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

by Lee Bond

  Chevy saw that Norcross were about to broach the silent gulf ‘tween the two ships, so the Gearmaster stilled the Arcadian with a twitch of the hands. There weren’t enough time affect e’en a single one of ‘em in the proper way, hey, but he were still an old Gearman from the Inside, and if there were one thing he could do well enough on his own was handle a gaggle o’ gearheads, no matter they had Iron in ‘em or not.

  “Well met.” Chevy called out to the boat, keenly aware the crew of four weren’t looking his way at all. Bothered by this turn of events, the Arcadian put a boot ‘pon railing, added hand to mouth and called out again, mindful that his lads and lassie were preparing themselves for a spot of trouble. “I say, well met, other boat.”

  “Ship.” Someone gruff and wi’ a throat full of tacks replied calmly. “’tis called a ship and not a boat, but then again, you hain’t been Outside long enough to properly learn what is what, have you, old man?”

  Well now, Chevy did of course recognize the voice calling out to him from the other vessel, for did he not already know the names and identities of nearly all them Arcadians as had been shuttled Outside by Dark Iron King? And had he not, one time or another, run into most of ‘em as well?

  “I am beginning to regret my ‘ask questions first, splash only when necessary’ policy most deeply.” Chevy muttered to himself. “Had I not been so liberal and possessed of an interest to keep the peace over gettin’ a bit of liquid gearhead ‘pon my boots, the map out here would be drawn much differently, hey?”

  Sveta chortled, clapping the older man on a shoulder. “Aye, true enough, but look on’t this way, grayhair. Were none of us out here, you’d be lookin’ to brace yon Enforcer all on your own, and while your handcrafted ticking jacket is a marvel, I reckon you hain’t got a patch on the others, hey? They got all manner o’ strength and brawny moves, all you is got is your brain and your senses. I …”

  “Is it true?” the ex-gearhead on the other boat demanded, face still turned away.

  “Is, er, is what true?” Chevy wondered aloud, trying to find purchase in this odd conversation.

  “Be you an actual Arcadian from the Inside?” the voice demanded. “Alive and well wi’ a pulse in your thumper still, long ‘ere The Dome come down? Is you really who you is claim?”

  Ah. Chevy understood now. Someone in his crew had told someone else, and through the nature of people, his tale had no doubt spread like wildfire through the landscape that were ex-gearheads throughout Trinityspace. He felt some awkward shifting and shuffling o’ feet behind him, and so the Arcadian turned to flash them all a smile.

  Softly, “’tis nowt to be ashamed of, hey? You is freed inside yourselves after decades and more o’ bein prisoners to darkened dreams lurking murkily deep down in your souls. Those o’ you who found some measure o’ peace here on the Outside would naturally tell any whom you love o’ this excellent side effect of my bein’ ‘ere. Fret not. I think me all my worries are like as not to be quelled in the next few minutes.”

  Loudly, to be heard over the wind and engines, “Aye, Snowtop Swivvens from out Gaglardi Way, I be a Gearman from the Inside. We in’t got the time for full introductions ‘tween me and all o’ yours, but know it to be the truth. You got the sound o’ a man who is closer than some to recalling all that you may’ve been, and right now, we truly hain’t got time to deal wi’ all that might come from a full deck dealt your way.”

  A grizzled old man –flanked on either side by two heads of pretty blonde hair, with an additional, bald-pated mate- wi’ the snowiest perch o’ hair atop scarred skull bowed his head suddenly, as if he’d been kicked well and thoroughly in the pills.

  Furtive motion behind Chevy had the man tutting his hands just so to keep Norry and all stood right where they was. “I do have this, lads and lass. Fret not.”

  Louder, so his voice may carry to the other two ships as well, “But aye, Snowtop Swivvens, as I did say. I am he. I am Gearman Chevril Pointillier. The last time you and I did meet, ‘twere on the outskirts o’ Cherrymantle Estate, a wee little place butting ‘gainst the frosty North. ‘twere sometime before the Bolt-Necks did start pushing the borders o’ their claims. Had yourself a fresh crew of wardogs and a few proper gearheads only. You’d heard tell that there were a Bolty as had no lands o’ his own, that him in his boxy boots were just trompin’ through the frigid wastelands all alone. Easy pickin’s, you said. A Bolty wi’out a castle, bereft of ‘lectric sparklers and all them other weird tools they use is hardly a challenge at all.”

