Emperor-for-Life: DeadShop Redux (Unreal Universe Book 6) Read online

  It was just the flavor of that commitment had changed.

  “I don’t like it.” Fenris admitted guiltily to his brothers. “This is just as bad as their fealty to Vasily. Worse, even, for the old man has sequestered himself once more and talks only to a few. For that, I am most thankful. But this? This disembodied consciousness whispers all the time. There’s no way to know if we'll wake up tomorrow with all our brothers and sisters against us! We cannot watch them all the time, we cannot hear what he says! This is untenable!"”

  “We could construct a hytech device to hunt for it.” Lokken suggested.

  Stride shook his head. “Not in this system.” He countered reasonably. “The HIM will connect to it. We don’t have the kind of time it would take to devise something hytech that won’t be automatically located and acquired by that machine.”

  “And so we come to the true matter of this meeting.” Lokken gestured at Fenris, made a mocking smile at their leader’s stormy, violent expression.

  To pretend they weren’t all suitably cowed by the events in that meeting was to lie boldly through shining teeth, but of all of them, Fenris was a boiling, seething whirlpool of well-maintained rage. As leader of their merry escapade by virtue of being the first through the old conversation chambers –and having done so with roughly twice the exposure time as the rest- Fenris Valeren had, without a doubt, the measure of them all.

  That Herrig DuPont, not even Latelian but some kind of wretched displaced Offworlder, had stood toe to toe with him, enduring the worst that’d ever been eked forth without a scratch, and then to demand they all kneel?

  Unconscionable. Unimaginable. It was disgusting.

  Fenris’ anger threatened to snuff the power of the moonship out, so he swiftly and deftly –as Garth would say- put a lid on it. Solgun nodded appreciatively at the skill, while the others merely looked equally bored and eager to be on with it so they could go their separate ways. They each of them had things that needed attending to, least of all because they felt in their bones that the Shield would –for some reason- be coming down any day now.

  But most of all, they just wanted to be away. Being this close to each other was to skirt disaster. All those old arguments, all those forgotten words … well. They were never really that old, never entirely forgotten, were they?

  Being the epitome of war made flesh made it difficult all around.

  “There’s nothing we can do, dear brother.” Lokken wished he’d brought some food with him. Fenris rarely ate, never in public, and certainly nothing interesting. “The quantum waves emanating from the Heuristic Intelligence Model are ubiquitous. He catches wind of any plot against him, we lose thirty million soldiers and not only will the Light not Rise, Darkness will fall Forever. We launch an attack at him from anywhere in the solar system, those shields of his will rise up. Though …”

  Solgun intruded. “Though the doughy politician hasn’t bared his teeth doesn’t mean he is toothless. His bite could be just as bad as his bark. Worse, even. We’ve never touched the HIM, never. There’s telling what powers the Engineer imbued it with.”

  Fenris stifled a curse. Impenetrable, indestructible shields were just as capable of ripping someone or something to shreds, of dismantling even the most carefully fortified ship. Of ripping a Horseman to pieces, atom by atom.

  There had to be a way to regain the upper hand. There just had to be!

  Scratching laconically at an arm, Solgun continued. “In times of crisis and unstoppable foes, look at your surroundings, see what can be seen. A fortress on high ground its own may be indestructible and unassailable, but the earth can be moved, and all can come tumbling down.”

  Stride chortled. “I like Sidra. She’s got balls.”

  “Balls she may have,” Fenris growled, mind already whirling with ways to work with the turncoat soldier, “but she’s far too cozy with that man. It’s something that should’ve never been allowed.”

  “To deny a warrior love is to leave them starving on the battlefield.” Solgun sighed wistfully.

  Lokken looked over his shoulder at their normally silent brother. “You’re quite chatty today, aren’t you? Did you eat the cat that’s had your tongue these last few years?”

  Solgun laughed so hard at that his voice rang through the cavernous chamber.

  “I like where this is headed,” Fenris shifted from foot to foot, “but the simple matter is, we can’t coopt her outright. She’s on the cusp of becoming a Five and while she is loyal to the cause and always will be, until the moment she is called to stand on the battlefield, her loyalty to DuPont is unswerving. Since you broached the topic, dear Solgun, you must have an idea I’ve not considered. And please, dispense with the pithy koans.”

