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

by Lee Bond

  Well, not precisely faked.

  Manipulated. Massaged into being. The titular character playing the role of Icarus not only prompted but informed well ahead of time, promised that while it seemed everything around him was turning into flames and corpses, shortly thereafter, Icarus would rise from the dead to find himself orbiting an even brighter sun, an organization dedicated to doing things no one, anywhere, had ever dreamed of.

  Aleksander Politoyov had and always would be loyal to the people of Trinityspace. How could he not be? He’d been rescued by Trinity Itself and pointed down a path that would lead to him being educated, trusted, and wise instead of stupid, criminally intent, foolish.

  Based on that premise alone –and yes, to a certain degree, with stars in his eyes at the great works he’d accomplish- that much younger Aleksander Politoyov, Offworld IndoRussian with ties thousands of years old, had agreed.

  Pundits who lived for such things had commented –some, hidebound and ancient scrawlers of pithy words still did, occasionally, when their font had run dry and people were looking elsewhere- on the relative disinterest upon a much younger Commander’s face as he'd stood before the Tribunal, almost as if he’d been wrestling with some greater challenge.

  ‘Booted out’ for criminal disobedience, a decision reached by the Council of Commanders and ratified by Trinity Itself, the very next day, Aleksander found himself in charge of an unruly pack of criminally augmented maniacs and thieves and rapists and perpetrators of crimes so profoundly different and weird that no official names for them even existed, but all of them, every single one, had been ready to take up pistol and rifle, to fight for their freedom.

  The very next day.

  Aleksander Politoyov tilted his head back and laughed as loud as he could, doing his level best to get the forced hilarity to reach as far back and up into the scaffolding of the now tomb-silent Orion Tunnel as possible, quirking his orange ears upwards in an effort to see if he’d reached a new high score or not.

  No. Same as before. No more than thirty feet, leaving Aleks to wonder if Orion had been thoughtful enough to include sound-dampening materials every fifty feet, all in the hopes that when he’d become God for the new Reality, people who flocked to His mighty presence would be up for a quick jaunt around Existence.

  Sound dampening would presumably be a prerequisite for starry eyed parishioners swinging by to say hello to their mechanized deity.

  Aleks laughed again, though this time, it was intentional, and laden with the kind of self-deprecating mockery that was owned only by men who were seriously reconsidering their choices in life.

  “I will destroy your life in the Army, Aleks.” Aleks mimicked Trinity’s austere, gender neutral tones with the skill of someone who’d been hearing it nearly every day for his entire adult life. “I will snatch away everything you ever held dear and I will make you wish you’d never been born, but in return, I will give you something this Universe has never seen, something this Universe will never be prepared for. It will be great, it will be glorious, it will be wonderful, and in the end, you will be the most important organic life form that has ever been born.”

  Aleksander strolled over to the lip of the promenade Orion had dumped him and Huey on –steadfastly ignoring the corpse off to one side for the time being- and peered over the edge.

  Endless space. Always.

  The Commander knew it highly likely that he’d die on Orion. It was inevitable, really. If he didn’t die of starvation or thirst, asphyxiation was next on the list; he’d checked the oxygenerators and while they were attached to power sources completely free from AI-controlled systems, there was absolutely no guarantee that they’d stay functional for long without AI minds being present. He was no genius when it came to wiring and all of that, so he couldn’t even ascertain if there were hardwired failsafes built into the blessedly functional oxygenerators or not.

  And then, of course, there was the extremely likely possibility that the Latelians were mustering their forces –those not already devoted to the insanity gearing up on the borders of that phenomenal gravity storm- that very second. Who in their right mind wouldn’t swing by the supermassive, mobile Quantum Tunnel that’d appeared for no real reason in their solar system?

  No one, that was who. No one would ignore a visitation like that, least of all the perennially paranoid and ultimately armed Latelian Army.

  “The most important organic life form that was ever born.” Aleksander shook his head, bemused at the offer. “And I said yes.”

