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

by Lee Bond

  “Where are the others?” Handsi demanded bluntly. The lights were finally on, but his nerves weren’t assuaged in the slightest. There were things tucked into the seemingly endless rows of alcoves and the fact that he didn’t know what they were was making things even worse. “There should be fifteen more of us, at least.”

  A shape plummeted down from the very height of the antechamber they were in, slamming into the deck plate with a loud thunk! Both Handsi and Prentiss had their weapons out and aimed directly at the odd shape on the ground, but it wasn’t until the formless shape began rising up to the height of a man that they skittered backwards, tracking the … thing … with every intention of opening fire if it so much as twitched in their direction.

  Iago flicked back the covers on his Wraithgear and laughed silently at the two terrified Armymen. He looked to his Captain, Marker, and smiled. “Apologies, Cap. Couldn’t resist.”

  Marker waved the apology away. “None needed. These here fellows need some reminding that we ain’t either Army or properly Specter. We’re Heavy Elites, and that makes us altogether different.”

  The two Army Captains tucked their blasters away and moved back to Captain Marker slowly, each of them eyeing up the newly arrived Iago. More specifically, the clothes he wore around his uniform; it was some kind of shroud, but now it wasn’t being sealed around him, the edges of it wisped and eddied like gray smoke.

  It was Prentiss who pointed to the fabric. “What is that?”

  “Wraithgear.” Iago stroked the whispery edge of the alien artifact lovingly. “Before you ask, no you can’t touch it, no, it wouldn’t be good for any one of your men to have it, and no, you can’t take it by force. You, and everyone else it doesn’t know would be dead in seconds. I only know one other guy to get one, and he's my brother, and he's an asshole and he's on the other side of the Shield."

  “It … it’s alive?” Handsi ran a nervous hand across the back of his neck.

  Iago shrugged. “Dunno. Never asked. It just doesn’t like being touched by strangers. Anyways, Captain. The other Army and Specterish are aboard now and are making their way here.”

  “Our men?” Marker demanded casually. If he was uncomfortable letting other Elites aboard Midsummer Night, then the rest of his men were on high alert for any kind of shenanigans. The Elite Commander was confident that they were safe from anything the asshole Army ... assholes tried, but if the other Specters decided to get all … Specterish … it'd make for one mother of a fight. Hopefully everyone had had their asshair combed and they were ready to get down to serious business. “Specifically Toon and Tanker.”

  Iago kept his eyes on the one called Relict Handsi. He didn’t like the look of the guy. Not one bit. The suit didn’t like him either, kept rippling at the edges. If he lost concentration, the damned thing might detach and eat the guy’s face off right there on the spot.

  And that would be awkward as fuck.

  “Toon is presently high as a kite on Wobble. She’s down somewhere in the Barrens, sobbing about her ex-girlfriend Mira. Why, I don’t know, because Mira was a goddamn lizard person who wanted to hatch babies inside her abdomen.” Iago grinned at Relict’s reaction and continued onwards. “And Tanker? He’s good. One of the Elites aboard is Winker. They’re talking about all the good old times together.”

  Marker looked at the ground for a second. “Fuck my life. Winker? He doesn’t have that thundering trollop Acey-Bassy with him, does he?”

  Iago shook his head. “Bitch died. Had her spine yanked out through her neck by one of them Goddies awhile back. During some raid on an asteroid colony. Popped up out of some giant metal canister and did her before she could rev up.”

  "Well, ain't that a fucking Christmas miracle?" Marker could tell Prentiss and Handsi were getting irritable about being ignored, so he addressed their concerns. “We’re here because my ship is the biggest. Because as you can see, Specters and Elites aren’t precisely the nicest of people. If she wasn’t already dead, it’s highly likely I would’ve killed Acey-Bassy in under three minutes because she is a raving cunt with the worst kind of augmented Cordon-tech you can find. Unstable as anything. The rest of the people en route aren’t much better, so if any of ‘em go off the rails, this ship can contain the damage a little better than the rest. And you are here first because as much as I dislike it, both of you have more than one vessel under your command and you’ve got a few cards up your sleeves."

