Emperor-for-Life: DeadShop Redux (Unreal Universe Book 6)
Page 263
That was a laugh. If anyone was to qualify as ‘weird-looking’, it’d be your stereotypical SpecSer representative.
Certain that if he turned around now, the other soldiers of various rank and file in the corridor with him –a cluster of three mustard-yellow shirt wearing opponents were already loudly discussing the stink and making very loud, very ridiculous comments as to the source of the earthy perfume- would find something amiss with the abrupt course change, Tomas steeled himself for the worst and just kept on walking, though he did –as a matter of course- get back to 'normal walking speed'.
Tomas lifted his head briefly to get a good solid glimpse of the Specters, an electric sting of fear racing through his old heart as he did so; three warriors lounged with reckless scruffiness no more than ten feet from where he lurked. Two of them were managing to loiter with such perfection that they appeared to’ve purchased the elevator door they were hanging from, a remarkable feat in and of itself. The third member of the Specter envoy, less threatening than his cohorts because he … Tomas shook his head. The man was wearing a bright purple and orange velvet bathrobe!
That was it. No weapons, no … clothes. It … Tomas shook his head and tried to blink the image of unfortunately glimpsed Specter penis from his mind.
“… don’t care what your fucking issue is, Captain Crybaby.” Bathrobe snapped his fingers, prompting Loiterer A and B to disengage from Elevator Basecamp. They settled in nicely on either side of their commander. “I need to use your facilities.”
Against wisdom, Tomas slowed to a crawl. Intuition gnawed on his guts and the flashing bulbs in his brain chimed in with their two cents; somehow, there was something important to learn or see here, something that might help.
“You will address me by my proper rank and name, Specter Hawser, or I shall simply have the inner ship defence systems educate you for me.” Captain Girill refused to back down from the intimidating Specters, even if his nostrils felt like they were on fire. Part of him was trying desperately to figure out how it was even possible for someone to pick up a rank stench like this in outer space. It was almost as if Hawser had a pile of manure aboard his ship, which was equally moronic. “My name is Captain Girill. Go on. You can say it, I know you can.”
Hawser ran a grimy hand through damp, greasy hair, stared at the residue transferred from the latter to the former, then shrugged. The entire affair resulted in everyone seeing everything the man had to offer, including a number of palm-sized, disk-shaped implants running up both legs, across the hips and up to a much larger one right in the middle of his chest. "As you like, Captain Girill, as you like. Now we've established what is what and who is who, I should like to use your facilities."
Tomas busied himself at one of the nearby monitors, pretending he was interested in the readouts. He needed to stay here, risking everything, regardless of the consequences; the sense of urgency boiling through his veins insisted he be witness to this discussion, no matter that the Specters on either side of greasy Hawser were on full alert. Whatever mysterious agency was driving him to such foolhardy lengths insisted on it, filling him with hope that whatever was happening would be to his benefit.
"In no way, shape or form are you ever going to avail yourself of any of the facilities on this vessel, real or imagined." Girill gestured sharply to the elevator doors behind the lurking Specters, an earnest blob of sickness squirming in his belly at the barely seen sheen of pure filth coating the elevator doors. "I am personally distraught that you're even here, near the elevator."
"Can't be too up in arms about it, Captain." Hawser looked this way and that, frowning when he saw that his audience had diminished to one measly ancient EJ slacker. "Elsewise you'd have some of your other men here, with your shiny Army guns pointed at me."
Girill sighed. Standing orders from Innit required that every soldier, Specter or Army or those weird groups that fell in between treat each other with respect and dignity at all times. Moreover, the brutish ex-Heavy demanded that in situations precisely like this that cooler heads prevailed.
Under normal circumstances, this wouldn't be a problem. Girill was used to being calm and collected. It was part of being Captain in Trinity's Military Services. It was just that when it came down to Specters, it seemed like every single one of them was perpetually incapable of being anything less than rabid, day or night.
"The lack of armed guards notwithstanding, Hawser, I have no facilities that would do you any good." Girill nodded his head once, crisp as a gunshot. "And that's all I have to say."
Hawser grunted once, held out a hand, into which was deployed a ratty, battered case. He popped it open, entered his personal access codes, then spun the BattleSystem around so that the Captain could see what they all knew to be true. "As you can see, Captain Girill, during an automatic and entirely legitimate scan of the local area, we inadvertently discovered an unprotected access port into your primary AI systems. Entirely accidental, I assure you. In an effort to protect our multi-colored brothers in the Army, Rix, here," Hawser jerked his head sideways at Rix, who scoffed loudly, "decided to determine how unprotected your systems were. During his sincere effort at mapping the flaws in your system, it was discovered that this ship, the awfully named Pratfall, was once named Quivering Palm, and that it was, as if you couldn't tell from the name, a EuroJapanese ship."
