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

by Lee Bond

  It were ‘probably’ as even Chadsuit hisself weren’t entirely certain if freshly conscious artificial machines had a soul planted inside ‘em.

  “Stop that.” Gwy snapped, tapping another wire connected to a spot inside the surprisingly cavernous interior of Chadsuit’s helmet; if the Empator-Tyrene wasn’t mistaken, there was actually substantially more inside inside Chadsuit’s helmet than there had any right to be, which was a mystery for another day. “You can hack into the ship’s cameras if you want to see what I’m doing.”

  Chadsuit laughed hard enough to pop an imaginary spleen, which in turn had an interesting effect on Gwyleh’s instrument panels. “Hey, that green line is goin’ up and down and all sorts o’ wobbly as I chuckle! You is be careful inside there! I in’t know you is goin’ ter mess about wiv me actual insides!”

  “I’m just monitoring things.” Gwy hazarded calmly, shifting a microscopic clamp to another bank of even smaller switches as carefully as he could; Trinity-standard engineering tools hadn’t exactly been designed with hyper-intelligent, super-telepathic buglike creatures in mind, but Gwyleh had been an Enforcer for a really long time, so he’d learned the skills. “If you keep twitching like an idiot, I might actually skewer something vital. Do you want that? Do you want me to accidentally poke your language replicators? Actually, that might be a good idea. Jolt that awful Arcadian accent right out of your mouth.”

  “’ere now, ‘tis one fing to hassle a lad about accidentally startin’ galactic wars or, like, blowin’ up the occasional planet here and there sort of fing,” Chadsuit spoke swiftly, “but ‘tis anuvver fing entirely to play about wiv ‘ow a lad talks. I is speak fully proper an’ intellygble King’s Own English. Hain’t my fault the rest o’ the bleedin’ Universe hain’t on board. Oldest language this side of grunts and squeaks, innit?”

  The moment Gwy got the clamps into place –really, using the remote controls for these things was, in Huey’s parlance, a motherfucking bitch of a chore, even with four fingers and opposable thumbs- the instrument panel lit up like an Exodite’s anachronistic Christmas tree.

  Sending a signal to lock those clamps into place so that he wouldn’t accidentally nudge them loose while working on the second array, Gwy took a moment out to tease Chadsuit; while there was no way to forget that the Suit was most definitely not the same as the man himself, enough Chad was present to make these sorts of exchanges quite a bit of fun.

  “Forgetting for the moment,” Under his expert skill, the next series of clamps disconnected themselves from the uninteresting switches inside Suit’s helmet and moved towards the area where Gwy believed the rest of the signal was being funneled, “that it took me forever to understand the thought patterns of Human-type organic life and even longer to comprehend the just as fluid grasp of spoken language displayed by nearly every damned variant out there, ‘proper’ Arcadian sounds like you’re talking around a mouthful of marbles and it seems to be that traditional concepts like using whole words is more of a suggestion than a steadfast rule.”

  The second set of microscopic clips –usually used to effect repairs on the thick bundles of wires comprising an AI’s ‘neural’ linkage with a vessel- were taking longer to move into place. It was almost as if there was some kind of invisible disturbance pushing the clips away from the switch-series he’d chosen.

  “Squire, if you is want me to sound all posh and ellygant like them as wandered around Arcadia umptybillion years ago, puttin’ on airs and holdin’ their pinkies out whilst they drank terrible tea and wastin’ all me time commentin’ on the aesthetic value of ownin’ your own pile of serfs, I is all for … what in the great bleedin’ fuckball is you doin’ on the inside there, Gwyleh Ronn, Jesus fucked a dolphin me ‘ead is full o’ color an’ light an’ shit an’ I swears on me mum’s grave if you don’t stop it straightaway I will shoot you right in your bug’s sealed arsehole!”

  “Colorful as always, Chadsuit.” Gwy deftly transferred whatever protocol or sniffer or code that existed inside Chadsuit’s internal operating system into the AI mind of their not quite stolen ship and stared at the instrument panel with speculative hope.