  Relict refused to look at Prentiss, but he could feel the other Captain’s eyes on him. “Don’t know what you’re talking about." He looked nervously at the one called Iago, licking his lips in beat with the rippling gray shadows the Specter was wrapped up in "What's ..."

  Iago shifted his stance a bit. The suit really didn’t like Handsi. Using the sublingual battle-comms they'd all had embedded in their throats, he told Marker as much, then spoke directly to the captain in question, “It might look like I’m in control, but the thing about Cordon-tech, Relict, is that it has a mind all it’s own. Wraithgear is a literal nightmare. Why'm I mentioning this now when we could all be playing shuffle board? My 'gear doesn't like you. At all. It knows you're lying. Now, it can't do much to you right now, but if it gets any more antsy-in-the-pantsy, I'm gonna have to put it all the way on, which ... ain't that much better, to be honest. Best for you to fess up…”

  Prentiss shook his head scornfully at Relict. “He’s got Glory missiles, I’ve got … BAM-cannons.”

  Relict’s shriek of disapproval was absolutely comical. “Goddamnit, Prentiss. Those are for one of the main worlds. Not for some fucking skirmish.”

  Prentiss ignored his counterpart’s burst of outrage. “We’ve never powered up the BAM-cannons in combat before. Only in tests. They passed with flying colors. I’m more than worried about using them in an actual firefight, though. At least … at least continuously. There’s a threshold, you see. Once it’s crossed, the cannons don’t even need to fire. The destruction just continues, and ... there's a model in one of the AIs that suggests that ... the rolling wave might not stop. If I can ask a question?”

  Marker knew what the question would be, so he answered it. “Got a guy, Prentiss. All Specters do, but a Heavy Elite guy that’s into tech usually winds up weirder than anyone else. Just rest assured, we know.” He cocked a finger-gun at Handsi. “And Handsi, right here, right now? This is where the war starts properly. You think for one fucking second that not only are we gonna go against a fucking swarm of Goddies but those fucking floating in space assholes, you got another think coming. Our analysis, which is confirmed by basically everyone coming to this here party, is that someone figured out a way to get out. This fucking storm is a direct result of that.”

  Relict opened his mouth to say something, but Marker ran roughshod. “Now, I’ve also got it on good, reliable grounds that even the Latelians ain’t happy with the Shield, but they can’t turn it off. Dunno who’s responsible, but that’s the fact. God Army is here to either secure that beachhead for themselves or destroy it, and so’re we. They got a standing Army of around thirty million. Not all of ‘em are Goddies, but most. So yeah, you are gonna use your Glory missiles, and of your own free fucking will because you haven’t even fought them yet. And if you don’t, your fucking ship will fire them anyways, but ... I'm trying to be nice, here. When you see ‘em in action, you will shit your pants, but you'll also understand why it'd be a good idea to blow your load right away."

  “You can’t talk to me this way.” Relict stated boldly.

  Prentiss shook his head sadly. “Relict, think for a minute. Just shut up and think for a minute. You’re on a Galyssian Titan-class warship. The effort of getting one of those is … impossible. You’re standing next to a man in a cloud of smoke, smoke that apparently hates you. The man next to him, who I am willing to bet you’ve mistaken for an ordinary man because he looks ordinary, is not afraid of that smoke at all. He’s invited other Elites to this ship. And he still isn’t afraid. He’s a Heavy Elite, Reli
ct Handsi, and he’s coordinating … trying to coordinate, an offensive against an actual God soldier army. Still not afraid. That puts him into a very rare class.”

  Marker clapped his hands softly, smiling and nodding the whole while. It was nice to see that crest, that dawning of awareness on another man’s face when he realized what was really going on. “Now, I ain’t no Specter in the Stars or anything, but yes, Prentiss has it abso-fucking-lutely right. I am a literal big bad. And as I said, I invited you here first because we need to go over a few things before the boys and … three girls … get here. Specifically, your tactical deployment, and confirmation of which vessels own the weapons in question.”

