Dark Iron King II: Arcadia Falls (Unreal Universe Book 5) Read online

  “I don’t know anymore.” He admitted truthfully. The pain of his admission was surprising.

  Agnethea tried to take it all in a single glance, and failed. Garth was wreathed in them, from toe to neck and all the way ‘round. Every inch of the man save his face was Iron-inked! And that was not e’en the strangest thing!

  Everywhere her eyes fell, metallic tattoos somehow carved directly into his flesh followed the same kinds of patterns and designs as had the armor. Skillful eyes picked out the oldest instances of the work, and the truth of his tale seemed undeniable: his armored arms had indeed drank deep of the ‘sblood coursing through his mortal body, for every inch of his arms were studded with freshly annealed beads of Dark Iron, glistening moistly in the light like thousands of tiny eyes.

  Agnethea raised an eyebrow, fingertips poised just above one arm. Garth nodded, cautiously. “I shall indeed be most careful, Master Nickels.”

  The Queen of Ickford reached out and touched one of the beads stippling Garth’s arm from wrist to shoulder. It was hot as a furnace, sticky to the beneath her fingertip. Strange, that, to feel the heat of a saturated gearhead in such a way. A quirk of a smile crossed her lips. “Were it so easy as simply pulling this from your skin like taffy, no?”

  Garth bellowed with laughter. It was grim, but funny was funny. Images of the petite Golem pulling long, fibrous strands of Dark Iron from his arms distracted him from the vulnerability of the moment.

  “May I?” Agnethea held her breath again. There’d never been anything like this in all of Arcade City, not even before, not when the King had experimented with other types of society, not when great steamships had plied the skies, nor when vast cities had risen up out of the dust, nor when they’d fallen to give rise to this most current incarnation.

  Garth nodded, then steeled himself. Agnethea’s icy cold fingers washed across his chest as she touched and circled and traced out the motion of the gears that thrived there. When she noticed that they responded to her touch, she amused herself for a long moment by seeing just how much chaos she could cause in the internal mechanisms.

  Finally, Garth gasped, half in pleasure, half in pain, all in fear that she would arouse him too far and Specter –so to speak- came bursting out. “Could you, um, completely stop doing what you’re doing and, ah, really go to the far end of the room? There’s more than one way to get a rise out of Specter.”

  Agnethea smiled lasciviously. It’d been a long time since she’d been attracted to someone who was also capable of surviving her attentions, and this was the first time where that same person was also capable of asking her to stop. She wanted to reach out and grab hold of Garth but stopped short of actually doing so out of conscientiousness; if what had happened in that alleyway, to all those gearheads, was a sign of what Garth was capable of when the majority of the Dark Iron in his blood was being rerouted into powering the armor, then his unfettered rage was indeed something best avoided.

  Garth begged her with his eyes to move away. He couldn’t trust the words that might come out of his mouth. For the moment, right then, right there, Naoko was precisely one hundred billion light years away, a dim, nearly forgotten memory of a few stolen kisses where Agnethea stood in front of him, a welcoming figure, petite and perfect.

  As Agnethea flounced saucily away a sigh of relief escaped Garth. By the time she had seated herself, her guest was back into his armor, clipping things back into place.

  “I ask again, Master Nickels, who are you?” Agnethea doubted he’d answer, and when he ignored the question entirely, she wasn’t disappointed. “Very well, then. On to other matters, then.”

  “You can’t help me with my problem, can you?” Garth tried to keep the disappointment out of his voice and failed. Truthfully, he wasn’t entirely surprised, or as despondent as he supposed he sounded. Really, all he needed to do was keep his head down and wait for the arms to drink the Iron out of him as it’d almost done once. It’d be difficult, of course, but he’d already done it once. Then, freed from the Kingsblood entirely, he could reforge the armor properly and Arcade City would be introduced the Knight of Gears and a whole new level of warfare.

  Then he would be free from the King’s crucible he laughingly called Arcade City.

  “Master Nickels,” Agnethea answered with more honesty than she’d felt compelled to display in over a thousand years, “I doubt the King himself could help you with what’s wrong.”

