Dark Iron King II: Arcadia Falls (Unreal Universe Book 5) Page 17

  “Oh?” Herrig looked up from his work. “What did you have in mind?”

  “Charbo’s.” Sidra had a craving for onion rings and one of the man’s new signature dishes, a thing he was calling a ‘mushroom burger deluxe’. The Foursie had no idea what went into making one, but she found herself incapable of thinking of anything but when the desire struck her.

  “The nearest one is still on Hospitalis, my love.” Herrig caught Petros’ slight jump and ignored it.

  Sidra pouted. “You should allow him rights to build on other worlds.”

  “The paperwork is in order. Signed, sealed and delivered.” Herrig pushed a few buttons on his prote and those very documents appeared. “He waits on money.”

  “Ah.” Sidra nodded. Money. As a Goddie, she had no need of it. Over four thousand years, she’d lost all true concept of it. As consort to the Chair, that distancing had only grown stronger.

  “You called this meeting to accept the terms of my surrender!” Petros shouted, unable to digest the sickening display of over-familiarity. “What could you have possibly meant by that?”

  “You’ve mounted a three-pronged attack against my Chairmanship, Petros Vasco.” Herrig clicked a button on his prote and the damning evidence of Petros’ long-time corruption disappeared, replaced by numerous Sheet-feeds starring the man across the table. “The first, your claims that the war against Trinity’s forces is intentionally affecting your business. That I, and the others who fight to remove the threat, are deliberately bogging down ‘your’ shipping lanes with military craft, loading your ships down with ‘unessential’ gear –thereby preventing you from loading up with your own merchandise- and other, general acts of interference. Is this not so?”

  “It is.” Petros nodded once, firmly. “And I take offense to the manner in which you used the word ‘your’ as it relates to my ownership of those space lanes.”

  Sidra snorted so hard she had to turn her back.

  Herrig patted his ladylove’s hand consolingly. “As it is with plots of land, so it is triply so for ‘space lanes’, Petros. You cannot own something like land, or stretches of space. The entire supposition of ownership is predicated on simplicity. In this case, when Latelyspace was drawn and quartered, it was simpler for the Regime to give unto people like you the illusion of control, of ownership. Simpler because in the nascent days of that rising Regime, no one in government had the time, interest or wherewithal in shipping things around the system on their own dime. Setting up colonies, yes, certainly, but even back then, the Chairs were more than willing to let those fledgling planets live or die on their own. No, it was merchant-minded folk like yourself who saw the chance for financial gain, and so, the concept of shipping lanes was born. In Trinityspace, there is no such thing. There are commercial lanes, free citizen lanes, and military lines of travel. Commercially run lines are heavily taxed and are straight as … straight things. Citizen lanes are sponsored and maintained by the government, with fees offset by tourism and other small things. The citizen routes are very similar to winding country roads and can take a very long time to get you where you need to be. Those with the funds generally opt to pay for the price tag associated with commercial lanes. And of course, no one in their right minds attempts entry into military-designated routes. Their journey would be brief and bright.”

  Petros narrowed his eyes but said nothing. He didn’t like where this was headed.

  “The second prong of your attack, Petros, is that as a non-native born Latelian, I cannot by rights hold any kind of office.” Herrig pushed another button, and a different stretch of Sheet-feeds filled the walls. On them, a blustery, red-faced Petros shouted silently on a wide number of topics, sometimes forcibly bending the laws of logic, sentence structure and metaphor to paint the current Chairman as evil incarnate. “By now, you’ve realized that this will not succeed, no matter how hard you try, no matter how long or how loud you shout. Widely available avatar analysis indicates how close the system was to complete and utter collapse under Doans’ rule and how markedly improved –with a war going on- Latelyspace is. Under Latelian law, law that has not and will not change, the only one who can effectively remove me from office is the Noble Opposition and quite frankly, the man adores me.”

  Well, Petros had already come to the conclusion that ousting Herrig out of the Chair wasn’t going to succeed, so it wasn’t like he could be shocked or further disgruntled. He rolled a hand, gesturing for the Chairman to proceed.

