by Lee
There was nothing else to do. He –his company, a company as old as the stars, a company that’d greeted weary colonists with smiling faces and open stores- was more vulnerable than ever been before. Without the AI systems buried deep inside each of those five buildings running things, even the smallest, most pathetic Conglomerate could waltz in and start taking a peek at things. Bigger companies, so-called ‘peers’ like Voss_Uderhell and Tynedale/Fujihara, why, Jordan would bet his personal assets that their troops were already in flight.
Jordan waved a hand and the ever-increasing plague of alarms and notifications ceased. He sighed into the silence.
Not all was lost, of course. There were redundant AI machines seeded throughout his vast domain, hundreds of them, but each would require personal activation before they could be brought up to speed and merged into a new BishopCo network. That would be immensely time consuming, during which time, he’d be under constant assault by his detractors. Here on Trinity Prime, all that remained were basic structures and asset storage.
It was the asset storage that Bishop needed to save. He raised a hand to slap a button.
“I don’t think so.” Gwyleh Ronn blew Jordan Bishop’s arm off at the shoulder.
High-grade military protocols booted up as soon as the weapon’s fire was detected. Gatling cannons opened fire once sophisticated tracking programs triangulated the location of the attack. Medbots were dispatched to Jordan’s location the very second the man’s vitals –monitored every second of every day- dipped low.
Gwyleh Ronn stood there, allowing his Suit to deflect the hard rounds pouring out at him from five –no, six- fully automated Gatling cannons that were better suited on tanks, or, better yet, airships. The Enforcer appreciated the overwhelming response as perhaps no one else could; as empathic as he was, Gwyleh knew, knew how terrified Jordan Bishop was of everything around him, how black his soul was, how consumed with exerting control the most powerful human being in Existence really was.
Bullets the size of a human’s hand bounced off his armor and flew around the room, shredding tens of thousands’ of years’ worth of priceless Exodus trinkets. Magazines from the Dawn of Mankind puffed into pulp. Eating plates with strange faces and even stranger logos shattered and cracked into porcelain shards. Toys of no discernible purpose erupted into plastic flinders. Artwork –some of it quite good, if merely human- caught fire and burned in their frames.
Gwyleh Ronn howled with laugher. Jordan Bishop’s mighty Conglomerate vessels had come to Empator-Tyrene. They had come and offered allegiance. They had come and offered his suffering brothers and sisters balm against the cruel tyranny that was Trinity’s Rule. In exchange, a chance to explore a small cross-sample of Empator-Tyrene citizens in an attempt to isolate the genes or sequences in their majestic Offworld DNA that’d given them the gift of true empathy, true telepathy, all without loss of self.
Oh yes, Bishop had come calling to the Empator-Tyrene’s door like a used vacuum salesman, and his brothers and sisters had eagerly accepted. Who wouldn’t? Jordan and his team of salesmen/soldiers were the first beings other than themselves that they’d ever spoken to. They couldn’t read their minds. They couldn’t feel their feelings. Talking to a human being had been like talking to a stone. Nothing but cherished silence.
And when the gene sequence proven specific to the Empator-Tyrene and not in any way cross-mutable to the Human Condition … well.
Payback, Gwyleh Ronn had heard during his travels as an Enforcer, payback was a bitch. It was why, in the end, he’d decided to allow Chadsik al-Taryin his colossal, fiendish damage. Trinity Itself was screaming in Gwyleh’s Suit, demanding to know what was going on, demanding that he hurry on with things and capture Naoko Kamagana before the mysterious entities working alongside Chadsik get away.
Gwyleh turned the communicator off. Jordan was staggering wanly to his feet, eyes comically wide as he surveyed the destruction of an Exodus collection that was to’ve been his method of fleeing the planet without emptying BishopCo coffers. The damage was total. There wasn’t a single thing left of a collection that’d taken a succession of Bishops thirty thousand years to acquire.
“Your medbots must be using illegal tech, Jordan Bishop, for your wound to’ve healed so well so quickly.” Gwyleh’s deep bass voice lapped at the walls and pulled the frantic human into the conversation.
