by Lee Bond
Something big and heavy dropped down from the ceiling.
Probably attack drones. SpecSer had attack drones.
Shim shut his eyes and gave the order to fire. It was going to take forever to repair the command center. They might even have to barter with the floating black market to get everything.
The red shirts didn’t pause. They opened fire with everything they had, weapons ranging from tiny little laser pistols that could burn a man’s head off to huge plasma rifles that were doing a terrific job of destroying the walls of the command station but apparently nothing at all to the drone in the middle of the room.
The lone SecuriTech to keep his head cursed. “He’s shielded! Cease fire! Cease fire!”
It took several long seconds of weapons fire before the troops heard the command, and a few more seconds of intermittent ‘just in case the shield breaks down’ fire before they reluctantly holstered their weapons.
The last of the big monitors, the one covering the one whole end of the station, cracked in half and fell to the floor. A few lazy sparks burst up from the guts of the thing, but that was it.
Shim opened his eyes, looked at the big thing at the other end of the room, and shook his head. “What are you, then? Or who? On what authority did you break into my ship?”
“MY NAME,” the ex-Heavy Elite Deep Striker bellowed, “IS KAPTAN INNIT, YOU SORRY EXCUSE FOR A FUCKING CAPTAIN AND AS TO WHO’S AUTHORITY I AM DOING ALL OF THIS, IT IS MY OWN AUTHORITY! AS OF THIS FUCKING MOMENT, I AM THE FUCKING COMMANDER OF THIS SORRY OUTFIT OF MISFITS AND BULLSHIT ARMY WIMPS.”
Wayco grimaced. If this … Kaptan Innit was their new Commander, and he really did talk like that, Captain Shim’s head was going to explode in less time than it took to requisition a new red shirt.
Shim took several deep breaths. “Where is the AI packet?”
Innit stepped more properly into the room, huge armor-plated feet kicking a console out of the way in the process. “UPLOADING NOW, CAPTAIN SHIM. BE SURE TO READ THROUGH THE FINE PRINT SO WE ARE ON THE SAME FUCKING PAGE.”
Shim looked over the data as it spilled onto his chair’s small screens. Everything appeared to be in order. There wasn’t a single person, group or organization in the known Universe capable of reproducing Trinity’s impressive sigils, and with good reason; It destroyed every single instance of someone doing so on a regular basis. “Good … good to have … you aboard, Commander Innit.”
Innit clenched his teeth. “THERE WILL BE NONE OF THAT FUCKING BULLSHIT HERE, CAPTAIN. I AM HERE ON ORDERS. I AM A HUMBLE SERGEANT IN SPECIAL SERVICES. I AM HERE TO GET THIS SHIT IN GEAR AND KICK THINGS UP A NOTCH. THERE WILL BE NO SALUTING AND NO SIRRING. ARE WE CLEAR?”
When everyone in the command station capable of nodding or otherwise making their assent known, Kaptan Innit continued. “NOW. IN A FEW SECONDS, I AM GOING TO BE ADDRESSING EVERYONE IN THIS SECTOR OF SPACE. YOU WILL SEE SOME AMAZING SHIT HAPPEN AMONGST THOSE IDIOT SPECTERS WHEN THEY REALIZE THEIR OLD TRAINING OFFICER IS ON THE SCENE. THOSE OF YOU WITH FRIENDS ON ARMY SHIPS SHOULD DO YOUR LEVEL BEST TO INFORM THEM THAT IF I DON’T SEE THEM GETTING THEIR HEADS ON STRAIGHT THE MOMENT I AM DONE TALKING, I WILL PERSONALLY VISIT THEM AND BEAT THEIR BLOODY HEADS OFF THEIR GODDAMN FUCKING NECKS. THIS IS A NEW CHAPTER IN THE WAR AGAINST THE LATELIANS.”
Innit swiveled his head this way and that, looking at the dumbfounded crew of the Sparrowhawk. None of them were moving. Fine. “ASSHOLES AND ELBOWS, PEOPLE, WE’VE GOT A WAR TO WIN.”
A Most Unfortunate Turn of Events
“Well. That’s … unfortunate.”
