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

by Lee Bond

  That being said, Mayin was one of the most experienced Shriven out there; she was just over five hundred years old and had been in the direct employ of the Emperor-for-Life for slightly over four hundred of those years. Unlike most of her brethren, she had experience in behaving more or less normal. The people she worked with accepted her as slightly quirky and 'different', and that was all that mattered.

  Her cover story helped with those moments when her behavior slipped, and with her new deployment alongside a handful of Trinityfolk in the smallish listening post as it buzzed around Latelyspace’s curious shield, she was allowed to be … more Shriven than usual.

  The EuroJapanese Shriven ran a thoughtful hand across the shiny, silver implant nodules rising out of her left temple to cross over one eye before rising over the top of her skull before eventually sliding back into her body at the base of her neck.

  According to her medical files, it was a semi-legal memory hack designed to replicate the autonomous functions of the brain; as a child, Mayin Chisolm had been badly ‘injured’ by a ravaging disease that’d all but obliterated the majority of those functions people took for granted, and the people of her world had done the best they could in providing for those afflicted with the terrible disease. The upside was that all of those bodily functions ordinarily handled by the organic brain were neatly taken care of by the stylish looking if oversized implant.

  The downside was that the world Mayin came from wasn’t as up-to-speed on implants and brain chemistry as some parts of the Universe, so they’d been forced to make sacrifices in order to ensure the afflicted had a chance at some kind of a normal life. What did it matter if –in most cases- the implant location had a tendency –by the time they grew to adulthood- to impinge on the emotional centers of the brain, rendering a significant portion of those saved as very nearly emotionless? They’d been saving lives.

  Mayin didn’t know if the Emperor had arranged for that terrible disease to descend upon the people of Irrila-9 or if it’s arrival had been purely accidental, nor could she care. The implant and it’s unkind side effects allowed her to do a very specific, very important job for the Emperor, and that was all that mattered. If he’d intentionally infected children ages five and under with a plague to give him eyes in places he himself couldn’t look, so be it.

  Mayin wasn’t one to judge. Not anymore. Not unless she was told to.

  “Implant bothering you today?” This, from her shiftmate, Coree.

  Coree was a nice older woman in her late nineties who’d taken on the role of deployment granny. She made certain everyone was feeling their best and did all she could to ensure that if people were feeling low, they didn’t stay there for long. Listening post deployments were among the worst you could draw, because they were –for lack of a better phrase- shit-stone boring and most Naval officers did whatever they could to get out of them, up to and including accidentally falling down long flights of stairs, or, in one notable case, purposefully drinking actual poison.

  “A little. Yes.” Mayin nodded but didn’t look away from her monitors.

  In addition to making certain she kept breathing and her blood continued flowing and all those very important things, the implant was a direct link to the Emperor-for-Life. When he had need of her, words whispered directly into her brain in a way that defied explanation; they were almost words and kind of images, all jumbled together in a way that eventually formed a clear idea of the Emperor's requirements.

  Coree flashed Mayin a little smile. It’d taken some getting used to, the way the younger woman just sort of … switched off … when she wasn’t actively engaged in conversation. Some casual prying into her personnel documents –something everyone did when curiosity got the better of them- had revealed the reasons behind the implant. Everyone aboard now knew about Mayin’s suffering as a child and did their best to remember how the implant had changed her life, especially during those moments when she seemed surreally dispassionate.

  It was the right thing to do. Besides which, the younger woman was really very good at her job.

  “Any updates on the … what was it called? The Morris code?”

  “No.” Mayin shook her head. “The AI minds tasked to deciphering the code have all but given up. The original Morse Code was quickly and easily identified, but the encryption escapes their efforts. I have spent considerable time attempting to unravel what it is they are saying, but with little success.”

  This was no lie; when she was done her shift at the controls, Mayin often spent as many as eight additional hours working to crack the strange Morse Code being played against the shield wall. The Shriven feared it was a waste of time, even for someone like herself, who was abnormally well suited for drudge work of this kind.

