Emperor-for-Life: DeadShop Redux (Unreal Universe Book 6) Page 40

  “Yep.” Chad deflected a bolt of unknown energy off his arm, gnashing their teeth in pain as a bit of that energy sizzled through his defensive plates. In response to this ungentlemanly treatment, they then laid down a pattern of return fire that scorched a few of the boring-looking lads down to their boots.

  “Wot is you finkin’, hey? Some sort o’ genocidal fing? I mean, don’t get us wrong, we’re down for that sort of stuff at the drop of the old hat, hey, but … ain’t we got to worry about the Unreal Universe? Don’t it dislike that sort of over the top nanotech mayhem? And more to the point, can we figure out whether or not that’s true on the quick, lads? We is been runnin’ at top speed now for what feels like several days and from the looks of fings, Himself is finally about to make planetfall, and we is finkin’ that might not be all that swell.”

  Which was, of course, why Antal’s forces hadn’t been more aggressive in dealing with them in the first place. They weren’t complete idiots, were they? No, they were not, because that were the sort of thing they’d do if he were hunting them, wouldn’t they just?

  It were your basic containment tactic and they’d used it millions of times…

  “Three times.” Chad ducked behind a particularly tall and hopefully resilient mountain so they could take a bit of a breather. “Three times, South African Me, and don’t pretend otherwise. And two and one half of those times, it failed quite spectacularly. I can see us in there, running away arfter.”

  One of him finally got ‘round to explaining just what was meant by ‘permanent’ and well, that just got the biggest and brightest smile curling on an old nanotech-enhanced assassin’s face, didn’t it just?

  Around them –almost as if their hunters were looking to spoil their good time- rocks and large boulders began tumbling down from on high, filling the air with the slow, monotonous rumble tumble of granite-filled thunder and choking dust.

  Chad’s mind filled with a bunch of echoey thoughts urging him to run away as fast as their feet could carry him. The Platinum Brigadier stuck a finger in their ear and wiggled it 'round, certain he were 'earin' nonsense inside 'is brain. “How many fuckin’ times were we flattened by boulders? We is not livin’ in a cartoon, lads, nor are we chasin’ fookin’ birds down long stretches of road. That shit is embarassin’. Everyone of me as has … crikey, that were close …” Chad moved themselves a bit away from the mountain so they could watch the massive thing shiver down to the roots a little better, “anyways, as we was sayin’, all of me as has been crushed by rocks, you is not allowed to say nuffink to me for at least two days, as that shit is embarassin’. Look, even Welsh Us is takin’ the piss out of you lot.”

  The mountain shuddered loudly then actually groaned like a massive stony giant that was suddenly realizing it was in for a lot more trouble than it’d imagined. The rocks and boulders and trees and all that’d been raining downwards thanks to the enemy’s efforts in dismantling an entire alp were beginning to show signs of weapon’s fire.

  “Wellp. Reckon break time’s over, hey? And we forgot to have ourselves a fag. Next time, someone remind us of that, yeah? Oh, and someone see about figurin’ out if food is summink we can do! I is fancy some chippy, orl right?” Chad rubbed their hands together and –fully if only provisionally rejuvenated for Round 136 of ‘Hey, Let’s Run the Fuck Around this Planet for Shits and Giggles’- took off in a direction they were more or less certain they’d never run towards.

  “Cor,” Chad said once they were out of exploding alp-range, “is anyone got on wiv the uvver project?”

  The other project was, of course, trying to uncover why weapons and other King’s Will manifested objects like cigarettes, failed to appear in anything remotely resembling a timely fashion. Now all their memories were returned to them and they understood that they were –in fact- summink of a walking, talking, ass-kicking nanotech-spewing cyborg- they were having a well difficult time coming to grips with the fact that their whims weren’t being answered instantly.

  Sure, they understood that summink wiv a relatively simple composition –like a cigarette- would naturally take very much less time to manifest than, say, a Boson Cannon, but they also had an instinctual understanding of how long that wonderfully destructive piece of hardware should normally take.

  They’d ordered that Boson Cannon several hours ago, and it were nowhere in sight.