  Solgun grinned toothily, but dipped his head in agreement. “Biochameleonic Units.”

  Nalanata scoffed. “All dead. That was one of the first things their Ministry of Observation did. Used their massively parallel ‘LINKs to hunt them all down because it was obvious they were still loyal to Doans and her maniacal policies. We could build our own, but again, if Herrig gets it into that pasty brain of his to set the HIM looking for that sort of thing, he’ll find it and put a stop to things.”

  Solgun quirked an eyebrow and stared at Fenris, smiling from ear to ear.

  It came to the God Army leader in a flash. “The BCU Program was perfected under Hollyoak’s twisted vision, but he was by no means the originator of the queer beings. That distinction goes to … what was the name?”

  Solgun whispered, “Doctor Amelio Drubarge.”

  Fenris recalled the stories now; as they’d had nothing but time on their hands whilst waiting for Garth N’Chalez to arrive fully on the scene, they’d alternated between sleeping long slumbers, listening to Lisa Laughlin’s tales from around the Universe, and gorging themselves on Latelian history.

  How better to gauge the acceptance of the people they were eventually going to lead into most noble death?

  The ancient Harmony soldier riffled through what he recalled of Drubarge and his plans to create the perfect chameleon warrior. The original BCU project had been a better thing than Hollyoak’s perverse amalgamation of hard-and-wetware in that Drubarge’s efforts had focused on creating a flawless, fully organic being capable of mimicking anyone.

  But as with all Latelian scientists working on deep, dark horrors, Drubarge had turned out to be madder than a hatter and had killed not only himself, but an entire base full of personnel and the completed BCU originals by overloading the energy cells and sending everything sky high. If Fenris recalled, there'd been no indication in any of the man's papers or notes that anything had been wrong with the program, so the massacre would always remain a mystery. “All…”

  “No.” Solgun interrupted softly. “Not all. Made to look that way, certainly, but no. Not all. A cunning warrior trapped behind enemy lines should convince the enemy he is dead. Or destroy half the world while retreating to a tactical location.”

  All the Horsemen laughed at Solgun’s sly reminder that they’d all reacted quite, quite poorly to their new worldview upon reawakening as freshly forged Harmony soldiers.

  “You know something.” Fenris chided. “Don’t you?”

  Solgun gestured at the computers, a true smile on his face. “Once the hunter has his foes convinced he is dead, the best thing to do is hide in plain sight. In this case, though, our hunter is a huntress, and her weapon is song.”

  On screen, Indra Sahari started singing.

  The assembled Horsemen smiled and nodded, nodded and smiled.

  The earth beneath Herrig's impenetrable fortress stirred.

  A Connection is Made

  Theoretically, the main –and only- offices for CalEx~Briu –a joint venture similar to FontagueFellman- crouched on a prime piece of property in the vast worlds-within-worlds that was Zanzibar; situated roughly in the center of one of the largest and most populated NorthAMC Stacks -Stack 17, in fact-, CalEx~Briu was poised to become one of the fresh
faces of Conglomerate power because of their amazing recovery of the only piece of tech to come out of Arcade City.

  Factually, though, CalEx~Briu was very nearly dead center in Zanzibar.

  With that in mind, being three hundred floors below what most Conglomerate folk considered socially acceptable somewhat tarnished that high value real estate.

  But the rent was cheap, the security forces that were available were skilled in the art of deflecting bored junkies and the occasional homicidal maniac that roamed the dimly lit corridors without leaving too many corpse behind, and once you got used to the smell, there wasn’t anything wrong with the offices at all.

  You just needed to focus on the future, that was all.

  CalEx~Briu –run by Kiersey Caldon, Soma-Ex Chang, and Lisa Briu- stared at their amazing prize, not entirely sure what they were doing.

  It didn’t even stare back. They felt like it should be staring at them, only … only it wasn’t.

  And it’d been doing nothing for months now.