  “And then what, Chevril Pointillier?” Swivvens demanded. “What did you then hear next, Gearman?”

  Chevy pressed his lips together tightly for a moment. Oh, aye, this old ex-gearhead, he were well teetering on the precipice o’ memory, all on his own, prompting the Gearmaster to wish he’d had time to read up on all them as had been set to fend for themselves in this rough and ready Outside. What were the rates, he wondered, of recollection? Were there some kind of prompt that started ‘em down the road on their own, or were it a natural thing that progressed at different rates for all? Or were it summat else altogether?

  “Time’s awastin’, old man.” Swivvens, back still to their boat, shouted. “As you pointed out. Yon constabulary as is not in Our Man’s pocket may find reason to come visitin’ three gunboats loaded for bear and wi’ enough wardoggies to take a world down to th’ knees. So … what did you hear o’ me next, if anything?”

  Chevy fiddled with his fingers. Just because the five behind him had dealt with news of their particular –and violent- deaths well enough didn’t mean that old Snowtop would be … in the same boat, as it were. Swivvens had been one of the rougher gearheads out there, close enough to bein’ a greyskin so that his moods and temperament were a thing vile enough to spread warnings out to all lookin’ for a new crew.

  The last thing Chevy wanted were a freshly remembered gearhead losin’ his shite right before a mission were launched.

  Alas, it were either tell the man the truth and risk violent awakening, or lie, only to have said lie eventually come to light.

  Bollocks. Old King’s Wrinkly Sausage and Misshapen Buns.

  “’ere I heard it last, Snowtop, one of your own wee doggies were capable of crawling all the long way back to Cherrymantle, whereupon they were given aid by the kindly folk as lived there. Said doggy were named Appleheaded Horatio on account o’ ‘e wore that stupid knot o’ hair at the top of an already pointed noggin, and he did tell the tall tale o’ when Snowtop Swivvens met his brisk end ‘tween the large hands of an old, homeless Bolty callin’ itself Grant. Pulled right apart, you were, arms and leggies right from the root, leavin’ nowt but head on a body. Horatio did tell of how you was still alive, o’ how the Iron in you tried to weave you fresh limbs right there on the spot, and of how Grant danced in the puddles you left behind. Your last breath were cut in half as quickly as Bolty biting into your skull like a child bitin’ into an apple. Game over, life all done. That were your death, Snowtop, plain and simple and as rough as any I ever did hear. Now, beggin’ your pardon, squire, but we truly don’t got the time. My peers do reach the level where our prize rests, and they’ll be squaring off soon enough, and so if news of your death is pulling you down, let it do so later on. Allegiance to Eli or nowt, I reckon we’ll need your support ‘ere long and we’ll just have to risk all else later on.”

  On t’other ship, the man calling himself Snowtop Swivvens dipped his head so low shoulders were fairly dragged down to the ground. Blondes on either side did begin rubbing the man’s shoulders, no doubt offering kind words and other bon mots.

  “Kingsblood, Chevy, the fuck?” Norry rather pointedly ensured his long guns were visible and that everyone knew it. The rest of the freemen did the same. “You take leave of all sense ‘ere you started rambling on? You is only just drop proof o’ a man’s vicious end atop him and ‘ere the first bit o’ news is even tasted let alone digested, you is all but say ‘oh, and by the by, eh wot, we is know y
ou is waitin’ in the wings to do all sorts o’ awful, but in the ‘ere and now, buck up and carry on’.”

  “Relax boyo, relax. Calm yourself.” Chevy eyed Swivvens. “Old Snowy Swivvens were a tough old cunt, pardon the language. Near about gray as you could find back in the day. Man like that prefers the hard truth over soft lie any day o’ the week. Now I’ve brought up Your Man’s duplicity, we can proceed forward, for there’s one thing I learnt about your lot close to the end of our world, and it’s that e’en though many o’ you had brains stuffed full o’ poison and souls screaming so blackly into the light that your insides were left forever raw, it was that you held onto honor most proudly. Twisted in on itself from time to time, aye, but honorbound you were all the s…”