  And they were, let's be honest, gettin' well sick and tired o' all the runnin'. He were Chad Sikkmund, greatest … greatest in all the Unnyverse. Minus a few other lads.

  The point were, they brought the pain. They didn't jog 'round a fuckin' planet gettin' their cardio for the millennium in!

  Chad cursed as a fist traveling at half the speed of light slammed into the side of their head. Several hims rattled around quite nastily before heading off somewhere deeper, leaving the man who liked to drive the bus to deal with the sudden and unwanted side effects of being punched in the head by a rock solid fist whilst running somewhere in the neighborhood of three hundred miles an hour.

  They tripped. And hard.

  And then, because that seemed to be the kind of life they were having these days, they crashed headfirst into something and they all scattered inside Chad’s brain like balls on a billiard table.

  ***

  Since they were not complete and utter morons, they opened their eyes quite cautiously, fully expecting to see themselves surrounded on all sides by a giant sea of vastly homogenous faces blinking in unison, each one of those faces belonging to a goit with the power to crush a mountain into fine dust.

  It’s what he would do, if he were the sort of person to have a limitless army and a fella-me-lad as what had shown up in their Galaxy-sized funhouse of mystery and strangeness because let’s be honest, someone showing up on their doorstep with the ability to stand against people as were designed to destroy everyfing everywhere deserved a bit of respect.

  Also, they were Chad Sikkmund, hey? That alone insisted on a million-strong security force, yeah?

  What they got instead of that million-strong body of clones –or wotever the fuck they called themselves at home when they was busy finishin’ each other’s sentences and other random shit- was an eyeful of summink … odd.

  “Hm.” They said humorously, eyeballing the fifteen foot tall monstrosity that appeared to've been carved directly from solid crystal, a monstrosity also dressed in the tattered remains of some kind of military outfit and who was staring right back at him with an equally interested visage on his craggy face. “I is seein’ a lot of fings in my day, sonny Jim, from lads trapped inside solid holograms to artificial intelligences merging with super-clones, but we is never seein’ nuffink like a man as is turned into living crystal.”

  “A side effect of continued exposure to the extra-dimensionality over many, many thousands of years.” Antal answered the question quite honestly. There was no reason to hide the truth of his strange and beautiful chrysalis; assuming Chadsik al-Taryin managed to escape in a manner similar to his arrival –which was preposterous in the extreme to even consider as a random daydream- there was absolutely nothing anyone, anywhere, could do with the information beyond accept it.

  “The power flowing from the hidden side of the Unreal Universe has a tendency to transform all who drink too deeply, and there has never been anyone to do so deeper than I.”

  Chad held onto his stomach as they saw summink swimming slowly inside the giant Antal’s bleeding face, some sort of banshee or wotever, swim in like it were in a pool instead of a bloke’s forehead. Wotever it was batted against the inside of Antal’s skull like a moth flapping stupidly against a window for a few seconds before going back to wherever it’d come from.

  Chad went green 'round the gills. The Arcadian didn't e'en care what Antal thought. The man had shite swimmin' round inside him. That were …

  Fuckin' weird.

  “One of my Masters.” Antal grinned wolfishly at the green cast on Chadsik al-Taryin’s handsome FrancoBritish face. �
��Another unintended side effect.”

  “’s quite the parlor trick.” Chad announced with cavalier aplomb. They struggled to a better position against the thing they was sat against, prodding the backside of their head as they did so; when they’d collided with the thing behind them, they’d been moving at a pretty good clip. His fingers came back free of blood and ever-important brain matter, so they were well content with the stinging bruise that was there.

  “You could do that at birfday parties. Call it ‘Wot’s In Me Noggin’’ and when one of your … Master fellas arrives, you could scare all them Poncy little children blind, as I never got a birfday party, so why should they.”