Oscar, who’d been working diligently on the thing he’d been working on for what felt like ever, didn’t bother looking over his shoulder because he was fairly certain that being trapped inside the Impossible Ship for as long as he had been had driven him completely insane, and thus, the voice that’d been trying to engage him in conversation for the last stretch of forever was therefore probably symptomatic of that condition.
Besides which, he was busy. The Latelian was kind of sure he was building the legendary First Proteus, only … only that didn’t quite make sense; part of the memories stolen or siphoned or whatever from Garth N’Chalez suggested quite firmly that time travel in the Unreal Universe was impossible, but …
He was definitely building a proteus with the softened matter generated by the weird collision with whatever his ship had crashed into because it was the only thing he really knew how to build. Only he was doing it with his fingers and not with a Proteus extruder, which …
Was yet another indication that he was crazy. Because you couldn’t build a proteus with your fingers. The circuits were on the nanomolecular scale. So the one-quarter finished proteus on his desk probably wasn’t there. Just like the voice.
“Oh, it’s there, Oscar Sabellik, it most definitely is. As am I.”
“Since,” Oscar retorted, levering another microscopic circuit into place with the tip of his finger, “you aren’t even here, the likelihood of a non-existent being telling me something true factors in at roughly zero. In fact,” the Latelian said strenuously, “it’s probably so impossible that it’s minus zero.”
“Nothing is impossible in the Unreal Universe.” The voice replied casually.
Without breaking his work stride, Oscar pointed at the nearest section of invisible shielding. “See that out there? That’s the skin of the Unreal Universe. Or something. We’re technically not inside it any longer. I am on my way to a place that doesn’t even exist and could quite possibly never even exist at all if Garth N’Chalez isn’t both wildly luckily and freakishly unstoppable. So given the state of things, if I say something is impossible, it’s impossible.”
“As you wish.”
“I don’t wish anything.” Oscar said woodenly, realizing he was arguing with someone who wasn’t real. He clammed up and went to work twice as diligently as before.
Oscar Sabellik, Unreal Astronaut en route to Reality 2.0 and the Impossible Voice rode on for some time in utter, blessed silence until …
“See, Oscar,” The voice resumed again, “the problem is this. I am real, and there’s been an unfortunate turn of events, and …”
Oscar ignored the sudden pressure of a body standing next to him, choosing instead to catalogue the physical sensation along with the rest of the symptoms of madness he believed he was experiencing. “Can you not see I’m busy? This thing is finicky as hell and if you nudge me at the wrong time, I could put a circuit in the wrong spot, and when I turn it on, instead of being a super-useful forearm computer that ‘LINKs me into every data source around, it will be a super-useful exploding thing that turns the whole of everything inside this ship into dust.”
The voice continued on as if Oscar hadn’t even spoken. “And I need to talk to someone about it, and since you’re the only one out here, it’s kind of important.”
Oscar gave an exasperated shout, pushed the not-there First Proteus away, and looked right where the Voice wasn’t. “There, you see? You … aren’t … great. I really am visually hallucinating. Awesome. I wonder if Garth is this crazy. He didn’t seem insane when I met him. I mean, sure, he’s got some really goddamn weird things in his brain, but insane? Maybe he’s so crazy he doesn’t seem that way at all. That’s possible, right? I mean …”
The Body belonging to the Voice put a firm, warm hand on poor Oscar Sabellik’s forearm. “Oscar, calm down. It’s all right. You’re not crazy, you’re fine. Garth … well, I suppose he’s a bit wonky, but really, that’s to be expected under these circumstances. I assure you, I am real.”
Oscar wracked his brain trying to see if he’d ever read anything about hallucinating physical impressions. He came up empty-handed. The pressure from the Voice’s Body was irrefutable, as was it’s warmth. “Well then, if I ain’t crazy and you’re really here, who the hell are you?”
“Good question.” The Body smiled, it’s relatively handsome, green eyed face shining with good humor. “When I’m at home, I’m known
as Diax. You lot, well, all two of you, really, since the rest of everyone doesn’t believe I’m really real, know me as The Engines of Creation.”
Oscar nodded slowly, lower lip sticking out. The Engines of Creation. On his ship. He kept nodding. Just … hanging out. “Fuck off.”
Diax raised a hand to ward off further cursing. “No, no, I know how it sounds. Really impossible, right? But it’s true.”