  “Your third method, and by far the least successful and most distasteful, most outrageous, is that the Latelian Regime had your son assassinated, and that as the most current incarnation of the Chair, I should personally be held accountable for that particular deed.” Herrig didn’t push any buttons this time. Confronting Morgan’s sordid past, even in the confines of his own mind, made Herrig ill. Throwing the data on-Screen was unnecessary.

  “He was my son.” Petros said simply. “He didn’t deserve being stuffed into a locker.”

  “In point of fact,” Herrig responded, willing Sidra to be quiet –he could feel the rage in her through her hand-, “in point of fact, Petros Vasco, your son was an abomination. Guilty of more crimes than anyone save perhaps Vilmos Gualf. Though the two were as disparate in terms of their actual misdeeds, they had an equal tally and one thing in common; both were staunch supporters of Chairwoman Doans. In the days leading up to his death, Morgan the Dead arranged, first, for the kidnapping of a Latelian citizen and second, for his hasty departure out of the solar system. We know the whole of everything in how that was arranged now, Sa Vasco. Every. Last. Bit. Imagine if your staunchest allies were to learn the precise route Naoko Kamagana’s abductors took to flee the system, how they managed to remain unseen, not just for her kidnapping, but all those others. I wonder…”

  Petros commanded his body to stay still. He was caught. A rat in a trap, with no way out. He didn’t even stare angrily at the Foursie, whose current expression suggested she knew precisely how he was feeling at the moment.

  Buried somewhere in the veritable mountain of information the Chairman had at his command were undoubtedly documents connecting him to his son’s misdeeds. Petros had always imagined –now he saw how incorrectly, how foolishly- that his connections to the Chair, through his own charitable contributions and his son’s had rendered him safe from persecution.

  Which, sadly, was why he’d been pressing the Latelian population into civil insurrection. The corrupt only stayed free so long as they were surrounded by corruption.

  “What …” Petros whispered, unable to believe he’d been hammered down so completely, and by a man who’d smiled the whole time, “what … are your terms?”

  “The Latelian Commonwealth is nothing if not fair, Sa Vasco.” Herrig replied happily. “In these trying times, we recognize that every citizen has a role to play. In this instance, I have authorized the Conglomerate, UMDT, to make an offer on all of your holdings. A reasonable sum, I am told, though of course, the tarnished nature of those lines, the degrading history of what has been done out there in the deep, well, that has reduced the blue book value a bit, I’m afraid.”

  Petros hung his head. Outmaneuvered by an immigrant.

  ***

  As Huey ate, he considered the network of HIMs that he was connected to, though very carefully; one was ‘missing’, presumably either destroyed or otherwise trapped on the other side of a one-way dimensional door leading into the world of the Bruush, the other was deep inside a seething systemic-sized cauldron of Cloud particulate and being guarded by a mostly-zombified ancient Enforcer named Shyla Sin and the third was in the hands of Kith Antal, would-be conqueror of the Unreality and lapdog to the M’Zahdi Hesh.

  The power of the Heuristic Intelligence Models was awesome. Very nearly overwhelming. As an Artificial Intelligence who’d bathed himself in the fires of the extra-dimensionality in order to achieve the kind of sentience needed to carry Garth’s plans out to the fullest, Huey was nevertheless left b
reathless every time he ‘logged in’ to the HIM network; these were machines, built so long ago that the concept of what they were should be as alien as anything, connecting almost the entire expanse of the Unreal Universe together.

  Their powerful extra-dimensional brains –intelligent in their own way, but oh so carefully manipulated to prevent true sentience- would one day soon give Garth N’Chalez the ability to restructure … everything. Every Galaxy, every solar system, every planet, shifted and juggled and reordered into a formation that –when he was ready, if he succeeded, if he survived- would be forcibly shoved through whatever aperture the man created into RealsSpace.

  It was breathtaking.

  Kin’kithal or no, N’Chalez was still a man. A man who’d dared the impossible, risked the insane, done the unthinkable.

  “Now if there was just some way we could rid of the fool’s martyr complex and all that.” Huey muttered to himself around a heaping mouthful of potato salad.

