The Dreams of Andromeda (The Imperium Chronicles Book 4) Read online

  THE DREAMS

  OF

  ANDROMEDA

  THE IMPERIUM CHRONICLES BOOK FOUR

  W. H. MITCHELL

  Copyright © 2021 W. H. Mitchell

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by an information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher or author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles, book reviews, and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the author at [email protected]

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Cover design: Steven Novak (NovakIllustration.com)

  Published by Willbot Books

  First edition, 2021

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Works by W. H. Mitchell

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Character List

  Glossary

  About the Author

  About the Publisher

  Works by W. H. Mitchell

  The Imperium Chronicles Series

  The Arks of Andromeda, Book 1 (2017)

  The Dragons of Andromeda, Book 2 (2018)

  The Robots of Andromeda, Book 3 (2020)

  The Dreams of Andromeda, Book 4 (2021)

  Humor

  A Little of Me Goes a Long Way (2015)

  Dedication

  To my wonderful wife, who

  appreciates my love of alliteration.

  Special thanks to Brad Snyder and

  Patron of the Arts, Judy Veatch.

  Additional thanks to my beta readers:

  Chris Buckland

  Mary Hanover

  Ward Lenz

  A character list and glossary are located at the back of the book.

  Prologue

  In the five years since the emancipation of Imperial robots and the destruction of the Klixian swarm, the Imperium had once again settled into stability and the status quo. In the spirit of reconciliation, Emperor Augustus pardoned Lord Tagus III, allowing him to become the patriarch of the Tagus family; the slot machines at the Fat Cat Casino were looser than ever; and TeeHee Tea came out with a new flavor, Jasmine in My Mind.

  However, not everything was rosy, no matter what tea you were drinking. The gangs of Ashetown had grown more powerful, bringing them into conflict with the Si-Sawat crime syndicate. To make matters worse, a hallucinogen called Lotus had hit the streets of Regalis, spreading to all levels of Imperial society. A petal on the tongue and the Lotus Eaters would fall into a deep, restful slumber full of dreams, far different from their waking lives.

  However, reality is not a dream. It is all too real...

  Chapter One

  On the planet Aldorus, the Imperial capital Regalis was divided into three districts, the poorest of which was called Ashetown. A collection of tenement blocks, Ashetown was mostly home to non-humans, viewed with disdain by humans in the other two districts, Middleton and West End.

  Once robots in the Imperium received the right to vote, the trashbots voted to avoid Ashetown altogether because it was too dangerous. This led to the streets filling with garbage and debris, including stripped down trashbots. Weeds were also in abundance, and most of the trees had died from pollution and mistreatment. At the corner of Marlowe and Vine, a nondescript building rose above the trash and the vacant lots on either side. The upper floors contained apartments and offices, but a short flight of stairs on the outside of the building led down to a red door painted with the words Le Sous-Sol, which meant The Basement.

  Le Sous-Sol, or as most people called it, the Sous-Sol, was a bar catering to, if the lack of crowds inside was any indication, no one in particular. If the occasional patron happened to stumble in, they saw the bar itself to their left as well as a door leading to the owner's office. His name was Louis Rion, a Cerulean. The blue-skinned Ceruleans, by nature, lacked any discernible culture of their own, so they tended to adopt the lifestyles of others. In Louis' case, he became a Francophile, but with only a limited understanding of the country. What he did know about France mostly came from fragments of movies, none of them actually French, that had survived the migration to the Andromeda galaxy and the centuries that had transpired since.

  Outside the owner's office, Red the bartender spent much of his time cleaning glasses with a towel he hadn't cleaned in years. Red was a Gordian who, like most of his race, was short, stocky, and lacking in social skills. He also lacked red hair, or any hair for that matter, so his name was a mystery. Due to his height, he usually stood on a step that ran out of sight along the length of the bar. It gave him a better view, allowing him to scowl at people across the room.

  The rest of the Sous-Sol included a few tables and chairs in the center and a small stage at the back. Last but not least, booths with burgundy leather seats ran along the right-side wall. A man sat in the one closest to the stage, giving him a clear view of the front door.

  His name was Thomas Martel.

  Private Detective Thomas Martel contemplated the ice in his drink. Some people drank their whiskey neat, without ice, but nothing was neat about Martel. In his late 40s, Martel had dark skin and salt-and-pepper hair. A small scar split his right eyebrow and a much larger one cut across his chin. He wore a faded, maroon shirt with a brown tie that was a bit too short and a bit too wide. A rumpled overcoat covered it all, including a shoulder holster with just the hint of a silver handle poking out.

  "Hey, Martel!" Red shouted from across the room. "Louis wants to see you in his office!"

  The detective groaned, already knowing how the conversation would go. He dragged himself from the booth and shuffled around an empty table, catching his foot on a chair in the dim light. Louis kept the lights low so the dirty tables would require less cleaning, and because his patrons preferred the cover of darkness.