  It sat on the pedestal that Kiersey had fashioned from some chunks of discarded steel-III he’d found ages ago, doing nothing more exciting that sitting there, a huge, brass-engraved lump of metal that looked like a book, but failed to be a book for the very simple reason that it didn’t open.

  Collectively, their minds were reeling over the findings their 8, Mahpy, had just flooded their cheap –and mostly cracked- monitors with not too long ago; diligent and excruciatingly fine scans with a Quantum Resolution Rectifier –‘borrowed’ from Lisa’s severely intelligent but somewhat absent-minded father- had finally revealed that, against all possible rationalization- the gears and grooves and everything else that the book was comprised of not only appeared to be capable of functioning as some kind of machine, but that the depths between the spaces were functionally infinite.

  Soma passed the spliff to Lisa, who took it happily. Around a mouthful of blue-tinged smoke, head buzzing pleasantly, Soma said, “Infinite?”

  Kiersey, who’d done a double lungful of the potent homegrown, swatted at an errant thought flying from his head and laughed at himself for a solid fifteen seconds. Putting on as sober a face as he was likely to muster, he shook his head. “Can’t be infinite. Even space isn’t infinite.”

  Lisa passed the joint back to Kiersey, who humbly declined. Another hit right then and he’d likely pass out on the couch, hardly a dignified state for one-third of the soon-to-be most powerful Conglomerate in the entire known –and unknown- Universe.

  Lisa blew a fancy smoke ring before throwing her two cents in. “Even if it isn’t infinite infinite, in there, it’s deep, though, right? Mahpy said it was functionally infinite. That doesn’t mean the same thing. Space is functionally infinite. Even if there’s, like, ten feet of space between the covers, that’s pretty … uh … deep, right?”

  Mahpy’s voice filtered in through both the speakers and the collective Conglomerate’s ears. “There is considerably more than ten feet of space between the covers, Ms. Briu. The Rectifier is only capable of resolving so much distance before the pings falter.”

  Soma stubbed the joint out and deftly pocketed the roach. They were talking science now, and though it swore it wasn’t capable of feeling emotion, Soma-Ex was damned certain Mahpy got all sorts of irritated when it, an 8, tried talking with it’s stoned owners. “Well,” she demanded with a slight giggle, “how deep does it go before, uhm, the machine stops working?”

  “Wait!” Kiersey shouted, startling Lisa so badly she slapped him in the back of the head. He struggled to keep his brains inside his skull for a perilous second, then shouted excitedly. “Wait. Wait. Bets. Let’s take bets. On the depth.”

  “Terms?” Lisa and Soma-Ex asked at the same time.

  “And no sex stuff this time.” Soma chided warningly. “You’re weird.”

  Kiersey frowned, but continued. “Whoever gets closest … doesn’t have to explain to Lisa’s dad how one of his eights wound up going … missing. Like, if he ever does. I did a great job of personality programming that spare four into pretending to be an 8, but, uhhhh, you … you never know, amiright?"

  Lisa narrowed her eyes. They’d been an official Conglomerate for about four months, and since they’d stolen Mahpy, she’d been terrified that her father –absentminded, sure, but also a towering egomaniac known to legendary fits of anger- would eventually notice the extreme disparity between Mahpy’s data output now versus before, and had been working on various explanations to prepare for whatever came her way.

  As Kiersey had pointed out, though, his reprogramming skills were spot on. That four believed it was an eight and none of the other AI minds in the cluster were saying anything.

  “Well, what about second closest?” Soma-Ex wanted a glass of water, but also didn’t want to ask one of the security guards standing outside the door to go fetch her one. She was way too fucking high to talk to security right then. She’d probably flirt with whoever was on the other side of the door. It was a dilemma.

  Kiersey wiggled his eyebrows. “Estate raid. Our fridges are getting empty and we need some capital quick. Whoever gets second closest has to sneak into someone’s parent’s summer home and steal stuff. We all have access codes and stuff so it’s not too dangerous, but still.”

  “And third?” Mahpy asked. “I do have a suggestion, if I may be so bold. In light of the fact that it seems that the relative punishment for being further off the mark is an elevation in danger and/or risk for one of you, my idea may prove both beneficial to your Conglomerate as well as providing the very kind of thrill all three of you seem to enjoy.”

