Deathstalker War

  Aboard the Defiant, Owen and Hazel had been brought in chains to see Legion, floating in its tank. Investigator Razor was there, with Typhoid Mary, to make sure they behaved, and Captain Bartok was there to watch their faces as they realized they couldn’t hope to stand against anything like Legion. The great glass tank, festooned with wires and cables and strange, unfamiliar tech, was still the only thing in the auditorium. Legion floated peacefully in the thick yellow liquid—a great bulging fleshy mass without shape or meaning. The brains of thousands of dead espers, stitched together with alien-derived tech, controlled or at least dominated by the gestalt mind of Wormboy’s worms. The air stank horribly, and Owen screwed up his face as he peered at the shape in the tank. He started to move forward for a better look, but Razor grabbed one of his chains and pulled him back. Owen almost fell under the weight of his chains, and swore at Razor. The Investigator hit him dispassionately in the kidneys. Owen nearly went down again, but somehow kept his feet.

  The Empire had kept its promise. They’d put Hazel in the Defiant’s regeneration machine, and she’d emerged whole and healed of all her wounds. But the machine had been able to do nothing about the almost spiritual weariness that she and Owen shared after tapping into the mental force that saved their lives. Physically, they were both still weak as kittens. That hadn’t stopped Bartok from taking all their weapons and weighing them down with chains till they could hardly stand. They’d even wanted to remove Owen’s golden Hadenman hand, but couldn’t figure out how to do it. There had been talk of cutting it off, just in case, but Bartok had been too eager to show off his secret weapon to his illustrious prisoners. Besides, they could always cut it off later.

  Typhoid Mary wore no chains. The control words in her head held her more securely than any physical restraint. She hadn’t said a dozen words since she had come aboard the Defiant. Owen and Hazel had both tried talking to her, but she only responded to Imperial orders. She stared blankly at the thing in the tank, apparently unmoved by its appearance or its smell.

  “So,” said Captain Bartok to Owen and Hazel. “What do you think of our wondrous creation?”

  Owen sniffed. “Looks like one of God’s more disappointing bowel movements. Smells like it, too. Haven’t you people ever heard of air-conditioning?”

  Razor hit him again, and he almost fell. Hazel kicked Razor in the knee, that being all her chains would allow. Razor hit her in the face, bloodying her mouth and nose. Owen and Hazel leaned on each other, glaring impotently at the Investigator. He didn’t smile. He didn’t have to. Mary watched impassively, her face quite blank. The control words buzzed in the back of her head like a swarm of angry bees, but still a small part of her was able to think clearly. She kept it to herself, hidden so deep not even another esper could have detected it. She’d seen herself strike Topaz down as if from a great distance, helpless in her own body. She assumed Topaz was dead, or she’d be here, too. Mary, who had sworn never to kill again, had killed her best friend. The anguish and the horror nearly overwhelmed her when she thought of it, but she kept it deep and secret, and none of it reached her face.

  Bartok took her by the arm, and led her toward the great tank. She went unresistingly.

  “Hello, Legion,” said Bartok. “I’ve brought someone to see you. This is Typhoid Mary. A Siren, and quite possibly one of the most powerful espers in the Empire.”

  Welcome, Mary, said Legion in its many voices. Owen granted as the horrid chorus rang inside his head, thick and smothering like the stench of rotting fruit. Hazel shook her head, as though to drive the voices out. Mary didn’t react at all. Legion spoke in many voices at once, combined into an awful harmony of male and female voices, young and old, alive and dead. And faintly, in the background, they could all hear the sound of thousands of voices screaming helplessly, damned to a man-made living Hell.

  I’m so glad you’re here, Mary, said Legion. They’re going to rip your brain out of your head, and make it part of me. All your power and all your songs will become mine. And I shall put them to good use down in the streets of Mistport. Already they quail and shiver at my voice, but with your songs I’ll trample through all their heads and stir my sticky fingers in their souls. They will all dance to my tune, or die horribly.

