by Lee Bond
Eddie nodded dumbly. Garth would be laughing his ass off at him right now. He was a damn puppet on a string.
“This is worrisome because, as I’ve said, while the Emperor has been unusually silent for a few hundred years, he is still around. When he catches wind of this system being messed with, well.” Politoyov gave the merest hints of a shrug.
“It’s difficult to separate fact from fiction, because the last time the Emperor-for-Life was stirred to action, it was before the last Dark Age. The silence between ages has a tendency to transform truth into lie and lie into truth. I’m almost positive that at no point did the Emperor rise from slumber on the back of giant blue dragon to lay waste to his enemies, though in these trying times,” Politoyov stared pointedly at the monitors displaying where they had finally mapped out the curvature of the invisible shield protecting Latelyspace, “I cannot help but feel that anything at all is possible.”
Eddie opened his mouth. He shut it.
“So. That is one system suffering under mysteriously SpecSer-like tactics. The other is a FrancoBritish system known locally as Ha’Penny House.” Aleks snorted. The FrancoBrits delighted in ridiculous names. They called it their ‘heritage’, when in truth, the whole lot of them were playing –as they called it- silly buggers. “Anyways. The list … the list of things happening in this system is too long to get into. There are some highlights that I’d like to touch on, though. One is that the entire system, each planet, is terrified of a man they called ‘Scourge’. Sometimes they add ‘the’ in front of his name. Two, many of the … incidents involve a great deal of cunning, a surprising twist, an unexpected escape and in many, many cases something ludicrous. Three, an awful lot of people died. Too many. Four, the children of everyone who died was found alive and safe and well cared for by a butler who told these children the most amazing stories they’d ever heard.”
Politoyov paused for a moment before picking up a piece of paper. Eddie was regaining some color. A good sign. Time to shatter the man just a wee bit further. “Let me see here … ah. Yes. ‘The Man who Shot the Moon with a Skyscraper’. ‘The Disappearing Solar System’. I’m certain that one shouldn’t have ever been mentioned. ‘The Impossible Bank Shot’. That one, interestingly enough, involves a man who flew an impossible spaceship blind across Galaxies to hit a glistening ball in the middle of empty space.”
Eddie sighed. He put a hand over his face. “Sir, let me ex…”
Politoyov raised his voice. “I am not done talking, Captain Eddie. This … Scourge … attacked a King’s Son. Intentionally.”
“S…sir?” Eddie looked around the room, though for the life of him he couldn’t figure out why. “T… that’s …”
Aleksander nodded. “Suicide. Yes. The man who attacked and killed this King’s Son is either en route to Arcade City or has already arrived there.”
“But … but … but.”
Every screen in the room flickered, spat static, then went normal. They flickered again.
Politoyov pursed his lips. He sighed quite deeply; you could set your clocks to the arrival of the mysterious quintet. Then he turned everything in room off. When the AI systems came back online, they’d be surprised to learn that a considerable amount of data –sadly, including the two yearlong investigation into the No Assembly crew- had been irrevocably erased.
Luckily, there was a scapegoat in the form of the mysterious five who showed up like clockwork to torment the assembled army. Just because they hadn’t erased information before didn’t mean they couldn’t.
“Captain Eddie, I am certain that Garth Nickels is the man who stole your ship, just as I am equally certain that he is The Scourge, and that he has done the things he did in Ha’Penny House for a specific reason. Why in the Seven Hells of Tarterus he wants to be in Arcade City is so far beyond me that I when I am born again, the new me will be terribly confused about … about everything. There is no sensible reason for him to want to be thrown into Arcade City as a prisoner. Did he say anything to you?”
