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

by Lee Bond

  Eli looked at his dear wife Chassie, who was doing her best to keep from laughing at Master Pointer and his just-so attitude and the ever-so-polite manner in which he was losing his temper, then gave her a little smack on the bottom. “Not quite as bad as the others when they first come through The Dome, though … there is a hint …”

  “Oh yes, just there, in the eyes.” Chassie nodded, a wistful smile on her lips. “If we were ever in doubt before now as to where you came from, Master Pointer, we no longer are. We’ve learned through the years when dealing with proper Arcadians and not just plain old FrancoBrits that each one of you is built around an iron core. What’s so funny?”

  Chevy bit back the rest of the ironic laughter bubbling out of him, confused as to whether he should still be angry at the couple. “You can say that again, Mistress Chassie. All us lads and lassies as come from Arcadia, well, we’ve seen more than you can care to imagine. Them as you call wardogs out here in the Outside, e’en more. Or, more accurately put, they’ve been through more than e’en they can understand.”

  “What was it like?” Chassie asked wonderingly. “Our … lads and lassies, as you call them. We do extensive psychological profiles on each one, spend sometimes upwards of a year bringing them along to something close to normalcy, but when they first come to us, they’re … feral, Master Pointer. Vicious and brutal and emotionally scarred and they jump at the smallest sounds. Yet tough. So very tough. The toughest things in all the world.”

  Eli closed a hand on Chassie’s shoulder. Ever the caring one, she loved and worried over each of the soldiers falling through The Dome and into their laps as if they were her children. It was hard not to fall in love with her time and again. “We have little time for this at the moment, love. Master Pointer’s impassioned diatribe against our wasting his time was no ploy. He itches to be in 17, to stop his friend and his enemies.”

  “I do.” Chevy took a step forward, felt the pressure coming from Nanny Nonesuch and smiled a wry old smile as he looked over one shoulder; he caught the pretty Offworld Lady in a half-crouch, long, slender, hooked toothlike daggers in each hand, held back in the manner of someone more than a little skilled in slicing through necks and arteries. She had the decency to flush slightly at being caught out.

  “Aye, I see it now. Never in any danger at all, hey? Leaving me here with the Offworlder lady, she of the breathless words and the wind chime language, best place for a man from Arcadia, hey? I promise you, lass, hain’t no need to fear anything I might do. Your Master Elijah, he speaks well and true. I did consider it some kind of odd providence that me and Mistress Chastity did meet on that rooftop ‘cross from 17 and e’en more of one that she and he have some sort of business around my risen brothers and sisters, and mayhap that might e’en be true, hey, but … time ticks quick. My friends and enemies in 17 seem to’ve each run into summat as has slowed them down considerable, but they are there and I am here and ground needs to be recovered else I lose.”

  “Master Pointer,” Eli stepped forward, throwing Nanny Nonesuch a careful and easily understood nod, “we are who we say are and we can provide unto you precisely what my wife said, but there is something you need to understand, something that has nothing to do with vetting who you are or seeing if you’re safe, or anything at all like that. Are you familiar with planets?”

  “Aye.” Chevy jerked his chin once, firmly. His feet ached to be on the path and his heart, too, though it were heavy with the knowledge that soon enough he’d be face to face with his dearest and eldest friend.

  Poor Dom. Rode so roughshod by the King and then cursed with summat of Nickels. Were it just the latter, Chevy had no doubt the lad would be safe as houses, but it were that rotten core of damned King!

  “I did … travel for a time, wi’ him that's the new King of Arcadia. I suppose I could call ’im that, though like as not he’d probably stick a thumb into one o' me grapes for it. Explained a bit of it. Planets and worlds and the Universe to a degree and I learned more here. Why do you ask?”

  Eli dragged Pointer to the window, Nonesuch inserting herself still between the older man and their child, Chassie in tow. “As my lovely wife…”

  “Do, stop, Eli, you’re filling my head.” Chassie parked herself on the other side of Pointer and gazed out over Zanzibar.