  Very shortly, she planned on calling an end to the efforts. Their new Commanding Officer, Kaptan Innit, might call her to task for the decision, but with ‘Space Station Tarterus’ transforming itself into a space-based den of iniquity and madness, the Shriven was willing to bet he had his mind on other things. For all any of them knew, the Morse Code had been put into play just to mess with everyone and held no meaning whatsoever.

  Mayin was about to add something pointless to the conversation merely to keep Coree from feeling slighted, but the implant in her head flexed.

  The Emperor was calling! With seconds, the confines of her mind weren't entirely her own; sights and sounds and images flooded her cortex, filling her with what felt to Mayin like the largest request the Emperor had ever demanded.

  “Such a shame.” Coree took a quick look at her own readouts and shrugged, dismissing Mayin’s vacuous expression readily enough.

  Nothing.

  Always nothing.

  All fifteen posts collaborated on different methods of trying to first locate then read information that should be spilling outwards from the shield, but to no avail. The only thing that was working was the Morse Code, but if Mayin -whose intellect was daunting- couldn't make heads or tails of it with AI assistance, there was no hope at all.

  Mayin said nothing.

  She was preoccupied in reprogramming the extremely delicate sensors of their listening post into something capable of scanning across the lowest levels of the quantum substrate. It was an area the posts had never bothered poking into with any great detail because the very first thing Politoyov had ordered his AI combat-oriented minds to simulate had been quantum disturbances. Anecdotal data generated by those preliminary assessments had been further boosted by the appearance of aggravated Enforcers letting loose with their frankly impressive collection of systemic killers.

  The shield just didn’t react. To anything, in any quantities.

  It was the sort of thing that drove people mad, as was evinced by the goings on in Tarterus.

  Coree grew interested in what Mayin was doing; the young woman was the best of them when it came to focus and staying alert when nothing at all happened for hours on end, but she wasn’t particularly keen on pushing the envelope, so the furious typing and barely audible sub-commands to the onboard artificial intelligences was most out of place.

  Using her credentials as lead Intelligence officer aboard the Whispering Pines, she logged onto the primary servers and ordered her ‘personal’ AI –Civit- to examine Mayin’s efforts.

  “What?” Coree could scarcely believe her eyes. Somehow, Mayin was doing root level reprogramming of the entire sensor array on the fly, rapidly rewriting entire sections of ordinarily AI-protected code to force the hypersensitive machinery to do …. Something. “How are you … this is …”

  “Whispering Pines was originally constructed by the Chin Zadou Corporation of Kelten-1-9 in the Fortenbas System.” Mayin continued typing, only with one hand. Her other hand was now busy extracting the slender needle gun she carried with her at all times. “One of the men working for Chin Zadou was named Kellen Fong, and he and I share a common grace. In support of the Emperor-for-Life Etienne Marseilles and his continued glory, Kellen Fong uses his access
to vessels in his dockyard so that he might prepare them more properly for use. The war against Latelyspace is of great interest to the Emperor, and so we cannot allow him to remain ignorant of what goes on here. He has always maintained a vested interest in Latelyspace. Too much power, too much … strangeness, all clustered together this way … it leaves a bad taste. And so, I am here.”

  It didn’t take Coree long to figure out what Mayin was going on about. Aghast, she uttered, “Shriven? You’re Shriven? Here? You can’t even be in the Navy! We … we have … tests.”

  Mayin paused in her reprogramming efforts to tap her shiny silver implant. “In conjunction with specifically designed machines, this device obfuscates my predis … ah. Finally.” Mayin’s hand closed on the needler. Without hesitation, she delivered a half-dozen poison-tipped, ultra-thin flechettes directly into Coree’s face and eyes.

  The elder Naval Intelligence officer didn’t even have time to gasp, cry for help, or reach for the panic button each of them carried around their necks. The poisonous needles killed her stone cold dead with a double thump of the heart. Coree’s lifeless body slumped to the floor beside her workstation, nothing more than a ragdoll.