  Sure enough, while Chadsuit continued on with very epically detailed descriptions of precisely the sort of torture he could expect to endure if the great colorful clanging in his head didn’t dissipate, the attenuated field signal that was –if they were incredibly lucky- signs that the MegaTunnel was back in operation dipped off the Suit’s monitor and reappeared on one of the ships.

  “Well.” Chadsuit said, suddenly feeling strangely empty. “That weren’t nearly as bad as you were implyin’, old friend. Were like a walk in the park, hey, wiv the only down side bein’ that I accidentally stepped in some leftover dog droppings.”

  “’Shoot me in my sealed bug’s arsehole’?” Gwy started the laborious process of unclipping the inside of Chadsuit’s brain. “’Dig up the exoskeletal bones of my long-dead brothers and sisters so you can create a chitinous catapult to launch flaming dinosaur droppings at me’? Where in the hell do you come up with this stuff?”

  Chadsuit hopped off the table and sniffed. “’tis a talent, Gwy. Natural-born talent.” He sidled over to where Gwy worked, tapping the secondary monitor significantly. “On another note, now I is lookin’ at it instead of it bangin’ ‘round inside me skull, aye, friend, that do be a Quantum Tunnel signature clean and simple, only … welladay.”

  “What is it?” Gwy only knew enough about the signals and frequencies of Quantum Tunnels to corroborate Chadsuit’s assessment of what they were looking at, so whatever had the Suit suddenly nonplussed was something that only an Enforcer Suit could know.

  “This hain’t my MegaTunnel’s frequency, nosir.” Chadsuit shook his head most firmly. “This one’s about … fifty times stronger? Cor blimey, and is it noisy round the edges, hey?” Chadsuit traced a finger along the perimeter of the signal, clicking the screen with a fingertip every few seconds. “Whoever is buildin’ this prolly were finkin’ bigger is better, yeah, only when it is comin’ down ter Tunnelin’ through the old substrate, you is got to consider the chaotic nature o’ that whole region o’ … well. That whole region.”

  “Who else could build a Tunnel of this size?”

  Chadsuit shook his head. “No one but Trinity, mate. Only … this hain’t built by the ol’ machine mind, not unless it went all sorts of mennal since we been on this journey.” Chadsuit kept ticking out the wild, frayed edges of the signal, expressing dismay when the whole thing suddenly stopped. “Aw, that is a bummer, hey? Where’d it go?”

  “Doesn’t matter where it went.” Gwyleh announced excitedly. “But where it was going.”

  “What is you on about?” Chadsuit couldn’t recall the last time he’d seen the bug so happy.

  “Interesting fact about that Tunnel’s signal, Chadsuit.” Gwy threw the combined data on a nearby monitor. “Look at where it was, hm, exiting.”

  Silence stretched to fill the engineering room as Chadsuit contemplated what he were looking at.

  “Nah.” Chadsuit shook his head. “Not fuckin’ likely.”

  ***

  "Bollocks." Chadsuit said in defiance of what were starin' both him and Gwy right in their respective kissers. It didn't make sense, it were in total violation o' everyfing that were sensible, but at the very same time, no matter how stupid it were, they just couldn't deny it.

  "This Universe is completely fookin' mennal. We is both know it. But this is just too coincidental e’en for me."

  Gwy couldn't take his eyes off the section of The Cordon that the MegaTunnel's frequency had led them to; every Enforcer -at one point or another in their careers- took time out to revel in The Cordon’s majesty, so both Gwy and the Suit were familiar with what the supermassive forcefield looked like, and what they were both looking at now wasn't ... normal.

  Under normal circumstances, The Cordon was your basic, matte black screen stretching to infinite distances the closer you got to the surface. This mat
ched the unlimited darkness that belonged to each of the Cordon Nodes situated throughout the Unreal Universe. It was standard, and once you got over the fact that The Cordon covered more than eighty-five percent of the Universe, it was actually pretty boring.

  But ... the section of Cordon they'd arrived at after following the MegaTunnel's signal was no longer ‘standard’.

  A section of matte black Cordon equalling nearly fourteen thousand miles was burned and crispy around the edges, emanating a dark, seething red that reminded Gwy -who'd become familiar with outdoor barbecuing during his time as a farmer- of a lump of firewood that was nearly all charcoal and cinders. This fiery glaze corkscrewed inward, growing darker and darker until, at the very center, The Cordon returned to it's normal condition.

