Emperor-for-Life: DeadShop Redux (Unreal Universe Book 6)

by Lee Bond

  Babel found himself wishing he was Shriven. Mostly because he suspected that when he got free, his life was going to become even more complicated. Having that cool exterior, that implacable calm … that'd be wonderful.

  Ha snapped her fingers, and Telgar started moving from his position nearest Cianni, a look of uncommon dread rising up through the glazed countenance of a man completely beaten down. When the brawny, golden-haired Specter stood beside Ha, he turned his head up to her, eyes shining with fear.

  Ha smiled down at poor Telgar, ran a manicured hand carefully across his jaw, the sharp points of her fingernails leaving behind red lines. She looked at the Emissary. “This man is going to kill you, Emissary. He doesn’t want to, but he will because I ask it. I have the same power as your Emperor, do I not?”

  The Shriven Emissary shook his head. “You do not. Any beast can kill at the command of their master. The Emperor never asks his loyal subjects to kill for him, and he only kills when there is no other recourse.”

  “Are you not afraid?” Ha simply couldn’t understand. Out of every single person she’d taken control of, precisely one was fighting her. All the others had caved within seconds of being offered the choice between life and death. True, she’d manipulated things to her favor, and true, many chose to die –and quite bloodily, and painfully, at that- but still, they’d gone down fighting.

  Ha was beginning to suspect that the Emperor-for-Life truly did hold a power equal to her own. Certainly not greater, because that was impossible.

  The Shriven Emissary shook his head again, though this time, the gesture carried with it smug amusement, as if he simply couldn’t believe that the Lady Ha –a woman who’d become a rightful scourge and a terror in one of the most powerful Yellow Dog systems in all of Trinityspace- was failing to understand something so simple as being Shriven.

  “There is nothing in this Universe for me to be afraid of, Lady Ha. I stood and faced my own inner demons. There is nothing greater, save the being who gave me that great gift. To die in his service is to fulfill a dream, a longing, I never knew I had.”

  Babel stared on as tears began pouring down Telgar’s noble face. The poor man was a wreck, for out of all of them, he’d been the least suited to deal with the kind of depravations and madness Ha demanded of them on an hourly basis; he’d joined Specter only to be close to the woman he’d loved. In the beginning, it’d been a one-sided thing, but in the end the very much more cynical Cianni had fallen in love herself, and while he was a top-notch warrior, capable of great violence and mayhem, it’d only ever been in the pursuit of a goal.

  Killing an honest man, a simple man, an envoy from one of the only rulers outside of Trinity Itself to have actual power … for Telgar, that was nothing more than brutal assassination.

  Babel shut his eyes. He’d seen men beaten to death before. It was grim and uncomfortable, filled with sounds that rattled around inside your head until you began desperately wishing that the recipient just gave up, but when the psychic connection –buried under millions of tons of concrete and glazed over with a special layer that was Ha’s own programming- flared to life, the weary conman opened his eyes and stared on.

  In horror. In absolute, mystified, horror.

  Lady Ha was forcing Telgar to generate one of his impenetrable shields inside the Shriven Emissary’s body; blood already poured freely from every visible pore, along with copious amounts of the stuff from the eyes, ears, nose and mouth. Babel saw with a regrettable look that the tiny EuroJapanese man was already leaking from his fingertips, ten thin, steady streams of bright red blood that seemed to be almost neon colored underneath the harsh lights that Ha adored so much.

  Ha flounced from her electronic throne and over to the Shriven Emissary, who was locked into a rigid, agonizing pose, doing a bit of a pirouette as she got close enough. She patted the man’s arm, cooed in delight at the obvious misery he was enduring. She whispered delicately into a bleeding ear.

  “Do you see? I do have power like your Emperor. This man’s power was meant to protect, but I … I have turned it into something else entirely. There is an unbreakable shield wrapped around your bones, Emissary. When I will it, this shield will grow, and everything that is wet and organic, everything that makes you who you are, will be pulled away. Pushed away. You will die, and for nothing.”

