by Lee Bond
“Because reasons.” Garth hopped onto the lifter and motioned for Spur to do the same. “And one more thing.”
Spur entered the lifter, unable to forget that Garth had said there were no AI aboard the Tynedale/Fujihara vessel. Before witnessing the man’s nanotech-derived armor in action, the android would’ve denied such a possibility, but now? Not only was it believable, he determined that it was all too likely that Garth himself was piloting the vessel and controlling all the different functions with his own mind.
Curious, he pushed outwards with his own vast AI mind. Though his own rise to sentience had taken a wildly different path than any of the other methods employed by Trinity, he nevertheless possessed the ability to connect on a quantum level with those other forms of sentience.
Nothing. A black wall. A black wall that shivered under his scrutiny for a moment before releasing a glistening silver barb that dripped powerful, implacable code.
Spur brought his mind back to the outside world, caught Garth’s stony expression. “And what is that, my master?”
“Under normal circumstances,” Garth sighed heavily, “this kind of side adventure would see us bond. We’d, like, get into some kind of hilarious trouble where we’d need to learn to trust one another and all that kind of shit. You’d tell me stuff about you, I’d tell you stuff about me, and at the end of our time in Kitezh, we’d be BFFs forever and ever.
“Is that how it goes?” Spur asked.
“In my life it does. Usually.” Garth shot his … captive ally a look. “But not this time. We ain’t partners and we ain’t friends. You fuck with me, I will personally strip you down to the atoms and dance on the bits and pieces. You run from me, I will call Trinity up and give It your fucking location. So on and so forth. Use that prodigious AI brain of yours to figure out the odds and ends of any threat I might make, and know, know I will follow through. I am done fucking around. Got it?”
Spur bowed deeply once more. The android schooled his countenance, using all the skill and effort he’d ever called to deal with Jordan during the worst of his tirades.
What had Garth N’Chalez become?
More importantly, how would the Emperor-for-Life greet this new incarnation?
The two beings, Kin’kithal Warrior and android, rose into the belly of the ship.
Tin Soldier
Ute mindlessly rubbed a thumb against a forefinger, thoughts very much … elsewhere.
Around him, his brothers and sisters in the Army did as they always did when they had some downtime, which was anything from rough and dirty quickies in full view of those who were inclined to display their penchant for voyeurism to settling arguments –with the aid of whatever weapons they had to hand- had several thousand years ago, but he, Ute Tizhen, was … elsewhere.
He had been since Herrig had severed him from the Harmony. The most ancient God soldier remembered the feeling quite well. One second he’d been trying to defuse a situation so weirdly spiraled out of control that he’d been quite certain they were all going to die right there on the spot, the next, he’d been … emptied out. Dead. Sort of. It was hard to explain. Certainly everyone sharing the Harmonious connection believed he’d been dead –even now, every hour or so, a squadmate came by to see if he was still breathing- but he hadn’t been.
Not a hundred percent dead. Call it … ninety-nine point nine percent dead. Dead enough for the Unreal Universe, dead enough for Harmony, dead enough for Fenris and the others to treat him with wary caution.
Because after he’d been dead, Herrig had commanded him to wake up, and he had. He’d opened his eyes up just in time to see ‘Father’ Vasily being hauled away on a crash cart, just in time to feel the darting pressure of Nalanata trying to pry through Harmony into his mind, just in time to see Herrig and Sidra exchanging woeful glances. He’d been dead. Now he wasn’t. Everything was different, now. So few of the others knew it, were capable of sensing the change. Of those that were, it manifested as a worried glance, a quick quirk of an eyebrow, a double-take as if they hadn’t seen him there and were surprised that they’d missed him.
Thumb and forefinger, back and forth, back and forth. He’d been dead. Floating in the black. Outside the Universe.
And it’d spoken to him.
He needed to leave Latelyspace. There was something he needed to do. It was important. If he stayed in Latelyspace, if he continued working towards ending the War, Fenris and the others would kill him because he was now more like them than the others.
The Universe had told him that wasn’t something they really wanted.
Ute rose from his bed, pulling his huge knapsack along with him.
It was time to go. Time to find a way out.
He could do it. He was different now, somehow.
Fallen
Vasily Aurick Tizhen watched the Screenshow on silent, unable to listen to his son’s voice another second; he wanted to believe it had more to do with the fairly serious concussion he’d received during the last few seconds of that singularly bizarre meeting of the minds, but the old IndoRussian knew it had more to do with the immense guilt and shame he felt at having failed his own family so famously.
His own son. Driven to terror-suicide. Because of him.