  "That's not what a Tunnel is supposed to do." Gwy nudged their ship a little closer, uncomfortable every inch of the way; though all onboard sensors swore up and down that the bright red edges of the 'fire' emanated no actual heat, Chadsuit claimed otherwise, leaving the Enforcer with the unwelcome task of taking a risk that he was pretty damned sure no one else in the history of time itself had ever done.

  "You fink?" Chadsuit's scanners were flip-flopping all over the place. As far as his internal gyroscopes and locations sensors and machine-born skill and resurrected soul were concerned, they were absolutely nowhere at all. "I is not like this, squire. This hain't feel right."

  "So you've been saying." Gwy scratched one of his limbs absentmindedly. "And yet, I can't fail to point out that your choice in coordinates, which you claim is both where Chad Sikkmund fell through The Cordon and where Kith Antal's vessel is located is to within a meager five thousand miles of where the Tunnel was firing."

  "Well, yeah, obviously, my coords hain't wrong, right?" Chadsuit rolled his shoulders. "My connection to Chad at the time were perfect and flawless. There is no doubt that Chad fell through right here," the Enforcer Suit pointed right at the dead center of the blistered Cordon, where it was darkest, "and that Antal hain't far off from here as well. But what in the utter fuck would Trinity be doin' firin' a fookin' Tunnel at the Kith? That is the part as wot makes zero sense."

  "You're not wrong." Gwy stroked his chin hairs broodingly. "Doesn't diminish the fact that we're here, there is visual and recorded structural damage to the Cordon, and hypothetically, Chad is somewhere on the other side."

  ***

  “Whut in th’ goldang hell was that?” Griffin ran a hand across the surface of The Cordon.

  Same as every other time he’d touched it.

  There was nothing to feel. The shield keeping Kith Antal –and all the other strange an’ crazy shit that popped up when you severed part of the Universe from itself- from gettin’ on to th’ inside where all the juicy stuff was at was the most powerful thing in creation … but it might as well not even be there.

  The fact that they knew it was less than three microns across was a particularly nasty slap in the face, even if Griffin Jones had decided he was one of the good guys.

  “I is reckon…” Chad tried using some of himself to do the sorts of fancy math tricks and scanner-y type things that you always heard people were capable of doing and they all promptly told him to screw a tosspot.

  They were all still reeling from crawling through a fiery portal that, while it had moved them substantially far enough away from Antal’s encroaching forces, had also provided them with a frightfully weird vista on either side of the fire … hole.

  Strange things, like worlds split in two but still functioning, or planets cut up like the perfectly peeled skin of an apple, or … immensely vast flat planes, upon which towns and cities and buildings reached up into empty, blank skies, or what could only best be described as planetary lashups, wherein whole earths and worlds similar to the queer ones they’d already seen were held together via everything from elevators to actual rope.

  They’d never seen nowt like that in all their travels, and Chad was one of those lucky fellas as had been given the great opportunity to visit solar systems where no other Trinity lad or lass would ever go.

  Chad blinked. Some of hims couldn’t take their thoughts away from the barely seen, fire-coated images flashing at them as they’d followed Griffin through the portal.

  “We is reckon,” Chad resumed lamely, “that it were a Quantum Tunnel. Big ‘un, too.”

  “That’s just retarded.” Griffin touched their section of Cordonspace once more, then looked over his shoulder, a nasty grin on his face; old Man Antal might very well be Lord and Master of a ship the size of a Galaxy, and might be able to shuttle forces back and forth faster than anyone could believe possible, but he still needed to move them. He couldn’t risk moving Harmony soldiers through the ex-dee plane, not unless he wanted them to spontaneously evolve into augmented Kith or Kin, so it was the long way or no way. “Trinity’s already got one o’ them as can do the job, pal, and ‘sides alla that, this here whatchacallit …”

  “Burn pattern.” Chad pulled a cigarette out of thin air, ignoring Griffin’s hungry look.

