by Lee Bond
Dark Iron King
By Lee Bond
©copyright Lee Bond 2014
Kindle Edition
CAST
Trinityspace
Commander Aleksander Politoyov: leader of Special Services and Trinity’s Army
Tendreel Salingh: Technical Expert in SpecSer
Jordan Bishop: deposed head of BishopCo
Ariel Bishop: new head of BishopCo
Andros Medellos: Conglomerate head of Medellos Medical
Trinity Itself: leader and protector of Mankind
Gwyleh Ronn: telepathic Enforcer
Naoko Kamagana: Savior 2.0
Alistair Katainn: Yellow Dog Elder for the Katainn Clan
ADAM: Absolute Dynamic Associative Matrix
Enforcers
Tiv Solom
Grave Kallan
Varan Seems
TwinForcer Ketchum Killem
Shirram
Gar Til
Clipper
Lexy Daisicon
Boron Tillamok
Marie
Slate
Armageddon Troop Too
Babel: Conman and Subterfuge
Telgar Wren: Master of Arms
Cianni Wren: Technical Expert and Co-Pilot
Dagon: Demolitionist
Eddie Tekmara: Captain and Pilot
Tenerek
Jerry Seinfeld: bus driver
Steve Smith: career criminal
Richie Rock: police officer
Gary Poorfowl: Evil Chicken
CyberPriests
Erg
Anode (George Stevens)
Faraday
Sine364
Coulomb6
Latelyspace
Harmony Soldiers
Fenris
Solgun
Stride
Nalanata
Lokken
Others
Herrig DuPont: Chairman of the Latelian Commonwealth
Sidra: Foursie
Ute Tizhen: The Oldest Man in the System
Vasily Tizhen: OverCommander
Tomas Kamagana: avatar codemaster
Candall: reclamation specialist
Captain Shane Markson: Trinity invader
Petros Vasco: Father to Morgan the Dead
Arcade City/Arcadia
Wardens
Warden Peemes
Warden Gaston
Warden Bastille
Lady Hanover
Mondulac
Prestier
Holcmobe
Messers
Falcomb
Shrutii
Mistresses
Mistress Taint
Mistress Primrose
Mistress Greenspire
Others
King Blake: obviously, King
Chadsik al-Taryin: Master assassin
Garth Nickels: Engineer and Specter
Dominic Breton: Gearman in service to the King
Chevril Pointillier: Gearman in service to the King
Dave the Bartender
Tinkers, Artificers, and Smiths and other Citizens of Ickford
Havilland Harvard
Danny-Boy Boom
Saucy Miss Smith
Twisted Mickel
Doctor Sharp
Lady Bullet
Shackled Al
Boisterous Bill
Downtrodden Lucy
Lugubrious Hammet
Idle Eric
Tricky Slamford
Crews/Lookers
Nicked Jimmy
Mistar Chang
Sally Ahoy
All-Points Eric
Mental Marc
Quick Wit
Shooty Jane
Rabid Elton
Dank Eddard
Fresh Emmy
Thumper
Deezy Cue
Moxy Molly
Obese Patterson
Riddled Smitty
Coralline Criss
Large Ronald
Obsidian Golems
Agnethea: Queen of Ickford and First Obsidian Golem
Melissa
Trevor
Henrietta
Young Luther
Juliet
Hiram
Morton
Shelby
Table of Contents
CAST
Trinityspace
Enforcers
Armageddon Troop Too
CyberPriests
Latelyspace
Harmony Soldiers
Others
Arcade City/Arcadia
Wardens
Mistresses
Others
Tinkers, Artificers, and Smiths
Crews/Lookers
Obsidian Golems
Odds and Ends before the Beginning
Here
There
Back Again
In Between
Somewhere Else Entirely
Galaxy’s Edge
Just So We’re All on the Same Page, Captain…
1. Now Do Yourself a Favor
2. Strange Bedfellows
3. Tick Tock
4. Tendrils
5. What’s All This, Then?
6. Nicked Jimmy’s Perpetual Revenge
7. All The King’s Horses and all The King’s Men
8. Saturday in the Park
9. Kingspawn Pub
10. Black Clinic
11. Bad Moon Rising
12. Twinkle Twinkle Little Star
13. Hair of the Dog
14. Knock Knock
15. Following the Threads
16. Hell’s Bells
17. Harmony wants YOU!
18. Trouble on the Rise
19. I Spy With My Little Eye
20. Workin’ for the Man
21. Of Strange Growing Things, Spreading Tendrils and Hitchhikers across the Universe
22. All Hail the King, Baby
23. Of ‘Requisitioned’ Ships and Unwanted Visitors, an Officer and A Chairman, and Barbarians at the Gates
24. The Great Wall of Arcade City and Other Surprises
25. A Father’s Love, A Friend’s Revenge, A Horse’s Ass
26. Dammit, I should’ve gone with the Barter Town Quote!
Author’s Foreward 14/07/2014
When I sat down to write Dark Iron King more than a year ago, I had absolutely no idea it was going to take so long. I had an idea of where the story was going to go, and the general format of how I wanted to handle the telling of this particular tale, but … I learned something about the very fundamental nature of writing in the process of getting this massive book off the ground.