“Sir, nosir.” Eddie shook his head, hastening to answer more fully when severe irritation flashed across the commanding officer’s face. “Sir, no. All he said was that he needed to see to a few things. Things that had the chance to ruin the big surprise. That’s … that’s all. He … he’s … different now. Whatever happened in Latelyspace changed him. He’s … he’s …”
“Somehow worse than The Spectre.” Politoyov grimaced at the flushed look of guilty pleasure on Eddie’s face. Of course. The EuroJapanese man had heard all the stories, had tried to ease Captain Nickels out of The Spectre’s shoes, but … that kind of dark glory was practically a narcotic. “Before, when he raged across The Cordon, it was just fire, fury, damnation and death. Now it’s … tempered. Forged. He’s a weapon, aimed at the heart of something. And you don’t know what?”
“Nosir.” Eddie shook his head and kept on shaking it.
“It is lucky I believe you, Captain Eddie.” Commander Aleksander Politoyov shuffled the papers on his desk. “Now, I am certain you’re wondering why I mentioned the other system, the EuroJapanese one…”
“You want us to go there.”
“The only person in the entire universe who can interrupt me, Captain Eddie, is Garth Nickels. Well, him and Kaptan Innit, but where the latter is incorrigible and incapable of understanding why, the former has earned it.” Politoyov said this as sternly as possible, then nodded anyways. “But yes. Someone is terrifying the living daylights out of this system and yes, I would like a SpecSer presence there as soon as possible. If representatives from the Emperor-for-Life show up, I want them to see that we’re trying to handle things. The tactics appear to be SpecSer standard, but … not quite. It’s almost as if they read a manual or something, only they have no real world comprehension of battle. Either way, what’s happening is proving far more successful than I am comfortable with. I can’t have anyone doing anything that might come back to bite SpecSer in the behind. Now go. Your team is already aboard your new ship.”
“Sir!” Eddie stood and saluted.
“I should warn you, Captain, your man Babel has already been at the controls.”
“Oh. Oh … oh no.” Eddie hung his head.
“Yes.” Aleksander smiled wryly. “I imagine you will be explaining to anyone and everyone why you named your ship ‘My Other Ship is the Millennium Falcon’ for some time to come. Now go. Find out who’s wrecking Jade Whisper.”
Commander Aleksander Politoyov watched a very pleased Captain Edio Tekmara depart before leaning back in his chair to consider the lies he’d need to tell the AI systems when they powered back on. With everything that was going on in the Universe, it was entirely likely they’d accept the data loss and move on.
As long as Trinity remained distracted, everything would be fine.
1. Now Do Yourself a Favor
The prison transport ship was full of maniacs and loons bound for Old Earth, but there was only one man from Ha’Penny, and he was last on the ship. Other than the trip to Ha’Penny House, it was your standard affair, really; the Baskerville’s job was to collect violators of the King’s Son Law from four systems, then fly off through the Quantum Tunnel towards Arcade City. And there were so many criminals destined to meet with their great King.
For unlike Leftbridge Stewart in Ha’Penny House, other King’s Sons in other systems weren’t nearly as circumspect with their Royal status. Some relished the power and authority that went with being an electric descendent of their most powerful ruler, and used the ‘protection’ of being a King’s Son with all the considerate nature of a chemical sprayer. If Goth King Blake –never mad, never where anyone could hear you- if Goth King Blake disliked or disapproved of the convicts being jammed through the clockwork doors, he’d never said boo to anyone, so they all of them just continued shoving fellas through the Geared Doors when they was set to open and that was that.
It wasn’t like the men and the occasional woman that ran afoul of a Son weren’t
already guilty of a hundred other crimes. They all were. They were in good company, to be true. Murderers and rapists and arsonists and cannibals and drug runners and drug users. Oftentimes, them as were Arcade City-bound were a strange mixture of all those bad habits, and more besides.
Edmund Meech used to think, way back in the beginning, that it’d be hard to come across a King’s Son and even harder to upset one, but as it turned out, roughly ninety-nine percent of the Sons in the four systems the Baskerville patrolled were just as bad –if not worse- than the criminals they banged up for Arcade City.