Hawser loved the look on Girill's face, savored it for a long, delicious moment before resuming. "And as we all know, EJ boats built up to about fifty years ago had themselves some truly impressive saunas and those lovely marble-lined soaking pools. We seen you got about four hundred tons of 'unspecified solid weight' aboard. Code for water, we suppose. As you can see," the Specter indicated his external implant discs, "I am in need of a proper soak. So I would like to use your bathtub."
Girill let out an exasperated shriek that he quickly swallowed before it got too far out of hand. When he was certain he'd be able to address the trio of Specters without losing his temper once more, he opened his mouth. "Now listen here..."
***
Tomas stumbled down the corridor as quickly as he could, one hand on his head, the other on his heart, both of which were full of thunder and lightning. He could barely hear anything at all, had, in fact, been stricken nearly deaf and blind from the moment he'd heard Hawser's revelation that they were aboard a EuroJapanese space vessel.
The sparking bulbs of light inside his head, always bright, had turned positively luminous at the announcement, and lest he draw further -and extremely unwanted attention from the Specters and the Captain of the ship- he'd done his best to leave the area under total control, only allowing the shock to spill over him when he was out of scrutiny range.
"What does this mean?" Tomas demanded softly, desperately hunting for an out of the way corner so he could just ... be alone with these strange thoughts of his. "I don't understand!"
Consciously aware that the few Army staffers in this particular area of the admittedly stupidly named Pratfall were staring at him and not really caring one way or the other, Tomas picked a direction and headed down it full steam.
Why on earth would the fact that he was on a refurbished EJ ship resonate so profoundly within him? More to the point, why were the strange lights in his head flaring so much brighter now that he knew ‘where’ he was?
"I'm losing my mind. That must be it!" Tomas muttered the words to himself in the oldest version of his native language, so much more Japanese than the combined language more commonly known as EuroJapanese. "All this stress, all this worry, it's caused me to lose my mind."
A terrible thing. Terrible, terrible. The things he'd seen poor Maurna suffer through … if that were happening to him, Tomas knew he wasn’t nearly as strong as his beloved.
As Tomas took the next available left, he was forced to slow to a crawl; running as he had combined with the impossible stress generated by the odd feeling besieging him from all sides had his poor old heart hammering fast as a hummingbird's. Breathing slower and
slower, the weary EJ found himself a nook to hide in for a few moments, then lowered himself gingerly to a cross-legged position.
"Be calm." Tomas cautioned himself, resting a hand on his heart. "Be calm, be calm. You're fine. You just need to find a way off this ship without attracting more attention."
What he really wanted to do was close his eyes and sink into a deep meditation, the likes of which he hadn't engaged in since before leaving his native world, but he knew better; while this particular hallway felt like it rarely saw visitors, you'd have to be the sort of person to intentionally ignore your surroundings to miss the fact that he was still in danger, just not from obvious sources.
More specifically, the glittering black surveillance cameras stuck into the ceilings, and what they represented. Why this particular camera finally filled him with conscientious concern over his blatant presence in a ship upon which he didn't belong was a complete mystery to him, yet the more Tomas thought about it, the more he realized he'd been so terribly lucky.
“I am a colossal fool.” Tomas berated himself bitterly. What had he been thinking?
He was one old man, alone in Trinityspace. Upon a time, he might’ve been the sort of person to go gallivanting across the Universe in search of his daughter, but not now.
He was too old. Too lame. Too accustomed to a simpler way of life. The food out here would probably taste too weird, and he was willing to wager a sizeable sum of …
If it were possible, Tomas contrived to slump even further into himself. “I don’t even have any money! Tomas Kamagana, you are a complete and utter fool! How can you expect to rescue your daughter when you don’t even have any money? Trinityspace runs on currency! Stupid old man. You should’ve stayed with Ute. Or better still, you should’ve stayed home. Trinityspace is no place for you!”
Defeated so easily after such a tremendous jail break, beaten down before he’d even begun the first leg of his journey.
How frustrating! Where was the youngster who’d fled hordes of rabid Yellow Dog foot soldiers? Where was the man who’d escaped to Latelyspace? The one who’d convinced the Chairman to let him in? The passionate lover who’d stood up to Vasily Tizhen? That man had accomplished miracles, become legend!
