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

by Lee Bond

  19. Full Steam Ahead

  DAY 16: When Semi-ODDities Attack and Other Weird Shit

  Rommen watched his new employer as he stared happily out the newly-added -and incredibly unsafe in every sense of the word- bay windows that themselves looked over the back end of the property he owned.

  Garth Nickels was an odd duck. There was no getting around it. When he'd met with the principle owners of Securicorps a few days ago, he'd approached them with a very specific criteria for each of the security officers to be deployed to the old schoolhouse. The fifteen person strong team needed combat experience in hostile territory. Needed to be able to respond to insurmountable odds with calm rationale. Needed to stay frosty. Needed combat medical experience. Needed proficiency in a frankly ridiculous number of weapons. Needed to be able to work alone or as part of team. Needed to sign an NDA of such profound complexity and comprehension that Rommen and the others couldn't shake the feeling that when their 'tour of duty' with Nickels was over, they might not even be allowed to admit they'd been alive during that time. And that wasn't the end of the list, either.

  Nickels had picked members with explosives skills. Men and women who'd survived torture and interrogation at the hands of the Taliban, ISIS, others. Members with extreme survival skills. Members with … no ties. To anyone. Or anything.

  It was as if the man were preparing for war instead of running an over-the-top arcade/business. They'd been given a précis of what Changetech was expected to engage in, and from that standpoint, the equally over-the-top demands of new security force made tremendous sense. Securicorps lawyers had picked through the man's life with a fine-toothed comb, had briefly inte … spoken with Special Agent Angela Devlin to gauge the depths of the United States' dissatisfaction with the man, had come to understand that the Federal Government was actively keeping an apparently never-ending roster of Japanese hitmen, Russian gangsters, Kenyan assassins, Polish secret agents and who knew what else from planting one foot on American soil.

  So the heightened security presence, the skills and talents of the 15-strong team, all of that … sensible precautions.

  It was the Arcade side of things that chapped Rommen’s Kansas-bred ass. Standing where he was, on the upper floor of what was ultimately destined to become Garth's sleeping quarters, Rommen could list eighty-six different points that were, to put a fine point on it, extremely simple to access. The blueprints indicated that these would dwindle down to five or six, but that was still more than Rommen was comfortable with. Having an arcade sitting atop a high-profile tech company, complete with the kinds of equipment that’d have thieves and all manner of industrial espionage types foaming at the mouth was the kind of poor decision that an actually ludicrous number of wealthy people the world over made.

  All the goddamn time.

  Nickels had all the bearing and stature of a man who'd done serious time in the trenches. Everything about him screamed professional soldier. From the questions he asked in short, clipped tones that insisted on equally brief answers to the way he stood, stock still, seemingly at ease, obviously ready to spin into action at the merest whiff of trouble.

  A man like that had to know he was inviting trouble on all fronts. This behavior, Rommen knew, was a thing they could handle. Nickels was plainly disinterested in keeping his enemies at bay, which was a tried and true tactic. He’d used it himself, more than once, both during his tour of duty and in his time with Securicorps.

  It was just … when the man spoke about non-combat or regular things that … things … tilted sideways.

  The man sounded like an idiot.

  There was no other way to put it. An actual, literal idiot. He was full of weird pauses, was overly fond of swearing for no reason other than he could, stuck the word 'like' in wherever possible. He talked about television and movies non-stop and seemed sincerely confused when everyone in the room plainly had no idea what he was on about.

  "This." Garth threw his hands wide. "This is what the fuck I am talking about!"

  "Sir?" Rommen moved forward to see just what the man was talking about.

  Garth positively beamed at the workers milling back and forth around the area behind the school. They were working on everything from putting the finishing touches on the five-storey parkade -a feat of engineering excellence that Garth was particularly impressed with- to the long and boring task of demolishing the few outbuildings and leveling the huge -and dangerously weatherworn- bleachers ringing the dilapidated track field; after deciding to go whole on the hog and get yet another crew in to begin work on the lower level where Changetech main offices and labs were going in, he'd gone a step further and literally hired out of town construction companies to just let 'er rip.

