"Show yourself, or I'll blow a hole right through you. I mean it."
"Of course you do," said Valentine Wolfe, appearing out of nowhere right where her gun was aimed. Dressed as always in deepest black, his face was white as bone, save for the dark mascaraed eyes and scarlet smile. His long dark hair fell to his shoulders in oiled ringlets. He carried a sword and a gun on his hips, but his slender-fingered hands were empty. He looked utterly at ease, and as dangerous as a coiled serpent, ready to strike at any moment. There was something else about him too; an unhealthy aura that grated on Ruby's expanded senses. She could feel the hackles rising very slowly on the back of her neck. Valentine smiled at her winningly.
"I'm impressed, bounty hunter. No one else can see me, unless I want them to. I do so envy you your wonderful Maze abilities, my dear. I have only a minor telepathic skill or two, courtesy of the esper drug. Still; who knows what the future holds, eh?"
"What are you doing here, Wolfe?" Ruby said flatly. "Looking for Random?"
"Why no, my dear. I know where he is. He made an alliance with my Shub colleagues, and he has gone where they sent him."
"You're crazy! Jack would never ally with Shub!"
"Oh, you'd be surprised what a man will do, when his back's against the wall. Still, not to worry. You can serve Shub too, in your own way. My good friends the rogue AIs have asked me to bring you to them. You fascinate them. Your powers, your abilities. The amazing things that only you and your Maze associates can do. They want those things too, and one way or another they're determined to dig them out of you. If I'm very good, they might let me watch. Now; is there any chance you're sensible enough to come quietly, and avoid unnecessary violence?"
"Guess," said Ruby Journey, and shot him through the heart.
The energy beam punched right through the Wolfe's chest and out his back. He gasped once, and fell to his knees, his head hanging forward. At the last moment, his hands slapped against the hard concrete floor, stopping his fall. He slowly raised his head to look at Ruby, and he was smiling. His mouth was a great scarlet gash, like an open wound, but not a drop of blood showed. He got to his feet again, not hurrying, and the hole in his chest was already gone. Behind the hole burned in his black shirt, there was only pale, unmarked flesh. Ruby blinked a few times.
"Impressive," she said finally. "You've learned a new trick, Wolfe. Dammit; doesn't anyone stay dead when you shoot them anymore?"
"It does seem that way sometimes, doesn't it?" said Valentine easily. "Finlay Campbell thought he could kill me that way too. He's going to be so surprised when I show up to tear the heart out of his chest."
"Finlay Campbell's dead."
"No. Merely resting. Some days the Empire seems to be positively crawling with people who should be dead. Superhumans and heroes and monsters, of one kind or another. Bad time to be just a man, as other men. My own invulnerability comes from nanotech. Shub introduced the busy little things into my system, and now nothing can damage me for long. Age will not wither me, nor time destroy me. I shall live ages, and do terrible things to keep myself amused. If the Devil didn't exist before, he does now."
"You always were full of yourself, Wolfe," said Ruby Journey, unmoved. "Shub might have promised you these things, but you can't trust Shub. Better first to put faith in fairness from life, or mercy from the tiger. Or from me."
"There's really no point in fighting," said Valentine. "You can't hurt me, but I can hurt you. The AIs would prefer a living captive to experiment on, but they'll settle for a body to dissect, if need be. It's really up to you. Your choice."
"I choose neither," said Ruby. She put away her gun and drew her sword. "Let's see how immortal you are after I've cut you into a dozen pieces."
She sprang forward, swinging her sword with both hands, and the Wolfe's blade was immediately in just the right place to block it. Ruby immediately disengaged and attacked again, boosting her strength and speed to their limits. The two of them dueled back and forth across the concrete floor, thrusting and parrying and slicing in the confined space of the lockup. Sparks flew as their blades slammed together again and again. Valentine was strong and fast, but Ruby was the better fighter. She cut him again and again, and even ran him through twice, but no blood flowed, and his scarlet smile never once wavered. She wasn't hurting him, and both of them knew it. He was just letting her tire herself out. And when her strength and stamina finally reached their end, he would hurt her just enough to weaken her, and then bind her securely. A gift-wrapped present for his new masters.