  “Aye, Norcross, aye, ‘tis as old man Pointer does say, in all things.” Snowy Swivvens were stood right at the connection point ‘tween the two boats, brightness in his eyes and a smile that curved oddly thanks to a collection o’ scars ‘round the mouth and neck. He stuck an even heavier-scarred hand out to the Gearmaster, who clasped his own worn, calloused hand into it immediately. As they shook, Swivvens spoke, quickly, “For the last year and more, I been havin’ horrid dreams o’ bein’ yanked hither and tither, hey? Only in my dreams, I’m this type of food as grows in the oceans, which you do consume by pullin’ their various bits off. They been grown worse and worse, Master Gearman, and ‘ere we heard word through usual channels that there were a man as were not only from the Inside, but who had all the memories o’ his time there, well, they grew e’en more vibrant, until I were no longer that seafood but meself, meetin’ my grim end at the hands of a murky shadow with unfathomable strength. So when word come out that Eli were lookin’ for some salty boys and girls, I leaped.”

  “And so?” Chevy wondered idly.

  “Welladay.” Swivvens ran a hand through snowy hair that’d become part o’ his name. “You isn’t wrong ‘bout Our Man lookin’ to earn some extra scratch behind your backs, as it were. Not to say he isn’t trust you, but you may already know that you is not become wealthy on the Outside overnight, nor on good principles alone. He did enjoin uz to see what could be seen, and to lay hands atop whate’er we could, ‘ere you and yours was busy wi’ Enforcer.”

  “And so?” Chevy demanded forcefully this time. Time was now not only wasting, it was speeding up.

  Swivvens laughed, and all the others aboard his boat and the other two besides did the same. The ex-gearhead turned wardoggy tapped a button on his collar by mute way of explanation, to which the Gearmaster nodded with understanding.

  “Why, milord, we doth seek to be as free as the five as stand on your side of things, natch. Our Man Eli has trod ‘pon the backs of bamboozled and confused doggies lo these many years, hasn’t he just, and we decided, all quiet-like and in our own ways, that we is well sick and tired o’ the practice. Now, not all of us are as close to the truth o’ who we were back on the Inside, hey, but we is all hungry for it. So we do ask, ‘pon the same honor you hold so tight, that you do give us all the chance to prove it to you, so that when all is said and done, you can take us, one by one, off to the side, and tell us all you can about who we used to be so that we might be whole and hale once more. And for that, milord …”

  “Aye?” Chevy’s question were nowt more than the weakest of whispers, for he were once again all choked up by the earnest tones and sincere gaze coming his way from weary dogs.

  “Why,” Snowtop Swivvens shouted so that all could hear, “for that, Milord Gearmaster Chevril Pointillier, the ranks of your kennel will swell unto they burst, hey, and you shall find yourself Kennelmaster to a force of wardogs as to make Our Man Eli gnash his teeth.”

  “And the Universe to tremble.” The two blondes on either side of Snowy said wistfully.

  “Oh aye,” Snowy agreed with a flash of teeth, “and the Universe to tremble.”

  “’tis agreed, then.” Chevy added his words to the rest. “We shall all ride towards the same goal ‘pon the same set of steeds. Forward, Norry, for I’ve got a date with an old mate and two Golems, and I do so hate to be late.”

  Norcross, grinning from ear to ear and so close to howling joy into the winds, put his gunboat into gear, the others following hot on his heels.

  And so it was that Gearmaster Chevril Pointillier and his kennel approached Stack 17…

  ***

  Clint cursed. "Terrex."

  "What?" Terrex, bored out of his mind and already regretting the fact that he'd been one of the few Enforcers remaining in the old home solar system not locked down into something that couldn't avoided. This detail was a hunk of crap and everyone involved knew it, they just weren't bold enough to say it out loud.

  The whole situation stank to high heaven. Terrex, while bold enough to gripe about the detail was nevertheless smart enough to keep his zipper zipped over certain things, was of the opinion that Trinity had lost It's goddamn mind; firstly for allowing the chaotic destruction that'd befallen this Stack to happen, secondly for allowing these rogue Arcadians -Arcadians obviously possessing abilities that they should not own- and then thirdly for changing It's goddamn mind and authorizing their deaths.

  Shuman, Abercoign and Slizzer were just gearing up to brace their Arcadians, yet his -obviously the one called Chevril Pointillier by default- mad old relic from an unknown realm had yet to show his ugly face.