  “Uh.” Kiersey faltered. He’d been leaning towards suggesting kinky public sex as punishment for being way off the mark, but having your 8 make a suggestion out of the blue was something you had to jump on, no matter what. “What, uh, do you got in mind?”

  The flimsy monitors hanging on the walls shivered, instantly replaced by a series of schematics. Mahpy went on to explain. “For nearly three months now, I have been analyzing this … Book … with everything at our disposal. Combined with your fairly ineffective efforts in prying the metal Book open or smashing it to pieces in the hopes that something would happen and this new information that it is essentially infinite between the covers, I have come to the conclusion that the only way this discovery will be of any benefit to anyone is if we power it up.”

  “Power it up!” Kiersey, Soma-Ex and Lisa shouted the words in unison, a kind of verbal face-palm. How could they have not thought of that?

  “Indeed.” Mahpy continued. “Preliminary experimentation with the Rectifier and several other machines capable of generating small charges across the Book’s surface has given me a workable foundation as to the level of power required to boot the machine up to full operational efficiency.”

  “What’re we talking here?” Lisa scratched her nose. Mahpy’s suggestion to use the task of powering the damned thing up as punishment for the third place loser was both brilliant and worrisome, which had to make it more risky than a summer home raid.

  Meaning it certainly wasn’t going to be ‘strip some wires bare and lay them across the surface’.

  “Roughly four trillion kilowatts.” Mahpy adjusted the displays to show the modifications that would need to be made to their offices, the rewiring necessary to steal that much power from five different relay stations situated across three levels of 17, and the things needed to get it done.

  The three Conglomerate heads exchanged thoughtful glances, only smirking and giggling a little bit. Four trillion kilowatts was a lot of power. Running those lines to CalEx~Briu wasn’t just risky, it was downright illegal and –if there was even the slightest misstep- lethal.

  The founding members of CalEx~Briu noticed that Mahpy had either failed to provide or hadn't even bothered to consider how badly their possible failure would affect the rest of the Stack.

  But the adventure of it all!

  Kiersey looked at his friends. “Screw it. I don
’t even care about the bet anymore. I want in on this. This is an epic idea. Could you imagine!"

  Soma-Ex agreed. “Doesn’t matter how deep it is, theoretically or factually. If we can get the thing working, who knows what secrets it’ll give us? This is Arcadian technology! Right from beneath The Dome! We need to do this, guys!"

  Lisa pulled a bit of a face. She’d really wanted to make a guess, if only to have a chance at avoiding a conversation with her father, but seeing the excitement shining on her friends’ faces, it was hard not to be affected.

  “All right, Mahpy.” Lisa turned her attention to the camera in the room. “How long will this take?

  “With all three of you, utilizing your security teams? Barring no real difficulties with local authorities or gangs or other interested parties who have no reason to be interested?” Mahpy paused. “Two days, four hours, sixteen minutes.”

  Kiersey gave a whoop of excitement. “We’re gonna need some stims. Lots of stims."”

  ***

  Ariel Bishop, new leader for the massive BishopCo Conglomerate, stared resolutely at the monitors arrayed before her. Behind her, the entire staff for this most peculiar … project waited as pensively as they ever had during their time under the more erratic and certainly less calm Jordan Bishop; while their previous overlord hadn’t had the vaguest idea about roughly ninety percent of the things they said and did –relying heavily on the absent android, Spur, to reduce everything into digestible bits and pieces- Ariel Bishop was another kind of ruler altogether.

  Where her Father had been disinterested in those daily bits and pieces beyond the usual ‘will it sell, will it won’t, who can we fob this off on’ –almost always to great success- Ariel Bishop was smart.

  Frustratingly so. Lead Technician, Doctor Voos Ousterhouse –holding doctorates in both Advanced Cybernetic Connectivity and Applied Biomechtech- remembered with awkward clarity the very first time this mere slip of a girl had barged into their laboratories –obviously backed by her own personal security team- demanding to be shown on-the-fly data for more than eighty percent of their ongoing research.