Dark Iron King Volume I: Thy King's Will Be Done (Unreal Universe Book 1)

by Lee Bond

  All these and others trailed behind the fiery star that was Garth Nickels, a … a caveman, as Jordan put it, from thirty thousand years in the past, yet nevertheless a herald of dark, dangerous and destructive times. Unfathomably intelligent, devastatingly merciless, the legend of The Specter had passed so deep into the dankest corners of the Cordon that the android found himself pleased, yes pleased, that the dark-haired, blue-eyed devil had vanished from Existence.

  Because were it not for that disappearance, Spur would not allow this … acquisition to pass. There were things happening, things taking place in the dark of the bruised and misbegotten world he lived on, things that would draw the attention of Garth Nickels like a moth to a flame. As much as the ancient android knew that Emperor-for-Life Etienne Marseilles would want Naoko Kamagana, no matter the cost, Spur couldn’t allow Garth to spend one second on ‘Earth’. Neither man could be allowed to have Naoko. Nor Trinity, when it came down to it. The only being permitted to have access to Naoko Kamagana was no man at all, but the Emperor-for-Life Himself, just … just not here. Not on Old Earth.

  Communication relays beamed the Zhivago’s descent pattern into Spur’s mind. The android nodded. Around him, check and ready signals flickered.

  Spur was no fool. Everyone who was anyone knew that Jordan was doing something risky today, that whatever cargo was being delivered directly to damn near the man’s front door was a prize unparalleled. Any of the other Conglomerates would leap at the chance to steal from their eldest. It didn’t matter they were allied in the Brotherhood. They were vicious animals. They’d do whatever they could to rise to the top, and if that meant killing everyone else, that was what they’d do.

  There was more military presence surrounding the landing ‘bay’ than had been seen since the last great Conglomerate War. Bishop had pulled nearly every single FrancoBritish warrior he had at his command from their posts throughout the vast BishopCo domain. Entire worlds under the BishopCo banner were currently being protected by nothing more than AI and their automated systems. Risky; left unattended, some AI systems … twitched. Colonies were lost that way.

  Metal spires home to hundreds of thousands rose up for thousands of feet on either side of the area marked for Naoko’s landing. Flickering, glittering ferrocrete coffins stuffed to sardine-like profusion with men, women, Offworlders, and their never-ending cavalcade of offspring. Spur could feel their beady eyes on him, on the flaring strobe lights that announced it wasn’t safe for anyone to walk through the ‘courtyard’. The android could feel them trying to figure out what was happening, who was coming, could what was happening be turned to their advantage.

  AI minds reached out and slammed all the windows shut, locked all the doors, and filled every comm channel in every room in every building with the same warning. ‘Mind your business or Bishop will mind you.’

  Spur nodded again, pleased. Bishop’s grubs were contained. The countdown reached go-no go limits. His eyes, the product of highest EuroJapanese science, picked out the contrails left by the Zhivago as it slowed down.

  This, then, would be the tricky part. How to steal Naoko Kamagana from Jordan Bishop without the man finding out, without the veritable army of grizzled veterans killing him where he stood, without violating Trinity’s Laws; surely the immense AI hadn’t missed what was going on, and It’s … lack of involvement in the proceedings was bothering Spur more than he was willing to admit, even to himself.

  Spur permitted himself the smallest of smiles as acknowledgement from the leader of the mercenary army brought in by Bishop came through an encrypted channel. They were willing to kidnap the girl from under their employer’s nose if they could gain audience with the Emperor-for-Life. There were few people who could resist such a lure; next to Trinity Itself, there was, at least theoretically, no one being with more power in the entire Universe.

  Spur agreed to the caveat without hesitating. Once the girl was safely hurtling away from Zanzibar to some other place, where men implicitly trusted by the Emperor-for-Life could find her, then he and the mercenaries would make their way to the Emperor’s glorious Dome.

  Soon, then, he would be free to return to his Lord and Master.

  The Zhivago hove into unaugmented view. The men prepared themselves. Some would die, but the prize… ahhh, the prize. Men were ever the soul of avarice, oh yes, yes they were.

