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

by Lee Bond

  "And a-one." The Foursie brought his fist down and gently touched the gravnetic shield, giving it the lightest of taps. "And … a-two." The second time he brought his fist down, it was a little faster, a little harder, this time sending shivers of Harmonically-infused lightning cratering outwards from the center of his knuckles.

  Ergot felt appreciation flow from his fellow Goddies. It was a rare Goddie who could handle this kind of Harmonic power with such ease, and it was definitely a treat.

  "And …" Foursie Ergot raised his fist as high as it could go, the brilliant nimbus burning brightly against the stupendous and terrifying Storm behind all of them. "A-three."

  ***

  secondToon blinked, incapable of actually processing the sight before her eyes for a solid thirty seconds. The majority of the reasons behind her inability to properly understand the effects of the God soldier literally punching the Gamble's gravity shield right off was due mostly to the sudden change in pressure; the moment the shield cracked into pieces, secondToon found herself bouncing and crashing against the bulkheads.

  "This is some serious fucking bullshit." secondToon beamed the memories of the moment back to primaryToon, who responded with such profound shock that secondToon felt the fibers of her essence shiver in commiseration. "What in the fucking hell are these fuckers made out of?"

  And then …

  One of the God soldiers looked directly at her, somehow seeing her brightly colored form through the bulkhead. There was no doubt in her mind that the Goddie staring at her right was in fact doing so.

  "Oh shit." secondToon considered her options as quickly as they came. She could run, which in turn would prompt the sneaky Goddie to start chasing, and there was absolutely no guarantee that she'd make it to freedom before she was grabbed.

  Not an option. primaryToon had already made it abundantly clear that the true nature of her particular talents remain a secret as long as possible. primaryToon wasn't built for combat, but she was perhaps the most durable of all the Heavies aboard. If it came down to it, she wanted her particular talents to come as a complete shock to the invading forces.

  She could attack. secondToon couldn't even finish the thought before she started laughing. As a second generation iteration of Toon, she could mimic roughly sixty-five percent of the primary abilities, and after having just witnessed a God soldier karate chop a shield capable of withstanding multiple Glory-fire without suffering, her death was an absolute guarantee.

  "Fuck." The only viable choice was disintegration. It'd give the Goddies a bit of a hint as to what she could do, but that wasn't much. Not really.

  secondToon shut her eyes and willed herself into nonexistence, feeling the faux-cells that she'd been borne from breaking down into nothingness.

  Such was life.

  ***

  "Huh. That was weird." Twoesie Shumanski made a face.

  Ergot looked up from his prote; Harmony-powered avatars were busy running the full profile of the ship they were about to invade against meticulously kept records from when God soldiers had stormed around past The Cordon.

  It wouldn't be too much longer because frankly speaking, not many Cordon-systems had spacefaring civilizations that went so overboard in terms of size.

  "What's that, Shumanski?"

  The Twoesie ran a check on his visual sensors. Nope. He wasn't imagining things and as far as checks went, none of the Heavy electronic chaff flooding the vicinity were affecting his systems.

  He had, in fact, seen a very brightly colored woman through the walls of the ship during a random scan of the environment, and then just as improbably, he'd seen that very same brightly colored woman disappear in a puff of oddly colored smoke.

  Ergot smacked Shumanski on the back of the head. "What's the problem?"

  Shumanski shook his head. He felt like an idiot and really didn't want to mention the weirdness he'd witnessed, but knew his job. Even if the crew was going to tease him until the Light Rose. The Twoesie started outlining the strange woman and the weird things he'd witnessed, doing his best to downplay the situation, but the more he spoke, the redder he grew and the deeper the hilarity roiling through local Harmony grew.

  "You realize what you're describing?" Ergot asked. "Really describing?"

  "Yes." Shumanski cleared his throat and turned away.

  "You're describing a children's cartoon character." Ergot pressed, doing his best to smile and not only failing, but failing so hard that he actually managed to get the rest of the nearby crew laughing behind their hands. "Like Rigby the Talking Shubin."

