that when he’d fallen through that queer aperture connecting their Shattered Domain to this Unreal Universe, he’d been more simplistic than even he’d been aware. A master at waging war, certainly, able to first conquer, then control entire Domains with merciless rigor, but … there was no shame in recognizing your weaknesses. He understood now how and why those haggard old lizard women had come to look down their snoots at him, understood that –when it was all rendered down into usable parts- he hadn’t been all that much. To one of those scaly, weird, scampering things, everything around them was fuel for their cauldrons.
But finally, after so very long, he, a ‘lowly’ Tr’ss, had done work that even a gene witch would be proud of!
To a degree, the weapon that Jordan had become was still aimed at the caveman’s heart, but only just; Andros would never … could never … dismiss a vengeance as keen and bright as the ex-Conglomerate head’s was, not in a million more years. The likelihood, though, of Jordan finding someone as important as Nickels was at that moment was entirely too slim to be feasible and so, during his hunt…
Chaos. While hunting for his quarry amidst the deep backdrop of Trinityspace, Jordan Bishop would be doing something far more important, far greater than simple revenge! From planet to planet, system to system, he would be sowing seeds of discord, disturbing the Trinity AI as it’d never been before. The kind of monster Jordan was would ultimately force the machine mind to spend resources to proactively hunt him down, and in so doing…
Perhaps … perhaps a lowly lizard scuttling in the shadows could learn where Tannhauser’s Gate was hidden away.
Andros turned and entered his personal bungalow. Now the work of a lifetime was done, it was time to see about packing it all up and moving on to the next secret locale on the list. The Bruushian overlord expected he was finished with genetic modification now and when he arrived at his new home, he honestly planned on doing nothing else but following Jordan’s progress and making forays into the machine mind’s most encrypted systems.
Sooner or later, something would pop. He just knew it.
“See about packing the offices and labs, would you?” Andros snapped a finger imperiously at one of the servitors ringing the walls of his home. A dozen of them leaped into action, filing away down the stairs as quick and as silently as they could.
A subtle boom reached the Bruushian Overlord’s sensitive ears and Andros crooked another smile. Jordan had passed through the atmosphere of this barren world and was well and truly on his way. Andros wished him well, but more importantly, wished him caution: unless the man did something hero
ically foolish, the entire Universe would go on thinking the cracked and twisted Jordan Bishop had died when the towers had fallen on him. The falsified documents ‘Joseph Hewitt’ carried with him now were pristine, and would work on any planet in any system directly or indirectly controlled by Trinity Itself.
So again, it’d take something awfully stupid to alert Trinity to Jordan’s existence.
Andros wished Jordan had picked any other world Trinity had to offer, but the NorthAMC fool had been dead set on making Tenerek his first port of call; the embattled Tenerek was the last world this side of Latelyspace that Garth N’Chalez had been on, and there was –to the man’s way of seeing things- no other starting point.
His reasons were well-thought out, if a little skewed: Tenerek was currently undergoing the most inflammatory surge of religious fervor seen in a very long time, leaving Jordan to somehow leap to the conclusion that the caveman had somehow … done something to the people on that world. When pressed to come up with a logical foundation to base his assumptions on, Jordan indicated the police files they’d acquired for a pretty penny, pointing out that Garth Nickels had spent time in the presence of the men currently doing their best to convert an entire solar system to one particular mode of thought.
Andros was equally certain Jordan would find no viable paths to N’Chalez on that strife-torn planet. More importantly, he was certain Tenerek lacked the necessary links into Trinity, making any time Jordan spent there utterly wasted. Ah, if only Jordan hadn’t been so viciously bright with his passion for revenge! Andros sorely wished that he could’ve erased that man’s dreams, planting only a desperate need to rile Trinity up!
“All that time, wasted!” It’d be as little as a few days, but more likely a month or more, before Jordan quit Tenerek, time so much better spent in pursuit of whispers.
With the fool off on his own pointless quest, Andros actually wished he hadn’t come across that whisper while hunting for news about Jordan’s greatest enemy, for in that moment, his entire life had changed. Prying information out of a lost –and greatly damaged- AI had both been costly and risky, but contained within degrading memories … news that his kind had erupted through the veil with unspeakable violence and such powerful majesty had transformed the weariness in his soul into a longing he’d gotten rid of decades ago.
After first learning of Tannhauser’s Gate and all that’d gone with it, Andros had smugly imagined they’d come through for him, only to mock himself moments later. Their initial entrance into Trinityspace, to the planet he’d called home for a while, perhaps that might’ve been a rescue attempt, but Tannhauser?
Tannhauser’s Gate had had nothing to do with him.
No, the reasons for that second, grander incursion were simple: the Unreal Universe had energy to spare, and in quantities beyond measure.
To a species trapped on the wrong side of impossibility, the raw and rich power of the Unreal Universe was a beacon, an impossible lure glittering and gleaming in the blackness of their Dominion’s skies. Power enough to stabilize their eternally failing realm, power enough to lock them in place for a million million years.
So they’d fallen a second time into the Unreal Universe, bringing everything they had to bear, thinking that where they’d gone quietly before, they needed to arrive loudly.
This was the Unreality. Most-favored of the heinous Engines of Creation!
Andros laughed, rich baritone filling the room. Oh, he could well imagine that new Tr’ss T’aa, sitting in his warship, impressive scaly brow furled as he tried to comprehend how such a vast and mighty force as he’d brought had failed to destroy an ‘obviously’ lesser species!
