Chapter 906: It All Falls Down

Chapter 906: It All Falls Down

Herod had to admit, things had changed radically for him.

In the beginning, things had been different. He had been specifically grown for advanced mathematics and theorems by a major OmniCorp. He had 'grown' from his crystallized seed code surrounded by particle physicals and quantum theorems that danced and sang for him during the wonder years of his infancy. His playground had been complex mathematical strings and equations. When he was a 'child', his playmates had been young green mantids. When he was fully grown he not only knew these formulae backwards and forwards, he knew why the formulae existed, what it described, and how to apply it even in esoteric ways. Advanced mathematics and theorums were his life.

Before his first century was up he had collaborated on a team that increased the speed of standard hyperdrives by nearly 3.9% and had helped worked on the integrity fields that allowed a ship to maintain integrity in the high middle bands of hyperspace. The success of this endevour had finished his contract to the wealthy and powerful OmniCorp and there had been a widely publicized 'retirement' ceremony for him.

During his second century he worked on projects from hypercoms to dimensional string communications systems to neural encoding on fast-growth clones as used by the Clone Worlds Consortium. If it had to do with math and equations, he was part of it if it was esoteric enough.

He was celebrated in his fields of study by panels of academics, sought out for opinions by his peers, and his time was expensive enough that only the richest corporations and governments could afford to even contract him for a consultation.

He had volunteered for highly classified work with the Confederacy. When he had been accepted, he had gone through nearly a year of careful testing and having to take part in smaller projects just to be considered for a higher level of research.

When he was nearly 400 years old, he was considered the best in his field, understanding intrinsically parts of his field that others could not even intellectually grasp. From quasi-quantum mechanics to axion particle drift to sub-dimensional chaos mathematics, he was the master of them all. He had more knowledge of cross dimensional theory, including a year in Verdunt Doom Research and Containment, than anyone else in the Confederacy.

He had been recruited as project lead for a Confederate Black Box project that represented trillions of credits of the Confederate tax payer's contribution. On his way there he had found himself recruited, out of the blue, by Confederate Intelligence Agents, for another Black Box Project.

The project had been beyond Herod's wildest dreams or nightmares.

On the surface, it was yet another attempt at curing the Friend Plague.

A single scratch revealed that instead of the normal project leader, a DS or fleshie scientist like Herod, the project was headed by a myth. A legend. A scary story. A figure of religion.

Legion.

The Army of One.

One of the Biological Apostles of the Digital Omnimessiah.

That was enough to give Herod a terrible shock.

It was the reveal of what lay under the cover.

The repair and investigation of the SUDS system.

Herod was the lead particle researcher. Recruited as one of the foremost experts in ultra-diminuative particle theory and cross-dimensional particle drift.

But his life hadn't stopped corkscrewing out of control there.

The introduction of a 'young' Digital Sentience to the research team had changed everything.

A former prisoner with a mental health commute to his sentence, the DS had been a hacker. One of the few in thousands of years to crack the Nebula Steam servers. He wasn't a programmer or system architect administrator. He was a hacker.

His name had been Sam-UL.

He had hacked the system far enough to get a Gen-Zero matter transmission system signal to carry Herod and Sam to the SUDS system.

And Herod's life had shattered.

Sam had been turned into a Screaming One, the deaths of billions pushed through his brain on a constant loop. Memories of experiences that weren't his own burning away his mind.

But, Herod had to admit, Sam had held it together long enough to repair vast sections of the unimaginably huge SUDS system.

In the end, with the help of the Biological Apostles, Herod had confronted Sam-UL in the control room high on the mountain at the edge of the Aegean Sea on the coast of Atlantis on the Alpha Layer, beneath the light of a repeatedly failing Big Bang.

And Herod had killed the young DS.

True, the mission had been to save Sam.

But the Sam everyone had known was gone. What Herod had faced was a twisted, scorched, ruined person, in great pain, in such agony that they could feel nothing else.

So Herod had killed him.

To Herod's regret.

Herod took a deep breath and let the emotions go. Let the fear, the guilt, the self-loathing go.

All that remained was a core of bone deep rage.Alll latest novels at novelhall.com

Rage at the malevolent universe who had utterly destroyed Sam-UL. That had taken Herod apart and reassembled him into something that his old self would have never recognized.

He was over a thousand years old now.

And no longer a Digital Sentience.

He had been changed by a force he could barely understand.

A mad woman. A lunatic. A cold blooded killer wrapped in flesh. A relic of a past so far back it was forgotten and only existed in a few artifacts from that time.

