Dark Iron King II: Arcadia Falls (Unreal Universe Book 5)

by Lee Bond

  That moment there, that moment above all others was thus far the sole reason she’d broken away from squaring off against this King’s assassin; she had to keep hawking up great gobs of Iron-tainted effluvia to keep from choking to death on her own wounds, and Henrietta would be damned if she was going to do so in front of the … in front of the foul demon out there!

  Oh, and when the five-shot gun had run out of ammo, why, her tormentor had calmly pulled out that … dastardly gun with the drum attached to it, and …

  Henrietta’s eyes flickered up to the roof, then quickly back to Garth. She’d charged him, all in a panic after that first blast had nearly gutted her. Charged, and attacked in a furious blaze of animalistic tension that had, however fleetingly, driven him backwards. Seizing the momentary advantage by kicking at the gun with terrified might, Henrietta had watched on –with the assassin gawping like the common fool he had to be- as the infernal weapon sailed upwards to wedge itself –hopefully forever- ‘tween two heavy roof planks.

  The Golem watched her would-be murderer, hoping to catch his eyes…

  He nodded and, shamefully, her heart was momentarily buoyed. Their unspoken moment of agreed upon respite was still intact.

  The Obsidian Golem’s ears still rang from the first baleful eruption of shells and she was afraid –afraid- to look at her left side closer. It was bad enough that the one whole side was warm and sticky to the touch. It was all she needed, too; whatever devilry perpetrated down her mouth seemed to be healing, finally, but the grotesque stickiness at her side felt like something she might not properly survive.

  “How…” Henrietta took another step backwards, and the thick matte of blood drying against her side cracked and ran warm anew, “how is this possible?”

  Garth looked up and at Henrietta, glad for the distraction. DarkEye was trying to run an analysis on the stuff spread across his fingers, but no luck; both bits of machinery –Eye and Book- were running full bore on connecting to the particulate contained within the armor, correctly assuming in their semi-sentient state that doing so would provide him with everything that he needed.

  “I told you,” the Kin’kithal warrior replied casually, watching Henrietta’s movements like a hawk, “I was made specifically to destroy Golems.”

  Such a great and wonderful lie. All dreamed up by Agnethea, it pushed every button in a traitor’s mind. Guilty of terrible things as they all were, the Queen of Ickford nevertheless understood her ‘people’ better than they’d ever dreamed.

  Henrietta’s eyes roved circumspectly over the few shelves to remain standing, her mind a blur of frenetic sounds, most of them hers. He’d chased her across the length and width of the warehouse a number of times, relentless, dogged, forcing her to use ordinary tools as weapons time and time again.

  Nothing. There was nothing anywhere.

  Where were the others? She was desperate to know. She, Bertram and three others met at the small little coffee shop that was ‘under their protection’ once a week to discuss Young Luther’s plans. Mirabelle, Winston and Truman had to’ve been just as close, if not closer than she’d been.

  Had they run away?

  Henrietta shook her head. No. Not possible. If anything, they’d gone to Luther to ask what should be done.

  “I don’t believe you.” Henrietta’s voice faltered at the denial. She believed. Did she ever. There was little doubt in her mind that their King had discovered some crucial secret into building a man with weapons capable of harming and killing a Golem, at long, terrible last. The wound in her side wasn’t sealing up as the wounds in her gullet.

  “Lay down like a good little freak,” Garth said calmly, feeling … curiously sad to use Henrietta’s own self-esteem issues against her, “lay down and let me do for you. It’s going to happen, Henrietta. Listen to reason. Your friends aren’t coming. They’re terrified. By now … by now, if they forgot to remove Bertram’s corpse from the street, gearheads and wardogs and all manner of tinkerer and artificer have been at it, picking and pulling at that cold, weird dead flesh, hoping to find the secrets of your immortality. I hear tell some of the blacksmiths in Ickford are geniuses. Maybe they’ve already built weapons like mine, capable of cutting, ripping, tearing your resilient flesh. Maybe they’re already all dead and I can find Agnethea and do for her. Then I can go home.”

