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

by Lee Bond

  “They’ll probably be melted down and used for wiring or circuits.” Ham said offhandedly. "No one wears jewelry anymore. Least, not stuff as only looks pretty."

  “Sally suggested the same thing.” Chez nodded. “I encouraged him to prevent that from happening. Though I am not ordinarily predisposed to care one way or the other about things of this nature, I was stricken by a sense of melancholy as I stared upon those earrings. Reminded me of better days, those twinkling earrings did.”

  "Melancholy." Was it possible that good old Chezzik Elteren, scourge and terror of anyone doing anything wrong anywhere in the world, was feeling melancholy? Would he mention something of his past? Ham thought back to all the things they all of them had heard about the assassin down through the years and couldn't help but feel that most of them were false, or engineered by the man himself to further cement his legend.

  "Oh aye." Chez finished his beer and gestured for another one. "There hasn't been a pair of earrings like those made in hundreds of years. Saw their value immediately, even if accoutrements like that hold little interest for me."

  Ham pushed another beer across the countertop and looked around for Vor, who signalled once again that the ‘loaders he was watching weren't doing anything worse than what everyone else in the bar was up to. That being said, the bartender/bar owner caught the telltale sign of tight pensiveness in the bouncer's eyes that had him dispatching another one of his men to the floor.

  "Do tell." Ham tried asking the question casually enough, hoping it came out with all the patent disinterest bartenders used on their patrons and knew almost immediately -in the way Chezzik's posture shifted slightly, the way his hand slowed a fraction before closing around the beer glass- that he'd failed.

  Keeping an eye on Hammic and gesturing for a moment of silence, Chez let onboard sensors troll through the crowd, accurately pinpointing the two ‘loaders perched in their back booth, drinking their drinks and having the kind of fake conversations fellows like them had when they were up to no good. The two lads had themselves the usual gamut of augments, which wasn't much of a surprise being that they were ’loaders, but the larger fellow was all encumbered down with a few extra tricks and surprises.

  There was no room for error here; these men were in the employ of the man who'd most recently lost one of his better tools in the bowels of an abandoned underground railway system, and they were here to gain payback.

  Unsurprising. The criminal underworld -of which he was most definitely a part, no two ways - was very predictable. Lucky, that.

  "Everything all right?" Ham asked worriedly, cursing when the fingers of his robotic hand twitched with a mind of their own.

  Chez took a pull on his beer. "Oh, aye, proprietor, everything is all right. I was just … testing the waters, as it were. Now, if I recall, you were prying gently into my life."

  Ham flushed and started nervously drying glasses that needed no drying, mechanical arm whirring into the high bands. "Apologies, Chezzik, I …

  Chez shook his head, refusing to accept the other man's words. "No point in apologizing, Ham, I did open the doors to inquiry. I shan't say much on who I was, save to say that, when I close my eyes and think of things I've seen, I can honestly say I do miss being able to stroll down to the local shop, have myself a fine cup of tea and then take myself off to the cinema for a wonderful time. I do … I do think the last film I saw was … hm. Memory's not there, today. Something with someone in it, I'm certain. Anyways. ‘tis nowt more than some people already know, though since any lad off the street could say the same as I and be just as believable, it’ll get you nowhere to tell anyone, and e’en less to try and prove."

  “That’d make you…” Hammic lips moved wordlessly as he did the math in his head, robotic index finger twitching as an imaginary chalkboard filled his head. “Over four hundred years old. The only…”

  Chez had come to a decision. It was one that Hammic, the fine proprietor with the shoddy replacement arm may not enjoy, but it was time indeed to take care of the two men who were doing their best to ruin the ambience by glaring daggers at everyone and anyone who came too close.

  ‘twere a true shame, really. Chezzik Elteren rarely found it within his cybernetic heart to take comfort in anything, and was even more rarely capable of owning feelings about a person, place or thing beyond his own body, but since he’d been coming to DSB over the last fifteen years, he’d more or less started feeling like it –with it’s terrible Barternic hawkers hanging from all those old street posts, shouting their employers’ wares in that terrible pidgin patois that’d risen up, a kind of … EuroJapanese lingo … and it’s brightly lit shops and dangerous alleys you ought not to ever travel down alone and everything else he couldn’t think of right then- was a place to call home.