  Ha skipped around the suffering man, halos and spires chiming, a grotesque, sinister children’s song for all to hear. “Or, you can tell me what you know about the Emperor’s power, everything I think I might find useful for when I take my fight to him, and I’ll let you live. I will give you the medical attention you deserve, and you can stand by my side.”

  Babel knew that if he wasn’t warring against the throbbing pain that’d risen up in his brain thanks to Telgar’s prolonged use of his power –and in such a bloody, unfair manner- he might very well have laughed out loud, spoiling his impending escape attempt in the process.

  No one went against the Emperor. That was something even he knew. It was unlikely that the Emperor possessed the same kinds of power and … and power as Trinity Itself, but he held something in his grasp that forced the machine mind to give him free reign whenever and wherever he turned his gaze.

  Babel screwed his eyes shut again. The pain was rising, turning from a minor irritation into glass blades levering into his brain. He barely heard the Emissary’s response.

  The Shriven Emissary laughed wetly, then spent a few seconds coughing up blood until his airways were clear again. He tried moving his head this way and that, tried to find the weird woman so he could look her in the eyes, but couldn’t. The strange energy gripping him kept him right where he was.

  No matter. The Emperor had warned him well in advance that his life was almost certainly going to end, promising in the same breath that his family would be well taken care of, right up until the end of time itself.

  There was no greater gift, no greater dream, especially for a man such as him.

  At last, at long last, his debt to the Universe would be paid in full. No greater gift, no greater love.

  “The Emperor … the Emperor …” He coughed blood again. Soon now. “The Emperor urges you to turn your sights elsewhere in the Universe, Lady Ha. He is kind and he is patient and he is forgiving, but he is not weak. Desist your cruelties here, exact your revenge until the solar winds burn with blood, then move on. Do not go to him. You will fail before you start.”

  The exasperated shriek of pure rage that erupted from Lady Ha at this final defiance was an excruciating, grand-hall-filling scream of discordant and unharmonious sounds that raked hot coals over the minds of everyone present over and over again until painful tears washed down the faces of every man, woman and Offworlder within earshot.

  “Kill him!” Ha bellowed, throwing her hands up in disgust. “Kill him now and make it hurt!” She stormed back to her throne, each step a gunshot.

  Babel felt the gun in the back of his mind, held by the real him tense up. Soon. It would fire soon. When Telgar unleashed the power coursing through the poor bastard who somehow still lived, when the psychic connection between them was at it’s most florid, then it would fire. All the rounds. All the control-destroying words that’d been shaped into lethal weapons would launch through every cell in his brain, every neuron, every ganglion, every bit of him would be scoured clean of the filthy alien thoughts trying to work their way in.

  And he would be free.

  The glass blades slicing into his mind suddenly bloomed into crystalline burrs, many-sided, weirdly shaped razor sharp caltrops. Babel gasped. He couldn’t help himself. He felt more than saw Ha’s suddenly raptor-like gaze turn his way the moment the sound escaped his lips, but it was too late; the very second the Shriven Emissary erupted into a fountain or blood, guts and other willfully unidentified viscera that sprayed the impassive honor guard, Telgar, Ha herself and her throne, the real Babel Sinfell fired those shots and let those bowling balls roll out.

  The effect was
instantaneous. The poisonous neon green and wretched black spires that were the mental projection of Lady Ha’s failed cybernetic intrusion into Babel Sinfell’s mentality shattered into so much virtual glass, whole sections of the perilous fortification cracked wide, revealing sulfurous intent and vile cravings. Everything fell and fell and fell, while the bullets themselves ricocheted back and forth and all through the mazelike corridors that were the mind of the manipulative Specter conman, back and forth and up and down and all the way through, hammering away at every single instance of Lady Ha’s abominable and –now that he was capable of seeing it at least partially clearly- clumsy hack until nothing remained except tumbling blocks of broken code.

  And then the bowling balls came, huge and heavy, lumbering words formed into crushing orbs, and they ground Ha’s fine work into atoms and less than atoms.