Oscar shook his head. “No really, fuck off. The Engines are … engines.”
“That makes no sense, Oscar. If the Engines were just engines, everything would’ve shut down ages ago. This old Universe is limping along on fumes, if we’re going to be so metaphorical.” Diax flashed Oscar a quick smile.
“If,” Oscar drawled the word out slowly, “you’re not … engine-ing … why isn’t everything falling to pieces?”
“Oh, I assure you, everything is indeed falling to pieces.” Diax nodded, exuding as much assuredness as any one thing could. “That’s more or less the point of all this. But it’s got to fall to pieces in precisely the right order for me to win.”
“Win?” Oscar seized on the word. “Win what?”
Diax bit back a curse, waggled his hands and said, “These aren’t the droids you’re looking for.”
Oscar blinked. “What?” He played his conversation with Diax back in his mind. Right. They’d been talking –in a roundabout way- of the End. “If everything is supposed to be falling to pieces in just the right order and Garth is doing that, what’s unfortunate?”
Diax waggled a pointed finger, clearly excited. “I am so glad you asked, Oscar.”
The Engines of Creation gestured grandly and with much flourishing of the hands and broad winks, causing at the end of his display everything outside the Impossible Ship –which was nothing more or less than the very indeterminable nature of all things outside the Unreal Universe- to be replaced with a terribly bucolic scene of untouched hills, soaring mountains, gently burbling rivers and streams.
“Reminds me of a place I visited on Hospitalis when I was a kid.” Oscar commented. “We had to go to a shubin farm. For school. It was a lot of … outdoors. I hated it. Only kid in my entire school who had allergies. They had to look the symptoms up. Had to go back three thousand years.”
“This is not Sa Handishinks Shubin Farm, Oscar.” Diax shook his head. “This is the British Isles. Formerly, and for the last thirty thousand years, known as Arcade City. There was a big giant Dome covering all this. It’s where Garth’s been for the last month and a bit.”
“Oh?” Oscar squinted. “There’s a noticeable lack of destruction.”
“He got rid of all that.” Diax went on to explain, “The reason he was there was because the King of Arcade City was actually a CyberPriest in control of a very powerful form of nanoparticulate…”
“Cloud.” Oscar blurted. “Cloud.” He said again, lamely.
“Yes, Oscar, Cloud.” Diax smiled and nodded. “Anyways … where was I head… oh. Yes. This King was a CyberPriest, but he was also, towards the end, nearly almost completely dominated by the Cloud Itself. Garth had to do battle with the physical manifestation of the Cloud Particulate. Naturally, he won, cleaned everything up and made sure to get rid of all signs of nanotech in the neighborhood because, let’s be honest, improperly controlled nanotech is a great way to destroy large amounts of very important property. My property. Shortly, he’ll be headed off towards his next big adventure, which I suspect will also wind up problematic for me. But because of the nature of that thing, well, I’m woefully ignorant of what’s been going on there as w…”
“Holy cats! What the fuck is that?” Oscar shouted, descending into Garth-isms. On the other side of the Impossible Ship, a tremendously enormous vessel of some kind dropped down onto a broad swathe of … the British Isles, sending shockwaves through the pristine earth and causing more damage than was probably necessary.
Diax pointed at the ship. “That is a Tynedale/Fujihara reclamation ship. Also en route are similar ships from Voss_Uderhell, CalEx~Briu and roughly fifteen thousand other Conglomerate ships. There are also no less than three Earthbound Historical Adjutants inbound, not to mention an odd assortment of stupendously wealthy Exodites, all with their own brand of mercenary forces.” The Engines of Creation made a point of checking the time on his non-existent watch. “In roughly half an hour, the perfect and wonderful and pristine nature of this land that hasn’t seen the skies of Old Earth for thirty thousand years will be a warzone.”
“And that’s the unfortunate thing?” Oscar felt bad for the fresh land. “They’re going to ruin the land they’re fighting for?”
Diax shook his head dismissively. “Couldn’t care less. It’s all going to go tits up sooner or later anyways. Some sixty-eight thousand square miles of pretty land don’t matter. And they aren’t fighting for land. They’re looking for things.”
