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

by Lee Bond

  There wasn't enough time to do much else other than slow time down, only at a rate that was imminently risky; as he was a Foursie, he could quite easily increase perception speed to a point where the outside world seemed to swim through molasses, but that left him open to dangers that he was no longer capable of witnessing. So locked in would he be on the simultaneous attacks from the Heavies that if there were any other foes out there, any one of them would be able to deliver a completely unstoppable death blow. He'd be in the middle of protecting himself from Zipper and his boss, unaware he was dead.

  Still. It needed doing, and it needed doing now. Zipper's attack was -or would be, as the prote-shield was already buckling slightly under the pressure- easily handled.

  The world juddered, then slowed. Zipper's face of joy was in the slow, transformative process towards shouted, inarticulate disbelief at the sight of the shield catching his hitherto unstoppable blast.

  Not slow enough. Not yet, not by half.

  The world bounced a second time, and slowed further. Ergot felt rather than heard a keening rising up from the machines that'd become almost completely subsumed by Harmony as they struggled to maintain homeostasis; Ergot's mind burned so bright and so fast that those systems were no longer directly under his subconscious, autonomic control, and the avatars being generated by cortical connections were barely capable of keeping everything together.

  Didn't matter that the whole thing would be over in less than three seconds. That tiny handful of seconds would feel be an eternity.

  Still not good enough. Whatever it was that the Heavy leader had tossed his way was now just this side of visible, a black-limned outline that seethed with hideous probability. Avatars tried plucking info from the air, but there wasn't enough time.

  Ergot ground his teeth, felt his bones shiver, felt the duronium underlayer and all his operational cyborg parts turn blistering hot. He was cooking himself from the inside out. Harmonyspace flooded with dire concern from brothers and sisters nearby and far away; those at distance tried offering him support and energy of their own, but his operational cycles were too cyclonic and they were batted away.

  Those closer by were now moving directly through the ship, tearing bulkheads and deck plates apart like paper.

  Even though they moved as fast as they could, they were still moving too slowly to provide anything other than first aid.

  Or funeral rites. Whichever.

  The world moved through amber. Zipper's atmosphere-blast was motionless now, swirling gossamer edges of air creeping over the sides of the prote-shield. The Heavy leader's strange emanation was now perfectly visible as a kind of multi-sided sigil locked in mid-air, fine tendrils of black glistening rot twisting backwards towards the Heavy.

  If it weren't for the fact that Ergot was one hundred percent certain that the oddity would kill him where he stood, the Foursie'd take time out to preserve the memory much more clearly for later perusal.

  As it was, it needed dealing with.

  Foursie Ergot bunched up the Harmonic power he'd generated -energy once destined for emergency healing- and snatched the sigil out of the air. He was dimly aware that his body ground it's teeth together in urgent agony the moment the deadly symbols were plucked loose; poisonous fire spilled backwards along the connection, threatening to overwhelm him. The veins along that arm rose to the surface, pushed the duronium underlay out of shape, and strange, painful obsidian marks flared to life.

  "Shit." There was no choice. Regrettable as it was, it looked like he’d be violating the Chairman’s orders after all.

  Ergot the Foursie shifted the sigil from where it stood to the left, spun it along an axis until the tendrils -once pointing towards their origin- stemmed from him instead.

  Then he released ‘control’ of the deadly thing and moved on to the second step of this most risky maneuver; he programmed the avatars –hopefully still functional and controlling his body while he did this foolish thing- to shift and twist his prote-arm more properly towards where the other Heavy crouched down near the ground.

  After that? He stepped his operational cycles back down to normal, prepared himself for the worst.

  The world shuddered.

  Several very important things happened all at the same time.

  Firstly, whatever thing the lead Heavy had released into the world winked out of view, but only for the split second it took to travel from where it’d been, back over the shoulder of the man who’d created it, and directly into the forehead of Zipper, whereupon those once unseen tendrils full of hideous black promise lanced into the Heavy’s flesh.