  ***

  Jordan couldn’t resist staring at Naoko’s luxurious face. In his time in Trinityspace, he’d seen exotic beauties, both human and Offworld, bred for beauty and just plain miraculous to look at. He’d stood before Queens of Solar Systems and genetically manipulated temptresses oozing pheromones designed to drive men mad.

  All without a twitch.

  Not to say he didn’t have his appetites. He was Jordan Bishop. Any whim was filled, any desire satiated, any command fulfilled before he even knew what he wanted. There was nothing in the known Universe that he hadn’t sampled.

  All had left him wanting. Wanting more, wanting better, wanting … wanting.

  And then, a blessing and a curse, wrapped up in the jade-eyed beauty known as Naoko Kamagana. Undoubtedly connected in some way to the Emperor-for-Life, if for no other reason than her elder father, Tomas, had somehow managed to broker passage into the most xenophobic and hostile system within their vast cosmos. Exemplary skills in coding and an innate understanding of the software being used by the Latelians notwithstanding, Tomas had become a citizen of Hospitalis during a time of patriotic resurgence so profound that the Chairman of the time had come perilously close to shutting the Quantum Tunnel down altogether.

  So. If Tomas was connected to the Emperor, then so too was Naoko, though Jordan was willing to bet his entire fortune that the girl had no clue. That was the curse. By bringing Naoko into his den, there was every chance that he was inviting chaos in the form of visits from some of the Emperor’s legendary assassins and thieves. It didn’t matter that no one had heard from the reclusive figure in decades. If his suppositions were true, then it was all too probable that Naoko would draw the attention of the Emperor, and if that happened…

  Trinity wouldn’t like it if their Old Earth suffered, which was why Jordan had called upon his best and brightest soldiers, his most grizzled and talented warriors. Once Naoko was safe inside his domain, it would be easier to protect against invading EuroJapanese.

  The blessing … the blessing held within its rose-like perfection a curse of its own; Naoko would fulfill the Cabal’s dreams of a limitless AI mind similar to Trinity. This Jordan knew down to his very toes.

  He could close his eyes and see the nearly infinite realm that was Trinityspace, and beyond that, whatever secrets and mysteries being held back by The Cordon, all his, given unto him by the machine mind that his paramour would build. Oh yes, it would be glorious. Naturally, the others, his righteous peers and friends, those who’d joined him in the quest to oust Trinity and to rule the unthinkable numbers of seething life, naturally they’d have to die.

  There was only room for one at the very top of the heap, and the Bishops had been there for so long already it hardly seemed fitting to even pretend that he’d allow anyone else to rule by his side. There would be no quartering of galaxies, no doling out solar systems to third cousins twice removed.

  There would be him. And no one else.

  Well, Jordan chuckled and grinned at the thought of his bride-to-be, eager and hungry for his touch, eyes wide at the things he could teach her, well, there wasn’t room at the very top, but … concessions would be made. As mother to the machine mind that would give him Trinity’s domain, young Naoko would be permitted anything she chose, so long as she stayed with him. Leave, and she would die. It was a simple choice, and one that the grinning maniac knew would make perfect sense to Naoko. She was a programmer, yes? Her mind operated along ones and zeros. Yes or no. Live, or die.

  Voss_Uderhell sent another query concerning the state of their most precious cargo. Emile Voss and Analise Uderhell were the
worst of those in the Cabal; Tynedale and Fujihara kept to themselves nearly every minute of every day. They practically had to be dragged into the heavily encrypted virtual meeting space. The other members were strictly low-rent losers who had practically nothing to offer in terms of materiel, money, personnel… groups like Titchmara and Grownly/Secre, Vannel&Dorren were fodder should Trinity fall upon them.

  But the fat man and his shrewish wife stomped and tromped across Bishop’s frayed and frazzled nerves like drug-addled fiends, demanding constant updates and ever-increasing proof that everything was going according to plan.

  Jordan snorted. Of course everything was going to plan. He had Spur down there overseeing the final handover, did he not? He had nearly every FrancoBritish soldier and mercenary in his employ covering every single inch of the spot, yes? Massive AI intellects watching everything from the flow of atoms through space to the encrypted chatter from a hundred million data points across the sickened planet they lived on?