  “Cannot help it.” Eli shot his lady love a wink and resumed. “We are … were indeed involved in the FrancoBritish wardog trade. Familial links to them as stood guard on the outside of those great and wonderful doors. We got the wink and the nod hours ahead of anyone else, and have done for near upon … well, let’s just say that it’s become a family tradition. We take ‘em in, we nurse ‘em back to as close to full mental health as we can, teach ‘em how to be in this world of ours and when they’re ready, we either hire them out to people who need a particular brand of protection or we sell them.”

  “As slaves?” Chevy couldn’t keep the sharp anger from his tone, nor would he, not never. The mere thought of Arcadians being kept as slaves would see everyone save Nanny Nonesuch and Gerry in the room dead, even it cost him his own life.

  “Hardly. Contracted soldiers, Pointer. We’d never treat them as such.” Eli wanted quite badly to run his hand across the ticking metal coat Chevril Pointillier wore, wanted to feel those miniscule gears and pistons move ‘gainst his own skin, but … they were dealing with a man direct from Arcadia. No matter how loudly he proclaimed he was fine and calm and normal, he wasn’t. He’d never be. He was an Arcadian.

  The best you could say about one of them was that they had two modes.

  Killing someone, and waiting to kill someone.

  They blipped between those two states so fast that the monitors had no time to register the abrupt change in brain chemistry and they could move so fast that most of the time, people were dead and they were smoking a cigarette, standing in a puddle of blood with gray matter in their hair, before anyone knew anything had happened, asking nice as you please if they could have a fresh cuppa.

  Near about the only thing they could say about Chevril Pointillier was that he was slightly more civil. And the cursing was virtually nonexistent, which was pleasant.

  Eli continued speaking. “As you no doubt know more than anyone else in the Universe, wardogs are so unlike other men and woman, Pointer. They … don’t fit in, out here. Not really. They try their best, they do all they can, they all take time off after their first contract is up and they become their own man or woman. Some leave the private sector and join one of the millions of armies that are out there. Some fall by the wayside and become criminals. Some come back to us. It is the way of things for them. They …”

  “Know nothing but war and violence and pain and death.” Chevy’s words came from a faraway place, from the last few hours inside Ickford, with him, beside the Dark Iron Bastards as they battled valiantly ‘gainst the Gunboys. “That’s all they know, them as come Outside, Master Elijah. You cannot understand. None can. We was all trained, from birth to death to rebirth, in nothing but war. Twenty thousand years and more of it. An endless fight. The pain they felt every second of every day of their twisted, tortured metal-filled lives … a single ounce of it is strong enough to break a city, e'en one as great as this. I were lucky I didn’t get a taste, that I became Gearman instead of gearhead, but I seen enough to feel it in my bones. Your wardogs, as you call 'em, their sorrow and suffering is as endless as endless can be.”

  Chassie shivered at the bleakness awash in Chevy’s voice, felt actual goosebumps dimple her skin. “You asked for our best, which also means in a very real sense, Pointer, that they’re our worst. We keep them separate. Far from other wardogs. When you meet them, you’ll understand.”

  “Why is it taking so long, lass?” The glowing lights in his head showed that Dom, Mirabelle and Agnethea were on the move again.

  “In the Inside, underneath The Dome, how long would it take you to walk from one end to the other?” Elijah asked suddenly.

  “Two yea
rs, three days, fourteen hours, minus all the foolishness.” Chevy answered quick. “’tis a thing all Gearmen do. To learn the lay of the land. Before we can ride, we must walk.”

  Elijah could not wait to sit this man down properly and talk to him about what it was like inside Arcade City. Not a single of his wardogs had ever been able to remember a single thing, and every time Chevy spoke, he mentioned something –offhandedly, no less, like it was nothing at all- that set the imagination on fire. “The nearest of our men we bring to you would take millions of years to arrive here, were he to walk. When I say we keep them apart, Master Pointer, I mean it. We keep Galaxies between them, wherever possible. They’re due to arrive very shortly, though, and that is why we have been waiting.”