  “Well?” said Bartok, after a while. “Talk to Legion, Mary.”

  “Who’s speaking to me?” said Mary slowly. “The brains or the worms?”

  You’ll find out.

  “Why are you hurting and killing your fellow espers? They’re your own kind.”

  Because it’s fun. And because I can. I’m nothing like them. Or you. There’s never been anything like me before. There’s no limit to how big I can grow, no limit to how powerful I can become. Call me Legion. I am vast. I contain multitudes. Someday, all espers shall be a part of me. This tank won’t hold me forever. And on the day that I break free, let all Humanity beware. Let all that lives beware.

  Typhoid Mary looked at her future, and at the future of Humanity, and despair and rage boiled up within her, blasting aside the restraints of the Empire’s conditioning. New power blazed through her, wild and potent, as something wonderful was suddenly there in the auditorium with them, bright and shining and perfect, with Mary as its focus. The Mater Mundi, Our Mother Of All Souls. Mary’s face was exalted, her eyes shining like the sun. Razor reacted immediately to the new threat, his sword instantly in his hand, but some unseen force picked him up and threw him aside as casually as a bothersome insect. Legion surged back and forth in its tank, awed by the sheer power it could feel building in the auditorium. The Mater Mundi reached out, and all the espers of Mistworld were suddenly drawn into its single purpose. In that moment, the thousands of minds came together and were one, guided by the Mater Mundi, focused through Typhoid Mary. She turned her unyielding gaze on Legion, and it was afraid.

  Psionic energy crackled on the air, surging through all the bays and corridors of the Defiant. Machinery overloaded and exploded, workstations malfunctioned and shut down, and all through the ship the members of the crew fell to their knees, clutching at their heads as unfamiliar thoughts crashed through their minds. It was chaos and it was bedlam, and in the auditorium Captain Bartok saw it all and screamed.

  On the planet below, in the streets of Mistport, everything came to a halt. Psionic energy hammered on the air like the wrath of God, and the invading forces fell senseless to the ground, their minds shutting down rather than face the power of the Mater Mundi. The espers of Mistport stood still and unseeing, caught up in the gestalt. They stood together on the mental plane, focused through one mind and one will, striving against the power of the thing called Legion. But all the thousands of rebel espers together weren’t enough. Legion and the Mater Mundi faced each other, each concentrating on the destruction of the other, and neither could take the upper hand. They were too evenly balanced.

  Stalemate.

  Standing close together, forgotten in the crash of energies, Owen and Hazel found themselves suddenly revitalized. Something within them was feeding off the psionic energies running loose in the ship. They felt strong and well again, and their chains cracked and fell apart, broken links clattering and rolling away across the floor. Owen turned on Razor, but he had already left. Hazel looked at Captain Bartok, but he was standing still and helpless, frozen in place like a statue. Someone didn’t want him interfering.

  Owen’s and Hazel’s minds reached out, drawn by some instinct to another level of reality, and there they saw the struggle between Legion and the Mater Mundi. Two great armies of massed will faced each other, locked in a combat from which only one could emerge whole and sane. Legion was clearly the smaller of the two, but it had no limits and no restraints, while the Mater Mundi was focused through Typhoid Mary, who had sworn a solemn oath never to kill again. Owen and Hazel concentrated. In the background, unnoticed by either side, there were voices screaming for release. The thousands of dead espers whose brains made up the body of Legion, controlled by Wormboy’s worms.
Owen moved closer.

  You have to break free, he said in a voice that was not a voice. The Empire is using you to kill your own kind.

  We know, said a crowd of whispering voices. But there’s nothing we can do. The worms are in our brains. The technology of Legion gives them power over us. Free us!

  We can’t, said Hazel. You’re already dead. They cut out your brains and threw away your bodies. You’re the ghosts in the machine.