  Chez raised a well-manicured finger to silence the bartender. “Best not to say the name right now, master barkeep. There’s enough danger in the air to bring one along, and as much as I regret it, ‘ere now there’s going to be some violence as well. That kind always comes runs towards bloodshed, especially in this day and age. So few interesting characters left roaming the wilds.”

  “V-violence?” Ham hated himself for it, but his damnfool head acted like a sentry on a swivel post and, as he turned to stare directly at the two men he’d dispatched Vor and Kerelly to keep an eye on, he cursed aloud. “They’re here for you?”

  Chez cracked an arrogant smile, just the barest lilt of a corner, and nowt else. He cast a hand towards the rest of the crowd, the usual bumping and grinding drunkards out for a good time and seething with a desperate need to forget how dark and gloomy their world was. It was funny, to Chez, who’d been there from the beginning, to see that e’en though every man, woman and almost-Human being in the bar had lived their entire lives from birth to this very moment in the kind of shit they trudged through every day, they still held –deep inside- race memories of a time when it wasn’t so dark, when their lives weren’t so hard, when a single misstep outside your door wouldn’t bring you right to Death’s Door.

  They didn’t know why they did what they did, they couldn’t put a name on the earnest longing in their bosoms, but Chezzik could. He’d even tried, here and there, to help the occasional person to understand.

  In the end, they always denied it.

  “’course they’re here for me.” Chez replied haughtily, a little bit of that old Southside England coming out in his voice now he were gettin’ all excited. “You fink they come for any of this here lot? I am Chezzik Elteren. Master Assassin o’ Planet Earf. Murder King extraordinaire, hey?”

  Ham winced, and didn’t care that Chez saw the wince. The man was talking funny like he did when he was about to go violent on someone. Rumor held that when the very dapperly dressed assassin –him in his violent white battle suit with it’s cunning pockets and immaculately pressed lines- began talking as though he had a mouthful of marbles, it was more likely that everyone in the bar would wind up dead on accident.

  “Could you …”

  Chez slid a few handmade metal coins across the countertop towards the bartender. “Relax, Hammic. I is keep the damage to a min, orl right? One of them lads ‘as summink I can use,” he tapped the black and red bandana covering the open socket, “to make me whole again. Call your dogs off. If they is damage either of the men about the head-type region once I’ve made me decision, there is every chance I shall ‘ave to take one of them to task. Shouldn’t take more than … four monfs to rebuild, under those circumstances."

  Ham ran the robotic hand through thinning hair, perversely wondering why, in a world where you could go out and buy a replacement arm or leg with next to no trouble, the cure for male pattern baldness was still considered ‘impossible’. It was ridiculous.

  Then he nodded, because it wasn’t like he had a choice anyways; Chezzik Elteren was already up and off his barstool, one lazy hand resting on the grand sword at his hip, the other casually laying atop the slightly smaller ‘dagger’ sheathed
at his chest.

  Vor, to his credit, saw the assassin moving lazily through the crowd and made immediate eye contact with his boss. Hammy gave a quick headshake, then jerked his head to one side. The bouncer made the connection quickly and hurried to get Kerelly off the floor.

  Hammic pulled one of the waitresses aside and told her precisely what was going to happen, and encouraged her to inform the others so that they might be able to better stay well out of the way of the maniac in the white-striped suit.

  ***

  Gedrax took a pull off a beer he didn’t want and made a gruesome face as the sludge seemed to take forever to work it’s way down his throat. An inarticulate grunt of disgust followed the sour beer’s efforts. “Why fuck we even bother with this? Shit beer. Shit company. We should just be doing the job and be going home.”

  Selt tapped the side of the glass meaningfully with a long, slender –and fully robotic- finger. Tinktinktink. “Best way. Old Chezzy’s been in here for hours now, drinking these drinks and spending all that money he made at Sally’s. Should be properly sozzed by now.”

