Deathstalker

  "I suppose so," said Daniel. "You always know best, Steph. You go on back to your room. I'll be all right now."

  "All right. Change into some fresh pajamas first. There's a clean pair in the cupboard." She gave his shoulder a last comforting squeeze, and stood up. "You go straight back to sleep, Daniel. And no more bad dreams."

  "Yes, Steph."

  She kissed him on the forehead, waggled her fingers in a good-bye, and left the room. Daniel sighed, and stripped off his sweat-soaked pajamas. He left them lying on the floor, padded over to the cupboard, and put on a new pair. They smelled clean and fresh and safe. He started to get back into bed, and then grimaced at the feel and smell of the sweaty bedclothes. He got up again, and clumsily remade the bed with new sheets and blankets. He couldn't have the servants do it. They would only have gossiped, and he still had his pride.

  He lay down again, and pulled the sheet and blankets right up to his chin. The bright light hurt his tired eyes, but he didn't feel strong enough to turn the lights off yet. Maybe he never would. He scowled, suddenly angry with himself. He was a Wolfe, dammit. His father had raised him to be stronger than this. He opened his mouth to turn off the lights, and then stopped as he suddenly realized he had another visitor. The door hadn't opened, and he hadn't heard or seen anyone approach, but nevertheless, he was no longer alone. Daniel sat up slowly in his bed, staring into the bright mascaraed eyes of his older brother, Valentine.

  He was sitting, or rather perching, on the end of Daniel's bed, hugging his knees to his chest, his pale face and dark ringletted hair tilted a little to one side as he regarded his brother with feverbright eyes. Dressed all in black, as always, he seemed like a giant crow or raven; a bird of ill omen. His scarlet mouth moved from a wide smile to a mock disappointed pout as he studied his brother. "What's this, dear Daniel? No welcome home? No words of cheer at the return of the prodigal son?"

  "How the hell did you get in here?" said Daniel, anger for the moment pushing aside his weaker feelings. "How did you get past security, and break in here without me noticing?"

  "No one sees me anymore, unless I want them to," said Valentine easily. "I took the esper drug, you see, and now I cloud the thoughts of mortal men as I walk unseen amongst them."

  "What do you want, Valentine?" said Daniel sharply, wondering if he dared reach for the gun he always kept under his pillow these days. Valentine didn't appear to be armed, but he was always dangerous. "What do you want with me, at this ungodly hour?"

  "To welcome you home, of course, and see you gathered safely back into the Family fold." He laughed softly, a harsh, unsettling sound. "I can't come home again, you see. I've gone too far, seen too much, changed too much, but I retain a kind of nostalgia for the way things used to be, when I was younger and still, merely, human." He fixed Daniel with his dark gaze. "I hear you're doing well for yourself, little brother. Constance, dear Constance, has given you control of the day-to-day running of the Clan, while she prepares for marriages and monarchy."

  "She needed someone. And she's never trusted Stephanie."

  "How very wise," said Valentine affably. "And you have been very outspoken since your return, about the menace of Shub, and the danger of Shub infiltrators. Why is that, do you suppose? You never showed any interest in public affairs before."

  Daniel frowned. "I don't know. It just seems the right thing to do. And I have this feeling… that Shub is a far greater threat than we know. That the rogue AIs are up to something. Something awful."

  "You're doing very well," said Valentine admiringly. "Everyone's very impressed with you. Chairing discussions, beefing up Family security, getting involved in all kinds of things. Dear Daddy would be so proud of you. He was never proud of me. But then, I was never content to be just another Wolfe." Valentine pouted daintily. "I have made something much more dark and dangerous and very glamorous of myself, Daniel."

  "You made a deal with Shub," said Daniel slowly. "When you were head of the Family. Just how many of Humanity's secrets did you sell to the rogue AIs of Shub? And what did you get in return?"

  "More than you can imagine. And I would have done far more, but events rather got away from me."

  "Who else in the Clan worked with you? How far did the corruption go?"