  "Your guy…"

  "I don't see him anywhere, Clint. This is bullshit." Terrex blipped around the area he'd cleared out in preparation for combat, knowing better than most that an encounter full of rubble was a rough deal and frankly, based on the manner of their escapes, battling these Arcadians was likely to be harder than anyone imagined. "I'm going to leave in …"

  "Yeah, you don't want to be thinking about that, Terry." Clint uploaded data directly to Terrex's Suit. "You got five … no … holy shit, you've got fourteen goddamn Arcadian wardogs and Chevril Pointillier on the outer wall. They're laying down breaching ordnance. I can't get more Intel than that. This goddamn Book thing is messing everything up. Looks like there's some kind of signal bouncing between it and the three Arcadians alr…"

  "What fucking kind of ordnance?" Terry demanded, ordering Suit to try and dig through the layers of Stack 17's outer walls and cursing quite brilliantly when all efforts came up null; he was too fucking close to the Book for them to be of any efficiency.

  Whatever kind of counter-intrusion measures the damned alien tech was generating was unbelievably effective, and from the background chatter coming from the other Enforcers, it sounded like the field was only growing stronger the longer the Arcadians were engaged.

  "Indeterminate." Clint's voice came through very irritated, and very unhappy. "I'm pulling some basic idents from a few of the wardogs there, and … you're likely to be in for a rough time of things, hate to say. Definitely pinged Norcross and Thierry."

  Terrex slumped inside his Suit, but only for a second. Norcross and Thierry, which meant that he was probably looking at the other freemen set loose from their master Eli. "Fuck my life. Clint, you have any idea how big a hole they're going to blow?"

  "Uh, that's a negative, Terrex. There's too much interference now. My advice, hunker down and prepare. These guys pack heavy arms all the time." Clint cleared his throat. "If I can, I'll get back to you as soon as. The others are in the shit already."

  "Copy that, Clint." Terrex moved further away from the area most likely to be blown in, urging Suit to prepare for the worst; Eli and Chastity trained their batches of wardogs to be the most vicious soldiers out there, and not only that, but they loaded them down with cutting edge weapons and tech. "Get your intrusion measures up to speed, Suit. We're gonna have a rougher time than the others."

  "By your command, Terrex."

  The explosion, when it came, was unbelievable. All sorts of thunder and lightning and the hole wasn't so much a hole as an entire goddamn fucking section of wall falling inwards like a metal mountain.

  Suit's HUD f
lickered and shivered and spat an ungodly amount of staticky confetti across Terrex's field of vision before switching off entirely.

  "Fucking hell." A surge of vertigo belched up from the bottom of Terrex's stomach as Suit lost all power. The Enforcer felt himself tumbling end over end and just when he thought it couldn't get any worse, it got so much worse.

  Five titanic impacts slammed into him, all within the space of a thought, all evenly spaced across his entire, armored body. Without power to the systems, each of the shells drilling into the usually unbreakable armor left behind severe impact points while the sheer kinetic force sent Enforcer Terrex spinning through the air like a Frisbee.

  ***

  "All right boys and girls, this is how it's done, hey?" Linders grabbed a container full of highly explosive gel connected to a sprayer, clipped the former to a body rig he'd geared himself with, then checked the grav-clamps built into his gloves and kneepads.

  Everything was go.

  "Get your head out of your arse, Lindy." Norcross smacked the back of his friend's head ever so gently, then motioned to the second gel-container. "Windim's going with you as well. We want a nice, big opening, maybe fifty feet high and at least twenty wide. We've got to figure that if there're people still alive on the other side of this wall, they've got to be starving for air. If not them, then the rest of the people in this Stack, hey?"

  Windim shrugged into the harness and quickly connected himself to the gel-container. "Aye, Norry, got to be a wee bit whiff in there 'ere now. Spot of fresh air'll be the trick for us all."

  Norry did a quick check of each man's gear, then sent them scrambling towards the Stackwall wi' a smack each to the arse. "Go on, boys, do our Gearmaster proud."

  Chevy, who by this point had found no reason to stand in the way of them as were clearly capable o' doing what needed doing, were stood off to one side, looking over the FARS-cannons. "These things here look mighty impressive, don't they just? What is it they do, exactly?"

  Sveta ran a hand across the sleek body of the FARS nearest her. "The original design comes from this little dirtwater patch of solar system called Latelyspace. Fires shells that're superluminal. Er, sorry, milord, faster than …"