  Inside, Specter applauded coldly, enjoying the spectacle. Garth felt keen sorrow once more. He hadn’t spoken to someone like this since … since he’d done for the thugs who’d killed the cabbie, Jimmish. Specter and Nickels merged together was a thing of scintillating, deadly beauty.

  Thank God it was a limited time merger.

  Henrietta plucked at her shirt, grimacing and gasping at the grotesque sensation of fabric pulling away from wet, sticky skin. Her eyes fell upon a rack of clothes. She narrowed her weirdly colorless eyes at Garth. “If I am to die, assassin, allow me to do it properly clothed.” Then, to drive her point home, she thrust her chin at the rack of shirts and whatnot.

  “You want to change your shirt.” Garth shook his head, incredulous. “They’re not coming, Henrietta. Delay all you want. You can try to run from this warehouse. You won’t make it to the doors. Or the windows. Or the walls.”

  “Please.”

  Garth took a deep breath. “Fine. Sure. Whatever. Make it snappy.”

  Henrietta’s eyes –traitors that they seemed to have become- flickered once more to the gun stuck in the ceiling. “On your honor?”

  Garth blinked, drawing himself a few seconds too late to the request. DarkEye and Book were merging together quicker now, suddenly unlocking a few dozen layers of Cloud connectivity between themselves and, happily, his armor: deep behind the remaining layers of encrypted data, Garth could see vague hints of schematics and analyses of his handmade geared armor.

  It was as he’d been hoping all along, however tentatively. With a proper, fully-functional bit of Kingtech, both the DarkEye and his suit were capable of being merged completely into the pervasive Cloud network!

  If things kept going his way … he’d have a suit of fully powered nanotech battle armor.

  And then…

  “Hm?” Garth waved a lazy hand. He was more interested in what was happening across the HUD. “Yeah, sure. Fine. On my honor, blah blah blah.”

  Henrietta moved cautiously over to the rack, walking backwards so as to keep both eyes on the man. Trust him? Not likely. But, as she moved closer and he did nothing but stare distractedly off to one side, hands twitching every now and again, Henrietta was had to admit that he seemed content to let her recover some dignity before dying. How humiliating, to beg for a chance to change her clothes, all so she could die with some kind of dignity.

  Worse still, when she found something to change into, she was going to have to do so in full view of her assassin. Henrietta knew she wasn’t much to look at, but she was a Golem. She was an immortal.

  The Obsidian Golem turned quickly to grab a shirt at random then just as quickly whirled back, fresh clean shirt in her hands.

  To stare down the yawning chasm that was the multiple barrels of that deadly weapon.

  “You said on you were on your honor.” Henrietta chided woefully. She hadn’t heard him move, hadn’t heard the gun being pried loose from the ceiling, hadn’t heard him land directly behind her.

  “Did you forget where you live, Henrietta?” Garth demanded, equal parts scathing contempt and sarcasm. “There is no honor here. Not in Arcade City. Not between monsters like you and I.”

  Garth pulled the trigger. Henrietta’s head burst into pieces. Her headless corpse stood for a few creepy seconds, hands clutching the shirt she’d chosen to wear for her last go-around, fingers unconsciously rubbing the smooth fabric.

  “Well, that’s that, then.” Garth shouldered the shotgun. “Time to move on.”

  “Why do that?” A voice called mockingly, echoing through the quiet, empty warehouse. “Why do that, when this place is perfectly suitable for your d
emise, assassin?”

  ***

  As luck would have it, Garth was very nearly dead center in the warehouse.

  Whether his new opponents were aware of it or not, this gave the trapped Kin’kithal an extreme tactical advantage.

  It was just a matter of getting all the various elements at his disposal on the same page, and in a fucking hurry.

  Thankfully, it only took a few seconds. With Book and DarkEye merging quicker than ever before, deciphering the tightening of the muscles beneath the eye clamps happened at an almost real-time level. They withdrew the bulk of their efforts in connecting fully with the nanotech systems of the suit and spread it outward.

  The Golems –shadowy figures standing high, high up on window ledges, turned into smudges by the bright light cast through thick glass- assumed they had him surrounded, that his armor was the same as the Gearmen who failed to bring them down more often than not.