In his time on the Baskerville –a measly five years so far- they’d never once gone to Ha’Penny House. Everyone on the ship, even the corroded old Captain Eck, had just imagined there were no Sons in Ha’Penny, so when they’d gotten the call to swing round and pick up this man the locals called ‘Scourge’, well … there’d been a bit of excitement.
Meech licked his lips and stared at the man he’d been assigned to watch. He wasn’t nervous. He wasn’t afraid. He’d been chosen to watch this one man, this … Scourge, because battered old Captain Eck knew Meech’s secret, and trusted that if everything went wobbly, they’d come out okay.
Once upon a time, a long time ago, Edmund Meech remembered opening his eyes on the bruised and grim sky of Old Earth for the first time in his entire life. At his back had been the clockwork door leading into Arcade City, clicking and clunking and chunking shut. He remembered that, and remembered the whoop of joy at being free from the howling madness that was Arcade City.
That was all Meech remembered of those dark times. Well, that, and how to fight.
He could fight all day and all night. He could be –had been- stabbed in the heart and still managed to kill his assailant before walking himself a nearby hospital. There wasn’t a weapon he couldn’t use, a vehicle he couldn’t drive. He wasn’t the best tactician in the world, but he could work out assaults on buildings if push came to shove.
Edmund Meech was a FrancoBritish wardog. One of the few to walk through the door into the outside world, one of the few to rise above the madness and fear and crazed longing for blood on his face, one of the few to get a normal job.
Meech licked his lips again. Eck had come to him and said ‘Meechy old boy, the man in the holding cell on his lonesome is the worst, a dyed-in-the-wool maniac. Nutted his King’s Son so hard the man’s brains went into jelly, they tell me. You need to watch him, Meechy. If he goes wild, you do that thing. You know that thing…’
That ‘thing’ was fight. The rhythmic push and pull, the magic ebb and flow that existed in any fight was a thing wardogs could see. Or feel. Or whatever. Wardogs were symphonic maestros, and just like any obsessive, they were two inches from madness all the time.
It was why they either found themselves in armies or criminal organizations. You couldn’t quit something that beautiful. You hungered for it, you waited for the day when you could surrender yourself to it. All the while praying that one day, it killed you.
Meech licked his lips a final time. The other wardogs said the same thing. There wasn’t a stern FrancoBrit soldier anywhere in Trinityspace that didn’t secretly pray for death.
It was time to talk to the prisoner.
***
Garth opened his eye and gazed thoughtfully at the grizzled FrancoBrit lurching his towards him; they were in transit through a Quantum Tunnel, and the ship wasn’t doing the job properly. He reckoned the Baskerville had one or two more voyages before the stabilizers gave out and the damned thing popped through the safe corridor of the wormhole and zipped off into the deep recesses of nothing for all eternity.
The OS for his quadronium implants fed data concerning Edmund Meech through the Eye. It was sparse: the AI aboard the Baskerville was a three. Barely smart enough to fly the ship without someone having a hand on the controls all the time, but then again, you didn’t need top of the line equipment to ferry morally retarded and socially reprehensible criminals to their eventual torture, now did you?
Since there was nothing important to find out about the guard coming his way, Garth told the OS to mind its own business. It went away, leaving behind the few data streams it refused to shut down. It’d taken a long time getting used to the permanent HUD flickering in his quadronium-spun eye, and there were times still where Garth fervently wished he hadn’t been so fucking tricky.
Having a metallic eye that actually glowed blue, and all the damned time, was –while pretty awesome- also one of those things that drew a lot of attention to yourself. For most of the operation in Ha’Penny House, he’d taken to wearing an eye patch, which had added nicely to the mystique and legend that was Scourge, but when you wanted to take a break from being a solar system’s nightmare in order to nip down to the pub for a quick drink and your choices were ‘notable eye patch’ and ‘mysterious blue eye’ … yeah, there hadn’t been too many nights off.