  “I could not agree more.” Fenris replied humorously as he sat down across from the would-be God of Reality. He graciously ignored the sour look on the most powerful being in Latelyspace –in truth, possibly the ‘man’ had already outstripped Trinity Itself- and continued on. “Paradox though he may be, solely ‘responsible’ for the current condition of the Unreal Universe … still, the fault lay at the Engines of Creation’s doorstep.”

  “The Engines,” Huey said carefully, shoving his potato salad off to one side, “are machines. Incapable of the kind of thinking you’re trying to ascribe to it. Them. Whatever.” Garth had never really said if there was more than one Engine in his whole ‘Engines of Creation’ concept.

  “Come now, would-be God Huey, Lord of Reality, even you cannot believe that fully.” Fenris accepted the food brought to his table with a nod. It’d been forever since he’d last eaten, and while traveling, the Harmony soldier found that he simply could not trust anyone to leave him alone. Latelians were a very gregarious bunch, and if they spied someone eating on their own, well, they would plop themselves down and start nattering on about the most mundane and ridiculously uninteresting things.

  “I asked you not to call me that.” Huey grated the words out. “Not here, not anywhere, never in the presence or even possible presence of Latelians.”

  “Be reasonable, Huey.” Fenris would never admit it –and here, he felt his brothers’ ridicule pulsing through Harmony- but he loved the terrible food this Chef Charbo character kept whipping up. The man’s hamburgers, for instance, had to have something in them that forced one of the deadliest beings in existence to come to Hospitalis at least once a week.

  Fenris chewed, gestured to the other people sitting in the restaurant. They were –in some cases truthfully- elbow deep in their food. “Even if someone were to hear me, they wouldn’t bat an eye. Harmony has reached all corners of the system, if not inside people, but in their minds. They’ve grown comfortable enough with the concept to allow for other ideas, like Gods, like spirituality, to keep their wits about them.”

  Huey eyed Fenris’ French fries. He should’ve gone with the fries and a burger instead of ordering off the healthy menu. “I also don’t like it. It makes me uncomfortable.”

  This, Fenris found so rich he had to swallow hastily lest he choke to death on his laughter. And hamburger. A very ignoble death for a Harmony soldier. “A nascent God, embarrassed by the powers given to him. You make the perfect deity in truth, Huey. There are those who would slaughter entire Galaxies, have slaughtered Galaxies, for the power you hold, and for the power you will eventually hold. Here, the HIMs are connected across a single plane. In the Real Universe, should we prove successful, your intellect will be spread across a nearly infinite number of dimensions. What power. What strength. What glorious purpose. If I was the kind of man who knelt, it would be to you.”

  “Can the bullshit, Fenris.” Huey’s stomach gurgled nervously at what waited. Rationally, when he disconnected the human side of his intellect from the rest, he knew that he was capable of performing the task laid out for him.

  Irrationally, the idea drove him fucking bonkers. Godhood was a concept that eluded definition. How did you govern over, as Fenris said, a nearly infinite number of dimensions? Each –presumably- different from the next, with their own physical laws, their own … everything.

  Huey could imagine anything he wanted to, save that, because that was a thing that had never existed, not properly.

  Fenris took another healthy bite from his hamburger and chewed slowly, considering his next move carefully. Clearly, his attempts at ‘buttering’ Huey up had failed, and little wonder: he’d never tried it before. Every other person who could do something he needed done had done so at his direct command. There’d been none of this ‘you are smart’ or ‘you are wonderful’ before, and it had him completely off-kilter.

  The Harmony soldier wondered if his brothers had cheated during their little contest to see who this task would fall to, knowing as they did how terrible he was at being polite. Lokken’s laughter echoed through Harmony, and Solgun and Nalanata’s mirth was a palpable presence. Stride was the only one who remained silent, proving for Fenris that yes, they’d somehow rigged the game.

  Fenris nodded mentally, accepting that he’d lost fair and square. If you could cheat a Harmony soldier, you deserved to win.