  “So,” Garth said slowly, preparing himself to gauge Agnethea’s next response, “Barnabas’ claims that the King’s forges in Arcadia would provide me with a way to be free of this … curse … were also false?”

  There. There. If he hadn’t been waiting for it, hadn’t been expecting the tiny flicker of amusement mixed with sadness flashing across the Queen’s perfect lips, he would’ve missed it for certain.

  This whole time. He’d been traveling with the King this whole time! And he’d missed it. Every little thing Barnabas had said or done and how he’d behaved whenever their rare –actual- conversations came around to the King, the King’s Will or The Dome itself … all of it made sense now!

  The man hadn’t been afraid of speaking ill about their weird Dark Iron King, he’d been hostile, outraged that an outsider would find any reason to demand explanation as to how things worked.

  A smile sly enough for a dozen foxes stole across Agnethea’s lips, though the Queen also felt a bit of … something … for the hangdog, foolish expression on her guest’s face.

  She well knew the feeling! When she’d been a young Golem, rich and ripe with the need to punish those who’d treated her poorly, she, too, had traveled with a crusty old blacksmith going by the name of Barnabas. She, too, had been just as fooled.

  “Alas, Master Nickels, I do believe they were false. And after traveling with the man for so long, no doubt you can easily imagine what it was he truly intended.”

  Garth saw they were going to play a game of ‘We Both Know What’s What Now But We’re Totally Going to Pretend Otherwise’ and chose to nod gloomily. “Yep. Melter. Good times.”

  The truth was much stranger than that; the outsider had no goddamn idea what Barnabas could’ve been thinking, could’ve been planning this whole time, or why he’d willingly gone on with the charade for as long as he had. There’d been times out there on the open road that the two of them had come as close to blows as possible without actually swinging hammers at each other.

  Agnethea nodded coolly. There were the both of them on the same page when it came to the King. E’en though he were out of sight, now Master Nickels knew the man’s true identity, ‘twas best to play it safe.

  “Now.” Garth clapped his hand and rubbed them together eagerly. Now he’d survived defrocking in the presence of another presence and uncovered an altogether earth-shattering –yet curiously unsurprising- revelation, it was time to get down to business. “What is it that I can do for you? And, more importantly, what is it that you will do for me once I’ve accomplished this totally bullshit side quest? I warn you, I ain’t going out to collect firewood or kill wolves and I sure as hell ain’t doing any escort quests.”

  Agnethea tilted her head to one side. “No, no … wolves nor firewood nor … escort quests? I need for you to rid Ickford of Young Luther and his cabal.” The words came out in rush, nearly all jumbled up and incomprehensible.

  Garth hung his head.

  Instinct. Always trustworthy, never the bearer of glad tidings. “Fuck me sideways.” He muttered. “Stealth mission because of course. That’s the kind of fucked up thing that happens in this fucking place. Assume for a secco that I agree, and then that I actually complete this bullshit side quest…”

  Agnethea gestured a manicured hand towards the wall of maps. The moment she’d decided to use Master Nickels to rid her of a most unwanted infestation and the second she’d learned what it was that Nickels needed more than anything else, there’d only been one counter-offer for her to make. “Why, I shall escort you to Arcad
ia, Master Nickels, right unto the very front gates themselves. Think on it. A grand adventure, no? An unkillable Obsidian Golem, allied with … whatever you are? Along the way, we do terrible and magnificent damage to the King’s Will and all that? More to the point, with me and thee en route, there shall be little in the way of discouragements.”

  Tactically, the only person better suited to make the journey inwards was the goddamn King himself. No one else, anywhere under The Dome –save perhaps the Gearmen- was more and better suited to make the kind of trip he needed to make.

  It made perfect sense.

  It was also -and here, Specter howled in disagreement- the absolute worst idea next to the last season of X-Files. Of course Specter wanted to travel with Agnethea. Beyond being a hottie, she was almost certainly as lethal as he was. The swathe of destruction they’d leave in their wake would be the kind of thing legends grew into.

  Garth broadcast the biggest smile he could muster. Unless there was someone else waiting in the wings he could better deal Agnethea on, it was her and no one else. He’d just have to make double-damn sure that he was in control of himself the whole time.

  It wasn’t anything he couldn’t handle.