  Kith Antal moved a bit closer to the mightiest assassin the Universe had ever seen, fresh new emotions swirling through his cavernous, crystalline body. “I am curious, Chadsik al-Taryin, about so many things. Curious about your arrival here, curious about your abilities to survive fully formed Harmony soldiers. But what I am most curious about, Chadsik, is why you aren’t terrified of me. I am a great and terrible monster, a beast in the dark who has destroyed entire Galaxies, farming the destruction for matter and energy to fuel my own grand Galaxy-ship. I am the Reaver of trillions upon trillions of living beings. I seek to unravel the…”

  “Yep, we is knowin’.” Chad waved a hand and plucked a lit fag from midair. “You is look to destroy the whole of everyfing. Blah blah blah. We is run into some lads as are gearin’ up to deal wiv all that, hey? 's like a new pastime out 'ere in the Unreal Universe, innit? Like, last week, everyone were carpenters and lawyers and, like … people who … do … jobs … and this week it's like 'oi, Marge, I is off to blow up the Unnyverse now, see you half-past for tea and biscuits.' Plus, I were,” they took a deep, deep drag off their ciggy and sighed obscenely, “once upon a time, supposed to be one of the lads as was goin’ to go up against you, only we was tellin’ the CyberPriests precisely what and where they could suck it, and for how long. Oh yeah, and we is prefer to be called Chad now. It’s kind of an important fing for us. We been workin’ on bein’ a normal bloke for some time now, and ‘avin’ a normal-type name is key.”

  “You know?” Antal surged forward, bulled right up to the cocky assassin until he was towering mightily overhead, blotting out the light that surrounded them all. “You’ve met people preparing to do battle with me? Give me their names and I will consider letting you live.”

  “’s a funny story, really, squire, that whole bit of business.” Chad scratched at their jaw for a moment, listening to what one of him were saying about the whole ‘everyfing taking too long to appear’ bit of their special superpower.

  It were quite interesting, and as the lad explained that their Host, Crystalline Kith Antal the Quite Obviously Stark Raving Bonkers, was in control of roughly ninety-nine percent of all the matter in his domain and that they, being … scavengers –which weren’t a word Chad appreciated at all, mind- they were sort of 'avin' to scoop up the little bits and pieces as Antal hadn’t claimed.

  It were taking a lot of doin', gettin' all them fiddly bits of free particles corralled, but he were well assured that the boson cannon, when it materialized in the next ten or fifteen minutes, were going to be well wicked and quite a bit of a surprise for Old Antal the Bloody Lunatic with Actual Living Monsters Under ‘is Skin.

  And then, almost as an afterthought, one of them explained what they were leaning up against.

  Who.

  Who they were leaning up against.

  With the skill of someone used to lying to a maddened Godking who was just as cracked as this new Godking in front of them, Chad Sikkmund of Taryin hid the smile of satisfaction that wanted to crawl across his face.

  While Antal waited for Chad to finish the cigarette he’d pulled out of thin air, the Kith attempted to figure out where the thing had come from. In fact, figuring that out along with where the man drew his power from was something he’d been trying to decipher since he’d realized who his guest was.

  The Destroyer of Worlds was ashamed to admit that over thirty thousand years, he'd never really sat down to figure out something as simple as math.

  Antal lost patience. “Tell me what you know, or I’ll turn you into broken atoms right here, right now. If there’s one thing I’ve heard about you, Chad, it is that you are quite fond of living.”

  “Hain’t no two ways about that, my old china, you is nail that right on the head. We do indeed love living quite a bit. Summink we’re pretty decent at.” Chad exhaled more smoke, artfully crafting the white plume into a fairly excellent old-fashioned boat. “Takes ‘avin’ special lungs an’ all to do that kind of stuff, yeah? No bloke wiv organic wheezers can control ‘is breathin’ enough to make an actual ship out of smoke. We is … right, you ‘ave got this look … orl right. Yes. So. Funny story, once upon a time, we is be ‘ired to kill your son.”

  The preposterous story all but flew from Chad’s mouth to smack Kith Antal right in the middle of his forehead with enough force to cave in a lesser man’s skull. As it was, it took the being a full fifteen seconds to properly digest the words into something a little more … understandable, and when Antal finally came to grips with the fact that Chad was being entirely forthcoming, there was nothing else he could do but turn his head to the skies and laugh until his laughter became as thunder and the heavens themselves did turn black and ponderous as a mortician's bleakest thoughts.

  Chad sat there, resting up for the next bit of the gag, smoking his cigarette and eyeing the madman who’s temperament affected the weather critically.