  Zipper’s screams were just as instant, and so full of pain that the air for Ergot –who was still in the throes of Harmony- shivered in sympathy.

  Ergot’s prote-shield bearing arm buckled backwards a surprising amount in direct response to the velocity of the modified atmospheric blow, the topmost layers of duronium comprising the shield actually cracked from the pressure and then, just as the Foursie began to fear the worst, that pressure dissipated.

  Marker took the brunt of redirected atmo-shot right across the chest and upper face, and as he was bounced, flipping end over end down the dusty corridors, his screams joined Zipper’s.

  And last but not least, Ergot’s sin of self-preservation caught up with him in the form of blazing heat hissing outward from overworked duronium implants, driving through muscle and meat with an almost disciplinary zeal. The pain ranked amongst the worst and most intense things that the four thousand and then some year old God soldier had ever been asked to endure, yet he kept his mouth gritted tightly against giving it control; he needed to make certain that Marker was, if not dead like his poor compatriot –Zipper’s skin had sloughed off his still-screaming corpse, revealing cancerous black tendrils that continued digging in deeper- at the very least temporarily incapacitated.

  Limping forward, a shambling monstrosity, actual steam now pushing through pores and evacuating through discreetly placed valves designed solely for that purpose, Foursie Ergot pushed towards where the Heavy Leader lay.

  Faint, gurgling breaths reached his ears the closer he got, and it was with something akin to great relief –mingled with sorrow at having violated the Chairman’s direct request- that the Latelian soldier saw that he’d gotten his wish; the remarkable Heavy wasn’t quite dead yet, just … severely wounded.

  Ragged, tatty shreds of flesh hung loose everywhere Ergot turned slow-moving eyes. Both the man’s arms were a mess of bloody skin and leaking veins, while his chest, still covered beneath his shirt, showed signs of having endured the same fate, if the amount of blood seeping through was to be any kind of indication.

  Gruesome, gruesome stuff.

  But it was the man’s face that’d taken the worst of it. There was very little left there to prove that the man had even been alive, let alone still living; ears, nose and lips were completely and utterly gone, leaving behind a skeletally grinning corpse-like mannequin that stared accusatorily at him.

  Ergot tilted an ear towards the body, desperate to learn if the sounds coming from the body were those of a man struggling to stay alive with such dire wounds or if it was nothing more than the natural processes of a dead body coming to full rest.

  “Give me just a minute.” Marker whispered, sucking cool air into abused lungs. “And I’ll fucking do you in, asshat.”

  Ergot smiled and nodded. “Same here, Trinity dog, same here. I’m just gonna park my ass right alongside you. Whoever gets up first gets dibs on killing the other. Agreed?”

  “Agreed.” Marker tried to smile, then remembered that the Foursie had blown his handsome face clean off his even handsomer skull.

  Ergot tried responding to the sounds of Goddies coming directly through the walls to save their fallen brother, but those same autonomic systems that’d kept him fully functional during the timeslow were even then dropping him over the cliff and into emergency alert mode.

  ***

  “…something on the
order of a thousand times the processing power.” Someone was saying with clinical fascination. “Even I wouldn’t try that, and my brain is made out of rubber.”

  “The pressure, though. It nearly cooked him through and through. If all of us weren’t here to save him, Ergot’d be dead. Cooked like a Sunday dinner shubin roast.”

  Ergot focused on the words banging into the side of his head and realized that the man talking about him was Shumanski. He laughed. That was quite the image.

  “He’s awake?”

  The other voice, then, would be the … woman … that Shummy had first seen through the hull of the ship during his visual sweep, the Heavy who’d quite literally tied him up not so long ago. The one with the remarkable powers, ones that seemed to violate everything that was already unnatural about the world in which they lived.

  Ergot tried opening his eyes only to learn they were sealed shut. No matter. He had access to Harmony still, so he looked through there instead, quickly discovering that he was surrounded by all the Goddies that’d been deployed alongside him. Moreover, every fucking soldier in this volume of space was doing their best to pretend like they weren’t peeking in on him, crowding Harmonyspace like a bunch of teenage lookee-loos trying to spot Indra Sahari as she hurried from point A to point B. Lurking in the back like a pack of dark shadows were the Horsemen themselves, patiently awaiting situation reports.

