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

by Lee Bond

  If Tomas was making a legitimate effort to break loose, the Emperor knew swift and deliberate action would be the only recourse; outside, in Trinityspace, AI systems everywhere would begin responding to Tomas Kamagana's presence. Why would they not? He was the last Kamagana Elder, titular leader of the defunct Yellow Dog Clan.

  During the purge -necessary to drive Tomas to Latelyspace- the angry, vitriolic Clans had done their best to empty the Kamagana Clan's nearly endless resources, but had moved too slowly. They were all locked under the most stringent of codes, alarms and other security devices, making it virtually impossible for anyone to first find those 'lost' Kamagana Clan Vaults and then secondly, opening them.

  In order to facilitate Naoko's protection on the outside, Eddie had allowed Tomas to barter away an incredibly small portion of what remained. Alistair Katainn had made good use of his newfound wealth, but …

  There was so much more in those vaults. Things that were better left in the dark.

  If Tomas was getting out, if the incongruity responded to freedom from the HIM's presence, if the right AI encountered the old man at the wrong time … access to those vaults could transform him into a feudal warlord the likes of which the Universe had never seen.

  And that’d make him competition. The thought of that made Eddie … well, sweat wasn’t the right word for it, but close enough: some of the safeguards out there, machines and other things that the Emperor-for-Life used to rule his people … they didn’t possess methods of differentiating between the real Emperor-for-Life and a perfect clone.

  “Wait. Stop. Go back. Show me those design specs again.” Eddie read through the technical specs for the black hole engines with something akin to worry burning through his mind. Powerful, powerful engines, without a lick of hy-tech to them at all.

  More of the ‘Engineer’s’ bullshit combined with the radically insane experimental insanity that belonged to Specters. Used the right way, engines like these might be able to bend or warp the skin of the shield just enough to let something …

  “No.” Eddie shook his head. “Not as they stand. If he had time to build something larger, big as a building or more, to bend the energy shield to his whim, then yes. But he’d attract all kinds of attention, and he wouldn’t want to spend that kind of … fuck my life. The Quantum Tunnel.”

  Eddie sat there and stared at the screen for a long, silent moment, before wordlessly commanding the room to run a simulation combining the warping power of a modified black hole engine and the distance-shredding abilities of a Quantum tunnel. When the simulation was complete, he watched as resulting tech was played against the shield.

  Success between 75-80%.

  Far too probable.

  “Do I have assets in any of the ships outside the shield wall?” Eddie demanded shrilly.

  The room responded almost instantly.

  Less than a dozen, most of them in cover identities that needed sustaining.

  Eddie was unwilling to spend those coins just yet. It was hard enough getting Emperor-loyal people into any positions of authority inside Trinity’s beehive-like command structure and he might yet need those of true power inside the Army for something –whatever that might be- important later on.

  But there was one he could use. One who wouldn’t let him down.

  “Contact Mayin Chisolm. Tell her I need data readings all across the quantum substrate. My eyes only. I need to know if that shield so much as shivers like a child in the night. No matter the cost. If she’s caught, remind her of what she needs to do. I need to know.”

  The room signaled it’s understanding.

  Eddie went back to watching the simulation, worry growing.

  He could not afford a version of himself –however imperfect, however inelegant- loose in the wilds of the Universe. There was simply no telling what a man like that would do, especially once he learned of his daughter’s fate.

  The Emperor-for-Life began calling up a list of entities –man, woman, Offworlder, whatever from wherever- that might be able to deal with the viperous Lady Ha, and in such a way that’d leave ADAM no other choice but to back down.

  As much as it pained him, Ha needed to be brought down, and before Tomas made any headway.

  The list was long. It would take forever to go through, and that was even assuming someone on that list could do what needed to be done.