  “Sure. Yeah. Sounds like a hoot and a half. Now … tell me why you want a creepy five year old murdered in the streets. I mean, I know why I’d do it...”

  6. Hungryfish Rising, What’s All This Then, and A Son’s Sorrow

  Candall had never claimed to be an expert on anything other than the fine –and oftentimes rough- skill of reclamation, but every time he looked at the weird ship called Hungryfish, he couldn’t help but feel that it was wrong somehow.

  Like it was watching him.

  One of the technicians, Sorrel, waved a technical Sheet around. “It can change shape.”

  “I’m sorry?” Candall blinked muzzily, then looked to the tech. No, the man had no clue he’d been staring at the sentient vessel like a fool.

  “It changes shape.” Sorrel flashed the non-military specialist footage. “When we finally convinced it things would be better for everyone if it was somewhere else, it … changed its shape to fit down here. When … when it arrived.”

  Candall flicked through the images, then watched an actual feed of Chadsik al-Taryin’s vessel literally changing shape, huge sections of the vessel moving this way and that, eventually resulting in a craft that was at least twenty-five percent smaller.

  How much had Latelyspace sacrificed when they’d proclaimed AI the devil? Chadsik’s vessel had flown itself from Hospitalis to this remote location all on its own, had changed its shape to fit through the opening into the underground base.

  What else could AI do?

  “We’ve been trying to replicate the results.” Sorrel admitted.

  “And how’s that working out for you?” Candall put his eyes back on the AI-driven ship impatiently; following successful test-firing of the Q-gun, it’d still nevertheless taken everyone a solid day of deciding whether or not they wanted to let a madman with a heart full of revenge anywhere near the powerful vessel.

  Even Herrig had gotten involved in things, though in this instance, Candall did believe Fenris had told the Chairman to stick it where the sun didn’t shine, making him perhaps the only entity in Latelyspace brave enough to do so.

  Candall understood Herrig’s worries, even if he didn’t agree with them. The cargo aboard Hungryfish was just as deadly as the weapon he’d provided the God Army.

  Four Hand of Glory missiles. Four. Each one capable of shredding a planet. The ex-reclamation specialist knew from his time hunting Ute down that when Herrig had learned of the deadly payload on his adopted planet, the Chairman had flown into a tizzy, demanding answers, looking to point accusatory fingers, hoping to crucify someone for letting something so dangerous remain.

  Ultimately, it’d developed that Jordan Bishop himself had greased those particular wheels with Ashok Guillfoyle and Morgan Vasco’s aid, and no one had really bothered to look into correcting the problem.

  It was hard to ignore the rampant corruption seen everywhere back in the day but…

  No amount of money or influence or threats or promises of favors should’ve seen even a single Hand of Glory crossing into Latelyspace, and the weird, shape-changing, possibly-multiple AI-controlled ship lurking fifty feet away from them all carried four.

  Enough to destroy everything worth destroying. All the main planets gone. Each, in a puff of incandescent smoke.

  “Hm?” Candall tore his gaze away from the alluring ship. “What was that, sa?”

  “I said, it’s not going so well.” Sorrel knew enough about Candall to know having someone like him using Hungryfish for a vendetta was particularly troubling, but assurances from much higher pay grades … the on-site lead technician blinked and backed slowly away, literally using his oversized techSheet as a shield.

  Fenris and one of his brothers, Nalanata, from the looks of him –it was very difficult to tell all of them apart- were coming around the other side of Hungryfish.

  It was time for lowly technicians to be elsewhere. Before making a hasty departure, the tech pressed the freshly recalibrated Q-gun into Candall’s hands, muttered nonsensical farewells before all but scampering away.

  Cradling the high-tech weapon in both arms like a lethal child, Candall nodded greetings to the two ‘men’. Fenris … Fenris he’d more or less grown accustomed to; the ‘leader’ of the original Harmony soldiers and factual commander of the hugely changed God Army was the most talkative of the five and was, if you ignored certain glaring personality disorders, actually not a bad person for conversation.

  The man had a unique perspective on nearly everything under the sun.

