Deathstalker Destiny
The scene changed again to show Captain Cross on the bridge of the Excalibur. His dark face was thoughtful but focused as he studied the course of the battle. Around him was a bedlam of noise as his bridge crew shared information from their stations, and where necessary yelled a running commentary. More crew ran back and forth on urgent errands, their voices high with tension and excitement. Captain Cross gave orders in a calm, professional manner, and only when he was sure he could spare the time did he turn to look out of the viewscreen at Parliament.
“As you can see, we’re rather busy at the moment, so I’ll try and keep this short. We’ve come up with a few new tactics that seem to be bringing us a measure of success at last. The insects are hard to kill, but they have their weaknesses. Battle espers are the key. If we can fight our way close enough to an insect ship, and hold our position long enough, the battle espers can sever the mental link between the ship’s queen and her warrior drones. Without a queen to guide them, they’re just insects, with no purpose of their own. Sitting ducks. The problem is getting close enough without getting our asses shot off in the process.”
His bridge lurched as a workstation exploded in smoke and flames, the screams only just drowned out by the emergency sirens. Somebody hit the station with a foam extinguisher, but the operator was already beyond saving. A security man put the poor bastard out of his misery with a shot to the head. Cross turned away from the screen and studied the instruments before him.
“I’ll have to get back to you later. We’re almost close enough to take out a queen. Or possibly vice versa. Someone will contact you again, once the battle is over. Excalibur out.”
The viewscreen became clear again, taking with it the screams and sirens of the Excalibur‘s bridge.
“Our next report comes from the planet Aquarius Rising,” said Gutman, his voice calm and even. “The Fleet there is dealing with a newly discovered Hadenman Nest on that world.”
The viewscreen now showed E-class starcruisers clashing with golden Hadenmen ships over a large blue world. The infamous golden ships of legend were huge, bigger than cities, but caught in a battle in local space, their size became irrelevant. The firepower of the two types of ship was pretty much equal, and vast destructive energies passed between the heavily shielded vessels. The great ships whirled and clashed, with no quarter asked or given on either side. Humanity would never trust the Hadenmen again. Here and there, broken ships spouting radioactive fires spiraled slowly end over end down toward the planet’s atmosphere and a fiery demise.
The view changed to show D-class starcruisers in low orbit, pounding the exposed Hadenmen Nest with everything they had. Stabbing disrupter beams plunged down through the atmosphere, tearing the shining metal structures apart, and blowing up the energy centers. More scenes came, overlapping views from communication probes dropped by the Empire ships. Hadenmen ran desperately through burning streets, trying to reach their escape ships, only to find them shattered and destroyed on cratered landing pads. The few Hadenmen craft that did manage to get off the ground were blown apart before they even left the atmosphere. Some of the augmented men fought back from unfamiliar weapon stations, and strange energies flew up to shudder against the starcruisers’ shields. But one by one the stations were identified and blown apart by pinpoint disrupter accuracy. Foot by foot, augmented man by augmented man, the Nest was destroyed.
Radiation levels rose dramatically on Aquarius Rising. The air and the water and the earth would be poisonous for centuries. Where the Nest had been there was in the end only a great volcanic crater, spewing dust and smoke and magma high up into the atmosphere. Earthquakes tore across the continent and gave the lands new shapes. The blazing hulks of golden ships fell from the skies like fiery meteors.
Aquarius Rising had been a pleasure world, once. The Empire destroyed it, to save it from the curse of the Hadenman.
“And that was one of our ... victories,” said Elias Gutman, as the screen cleared again. “We’re discovering new Nests all the time. The Hadenmen took good advantage of our misplaced trust to seed themselves all across the Empire. We were fortunate indeed that the Deathstalker and his allies were able to destroy New Haden, before it could become the communications center that would have linked the Nests together. However, only E-class starcruisers have the speed and the firepower to equal the golden ships, and their numbers have never been more limited than now. And if I hear one voice saying Build more, I’ll have that person dragged outside and shot. The factories are running day and night as it is. Next up, we have a report on how the ground wars are going against Shub’s forces on the outer worlds.”