  "Oh, I worked alone, Daniel. I always have. I'm the only real black sheep of this Family. I've never liked competition. If I'd ever seen you or our dear sister as serious competition, I'd have had you both strangled in your beds long ago. Ah, the happy carefree days of youth! I almost miss them. Which is one of the reasons I'm here. To say good-bye to my youth, my past. I'm someone else now, bound on a journey to places you couldn't even imagine."

  "What the hell are you talking about, Valentine?"

  "You never did have any patience, Daniel. Let me put it so simply even you can't fail to understand me. I have joined with Shub. I will become as they are; powerful and immortal, riding an endless trip on unadulterated reality. The ultimate, never-ending high. And along the way, I shall help to bring about the destruction of all Humanity. Just because I can. And you'll help me do it, dear brother."

  "Never!" said Daniel. He pulled the disrupter out from under his pillow and shot Valentine in the gut. The point-blank energy blast punched right through Valentine's midriff and out his back, so suddenly his body barely rocked in its perch on the end of the bed. The smell of burned meat was heavy on the air. Valentine gasped once, and bent slowly forward over his wound, almost as though bowing to his brother. Daniel felt a rush of excitement and achievement. In that moment he felt as though he was destroying all that was dark and evil in Clan Wolfe, cutting it out like a cancer. And then, impossibly, Valentine straightened up again. A wide hole had been burned through his shirtfront by the energy beam, but there was no trace of a wound anywhere. He smiled his wide crimson smile, his eyes gleaming brightly against the surrounding black makeup. His pale face was ghostly, ghastly, demonic.

  "Nice try, Daniel. Didn't think you had it in you. Dear Daddy would be proud. But the likes of you can't kill me anymore. Not after what I've been given. Finlay Campbell tried the same thing in Tower Shreck. I told you I was immortal. Now; any last questions before I leave? I might even answer them; for old times' sake."

  Daniel realized he was still pointing his disrupter at Valentine, and slowly lowered his arm. If he could keep Valentine talking… Security had to have detected an energy gun discharging inside the Tower… "Did you kill our father, Valentine?"

  "Of course. He was in my way. Yours too, but I knew you and Stephanie would never find the guts to do what needed to be done. Jacob had got old. Worse; he'd got old-fashioned. He never saw the possibilities in a real alliance with Shub. And I never did care for him. He never cared for me."

  "You never gave him cause to."

  "I was his son," said Valentine. "His firstborn, and his heir. And because I chose to follow my own path, rather than the one he'd chosen for me, he disowned me. So I disowned him with a blade in the back, and soon I will disown all Humanity."

  Daniel laughed disbelievingly. He couldn't help himself. "That's it? Everything you've done, all the people you've killed and mean to kill; just because Daddy didn't love you enough? You pitiful long streak of piss."

  Valentine snarled at him, and lunged forward impossibly quickly. He crouched over Daniel, grabbed a handful of his pajama jacket, and pulled Daniel's face close to his. "I know why you've been having nightmares, little brother. I know where you went and what you saw. If you'd asked me nicely, I might even have told you. But now I'll just leave you to your night sweats and your desperate dreams, and I shall take great delight in seeing your face when your nightmare embraces all Humanity. Give my love to Steph. But no tongues. We are Family, after all."

  And then he was gone, air rushing in to fill the space where he'd been. Daniel tried to control his whirling thoughts. Everyone knew Shub had remote control teleportation. That's how they'd got past the Quarantine, and broken out of the Forbidden Sector undetected. S
o, for once, Valentine was probably telling the truth about his new allies. And maybe he did know what had happened on Daniel's quest to find his dead father. Daniel decided it was time to do what was necessary, and to hell with the consequences. He had to find a telepath. An esper powerful enough to dig into his mind, and find the truth. Before his nightmare became Humanity's.