  The Commander spat over the edge. His spittle froze solid no more than three feet from where he stood, then drifted off to some other part of the Orion Tunnel.

  “What a fool.” It wasn’t difficult for Aleksander to recall his younger self, the motivation that’d driven him, the stars in his eyes and the hunger in his belly, a fervor that needed satiating. “What a fool.”

  Naturally, Trinity had made no mention of the caliber of men and women he’d be receiving, or that he’d need to ‘recruit’ for the newly developed and highly classified establishment dubbed ‘Special Services’, nor that the primary requirement to keep the operation functional would be blatant theft of nearly every goddamn thing they could lay their hands on, but Aleksander had never been one to turn down a job.

  No sir. When approached with questions concerning the reasons for recruiting thugs and miscreants, murderers and psychopaths, arsonists and necrophiliacs, Trinity had responded as it always answered such questions;

  “My reasons are My own. There will come a time when your hodgepodge assortment of criminals will stride bold and bright across the skin of the Universe. Until then, do as you are told.”

  Aleks strolled back to where he’d built himself a kind of lean-to. It wasn’t a terribly good one, least of all because he had no furniture to make himself a little more comfortable; in fact, all it was a tarp –no doubt left behind by some humanoid-type worker who’d needed a bit of shade or something- lashed between two support columns, a small cup that was collecting surprisingly fresh water from a nearby drip and … that was it.

  “And I said yes. By Perun, I said yes.” Aleks settled down and watched the slow trickle of water drip into the cup. It took twelve hours for that cup to collect enough water to slake his thirst, and he’d drank deeply four times since the lights –metaphorically speaking- had gone out, so two days.

  Two days had passed since Huey and Orion had been gutted by a weapon that shouldn’t exist. A Quantum Cannon. Capable of ripping the admittedly fragile substrate connectivity held by each AI sphere into tatters, effectively killing it.

  In the wrong hands –in this case, anyone not from Trinityspace- it was a weapon unlike anything ever deployed on the field of battle. It superseded Hand of Glory missiles, made Superstring Cannons look like party poppers. Latelians, with their reliance on all things non-AI, would roll over Trinity Military Services as if they weren’t even there, and then, unchecked, they’d swarm over the whole of Trinityspace.

  That was the kind of thing thirty million God soldiers could accomplish. Three or four Onesies under the direct command of a Twoesie or, depending on the nature of the system, a Threesie, could blast a solar system into cinders in just a few days. A few days.

  Even Specter’d need a week.

  “Well.” Aleks grinned understatedly as he considered his thoughts. “That’s not entirely true, I suppose.”

  The first eighty years SpecSer had been in business had been the absolute worst time of Aleks’ life. Worse even than when he’d been a child living in the streets, a miserable pawn caught between the mighty forces of survival and imminent death; Trinity –in what would eventually be proven to be a habitual character flaw- had completely undersold the depths from which SpecSer’s forces would come, and in perhaps the most egregious way possible.

  “They’ll be rough.” Aleks’ voice rang out with Trinity’s tones. “They’ll be hungry and angry and prone to kill and in some cases eat everything in sight,
including not just enemies, but friends. This is the kind of viciousness we’ll need, Commander, this is the kind of rage and this is the kind of terror we need to produce. The end justifies the means, Commander Politoyov. I don’t expect you to see the forest for the trees just yet, but in time, this will all be worth it.”

  A dry chuckle escaped Aleks. How could he not laugh? Between the beginnings of his career as Commander for Special Services and the ending of his life here, trapped on an inert Orion Tunnel, there was plenty to laugh about. Wasn’t there? His life was a comedy of errors, starting with the blossoming tree of utterly absurd loyalty to Trinity and continuing onwards with the nearly rabid decision to keep moving forward, to keep marshalling hordes of professionally insane soldiers with a literal mandate to steal what could be stolen, kill what could be killed, and most importantly, eat what could be eaten.

  But he’d made it work, oh yes, yes he had, and in ways that even Trinity had admitted were surprisingly efficient.