  Through it all, Lady Ha couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, her own great and vast and wise intellect stunned very nearly insensate over this unexpected spectacle.

  A simple man, with a simple talent for getting what he wanted out from people … had accomplished this?

  Her glorious psyche-hack had been transformed –without her even noticing- into mentally tangible and concrete structures instead of brilliantly flowing code, and it was being destroyed by words forged into malicious weapons of unstoppable intent.

  Ha’s fingers twitched spasmodically in time with the unrivalled destruction. The CyberHacker waited for the moment when the carnage in Babel Sinfell’s mind fell to nothing. Then she would be on him again, efforts redoubled. No. Tripled. She’d pour all her resources into cracking the man’s brain open like an egg. She’d sacrifice her efforts into hacking the Universe if only to be able to understand how something so simple as Babel’s talent could blossom into something so unexpected.

  So powerful!

  Babel dropped to his knees, hands clamped to the sides of his head to keep the damned thing from bursting wide at the seams. Blood poured from his nose and a bit of wetness the eyes, but as he knelt there, gasping and groaning, the pain began residing.

  Clarity and purity of a mind finally untainted settled in, like fresh snow on a big field.

  Babel Sinfell rose to his feet, thumbed the blood from his nose. He looked at Ha, who was of course staring at him with eyes wide enough to swallow star systems. He felt the thoughtful, watchful eyes of everyone in the room, considered the danger of the fifty-strong ninja army as well as the threat represented by his friends Telgar, Cianni and Eddie.

  Then, of course, he also took into consideration the indomitable Lady Ha herself. With the deadly spires and halos that coruscated with sickly energy and with her queer, violent connection to the Universe itself, the woman herself was more of a danger than anyone else in the room. She was capable of doing things that violated the already easily-violated laws of the Unreal Universe.

  Lady Ha clapped her hands, genuinely impressed. She’d witnessed a feat of miraculous willpower, a thing she honestly wouldn’t have expected from a man like Babel Sinfell.

  “Well done, Babel Sinfell, well done indeed. The worm has turned. Of all you Specters, you were the last man I expected to show any kind of resistance, much less capable of orchestrating an escape. Well,” she smiled condescendingly, giving off a flouncing gesture that took in her empire, “from my immediate mental control. But certainly not from here. You can never escape me. Be a good boy and stay right there, and I assure you, when I am … ready, my men will take you into custody. Whereupon we will begin again.”

  Babel Sinfell said nothing. Not yet. It wasn’t quite time. He felt the burgeoning power of his voice, of his will, growing inside him, but he was afraid; where before the words flowing out of him when he turned his voice in that special way had been like honey, or a soothing river, he felt a tsunami on the horizon and when he spoke, he needed just the right words.

  Ha clapped her hands again, realizing as she did so she was coated in gore. An aggravated wave of a hand and the Shriven Emissary’s remains were scoured clean. “Don’t you have anything to say for yourself? I’m certain you are trying to come up with some words to say, no? Some phrase, some trick, some wily words to win your freedom from here? No? Good. Because you can never be free of me. I am all you have, all you will ever have, until the day you die by my will … what is it?”

  Babel couldn’t help but smile. The Lady Ha, giving him his choice of words. It was funny. So funny, he even laughed, and he laughed again when Ha’s countenance grew ever sourer. He opened his inner mouth, the thing in his mind that held the power to fill his voice with power, and he whispered…

  Tried to whisper.

  The thing that erupted from his mouth was a tsunami. It was an outburst of purified and concentrated will, a howling, deck plate buckling, bone-shattering command that had the very air dancing with beads of illuminated power.

  “I. AM. FREE.”

  The words exploded, then. Into scintillating fractals. Every interpretation, every variation, every intent, every meaning filled the air.

  Free to run

  Free to hide

  Free to be

  Free from you

  Free from danger

  Free from threat

  Around and around and around the words went, catching Lady Ha and her servants in a whirlwind of spitting, crackling words that burned into them, caught them up and handled them like wayward children. The words continued spreading, flowing through the Lady Ha’s mighty empire, filling the space between each ship, sliding into the minds of everyone under her control, across comm units, across the gulf.