“Mind if I sit, mate?” Meechy asked, hands clasped around a pipe above his head.
Garth made a huge show of looking around, then staring rather fixedly at the ‘new and improved’ Choice gear wrapped lovingly around his arms up the elbow; everyone in Ha’Penny House had decided that the first set of Prisoner’s Choice had been faulty somehow because the programming behind the ‘evil intent’ trigger had never failed yet. They’d never imagine in their wildest dreams that someone’s need to do evil could ever be overwritten by the power of the greater good that might arise from that evil, so they’d slapped a second pair –one with more explosives and a recalibrated mental signature of ‘evil’- in the hopes he’d trigger the device before even getting to the ship.
The looks on the collective faces of the officials assembled to see him off when he hadn’t turned himself into a red puff of N’Chalez Goop had been priceless.
“Go ahead, man.” Garth gestured with his chin, distracted. He was trying to remember the last FrancoBrit who’d used ‘mate’ in a sentence. “Not like I have a choice.”
Meechy plopped down on to the bench opposite Scourge. This particular transport area was empty of other prisoners because the man’s blue eye gave them all a case of the screaming willies. The prison guard tilted his head this way and that, staring at the glittering well of light pouring from Scourge’s face. It was weird, all right. Weird enough, he supposed, to make some men mad.
The OS flickered and beeped for a second, then informed Garth that, once upon a time, his new friend Meech had had some kind of implants at some point in his life. Garth filed the information away and waited, brimming with curiosity; it was rare for someone with implants to have them removed. Rarer still that the Eye was failing to describe –even in part- what type of implants, or their purpose.
“What happened, then, with the eye?” Meechy tapped his own cheek then pointed at Scourge.
“Sacrifice.” Garth shrugged. “For knowledge.”
“Worth it, then?” A hollow clanking filled the ship for a moment, drowning out all chance of conversation. Meechy nodded to himself. They’d be out of the Tunnel soon, putting them about a week away from Zanzibar and Arcade City.
When Garth hadn’t been desperately trying to figure a way out of Bravo, that question had prayed most heavily on his mind. Had it been worth it? Thirty thousand years ago, when he’d been building the repositories for the electronic minds of his commanding officers, he’d been faced with an intriguing choice; manipulate their memories and make them puppets, or leave them with free will, and deal with whatever happened down the road?
In the end, he’d chosen to leave them almost whole, reasoning that the more real they believed they were, the more likely they were to provide him –under the guise of acquiring it for their own purposes- with information concerning the state of the Unreality that he might not otherwise have the time or the wherewithal to get on his own.
But the ‘Eye’, as Garth thought of it most of the time, was … aggravating. It –or the operating system that was neither an AI nor a proper operating system- was whi
msical when it came to allowing him access to those implants that were working.
And there weren’t many of those. In Bravo, when he hadn’t been consumed with myriad attempts to free himself or considering the folly of his choices in life, the other thing to dominate his focus had been ways to power his quadronium body properly.
As far as he could tell, there were none. Exactly zero. Huey’s ‘divine intervention’ -which had saved his life, so Garth wasn’t exactly pissed off- had done something weird and unexpected to an already flawed design.
When the Eye was feeling generous, Garth had full access to all the strength and speed he’d come to rely on during his time as Specter. When it was not, he was just a regular ordinary old dude who was stronger than your average normal human being. Hidden behind barriers defying description and requiring –it seemed- more energy than the whole of the Unreality was capable of providing throughout the duration of its broken existence were entire tiers of Kin’kithal abilities.
Abilities like telekinesis, his oldest and bestest ability, the power that’d given him the competence to handle the worst the Kith and Kin could throw at him. Mind reading, pyrokinesis, teleportation, remote viewing … all that and more, all necessary if he was to defeat the Heshii harbinger and what surely would amount to an eternal number of Harmony soldiers.
Locked behind the Eye, he might as well not have even fucking included them in the package.