  11. Madness Abounds Pretty Much Everywhere You Look

  Math-meatics

  Terrex-33. Ponobley System, Crucifacious Galaxy. Just one of the hundred billion or so backwater Galaxies under Trinity Itself’s belt, a Galaxy that knew precisely what it was, what it could have if it so chose to move forward into the light and …

  Didn’t give one hot damn one way or the other.

  Because in addition to being a backwater planet that could have access to the kinds of things that’d turn it and every solar system within Crucifacious into something a little more exciting, they were also Dark Age fanatics.

  They lived it and breathed it and they feared the coming of the Night with such bladder-bursting terror that they'd do whatever it took to stave off that immaculate darkness any way they could.

  And that meant living in conditions that Andros Medellos, aka Tr’ss T’aa Nihaaq S’strss, found sublimely abhorrent.

  “There are animals, my child,” Andros ran a hand across the pulsating, clammy flesh of his larvaship, feeling it’s internal distress the way a father might, “and then there are animals.”

  The larvaship said nothing. It never said anything these days and would continue being mute until it was fully repaired; activating the wormhole technology so close to the Quantum Tunnel had had it’s desired effect –that of depriving Trinity from not only knowing which direction he’d fled in, but also proper access to the Black Clinic’s resting place- but it’d also had a tremendously terrible effect on the larvaship itself.

  Andros couldn’t shake the horrific, mewling, psionic screams ripping through space as he and it had plummeted from the night sky to this awful Terrex-33, subsonic lacerations slicing into his mind like a million indeterminately thin glass needles.

  The damage wasn’t complete, thank the Gods. Self-defense measures –mostly psionic in nature- were still fully operational and more than capable of keeping the people of this world from finding the huge, pale mound of flesh and altered bone where it’d crashed, no matter how hard they tried.

  Andros ran his fingers across one of the few keyboards in the ship, entered a few random requests to see how things were going. “One of the few good things about their utter disregard for tech above the Industrial is their lack of … vision."

  Crews had been out to the crash site three separate times, poking and prodding and digging with their antiquated steel and iron tools, their ridiculously plain faces –oh, what he could do to these people if only they’d open their imaginations to the realities of the flesh- and their dopy eyes looking this way and that, convinced they’d seen something falling from the sky, guttering smoke and billowing flame, a massive rock that should’ve left a crater the size of a small town right where they were stood.

  Only no matter how hard they looked, they found nothing.

  The first time Andros had been standing just outside, doing a damage assessment when those hairless apes, those wretched writhing larval bodies, had stumbled upon the ship. Blinded by the psionic field, they'd neither felt nor heard Andros' sublime despair.

  This world was full of stumblebums and yokels, fools and morons. It’d take some time to bring his larvaship back up to full health, and Andros wished he'd crashed on a high-tech world. More danger, certainly, but elements he needed would be within arm's reach.

  Not here, though.

  The keyboard gave off a tremulous quorp that drew Andros back from his memories. He read the responses with a disappointed eye; the ship had extruded all manner of tendrils and tentacles and siphon-tubes from it’s belly, vast biomechanical straws through which it drew whatever organic materia
l from the just below the surface. As they were playing it safe, though, the all-important matter they were getting was literally a thimbleful when it was the whole ocean they needed.

  “There’s only so much sustenance you can get from fruits and vegetables, my child.” Andros ran more queries through the ship’s quivering brain mass. Of all the sensitive organic machinery aboard, that pulsating organ had been surrounded by the absolute best protection he could’ve designed but even then, the ferocity of the quantum explosion had … gently cooked … a few parts.

  Thus, the gentle treatment. He couldn't risk pushing the damage ship past it's limits, because the psionic barricades were certainly next on the list of things to fail.

  When they regenerated … if they regenerated, there was no telling what the ship would be like.

  Naturally, it'd be best if he brought his child a solid meal of meat and bone, flesh and blood. This way, the better and more thoroughly the Bruushian vessel would recover. It was the way of all things Bruushian, and his handmade larvaship was no different.