Indulge me for a minute, if you will, kind reader;
As a young man, I grew up reading some of the best science fiction in the world (and fantasy, too, and this little anecdote holds true just as well in the realm of swords and sorcery as it does in the universe of laser beams and AI); from Herbert to Chalker, Asimov to Banks, I thrilled to these other worlds and other places, marveling all the while at what they’d called up out of their minds and onto the pages. But, as I read these stories, as I tore through a series and waited oh so impatiently for the next book, I began to notice something:
The time between books grew longer. And longer. And then longer fucking still. And the books got bigger, and bigger, and bigger. Gone were novels I could read in a week, replaced by something so huge and ponderous that it would take a month or more.
Why? What in the hell? What … oh.
Right. There were people in the story being told. People who had their
own plots, and their own threads, and all of that needs proper handling, because if you don’t, if you miss something or screw something up (I am so guilty of this it’s not even funny), your fans will notice. Someone you think is insignificant to the plot is someone that a reader loves. Some little throwaway line can have tremendous implications later on, and so on and so forth. Truly immense stories with more than three characters grow and swell of their own accord, and as the one putting brain to keyboard, it’s my job to say ‘hey, back the hell down over there’ but …
It’s hard to do that when you’re writing what I’m writing. The End of the Unreal Universe looms over all their heads. So many people are involved, so many different needs and wants and desires and fears and all of that needs to be told. Even peripherally, and I believe it’s the hallmark of someone truly vested in telling the story properly that they take the time. Yes, it leads to a gigantic book. Yes, it can sometimes be a little … cumbersome.
Would you rather read a chapter or two on, say, what happened to ex-Chairwoman Doans or always and forever wonder? Would you rather miss out on what’s happening to Herrig, or the weird dynamic between so-and-so and whosit?
I don’t and I’m the dude who’s spent three hundred and eighty hours of my life getting Dark Iron King Volumes I and II done. And that ain’t including covers. Or edits. That’s just the writing bit.
And that’s why this book is so big, and why it got split into two. Because the story isn’t just about Garth anymore. It’s about Herrig and Vasily, Huey and Ute, Chadsik al-Taryin and Jordan Bishop. It’s about characters I hardly mentioned, and ones I fell in love with after the first sentence and others I couldn’t wait to kill because I hated them. It’s about a Universal war hanging over everyone’s heads and it’s about a million other things I can’t mention because spoilers suck.
I didn’t appreciate the effort my favorite authors put in to writing their big, grand, epic stories because for me, the Latelian Cycle was very nearly Garth-centric from page one. Not to mention, nearly complete; the only novel in that trilogy that wasn’t ‘finished’ was Citizen Pariah, and even then, it was almost done. Those of you who are into that sort of thing will have noticed that Subversive Elements and Citizen Pariah came out in the same damn year!
Dark Iron King I: Thy King’s Will Be Done and II: Arcadia Falls were purely invented in the last year. Everything between the electronic pages are fresh and new and damn me if I didn’t nearly kill myself every now and then trying to get it right.
Hell, I’m still not certain it’s perfect, but if there’s one other thing I’ve learned, it’s that there comes a time when you’ve gotta put the fucking thing to bed.
There are other reasons why the book(s) took so long to get done, and if you follow me on Facebook (if you don’t, for shame! Please, like me. I already like you. I’m working on coming up with some fun stuff to involve everyone a little more, and if you don’t like me, you’ll always wonder) you know what happened about six months ago:
Catastrophe happened. I can’t quite explain how it happened, not precisely. Basically, though, as my fingers were flying like mad across the keyboard, several things happened in precisely the proper order to screw me over in the worst way since my computer died in the late 90’s:
I hit ctrl-a (those of you who use word are already cringing, I’m sure).
I hit a random letter.
Office began it’s autosave (here is where I am certain I experienced an out of body moment).
Googlecloud (where I store my stuff) began autosyncing.
I panicked and x’d out.
I died.
Now, since this moment, I am infinitely more careful about backups but back then, all I ever really did was drag and drop a new file whenever I remembered.
My ‘newest’ backup file?
Three months old.
Three months of work. Gone.
I’ll … I’ll let that sink in for a moment. Consider that. I am not ashamed to say I spiraled into depression, pretty much right there on the spot. Factually, I wasn’t terribly worried; I rarely forget what I’ve written in the broadstrokes, so I assumed it would just be a matter of plugging it all down again.