  Nalanata and the others were … enigmatic. They preferred to stay away from ‘regular’ folk as often as possible, and when they were required to be in public, they interacted with a chosen few and said as little as humanly possible the rest of the time.

  Candall chuckled at that. Humanly.

  There was very little that was human about any of them. They flowed when they walked. The movements of their arms and legs had a terrifying languor about them, as if they moved through invisible liquid. Beyond that, there was a darkness that flowed from them; whenever you looked head on at one of the original Harmony soldiers, dark shadows seemed to cluster and bunch up behind them.

  It was impossible to imagine that these wolves had ever been sheep.

  “Penny for your thoughts.” Fenris flashed Candall a mouthful of bright, shiny teeth.

  Candall blinked his grim thoughts away. “Sorry, sa?”

  “Old-fashioned saying, I’m told.” Fenris pointed at the Q-gun. “Is it up and running?”

  “So I’m told.” Candall brandished the weapon, unable to tear his eyes from Nalanata.

  Fenris spoke. “My brother was responsible for designing our asteroid-craft. Ever the crafty one, our Nalanata. A mind bristling and brimming full of strange ideas. He was curious about your Q-Gun.”

  “Seeing it fire across Harmony was a poor second choice.” Nalanata announced softly, reaching out to pluck the Q-gun from Candall. To his credit, the Latelian surrendered the unique weapon with barely a squawk.

  Candall couldn’t help but flash a look of concern at Fenris, or his abrupt decision to stare fixedly at Hungryfish. He didn’t know what he’d do if the Harmony soldier decided to fire at the ship, effectively stealing a portion of his plan; firing the weapon, being the one to shut the AI-controlled ship down, flying to Sarelsa… It was all part of a fantasy he’d built in his head. Having the opening chapter stolen by a Harmony soldier would ruin … would ruin everything.

  Nalanata openly admired the Q-gun’s efficiency. It was perhaps one of the … cleanest … weapons in history. There was no other way to describe it. In other times, even in Latelyspace’s own past, weapons’ manufacturers had risen to dizzying heights of complexity, ever in search of delivering the maximum amount of carnage. He hefted the gun, aimed down the s
ight. This, though, this did precisely as advertised and no embellishments.

  A curious whisper of concern and dread filtered through Harmony. Nalanata turned his head slightly towards Fenris, who was pretending to look at something of extreme interest on his proteus, then back to Candall, who was, quite literally, vibrating on the spot, working overtime to contain the urge to scream and shout. A faint curl of a smile rose on his brother’s lips.

  Candall bordered on the verge of Harmony. True Harmony. Nalanata shared one of his own mischievous half-smiles with his ‘older’ brother. This, then, was why Fenris had ultimately agreed to allow Sa Candall access to Hungryfish.

  It also explained how and why an ordinary mortal, a mere man, had come up with something as deviously wonderful as the Q-gun in the first place.

  Under circumstances such as these, Fenris would’ve offered Candall anything he’d demanded, so long as the end came out the same.

  “You came up with this on your own?” Nalanata asked softly as he returned the Q-gun into Candall’s hands. The result was virtually instantaneous: the reclamation specialist stopped fretting and a cool, calm wave of readiness trickled through Harmony.

  Nalanata wanted to punch Fenris, who stood off to one side, so amused by the burgeoning state of wakefulness hovering inside Candall that he was practically laughing his damn-fool head off.

  There was no anecdotal data on normal humans achieving Harmony on their own. None, of course, save Lisa Laughlin’s stories of men and women from her own time being absorbed and changed by the Heshii’s version.

  Allowed to blossom unchecked, which direction would Sa Candall’s mind go, Nalanata wondered. For, or against? Or would it even be his choice? None of them could forget when Kith Antal had spoken through Sa Gurant.

  Candall checked the instrument panel to ensure that Nalanata hadn’t accidentally touched something. Working on the estimates that there was at least, at least, four artificially intelligent minds inside Hungryfish, they’d had to increase the Quantum emission output of the gun by a pretty huge factor, but not so much that they destroyed the minds; the weapon needed to fire multiple shots in rapid succession without any appreciable cooling time between bursts. An incorrect setting now would result in the destruction of the AI sphere, and everyone in the room had seen what happened then.