Ruby could feel herself slowing fractionally already, as they stamped back and forth in the lockup, kicking boxes and provisions out of their way. Her mind raced furiously, coming up with one plan after another, discarding them more and more desperately, until one final possibility suggested itself. For Ruby, to think was to act, and she put all her boosted strength into one parry, slamming the Wolfe's sword aside. And while he stood momentarily unbalanced and undefended, Ruby gripped her sword with both hands and brought it flashing round in a great, unstoppable arc. The heavy steel blade sheared right through Valentine's neck. The head fell backward, still holding its last startled expression, and blood fountained up out of the severed neck, splashing against the low ceiling overhead.
Ruby lowered her sword and leaned on it, panting for breath, her chest heaving. It had been a long time since she'd been pressed that hard in a fight. Sweat ran down her face and stung in her eyes. Valentine's head rolled slowly across the floor, until it bumped up against a crate of grenades. And it was only then that Ruby realized the headless body showed no signs of falling. It stood squarely on its own two feet, still facing her, still holding its sword in its hand. The chest was still working, and she could hear its breath bubbling in the open throat. The hackles on the back of her neck were standing up so stiffly it was almost painful, and gooseflesh covered her arms, as the body turned unhurriedly, bent over, and picked up its head. The arm held the severed head out on a level with her face, so she could see it smiling, the eyes bright and aware and knowing, and then the body replaced its head on its neck. The blood flow cut off in a second, and the wound vanished. Valentine Wolfe was whole again, and very much alive.
"Good to be back," he said easily. "Did you miss me?"
Ruby didn't wait to see any more. She called up her fire, blasted the nearest crate of explosives, and threw herself out the open lockup door, rolling to one side tucked into a ball with her hands over her ears. The explosives all went off at once, painfully loud, and a great blast of fire and heated gasses came boiling out the lockup door, close enough to singe Ruby's clothes and hair. The ground shook beneath her as more explosives went off. She scrambled to her feet and ran as fast as her feet would carry her. Behind her, the entire row of lockup garages was a mass of flames, leaping high into the night, accompanied by a loud rumble of collapsing brickwork. Ruby didn't know how long it would take the Shub nanos to put the Wolfe back together again, or what he might look like afterward, but she was sure she wasn't curious enough to stick around and find out. It was a long time since she'd had to run from a fight, but survival was more important than honor, and besides, no one was paying her to kill Valentine Wolfe. Her job was to find Jack Random, and she'd already established he wasn't in the lockup. Ruby scowled as she ran. Random, allied with Shub? Was the whole universe going mad?
Jack Random appeared deep in the shining metal bowels of Lionstone's old Palace, and immediately began to shudder violently at the cold. Extremes of temperature didn't normally bother him much these days, but the air here was bitter cold, barely above zero. The freezing air seared his lungs as he breathed it, and he could already feel hoarfrost forming on his bare face and hands. He pulled his cloak tightly about him, and gritted his teeth to stop them from chattering. His unsteady breath steamed thickly on the air before him. He looked around him, but there was only the featureless metal walls of an unremarkable corridor. He could have been anywhere in the Palace.
"Lionstone?
" he said loudly. "You still with me?"
Of course, she said immediately, her voice cool and familiar in his ears. Welcome to my old home. Shub has teleported you as close to the hidden crypt as possible. Their abilities are limited here. There are strange powers at work in this place, old machineries still active in the crypt, even after all these centuries. Watch your step.
"Now she tells me. Why is it so bloody cold here?"
Parliament shut my Palace down, said Lionstone. You should remember. You authorized it. Said it was too vile a symbol to be allowed to endure, and should be systematically dismantled and destroyed at the first opportunity.