  Mayin finished the reprogramming a few minutes later. It’d take time for onboard constructs to complete the physical alterations to the senor arrays; restructuring everything aboard to look for a very specific pattern of Quantum Tunnel emissions comingled with a theoretical amount of black hole engine discharge wasn’t something anyone had previously considered. Whole entire sections would need to be dismantled and rebuilt.

  Time which would be well spent dealing with the two remaining naval officers aboard Whispering Pines.

  Mayin checked the needle cartridge. Half a dozen incredibly lethal needles remained. She looked at Coree, dead. She’d been distracted when firing, and regretted using six needles where one would've certainly done the trick for the old woman.

  The other two were younger, meaning they'd need more than one …

  “No matter. They’re asleep. Three apiece will do.” Mayin paused to reflect, to see if she was doing anything she shouldn’t and came up wanting.

  The Emperor-for-Life was convinced someone was coming through the shield and he wanted whoever it was for his own purposes. Nothing else mattered, not even her own life.

  Mayin headed off to deal with Martine and Oparet.

  ***

  A few hours later, a gentle chime shivered through Mayin’s cabin, prompting the Shriven’s eyes to snap open like shutters on windows; though she felt no true emotion, Mayin was nevertheless certain that could she have a feeling, it would be one of pleasure.

  The modifications long since complete, the sound could mean only one thing: the sensors had detected something similar to what the Emperor was hunting for in this section of space!

  Therefore, while she felt no true emotion, success at finishing a task that might've been a fool's errand would indeed create a feeling of pleasure.

  Rising swiftly from her cot, Mayin made her way at a brisk pace through the empty corridors, listening only to the sound of her breathing and the fall of soft footsteps on the metal floors. Gone was the merry bickering between Martine and Oparet as they worked to stave off the boredom. Gone was Coree’s incessant intrusions into perceived personal issues that –had they even existed- Mayin would’ve rather died than discuss with anyone except another Shriven.

  Mayin adored the silence of Whispering Pines.

  Within a few minutes, Mayin Chisolm was back in the main data centers of the ship. “Show me.”

  “There is nothing visual to display, Mayin Chisolm. The phenomenon exists solely within the nonvisual range. Hallmarks of your search pattern have been detected, that is all.”

  “Fabricate a display.” Through her implant, Emperor-for-Life Etienne Marseille’s computers had been most descriptive with what a breach of this nature would look like, and the inexplicable images were burned right into her mind. The AI could easily work something up, no doubt mirroring the Emperor's concepts; she wasn't about to move her ship without more proof than an AI saying 'yes, this is happening'.

  The moment she did so, the Naval Branch of Trinity's Assembled Army would notice, and her commanding officer would jump on it within seconds of departure; while Lieutenant Grabe Gables spent an absurd amount of time on Tarterus, even he’d feel compelled to pull his boots on and deal with situations. “Surely you can do that.”

  “It will be a theoretical model only.”

  “Acceptable.” Mayin nodded once, firmly. If what the AI cooked up was even partially similar to the images in her mind, the Shriven was prepared to move.

  “Preparing display now.”

  On the largest monitor –one that Oparet used to watch ridiculous television shows from her homeworld on- the AI first began by displaying their theoretical models on the shield surrounding Latelyspace; rendered with a faint bluish glow to differentiate the impenetrable armor from the rest of space, the conceptual presentation always took Mayin’s breath away.

  To think! A shield, surrounding an entire solar system! Of course, she knew of The Cordon, but to nearly everyone in Trinityspace, that was an abstract thought so very far away it barely seemed real.

  This was here, right here, in front of them all. Keeping them all at bay.

  Mayin had to confess to pleasure that the Emperor-for-Life had asked her to find a way through this curious miracle. The impossibility of this shield was too overwhelming. Mayin was convinced that any attempt on her part would've defeated her quite handily.