  Everyone, everywhere, heard his words. And were snared.

  Ha felt the prickling energy traipsing across her skin, slithering across her haloes, trying to burrow through her spires and put everything she could into stopping them from digging in deep, but it was too late, had been too late the moment he’d spoken, because that was how Babel’s power worked.

  Aghast at the fluidity and ease with which she herself had been hacked by a conman with a basic power, Ha could do nothing as all desire to capture, kill or control Babel Sinfell or to even order someone else to do it for her –not that it would be possible, not with his voice curled into their very souls now- drained away.

  She watched Babel Sinfell turn and run, eyes glittering thoughtfully. There had to be a way. A way to catch him again. A way around the commands burned into her. She needed him back, needed him. If he could build a word that held all the words in it, then he might be able to tell the Universe what to do.

  Babel Sinfell disappeared around a corner.

  The Lady Ha blinked, and even the dream of having Babel back was gone.

  "Clean this mess up, fools. With your tongues." The mighty Lady Ha went back to her throne, and her efforts in controlling the Universe.

  A Whole New Kind of Show

  Sidra stood off to one side of the most powerful man in the solar system, as was customary. These days, there was a tiny bit extra space between her and her love, and it troubled her heart, yet there was little she could do; ever since the moment she’d saved his life –it felt like a thousand years ago, even to someone who was functionally immortal- and he’d displayed such bravery, such passion, such loyalty to Garth, both time and distance tugged at heart until she was by his side once more.

  Except …

  Sidra furrowed her brow, then smoothed it with an impatient thought. She needed to have better control over her emotions. With Herrig a handful of steps away, addressing the entire solar system on the state of affairs –things weren’t going well, but neither were they going poorly- with the encroaching Trinity forces, listening to everything he said, did and implied, those eyes were also on her.

  One of her frowns would have certain quarters talking about 'trouble in paradise' and 'lovers' spats', and Herrig didn't need that kind of attention.

  Getting used to the fact that when he spoke, trillions of people were watching and listening, and that by exten
sion -because she was stood by him, protectively glowering at every newshound who dared get too close or who foolishly risked questions better left unasked- she was being watched also.

  Sidra remembered that moment as clear as the first moment she’d stepped out of the conversion chamber, though with considerably less excitement: Foursies aren’t supposed to have panic attacks.

  She’d stood before flaming shipwrecks, with titan-sized chunks of metal and fire raining down. She’d wrestled with hulking creatures on the other side of the Cordon that were nothing but muscle and hate and poison. She’d stood beneath alien suns and watched those suns explode, and all without a single twitch of fear, a single frisson of panic. But standing beside a humble man who –more often than not- ‘ermed’ and ‘ahhed’ his way through a speech, she’d suddenly felt lightheaded and possessed of a sudden need to run and hide in the corner.

  Sa Herrig DuPont, Chairman of the solar system and close personal friend of Garth N’Chalez, had rested his hand atop hers, and in that moment, all her fears and panicky thoughts had dissipated, leeched out of her by the warmth of an honest man.

  Except…

  Sidra wished she could push the word away, cram it down deep inside and leave it there to rot, only, it wouldn’t go away because …

  … Because Sa Herrig DuPont, the man she loved with all her heart and soul –scandalous as such a thing might be in this day and age- was different now. Had been since he’d stood up to Fenris and the others, since the second he’d turned their solid friend Ute Tizhen into a … whatever he’d become.

  There was an old saying, often crowed from the mountaintops when newshounds and political figures feared that their Chair was getting ahead of him or herself, that they’d been too long wearing the First Proteus;

  ‘Absolute power corrupts, absolutely.’

  Sidra knew most of the Universe had something similar in their own language, and it held true. True across the board, as far as she was concerned, save one particular man. Even her own brethren, the original Harmony Soldiers, couldn’t claim to be aloof from corruption.