Only you've all been so very busy recently, what with one thing and another, that no one ever got around to starting the job. They did shut down the generators, though, to save money. Shub has managed to restore some power, but only in this immediate vicinity. We don't want our little visit to be noticed, after all.
"This job just gets better and better," said Random. "Talk to me, Lionstone; what can I expect to encounter, between here and the crypt?"
The very best booby traps I could devise. I'll talk you through them as best I can. How to deal with the stasis field enveloping the crypt is entirely your problem. But you'd better find a way in, Jack, if you expect Shub to teleport you back out again.
"Typical Shub. Never pass up a chance to make a threat, and prove you're in control of the situation. For supposedly sophisticated AIs, they can be surprisingly insecure at times. Now point me in the right direction, before I freeze solid."
Walk ahead of you till the passage branches, then bear left. It's not far to the first nasty surprise.
Random sniffed, and set off down the metal corridor. There was only a bare minimum of lighting after the passage branched, and shadows moved menacingly around him, possibly concealing all manner of things. The air was still and silent, the only sound the soft slapping of his boots against the smooth metal floor. Random moved lightly, not too fast and not too slow, ready to jump for his life at a moment's intuition. All his instincts were yelling at him that this was a trap, but he'd known that going in. He was betting his instincts and his skills against anything Lionstone's twisted mind could throw at him.
The walls looked solid, the floor and ceiling too. Didn't mean a thing. Lionstone's little surprises would be as subtle and vicious as she had been. When she was still human. He felt the floor give just a little under his leading foot, and immediately threw himself forward, tucking his body into a roll that brought him straight back to his feet again. Behind him, long metal spikes had burst out of the walls from both sides; barbed spears that would have skewered him if he'd been an instant slower. Random smiled and shook his head, and padded on. Kids' stuff.
In swift succession, he encountered several more such: Trapdoors that opened onto deep pits with spiked floors waiting at the bottom. Guns and gasses from concealed vents in the walls. Even a few old-fashioned bear traps with vicious metal jaws. Lionstone warned him about some, but not about others. Probably just to see him go through his paces. Make sure he hadn't got soft. At least the exercise warmed him up a bit. Next came the ultrasonics, the subsonics, and various nasty light shows that would have disorientated, brainwashed, or brainburned any normal burglar into a drooling idiot. Random just walked right through them. By the time he finally got to the stasis field, he was actually starting to feel a little bored, but the sight of the opaque gray energy field blocking off the end of the corridor jolted him out of that mood in a hurry. Stasis fields were trouble.
Inside a stasis field, time does not move. Whatever lay within was preserved for as long as the field continued, like an insect in a drop of amber. You couldn't affect the field by any physical means because, strictly speaking, the field wasn't really there. It just marked the real world interface between the two time periods, within and without. Random once asked a renowned scientist to explain that, and the best part of an hour and one serious headache later, Random was still none the wiser. Which was a pity, because it meant he had no idea whatsoever on how to get through the field before him. Particularly if, as he suspected, the field was the result of old Empire technology. Random stared at the field, frowning, for some time.
Do we have a problem? said Lionstone, finally.
"Possibly," said Random. "How did you get in, when you needed to?"
Handprint and retina scan, along with a voice code, via the security panel to your right. Dram set it up for me. The original Dram. But since I no longer have access to my body… Need I add that the system is designed to crash and scramble itself if tampered with?
"Handprint. Retina scan. Voice code." Random glared at the security panel. He could do a lot of things, but shapechanging wasn't one of them. And Lionstone's late departed body had been destroyed long ago. Ritually cremated, while the crowds cheered themselves hoarse, just in case anyone got any smart ideas about cloning. The security panel itself looked to be state of the art and then some. Random was pretty sure even Hazel would have had real trouble with it. He thought hard, scowling fiercely till his brow ached. Something was stirring at the back of his thoughts; something someone had said earlier… in the sea of dreams.