The screen revealed a montage of swiftly changing images, showing great armies of Imperial marines clashing with equally large armies of Ghost Warriors, Furies, and Grendels; the Legions of the dead and the damned. Swords flashed and energy weapons flared, and the dead and the dying lay everywhere. The marines fought bravely, often to the last man, but their victories were few and far between. Often the best they could manage was a bloody standing action, holding their ground in the desperate hope of reinforcements. The marines had to burn their own dead to prevent Shub raising them again as Ghost Warriors. Battle espers were the Empire’s only match for the machines in the form of men, the Furies, but there weren’t enough of them to go around. Rushed from one danger point to the next, with never any time to rest, they died by inches from fatigue and overstraining of their powers, but still fighting bravely for as long as they could.
No one was stupid enough to face the Grendels head on. The scarlet devils swarmed unstoppably forward on all fronts, killing every living thing they encountered. The marines’ current best tactics involved using themselves as bait to lure the Grendels into an enclosed space, and then blowing the whole area sky high with previously placed explosives. Unfortunately, the Grendels were very hard to kill. Sometimes the charges did the job, and sometimes they didn‘t, and either way there always seemed to be more of the crimson aliens to replace those who fell.
“And just to further complicate things,” said Gutman, “the Grendels seem to be throwing off their Shub controls, and attacking the Shub forces as well as ours. This was considered good news, until it was discovered the yoked Grendels we’d been using as advance troops were also rejecting their conditioning, and turning on our troops. The Grendels are becoming wild cards in this war; completely unpredictable. There’s also some evidence that the Grendels have been showing signs of increasing intelligence. Apparently the harder you hit them, the faster they adapt to meet the new conditions.”
The viewscreen went blank. The MPs and honored guests looked at one another, but no one seemed to have anything to say. Gutman looked out over the packed crowd till his eyes fell on Jack Random and Ruby Journey, and then he gestured for them to approach him. They did so, taking their time about it. People still hurried to fall back out of their way. Random and Ruby were used to respect, but naked fear was new to them. Ruby quite liked it.
Eventually they came to a halt before Elias Gutman on his raised dais, and he looked down on them with all the authority he could muster. “Well?” he said heavily. “Do either of you have any comments you’d care to make on what we’ve just seen?”
“We’re getting our ass kicked,” said Ruby. “We’re outnumbered, outgunned, and using outdated tactics. Either we get our act together soon, or the whole damned human Empire will be nothing more than a footnote in Something Else’s history books.”
“Diplomatic as ever, Ruby,” murmured Random. “Though essentially accurate. Gutman; we can’t face this many enemies on so many scattered fronts. We’re potentially a match for any one of our enemies, maybe even including Shub, but dispersed as we are we’re too ineffective to achieve any real victories. Our only real hope is to get our enemies fighting each other ...”
“We’re working on it,” said Gutman. “In the meantime, however, we need a secret weapon. Something powerful enough to reverse our losses and buy us valuable time to work out
new tactics.”
“You’re talking about the Darkvoid Device,” said Random coldly. “And the answer’s still no. Some cures are worse than the disease.”
“If you’d allow me to finish, Sir Random, I was about to say we need you and Ruby Journey. Your Maze powers have so far proved superior to everything that’s been thrown at you. So; if you will agree to fight on the front lines, as Humanity’s defenders, Parliament is prepared to offer you both official Pardons for the crimes and atrocities you perpetrated on the planet Loki, against the rightly appointed government there.”
“I gave all the orders,” said Random. “The responsibility is all mine. But since I’ve done nothing wrong, your offer of a Pardon is basically irrelevant. I’m proud of what I did on Loki. Still, much as I hate to agree with you on anything, you’re right on one thing. We are needed. We might just be able to tip the balance. And with Owen and Hazel gone, we’re the last of the Maze people. We have a duty to use our powers in the defense of Humanity.”