  “Of course I’m awake. I’m a motherhumping Foursie.” Ergot tried sitting up, only to discover once again that someone had sought to immobilize him. He struggled against the bonds that had him all but fused to the makeshift gurney; probing through Harmony revealed that someone had lashed together a bunch of broken hull plates, upon which they’d lashed him. “What the fuck is this?”

  Toon smacked the enormous Goddie on the tip of his nose. “You, mister, are nearly cooked all the way through. There are signs of healing already, which just … boggles my mind, but I now have it on authority that you lot are quite a bit more than we expected. You’re tied down because while yes, you can make your cybernetic parts move you around like normal, that’s pretty much the worst idea ever. Except, of course, you know, for the part where we decided to invade you guys.”

  “Shumanksi.” Ergot whispered the word, forcing the Twoesie in closer. “If you’re fucking the enemy already, I will bring you up on charges. Just because she’s agreed to the terms and conditions of the Letter doesn’t mean she’ll follow them.”

  “Foursie Ergot!” Shummy shouted loudly, protesting his innocence in such matters across Harmony as well, forgetting to clamp down on his absurd desire to do precisely that. “Never have I ever.”

  Raucous laughter and guttural snickering reached Ergot’s ears, prompting the temporarily bed-ridden Foursie to smile. “Your … your leader …”

  “Marker.” Toon supplied helpfully.

  “Is he …”

  “Oh yeah.” Toon nodded noisily, a twanging spring sound rippling from her neck. “He’s hard to kill, that one. Packing a lot of C-tech. Might even be up before you. You sure fucked Zipper up, though. Didn’t think anyone could catch one of Marker’s Marks and then throw it at someone else.”

  “That’s why he accelerated his temporal perception, Toon, I told you that only a few minutes ago.” Shumanski turned back to Ergot, who was the picture of perfect relaxation. Now that he was conscious and awake, he’d even gotten control of the pain radiating outward through Harmony. The Twoesie had gained a renewed respect for everything that those above him could do and found a small kernel of regret that, if things went the way they were supposed to, he’d never receive the same gifts.

  He puffed out a small sigh. Ah well, such was life. He snapped his fingers. “Oh, hey, Ergot, um, hope you don’t mind, but one of the guys read the Letter to Marker while you were down for the count. He wants to talk to you.”

  “Thank Pete I’m not using my eyes right now.” Ergot commented dryly. “You ever seen a guy with no face trying to talk to you? It’s bloody unnerving. Wheel him on over. The faceless atrocity can chitchat with the parboiled freak until we’re both well enough to resume trying to kill one another, if that’s what he wants.”

  Ergot settled back down into his own skin. Sounds of shuffling bodies and squeaking medical equipment filled his senses for a time, then he felt the presence of someone right beside him. “Marker, eh? Do all you guys choose names based on your Cordon-tech enhanced abilities, or do the powers appear based on your names?”

  “The former. Makes more sense that way.” Marker had to work to keep from framing the full words with his slowly healing flesh; he had just a hint of lips already, and there was a thin translucent mask growing over his face that’d eventually become his face. Toon held serious doubts that his old face would grow back precisely the way it’d been, which was something of a letdown, but he supposed beggars couldn’t be choosers. “Toon and your stupid … Twoesie? Yes, your stupid Twoesie tell me that there’s some kind of bigger war on the event horizon?”

  “Yeah.” Ergot nodded. “Much bigger.”

  “And the enemy actually qualifies as deserving not only the adjective ‘great’ but also a capital ‘G’?”

  “Oh, most definitely. He’s been banging around for thirty thousand years now.”

  “And you Latelians are the only ones really prepared to do battle with him?”

  “Such is life, friend. Such is life.”

  “And … you worked so hard at not killing all of us because you want our help?”