“What have I done?” Vasily demanded of the empty room. He could get up and ask one of the Goddies on the other side of the door what they thought about what’d happened, but as the last time, he already knew the answer; one of the guards was a Gloryhound, the other was a Vengeful Soul.
One would ask if he felt what he’d done was right, and pass no judgment.
The other would suggest he find a way to atone.
He wanted to blame the boy’s mother. Desperately. But he couldn’t; no matter that she’d been a money-grubbing socialite intent on using the power of his connections to rise ever higher in the Latelian scene, no matter that she’d filled an overly-sensitive boy’s ears with sensibilities that didn’t belong in the child of an IndoRussian soldier, it was still his fault.
He’d traded one family for another, first diving headlong into caring for the Sleepers and again, when he’d been forced by Fenris into wearing the mantle of spiritual father for the freshly reborn God soldiers. He’d gotten swept up in the fame of it, too, and how was that for a laugh? As OverCommander, he’d done everything in his power to avoid the camera whenever possible, going so far as to craft carefully created bogus terrorist attacks somewhere else on the planet, all to avoid airtime.
As ‘Father’ Vasily?
The old IndoRussian laughed at his own arrogance.
“Well,” Vasily Aurick Tizhen said to the Screen, where his son portrayed a better-than-average representation of one of those ancient Box-scientists, “it’s time for a change, son. I know you’re gone and can’t hear me, but I’m going to … to do right by you.”
And then because he was an old IndoRussian who rarely followed orders, he grabbed the mostly empty bottle of Soldier’s Tears and took a healthy pull. Alcohol and injuries pulled him into darkness.
Unseen, the Screen holding Marcus Aurelius Tizhen’s made-for-TV face flickered.
Shieldbreak
Tomas Kamagana looked up from his work, barely aware of the time, or his condition; his face was wreathed in sweat, his eyes ached furiously, his back and legs felt like they could fall off at any second, but his mouth … ahh … his mouth was curled into a most triumphant, satisfied smile.
He’d done it. When he’d begun the endeavor, when he’d sat down to go about cracking the Latelian shield’s codes and structure, he’d been convinced it’d be just a few seconds worth of effort. After all, hadn’t he cracked Guillfoyle and Gualf’s masterful deceit in the time it took for a cab to drive from Port to Central?
The EuroJapanese genius laughed. More than a few seconds by roughly … a month. The budding relationship with Si Stonigvale was a thing of the past after he’d rather discourteously asked her to put her clothes back on right in the middle of her attempt to seduce him, but no matter.
>
He’d done it. He’d burned every bridge, sacrificed every favor, stolen more processing time and broken more rules … Tomas laughed. In the grand scheme of things, MoE was undoubtedly hunting him down right that second for being the Lady Ha!
Tomas wiped a hand across his sweaty brow and sighed in relief. It was over now. Now he knew he could leave Latelyspace and hunt for his daughter. It was just a matter of …
The doorbell suddenly rang, jerking Tomas’ head around and breaking him loose from laying down the bones of what would surely be the hardest part of his venture: stealing a spaceship. The old man looked at his prote and shook his head most unhappily.
It couldn’t be Hildy. She went the other way when he was walking down the hallway these days, though she still left one meal a day on his doorstep because even though he was an unutterable jackass, stout Hildy was Latelian through and through.
The doorbell rang again, somehow managing to seem irritated.
Pushing himself off the chair with a considerable amount of moaning and groaning about old knees and tired backs, the diminutive super-hacker creaked his way to the door. He opened it, saying, “I am an old man, so whoever this had better…”
Around a mouthful of delicious homemade –and stolen- Borscht, Ute Tizhen spoke quite seriously. “I am told you know how to leave the solar system. I have a ship.”
Tomas Kamagana narrowed his eyes at the truly massive Goddie. “And who would spread such lies about a man who is quite clearly at death’s door?”
Another spoonful of Borscht went into Ute’s mouth. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
Tomas whacked Ute in the toe with his cane. “Try me.”
“Herrig,” Ute said, licking the spoon clean, “killed me with the HIM, then brought me back to life. While I was dead, the Universe told me I needed to be on the other side of the shield. It told me that you were working on breaking Huey’s codes.”
“The Universe.” Tomas shook his head wonderingly. “Come in, Ute. I think we may have something to talk about.”
“Before I do,” Ute looked over his shoulder at the apartment door behind him, “I need to get the recipe for this from your neighbor.”
The Real Boy
Herrig slipped out of bed, smiling gently at Sidra’s murmured complaints that he stay right where he was. “I just need to check on something, love.”