  “Can’t believe he did that to poor Tomm.” Gedrax closed his eyes, took another swig of pure distilled shit in a glass, and choked it down. “Tomm…” he felt Selt tense beside him. His eyes snapped open.

  “Tomm,” Chezzek Elteren interrupted smoothly, making a grand show of where his hands were placed, “well and truly deserved what he got for his trouble, lads. Tomm went out of his way to righteously upset one of the last remaining Italian Fathers in Vecchio Sicilia. Stole some things, which is, according to the Father in question, regrettably acceptable, but on his way out, Tomm chose to rape the man’s daughter. Savagely, in fact. Left the girl all sorts of injured, which makes Tomm’s demise a blood-debt. Perfectly understandable, no?"

  Selt sniffed. “Man’s world out there, Chez. Women should know how to protect themselves. Ain’t Tomm’s fault, but the Father’s.”

  Gedrax’s head swiveled to stare at Selt, eyes wide as saucer plates, but his partner refused to acknowledge the fact that he’d apparently gone all the way crazy and was now strolling down Insane Boulevard to Holy Shit, I’ve Lost My Mind.

  The plan had been to come at the man unawares. The plan had involved their target being drunk as a skunk and unable to coordinate between his left and right foot. They’d even bribed a local to come in around the same time, sit there, drink as many drinks as she could, and then come out with a tally of beers for their target.

  Their inside woman was out back in the alley, completely passed out, head resting gently in a pile of her own orange and green vomit. But before falling unconscious, she’d been able to recount that Chezzik Elteren had downed fourteen beers in rapid succession, all while sitting there like some kind of regal lord in his lovely white suit.

  The plan had not involved Chezzik Elteren coming upon them.

  Chez pursed his lips and nodded sagaciously. “I see where the problem lay. You two thought you could simply wait until I was too sozzled to do anything but let you kill me. Alas, that really isn’t the case, now, is it? Over the years, I’ve acquired quite a few … additions. One of them is an admittedly regrettably efficient liver. Wholly artificial. Processes alcohols and other ingested toxins at a rate that would require me hooking pure grain hooch right into my veins via tubes. It’s been well over … well. I’ve not had a drunken night out in quite some time. And to you,” Chez’s right hand flashed, quick as wink, and Selt’s head was suddenly bathed in a brilliant red effulgence sputtering up from a bright silver blade with a positively scorching bright ruby band crawling up one side, “I say that aye, it fookin’ well is a man’s world, right, but is up to the men, right, to not be so fookin’ aresholish about it, hey?”

  Gedrax worked his lips to say something, but his throat had other ideas, most of them centering on drawing a few more breaths in before the end came. He twitched, and suddenly, a dagger … well, it was also more of a sword, but not quite as … swordish as the red one … with a searing azure span of energy burning from pommel to tip was pointed right at his forehead. He didn’t know if Selt could feel the power coming off the one at his neck, but Gedrax sure as hell felt the ice-cold fury radiating outwards from the tip pointing gently into his forehead.

  Even as the skin on his neck began blistering from the heat, Selt found it within him to smile lazily. Their employer, Regrettable Henry, had prepared him for this moment; Chezzik Elteren was indeed the world’s greatest assassin, and worked for whomever could meet his outrageous prices, and because of this, he’d been hired to kill quite a few of Regrettable Henry’s employees down the years, and so, with this latest murder, he’d gone out of pocket in a considerable way to ensure that the pale assassin went down.

  And stayed down.

  Selt had some surprises in st…

  Chez twitched, and the fool thug’s head fell right off into the man’s lap, the air suddenly filled with the scorching stink of cauterized flesh and messy autonomic bodily reactions to suddenly being killed. The assassin took a good long whiff and smiled. “Now, son, that is wot we is call a righteous kill. ‘s all about the eyes, yeah?”

  “I’m sorry … what?” Gedrax wanted to scream in pain, but the tip of the blade that was now slowly sinking into his skull at a glacial but inexorable pace left no sensation. There was a slight pressure in the center of his forehead and he absolutely knew that Chezzik was sticking the azure weapon into him, but there was … nothing. He blinked against the harsh light of the madman’s red-rimmed sword and suddenly, that particular weapon was sheathed.