  He'd caught some flack from activist groups and a few 'fair business' organizations -not so secretly disguised union reps freaking out that local boys were losing money- but in the end, there hadn't been anything any one of the reps could do to tie the project up in red tape; knowing how these things worked, he'd called the mayor well in advance of Operation Hire Everyone, and after some campaign donations and further assurances that San Francisco was going to be top of the heap when USA was reborn, it'd been Rubberstamp City.

  Hell, the mayor'd even flown in three more squadrons of construction workers, engineers and whatever the fuck else on his own private jet, of all things. They were all out there, working in perfect harmony. Well, as perfect as you could get when you were employing basically an entire village of guys and gals who were -at best- rough around the edges. Forklifts and scaffolds and cranes and bulldozers and things Garth suspected didn't have proper names were tearing all over the place, a frenetic anthill of activity, all dancing to his tune.

  It was nice that other people were doing it for once. After assembling all the 3D printers and transporting his computer equipment downstairs and signing for all the crap he kept ordering and assigning one of the security officers he'd hired to handle that from now on, Garth barely had enough energy to breathe.

  Proper global domination was tiring. The half-assed manner with which he'd assaulted Hospitalis had been just that: half-assed.

  "Commerce! Industry! Men working hard for a living, struggling to bring a dream into existence. The kind of stuff you Americans got up to back in the early days of the country!" Garth caught the miniscule flinch at the phrase 'you Americans', but there was no other choice. He was supposed to be from Switzerland and that was the kind of douchey thing well-educated dudes from there said to American dudes. "This is pretty cool."

  Rommen took another step forward. "Sir, I'd like to talk to you about the security measures you've taken … or rather, not taken for the exterior perimeter. You've hired fifteen of us, and we're on a rotating shift schedule that will provide you with the absolute best we can provide, but I cannot stress how important it is that you set up camer…"

  "It's handled, dude." Garth fluttered a hand. "Well, not right now, but, soon. Like, super soon. You guys will have the kind of camera coverage, both audio and video, you can't imagine. It'll be like you're, uh, standing there. Right there. One hundred percent coverage, all day and all of the night."

  Rommen nodded slowly, more out of a urge to placate the man than out of any actual belief in the matter. Their employer was very keen on inventing new technologies, and while he hadn't yet released anything on the open market, investigation into Changetech’s activities indicated he was in the process of making waves. He had that shyster lawyer on retainer, feeling out various government organizations as to whether or not they'd be interested in climbing on the Changetech train, and inconceivably enough, it seemed that the CIA, DOD, and a few other alphabets were already on board, apparently enticed into business with nothing more than a few sketches!

  Rommen hoped Uncle Sam knew what he was doing, because from where he stood, Garth Nickels was nothing more than an idealistic weirdo with more money than sense.

  "Very well, sir." Rommen moved on to the next topic on his list of things Gar
th pretended weren't issues but were, in fact, the kind of situations that called for a security team capable of overthrowing small to medium governments. "I would like to address the death threats."

  "Death threats?" Garth watched a crane operator very nearly bean a full dump truck full of old building-junk with it's demolishing ball thing, cringing in anticipation of the sheer tornado of paperwork that'd erupt from the scene of the accident. Nothing happened, so he continued. "I'd hardly call them death threats, Rommen. More like … enthusiastic expressions of dissatisfaction."

  Rommen had his smartphone out and was quoting directly from the emails he'd been forwarded. "'I will find you and I will cut off your fingers and shove them down your throat, you asshole motherfucker'. That's not from a disgruntled employee. That's from the CEO of one of the Fortune 500 companies you razed to the ground on your first day in the country. The man has a handful of doctorates and is a lawyer. The ones coming from the workers on the ground are even more colorful! And that’s from a single company you killed. If you're not careful, you will wind up in very tiny pieces. There's only so much we can do. It's good you've stayed on property since you started this endeavor, but that can only last for so long. Sooner or later, you will be expected to do press junkets and interviews. The men and women you rendered unemployed are highly intelligent and more importantly, highly motivated."