  It was a cold and cloudy day when Jack Random and Ruby Journey came back to Golgotha, homeworld of the Empire. A crowd of reporters huddled together beside the main landing pad, as much to keep warm and pass hip flasks around as to share the latest gossip. Everyone knew what had happened on Loki. They'd all seen the holo footage; seen the bodies hanging from the walls of Vidar. Parliament had sent Random and Ruby to put down a rebellion on Loki. Jack did it by hanging the leaders of both sides, and a great many of their followers too. Public response throughout the Empire was divided. They wanted to see the guilty punished, but by courts and tribunals, not by one man, answerable to no one. After all, who knew when such a man might turn on them? Parliament was predictably outraged, not least because most of the hanged dead were politicians, appointed by Parliament. So they sent a ship to Loki, to pick up Jack Random and Ruby Journey and bring them back to Golgotha, to answer a few very pointed questions. They also sent a small army of guards along, just to make it clear how upset they were.

  The ship had landed over an hour ago, but as yet no one had disembarked. The great hull was still ticking quietly in the cold air as the hot metal slowly cooled. No one on board or in the port control tower was answering any questions. The reporters were beginning to wonder if anyone was left alive on board. It wouldn't have surprised any of the journalists present if Jack Random and Ruby Journey had killed all the guards sent to escort them, and sent the ship home empty.

  The main airlock suddenly began cycling open, and the reporters quickly moved forward to get the best positions facing it, while their hovering cameras fought it out overheard for the best covering angles, often resorting to savage butting contests to establish seniority. The lock remained open for several seconds of silent tension, and then a single guard captain stepped out onto the pad. He nodded tiredly to the journalists, his face grim.

  "Jack Random and Ruby Journey want it to be known that they are not in the best of moods, and will take any intrusive questions as personal insults. Anyone wishing to get really probing should make his next of kin known in advance. They've got a few things they want to say, but you'll have to wait for the rest until after they've spoken to Parliament. Everyone got that?"

  There was a certain amount of confused nodding, and not a few sideways glances, and then Thompson of the Golgotha Times stepped forward. A tall, gangling sort with piercing eyes, he'd covered everything from wars to gossip at Lionstone's Court, and there wasn't much left that frightened him. "A few small queries, Captain. First, why are you acting as their messenger boy, when you and your fellow guards were sent to escort them back in semi-disgrace; and second, shouldn't you be wearing some sort of weapon?"

  The other reporters took in the empty holster and scabbard on the Captain's hips. He cleared his throat unhappily. "Sir Random made us all give up our weapons. He said he found them… distracting."

  While that was still sinking in, a hundred other guards filed silently out of the airlock. None of them were armed, and most of them looked demoralized, upset, and, occasionally, downright twitchy. They all carefully avoided the reporters' gaze as they formed two ranks on either side of the airlock, and then snapped to attention as Jack Random and Ruby Journey finally disembarked. The cameras immediately went for close-ups of their faces, transmitted to the journalists via their comm implants, but the two Maze survivors looked much the same as they always had. Except perhaps a little colder around the eyes. Random and Ruby came to a halt before the assembled press pack, who suddenly had to fight down a collective urge to fall back several yards. The man and woman before them had always felt dangerous, but now there was something about them that was positively disturbing. They had the look of people who were no longer interested in taking prisoners. The reporters looked at the dispirited guards, and swallowed hard. Whatever had happened to so thoroughly upset the guards, the journalists were pretty damn sure they didn't want it happening to them. Random looked them over, unsmiling.

  "Where's Toby Shreck? I thought he'd be here. Only damn journo I ever had any time for."

  Again, only Thompson found a voice to answer with. "He and Flynn are covering the forthcoming royal wedding. He's got exclusive coverage rights."

  "Ah," said Ruby. "They're still going ahead with that constitutional monarch rubbish, are they? How are Constance and Owen?"

  The reporters stirred, and looked at one another. "You haven't heard?" said Thompson.

  "Heard what?" said Ruby. "We've been busy."

  "Owen Deathstalker and Hazel d'Ark are missing, presumed dead," said Thompson slowly. "Constance Wolfe will be marrying Robert Campbell instead."

  The floating cameras whirred in unison as they concentrated on close-ups. Random and Ruby looked at each other.

  "They can't be dead," Random said finally. "They just can't. I'd know… I'm sure I'd know, if they were…"

  "We haven't been mentally linked to either of them for a long time," said Ruby. "We let things drive us apart. But even so, I'm sure we would have felt… something…"

  "They can't be dead," said Random. "They were the best of us."