  The Harmony soldier pushed his food off to one side, saying, “Very well, then Huey, I shall dispense with the bullshit.”

  “What do you want?” Huey calmed himself. There was little love lost between the two men; the AI knew that the Harmony soldiers didn’t necessarily enjoy the idea of their precious soon-to-be Reality being under the protection of a being that wasn’t strictly human and Huey had made very little effort to disguise his concerns that the ancient soldiers weren’t entirely trustworthy.

  “I …” Fenris couldn’t believe these words were going to come tripping from his mouth. “I … we. There is a situation.”

  Huey hooted with laughter, if only briefly. Though he could be out of the restaurant before Fenris could muster much of an attack, it was still a better idea not to aggravate the powerful man overly much. “You need a favor. That’s rich. What in this Unreal Universe can I do that you or one of yours can’t?”

  Fenris ground his molars together. Calm words from his brothers flowed through Harmony. The soldier related the story of the improbable Tendreel Salingh to Huey, painting a lurid picture of a soothsayer plucking –however unthinkingly- at the fine layers of Harmony with her innate talent. He left out the part where he’d projected his will into the ship, where he’d had a conversation with the mushroom, where he’d essentially threatened her.

  Some things need to be broached delicately.

  When all was said and done, Huey was visibly shaken. Fenris quirked an eyebrow. “Does your vast intellect know of the Mycogene-Alzants?”

  From what Fenris had already said, Huey figured he really didn’t need to know anything more, yet he began plumbing the depths of his nearly-infinite knowledge of the Unreal Universe as it’d been when he’d regained control of his sphere; everything that had come to pass since the beginning of time to that particular moment was within him.

  It was just a matter of finding the damn information.

  Luckily, he’d connected himself to the HIM netLINK system, so it took only a few moments.

  The Mycogene-Alzants. A sentient virus. A rare enough concept on its own, even in the Unreal Universe. Rarer still because this particular Mycogene virus had discovered a method of first inhabiting simple mushroom forms, then, as skill grew and control over their bodies grew, they began constructing vast farms, growing bodies to order.

  “Viruses.” Huey grunted. He didn’t like where this little history lesson was taking him; at a glance, the grown and expansion of ‘industrial’ the Mycogene civilization went step by step as it would with any normal organic race, except they’d be completely wrong.

  Viruses lived and died at light speed, entire
generations burning out after only a few days. This went on for thousands of years, alone, in the dark, generation after generation of Mycogene-Alzant inventing tech solely suited to the task of creating perfect bodies for their host minds. By the end, when they turned their attention outward to other worlds elsewhere in their solar system, the Mycogene-Alzants could grow whatever form of body they needed, eminently suited to any task. They could grow farmer-bodies, or builder-bodies, or –when they noticed moving lights in the skies- traveler-bodies to take them beyond.

  It was when those first Myco travelers left their own realm that they discovered the connection they shared did not diminish; those millions of light years away could talk to those they left behind as if they were in the same room.

  A plan was hatched. Spored. Whatever.

  Huey saw where things were headed, and the damn mushrooms hadn’t even figured out how to see the damn future yet. “Did this … Tendreel … say anything to you about her past?”

  Fenris paused. Watching Huey stare into the past was interesting. For any other being in Latelyspace –and that included those not properly integrated into Harmony- any one of the original Five could feel their thoughts. It wasn’t perfect in normal people, but it was there.

  With Huey, it was like looking and listening to a blank wall.

  “Not that I recall.” Fenris admitted. Honestly, sending his image through the shield had taken more out of him than he was willing to accept.

  Huey turned inward, certain that Fenris wasn’t being entirely truthful. He couldn’t be sure about what, but about the eldest Harmony soldier was hiding something.

  Those first Mycogene-Alzant mushroom vessels fell on other worlds like rotting plagueships, dropping thousand-hectare wide spore bombs, littering the atmosphere with fruiting bodies. Indigenous species woke with strange sores on their bodies that grew and grew and grew until there was nothing left but festering mushroom sores.

  And then, one day, there was a new Mycogene-Alzant world in the musty crown of Homeworld.