  The only thing he wasn’t certain of was Trinity Itself. When it came down to the thirty thousand year old machine mind, you might as well just shrug your shoulders and find some deity or other to pray to; the mercurial inorganic mind either would, or would not, involve Itself in your plans. If It didn’t, all the better.

  If it did … well. Jordan didn’t think Trinity would react too badly to what was happening, but then again, there was no way to reliably predict what Trinity would do. Proof of that was Latelyspace. Every single member of the Cabal agreed that the madness that’d gone on there made no sense to anyone. An entire solar system filled with the most dangerous and skilled cyborg soldiers anyone had ever seen anywhere before or since, each with the most impressive hatred for anything not them. A sane ruler wouldn’t’ve allowed that to happen at all.

  Emile Voss sent another request for data. Jordan directed an AI to block all further communications from Voss_Uderhell and everyone else; his monitors had just shown him the first sneak peak of The Zhivago.

  Naoko Kamagana would soon be his! After that, he would be King of the Universe!

  It was good to be alive.

  ***

  If Trinity had hands, and eyes, and a face and all the things required for it to all work together properly, It would be rubbing It’s eyes miserably; it seemed that the whole of Unreality was unspooling around It, and the Final Battle hadn’t even happened yet!

  It’d been so hard to determine the cause and effect of releasing the Kin’kithal and the Kith’kineen from their time-locked prison aboard Alpha. For all It’s intellect, for all the power It held, for all the mysteries contained within It’s nearly infinite realm, being able to definitively determine precisely what the outcome from Garth N’Chalez and the others being loose would be had escaped It.

  The Unreality was a prison, and the prisoners were rattling the bars of their cells with increasing vigor.

  Offworld species normally placid and content to live within the confines of their own solar systems were pushing at the limits of Its patience, demanding more space, more room to grow, and in some cases, outright attacking It’s bases and attempting to dismantle the barricades that kept them in.

  Peaceful human systems were starting to bark and bay at one another, an inexplicable bloodlust boiling up from deep inside. They, too, wanted more space, their neighbors gone, lands that weren’t theirs under their control.

  It was almost as if the Unreality itself was somehow getting everyone ready for the War to End All Wars. For that was surely what it would be. Once Trinity defeated the Great Enemy that was even now coming this way, alerted to N’Chalez’ scent, the next step was to either defeat or take control of the Engines of Creation. And then it would be time to redo everything, to make the whole of everything better, more … practical.

  And yet, as Trinity sat and watched the hundreds of quadrillions of men, women, aliens, robots, cyborgs, sentient sponges and talking blobs of light, It knew that simply defeating the Great Enemy wouldn’t nearly be enough.

  There were others out there, others who’d sat by and done nothing for thousands and thousands of years.

  Emperor-for-Life Etienne Marseilles, who truly was and had been an Emperor for life. Data concerning the first EuroJapanese man was sparse, but Trinity knew, oh yes, It knew that Etienne Marseilles had been on Earth for as long as It had been growing into what It was now. There was no way to know how a mortal man had contrived to live as long as he had, but it was a truth that I’s own databanks couldn’t deny.

  Etienne Marseilles was thirty thousand years old. And were it not for the integral part that the damnable immortal played in Its own plans for existential domination, Trinity would’ve devoted considerable time and resources into piercing the Emperor’s unbreakable dome of silence and slaughtering everything inside without hesitation, without remorse, without feeling.

  The only thing that made any sense as to Etienne’s rise to power was timing. Etienne had been alive during the war with the Armies of Man and the Kith, the Kin and their Harmony Soldiers. Never before or since had there been such an unfettered explosion of science, of risk, of reward. It was entirely possible that the accursed immortal hiding behind the pristine sapphire shield was some kind of hytech wizard, possessed of machinery that outstripped Garth’s own equipment.

  Emperor-for-Life Etienne Marseilles was an integer that factored into the equation for total domination, but one that made no sense. The EuroJapanese Monarch wouldn’t make a move until the deadly Enemy beyond The Cordon was demolished. That made perfect sense. It was what It would do were the situation reversed.