  "They were bastards!" said a harsh, angry voice. "Just like you!"

  There were sudden shouts and scuffles among the journalists as one of them suddenly produced a gun. He put it to another reporter's head, and she stood very still, the blood draining out of her face. Her fellow journalists quickly fell back, partly to get themselves out of harm's way, and partly to be sure their cameras were getting uninterrupted coverage. This was news. Soon the gunman and his hostage stood alone on the landing pad, his gun pressed tight against the woman's head. The guards looked very much like they wanted to do something, but they had no weapons. The gunman had eyes only for Random and Ruby. He glared at them both, his mouth stretched in a desperate snarl.

  "You try anything and she's dead," he said, almost panting for breath in his intensity. "I'll blow her head clean off her shoulders!"

  "If she dies, you die," said Ruby flatly.

  "You think I care?" said the gunman, and his voice was cold and flat as death.

  "Let's all be very calm about this," said Random. "Ruby; get your hand away from your gun. No one needs to get hurt here."

  "Wrong," said the gunman. "Someone's going to die here today."

  "Better men than you have tried to take us down," said Ruby.

  "Hush, Ruby," said Random. "You're not helping." He moved his hands ostentatiously away from his weapons, keeping his eyes fixed on the gunman. "Let's take this one step at a time. Why don't you start by telling us your name?"

  "You don't know me, do you?"

  "No," said Random. "Should I?"

  "No real reason why you should, I suppose. I was just another soldier, fighting beside you in the streets during the rebellion. Right here in this city. My name is Grey Harding. No one important. Just like all the other poor bastards who died fighting your war."

  "We all lost people we cared for…"

  "Don't give me that crap. Random! You didn't know us. Didn't care about our little lives. We were all just bit players and spear carriers in your great heroic saga. You had the power and the glory; we were just grunts with scavenged weapons. You might love the people as a whole, but in the end you just used people like us, and didn't give a damn whether we lived or died, as long as you and your kind came out on top."

  "It wasn't like that," said Random. "It was a people's rebellion…"

  "I was there! I saw my friends bleed and die, while you went on unscathed!" Harding's voice broke, and for a moment he seemed very near tears. But his anger pushed that aside almost immediately, and his gun never wavered an inch from his hostage's head. "I
never really gave a damn about your war. Whoever's in charge, life for people like me, people at the bottom, never really changes. We marched off to war singing, because we'd been promised a chance to fight beside living legends, and afterwards nothing would ever be the same again. But in the end I saw damn all honor or glory, and most of my family and friends are dead. I saw them fall one by one, fighting strangers on behalf of strangers. And afterwards, when I went home, I found my village had been destroyed in an Empire reprisal raid. Women and children are homeless and starving now, because their menfolk marched off to war and never came back.

  "And after all we paid in blood and suffering and death, nothing's really changed. The same sort of people are still in power. And I… I can't sleep at night. I did… terrible things in the war, just to survive. Terrible things. There are ghosts at my shoulder, with familiar faces. I jump at loud noises, and sometimes I hurt people for no good reason. I don't know who I am anymore. I'm not the man I used to be, and I'm scared of who I've become. So you tell me, Random; what was it all for, really?"

  "I understand how you feel," said Random. "I really do. I've felt the same way, sometimes. But I've learned my lesson. I've come back to Golgotha to clean house. No more deals, no more compromises. I'll put things right, this time, or die trying."

  "Words," said Harding. "You were always good with words, Jack Random."

  "Look, what do you want?" said Ruby. "Money? Publicity? Some kind of ransom for your hostage's life?"

  Harding looked confused for a moment. "No. No; she was just to make sure I had your attention. I had to be sure you'd listen to me." He lowered his gun and pushed the reporter away from him. "Go. Go on; get out of here." He watched disinterestedly as she ran for the safety of her fellow journalists, and nothing moved in his face as he watched Thompson hold her while she cried. He turned back to Random and Ruby, the gun pointed nowhere in particular for the moment. "Now," he said. "Now it's just you and me."