Dark Iron King Volume I: Thy King's Will Be Done (Unreal Universe Book 1)

by Lee Bond

  Now? Now Nickels needed to die, and die quickly.

  Garth Nickels had to die, oh yes he did.

  The sooner, the better.

  21. Of Strange Growing Things, Spreading Tendrils and Hitchhikers across the Universe

  “And how are we feeling today?” Andros asked his patient, who was currently bent over a large plate of food, shoveling whatever was within range crudely into his mouth.

  Jordan Bishop, bald-headed, skull, upper chest and arms studded with implant ports, ignored his cheery ‘host’.

  He couldn’t bear being near his long-time friend any longer; the honey-tongued man triggered some kind of … mammalian response, some kind of emotion he’d never felt before, something that made him feel other emotions that were unwelcome.

  Fear?

  Maybe.

  Something like that, something bleak, something dark, spiraling through him. Whatever the feeling was, all Jordan knew was that he was ill at ease in Andros’ presence and did all he could to keep their time together as short as possible. He knew Andros was amused by the unspoken desire to keep his distance, but didn’t care; when every other part of him felt like lightning trapped in a bottle, keeping that sensation at arm’s length was the only course of action.

  “Hungry.” Jordan said around a mouthful of meat. He laughed at the time he’d eaten delicately from a plateful of Skrran proteins, acting as pretentious as he’d ever been in his life, explaining the whys and wherefores to a disinterested Spur. Well, Jordan thought as he wolfed down another handful, times have changed. “Always hungry.”

  “Your metabolism is currently overcharged.” Andros consulted a handheld reader twinned to Jordan’s many and various augments. Everything was fine. So far. Hopefully they were past the worst. It was unlikely Bishop could –or would want to- survive another complete genetic meltdown. “To assist with the healing.”

  “I thought you gave me advanced healing.” Jordan washed the food down with a healthy pull of water then bent back to feeding the cavernous maw in his belly. “From some Offworld culture. The Venebians, wasn’t it?”

  “Indeed, Jordan, I did just that, and it took a great deal of effort, more than your tiny human mind can possibly hope to appreciate.” And that was no lie: Andros would no more explain his procedures to Jordan than Jordan would outline the methodology behind controlling his might Conglomerate.

  It was no accident they were now further away from Trinity’s core than they had ever been, and all because of what Jordan Bishop wanted to become; many of the chemicals, nutrients and machinery keeping Jordan alive long enough for the implants, enhancements and augments to mesh together in one paltry body were strictly monitored by the machine mind’s frustratingly diligent agents. Any one of the tricks used to keep Bishop going was enough to bring the full brunt of Trinity’s displeasure down on their heads. By virtue of the warrior-God Bishop sought to become. Andros had used –was using- dozens and dozens.

  Now that It had been on hand for both a failed Visitation and an Incursion, the machine mind undoubtedly possessed all It needed to hunt a single, hidden Bruush down with all due alacrity. Andros was no fool, not any longer. Trinity was destined to come knocking again, and the effort it was taking to keep Jordan Bishop stitched together at the seams was making that moment more and more likely.

  This time, though, It wouldn’t play coy. It would come with all It could bring to bear, for the leader of Humanity was nothing if not capable of learning from past mistakes.

  There was every chance that this restructuring would be the last one, and for more reasons than avoiding capture or death.

  Jordan snapped his fingers and one of the waiting attendants scurried forward with another plate of food, neatly whisking away the empty dishes with smooth fluidity. Being a ‘survivor’ of Andros’ techniques, the ex-Conglomerate head easily recognized signs of Medellos’ brand of manipulation. He shrugged and dug in. His stomach was a black hole, a never-ending, perpetually gnawing thing that needed more food than he’d ever imagined he could eat.

  “When,” Jordan started when he was capable of slowing down enough to frame a proper question, “when will I stop needing to eat like this? It’s undignified.”

