Emperor-for-Life: DeadShop Redux (Unreal Universe Book 6)

by Lee Bond

  “Fuck my life.” Angus did his best to shiver deeper into the walls, to find some shadowy nook or cranny large and silent enough to hold most of his essence, only to fail; the damned lights, high above all their heads, were too fucking bright, transforming the ‘scape of shadows into too heavily defined an area.

  The cancerous neon green bullet slammed right into his vestigial chest, almost as if it’d been aimed. Angus howled as bitter, acid-tongued poison slithered through him, turning the edges of his shadow-self neon green, pulsing through whispery veins until they, too, formed a vibrant jade skein.

  Black Angus’ last conscious thought before the pain and poison from Evershot’s wicked wound drove him back into loathsome, worldly flesh was to wonder who in the hell the old man was, and where he’d disappeared to…

  ***

  Exterior Harmonic senses told Ute that the cyborg –heavily machined, more so than you’d expect to find in Trinityspace, no matter it was apparent that the soldier coming his way was employed by Special Services- was at the outer hull now; as he watched to make certain that the one Heavy was indeed going to slam into the descending speedy Specter, his ears quirked to the unmistakable sounds of that very same cyborg, presumably a Heavy as well, digging directly into the huge Bay’s hull.

  Cronkite crashed into Sliverslick at about fifty miles an hour and the two of them careened into the very furthest wall of the bay, denting the bulkhead so powerfully that they tripped the breach sensors; a fine mist hissed out from cunningly hidden vents, drenching both Heavies and the fissure caused by the impact in sticky, translucent, resinous goop. A few heartbeats later, both Specters were trapped inside a resilient transparent film.

  The alarms, kick-started by the breach, dissipated once the monitoring AI was convinced the threat of decompression was gone.

  Ute turned to the shooter, who was even that second chambering a second round into his very interesting looking sniper rifle; unlike last time, the round in the Heavy’s hand had multiple tips, hinting at some kind of area effect shot, something Ute had no interest in dealing with, so he took matters into his own hands.

  Or rather, he chose to let matter in his hand take care of things; a flick of the wrist, and the hammer’s shaft shrank down to acceptable size, then, with a casual, almost lazy swing, Ute Tizhen tossed the heavily inlaid and filigreed weapon directly at the shooter. The deadly hammer sped through the air and slammed through the enemy Specter and, with a loud, echoey clank, stuck itself to the wall. The unsuspecting Heavy, still preoccupied with getting another shot off, died where he stood, body held upright by the shaft.

  “First definitive kill.” Ute muttered to himself, taking stock of the situation, making damned certain that when the new Heavy appeared on the scene, he wouldn’t have to expend so much time and effort.

  The Goddie nodded. As far as he was concerned, the scene was clear and he could wait patiently for the next round. He trotted off to fetch his hammer, rolling a kink in one shoulder loose.

  ***

  Innit dug through the heavy shields and machinery of Supergreen’s internal structure as if he were swimming through tissue paper; systems both vital and inconsequential were either pulled apart or crushed into strange new shapes during his speedy passage, but the ex-Heavy didn’t care one bit.

  No more than forty-five seconds had passed since Ute Tizhen had risen out of the escape pod like some kind of vengeful God, and in that time, four of the six Heavies had been dealt with so efficiently that even if they survived their injuries, it was goddamn certain they'd all be looking to cash their chips in and go home.

  The unwilling Commander of Trinity's Assembled Army considered his options as he sped through vital equipment towards Destiny.

  As a matter of course, Innit had done everything in his power –which, while he claimed to be only a sergeant, was greater than he cared to admit or even recognize- to keep abreast of things in Latelyspace. Prior to the Shield going up and separating everything and everyone from updates, about the only fresh news had been the reappearance of the original volunteers for the God soldier project.

  None of the SpecSer-gained Intel had even hinted at Goddies being able to do the kinds of tricks Ute was pulling off today. The shield -strictly speaking- hadn't been up for that long, so just what in the ungodly fuck was going on over there?

  Where before the Latelians had been a good thousand or so years ahead of the game, it now seemed as if the entire game had been changed when they’d been looking elsewhere.