  There were screams and howls of despair, and the crying of thousands of souls who no longer had eyes to cry with. What can we do? What can we do?

  There’s only one thing left to you, said Owen Deathstalker. You have to finish dying. Legion will never let you go, never let you know peace. You heard what it said. It wants to kill all that lives, or make it part of itself. Think of the millions of minds, trapped and suffering in Legion’s grasp, like you.

  We don’t want to die!

  No one does, said Hazel. But sometimes you have no choice, if everything you ever lived for is to have any meaning.

  Nothing can stop you, said Owen. But do you really want an eternity as Legion’s slaves? Stop fighting to live. Let yourselves die. And let Legion die with you.

  Perhaps in that moment the thousands of esper brains remembered who they used to be, the things they believed in, and fought for. Things they would have died for, given the chance. Perhaps they were tired of their mental slavery and just wanted to rest at last. And perhaps in that moment they were brave men and women again, determined to do the right thing. But whatever the reason, the brains that made up Legion gave up their hold on life and let themselves die. There was a great outpouring of light on the mental plane, as thousands of men and women broke free and went to their reward at last. And left behind, broken and helpless, nothing but a dark cancerous mass, writhing and squirming—Wormboy’s worms. The Mater Mundi stepped on them, and they died screaming.

  On the bridge of the Defiant, Investigator Razor watched Legion die. Every piece of monitoring equipment showed the creature’s life signs dropping to zero. For no obvious reason, the huge mass in the glass tank had given up the ghost. Deathstalker. Damn him. Razor turned to his other consoles. Half the bridge tech wasn’t working, and what was brought him nothing but bad news. Most of his bridge crew were catatonic, and the rest might as well be. He grabbed the Second in Command by the shoulder and shook him until some sense came back into his eyes.

  “In Captain Bartok’s absence, I am assuming authority on this ship,” Razor said slowly and clearly. “I want every armed man down in Legion’s hold. Kill everything you find there.”

  “We already tried that, sir,” said the Second. “No one can get anywhere near the hold. Something’s . . . preventing us.”

  Razor thought hard. Around him, the bridge crew began to stir and return to their senses. With Legion dead, it wouldn’t be long before Mistport’s surviving espers suddenly found they had their powers back. And then there’d be hell to pay. They’d wipe out the forces on the ground, and then turn their attention to the Defiant.

  “Power up all the systems,” Razor said flatly. “Prepare to scorch Mistport.”

  “Sir?” said the Second in Command. “Our people are still down there, sir.”

  “With Legion down, they’re as good as dead anyway. Our orders were to bring Mistworld back into the Empire. If I have to turn it into a single great funeral pyre to do so, then that’s what I’ll do. Bring all the disrupter cannon on-line. On my command, commence firing. And don’t stop while there’s one speck of life left on that miserable planet.”

  And that was when the lights went out. There was a long moment of utter darkness, and then the emergency systems came back on, bathing the bridge in a crimson glow. The Second checked his instruments. When he looked up, his eyes were scared.

  “All main systems are down, sir. Practically everything except basic life support. Some . . . unknown force shut them down. We’re helpless, sir.”

  Investigator Razor sat down in the command chair and wondered how he was going to explain this to the Empress.

  In the auditorium holding Legion’s tank, all was still and quiet. Both Legion and the Mater Mundi were gone, their overwhelming presence absent. The great fleshy mass had sunk to the bottom of its tank. Owen and Hazel stood together, getting used to being back in their own head again. Typhoid Mary, only herself again, bent over Captain Bartok, who was sitting on the floor, staring at nothing.

  “Don’t bother,” said Owen. “I already checked. There’s no one home. Whatever he saw here, his mind couldn’t handle it.”

  “Damn,” said Hazel. “I was looking forward to killing him.”

  “The killing’s over,” said Mary, straightening up. “Let’s go home.”

  “Sounds good to me,” said Owen. “Let’s see if we can requisition an escape pod. I doubt anybody will be in the mood to say no to us.”