“He got old.” Tomas muttered bitterly into his sleeve. And now, to make matters worse, he was prote-less, with absolutely no way of getting home. He was stuck in awful old Trinityspace, aboard a TMS space ship, wearing a stolen uniform, waiting for the moment when the idiot he’d coldcocked woke up and alarms ripped through these passageways.
The fine hairs along the back of his neck and his arms popped right up, a deadly chill stealing his breath from him. Tomas shifted forward until his tiny little head was past the confines of the cubby he was hiding in. No one was there. No one.
He felt incomprehensibly on display, convinced that any second, hordes of Specters would come running around the corner, howling for his blood.
“And now I’m hearing things. In Japanese, no less.” Tomas ran a hand across his balding head. “Just wonderful.”
Tomas, always a lightning fast thinker, allowed as how such a thing could be possible. Simple, really, to accomplish. But it still didn’t make things any simpler for him.
“Why on earth would the governing AI of a TMS vessel talk to me?” he whispered furiously, for the first time becoming consciously aware that he, too, was speaking in Japanese.
How long had he been doing that for?
Well, that plain old made no sense at all, and Tomas told the AI as much, adding, “Why aren’t you sounding the alarms? I’m an intruder from an allegedly hostile civilization. You no doubt know I’m guilty of assault, theft and … and who knows how many other laws!”
That sounded like lunacy. It was insane.
Tomas snapped his fingers. That was it. The grim realization that he was trapped, with no way home and nothing more than a quick visit to a Trinity prison before being brainwashed or outright murdered as a prisoner of war had cracked his precision mind into millions of splinters.
He was imagining all of this.
Because surely if there was any thing in the Universe that’d notice a load of rogue AI minds programmed to keep their ‘eyes’ peeled for one wandering, ancient Latelian programmer, it was Trinity Itself.
For all he knew, he was already in prison, and everything he was experiencing right that moment was nothing more than some brainwasher’s fantasy.
“I call bullshit.” Tomas scooted back all the way into his hidey-hole, then drew his knees up to his chest. They protested quite ardently against the treatment, which was a nice facet to this torturer’s illusion.
Whoever was doing the job was doing making an admirable effort in getting all the small details perfectly; he still craved a pull on his pipe and now he wasn’t running, his guts were taking a moment out to announce how hungry he was.
“Trinity would never let something like that happen, and It sure as hell would notice if someone tried without permission. There is simply no way this can be real.”
“For my daughter!” Were he capable of bolting upright at this moment of crystal clarity, he would’ve, if for no other reason than the gesture would’ve provided perfect counterpoint to the announcement.
Realizing he’d actually shouted quite loudly, Tomas waited a few moments before continuing this impossible conversation; when no one came to check out the weird, shouting EuroJapanese man hiding in a cubby hole, he reminded himself to keep his voice to a whisper.
“She’s out there, in the Universe, somewhere. Jordan Bishop kidnapped her and stole her away from me and that’s why I’m here. I …”
“My daughter!” Fresh tears sprang up in the corners of Tomas’ eyes. He clutched his chest in woeful agony. “Is she okay?”
Tomas narrowed his eyes thoughtfully at the AI's cautious phrasing. You’d have to be a fool to miss the prevarication there, which was something new for the old man.
Although he’d only been exposed to AI minds for a very short time, he’d always been told that artificial intelligence couldn’t lie. The whys and wherefores behind their inability to delude organic entities had never interested a young Tomas, so he’d never pursued the matter further.
As with all recent events, Tomas found himself sorely wishing he’d spent the years of his youth more proactively.
“What aren’t you telling me?” Tomas demanded quietly but sternly. “I need to know what you’re covering up.”
“Then why reveal yourself at all!" Tomas pushed himself up slowly from the ground, using his cane as a lever to shift his cr
eaky body upright. “I see no percentage in any of this if you’re not prepared to assist me in the way I need. However, I do thank you for informing me that my daughter is still alive. It gives me hope when I needed it the most. I …”
Tomas reigned in his grumpy attitude, a wild zing of mirth forcing him to smile. Chastised by an artificial intelligence! What was next? Brought to heel by a robot?
“Apologies. I’ve become very self-centered in my old age. I meant no harm.” He peeked down both ends of the corridor. Still no one. Obviously engineered by the Pratfall’s AI. “What now?”
“Yes?” Excitement at being rescued from the jaws of terminal self-defeatism had the old heart pumping blood through veins so vigorously right that moment that he felt he was in his twenties all over again. He was saved! He was going to be on his way! How wonderful!