“Hold everything,” said Ruby in an aside, “what’s all this we stuff? I’ve never admitted to a single obligation in my whole life, and I’m not about to start now.”
“You mean you don’t want to fight the bad guys?” Random asked, turning to her.
“Of course I want to fight! I always want to fight! I just like to be asked, that’s all.”
“I’ll ask you later. Over several large drinks. For now just follow my lead, nod and smile in the right places, and concentrate on planning some really nasty tactics we can use against the bad guys, while I deal with Gutman.”
“Why can’t I deal with Gutman?”
“Because you’d lose your temper in under two minutes and kill him horribly.”
“Good point.”
And then the viewscreen suddenly came to life again, with a new report coming in. Gutman frowned as he listened to something on a secure channel on his comm implant. “We’re getting live feed from ... Virgil III, the latest planet infected with the new plague. No ships are allowed past high orbit, but they’ve sent down probes to take a look at what’s happening.”
Automated probes swept through the streets of what had once been a human city. The air was full of inhuman screams and shrieks and howls. No transport was running, though some automated machinery continued here and there, to no purpose anymore. Some buildings had been set on fire by their occupants, and thick black smoke drifted on the disturbed air. And in the streets, running or stumbling or crawling—monsters. Things that had once been people, but were no longer. Men and women had been transformed by the plague into nightmare shapes of jutting bone and hideously stretched skin. Strange new organs had formed on the outside of their bodies, black and pulsing, with inhuman properties and purposes. Long curving horns strung with strings of neurons glistened on elongated heads, and legs had three or four joints. Human growth gone mad, without restraint or reason. Monsters lurched and stumbled through the streets, with insect eyes and too many limbs, tormented by inhuman hungers and desires. They growled and slobbered and cried in unknown languages, using sounds beyond or beneath human comprehension. Occasionally a long tentacle would whip up from a shadowed alleyway to snatch a probe from the air and crush it.
Some of Virgil III’s people had progressed even beyond that. After the monsters came the next, and most feared, stage of the plague: meltdown. The body lost all shape and structure, collapsing into liquid, protoplasmic goo. There were whole cities now on abandoned worlds where nothing moved but great tides and rivers of accumulated slime; whole populations reduced to little more than massive amoebas.
That was the new plague, the transformation disease, and its inevitable end. There was no cure, no idea as to its origin or nature or how it spread. The only effective answer was planetary quarantine. So far, seven planets had had to be abandoned to their fate. Volunteers had gone in to help, protected by impenetrable energy screens. Most went mad. The plague appeared spontaneously, with no obvious cause or carriers, and no clear link with any of the other affected planets. An unnatural disease, of tech run wild; nanotech. Individual machines the size of molecules, that could remake a living organism from within. The one technology too awful and too dangerous even for the old Empire to use.
The viewscreen shut down, and the monsters thankfully disappeared. No one felt like saying anything. Some people were being sick. Random frowned.
“There’s no question this is nanotech?”
“None,” said Gutman.
“Then the answer’s obvious. Someone has to reopen Zero Zero.”
The people around him flinched back from the last two words as though he’d spat at them. Some made the sign of the cross. Zero Zero was the world used in the Empire’s first tentative experiments with nanotech, hundreds of years earlier. It all went terribly wrong, terribly quickly. The nanotech somehow escaped the confines of the scientific Base, and ran wild. The whole population of colonists was wiped out, the entire natural order of the planet was transformed and violated in terrifying ways, and the last few scientists left in the Base, locked in their isolation chamber, died screaming for help that never came. Zero Zero was quarantined, and nanotech was banned. Officially. Random was one of the few people who knew Lionstone had briefly dabbled in nanotech, in an isolated lab on the planet Vodyanoi IV. The lab had self-destructed, under mysterious circumstances, and that put an end to that.