Jordan grinned madly. The drugs in his system, administered by the medbot, were … were powerful. “Only the best. Direct from Medellos Medical. Healing factor cross-spliced from a half-dozen different Offworld species for maximum recovery. The man’s a genius. He hotwired the sequence to trip up an … a species ladder, working from an Offworld colony so alien even their breath is poisonous until finally, it works on Man.”
“That’s a violation.” Gwyleh Ronn tsked.
“Shouldn’t you,” Jordan reached out to steady himself on his desk and fell hard to the floor, smacking his head on the desk on the way down. He lay there, gasping for air. The Offworld drugs coursing through his veins took care of the damage and he righted himself once more. “Shouldn’t you be outside, dealing with my invaders?”
“In due time.” Gwyleh Ronn nodded.
“They’re causing incalculable damage to Trinity Prime!” Jordan struggled back to his feet, clenching his sole remaining fist in rage. “They are destroying the Birthplace of Humanity! You will do as you’re told! As Trinity commands!”
Gwyleh couldn’t help but chuckle again. It wasn’t something Empator-Tyrene’s had done on their own, it was a trick learned from Humans; when you’re telepathic and empathic, everyone around you knows when you find something funny. There’s no need to be crass enough to announce it. “What would your Dark Age Cabal friends think of you now?”
Jordan licked his lips and did his best not to eye the button that would send the AI spheres that held his asset connections into deep space. Gwyleh knew he’d been trying to hit the button. Paying it any heed before leaping towards it would only cause the Enforcer to destroy the desk. “They understand the need for self-preservation over everything else, Enforcer.”
A voice boomed into the room. “I am not fucking around, Gwyleh Ronn! You get out there and you deal with Chadsik al-Taryin right now!”
“Is … is that Trinity?” Jordan’s mind whirled and wheeled in the confines of his skull. The systemic AI sounded … frantic. Worried. Afraid. Never in his dealings with the powerful machine mind had he ever heard the AI sound anything but vaguely amused. Once or twice Trinity Itself had portrayed various stages of disappointment but never anything as provocative as fear. “What’s wrong with It?”
“There’s a lot of stuff going on that you don’t know about, Jordan.” Trinity glowered. “Do as you are commanded, Gwyleh Ronn.”
“I have unfinished business with Jordan Bishop, Trinity.”
“Ah. Yes. Your people. I should’ve realized. Very well. Shoot his other arm off and then get out there and for the love of God, destroy Chadsik al-Taryin. For preference, capture one of those weirdoes that he’s got with him. I suspect I know what they are if only because they’re avoiding all but the most sensitive of my scans. Do you understand?”
Gwyleh bowed. “By your command, Trinity.”
“Good.” The comm signal went dead.
Jordan raised his remaining hand in a half-hearted gesture of supplication. One of the laser cannon’s on Gwyleh Ronn’s Suit stuttered into life. As he passed out, Jordan watched his arm fall away to one side.
Gwyleh stood there, contemplating whether or not to disobey Trinity’s unspoken command that Jordan remain alive. Killing the man would free trillions upon trillions of living beings from the iron fist that he used. The Offworlder shook his head. No. Trinity wanted Bishop alive for some reason, and really, at the end of the day, Gwyleh liked being alive. It was why he was an Enforcer in the first place.
It was why he was the only Empator-Tyrene left in all of the Universe.
His Suit turned and flew
him through a wall, already plotting attack vectors to deal with the cybernetic assassin, Chadsik al-Taryin.
***
The two ‘Priests were visibly nervous and Chad knew why; they’d only just managed to verify that whatever trick Spur had been planning wasn’t going to happen any longer and now the very distinctive energy signature of an Enforcer Suit was bearing down on their location at reckless speed. Whatever wonky mojo the creepy little fellas were perpetrating on Naoko to keep her docile was still having an effect; this was good, as when the Electric Friars got all antsy in the pantsy, normal folk picked up on that psychic vibe and started off on their own ill-behaved foolishness. The last thing any of them needed right now was the sole reason for all these shenanigans getting it into her head to jump off the edge.
“All right, you lot,” Chad pointed one of his pale white fingers at one of the ‘Priests, snickering when the ancient cyborg holy man twitched, “Now you is tellin’ me why you is needin’ me to do this when you is obviously quite fuckin’ capable all on your own of kidnappin’ a silly twat.”