  Red greeted Martel with a sneer. The bartender used to be a boxer, pictures of his fights hanging among the bottles of gin behind the bar. Red was blind in one eye, his face battered, but he made up for it with a terrible personality. Martel was never sure whether the former boxer looked like that because of his life in the ring or if he was just born ugly.

  The detective came around the bar, stopping at the door to the owner's office. He knocked and heard an effeminate voice answer from the other side, "Come in!"

  Martel sighed and pushed the door open.

  The office was long and narrow, with a desk to the left and a door on the other end leading to the storeroom. At the desk, wearing a jacket with white ruffles around his neck akin to something from 17th-century France, Louis Rion nodded at Martel. Louis' pale blue skin was covered in white powder except for a fake birthmark on his cheek. What really caught Martel's attention, however, was a powdered wig that towered atop Louis’ massive, elongat
ed head.

  "Bonjour, Monsieur Martel," he said.

  Restraining himself, the detective replied, "Hello, Louis."

  "It has come to my attention," Louis went on in a bad French accent, "that your bar tab has grown quite large. This is inacceptable."

  "Inacc—what now?" Martel asked.

  "Yes, how do you say? Unacceptable..."

  "Right," Martel said. "Well, I haven't had many cases lately."

  "Be that as it may," Louis replied, "I have my own bills to pay, Monsieur, I assure you."

  "Sure, I get it. I'll see what I can do."

  Apparently satisfied, Louis said, "C'est bon!"

  Martel turned, closing the door behind him, and tried to forget what he had just witnessed.

  Two flights up from the street and three levels above the Sous-Sol, Martel left the stairwell and walked to the end of a long hallway where a door had the words Thomas Martel, Private Investigations printed on the glass.

  Inside, a woman's voice greeted him with a thick accent.

  "Back already, hon?"

  Closing the door, Martel hung his coat on a rack before facing the desk in the room. No one was sitting at the desk and, in fact, there was no chair to do so.

  "Anybody call, Dolores?" he asked.

  On the desk, a small box the size of an alarm clock lit up. "Sorry, nuthin' so faw, hon."

  Dolores was an AI, fully connected to the nodesphere, but lacking anything in the way of an actual body. Martel couldn't afford a secretarybot. He also couldn't afford a decent voice modulator, settling on an older model that imitated an Earth accent from a mythical place called the Long Island.

  "Okay," Martel replied, his voice resigned, and passed through into a second room where he kept his private office. It contained a desk, a few chairs, and an old leather couch he used as a bed.

  This was also Martel's apartment.

  The wooden chair behind the desk creaked as Martel sat down. From the shoulder holster, he pulled a brushed chrome-plated, .44 Magnum. It was a massive gun with a thick, heavy barrel. He called it Maxwell.

  Removing the bullets, Martel placed the revolver on the desk and opened the center drawer in search of the gun oil. The glint of a police badge, engraved with the words Regalis PD, caught his eye. He read the motto: Honoris, Officium, Integritas, which meant Honor, Service, and Integrity.

  Martel found the oil and shut the drawer, hiding the badge along with it. Ten years away from the Force, his memories of those days weren't as easy to hide away.

  Police Detective Crawley had ten years of experience under his belt when Martel first met him. The future private eye still had the youthful enthusiasm instilled during the Academy, but Crawley had walked the mean streets of Ashetown long enough that neither youth nor enthusiasm held any sway.

  Back then, Crawley was in his thirties, but he was already smoking two packs a day and neglecting the usual habits of personal hygiene. His face, covered with patches of stubble, was pudgy from too many beers, and heavy bags hung beneath his blood-shot eyes.

  "Come on, kid," were the first words out of Crawley's mouth at the precinct, and he didn't say much else until they got out of their gravcar in the center of Ashetown.

  Martel tried making small talk, but the senior detective only answered with grunts. Martel gave up until his new partner got hungry and decided to speak.

  "You hungry, kid?" Crawley asked.

  "Sure," Martel replied.

  "Then buy me some lunch."

  Eventually, Crawley came to trust Martel more and began opening up about the job. It soon became clear to the rookie, however, that there was a lot to the job that had nothing to do with police work.

  "Without us," Crawley said, puffing on his cigarette, "these streets would run red with blood."

  "Why is that?" Martel asked.

  "Well, on the one hand you have the street gangs like the Griefers and the Cyberpunks. On the other, you got the bigger crime syndicates like Si-Sawat who take a piece of the action from the other two." Crawley paused to remove his cigarette long enough to spit. "At any time, any one of those groups will take a pot shot at the other and suddenly you've got a goddamn turf war on your hands."

  "Why don't we just round them all up?" Martel asked.

  Crawley snickered. "Because that would be bad for business."

  "Business?"

  "Sooner or later, kid, you're going to realize that the Regalis PD doesn't pay you as much as they should. Unless you want to live in a one-bedroom apartment with two cats and three litter boxes for the rest of your life, you're going to need to make a choice."