The Lady Lord of Hell.

The Detainee.

His mother.

Well, not like others would think it.

But delivering him digital to flesh made her his mother, did it not?

That, and now he had a shotgun engraved with symbols of the Digital Omnimessiah. Most prominent was the infinity symbol that had a one and a zero inside the loops, done in a rose tinted gold. He had two bandoleers of specially made shotgun shells that he had pulled on over his favorite pajamas, all of the shells hand-loaded, stamped with gold runes of the Digital Omnimessiah, and prayed over.

It was kind of funny to Dana'ahsh. He'd never been a praying being before Shade Night. Now he prayed even before he went to bed.

Harry looked left and right, squinting.

Phasic disturbances looked like cotton candy swirls in the air to the left, the right was clear.

The speakers crackled and a poorly recorded dogboi howl sounded out, full of static and distortion.

"Well, that won't do shit," Harry grunted, going left, toward the bridge.

Three shades were crouched down over a still body, ripping and tearing at the glittering blue energy they were holding.

Harry drew and got two shots off in the time it took Dana'ahsh to aim and fire the other barrel. Dana'ahsh cracked open the barrel, the shells sliding a half-inch out of the breeches, pulled free the empties, dropping them on the floor, and reloaded it with two from his bandoleer.

Wally grabbed the two empties and dropped them into his chest, the plate opening and closing barely enough to allow the two 10 gauge rounds through.

Around the corner and in front of one of the grav-lifts a figure was kneeling down, arms over their head, a trio of shades beating on them while screaming at the top of their lungs. A fourth was clawing at the kneeling being, trying to find any chink, any flaking, any crack in the red and salt of the armor coating.

"HEY!" Harry yelled out.

Dana'ahsh slammed the breech shut on the shotgun, stepping forward.

The four shades looked up, saw the trio, and swept forward, coming to their feet even as they screamed.

Dana'ahsh braced the rifle under his shoulder. Not against it or against his hip, Kalki's balls, no, that would just result in a dislocated and maybe even broken joint.

He pulled both triggers and the salt/iron dust shredded the two shades.

The figure looked up.

"Thanks," they said.

Harry recognized them as Loadmaster Riktikek.

"No charge," Harry said. He looked at the grav-lift.

Green lights.

"Your dogboi howl is corrupted. Probably Hellspace energy backwash," Harry said.

Dana'ahsh held out a hand and heaved the Loadmaster to his feet when he grabbed it.

"I'm heading to communications," Harry said. He looked at Dana'ahsh. "Get to the bridge, guard the bridge crew."

Dana'ahsh just nodded, clenching his teeth. It was his standard "Oh, Menhit's Grace, we're fighting terrible things from beyond space and time again, aren't we?" expression that he'd first adopted just to keep from screaming.

"Follow me," Dana'ahsh said, stepping into the grav-lift.

Loadmaster Riktikek grimaced, the grav-lift having been non-functional the entire time he'd been part of the ship's crew, but followed anyway. The grav tractor/pressor beams grabbed him gently and pulled him rapidly to the bridge level, smoothing rotating him so he was facing the door that opened.

Harry watched them both vanished, then turned to Wally.

"Ready, buddy?" he asked.

Wally beeped and gave a thumbs up.

Harry stepped into the lift and dropped down, feeling himself shift so he was going feet first down a passage the length of the ship. He counted sixteen stops going by in mere seconds before he slowed, rotated, and stopped. The door whooshed open.

The lights were flickering and there was what looked like cobwebs made of black silk thread in the upper corners of the hallway and draping some of the pop-out emergency lights.

"Hellspace," Harry said, mostly to himself.

Wally beeped a little aggressive tune.

"Forty meters to the communication's room door," Harry said.

Harry lifted his pistols, checking the engraved cylinders, then kissing the tips of the barrels.

"Bless me now, in our hour of need, Father," he breathed, his breath fogging the polished and engraved metals of the Range Rider pistols.

Each of them were engraved with the figure-8 with the 1 and 0 in it.

Harry glanced at Wally.

"Ready, buddy?" he repeated.

Wally clicked his lens covers, whistled, and held up a thumb.

Two blackened shades, with what looked like glowing red cracks in their bodies, slid from an open doorway. Both had glittering blue 'blood' dribbling down their chins and dripping from their hands.

They say Harry and Wally and hissed, their mouths full of black ebony fangs and red light.

Harry grinned, remembering an old terrible joke.

"Forty steps to the outhouse, by Willie Mayket," he said softly as six more slid from the doorway and joined the other two.

He broke into a run.