  “Running detected spatial phenomenon.” The AI announced. “Remember, Mayin Chisolm, this is similar to but not precisely the same as what has actually been located with the modified sensor arrays. Much of what has been uncovered is beyond even our capacity to render properly. We have discerned that it'd take a Grendel cluster of 10’s for a full and accurate display.”

  “Acceptable.” Mayin hissed. She hated wasting time. Already, Martine’s contacts aboard the other ships had to be wondering why their ordinarily garrulous friend wasn’t chatting their ears off about the dull minutiae of life aboard a listening post in a war where no one was doing anything interesting.

  At first, nothing happened, leaving Mayin to wonder if she’d managed to push the AI too far; though the ship had been constructed to the Emperor’s specifications –had, in fact, been built just for her- the minds running the vessel still had unbreakable allegiances to both Trinity Itself and their primary owner. That was a higher than average number of conflicting orders.

  Had it been enough to trip the logic centers buried inside each sphere?

  Then … a ripple of invisible light shivered across a section of the bluish shield, almost like a globe of water suspended in zero gravity being hit gently with a small object.

  Mayin found she was holding her breath. The Assembled Army had spent years and considerable effort to cause the shield to do something, anything, to no avail, yet someone on the inside had managed it.

  The Shriven woman wondered who was trying to breach the only thing keeping Trinity from crushing the solar system. It couldn’t be someone loyal to Latelyspace. That made no sense.

  No, the only thing making any sense was that somehow, a group of soldiers or Specters had uncovered the location of an emitter or broadcaster and were exploiting their discovery.

  Which begged the internal question: what did the Emperor want with them? Other than his loyal Shriven, their glorious ruler had next to no use for anyone in Trinityspace.

  Mayin pushed the puzzle away. It was none of her concern, nor would it ever be. The Emperor wanted what the …

  The rippling suddenly transformed itself from a mildly impressive display into something that very nearly threatened to shock the Shriven spy into unconsciousness; space surrounding the relatively small ripple effect –no larger than three hundred feet, give or take- suddenly burst into a kind of sideways volcanic eruption, spilling a riot of energies into the empty v
oid for very nearly three solid miles of quantum substrate disruption.

  Where the shield was cast in soft blue, the frenzied disgorging of energy pushing through the center of the disturbance was –for whatever reason- rendered in varying degrees of red; the edges –presumably where the forces plucking at the very base state of the Universe were at their weakest- being a soft, gentle pink, while the central … veins passed into the deepest, darkest, most violent looking shades of evil red and vermillion.

  And the whole of it was moving, shifting this way and that, waving in the depths of space like some kind of carnelian flower.

  A thing alive, burning through an impenetrable wall of energy.

  Against rationality, Mayin Chisolm found the display to be the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen with her own two eyes.

  “Display ended.” The glorious image winked out.

  Mayin found a hand pressed firmly against her lips, and she moved it away, staring at the traitorous limb as if for the first time.

  Impossible. She felt no emotion.

  The staggering enormity of what it meant to break through the shield had merely clouded her senses for a moment, that was all.

  Yes. That was it.

  An autonomous response, driven by her implant. There was no true emotive component here.

  “Take me there.” Mayin commanded brusquely, climbing into the pilot’s chair. “Spare no effort.”

  “Using the black hole engines will destroy the sensor arrays.”

  “It matters not. Even though no one was looking for precisely this kind of thing, I cannot help but imagine that a blind, deaf and dumb idiot could sense that eruption. That kind of spatial chaos would be hard to miss.” Mayin buckled herself in and made sure she was moored down tight; on an ordinary military vessel, the black hole engines caused little in the way of internal distress thanks to the gravnetic shields, but Whispering Pines didn’t have shielding to cover their sensor arrays. Ordinarily, they were torn down over half a day and stored in compartments, only to be rebuilt at the other end, but a matter of pressing urgency had settled in over Mayin's heart.