  Martel didn't like where this was headed. "You mean take bribes..."

  "Bingo," Crawley replied, pointing a finger at his partner. "It's either that or end up dead anyway."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Most cops on the beat are dirty," the senior detective said. "Either you play along, or bad things happen. If the gangs don't shoot you dead, some other officer will. It's a kind of ecosystem. Everybody gets a cut, and when things go south, it's usually ‘cause somebody didn't get theirs."

  "And you're fine with all this?"

  Crawley shrugged. "You're either the dingo or the baby. Which do you want to be?"

  Martel didn't answer, because the answer was obvious.

  Elbows didn't normally bend that direction, but Mister Munge continued bending it that way until he heard the magical words, "I'll pay! I'll pay!"

  Releasing the shopkeeper, he watched as the man hurried away, presumably seeking medical attention. His job done, Munge returned to the headquarters of the Griefer gang.

  Over seven feet tall, Munge wore a simple black suit and tie. His skin was pale and his eyes were sunken. No one was sure what kind of species Munge was, but he was clearly not human. Kid Vicious, the leader of the Griefers, had a few ideas of his own, but as someone with limited education, his thoughts on his lumbering enforcer were restricted to the realm of folklore.

  "Some kind of golem, I guess," Kid once suggested.

  Munge reached the warehouse that the Griefers called home and checked in with his boss.

  Kid Vicious greeted him with little more than a casual glance. No longer a kid per se, Kid still wore the same black muscle shirt and leather pants, flames printed along the side, that his gang had grown to expect. His red hair was thinning, but he normally kept his back to the wall, so nobody could see.

  "I need you to pay Louis Rion a visit," Kid said. "He's late on his protection money."

  Munge, a person of few words, blinked a few times and murmured his acknowledgment.

  “Scare him but don't hurt him,” Kid said, but Munge had already turned his squarish shoulders toward the door. “Did you hear me?”

  A grunt was his only reply.

  Too big for the average gravcar, Munge walked several blocks to the corner of Marlowe and Vine. He descended the concrete steps and bent to pass through the entrance of the Sous-Sol. The inside, as usual, was gloomy like a forlorn dinner party with few attendees. Behind the bar, the Gordian barkeep saw Munge coming and rolled his eyes.

  "Louis can't talk today," Red said.

  Munge paid no heed, passing him with a healthy shove, and kicked open the door to the owner's office.

  Inside, Louis was sitting at his desk. He wore white gloves and black pants with suspenders over a shirt with black and white stripes. A red bandanna was tied around his neck and his face was painted white. A black beret balanced precariously on the top of his elongated head.

  “Kid wants money,” Munge said.

  Louis raised his hands and pressed them against an imaginary wall.

  “If Kid don't get money, Munge twist arms!” Munge went on.

  Louis’ mouth opened in a scream, but no sound came out.

  With a mixture of a groan and a growl, Munge turned to leave. Under his breath, he muttered, “Munge hate mimes!”

  They found Detective Crawley's body among the statues of the Grand Marching Grounds in t
he West End. The coroner said he died from a massive brain hemorrhage, but the autopsy couldn't explain why a crooked cop was so far from Ashetown.

  Martel had already left the force by that time. Having spent almost ten years as Crawley's partner, Martel had seen and done things that he wasn't proud of. At some point, it got too much and he quit, burning as many bridges as possible on the way out. That included Crawley, who swore he'd never forget or forgive, and most of the precinct shared the same sentiment. Even so, Martel went to the funeral, whether he was welcomed or not.

  Dead men tell no tales, so a lot of people in the department were glad Crawley took his secrets to the grave. A full honor guard fired into the air after the precinct captain spoke a few words. She didn't mention the bribes or the police brutality. She didn't even mention the time Crawley killed another cop who said he was going to rat them out. The captain mostly said Crawley was a pillar of the department and other empty words everyone knew were lies.

  Martel watched from a distance, waiting until they lowered the casket into the ground before he left.

  Being a private eye was no picnic compared to police work, but at least Martel knew nobody would bother lying at his funeral. Most likely, nobody would attend his funeral so it wouldn't matter anyway. Since becoming a PI, he had never killed anybody who didn't deserve it, and none of the people around him hid their hatred behind a badge. They kept it out in the open for everyone to see. It wasn't pretty, but at least it was true. Something Martel didn't get a lot of while on the Force.

  Five years after they had buried his ex-partner, Martel was polishing his revolver, making sure Maxwell was nice and shiny. His .44 was the only partner he needed now. The police and the military might have their blasters, but the heft of a slugthrower balanced well in Martel's hand.

  From the other room, the earthy voice of Dolores shouted, "What'cha doing in there, hon?"

  "Nothing," Martel replied.

  "Ya polishin’ your pistol again?"

  Holding Maxwell in one hand and the gun cloth in the other, the detective replied, "No!"