  "Got it …"

  Rommen interrupted. "Sir, if you say you 'got it handled', I will insist you be tested for functional retardation. Roughly ninety percent of the people you cut loose can build explosives from Play-Dough and newspaper trimmings."

  Rommen's delivery was so intense, so sincere, it was obvious he'd dealt with people of an erratic nature before. Garth tilted his head back and let loose with a small burst of laughter before resuming. "Got it under control, is what I was going to say, Rommen.

  And he did. The poor folks once working for the companies he'd worked into the ground in order to secure a free path for the technologies he planned on developing in their place and to gain ready cash were going to be well cared for. Well, as well cared for as he could manage before the whole thing came crashing down around their heads, but something was better than nothing.

  The pain in the ass of it was, he didn't really want to do anything for them. They weren't real, so why should he really care one way or the other?

  The only reason he was making the effort was because when you were the only real thing in the room, everyone else wasn’t real, and reacted accordingly. So if he didn't make peace, everyone across the United States would try shitting in his cornflakes.

  Rommen closed the email app on his phone and tucked it back into it's plastic holder. Garth Nickels was going to be a trial, that was for certain. It was time for some hard truths.

  "Sir, you've employed some of the best Securicorps has to offer. You're paying for top dollar protection and that gets you an awful lot in return. We will take bullets for you, we will stand in the line of fire while you run away, but at the end of the day, if you're unwilling to take even the most basic of precautions for your own safety, you're actually making our jobs that much harder. There is a line we will not cross, sir."

  Garth turned to talk to Rommen face to face. He was a hard and crusty guy. After three tours in Afghanistan in one of the many blackbag operations taking place in that area in the late 90's and early 2000's, Rommen deShure had then promptly turned his attentions to privatized military service. Highlights of his tours of duty across the globe included some pretty nasty business in the Congo with Separatists, on the borders of Minsk with a surprisingly efficient squad of rebranded Nazi crazy people and more than one dust up with the various flavors of terrorist operating all across the landscape of Iran, Iraq and Egypt. Finding -as most men did after a time- that kind of work to be distasteful, he'd moved stateside to join SecuriCorps the moment the paperwork had been green-lit.

  He was a hard man who'd seen hard times. He'd done his work and was -for the most part- looking to have it slightly easier by providing low-to-medium protection for the rich, the wealthy and the occasional powerful politician.

  Nothing wrong with that.

  Garth wished things could be different for Rommen and the others, but it wasn't meant to be. Sooner or later, Samiel's forces were going to come along down the road and that’d be that. If the man himself didn't stick his nose in, Lissande and the others would once he actively started working on the 'save Drake' side of things.

  And once he began spearheading the 'Destroy Asshole Samiel' end of the plan?

  The whole planet was going to rage. That much was a given.

  "Rommen, I like you." Garth turned back to the bay windows, thrilling to the sounds of heavy construction going on all over the place. "You and the other guys are super hard-core. Nothing like me, of course. I did my required tour in the Army and got the hell out and never looked back. Maybe I'm just not as worried as I should be. I'll work on it, I totes promise."

  As far as assurances went, it wasn't exactly empty, but it was damn close. Rommen nodded and let the half-truth lay where it was, right there, in the middle of the room. He caught a look from Garth that said all that needed to be said on the subject; he was lying, he knew he was caught, nothing was going to change.

  Time to continue the lie. But only for so long. Rommen wasn’t kidding. If he or any of the others felt that they were either in over their heads or that Garth was in some weird way actively seeking his own demise or downfall, they’d just give their bosses a call and have the contract ended without another minutes’ worth of risk. The penalties for bailing on a contract were pretty steep, and to Rommen’s certain knowledge, not one of the Securicorps teams had ever done it, and this was including the group dispatched to protect that mad Saudi Prince a few years back, but someone had to remain sensible!