Oscar winced as the first of probably many ships exploded. “Those Conglomerate people are pretty serious business, aren’t they?”
Diax’s eyes burned like stars for a second. “Yes. They are.”
Something Diax said whispered in Oscar’s brain. “But… you said Garth cleaned everything up. From what little I remember about Cloud, it can be denatured, turned fully and completely into the thing that … uh … it’s supposed to be. No difference, right?”
“Indeed, Oscar, no difference at all.” Diax pointed, and the outside of the ship split into three different sections, each displaying a different, as yet undiscovered, area of the British Isles. “The problem, Oscar Sabellik, is Garth N’Chalez either intentionally forgot about these things or … just forgot. And they, Oscar, are the unfortunate turns of event. Events? Whichever. In Garth’s own terms, these are galactic sized fucking problems and … I can’t intervene.”
Oscar examined the three split-screens meticulously.
Two men, officers of some kind, only dressed in bizarre-looking clockwork armor poorly hidden beneath tattered long jackets. At their feet lay an even more bizarre looking brass book the likes of which Oscar had never seen before.
A woman with a ravaged face, one ruined eye leaking a clear liquid that churned Oscar’s stomach. She was close to the two men in armor, and the Latelian couldn’t shake the feeling that before the end of everything, she’d been trying to protect them from something.
A second woman, laying on her back, in oddly peaceful repose, long dark hair splayed out behind her. She was breathtakingly beautiful. She was also –if Oscar had to guess- pretty seriously dead.
“I don’t see the problem.” Oscar knew there was a problem, a big one, specifically because the Engines of fucking Creation was on his ship, meaning that not only was there a problem, it was so big his brain couldn’t contain even a tiny little bit of it.
Diax knew he shouldn’t be disappointed, but was all the same; if it were Garth in the Impossible Ship, the Kin’kithal would’ve seen instantly how terrifying those four corpses were. Correction.
Those four almost corpses.
“The problem, Oscar,” Diax said slowly, feeling fear for the first time since he’d realized what the M’Zahdi Hesh were truly setting out to do, “is that they aren’t properly dead. And each of them not only possess either internal or external and functional nanoparticulate engines, they were, at one point or another, exposed. Beyond that, the Book there was in Garth’s possession. It, too, was exposed. And contains some, if not all, of his plan.”
Oscar didn’t need to ask ‘exposed to what’. He was living proof of what exposure could do. His mind fiddled with various permutations of all that Diax had pointed out. After about an hour of thoughtful consideration on how wrong things could go, the Latelian raised an eyebrow and said, “Ah.”
“Ah indeed.” Diax pursed his lips.
“What now?” Oscar asked, itching to return to his work. Even if he could do something, it was extremely unlikely that Diax would permit it; the function his Impossible Ship was destined to perform was just as impor
tant –if not more so- than Garth’s task of destroying the current Unreality. The Engines of Creation would no more ask him to turn around than he would ask N’Chalez to let the Heshii win.
Diax shrugged. “One, possibly two of those beings will wake and be his enemy. Two are definitely his friends. One friend may become foe, one foe may become ally. All will possess terrible powers. I am powerless to intervene and Garth will be too busy sorting out the mess with the Emperor-for-Life to even be aware. And they will be found, by Conglomerates and Adjutants…”
Oscar absorbed all that and said, “Bummer.” A thought trickled in. “Hey. You’re, like, the Engines of Creation. Can you whip me up a pizza on the quick? I forgot to pack food, and while it doesn’t seem like time passes properly here, I could use a nosh.”
Diax, The Engines of Creation made manifest in physical form, sighed. Humans. So resilient. So … adaptable. “Pepperoni mushroom all right? I can’t digest onions properly. They give me wicked wind.”
“Sounds good.” Oscar smiled from ear to ear.
A pizza appeared. The Latelian grabbed a slice, then went back to work on his proteus.
Diax looked on as the first of the Conglomerates reached Gearmen Chevril Pointillier and Dominic Breton; Tynedale/Fujihara reclamation forces slapped a hand on Chevy just as a Voss_Uderhell hunt team snaked a metallic grab-tentacle around Dom’s wrist. CalEx~Briu Swoop Team Alpha honed in on Book, literally snatching it from a FontagueFellman Underworks Squad.