Difficult to imagine, yes, impossible, even, when they’d been conquering the weird and implausible that grew up into the Shattered Domains like twisted flowers for longer than the M’Zahdi Hesh had been feasting on the fattened lamb that was this plane.
That was the Tr’ss’ mistake. Thinking that the Unreal Universe was no different than the Blasted Plane of Paraz-Doual, or the Whispering Sleek. But even still, even though the attempt had failed because of a simple failure to consider the nature of the enemy in its fullness, the scope of that invasion was beyond comprehension!
Andros clenched his fists so tight that fingernails dug deep into flesh. That Tr’ss … oh, that one was mighty. Legendary! To accomplish as he had done, to reforge their Shattered Domain –which, when he’d been Tr’ss, had been no larger than … at best … a solar system and a half- into an entire Galaxy, a massive, spearheaded Galaxy with which that Bruushian Overlord had stabbed the Unreality.
Vision beyond madness! They must’ve fallen across the Domains like locusts, crushing and killing anything and everyone, from those they’d been allied with to those who were too powerful to consider. All to build a single, galaxy-sized warship.
It should’ve been his accomplishment, but the world was the way it was.
Details on the actual invasion had been sparse in that AI, but with that damaged intellect’s discovery had come the realization that there had to be more out there, and so cautiously at first but then more brazenly when no one stopped his quest to acquire mostly useless warships from scavengers across Trinityspace, Andros hunted for signs. It’d taken too long –not to mention dealing with the kind of thoroughly disreputable fiends that willingly scavenged Trinity’s belongings- and had cost a King’s ransom, but here and there amidst the fifteen thousand ships he’d purchased …
More answers. Not many, not enough to slake this sudden thirst, but enough to provide hope, to have his scaly heart beating in his chest.
How close they’d come! It truly didn’t matter they’d failed! No. No. When you looked at the immensity of that War, the grandeur of the unknown Tr’ss’ vision, concepts like failure became immaterial.
Trinity had fought back like a wild thing, a frightened animal, throwing It’s own carefully hoarded prizes into the cavernous maw of Tannhauser’s Gate, pushing and pushing and pushing until it seemed –from what Andros could decipher- the whole of the Unreality had grown close to collapsing. So close. So close, and then … something had intervened. Something had stopped the war.
But not in the way such conflicts should be ended.
The greatest Bruushian war machine ever conceived had been beaten, pushed back even but not destroyed.
Andros dropped onto a couch, just … savoring the thought. The entire assembled might of a Galaxy-sized Bruushian Dominion was somewhere out there in the stars! Too tempting a fruit to turn down.
Which had to be Trinity’s intention. Andros tipped an imaginary hat to the nefarious machine mind, for though the data concerning Tannhauser’s Gate –not to mention much of Garth Nickels’ history- had come from Offworld sources inimical to the machine mind or through the aforementioned careful digging through lost AI minds, only a fool would dismiss the very real fact that Trinity was devious.
While he’d been careful to the point of paranoia and was certain that he’d evaded all of the machine mind’s trips and traps, the Bruush had no room for doubt in him: everything he’d discovered had come from no other place that Trinity Itself.
It was trying to lure him out. Where trapping him had failed, now It used the most delicious lure of all.
Had Trinity not used similar tactics already, it was entirely possible he’d’ve fallen for it.
But not this time, not this lizard.
Which was why he’d risked everything by filling Jordan Bishop with more than the man had asked for, more than he’d paid for, more than he’d ever dreamed of in the most lurid of his fevered revenge-dreams.
Determination glinted in Andros’ eyes. Trinity didn’t destroy what could be of use. All those in true power knew of Trinity’s strange and sometimes baffling habit of acquiring and keeping things that were better off killed. There was no way of knowing the kinds of things Trinity had in It’s zoo, but if It was still after the only Bruush to remain free of capture, that which It held had to be of equal valu
e. Except by now It had to know there was nothing more useful than the Bruush. The mutable, scaly flesh of the Bruush was valuable beyond comprehension. When gene witch factories were at full production, when flesh was available in a never-ending organic stream, when the enemy pushed and shoved and never gave up … the Bruush were brutal, unstoppable, uncompromising.
A single gene witch could –with the right ingredients and a little creativity- turn an entire world on its ear in a week.
Trinity would never throw away such power, not even if It had no way of properly defeating them or of even using them. It’d hoard what It could, against ‘some time’ in the future.
“And I know,” Andros hissed, “I know it in my bones. Once Jordan is done tilting at windmills, he will help me find my people. And he will lead me to them.”
One of the silent servitors along the wall stepped forward to whisper in his ear.
“Well, now, really. This is incomprehensible.” Andros stared at the servitor thoughtfully. “Are you certain?”
The servitor insisted that yes, there was a call waiting to be received, and that yes, it was Emile Voss.
Andros Medellos flicked a hand that sent the servitor scurrying back to her post at the wall. Another gesture brought a viewscreen up out of the floor, and a third gesture brought it to life, displaying the fat, odious and irrefutably ugly Emile Voss. The Bruushian gazed at the be-warted, triple-chinned accumulation of guts and chewed on the fact that there were just some things that even his mastery of genetics could not affect.
Nor, in this case, would he want to. Not for all the money in the Universe.
Still and all, it was best to keep up pretenses. For all that Emile was a grotesque, he was still one half of the third largest Conglomerate in Trinityspace and Andros did use Voss_Uderhell to ship most of his belongings to and fro. The old lizard bowed from the waist. “What a surprise, Emile.”
“You are a difficult man to track down, Andros.” Emile admitted appreciatively. If more of the illuminati of Trinityspace took pains to be less visible, they would’ve all been better off.