  Ergot took a deep breath and let it out slowly. At least his massive lungs hadn’t been affected. “When Darkness Falls, we will need every hand to ensure that the Light Rises. So yes, that means we’d like to get as many boots on the ground as possible.”

  Marker mulled that over. In fact, he’d been thinking about this greater conflict ever since one of the lumbering goofs identified as a Onesie had read, haltingly and with terrible inflection, the ‘Letter’. The Heavy knew he wasn’t the only one who’d found their sudden redeployment to Latelyspace and the subsequent war of attrition a little on the ‘what the hell’ side of the spectrum, just as he knew there was more behind this story of Ultimate War.

  “If we’re gonna join this batshit insane quest, I’m gonna need to know everything about everything. If I like what I hear, we’re in.”

  Ergot smiled and nodded. “Of course you are. It’s no fun fighting us, but it’ll be a blast fighting the enemy. Of that, I can guarantee.”

  Hungry Little Devil

  Thick, bass-heavy music rumbled through the sweaty, disheveled crowd, a hot, sultry and salacious booming repetition that had half-conscious men and women pumping and grinding against one another with reckless abandon. Men and women of all ages, some as young as nineteen –and perhaps a bit younger, given the Black Altar’s particular proclivities and the power of some of the people who partook- and as old as ninety, all adherents to the Church, willfully choosing to be in this place, at this time. The power of the bass was inside them, wrapped around their spinal cords, driving them this way and that, over and over, none of them under their own control.

  And they loved it. All of them. Loved it. Every eardrum wavering, every heartbeat snatching pulse and throb of the rough beast that roamed through the dance floor, pushing them against their neighbors for a moment or an hour or some weird length of time in between them all.

  Jordan Bishop loved the Black Altar more now than ever, and as he sat in one of the freshly-installed sound-proof booths at the far end of the dance floor, hooded eyes falling hotly on the image of a blond-haired, blue-eyed lithe little thing as she pressed herself against a man three times her age –if he was a day, and Jordan thought he might recognize him as a senator or someone else of equally impressive power- he reveled in the ardent roughness of the group.

  God, he loved this place! It gave him the freedom to do what he needed to do, certainly, but during the downtimes, when his search for Garth Nickels grew fruitless or his own beast –that la
y within him, curled through every atom, a hungry, savage thing that was growing hungrier and more savage by the hour- grew too insistent he’d sit back, drink some drinks and literally feast on the dark, humid power burning upwards towards the ceiling, the delicious pheromone-essence of all these prancing fools that sought sanctuary from the pressure of Jerszak Sinfell’s much more ‘noble’ Church of Nothing.

  They were like he was, Jordan reflected, heart hammering in his chest every time his eyes accidentally locked with those of the blonde girl on the dance floor; she, of course, had no awareness of anything beyond the moment, had no way of knowing that she was being stalked from outside the circle, but she was.

  Oh yes, she was indeed.

  As the ‘face’ of The Church of Nothing, a freshly resurrected Tenerekian who’d survived the worst trials and tribulations any man could ever be asked to endure, Jordan Bishop, aka Darren Freoli, was now officially one of those most recognizable faces on the planet. He was right up there with their illustrious leader, Jerry Seinfeld, but where Jerry continued to pretend that he was righteous and virtuous and that the Church existed purely for the sake of bringing people to a kind of enlightenment the Universe was sorely lacking in –all while issuing orders to beautiful young women like this blonde girl, like Preeta Etanh- he, Jordan Bishop, accepted the darkness inside him.

  So after a rough day of politicking –for there was, it turned out, nothing quite so political as an organization calling itself a religion- Jordan would gratefully walk down the dark stairs, through the poorly lit alleyway and across the even darker threshold that led here, to Gary Bad Chicken’s palatial homage to all things dark and secret, and embraced the culture.

  He grinned lasciviously as the blonde woman stepped voluntarily closer to the sly old dog who wasn’t nearly as mentally wrapped into the music as others might imagine, willingly allowed his soft old hands to roam across her body, her tongue flicking in and out of her mouth like a snake’s, almost as if she was tasting the sexual heat.