  Chez tapped the bandana knowingly. “I is say this about poor old dead Tomm. For all ‘is faults and his proclivities towards being an arsehole and damaging proper women in ways that not even I would consider wivvout first making payments and arrangements for such defilement, ‘e were one hell of a shot, hey? Took this eyeball out from nearly four hundred feet, in the dark, in a fookin’ tunnel. Brilliant. ‘course, I is much ‘arder … harder to kill than all that. If you could please stay right there, just for a … moment. There we are.”

  Chez pushed ever so gently and his wonderful blue blade sank in another inch. Gedrax flinched, and found himself utterly pinioned in place, eyes wide open, unable to blink. Thoughts raced inside his mind, raced and raced and raced until they pooled against the silvery azure tip poking inside his brain, where they quickly rushed outside his own skull.

  But he could still see, could still think, could still watch as Chez calmly unwrapped the black and red cloth around his own head, revealing an empty socket and skin that’d been burned crispy from whatever weapon Tomm had used to pop that eye like a zit.

  Geddy tried to move. Tried commanding his cybernetic augments to respond to his mental commands. Nothing happened. Nothing at all, unless you counted more of his precious thoughts fleeing out the hole in his head. The only thing that worked in his entire body was his mouth, which was just opening and closing, closing and opening, like some kind of fish’s.

  Aware that everyone in the bar was watching and not caring one whit –moments like this, these precious few public displays, they were golden for a man like him, no matter he was a most private individual- Chezzik reached over into the dead man’s lap and pulled the head free, then plopped it on the table, between himself and the other lad, who was nicely paralyzed.

  “See,” Chezzik ran a manicured finger around the edges of the cauterized wound, then licked the digit clean, “I is like to use Red for fings like this. Kills quicker than Blue, naturally, but is a lot less messy in the long run. Burns every nerve ending right out, it does, leaving whatever it is I need completely accessible, and in this case,” Chez jammed three of his fingers into the ocular cavity of the beheaded fool’s face savagely, long, thin, artistic fingers closing tightly around one of the dead man’s cybernetic peepers just a few seconds later, “I need a new eye.”

  Chez held his gory prize up into the light and angled it around until he got a good, long look into the du
ll gray orb. Somewhere behind the two of them, some retched, and a few lost their cookies altogether. He looked at his pinioned friend, took in the dried blood stippling his face and at the fresh stuff pouring freely, then shrugged.

  “I am terribly sorry that you wound up with Blue, friend. Of the two, you did seem slightly more agreeable. Of course, both of you were destined to die the moment you decided you were actually going take up arms against me, but I might’ve been predisposed to killing you a bit quicker than your compatriot, but alas, your friend has got robot eyes and, well, Red is usually quite rough, so to speak, and I were fairly rushed, hey?”

  Geddy felt his eyes focus on the grisly orb in Chezzik’s bloody fingers, but couldn’t remember why. Then he realized he didn’t know what the dull metal thing in the other man’s fingers was for. Then … then words … words … then …

  As Chez wiped the cyborg eye as clean as he could with the few clothes on the table, he shot the gruff ‘loader an apologetic and understanding smile. “Ordinarily, Blue is for robots and folks as are heavily augmented, you see? Overrides and shuts down most every kind of electrical communication. Saves the hassle. But when it’s jammed into a person it … ah. Yes. This is regrettable.”

  Gedrax’s head popped. Messily. All over the place. Chezzik sighed morosely as he shoved the freshly obtained robotic eye into his empty cavity. The bloke had exploded quite a bit earlier than expected and now the suit was completely filthy with brain matter and other viscera.

  “So distasteful.” A grim frown crossed Chezzik’s face, one that was quickly replaced by a pleasant smile; his own internal diagnostics were already recognizing the new peeper and onboard systems were even then working overtime to forge proper connectivity between it and the overall structure that was his body. All it’d take was … additional sustenance.