Naoko shifted. Vaguely aware she’d been insulted by Chad, she tried to tell him to mind his manners. The thought dissipated. The men holding her were … interesting. Naoko thought she could see numbers and symbols spilling off them like tiny electric insects, but every time she tried focusing, things changed. Changed into clashing, smashing gears and scythes and fuzz that –were she not being held in place with buzzing fingertips- threatened to push her to the ground.
The ‘Priest he’d singled out spoke, his voice harsh electric static buzzing against the loud backdrop of the pandemonium surrounding them. “We do not have time for this, Chadsik al-Taryin.”
Chad lit a cigarette. “We may not ‘ave time, my sonny Jim, but we is ‘avin this chinwag all the same.” He exhaled. My Lord he really did enjoy smoking. He jabbed the cigarette at the other CyberPriest. “You is thirty thousand years old. You is been ‘idin’ in plain sight for all that time. You is plottin’ the downfall of Existence an’ every fuckin’ fing that makes Life worth livin’. You is able to teleport an’ all manner of fings. An’, I might fuckin’ add, that fuckface as wot was on Hospitalis was quite the hander outer of asskickings. So why is you lot not doin’ the same?”
Chad made a big show of checking the time on a watch he wasn’t wearing. “We’ve got about five minutes. Take your time. I is not mindin’.”
The ‘Priests exchanged looks. Volumes of unspoken data passed between them, dimpling the fragile nature of the Unreality in which they lived. One of them sighed, broken glass over hot coals.
“Erg1 is …” Sine17 hesitated. “Erg1 is insane. We … we are not capable of waging proper war. We are capable of defending ourselves to the limit of our abilities, but we cannot engage. It is a design flaw. Even now, today, we did not engage the mercenaries and security teams directly. We waited for them to attack us. It is …”
Volt789 finished the sentence. “It is why we created you in the first place. To lead us. Where you command, so we follow.”
Chad couldn’t help himself. Laughter burst out of him, filling the heavens with utter hilarity. He laughed so hard he snorted, and coughed, and started spluttering. Momentarily afraid he’d choke to death from laughing so hard, Chad eventually found himself doubled over, hands on his knees, giggling and snorting. “Cor, ain’t that a kick in the fucking pants, hey? The Universe’s great nihilists, enemies of the Unreality and Reality alike, possessors of a warped Harmony capable of unspooling matter an’ energy and wotnot with a twitch of your will and you can’t do the one fuckin’ fing you want. No wonder you lot is mad as ‘atters.”
Sine jerked his head at the skyline. A pure white contrail split the bruised sky. “The Enforcer comes, Chadsik al-Taryin. We must flee.”
“Nah.” Chad continued smoking his cigarette. The confusion spilling out of the CyberPriests was enough to knock lesser men unconscious. Happily, he wasn’t lesser men. He was Chadsik al-fucking-Taryin. He was, for lack of a better word, a goddamn God. He explained this, finishing with, “You lot can all fuck off back to the underground. I is gonna deal wiv this silly Enforcer and then, when I is showin’ back up at your dank man-cave, you is explainin’ in very simple words why exactly we need this girl. You can use diagrams an’ pictures if you want. Orl right?”
The ‘Priests nodded. Permission given, they disappeared, Naoko in tow. The sparse sounds of FrancoBritish resistance from the floors beneath Chad’s feet. The assassin shook his head. That was one of the many problems with his brothers and sisters; they refused to give up the fight, even when it was fucking obvious that they were trying to tear down a brick wall with a piece of straw.
Chad looked around for something to lean on as the Enforcer made his final approach, frowning when he realized there wasn’t anything remotely suitable. He wondered if the armor-clad maniac would wait long enough for him to move things around so the scene could be set properly, wrinkling his nose when he decided that probably the only person in the entire Unreality that’d not only let that happen but who would also appreciate the gesture was Garth Nickels.
“Bollocks.” Chad muttered to himself. Then, because standing around smoking a cigarette while waiting for a truly kick-ass battle without being able to lean on something looking cool was hardly worth the goddamn effort, he flicked his cigarette over the edge and stared moodily downward.