  Prentiss let Handsi just stand there for a moment. “How long …”

  “Don’t worry. Midsummer Night is, as you mentioned, a Galyssian Titan. Zipper and Flits’re taking them the long way around, showing them the sights, hammering home that they best be on their best behavior while they’re in my house. We got about twenty minutes more. We’re good. Now, you were saying?” Marker checked the progress his team was making inside his head. They had a long way to go still. Tanker was having a high old time with Winker. He sighed. He was going to have to break out some of the strong stuff for when the meeting was over.

  If he didn’t get them all shitfaced, Tanker or Winker would start remembering why they broke up in the first place.

  Prentiss nodded slowly. “I’ve got two ships with the BAM-cannon arrays, Marker…”

  ***

  Herrig rubbed his face miserably for a moment, then put his glasses back on. He was stuck in a quandary and Sidra was nowhere to be seen. When he needed her the most, the love of his life was stuck in a training session with Onesies and Twoesies.

  And he had a very stern, bordering on angry, Fenris Valeren staring down at him as if he was atop a mountain.

  The Chairman of the Commonwealth had quite earnestly been praying -in quiet, in secret, where no one could hear him- that this moment would never come to pass, that both sides of the war would never really have reason to engage one another.

  "And yet, here we are." Herrig sighed miserably. He debated leaving the angry Harmony soldier on mute so he could go about the business of running the solar system, but there were some things you just didn't do, even if you did have the power to castrate your enemies with a single command. "Things were so much simpler when we were all just running around taking potshots at each other."

  Letting loose one more hangdog sigh, Herrig turned the volume back on. "What, precisely, are we looking at, here?"

  "It's all in the files I've sent you." Fenris growled the words.

  "Fenris, I literally cannot read another word of anything." Herrig figured if you couldn't be honest with a man who was your greatest enemy, you couldn't be honest with anyone. "My head is full. Break it down for me. Please."

  Fenris quashed the smirk of triumph that wanted to rise on his lips. It was plain to see the efforts with the shapeshifter were working better than anticipated. Herrig had never before been so ... depleted. Hopefully this sign of weakness would play to his advantage. "Your own astrophysicists may have mentioned this already, but there is a tremendous celestial storm in a particular sector of space." Faint stirrings of remembrance tugged on Herrig's face, so Fenris continued. "What you may be unaware of is that it is manmade."

  "Oh?" Herrig did recall hearing something about the storm but had instantly dismissed it. There were more things to worry about than storms in space. "This was not apparent in the debrief."

  "Classified Intel." Fenris explained smoothly. "Furthermore, it develops that two men known to you were responsible. Ute and Tomas Kamagana. They used the stolen Quantum Tunnel and some black hole ships to somehow dig through the Shield Wall."

  Herrig leaned back in his chair and cursed quite floridly for a long minute, perversely wondering if Garth would be proud. "That certainly explains why no one was able to find the one man I need more than anyone else in this godforsaken solar system. Without him, dozens of projects will remain unfinished. And Ute... well."

  This time, Fenris simply couldn't keep a sly smile from curling his lips. Oh, fake Sidra was doing a wonderful job. So wonderful, in fact, that leaving her alive suddenly became a distinct possibility. "We are both in accordance, then, concerning the loss of these men."

  "More worrisome is them discovering a method of getting out of the solar system." Herrig muttered, cutting right to the bone of the problem. "I don’t like the thought of that at all."

  "Precisely." Fenris nodded curtly, unable to prevent himself from admiring Herrig's perspicacity. It was ... an odd feeling, the two of them, agreeing over anything. "Which brings me back around to why I have called you."

  "Yes. Yes, of course. The troops assembling on the far side of the storm." Herrig slumped a bit. "What are we looking at? I presume I have a report somewhere in the pile."

  "If you do, Herrig, my dissemination officers are not doing their job properly." Fenris cleared his throat. "We're looking at approximately eighty to a hundred thousand Trinity soldiers. Forty percent are assumed to be SpecSer, if the mishmash of vessels are any indication. In kind, we will be deploying just over one hundred sixty Legions."