  "No." Shumanski grated the word out. "Not like Rigby the Talking Shubin. Rigby is a bright orange talking shubin that wears bright red pants. This woman was purple. And disappeared in a pop of brightly colored confetti."

  "Same diff." Ergot pumped his fist. His instincts on the kind of ship they were about to board had been right on the money. "All right boys and girls, this here bitch of a flying pig is a Galyssian-class super destroyer. Big, mean old mother. Avatars aren't gaining a lot of foothold in the computer systems aboard, but that doesn't mean much. A lot of these warpigs follow the same design and construction patterns, so I’m uploading base schematics to you all. When we get separated, keep in mind that the main trunk connecting the engines to the bridge is always a straight shot, stem to stern. These guys seem to’ve forgotten that we went where they went, only for nearly five thousand years. So let’s hope they’re all just lingering down there like a bunch of lazy bitches.

  Downside, though, is I'm only detecting a few life signs inside, and none of them are falling into the Heavy category. Maybe one of them is your Disappearing Purple Cartoon Lady, Shumanski. What do you think?"

  Shumanski drew the biggest gun he was carrying, a monster DeepCore Shotgun big enough to blow through the muscle and bone of a five thousand pound shubin like the bloody thing was made out of wet tissue paper and noodles. "I think if I see this bitch again I'm gonna see if she can bounce back every week like Rigby. You okay with that, Ergot?"

  Ergot laughed, and the crew followed suit. "I think that's a mighty fine idea, Shumanski. All right sis and sas, gear up and make yourselves ready. There's no doubt in my mind that there's an asston of Heavies aboard this pregnant whore and as we've already seen, there's just no fucking way to tell the weirdness they've got under the hood until they open up. Now. What do we say when we come across a Trinity idiot?”

  The assembled crew of Goddies chimed in, “Please, put down your weapons.”

  Ergot ticked a finger. “And if they don’t?”

  “We don’t want to hurt you.” The fifty Goddies, all ranked from one to Four, sounded for the world like a load of bored children on the steps of a museum, waiting to go in for their field trip.

  Ergot checked another finger. “And what happens when they open fire on us?”

  Well, they all of them already knew what happened when the Trinity idiots opened fire without real provocation. All they had to do was look over one shoulder to watch the rest of Honor Your Offer get unceremoniously sucked into the Storm. Elsewhere on the battlefield, the damage wasn’t as bad as all that, but it wasn’t great, either; Goddies overtaking the other vessels that’d shown up to this little party were all sporting a considerably high number of holes leaking smoke and other important things into the void, with –regrettably- an even higher number of casualties.

  The worst part was, they weren’t even trying to hurt Trinity’s military. They were following Huey’s Mandate and were doing their level best to make sure that as many people survived as they could possibly manage.

  It was just that these Trinity soldiers … they were too young. Too exuberant.

  “Ouch, that hurts. No please, really, that hurts a lot. Why are you doing this? Give us a hug.” One of the Threesies lounging around the back of the cluster shouted.

  Ergot nodded, slowly. “That sounds about right, though I’m not sure if I’d take a hug from Rigby the Shubin.” The Foursie flashed Shumanski a w
ink, then was abruptly all business. “All right. Squad One, you hit the ass of this thing as hard as you can. Don’t … for the Love of Pete, don’t damage the black hole containment fields on this one, okay? Fenris will be pissed we lost that ship and the Chairman’s going to shit on our heads at all those dead Trinity goofs. Second squad, take the next area. Third, you get to land smack dab in the middle of this gigantic stupid ship and four, you guys are with me, we hit the command center. We work our way towards one another. Keep an eye out for bullshit Trinity tactics. We clear?”

  Everyone absorbed the data streaming from Ergot’s prote to their own, fixed their individual goals in their minds, stamped their feet and shouted gutturally in batlang. They didn’t use the old language often anymore, now that they knew it’s origins stemmed from the Enemy, but some situations just begged for some good old fashioned nostalgia, right?