  “Your body,” Andros sat down, mindful of the ‘splash zone’ surrounding Jordan and his indelicate eating style, “is home to over a hundred separate genetic modifications, Jordan, some from Offworld DNA so, well, so alien that it is quite frankly a miracle you are alive. All of these things require time to achieve stability. Could I speed the results up in a lab, as I have done on more than one occasion with you thus far? Certainly. But after our last … session … it became apparent to me that we must use other methods, as always.”

  Jordan snorted, regretting it immediately as he choked on a chunk of carrot. He’d torn that room to pieces in anguished ire at being treated like one of the poor miserable souls he himself had ordered tested, changed, and altered in one BishopCo laboratory or another. Torn that room and all the machinery to shreds with his bare hands, reveling in the power coursing through his veins the whole while. Afterwards, he’d dropped like a poleaxed steer from having pushed his new body beyond safe limits.

  But he now possessed such power!

  It was safe to say that Jordan Bishop now had a better understanding of why people disliked being experimented upon. Their reactions –once considered childish or, at the very least, unnecessary- made a whole world of sense, now.

  “I suppose I should apologize for that.” Jordan said listlessly when he was able. He wasn’t sorry for the destruction. He was exhilarated by it, couldn’t wait to cause such mayhem again and again, and worse still after that.

  And all on Garth Nickels. The damned caveman from the dawn of time. People said it all the time and rarely had the wherewithal to make their claims come true, but Jordan Bishop swore that Garth Nickels’ suffering truly would be legendary.

  Andros waved a hand. “No matter. When we are done, you and I, this Clinic will be moving. Now there is one less room to pack up.”

  “If you say so.” Jordan bent back to the task of feeding the whirling maelstrom of hunger inside his body, awareness dwindling down to the plate of food in front of him to the exclusion of all else.

  Andros could not help but admit to a small feeling of perverse satisfaction at the beast Jordan had become, now that the Bishop Line’s thirty thousand year secret of purity had been revealed to him; during the … unzipping … process, wherein he’d cracked the bothersome NorthAMC man’s entire body down to atoms, the truth of that mystery had become clear.

  Clones.

  Or, more specifically, beings grown from a vast and carefully maintained sperm sample collection, most likely from the very first Bishop, with small, unremarkable tweaks here and there to change basic things like sex, eye color, hair color, nothing that would draw attention to the Bishops. Nothing that would pique Trinity’s ire. Andros hungered to lay hands on whatever tech the Bishops had been using to keep themselves so genetically pure, but there was little point in pressing Jordan for its whereabouts; the ex-CO would keep that to himself until the day he died, either wilfully or through genetic manipulation, most likely dying before anything important could be revealed. And, given the destruction of BishopCo’s headquarters, the more likely thing was that the mysterious machinery had been destroyed along with the rest.

  Andros turned his attention back to his handheld reader for a moment. Jordan Bishop’s DNA was a wonderful thing, a hearkening back to when Humanity had been at its most prolific, it’s most powerful, it’s most … ingenious, whereas his peers, who claimed to have the same strain of purity to their genetic matrices did not. Trace a random man or woman’s genealogy back far enough and Andros knew you would find a hundred years, two hundred years, a thousand years of altered DNA, of mongrelized tissue, of bastardized essence.

  That was what thirty thousand years interspersed with tech-crushing, existence-destroying Dark Ages brought to Humanity.

 
All save the Bishop Line. The Bishops were and always had been the conquerors they were because they came –whether they knew it or not- from the most spectacular time in history. It seemed a War –discovered entirely by accident as he’d begun the process of … fitting in to his new role so long ago- had very nearly destroyed the Earth just over thirty thousand years ago. The brilliance that was Mankind had risen to the challenge, adapting and changing and learning how to cope with whatever Offworld invaders had come knocking on their doorstep, managing not only to survive, but thrive.

  Even back then –and this was all public record, verified in one way or another by Trinity Itself- the Bishops had been a force to be reckoned with, striding boldly to the forefront of fresh new interstellar exploration, recklessly using the first Quantum Tunnel to launch from their old planet in order to land on worlds destined to be populated by the old generation ships that’d taken to the skies during the Exodus Wars.

  And there was only one way that such a thing could come to pass.