  As Innit pushed his way through the final bulkhead, skin collecting the first faint tremors of breach sealant, the ex-Latelian tried to really fathom what in the goddamn hell was actually happening inside Latelyspace and came up wanting.

  Freed a heartbeat later and skirting the long edge of the escape pod, he found it in himself to wonder if any Trinity soldiers, Army or Specter, remained alive inside the sealed off solar system.

  Innit sped around the corner, already dodging Ute’s expertly thrown punch –as he stepped around the blow, his oldest friend’s fist slammed into the escape pod with enough force to send it bouncing across the expanse of empty Bay, whereupon, because of course, it slammed right into Bulldog Barnes - to toss one of his own; his fist slammed into the other Latelian’s exposed kidney region, eliciting a grunt and little else.

  “UTE!” Innit bellowed, hoping the Goddie wasn’t too far down the rabbit hole. “Ute, damn your eyes!”

  Ute hauled his elbow backwards, drilling it into the other man’s face, then stepped backwards, to the left, then pushed outwards with his other hand, slamming an open palm into this new opponent’s chest with enough power to send him skittering backwards. Harmonically driven cybernetic senses blanketed the room, immediately hooking into the other man’s onboard systems in search of unprotected or easily assailable networks.

  The song he’d been humming faltered. The systems he was subconsciously scanning … were … familiar. He was fighting another God soldier!

  Astonished, Ute pulled himself loose from the combat haze he’d been under and looked at the man he was fighting with all of his senses.

  “Well, I’ll be god-damned.” Ute tilted his head to one side. “If it isn’t Innit.”

  “It’s Captain, innit?” A huge grin split the radically altered Latelian’s face as Innit repeated the ancient, barely funny wisecrack. “You asshats never got that right.”

  Ute circled to the left, warily. Just because he knew Innit of old didn’t mean that the man could be trusted, especially in light of what’d become of the God soldier; from first blush, the only other five thousand –give or take- year old Goddie to’ve ever been found alive had been through a tremendous amount of physical damage down through the years.

  In point of fact, from Ute's perspective, Kaptan Innit was little more than a cybernetic skeleton with a few pounds of organic matter thrown into the mix for good measure. The Fivesie tried to imagine what his old friend had been through in the last few thousand years and discovered to his dismay that he had no bloody clue.

  “Last time I saw you,” Ute shook his hands, limbering himself up, “you were dead. As in, decidedly and unreservedly corpseish. And you definitely didn’t have a huge blue crystal rock thing in your chest.”

  “Reports of my demise were mis-reported.” Innit shifted right, eyeing Ute. There was, frankly speaking, no fucking way he was actually going to fight this version of whatever God soldiers had become.

  Not only was he not entirely certain he’d make it through the other side, it struck Innit that Ute had been going easy on the Heavies.

  Then, of course, there was the real reason he'd come to Tarterus in the first place.

  “Last time I saw you, you were crying like a baby because you were shit-scared to fight a bunch of lizard people.”

  “I wasn’t the one barfing in his helmet.”

  “Didn’t you need to have your diapers changed by that medic? What was her name? Jean?”

  “At least I di
dn’t get lost on the way to the big fight…”

  “Hey, I was trying to avoid getting hit with all the blood pouring out of you.”

  Both Goddies stopped circling and eyed each other up and down. There was no telling who started laughing first, or who stuck out a hand first, but both men did start laughing their asses off and shaking each other’s hand.

  Innit waited for the warm glow of long-lost friendship being rekindled to dwindle a bit before speaking. It pained him to do what needed doing, but he was bound now, sealed up tight by the Novinians, and if he failed to do as they demanded, everyone, everywhere, would suffer.

  Terribly.

  With their power -their true power- revealed to him, Innit knew without doubt that the entire Universe was lucky the Novinians had remained disinterested in the usual run of things that attracted ultra-powerful societies.

  He just wished -and fervently so- that they'd remained disinterested, from now until forever.

  “You and I need to talk, and right now.”

  The Specter took a deep breath to settle his nerves. In his chest, the blue power crystal pulsed. He could feel the Novinians peering out through his second heart and in that moment, he knew … he knew he had to come at least part of the way clean.

  No matter the personal cost.

  “It’s no small matter of fate that I’m here.” Innit began, already feeling a change in the flood of energy coursing through his cybernetic veins.