  Chevy absorbed the news quickly. Of course. All of the Outside were bigger than he could dream. “Did I have a hat, I would doff it and beg apologies, Master Elijah. There is an imperative in me, and it does drive me merciless.”

  “No matter.” Elijah took the moment to clap a friendly hand on Chevy’s wondrous coat. Barely, just barely, could he feel the precision of the coat’s mechanisms. “We both understand.”

  Chevy looked from Master to Mistress and back again. “”ere, I is wonderin’, as we is waiting for your people to arrive, what are the chances of ‘avin’ a cup of tea and some food, hey? Them as had me before here fed me right enough, but it weren’t proper food.”

  ***

  Thierry looked at the men and women he supposed were technically his friends and shook his head once more, the tight, thin braids of his beaded long hair clicking and clacking with the furious motion. “Shouldn’t be here.”

  Norcross, perched upright on one of the few stools in the ‘conference room’ –one of the old tool shops that Elijah and Chassie kept on their property for when their very special charges got bored- rolled his one good eye. The other stayed right where it was, permanently fixed and dilated thanks to a rare side effect of being hit with a stun grenade. “You been sayin’ that for the last hour. Nice hair, by the way. Who did it for you? A sixteen year old girl?”

  Turner and Linders burst out laughing, caught each other’s amused glances, and shut right up.

  Windim, noodling with a screwdriver, jerked a chin at Thierry. “He’s not wrong, you know. We shouldn’t be here, not together, not for this long without something to do.”

  Sveta, from the window, took a deep breath. “I got pulled away from a pretty good assignment to sit in this room with you idiots. Didn’t know any of you were going to be here until I walked through that door and saw Turner trying to impress himself by doing push-ups. Should’ve turned away and walked to the other end of the goddamn planet.”

  Linders ran a blunt finger across the fresh scar running down the side of her left arm. Aggravated and inflamed, it was going to be a lovely addition to the rest of her collection once it was done healing properly. “I got nowhere else to be. Doctor on duty on Esser-1 wanted to give me a whole host of drugs to fight infection. Told him I knew he was going to fill me up with heal-quicks instead because I also knew he didn’t think women should have scars.”

  “Chicks dig scars.” Norcross said boldly. “And most guys, too.”

  “That’s what I said, Norry.” Linders shrugged. “Right before I broke his arm in sixteen places once he decided I needed the shots anyways. Getting this call was a nice occasion. Where’d you put your ear?”

  Norcross reached out and fiddled with the little bit of ear remaining on the right side of his head. “Lost it the same time my eye went goofy. Stun grenade of homemade design. Fighting a little skirmish for the Vossies. Stupid ‘glom bullshit. Dunno what happened to ‘em, but last few years, they been getting into all kinds of fights with basically everyone.”

  Sveta and Turner nodded in agreement, the former putting in her two cents, “Ran a stint for the Vossies out in Paternak System, what, six months ago? Some made-up bullshit about the people of the system reneging, but the stuff I got up to wasn’t about debt collection or anything like that. They were clearing house. Some of the buildings I took down were Voss_Uderhell all the way. Stripped of all the identifying markers, right, but that fat guy and his skinny wife got a real particular way about their office space, don’t they? Turner?”

  “Didn’t work for Voss.” Turner watched Thierry, saw him relax a bit now they were running down their past work history; talk of war and violence would keep them all a bit more relaxed, though not for long. Sooner rather than later, they’d all start to get twitchy and then if they were really unlucky, they’d start to hear the whispers in the backs of their heads and from there … Turner had no desire to be sedated and locked up for however long it took for him to calm down again. “Worked for BishopCo.”