  Garth snickered, just a bit. Specter wanted to turn the laugh into a roar, but let the moment pass. If he were a Gearman, and if his armor was nothing more than simple Gearman garb, their incredible arrogance wouldn’t be misplaced.

  Only, he wasn’t a Gearman. His armor wasn’t simple. And they were not right.

  By no means complete, there was nevertheless enough connectivity between the tech to provide him with methods hitherto not at his disposal.

  Garth raised his hands slowly, tilting his head up a bit so he could catch sight of the –hopefully- three Golems that were present, and began spinning slowly in a circle. There. There was one. The second one was there, one huge window frame over, and the third … yes.

  In each instance, the moment he focused directly on the figure in the window, DarkEye popped and sputtered as always, but Book, ahh, Book, seemed able to record those particular moments anyways, adding them into its assessment of the scene. The mystical tome was charting their locations, but it needed more information before the data could be of any practical use.

  In short, Garth thought to himself as he made another circle, I need to get these fuckers to talk, get some echo-location shit going on. “Come on down,” he hollered jovially, channeling Richard Dawson from Running Man, “bring the family. Don’t be shy! We’ve got the whole place to ourselves.”

  “Of course we do, murderer.” A haughty female voice shouted mockingly. “We … encouraged the people in this area to find somewhere else to be. Wouldn’t do for them to see poor old Henrietta getting…”

  Book’s nanotech processors locked the woman Golem’s location down in a flash, sketching an image of the she-devil against the backdrop of the warehouse, using everything from shifting light spilling around her frame to the directional wavelength of her proud crowing to get it absolutely perfect.

  “Mirabelle!”

  A male shouted, and again, Book was on the scene, replicating yet another sepia-toned sketch against the window; Agnethea’s own sketches, nearly on par with da Vinci, came to life in the HUD.

  Excellent.

  “Keep your mouth shut. Not in front of the freak.”

  Garth laughed at that, low and threatening. They really didn’t understand that they were the freaks, that what they’d done to bring Young Luther into the world as a fully-fledged Golem stretched past the point of evil and into some fucked up alternate dimension of evil. Not even the Kith and Kin had experimented on children, and they’d been intent on killing everything everywhere.

  “Are you telling me,” Garth demanded with all seriousness, “that you let your friend die so you could clear the area?” This time, as he spun, he very cautiously lowered his right hand down until his palm was resting just above the gun stock for his Heart Sniper. “I mean, tactically, it makes sense. She was a piss-poor opponent. It was amazing she lasted that long.”

  Mirabelle clucked her tongue. “Come now, Truman, he realizes he cannot get away. What does it matter, if he learns that we had no true love for Henrietta? She was too young, too ugly, too … different than the rest of us all. Hardly fit for Peerage.”

  Truman! His window blossomed with living sepia sketches, a handsome, rakish man with a curled smile that filled people with dread whenever they saw it.

  So far, so awful.

  According to Agnethea, Mirabelle and Truman were lovers and had been for well over two thousand years, and unlike their sacrificial lamb, these two had spent their every waking moment –when not tormenting mankind- to learn the proper ways of combat.

  And they’d done it the hard way, by killing Kings, by hunting other monsters, by standing nose to nose with entire gearhead gaggles, never relying on their outmatched speed and strength, always learning.

  There was no better way.

  In short, they were amongst the best that Arcade City had to offer in terms of capable opponents and … that made the odds super shitty.

  The third Golem finally spoke. “Hold your tongues. There’s no knowing what sort of Gearman equipment this threat possesses. After all, he has already proven quite deadly for poor Henrietta and Heinrich. Our usual methods will probably not work in this instance.”

  Book’s data threads running through DarkEye practically leaped for joy; the third Golem was locked into place and triangulation was complete. Both Mirabelle and Truman’s images shifted about a foot and a foot and a half to the left, respectively, for which Garth was tremendously pleased; the gambit he was about to deploy relied on having rock solid data on where everyone was actually situated.

  The third one shimmered into ‘view’ in the HUD.