  The man had the power to burn a hole from one place in the Universe t’ the other, and he still wanted more. The lad were smart enough not to push the point, but none of him as were keepin’ an eye on the disgruntled carrot top trusted the boyo further than they could throw him. Granted, that distance would be well far away, especially in their current location, but the sentiment remained.

  Griffon Jones had proclaimed himself converted to Garth N’Chalez’ way of seein’ things, and that were all well and good. They were willing to ally themselves with a madman as had only just recently been rescued from a torturous giant comprised mostly of shiny baubles –which were also summink none of hims had ever seen- and to withhold judgment until some later date, but that didn’t mean they were going to let his guard down.

  “Son,” Griffin slapped a hand firmly against the empty pressure that was The Cordon and sent some of his power into it, face lighting up both with joy at the release and shadows as arcs of fire crackled outward in a roughly hand-shaped pattern, “Ah know all there is t’know ‘bout fire, and Ah c’n guaran-goldang-tee this here shit ‘round th’ edges weren’t no mere fire.”

  “We is find it especially innerestin’,” Chad jetted backward a bit so they could take in the burn pattern more clearly, “that you is pronounce your chosen element as fahr, which is most definitely not ‘ow it’s spelt. One of uz spent time as a teacher, it seems, hey, and ‘e is most insistent there hain’t no a nor haitch in fire. ‘s not summink I personally am inclined to question, right, but as I said, teacher-me is quite specific on the matter.”

  When they were back far enough, they took the whole picture in. On it’s own, the huge mark burned into The Cordon looked just closely enough to a deadly eye that Antal had to be all a-quiver with excited interest. With the extra-added value of yon Kin’kithal’s tempestuous flames licking all over the place, it looked positively dire.

  “Oi, is you ever ‘ear o’ this place called Mordor?” Chad asked when Griffin were done fucking around with ‘is talent.

  “Sounds familiar.” Griffin chose to dismiss the marble-mouthed Arcadian’s dialectic jab this time around; the last time the two of them had started verbally sparring had been during their slightly more harrowing-than-expected flight through the Fire Vortex, and the Kin’kith was ashamed that Chad, while seeming to be about two or three steps away from eating paste, was actually very erudite and knowledgeable.

  Hard to beat a man who had a few hundred thousand echoes of himself wandering around inside that weird head when it come to thinkin’.

  “Somewhere over in the Jui-Cotan Galaxy, raght?”

  “Nope.” Chad blew a few grand smoke rings. “’s in a place called Middle Earth. One of me’s apparently has done some book readin’. Now me, we is not in to that sort of fing, but as I is spend more and more time reacquaintin’ myself with … er … my other selves and they is provin’ to be chattier than a roomful of Cathy’s, it do seem as
if they’ve all lead some pretty fuckin’ boring lives, hey? Anyways. Book-readin’ me is sayin’ this are a loving recreation o’ this fella named Sauron’s grotty Eyeball.”

  “That sounds stupid as fuck.” Griffin used a few thin streams of superheated plasma to push himself backwards until he wobbled up beside Chad. “Who’d use a giant eyeball to spy on people? ‘s lahk puttin’ up posters everywhere, tellin’ everyone where ya’ll’re at. ‘Hey, ya’ll, Ah’m raght over yere, c’mon, farh some missiles an’ all raght up inna mah giant eyeball’. Pssht. Big ol’ eyeball? C’mon. Ya’ll gotta have some discretion if ya’ll’re the bad guy.”

  “Squire,” Griffin shot the tail end of his ciggy over one shoulder, briefly imagining a scenario where one of Antal’s Harmony clones got it square in the eye, causing it to trip, at which point in time the entire batch of clones –who were, for the purposes of this daydream, jogging swiftly across an endless rainbow bridge- to trip and fall all over each other, “your crystalline plus-sized supercunt Granda is flyin’ ‘round the fookin’ Unyverse in a spaceship the size of a bleedin’ Galaxy. Antal wouldn’t know subtl… oi. What are that?”

  Griffin watched Chad dig around in both ears with his pinkies, elbows comically out from his sides at perfect ninety degree angles for what felt like an eternity. When whatever it was the man was trying to accomplish failed, Chad redoubled his efforts, this time looking for all the world like he was trying to attain flight while opening and closing his mouth.