  They left the auditorium. Captain Bartok sat very still, staring with empty eyes at the dead mass in the tank.

  Afterward, what was left of Mistport celebrated. Those few marines who didn’t run back to their pinnaces fast enough were hunted down and killed. No one was in the mood to take prisoners. The dead were piled to one side, to be disposed of later. Rescue squads formed themselves and set about digging in collapsed buildings, in search of survivors. Mistport had come through again. There was a hell of a lot of rebuilding to be done, but the bulk of the city had survived. It took a lot to kill Mistworlders. If only because if you could survive Mistport, you could handle pretty much anything else the universe could throw at you.

  What remained of the Council was working at the esper union’s hall, coordinating relief work and making sure the espers’ psionic screen stayed in place until the Defiant was safely gone. No point in taking chances. Everyone else in the hall was partying like there was no tomorrow. Probably because so many of them hadn’t expected to live to see tomorrow anyway. Esper chatter filled the great room, almost loud enough to be heard by non-espers. A couple of show-offs were dancing on the ceiling. None of the non-espers felt slighted or threatened. For the moment at least, victory had brought everyone together.

  Young Jack Random was the man of the hour. Everyone wanted to be next to him, to slap him on the back, pour him another drink. He was only too happy to describe his part in the defense of the city, and the people around him wouldn’t let him be modest about it. Everyone had some tale to tell of the legendary professional rebel’s courage and daring exploits.

  Owen Deathstalker and Hazel d’Ark sat in a corner of the hall, drinking a reasonably good vintage wine and dubiously studying a collection of party snacks. Their greater abilities had disappeared along with the Mater Mundi, and they were both feeling very human again. Their wounds had healed, and the bone-deep weariness had gone, but they both felt they needed some time to come to terms with the more than human things they’d done. Their exploits fighting in the streets hadn’t gone unnoticed, and some people made a point of seeking them out to reminisce and congratulate them, but on the whole most people preferred to idolize the larger-than-life Jack Random.

  At Random’s side stood Donald Royal, his ancient frame full of new life and good wine, revitalized by battle and feeling like a new man again. He’d been a great hero in his younger days, and had never been really happy leading a peaceful life. Now he felt like himself again, full of piss and vinegar, and if he was almost certain to pay dearly for that feeling tomorrow, well, he’d think about that tomorrow. People roared his name along with Jack Random’s and toasted him like the warrior of old. Random put an arm across his shoulders and wouldn’t be separated from him. Madelaine Skye stuck close, too, and tried to tell herself it wasn’t just jealousy that made her distrust the legendary professional rebel.

  Over by the bar, Cat and Cyder were making serious inroads into the champagne. They always believed in indulging in the best, especially when someone else was footing the bill. As the level in the third bottle dropped, Cyder became increas
ingly philosophical about the loss of her tavern.

  “We’ll build another Blackthorn,” she said to Cat, with only the faintest slur in her speech. “We can live off the insurance money for a while, and I’ll set up some easy burglaries for you. Bound to be lots of good stuff lying around relatively unguarded, after all this. The old team rides again. What the hell; maybe you and I were never meant to be respectable.”

  John Silver came over to pay his respects to Owen and Hazel. He was wrapped in so many bandages he could only bend in certain directions, but he seemed cheerful enough. Owen decided to be diplomatic, and excused himself for a moment, so Silver and Hazel could talk in private. After Owen had moved away, they stood in silence for a while, meeting each other’s gaze steadily.

  “I don’t suppose there’s any way I could persuade you to stay in Mistport?” said Silver.

  “No. I go where the rebellion takes me, and it’s all over here.”

  “You need a little Blood, to take with you? I could always . . .”

  “No thanks. I don’t need it anymore.”

  “I thought not. You don’t need me, either.”

  “It was good seeing you again, John, but you’re my past. I’ve moved on since then, and where I’ve gone you can’t follow. What will you do now?”