  The last of the deadly trio was behind him, just over his left shoulder.

  It was hard enough aiming and firing a sniper with your ‘weak’ eye. He’d done well enough doing for Heinrich, but it’d lacked the finesse he liked his work to own. With Chatty Cathy behind him, all the ducks were in a row. Sure, the new systems weren’t fully up to snuff for a three-fer, but there was enough integration for a single badass noscope.

  Garth let his hand slide the rest of the way down onto the stock of the sniper rifle. Against the HUD, DarkBook was plotting viable trajectories for each of the three Golems. Simple concentration on Truman’s shifting, sepia form locked the twinned technologies into calculating the best free-hand firing location for him and him alone and within two seconds, the task was done.

  Now it was down to keeping everyone right where they were for … just … a … few … more seconds…

  “Y’know, Truman, I gotta say…” Addressing the self-important Golem by name snapped Truman’s head around to face Garth directly; the idiot had been having some kind of side conversation with his paramour, and though the HUD couldn’t display the shock, Garth was willing to bet that the man looked downright astonished at being addressed thusly!

  If there was one thing Garth loved more than high-tech solutions to problems, it was dudes like Truman, men who imagined they were just so much better than everyone else.

  Guys –and girls- like that were super easy to manipulate. Entire sections in SpecSer’s stupidly big training manuals dealt strictly with that kind of person.

  With the unsurpassed skill of a man capable of killing in a million different ways, Garth brought the sniper rifle off his shoulder and into play before the smug Golems could process what was happening.

  Squeezing off the only round he was ever likely to fire in this altercation, the highly trained Specter drilled Truman through his right eye.

  Truman’s head erupted in a fury of expended King’s Will, brains, bone and blood. Behind the Golem, the huge window shattered into thousands of razor sharp shards and the lifeless corpse –spraying thick, black blood everywhere- tumbled lifelessly to the ground amidst a sea of winking silver lights.

  Mirabelle’s shriek of disgust mingled with sorrow and the unnamed male Golem’s bellow of earnest fright echoed through the warehouse.

  Garth stepped back a bit to allow his two opponents proper space in which to move, using the scant seconds to clip the rifle back into place.

  T
he two remaining Golems arrived just as he finished stowing his gear, so Garth hastily backpedaled then bowed deeply, keeping his one good eye on both Mirabelle and the other one, wondering at his identity; unfortunately, the Queen hadn’t been able to dig into Luther’s cabal as much as she’d wanted, and so there were a considerable number of ‘best guesses’ as to those in her own group who’d switched sides. Until the reed-slender man identified himself, he was going to remain totally anonymous.

  “Lord and Lady Golem, I am your host for this morning’s festivities. I am Master Nickels.” He straightened and locked eyes with the male Golem. “I know who your companion is for today, sirrah, but I don’t know who you are. So who are you, when you’re at home, thinking up new ways to fistfuck normal people lives into oblivion?”

  Winston ground his teeth. Up close and personal as they all were now, there were … reservations. The moment Heinrich’s head had burst like a melon in full view of lesser beings, news of the cowardly assassination had spread through Ickford like a wind-born plague, pushing the Golems in every direction. Most of those unaligned with Luther were wisely hiding themselves away. Unsurprisingly, roughly half of those who followed Luther were doing the same, though …

  Some had adopted a different stance. Some –like himself- believed in Young Luther enough to step forward and deal with the assassin.

  There was little doubt in Winston’s mind that Agnethea had sold them all out, an action Luther had been preaching for decades now. Heinrich’s death had been a call to arms for those of the faithful willing to do whatever it took.

  Agnethea’s refusal to deal with her own problems seemed to make sense. She’d let things go for so long, and suddenly an assassin appears with the ability to do for Golems?

  Winston was concerned they had it wrong. They’d only managed to catch summat of ‘Master’ Nickel’s taunting diatribe at Henrietta, but the odd Gearman’s story certainly made a great deal more sense than what they’d all long held to be truth.

  Agnethea hadn’t made Master Nickels, nor had he appeared on his own. He was a tool of the King.