A scene direct from Hell greeted him. The destruction of Jordan’s five towers had transformed fifty square miles of Zanzibar into a furnace of death and mayhem. Thick smoke, carnal red and despoiled black, guttered and billowed as though some great beast breathed in and out. Fires raged, bursting up into cyclonic spirals of death that gutted more of Jordan’s holdings. Bursts of electricity miles in length split and spat and flared like supernovas as generators and engines cracked into splinters. Hungry growls of Death Incarnate thundered across the sky.
It was a maelstrom.
“Cor.” Chad pursed his lips thoughtfully. He figured he didn’t need to set the mood. Fighting an Enforcer directly above the Forge of Hell Itself would work well enough.
A sonic boom ruptured the air directly above Chad. A Devil-may-grin creased the FrancoBrit’s pale, austere face. He rolled up his sleeves and motioned for the Enforcer, who hovered some ten feet away, to engage in Marquis Rules.
***
Gwyleh Ronn paused and considered the unlikely scene that’d unfolded before him. The Suit identified the man in front of him as Chadsik al-Taryin, one of Trinity’s inexplicable ‘favorites’. It had failed –and was continuing to fail- in identifying even a single one of the beings that’d been with him just moments ago.
A bit troubling, that; there was, to Ronn’s knowledge, nothing in the Universe that could hide from an Enforcer Suit once it was put to the task. Connected directly to knowledge and information accumulated over thirty thousand years, everything should already be catalogued.
Whoever had been with Chadsik had used some form of teleportation or matter transference to flee, hauling Naoko Kamagana along with them, but Gwyleh Ronn wasn’t terribly worried about that. The area was positively littered with her DNA and pheromone signatures, not to mention her psychic mark.
No, once he was done dealing with Chadsik al-Taryin, finding one Latelian woman amidst the rotten, reeking splurge of Humanity that infested the crummy planet beneath his feet would be no trouble at all. If anything, it would be a nice vacation.
The Enforcer considered Trinity’s thoughts on preserving the strange and unique. As the only Empator-Tyrene left , Ronn understood that he himself was one of those strange, unique things that the machine mind so loved to keep around, either as a reminder of how unpredictable everything could be or as a living Museum piece.
Then he wondered what Trinity would think about one ultra-rare entity destroying another.
Then he decided he didn’t care.
Gwyleh Ronn powered up his singularity cannons. The strange-sounding sine wave oscillation
of the magazines pulling energy from the fabric of the Universe hissed against the roiling thunder of the Hell below. He’d reviewed footage of Chadsik’s shenanigans throughout space and was well aware of how powerful, how durable, how resilient the cyborg was to traditional arms. Singularity cannons, though … these were weapons of mass destruction that no being could withstand, least of all because they’d been designed to tear apart Generation Warships as large as planets.
Chad readied his own weapons, trusting one of hims to do right by the rest of them and pull something pretty spectacular out of their ass. “Orl right,” he crowed, “in our left ‘and we’ve got summink one of me says is a Wicked Twister, which sounds like summink I is buying from a prostitute, and in our right ‘and we got a fing wot is apparently called a BFG. And once I is done blowin’ you up, Enforcer Man, I is gonna ‘ave a chat wiv the rest of me’s because these guns are fuckin’ ridiculous an’ I feel like I is takin’ the piss wiv myself.”
“I’ve got dual Singularity Cannons pointed at your beady little head, stupid FrancoBritish cyborg.” Gwyleh sneered beneath his helmet. “There isn’t anything in the known Universe that can withstand these weapons. I’ve used them to destroy warships the size of your moon.”
“Well,” Chad barked back, trying to convince one of him to pull something more threatening that a ‘Wicked Twister’ out of a pocket Universe and failing, “it’s really fuckin’ unlucky for you then, my son, because I isn’t from around these parts. I is from all the parts that ever were. If you got summink on you that can destroy the physical iteration of a hundred thousand or more versions of Reality, well … actually, I is suggestin’ you don’t use it on account o’ it’ll probably destroy everyfing. Hm.”
The two combatants gauged each other coolly. This wasn’t something you could rush into quickly. They were evenly matched; Gwyleh Ronn didn’t know where Chadsik had gotten his weapons, but the Suit’s AI didn’t like what was being pointed in his direction. That same AI was giving him very iffy odds on the Singularity Cannons doing anything more than giving the assassin’s coat a bit of a thorough going-over.