  Rommen didn’t want to be the one do break the streak, but neither did he want to end his own life for some fool. “Good, sir, good. Just had to bring it up. I’d be remiss in my duties if I didn’t bring you these security concerns.”

  Garth was back at the window, staring out it, watching progress happen. This was how it was to be a Specter. Fully in charge of the moment. Seeming like you were doing nothing at all, yet behind the scenes, everything was being done. “How did everyone take wearing the GPS-trackable identity badges?”

  Now, the ID badges –completely GPS trackable and unique for every single person working on this madman’s dream- were near about the only thing Nickels was doing that had even a single iota of forethought behind it. Each of the security officers were linked into a system that Garth had written himself, a nifty little software program that allowed any person –or group of people, including themselves- to be located with the press of a button. There were areas of the complex –Changetech’s subterranean base, for example- where roughly eighty-five percent of the workers weren’t permitted to access, so if someone detailed to exterior work was suddenly pinged in the basement, the on-duty squad would swarm that location. Though only half-built, Garth had about two million dollars’ worth of equipment and projects down there, so that was a frequently monitored location.

  “There was some initial concerns about privacy.” Rommen admitted. “Mostly from the men you brought in from California. There’s a lot of … issues … with privacy in California right now. But when we explained that they weren’t going to be working on this site without the tags, they calmed down. We’re doing spot checks and will continue to do so until work is complete. Any violators will be issued warnings. As per your orders, once we hit three, their work license will be pulled and they'll be bounced home.”

  Garth nodded, eyes still on the outside world. “Good. Did you make certain that they understood it wasn’t just the one dude or whatever that was getting sent back, but the whole crew?”

  It was a hard demand, but Operation Wire My Shit Up wasn’t gonna get going any other way and the last thing Garth wanted was a delay in getting as much of … everywhere wired
up with quadronic circuitry, and it was all happening thanks to the GPS ID badges.

  They were a goddamn stroke of genius, is what they were, and Garth felt he deserved all kinds of praise. Not that he was going to get any from anyone other than himself, but goddamn, he was a genius.

  Following that first incredibly crude lightpen/blood gadget, the airborne phenomenon that was his blood had undergone some very drastic, very impressive iterations, and whether anyone currently working on his site was aware of it, every time they walked or stepped or drove or moved in some unfathomable way in a specific direction, their GPS tag emitted a long, thin stream of quadronic matter. Until they deviated from the heavily encrypted circuit designs that’d been built into each one.

  Then the device turned off until someone –didn’t matter who- walked in precisely the right direction. Then it turned back on again and layered in another bit of the circuit.

  It was sketchy, it was hodgepodge, but it didn't matter how it was, so long as it worked.

  And brother, it was working!

  Right now, the mostly completed parkade, the exterior area where the drive-in movie theater would be and the grounds themselves looked like a barely finished child’s drawing of thin red lines wavering in mid-air, sometimes nothing more than a handspan of neon crimson, sometimes, forty or fifty feet, but it was there. Hardly anything was properly connected as of yet, but that would happen in due time. There was so much work left to be done, in so many areas, that it was guaranteed.

  A part of Garth wished someone else could see the quadronic circuits being layered into thin air because the concept was a thing of beauty. Once the intangible circuit board was complete, the entire compound, inside, outside, maybe even some of the streets on either side … all of it would be connected together and powered by the new-stage solar panels that were being shipped from the other end of the country. Once powered, he’d have access to every single electronic device brought onto his property, encrypted or otherwise, and be able to access the internet through a diffuse network that was completely untraceable. Beyond that, the invisible network of hardwired lines would provide him with a truly massive supercomputer capable of mimicking –at the very least- a level 1 AI intellect.