  Many of him suggested that there was no possible way at all for them to cause Kith Antal any kind of harm at all, while a few of the older ones –them as had been trapped as power sources ‘neath The Dome for eons- flatly stated they didn’t care, they wanted to get in there and chew on the crystal giant’s earlobes for a bit of fun. Y'know, poke out an eye, gouge out a throat, kick a lad in the pills so hard he shits crystalline turds.

  In other words, a fine old day in the life of Chad Sikkmund.

  The Chad that thought of himself as the main Chad didn’t want to ‘ave nuffink to do with Antal, beyond possibly a little bit of sport, because why not? He reminded all them boys inside his melon as wanted to battle Antal that there were only one bloke in all of the Unreal Universe as was truly capable of doing that, and they weren’t him.

  As much as Chad really hated the thought of it, they were looking at more of a ‘permanently run away and hide’ kind of situation rather than the more popular ‘make it look like we is runnin’ and hidin’ but we is actually goin’ to come ‘round the other way an' we is goin' ter kick you in the 'ead with steel-plated zombie-crushing armor boots' thing.

  Chad ignored the boos and the hisses coming from inside their noggin, pointing out when the lads subsided a wee bit that they should try and be happy with the fact that –if they somehow managed to escape- they’d be able to provide the Man Himself, Garth N’Chalez, with some primo Intel that might just buy one scurrilous assassin all sorts of leeway.

  Leeway for what, they weren’t sure, but when the man who wants to destroy the Universe –a man who possessed the means to do it- owed you a favor, well.

  They couldn’t help but think that were a mighty fine thing, hey?

  Antal stopped laughing, transitioning from hilarity to icy coldness rapidly. Thunder and darkness disappeared. He gazed down at the pale man. “And how did that work out for you? Trying to kill my son?”

  Chad traced the circle of scar tissue in his chest through his shirt. “It were positively illuminating, hey?” One of him –Welsh Him, in fact- mentally barfed when another one of Antal’s ‘masters’ swam up through a see-through cheekbone and batted mindlessly against the crystalline prison. “Cor, that ain’t a fing as is easy to get used to.”

  Antal slapped his cheek hard enough to make his fingers chime slightly. The imprisoned Hesh flitted away. “Don’t change the subject. You were about to tell me everything about the men and w
omen and anyone or anything else giving aid to my son.”

  Their ears quirked a wee tiny bit at the unmistakable sound of atoms rushing around them as their boson cannon grew to completion. They rose to his feet, grinning from ear to ear, which, of course, drew unmistakable and considerable displeasure from their lumbering, see-through –and probably glow in the dark, which might help, down the road- host.

  “Who do you think you are?” Antal demanded, astonishment at Chad’s temerity momentarily overriding all natural urges towards dismemberment or equally violent reprisals.

  There was enough leftover atoms for another cigarette, so Chad pulled a lit one right of the air, right in front of Kith Antal, bold and brazen as brass tacks. They all delighted in the squinting focus that they were suddenly home to.

  “Mate, we is fuckin’ Chad Sikkmund of Taryin. We is the first Platinum Knight. We is the greatest and weirdest fing in the entire Unreal Universe.” They jammed their cigarette in their mouths, put their hands together, then pulled their enormous boson cannon into existence with a flourish. “Oh, and this is my friend, Higgs. He shoots bosons.”

  Chad shot Kith Antal right in his giant forehead with a stream of bosons that would –when pointed anywhere not a man formed of living crystal- disintegrate pretty much anything as stood in the way. They puffed on their cigarette, growing slightly concerned –as would any man full of himselves- when their foe did nothing but stand there, looking perplexed.

  The Harbinger of the M’Zahdi Hesh took the brunt of the stream without blinking, but as the pressure continued, he felt a curious … disentanglement … growing throughout his frame. Then, suddenly, his prisoners, those oh-so wise and glorious and powerful and foolish M’Zahdi Hesh started swarming towards the point where the deadly boson stream was hammering against his indestructible flesh. Antal felt a tiny surge of panic, something he’d not felt in … millennia; Chad’s impossibly summoned weapon might not be powerful enough to cause him any kind of lasting harm, but it did seem capable of loosening the bonds of what he’d become to the point where the Heshii might escape