  Trinity Itself. The machine mind that so obviously loathed Jordan Bishop was responsible for ensuring that he’d been born in the first place. No other thing made any sense.

  Realizing that was something that’d gripped Andros’ intellectual curiosity firmly.

  What was so special about the Bishop Line?

  Andros watched Jordan cram more food into his mouth, eyes glittering thoughtfully. With all that’d been revealed thanks to Jordan’s immaculately preserved flesh, with how perseverant Trinity must’ve been in keeping the line untouched and undamaged, a most … daring plan had formed in the ancient Tr’ss T’aa’s cunning reptilian mind.

  Whatever Bishop’s relationship to Trinity was, that relationship was now his to exploit, and for a very personal reason.

  With the spot where the Visitation had happened permanently under watch, with where the Incursion had failed and locked away behind a Cordon node generator, there was no way Andros Medellos, once called Tr’ss T’aa Nihaaq S’strss, could get what he wanted more than anything. Unless…

  Unless that which Jordan Bishop was becoming could be turned to a nobler goal: that of enabling a trapped Bruushian Overlord to return Home.

  Yes, Jordan Bishop would –all while believing he hunted Garth Nickels, the so-called caveman down where he hid- in truth be digging, digging, digging into Trinity’s secrets, working tirelessly to provide his new benefactor with truths as to where the Incursion point was hidden. And, if an ancient Bruush was lucky to the point of miracles, access to tech powerful enough to burrow Home.

  He was sick to death of pale, wretched beasts wriggling in front of him like larva. With his brethren somewhere here within Trinityspace, accessible in ways never before imagined… the lure was too powerful to resist. No matter how much he admired Jordan, some things could not be ignored.

  Andros watched the once most powerful man in the Universe bite one of his fingers hard enough to draw blood, watched on as the man ignored the bloody wound in favor of another mouthful of food.

  Poor Jordan Bishop.

  If Andros was capable of feeling the human emotions he so adroitly mimicked, he’d feel sorry for the man.

  Andros thumbed a command protocol on his handheld and removed himself from the table as soon as Jordan’s arms locked themselves in place.

  “What … what’s happening?” Jordan gasped, watching the muscles in his arms and hands ripple of their own accord. His veins … oh his veins were on fire, a burning agony of molten anguish that spread quickly to the nerves. He wanted … he wanted to scream but couldn’t; his mouth was no longer his to control.

  Andros leaned in to take a closer look at the transformation. “A test, Jordan. To see if you can survive the rigors of the journey ahead.”

  Jordan watched as the rippling, wriggling things beneath his skin split through, tore their way free of their fleshy prison. His mind boggled and gaped and wanted to run into the furthest corners of his thoughts as his arms began growing in strange ways, ways he knew he had not asked for Andros to manufacture. Every inch of skin was ripping open to reveal what lay beneath.

  Finally, he was allowed to howl, and the howl that escaped his tortured lips blew the lights in the cafeteria out like candles in the wind.

  ***

  Tendreel Salingh was a busy spore these days. Tech Services had finally managed to identify the weird light pulses being broadcast against the skein of the solar system-enveloping shield as Morse code, a form of communication very nearly old as time itself; an Historical Adjutant on loan from Trinity was responsible for making the connection, and now everyone in Tech Services was working overtime to decode the dots and dashes into something that made sense.

  Tendreel was nominally in charge of decoding the Morse sequences because she’d already proven herself adept at that sort of thing, but … her innate intuition wasn’t coming up with any ready solutions. The Adjutant, well aware of what it was that Mycogenes were capable of, suggested that it was likely that the SpecSer team responsible for beaming the Morse Code messages to their location had had some contact with Garth Nickels, survivor of a thirty thousand year cryosleep, and were therefore employing some form of encryption too hoary for an AI to even identify.

  The Myco had almost laughed at the Historical Adjutant’s smug supposition and had very nearly told the foolish woman that Garth had never slept one single minute in cryogenic suspension. It’d been a close thing, and mostly because Commander Aleksander had been present in the room, watching her terribly closely; she’d felt his eyes on her, had tasted the sudden surge of electric hot fear over secrets close to being revealed.