  Fifty Goddies for a single ship, Galyssian or otherwise, might seem like overkill, but when you were trying to capture who knew how many Heavies, it was always better to err on the side of caution.

  The squads dispersed, launching towards their primary targets with smiles on their lips. They hadn’t had a good, solid fight in over a hundred years.

  It was nice to be out and about, especially when the weather was so nice.

  ***

  Winker fell into the void, popped back out again half a foot away, then fell in a second time, appearing another half foot away. Then he popped back to where he’d started. The few monitors in this section of the ship that were functional were showing bright red blips moving swiftly through corridors, almost unchecked, almost as if the various traps and other obstacles that they’d all spent long months putting into place –not in readiness for God soldiers specifically because when you were Marker, you basically prepared yourself for everything- weren’t slowing them down at all.

  Winker’s ears rang with the last sitrep from Honor Your Offer. Four Goddies. That’d been all it’d taken to bring down that ship and all the people in it. Didn’t matter one bit that the Honor had been stuffed full of regular Army. Least … it shouldn’t have.

  Nothing but panic in the voices of the soldiers steadfastly staying at their comm stations, doing their best to remain brave, shouting out the invaders’ tactical maneuvers and anything else they could think of, all while their ship was being destroyed and while their brothers and sisters were being killed.

  Winker popped fifteen feet to the opening of the hallway he’d decided to make his ‘own’, stuck his head around the corner, almost wept with relief when he saw there wasn’t anyone there. Of course there wasn’t anyone there. That was what the monitors and security cameras were saying, but … Winker’d decided you couldn’t trust what the machines were saying. How could you? These Goddies …

  Winker blipped thirty feet in the other direction, repeated his limited reconnaissance.

  … were unlike anything they’d ever encountered. They’d all read the files, they’d all done their best to familiarize themselves with the Intelligence made available to them but …

  The Heavy zipped back to the middle point, satisfied he was alone. An eye turned to the security monitors. Red dots everywhere. AI tally had fifty of the fucking things stomping through whole sections of their ship unimpeded.

  … it was hard to imagine anything like a Goddie. Winker wondered where in all of the places across The Cordon these fucking God soldiers had acquired their augments and implants.

  A loud thunk reached his ears and Winker was gone, disappeared into the ether through which he made his moves. Ethereal, floating in some place that was neither here nor there yet connected to the earthly plain all the same, Winker watched as two God soldiers of indeterminate rank –there was no way to know who was who and who was more of a high value target because the fucking guys all wore the same boring green army fatigues and they were definitely smart enough not to salute anyone- wandered into the area, disgustingly massive guns sweeping left and right, up and down, right and left like the patient, calm ticking of an old-fashioned wind-up clock.

  Winker bared his teeth in triumph. He’d known, hadn’t he? He’d known they were fucking with the life scanners. He thought about –very briefly, like most of the thoughts flitting through his head- contacting the others, but if he’d figured it out, smart people like Marker and Iago and Toon would’ve seen it right away.

  The Goddies were jibber jabbering back and forth in some kind of guttural language that hurt Winker’s ears. Some kind of combat language. Not uncommon, but from the casual tones underneath the harshly glottal tongue, they may very well have been talking about the weather or what they were going to have for dinner when they were done killing everyone.

  This was it. It was time. Winker knew he wasn’t much, but when he moved in and out of the real world like a blur of blades and wind, he was everything. No one could stop him.

  Winker blipped back into the real world, directly behind one of the Goddies, wicked sharp blades flashing in the brightly lit corridor. The first of the blades sliced into the broad backside of the Goddie nearest him, carving a huge strip out of the bland green pants and the second jabbed in sideways. With normal sized opponents, the second blade ordinarily punctured the neck for a nice, sweet kill, but because God soldiers were stupidly large, this one went in on an angle destined to deflate a lung, so that was all right.

  ***

  “Ouch.” Twoesie Sellaflor turned around to see what’d bit into his side and blinked in astonishment as he caught sight of a panicked fella in what appeared to be a jogging suit disappear in a swirl of dusty gray smoke.