  Turner graciously accepted all the cat-calls and girlish squealing that came from his cohorts, bowing and turning his hand this way and that, smiling like the devil’s own. “Thank you, thank you, it’s not often they reach out to independent contractors these days, I know. When Jordie got that building dropped on top of him thanks to you-know-who and went the way of all things wicked in the West, his daughter … well, I don’t know really what she’s up to, hey, but it looks like she’s gettin’ ready for summat, isn’t she just? Loads o' movement, all across the Outs …"

  As soon as the words fell from his mouth, Turner –and the others- went ashen and pale, and they’d swear on whatever they were asked to that the temperature in the room had dropped about fifteen degrees.

  “That were well quick.” Thierry bit back a curse. Then, with pedantic and cautious precision, he tried again. “That was very quick, this time.”

  Norcross ran a trembling hand through his thinning hair but said nothing. He didn’t want to because he was afraid the words coming out of his mouth would be as mushy-sounding and weirdly tilted like as they’d come from Turner and Thierry just now. The FrancoBritish wardog could tell from the postures and downcast eyes on the rest of the crew that they were all thinking and feeling the same way.

  Thankfully, it was then that their old Master and Mistress strode into the room with a man who stayed curiously out of easy eyeshot walked into the room. Everyone busied themselves with straightening up and presenting themselves properly to the man and woman who’d saved their lives and given them purpose in the Outside.

  All six of them noticed with strained curiosity that the old man in the odd coat was staying at the far end of the room and that he’d immediately set about working on something, but Elijah spoke, pulling them back in.

  “Well, boys, girls, how are things?” Eli asked calmly though he’d admit –only to his wife, though- that he was on a bit of precipice of worry all the same; they all three of them’d heard a little surge of that old patter, that queer way Arcadians had of talking when they were fresh from the City.

  It didn’t necessarily bode ill, but neither did it mean that things were okay; when the eldest of the wardogs started spending time with one another, it was like some kind of old, rusty circuit was made between them and when they started talking like that, the old twitches and jitters came back on strong and they all started looking for the wrong kind of trouble. These were the oldest of them all, freed from Arcade City for more than a hundred and fifty years, and they were veterans of thousands of skirmishes.

  Eli knew he could trust them to keep their inner natures under control long enough to articulate that they needed to be elsewhere and in a hurry.

  That being said, he hoped Old Pointer finished doing what he’d claimed was as important as introducing himself to the squad very quickly.

  Chassie took one long look at Thierry’s hair and smiled. “Thierry’s got himself a girlfriend, is what.”

  All eyes swiveled towards the salt-and-pepper mercenary with the fancy hair and the air filled with a fresh round of catcalls and mocking sounds. To his credit, Thierry managed to disguise most of the flushing embarrassment by looking the other way, but he didn’t deny the claim.

  Once they were d
one teasing one of their oldest friends, it was Norcross who chose to answer Elijah’s question with one of his own. “You know how it is with us, Eli. You is … you are keeping tabs on us all the time. We’re the only independent contractors left after that fiasco with Bishop. We lost … you lost … hundreds of ‘dogs. What’s more important to all of us, hey, is what we is doing here. You is know … you know the risks.”

  It was hard to ignore that Norcross’ particular speech impediment brought a snort of laughter from the old man in the back of the room and near about the only thing from keeping any one of the wardogs from launching him or herself across the room to deal with the man’s rudeness was the fact that he’d come in with the Mister and Missus.

  Eli nodded in recognition of the self-control emanating from every man and woman in the room. They were consummate professionals, but they were dancing on the fine wire much closer and much quicker than ever before. Had to be their time out in the wilds.

  They hadn’t been kidding about how it was out there; all the Conglomerates –the major ones, anyways- were gearing up for big things, and they were taking the fight to whoever got in their way.

  When Conglomerates fought one another, it was sick and dirty and rough and worse than any other kind of confrontation. A lovely little breeding ground for the darkness coiled around the iron core of every wardog in the Universe.