Hazel had said that all Time could be accessed through the undermind. Past, present, and future. So if he sent his mind back into the sea of dreams, and chose when to come out… He shivered abruptly, and it wasn't from the cold. Get this wrong, lose control, and he could become unstuck in Time, drifting helplessly back and forth for all eternity… He'd taken risks before when he needed to, but nothing like this. But then, it wasn't as if he had a choice. So he took a deep breath, squared his shoulders, and dived down into his own mind, through the backbrain and into the undermind.
He stayed just long enough to orientate himself (the endless sea, the brooding presence of Shub, the huge black sun of the Recreated), and then he concentrated on defining his position in Time. Many times before he'd felt his thoughts moving in strange directions, when he used his Maze powers, but this was something new, and altogether terrifying. Past, present, and future all howling at once, flashing past, stuttering and repeating, branching endlessly into varied possibilities. He saw old friends, long dead, and familiar faces, wars on Mistworld and Golgotha, saw himself fighting in crowded streets, fighting and bleeding, winning and dying, over and over again. Owen Deathstalker came to him and tried to tell him something important, and then was gone away, swept away by the relentless pressure of Time.
Random screamed. He could feel himself unraveling, torn in an infinite number of directions at once. Random made himself concentrate on the crypt, that bubble held in Time by ancient energies, focusing all his will and need into a single implacable thrust. Time roared and threw him out, and he fell endlessly in a moment that seemed to last forever, before he finally emerged into that moment of time sustained within the stasis field.
He fell to his knees on a thick pile carpet, shaking and shuddering, and for a time all he could do was lie there while his thoughts slowly came together again. At last he sat up, and looked around him. The chamber was about the size of a standard Family mausoleum, with a single bed where the coffin should have been. Various mechanisms he didn't recognize filled the rest of the chamber, none of which he felt like meddling with. Random was touched by an uncommon sense of wonder. Here, the man called Dram had slept through the centuries, chasing his father down the many years, all in the name of hate.
Random knew the basic story. Everyone did. The original Deathstalker, Giles, had a son whose name was now lost in time. He betrayed his father, or was betrayed by him, depending on which version of the story you believed, and vowed a terrible vengeance. Somehow he discovered his father had placed himself in stasis, and arranged the same fate for himself, to wait until his father should reemerge. So he could have another chance at killing him. Only Lionstone found him first. Awakened him, probably not with a kiss, and made him her man. He took the name Dram, and became the Empress's official Widowmaker, just to keep busy t
ill his father reappeared. And when Giles did, son followed father into his Family's greatest triumph and tragedy: the Darkvoid. Dram died there, on the Wolfling World, and everyone assumed Dram's chances for revenge on the Family and Empire he hated died with him. But Random could bring Dram's dark dreams back to life again, if he chose. Who knew what terrible knowledge, what awful weapons, could be retrieved from this old Empire crypt, to be used by Shub against Humanity?
"Lionstone?" said Random. "Can you hear me? Lionstone!"
There was no reply, and Random smiled and relaxed just a little. The crypt was in another time, as far as Shub was concerned. Lionstone would have to wait till Random emerged again to question him. Which was what he'd privately hoped. He'd never had any intention of handing anything over to Shub that could be used against Humanity. He might be an outlaw, but he hadn't gone mad. He was here looking for hope in forgotten old Empire tech. A cure for the nanotech plague perhaps, or powerful weapons that could be used against Shub and the Recreated. Or even by himself, in his continuing war against corrupt authority.
He set about searching methodically through the various forms of high tech scattered through Dram's old crypt. Some were clearly responsible for maintaining the stasis field. Others were variations on existing tech, slightly behind or ahead of current thinking. Some he couldn't recognize at all, either in design or function. But there were no obvious weapons, and nothing that even suggested nanotech. So; no cure, after all. No mighty weapons to save the day. Random sighed tiredly. He would have liked to have been able to save Humanity one last time. If only to rub their noses in it, to prove they couldn't manage without him. An unworthy thought, perhaps, but what the hell.