  That was what he needed to do. Needed to find bodies to feed his child. None of this crap digging through earthy strata in search of leavings, but actual, full bodied corpses, rich in vital nutrients and minerals. So he could grow big and strong once more, so he could leave this world. To find Garth N’Chalez, the sole man in the entire Universe who might be able to help him leave this Universe and the mewling weaklings who lived in it.

  A machine by his left elbow belched softly.

  Andros rescued the paper-like documents that he’d commanded the ship’s fabricators to create and looked them over with a cautious eye. Everything about the papers was perfect.

  “And why not?” Andros demanded of himself. “I’ve got a crafty eye for this kind of thing, because it’s not that much different from building a new body from the cells up, is it not, my child?”

  The Bruushian Warlord fanned the ‘papers’ –which were, grotesquely enough, forged from actual skin. The humans of this world definitely lacked the subtle sciences that'd detect the grim forgery, so as Andros fanned himself, he enjoyed the breeze that much more.

  “The only other good thing about a world in a system like this, my child, is that their identikits are all taken at face value. I couldn’t imagine a cityworld like Zanzibar operating with nothing other than these.” Andros held the papers up to a camera-eye so his child –if it was capable- could appreciate the merit of it’s work. “I am Andros Medellos, from Hurkin down the road. How are you? I’m thinking of moving to Frengton. My vehicle? No, a friend dropped me off but had to hurry on home for harvest. He’ll be returning in a few days to take me home."

  The mighty Andros Medellos, one of the most ancient Bruush in all of existence, hung his head in utter desolation. “I hope this goes quickly and smoothly, my child. I fear that talking like a country bumpkin for overlong will have me being one before the sun sets. Let no one other than myself through the doors, let no one save me even near you. If animals approach, feed, but only if you can bring the carcass inside. Leave no signs of your consumption, for as much as they’re stupid and as backwater as anything I’ve ever witnessed with my own saurian eyes, every human in existence has a curiosity that can’t be controlled or deflected once piqued. Do you understand me, my child?”

  Andros put a hand against a quivering feed-tube that was thick around as his closed fist and full of ropy red, green and blue veins. There. A tiny quiver contrary to the operations of that particular vein. The Bruush patted the hot tube with a fatherly hand. “I shall return soon enough. If I am lucky, I’ll find someone to bring you.”

  ***

  Frengton. Population 132,908. Main export … seemed to be carbon dioxide, as far as Andros could tell as he slid cautiously into town; Frengton was by no means the largest city on the planet, but when he and his child had been barreling towards the surface at a worrisome rate of speed, there’d been little in the way of choices.

  It’d either been this grim little city called Frengton or a much bigger city to the north, a true and proper metropolis with a few million souls.

  That larger city -Alaint- would've been infinitely more preferable, but with all things being relative, a larger population meant more interest in what'd crashed nearby, and more interest meant larger search parties.

  His poor child was having a hard enough time with the fools from Frengton. Imagining the suffering caused by those from Alaint filled Andros with woe.

  “I planned for none of this.” Andros snarled angrily. “None of it.”

  Oh, how the betrayal rankled!

  Those damned cowardly Cabal members, so eager and ready to sell out one of their own the moment things grew hot under the collar. Emile Voss’ corpulent, greedy and altogether too sanctimonious smile loomed up out of the darkness on a regular schedule, fat, fleshy lips squirming in a face round as a pie.

  Andros wanted nothing more than to exact revenge on the Cabal members –with Emile Voss himself being introduced to the true meaning of hell-, only … only that luxury was beyond him now. Trinity Itself knew just what he was, now. There was every reason to expect that the machine mind would scour the Universe for one lone Bruush, a Bruush capable of doing things to genetic matter that were millions of years ahead of anything anyone else was doing, anywhere.

  It made tactical sense.

  There was a war coming, the greatest War this Universe had ever seen.