When Sidra snorted then slipped back into her normal, soft snore, Herrig chuckled. He was the luckiest man in the world, with her by his side. If only there was some way of contacting the people he’d gone to school with, those he’d worked with, to show them how far he’d come. They wouldn’t believe it.
There were times still that he didn’t believe it.
Padding softly through his house in Northon, Herrig had never felt so complete. So … perfect.
But as he’d told sleepy Sidra, there was one thing he needed to check on.
Slipping into the bathroom, blinking against the bright lights, Herrig Du Pont, Chairman of the Latelian Commonwealth, peered deep into the mirror. Stared deep into the eyes of the man staring back. He tilted his head this way and that, wrinkled his brow, squinted his lids, always certain to keep his eye contact with his mirror image.
“I am real.” He whispered fiercely. The man in the mirror did the same. “I am real. Everyone else might not be. But me? I’m real.”
Herrig waited. Waited for the man in the mirror to laugh, or to shake his head, to do something other than what he was already doing.
Nothing happened.
He was real.
Flicking the lights off, Herrig headed back to the bedroom, eager to crawl back in beside the woman he loved.
Unseen until the next morning –and then written off as ‘shit happens’- the mirror cracked all the way through from side to side and top to bottom, barely held in place by the frame.
Well, That Could’ve Gone Better
“Well,” Garth commented dryly as he tried pulling a long, slender shard of metal from between two mostly-intact plates of his nano-armor, “that could’ve gone a lot better.”
Spur, deftly piloting the stolen IndoRussian airjet, didn’t bother looking over his shoulder at his rescuer. The man was a complete maniac. A thousand times worse than Jordan Bishop at Bishop’s worst; his ex-employer had never once intentionally put him in danger, whereas Garth the Caveman had done so literally within seconds of reaching the communications array.
“That is an understatement.” The stolen ship’s AI suggested a course correction to avoid heavy metal materials launching upwards from the ground. Spur followed the directions to the letter, leveling out after what looked like part of a mile-wide satellite array arced past them, a smoldering, smoking low-tech missile.
“Well, hey.” Garth dropped the metal shard to the floor and went to work on the next piece. “How was I supposed to know about teleporting ninja robots?”
“There was no way to know.” Spur admitted cautiously. “Are you certain we are safe?”
“Uhhhh.” Garth tilted his head this way and that, doing some fairly basic math. “This ship’s a 1, right?” When Spur nodded his head once, firmly, Garth continued. “Yeah. Relatively. Quantum substrate chatter for a 1 is like, two feet maximum. As long as I don’t get any closer … we shouldn’t have any more problems.”
“’Shouldn’t have’,” Spur replied darkly, “is not the same as ‘won’t have’. My clothing was destroyed and I am sullied by wearing this … uniform.”
Personally, Garth thought Spur looked kind of okay in the IndoRussian pilot garb, but kept his mouth shut all the same. The android had done more than his fair share of teleporting ninja murders in addition to saving his life at least twice, so if the pale dude wanted to bitch about his clothes, he could bitch away.
“Did you learn anything important before we were attacked?” Spur hoped so. He didn’t think it was a wise idea to transport Garth to the Emperor when –by all accounts- they almost certainly were soon going to be followed by the very irate owners of the now completely destroyed array.
Garth rolled his eyes. Had he ever. The sheer gravity of what he’d learned was the kind of thing that would –under normal circumstances- have him deviating from his current objective so fast it wouldn’t even be funny. But he’d come this far, and for once, he had someone capable of filling him in on what it was he could expect next. “Not salient to the matter at hand. How about you tell me what I can look forward to at the Emperor’s Dome.”
“Regret.” Spur replied instantly.
Garth cocked his head to one side. “Say again?”
“Regret, caveman. Regret.” This time Spur did turn to confront his rescuer. “Emperor-for-Life Etienne Marseilles allows only the penitent access to what lay inside his Dome, and what lay inside his Dome is regret. In your mind, in your darkest and most secret of hearts, Garth Nickels, there is a burning ember of regret greater than anything you’ve ever spoken aloud or experienced since. That regret, caveman, is brought to life inside the Dome, and you are tasked with surviving it a second time, of doing better, of doing what is right.”
Garth snorted derisively. “I don’t regret anything.”
“That, caveman,” Spur said as he turned back to the controls, “is a lie. Think on your regrets. Prepare yourself. The Emperor knows all and sees all, and you shall be tested.”
Garth settled back into his chair.
He knew all about regret.
Didn’t he just?
COMING SOON:
EMPEROR-FOR-LIFE: DEADSHOP REDUX
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