  Development of the Reclamation Point system had corralled those thieving lunatics into a specific formula of thievery, thereby ensuring that when they were done with any mission in any solar system, there was at least a fifteen percent chance that the people who’d hired them in the first place would have something to go home to when the fires went out.

  Formulation of tiered ranks of Specters had further defined the structure of Special Services, ensuring that ‘weakling’ unaugmented soldiers –who were by no means soft or unskilled- wouldn’t find themselves on the same ship with a fifteen foot tall maddened Gaeral fronting cutting edge metabolic enhancers.

  Creation of hand-picked titles for commanding officers –sometimes resulting in regrettably ridiculous names-, permission for Specters to pick and choose their own missions, allowing them to trade in Reclamation Points for better gear as and when they could afford it, all of this had given Specter as an organization the kind of sustainability that no one had even dreamed possible.

  “And then.” Aleksander stretched out his muscles, then decided to lay down on the cold bulkhead floor for a few minutes, just to relax. “And then, those fateful words.”

  The Old Man could hear them ringing in his ears today just as easily as he had over ten years ago. Oh, how he wished he'd dealt with the suggestion differently, somehow, some way. The end result would still be the same, but Politoyov felt that if he'd been more prepared, better aware … the road they were on now would be, in some way, be better.

  "A man is coming to you." Again, Trinity's voice -or it's mirror- echoed slowly and remorsefully through the empty platform. "He is from a bygone era. Do not trust him. He is more powerful than he seems, than you can imagine, than you can expect. Use him. As a tool. As a weapon. But never trust him. Nothing but lies and deceit will spill from him, even if he himself seems innocent and unaware, everything, everything is lies. Ensure his safety. Coach him and guide him as you would any man under your care, but always remember. He is danger incarnate."

  Danger incarnate.

  Hardly a fitting tag. Not for someone like Garth Nickels, who had, in less than ten years, become the equal … no.

  Greater than the worst Elite to have ever come back from across The Cordon with the foulest Cordon-tech ever conceived, all without sign or hint of implant, augment, DNA construction … whatever.

  In less than ten years, Garth Nickels -a man who'd come to SpecSer with an easy grin and terrible jokes, and no sign of any memories that might explain why Trinity wanted him treated with such kid gloves- had transformed himself from a mediocre soldier into Specter in the Stars, a man with such power and terror under his belt that entire Galaxies actually, actually gave up and walked away when it was even mentioned that he might possibly be coming their way for a quick visit.

  Perilous times, those. Not just for Nickels, who's power and bottled rage threatened to turn the entire Universe on it's head, but for Specter as well; with every successful battle, with every slaughter, awareness of Special Services grew, and with that awareness came scrutiny, and with that scrutiny came pressure.

  Pressure to succeed, to shine, to take their place at the forefront of Trinity's Military Services.

  "No choice." Aleksander remembered the day most bitterly, when Trinity had contacted him once more, suggesting in that hideous gender neutral tone of It's that it might be in the best interests of everyone involved if Special Services did indeed take more of an active role. "No choice at all."

  The worst of all Trinity's choices-that-weren't was the fact that, through it all, through his personal suffering and grievous madness, Garth Nickels hadn't been a bad man.

  Just … a man. With more power -power that grew exponentially, every time he was threatened, every time he was in danger- than any being should rightly possess, power that very unsubtly worried every single member of Specter, including Heavy Elites that had fallen so far off the map of normality that they should no longer rightly exist, Garth remained … perhaps not good, but certainly not the devilish being described by Trinity.

  Still with the quick smile, the bad joke, the anachronistic references. Willing to do whatever he could, whenever he could. Just … towards the end, when he'd eventually become Heavy himself, with … less concern for casualties. Less interest in results.

  For the longest time, Aleks had wondered if, underneath it all, Trinity'd been trying to kill Garth. Certainly by the time the man had become Heavy, the Cordon-missions coming Specter's way had been the sorts of undertaking that should've never seen the light of day, let alone being dropped in Specter's lap.