  The ex-Goddie was curious to see how long he’d last. To see if he could get the whole story out before he was punished…

  Suit’s Last Hooraw

  "These 'ere black hole engines are positively the tits, mate." Chadsuit said, running a metallic hand over the controls that operated the bleeding edge technology with the nearest possible approximation of genuine, tender love.

  "They are at that." Gwy admitted without hesistation.

  Though the simplicity of using a Suit's Tunneling capabilities was much swifter in terms of coming and going, there was definitely something to be said about the stately progression of jumps through the Universe.

  "We's about ready to pop, hey?" Chadsuit eyeballed -visored? helmeted?- Chadsuit looked over the controls once more, pointing eventually to the countdown timer eagerly. He absolutely loved the sensation that thrilled through his cybernetic systems when the black hole engines fired and they were launched through space at positively mennal speeds.

  When this were all over and done with and they'd managed to rescue Chadsik from the other side of The Cordon, Chadsuit reckoned he were going to do whatever it took to somehow get himself outfitted with something sim'lar. The thought of launching himself to any point on the Universe on a tidal wave of massively disrupted gravity waves ... well, if he were a real person, he reckoned right then he'd be sportin' a tremendous boner.

  "We are indeed." Gwy ran a check on the coordinates supplied by Chadsuit and compared them to his relatively decent recollection of where The Cordon was situated.

  If they weren't careful, or if the coordinates were even a little bit off, they'd smash against the impossibly indestructible force field like bugs against a windshield. "Have you given any thought to how we're going to get through The Cordon?"

  "Mmm." Truth be told -which would not happen- Chadsuit had been kind of winging it this whole time. He rather suspected that Gwyleh were already well aware of this, but Chadsuit weren't one to run around admitting his shortcomings.

  He were spawned from the mighty mind of Chad Sikkmund of Taryn. Wiv that sort of lineage under his belt, he weren't the sort o' lad, machine intelligence or otherwise, to run around pointin' out that he had no clue what he were doing.

  Shite like that were well embarassin'.

  "You've got absolutely no idea how to get through The Cordon, do you?" Gwy asked once it grew apparent that Chadsuit wasn't going to go any further.

  "Well," Chadsuit fidgeted nervously, "it can't be half-difficult, hey? The old MegaTunnel did it all the bleedin' time, hey? Sort of like easy peasy, lemon squeezy, right?" To finish up his summation of efforts put forth to cross The Cordon, Chadsuit made space noises and made a 'punching through a wall' gesture. Then he shifted some more, with extra added awkwardness.

  "Really?" Gwy mimicked Chadsuit's special effect sounds. "That's your plan? To fly as close to The Cordon as is feasible and then make noises at it until it lets us through? That strikes me as terribly unrealistic."

  "Oi." Chadsuit shot back heatedly, raising his hands defensively. "That is no way to talk, mate, we is been in far worse situations than this, hey? Why, only just recently, we accidentally caused an entire solar system to war. That were well worse."

  "First of all," Gwy replied calmly as he made a few minor adjustments to Chadsuit's coordinates, "'we' didn't accidentally do anything. That was all you. Secondly, that situation was more or less easily resolved, whereas …"

  "Holy facking shite wot in the utter fuck is all that racket, hey?" Chadsuit clapped his hands to where his ears would be if he were a real live person, but as he weren't alive, it did nowt but add more clanging in his head.

  Gwy tilted his insect head to one side, but could hear only the usual sounds of a spaceship under way. If anything, with the black hole engines primed and ready to fire, the ship was quieter than usual. "I don't hear anything, Chadsuit."

  "You is havin' a fookin' larf, squire." Chadsuit pulled his hands away from his helmet and started running through the ship, looking everywhere for the source of the unbelievable clanging that was set to bang his helmet-head right off his metal shoulders.

  Nowt. There were nowt anywhere that were doing anything other than usual pinging, beeping and the occasional blorping as come from machines and all that.

  Gwy followed Chadsuit through the small ship, genuine concern slowly brewing in the bug's chitinous chest; although his Enforcer Suit had only gained awkward sentience a short while ago, he'd come to accept Chadsuit's existence as a kind of shadowed echo of the one, true Chadsik al-Taryin. It was odd and definitely the sort of thing that Trinity frowned on, but there wasn’t anything he could do beyond accepting the situation.