  Onesie Grif snickered. “Guy cut your belt. Your pants are falling off.”

  “What the?” Sellaflor turned this way and that, trying to catch sight of the damage done to his pants. As he did this, the weird little goof in the track suit reappeared behind Grif, just about neck height, deadly blades flashing once more in the bright lights of the hallway. Without thinking, Sella raised his rifle and squeezed off a few shots.

  “Hey!” Grif raised his hands to protect his lovely face. A few of the rounds rattled off his heavy rifle, some punctured the wall behind him, and one … one bounced right off his forehead. Then he felt two somethings try to stab him in the neck, only to slide off.

  The weird pressure he’d felt behind him disappeared.

  “Oh.” Grif quickly checked his rifle. A few scuff marks, nothing else. “You’re buffing these out.”

  “Uh, no I’m not. I’m a Twoesie, remember?” Sella pursed his lips. “So this geek can teleport? That’s interesting.”

  Grif snorted. “You’re a Twoesie by like, two and a half minutes, Sella. If you don’t buff these out when we get home I’m telling Ergot you shot me in the head.”

  “’s not like it caused any lasting damage, you big baby.” Sella shouldered his rifle. “Now hold on while I try and find this dude.”

  "That's not the point, Sella, and you know it." Grif rubbed the slightly red mark on his forehead vigorously, intentionally transforming it from a barely noticeable crease into something a little more appropriate to his hurt feelings. "See?" He tilted his head down so the slightly smaller Twoesie could get a better look. "Look. This is permanent! My own damn grandkids won’t recognize me now!"

  Sella snorted as he dove into the first layer of Harmony. It was difficult to locate the teleporter as he zipped around the area, appearing and disappearing so quickly that it was almost impossible to track his movements, but it didn't matter terribly; the Twoesie quickly realized that their enemy could only hold himself in whichever phase of space he moved into and out of for an extremely limited amount of time.

  Working from that standpoint, it shouldn't be too difficult to map out where the goof would be next. Just a matter of correlating all the past points of ingress and egress then run a…

  ***

  Winker popped in and out of phase, absolutely unsure of what to do next. The two Goddies were absolutely ridiculously enormous and showe
d such a complete lack of interest in anything that was really happening. It was damned near fucking impossible to believe!

  He was an Elite Heavy, for the love of God! His ability allowed him to move swiftly across the field of battle, an invisible ghost striking with impunity, vicious daggers slicing through arteries, puncturing lungs, piercing hearts, severing heads. He could start at one end and by the time he got to the other, dozens of enemy combatants would be on the ground, dead or dying, lost and confused as to what'd happened.

  But not these God soldiers. Their skin was resilient to the point of absurdity. Winker was still not entirely certain if he'd actually seen that bullet bounce off the lumbering oaf's forehead or if it'd been a combination of light trickery and his panicky descent into the other phase state.

  In and out. Back and forth. This way and that. The more he moved through into and out of the lower phase of existence, the harder and harder it became to maintain anything remotely resembling control over his ability, but there wasn't anything else he could think to do; worry started gnawing at his guts as he felt faint tendrils of his being pull more slowly back to his original state of being.

  It wasn't dangerous yet. Soon would be, though.

  Risks needed to be taken.

  Winker flashed back into existence, deadly daggers stabbing towards the one slightly more distracted God soldier.

  Surely their fucking eyes wouldn't be as wound-proof as the rest of their goddamn bodies, right?

  "Are you fucking kidding me right now?" Winker hissed violently as one of his chosen weapons snapped right off at the hilt while the other one skittered uselessly off the other eyeball, getting hung up in the body armor rig the Goddie wore.

  "Why, thank you so much." The Goddie's hands flashed like lightning, one hand closing tightly around the teleporter's neck, the other clamping viciously around one of his forearms, a vice that offered no freedom.

  ***

  "This guy's an idiot." Griff commented, shaking his head ruefully. "Fucking teleporters. They just don't think properly. Look at him. He's got no muscle tone."