  But through it all, Garth had given that stern nod, bluest eyes of all flashing with hidden energy, and off he and his team had gone, jumping feet first into critical situations best dealt with at arm's length, by Enforcers launching salvos of Glory Missiles.

  Drip. Drip. Drip.

  The first time Aleks had risked drinking water coming from some unknown -and definitely unlocatable, unless he wanted to take further risk by shimmying up metallic towers hundreds and thousands of feet high- he'd been nearly delirious with thirst. But that first mouthful, rather ingloriously sipped directly from the pole, hadn't killed him or given him the shits or driven him further into madness.

  Aleks wondered how Orion would react to the small mercy provided by the Tunnel Array that’d once been his body. Probably badly.

  Aleks made his way back to the edge once more, eyes falling to Huey's fallen body. Sooner rather than later, he was going to have to deal with the corpse. To Latelian genetic science's credit, the cloned body of one deceased Hamilton Barnes had yet to show signs of decomposition, which was another small favors that had the Old Man thanking Older gods.

  "Wish I'd paid more attention to Latelian stellar geometry." Aleks griped. If he had, he might be able to figure out where he was in relation to Hospitalis. It'd make his calculations all the more accurate. "Two days with no sign of support craft looking to scavenge for materials. Makes it unlikely, then, that they were able to positively locate Orion's Tunnel, which in turn makes it very probable that they were only able to detect the direction of our arrival. Best guess, they just fired their damned Quantum Cannon over and over again, across different degrees, using their avatars to narrow down plausible entry points.

  Figure four days, then, in total. At max, targeting different regions in this volume of space, with no real way on their end to determine whether or not their attack had been successful. Add in some extra time to compensate for scavenger ships to hunt through those areas, all coming up zero. That's as good a guess as any I can make without AI, or even a goddamn calculator."

  Aleks plucked at some wiry orange hairs that always splayed off in weird directions. He nodded. "So, one more day before they get here. Time to get ready, then, for their arrival."

  The task ahead would be a grim one, but steps had to be taken.

  Aleks wondered if Huey would find his final act apropos.

  ***

  "Move move move!"

  "W
e've got life signs around the corner! Move move move!"

  "Roger, life signs. Ten meters. Five meters. Located. Hands up, Trinity bastard, don't move."

  "Which is it?" Aleksander demanded dryly, holding one of Huey's dead, lifeless hands in his. "Hands up or don’t move?"

  The Commander for Trinity's Military Services waited patiently for the non-Goddie soldiers to swoop forward, their impressive automatic rifles -complete with laser tracking and who knew what else under the hood- dragging this way and that, sending brilliant red and green beams all over his … new digs. He could almost feel the pressure from Identification avatars cataloguing his face, running him through their vast information databases, quietly counting down the seconds until they pinged him.

  Didn't take long. In fact, by the time they got close enough for him to make out individual features, they were shouting about 'high priority targets' and 'containment procedures', prompting the grizzled commander to smile rather toothily.

  For his efforts, he was gifted with a momentary pause in the soldiers' movements. Good. They were smart enough to show proper respect for the man running an organization that'd taken away a five thousand yearlong gig, and smart enough to show the smallest bit of fear for the man who ran the Army presently waging war with them.

  "Where's the man?" Aleks wondered casually, counting the number of soldiers. Fifteen. Smaller than standard, and with the lack of Goddies, perhaps the smallest bit of poor decision-making on behalf of whoever was in charge of this particular venture; even though whoever Mystery Commander was had no real reason to believe his or her troops would find any kind of person, living or dead, aboard the immense Orion Tunnel, safety and wisdom should've prompted them to dispatch a few Goddies, just in case. Even a pair of Onesies, if for no other reason than to play bullet sponge.

  "Who would that be?" Lieutenant Rillin demanded, heart hammering so fiercely in his chest that there was a small amount of concern that the bloody thing would burst clean out; they had the Commander for Trinity's Army, right here in front of them! Aleksander Politoyov himself!