  It hadn’t been until later, when she’d looked up just what an Historical Adjutant actually did that Tendreel appreciated Commander Aleksander’s fear. Adjutants were the next-most powerful individuals in the Universe, a step below Enforcers only in that they didn’t wear those wonderful Suits of armor. Happily, the Adjutant was gone, whisked away on some new task, hopefully very far away from Mycos prying into things better left alone.

  Tendreel fidgeted in front of the Q-Comm screen, one hand and one set of eyes continuing to work on the problem of the Morse Code sequence she’d taken with her to her private quarters, the other set of eyes waiting patiently.

  Someone, a man, if Tendreel’s ability to guess the sexual identity of men and women had resumed working properly after she’d mistakenly –and painfully awkwardly- incorrectly assumed the gender of the Adjutant, appeared on the screen.

  This man, too, was dressed in the brilliant puce of Tenerek’s police force. And like the last man she’d spoken to a quarter of an hour ago, appeared very harassed. The Myco had data requests sent out to her systems to accumulate information on what, precisely, was happening on Tenerek, but because she was using non-AI variants tasked to decrypting Garth Nickels’ life to gain this Intel, Tendreel rather suspected she’d learn the Specter’s true motive well before she learned anything important about the planet.

  “Hello, yes, er, what?” Morali wasn’t sure what he was looking at. He looked over his shoulder to see if he could ask someone who’d already taken a peek what in the hell was going on, but they were all busy trying to get a handle on the … situation.

  Sadly, they were not. Things were at an all-time low.

  “My name is Tendreel Salingh…”

  “What, er, what are you?” Morali interrupted. Now that the barely moving thing had spoken, the police officer couldn’t take his eyes off it.

  It was always the same, no matter who she spoke to. Trinity needed to get Its act together when it came to truly Offworld species coming into contact with incredibly sheltered specimens of Humanity. Why, there were still people aboard her particular SpecSer vessel that acted strangely in her presence, and Special Services was home to more Offworld representatives than any other branch of … of anything!

  “My name,” Tendreel began, voice full of exasperation, “is Tendreel Salingh. I am a Mycogene-Alzant. I am a …”

/>   “Talking mushroom?” Morali couldn’t help himself. He looked over his shoulder again, hoping to catch Ferdinale or even bitchy Alsinza’s eye, but they had their eyes trained on their screens. This was turning into an all right assignment. With everything that was going on, a small bit of comic relief was just what the doctor ordered.

  Morali caught a glint of ire in the talking mushroom’s many eyes, then reconsidered his attitude; whoever this … Tendreel Salingh was, it … she? Maybe a she … she had been on an open Q-Comm line for more than an hour. That was serious money. Or connections. Or both.

  Morali perked up at the thought of that. Maybe they could get some outside help. Of course, he’d have to run it up the chain, but still … worth the shot.

  “I … I apologize, Tendreel Salingh.” Morali let loose with his best ‘relax, everything is ok’ smile that he used so often on the dissidents. It didn’t work, but the officer forged on ahead. “We … it’s difficult on Tenerek right now. We’re having some problems.”

  “I’m aware.” Tendreel mimicked Aleksander’s tone when he said something that should mean he was sorry about someone’s own issues but really meant the exact opposite. If Morali’s flinch meant anything, she’d succeeded. “My time is precious and even more limited. I am a Special Services Technical Expert and I need your assistance.”

  A zing of excitement ran through him. Special Services! Just the organization to help! The police officer cautioned himself to be as helpful and as polite as possible moving forward. He surreptitiously tapped the ‘record’ button on the console, though, because, really, no one would believe he’d spoken to a talking mushroom. That was also a legendary SpecSer. “How can I be of assistance?”

  “I,” Tendreel called the names to mind, pleased at the sudden change in attitude, “am looking for either Jerszak Senfell, Seteven Smith, Rikvell Rawk or … Gary Poorfowl.” The Myco’s trailed off with some puzzlement; Morali the Tenerekian police officer’s face had gone from eager to some sort of dark distrust by the time she’d gotten to the second name.