  A war so great and mighty that those lucky enough to be born into the new reality would be unlucky enough to dream of it, sing of it, write songs and stories of it.

  The upcoming war would be inscribed into the very atoms of every living thing in that new reality, from the first birth to the last death.

  The poetry of that upcoming conflict sang to the Bruushian warlord, but he needed to turn a deaf ear to the music that tried so eagerly to fill him. This Universe wasn't his. He dreamed of the flatlands of the Bruushian Dominion, with strange colors washing over head, too often now to do anything other than pursue his own very specific goals.

  Andros turned a corner and took in the fact that he was now on a more populated street. He reminded himself that for all intents and purposes, he was just an average human doing average human-type things and that it'd do no good to draw any more attention to himself than he already was; the few Frengtonites closest to him –dressed in light blue jeans and sturdy shirts with caps for the men and long, darkly colored dresses that covered most skin for the women- were already giving him thoughtful looks.

  Andros frowned, but only momentarily. The differences between he and they grew glaringly apparent.

  The average Frengtonite male was between five and half and six feet tall, thin with wiry muscles, whereas he was a saurian offshoot ordinarily ten feet tall and bristling with muscles crammed into a meatsuit that shrank him down to six and a half feet tall and somewhat ridiculously wide. Overtop of his physical differences, he was foolishly wearing loose fitting clothing that absolutely made him seem to be a towering, half-naked giant out for an afternoon stroll.

  Ah well. Stores and supplies aboard his child were now limited. Creating the dragonfly-like reconnaissance that'd swarmed the environment for several days following their 'landing' had been far more important than proper clothes: that was textbook invasion protocol, right there. Knowing more about the environment, what kind of opposition you might encounter … all of that was infinitely more important than clothing.

  There wasn’t anything he could do about it, and from the looks of things, Frengtonites were too polite to broach the topic of the half-dressed, golden-haired giant wandering their streets. He did get plenty of disparaging looks and quite a few distressed sniffs from the women, but all that was water of a dinosaur's back.

  Andros ignored the people around him and kept walking, looking for an area of town that was slightly less reputable than the area he was currently in, a thoroughly unclean plan on his mind; in order for him to fit in, and to find the kind of …
organic reserves … his larvaship required, his options were … limited.

  In fact, there were only two choices available, and both involved the criminal element.

  One choice left whatever criminals he interacted with alive and well and commenting on the kindness of strangers.

  The other choice left those same hypothetical criminals dead, with nothing on their minds any longer, unless you counted the blood pooling gently inside their skulls.

  One allowed him to operate in town without anyone wondering what'd happened to missing fools, the other had other, more purposeful merits, but as Andros strolled through the area, he realized choice had been taken from him; all the locals this area of Frengton were now staring openly at him, silently marking him in the way of small towns everywhere.

  If he didn't take the lives of whichever bad element he met with today, they would most certainly attempt to take his. The natural course of events after that awkwardness would turn all an old Bruushian's plans over the side, so.

  Killing a handful of thieves or conmen or whatever passed for villains in this rural accumulation of ramshackle buildings, industrial plants and mines was far more preferable than dealing with the aftermath of an outraged society hunting 'a madman in their streets'.

  There were more than a few Trinityfolk stories centering on those sorts of encounters, generally with the stranger -sometimes an Offworlder, sometimes someone different, sometimes an actual crazy person- getting the very shortest end of an already tiny stick.

  Now, if only he could arrange to kill and hide the bodies long enough to spirit them back to his poor ship under cover of darkness; because of their Dark Age mania, Frengton had few lights running the length of the streets, so once nightfall swept away their reasons for being out, Andros reasoned he'd all but have the run of the place.

  Andros took another corner, this time mindful to choose a path that'd take him further away from the center of the town than deeper inwards. His cautious foray into Frengton proper had given him a solid dose of Small Town-itis, and he'd rather avoid the complication of 'Idle Sherriff'.