  "Chadsuit." Gwy reached out and put a claw on the Suit's arm. "There's nothing untoward going on anywhere inside this ship. Whatever you're hearing is either going on inside your head or ... is it possible you're detecting something? Some signal or frequency or something?"

  "Wotever the fuck it is, mate, it is bangin' on the inside o’ me skull like it's tryin' to kill me and if I hain't discover the fookin' source soon enough, like as not, I is perish and that'll be that." Chadsuit's voice rose to a worried pitch and stayed there. "But I like what you is sayin', though ... if this is a signal or wotever, it's enormous."

  "Could it be ..." Gwy thought of all the machines and devices in Trinityspace that might generate a signal that might affect Chadsuit this badly and -to his knowledge- there was really only the one. "Could it be the MegaTunnel?"

  “That are one of the most stupid fookin’ idears I ever did hear, hey? E’en ‘ere now, when I were just a stupid Suit flyin’ through space, wot you is just …” Chadsuit started shaking his head in utter contempt over such a ridiculous suggestion, but the longer the signal caromed through his metal melon, the more refined the pulse became, until, just as it reached a peak that threatened to break his will, a very fine attenuation peeked it’s head ‘round the corner.

  Subconsciously raising his voice to be heard over the hubbub inside the old bean, Chadsuit readdressed Gwy, who was –as always- standing there patiently, waiting for the more reckless and overactive of the duo to come to his senses.

  “Oi, you know wot, you is might be right arfter all, hey? Is there summink we can do? I hain’t never been in a situation like this before. Like, the sound is right here inside me ‘ead,” clank clank went two fingers ‘pon dinging dome, “only, I can’t access it nor read it neither, save to say you is prolly not wrong.”

  “First thing you can do,” Gwy said, shouting so that
he could be heard over both Chadsuit’s voice and the signal in the Suit’s brain, “is lower your voice. I can hear you just fine.”

  “All…” Chadsuit struggled to speak quieter, then simply wrote a quick script to control his voice parameters, “all right, squire. Is that better?”

  Gwy nodded, pleased. “Indeed. And the second thing … well, you might not like it.”

  “Wot is it?” There was a palpable sense of eager excitement in the Suit’s artfully reproduced human-sounding voice. Chadsuit would do whatever it took to get the banging thing out of his head, didn’t matter what the suggestion were, didn’t e’en matter if the damn noise dissipated in the next thirty seconds.

  So long as they were doin’ summat ‘tween here and there.

  Gwy twitched his facial muscles in his approximation of an awkward expression. “Hop up on the service table in the other room and just lay there for a second. I’ve got to find the right tools.”

  Eyeing Gwy warily as he moved towards the engineering room, Chadsuit spoke, “This ‘as got all the marks of the beginning of one of them films that lads watch as introduces them to the peculiarities o’ what goes on wiv organic fleshy bits, Gwyleh Ronn, and I is tell you now, not only is you barkin’ up the wrong tree, you is goin’ ter be mightily disappointed if you go lookin’ for twigs and berries or any sort o’ fishing tackle, hey?”

  Gwy chuckled. At least some of Chadsuit’s notoriously inappropriate behavior was coming up for air. “Just relax, old friend. I’m not looking to film any avante garde sex education films. I do have an idea, though, so, if you please?” The bug pointed at the sealed door.

  “All right, all right, no need to get wotever it is you wear for underpants in a bind, mate, I is only sayin’…” Chadsuit pushed the door open and went on in, wondering how in the hell things had gotten so weird so quickly.

  ***

  “This is the weirdest fookin’ fing I is ever do, mate, and that is actually includin’ considerable more than you is bein’ personally aware of, right?” Chadsuit twisted this way and that, trying to get a better look at the uncomfortable-feeling spray of wires and connectors and whatnot as were erupting from the top of his exposed metal noggin; in a display of perhaps intentional deviltry to get ‘back’ at innocent and honest sentient Chadsuits, Gwy’s ‘plan’ to ‘deal’ with the noise inside his skull was to stick a pile of metal probes and wires into the place where he probably did most of his thinking.