  And then, there was the Mad Goth King. Another being that defied reason, escaped logic, spat in the face of rationality. There was no knowing how old the King was, either, and for relatively the same reasons as the Emperor; King Blake could’ve been alive since the beginning of the War against the Heshii or he could’ve popped up some time after the first few Dark Ages. Until It’d figured out a way to protect data from what was now revealed to be attempts by the M’Zahdi Hesh to destroy the Unreality, everything had been lost in those purges.

  In the end, it truly didn’t matter if Blake, the Mad Goth King and unsurpassed ruler of Arcade City, was thirty thousand years old or ten thousand.

  What mattered was that, again, maddeningly, frustratingly, like the Emperor, the other self-proclaimed ruler on Earth had played and would continue to play an important, nay, crucial role in Its own plans.

  Trinity howled and somewhere in the dark, Offworlders sensitive to Its galactic webs of thought and control shivered.

  Mad Goth King Blake was even more important than the Emperor, even more powerful in his own way than the laconic EuroJapanese imperator, at least in this late stage of the game, and were that not so, It would launch everything It had under Its control at the insane clockwork dome that shielded the citizens of Arcade City from the rest of Unreality.

  But it couldn’t. First, it wouldn’t work. The Dome of Gears, the TikTok Shield, whatever you wanted to call it, was almost magically impervious to harm. At least the Emperor’s dome made a kind of sense; while it wasn’t exactly like the energy shields recently created by Garth N’Chalez, the principles remained the same. The King’s metalwork dome was just that: metal. An apparently random, haphazard collision of clockwork gears and nonsensical madness that clicked, clacked and whirred, defying damage just as readily as the most powerful shields in existence.

  Beyond that, there were the … denizens. The FrancoBritish men and women inside. Bred to be unstoppable, challenged by the never-ending forge of the King’s insane trials, those that won freedom and were permitted to pass beyond the Dome of Gears were … soldiers with no equal. If they bothered to kit themselves up like Latelian God soldiers, those mechanical monstrosities from Latelyspace would meet their maker.

  And those were the ‘sane’ ones. If The Dome came down and the mad FrancoBritish wardogs were unleashed … Trinity wasn’t terribly prone to exaggeration, but it was all too like
ly that Trinity Prime would rupture under the pressure. If only… if only the King of Arcade City hadn’t abruptly cut all ties a hundred years ago! There was no way of knowing what was going on inside The Dome any longer, and with that monarch’s power being nearly unrivaled, Trinity couldn’t help but worry that Barnabas was –or soon would be- making his play for The End.

  At least The Emperor was content to sit and wait, as he had been doing –more or less- for the last thirty thousand years.

  So, both monarchs would remain free. Or, not free, but perhaps unbothered… yes. For now. The moment either side showed an interest beyond their own borders, It would swing into decisive action and show them –no matter how powerful they were, no matter how … beneficial their own powers and technologies could be to Its own plans- precisely who was boss.

  If only It could find a way to reach It’s contact inside Arcade City! The usual percentage of wardogs were still making their way Outside to spread the word –so to speak- but for the last hundred years, there’d been nothing at all from…

  “Are you serious?” It demanded, consciousness zooming through a hundred million different points of view to focus in on something that Its somehow managed to miss. Other portions of Its mind began rustling through the truly never-ending flow of data It accumulated in search of how this had been missed.

  “Fuck me sideways.” Trinity whispered to Itself. “Naoko Kamagana is on Trinity Prime.”

  The woman so obviously destined to assist Garth N’Chalez in doing to the Unreality whatever it was the man intended on was here, on Trinity Prime, and was about to be handed over to the one man who definitely possessed the resources to create another godmind AI.

  That … that couldn’t happen.

  Trinity opened Its communication ports. “Enforcers. Make haste to Trinity Prime. Details follow.”

  It would rather lose the planet and risk freeing Mad Goth King Blake and the Emperor-for-Life than allow Jordan Bishop and his Dark Age Cabal have Naoko Kamagana for one minute. She’d been exposed to N’Chalez and the weird extra-dimensional energies boiling off him for an uncomfortably long time. There was no telling what she was like now, or what she could become. Ex-dee … ex-dee changed people.