Except … except it was harder than I’d imagined. Nothing felt right. Nothing clicked the way it had the first time off my fingers. I went through the motions, of course, because the story had to be told. It would be told. I consoled myself by reminding myself that everything could and would be fixed in edits, that I knew precisely where I’d lost my stuff (thanks be to the concept of copy and pasting ‘dailies’ into a separate file), so really, all I had to do was get back to that moment and everything would fall back into place.
Then, one day at work, while I was … ah … ‘working’, I … well, I can’t remember what prompted me to check my google drive, but I did. And there, in the online trash receptacle, was a file. With DIKnew.docx.
Could it be? I remember sitting there, dumbounded.
Not possible. The good stuff was gone.
I undeleted it and before I opened it, I checked the file size. It seemed big.
Still not possible. No way.
I did the only thing I could do at this point. I held my breath, hit ctrl-end and …
My life was returned to me. Mostly; 85% of the story as I’d told it before the doc crash was there. Instead of three months of lost effort, it was three weeks, and that stuff was fresh in my mind.
From that mistake, and from that miraculous gift (presumably from a certain Engineer we all know and love) I took precautions. I set an alarm on my phone, ingloriously labeled ‘Backup your fucking work, you stupid ass’. I wrote a macro that automatically copied what I was writing both to my desktop and to the cloud. I routinely backed up my online copies. I do that for everything I touch, now. I’ve learned my lessons good and proper.
Other things that kept the book from coming out sooner? Well, work. The job that pays my bills so I can sit and write went all kinds of mental from about November until January. It was painful; I dropped down to about four hours of sleep a night and quit going to the gym. I ate like crap because by about week two of November, I was an automaton.
But …
That’s over and done with. Volume I is done. Hell, you’ve got it in your hands right this minute!
If you’re a sneaky person and have already looked at the Table of Contents, you may notice the addition of the chapters that were in ‘Road to Trinityspace’. I wasn’t going to put it in, but after a quick check on what Chad got himself up to in that little novella, I realized that everything in that booklet (touted as ‘not important but interesting anyways’) had somehow seeped all the goddamn way into the Dark Iron King and that I had somehow also forgotten some pretty damned important stuff in the meantime.
In all honesty, Thy King’s Will could’ve been out last week, had it not been for the last minute addition, but I’m glad I took the time out. It makes the story better, refreshes the mind and … oh.
Before I forget. If you have read Road to Trinityspace, I urge you to read the chapters again. There’ve been a few minor changes, one relatively significant one that, if you remain unaware, will have you fairly confused.
Those of you who’ve read the other books (who am I kidding? No one who’s not already familiar with the Unreal Universe would start with book 4) will notice the price is a bit … high.
It has to be. I consider myself a real and true author. I put genuine and sincere effort into what I create. Further, I believe the work is worth it. If you’ve thrilled to anything I’ve written (even if you’ve been a bit lenient on some dodgy grammar here and there) I know you won’t be disappointed. If you are, whisper to me quietly of your discontent, else Messers Nickels and al-Taryin hear.
Dark Iron King was the most fun (and the worst time) I’ve had writing anything. Between these electronic covers, I hope you find the same sense of awe and wonder, hope and fear, doubt and laughter that I had in writing them. And, on the off cha
nce that anyone out there knows game developers, kindly and gently (and if that don’t work, roughly and forcefully) beat them in the head until they read The Latelian Chronicles so they can get up to speed on Arcade City.
You’ll see why.
Always and forever yours,
Lee Bond
Odds and Ends before the Beginning
“I’m not comfortable with you leaving, Huey.” Herrig DuPont looked up from terminal he’d been staring gloomily at since … since everything had happened the way it’d happened.
Currently, the screen was displaying a table of contents labeled ‘Secrets of the Chair’, and it was about as depressing and infuriating a thing as anyone had ever been asked –or even expected- to read. The long list of rulers ‘guiding’ Latelyspace ‘to a better, bright tomorrow through force of arms’ revealed that nearly every one of them had, in truth, been a pack of maniacs. There wasn’t a single Chair –with the possible exception of the first one- who hadn’t, at one point or another, done things so horrible, so grim, so … unforgiveable as to make them demonic.
It was depressing as hell. And Huey, the one who’d shown him how to work the Chair’s proteus, was leaving. Yes, it was to find some way to free Garth from the Box, but still.
Herrig knew he wasn’t up to the task of running a solar system of one man, let alone a solar system crammed to the rafters full of … full of Latelians. They looked well-behaved, they minded their P’s and Q’s and dotted all their I’s, but the second, the very second you looked the other way, they turned into curiosity-fueled maniacs. And that was the ones who pretended they were nice.
The ones who didn’t bother acting, the ones who’d accepted who they were, well, they just ran around doing whatever they wanted anyways. Nature and mishap took care of those fools easily enough.
Luckily matters involving the Army and everything those men and women got up to was being handled by men better than himself; Fenris and his breed, Ute and Vasily had their jobs cut out for them. Herrig knew he wouldn’t have lasted a minute in office had he been expected to corral all those Goddies.