  "So many." Huey's admonition that as many lives be spared as possible simply wasn’t going to work, not with these numbers. The lines of battle had been drawn. "Surely your avatars have provided you with projected losses. Can we minimize losses on both sides? Why … why a million Goddies? That seems excessive!"

  "In all honesty, Chairman," Fenris deliberately used the honored name to see what would happen and he was not disappointed to see a furtive gleam of pride glaze Herrig's eyes, "A million Goddies is us being conservative. As I mentioned, upwards of forty thousand of the enemy troops are projected to be Specters, and of that number, an unverifiable number will be their so-called Heavy Elites. As much as we've been downplaying Heavy Elites and their combat readiness, a lot of that is, ah, damage control. We simply cannot deny that Cordon-enhanced technologies and modifications bring those ... 'soldiers' as close to a Foursie as anything we've ever seen. Following what we've already seen from these Elites, which is admittedly little, given they’re usually too busy goofing around to engage us properly, they're good. What they lack in experience, they make up for in savagery and, of course, Cordon-tech. We've got a tremendous database of many, many flavors uncovered cross-Cordon during our service to ... to It, and with the upgraded and enhanced battle belts, our forces should be able to counter or nullify a lot of what they come across, but...

  "What, precisely," Herrig removed his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose, "are you asking for, Fenris?"

  "Acceptance of reality." Fenris spoke calmly. "Immense losses will be the nature of this day if we’re crippled before we even start. I hope you have not forgotten that our army, once intended to conquer the Universe, has been repurposed for a very different event. We can suffer some losses and remain on point for the battle with Antal, but these Elites can and will tear right through our troops. Unless … unless they’re free from restrictions."

  "Do we have an actual number of enemy forces here inside the Commonwealth?” Herrig felt like he was swimming in a very deep ocean. He was lost and alone and wanted Sidra at his side. "More importantly, what's the projected enemy casualty number?"

  "No. And ... we likely never will. For all we know, the forces assembling on the Far Side of the Storm are all there is. Or equal half the number." Fenris rolled his shoulders. "The only thing we can count on is the fact that most of those enemy vessels house Specters and their Elites. And that means a tough fight, Chairman, no two ways about it."

  So many.

  "It's safe to assume that this patch of space would remain empty were it not for the Storm. Or," Herrig tapped a finger on his desk, "more importantly, the Storm itself would be ignored, were it not for the hope that Ute's method of escape remains functional. And if not functional, then repeatable. No?"

  Fenris dip
ped his head, dark eyes glittering triumphantly. "Just so, Chairman. Whether we want it or not, The Storm has become a turning point in this abortive War of ours, and for obvious reasons."

  Herrig exhaled nosily, disturbed heavily by the choice he was being forced to make. More than that, the fact that he was having to go along with Fenris' desires made the decision all the more unpalatable. Better the devil you knew than the one you didn't, and the Chairman quite frankly didn’t want any more Trinity soldiers in his domain.

  “You have my leave to engage the enemy at leisure, but understand this; attempts to use this conflict as a distraction while you pour even more of our soldiers into the Storm itself so you might have them do as Trinity did will not be tolerated. Bad enough we'll be losing Goddies in one direction this day. I cannot have them wasting their lives for any other reason. Are we clear?"

  Fenris nodded smoothly, then ended the call, dark presence dissipating quickly once the Screen resumed displaying News4You's daily feed. Herrig slumped in his chair once it was clear Fenris was definitely not going to place another call. It was all he seemed to be doing, these days.

  "Find me Sidra." he commanded the empty air. "Find her, and tell her to come to me. I need her."

  ***

  Goddies stood before the podium, listening intently to the words booming through the speakers at them.

  It was a rare pleasure and distinct honor to stand before Father Vasily, and so they soaked up every single word as if it were the most precious of resources. There was no anger or regret in them that he rarely showed his face, for unlike the last time, they understood all too well the pain and sorrow flowing through their OverCommander’s frigid veins; the loss of his son, so quickly, so violently, had stripped something from Vasily. Something vital and important and it was plain that the man they idolized did not know how to deal with the brutality of that moment.