Even Lionstone had enough sense to be afraid of nanotech.
“Nanotech is forbidden,” said Gutman slowly. “And with good reason. If what happened on Zero Zero had got offplanet ...”
“But it didn’t. So its secrets should still be intact. If we want an answer to the nanotech plague, Zero Zero is the only place we might hope to find one.”
“Are you volunteering to go there, Sir Random?”
“Hell, no. I’m not crazy. But I can think of one brave, honorable, and very dutiful Captain who might just be crazy enough to do it.”
“Of course,” said Gutman. “The good Captain Silence. Currently on his way to the Darkvoid. He shouldn’t be too upset by a chance to put that off by stopping somewhere else first. And the good captain has always been a most ... dutiful man.”
“Not to mention expendable,” said Random.
“Best not to,” agreed Gutman. He looked out at his audience, who by now were hanging on his every word. “Just to reassure everyone that the best scientific minds in the Empire haven’t been entirely idle concerning this matter, I can also tell you they have established contact with a small scientific group on Wolf IV, a hellworld right out on the edge of the Rim. The hellsquad assigned to investigate this new world apparently discovered an ancient race of shape-changing aliens, whose nature might also be based around nanotech. Always best to have more than one iron in the fire ... Now, let us move on to the next item on the agenda.”
“You mean that bit of paper in your hand, covered in your usual indecipherable scrawl?” said Random. “Since when did you start deciding the House’s agenda?”
“Ever since things got so busy around here that the House didn’t have time,” said Gutman tartly. “There is a war on, you now. Several wars, to be exact. We haven’t all been hiding out on backwater planets.”
“Hiding out?” said Ruby dangerously.
“The next item,” said Gutman, “concerns the dragon’s teeth; people who supposedly lost their minds in the computer Matrix, and now have only Shub’s thoughts in their heads. An army of Shub spies, walking undetected among us.”
“There’s no supposed about it,” said Random.
“There’s been no actual evidence to support the theory yet.”
“Only because you won’t allow the espers to run random tests on the population,” said Ruby, just to show she was keeping up with the argument.
“Would you let an esper scan your mind?” said Gutman.
Ruby shrugged. “Wouldn’t bother me. Of course, how they coped with what they found there would be their problem. My head’s a weird pla
ce these days.”
“It always was,” said Random generously.
Ruby gave him a hard look. “Guess who’s sleeping on the couch tonight?”
“Esper scans are vital,” said a new, harsh voice, and everyone turned to look. Most of them then wished they hadn‘t, as Diana Vertue strode through the packed House, the crowd falling back to open up a narrow aisle for her. It had been a while since the short, scowling blond woman had gone by the name Jenny Psycho, but enough of her old malevolent persona still crackled about her to push back even the most tightly packed crowd. No one wanted to get too close to a human time bomb. She came to a halt beside Random, gave him a quick nod, and then glared up at Gutman, who looked uneasy for the first time. Diana gave him her best disturbing smile.
“Listen to me, fat man; it’s essential this House authorizes the mass screening of the population by the esper fraternity, right damn now. There are too many people walking about who probably aren’t people anymore. We’re talking dragon’s teeth, Ghost Warriors, Furies, and maybe even shape-changing aliens. Remember that crazy thing we discovered masquerading as human in Lionstone’s Court? Just because we haven’t heard from it since doesn’t mean it isn’t still out there somewhere, plotting mischief. Shub has remote control teleportation. It could have planted any number of disguised agents here on homeworld, and the only sure way we have of rooting them out is mind scanning. Set up booths in every city, and require people to walk past them twice a day. Computer records will spot anyone who tries to dodge. Of course, all private and public esp-blockers will have to be destroyed.”
“Oh, of course,” said Gutman. “And that’s what this is really all about. You want all esp-blockers to be destroyed, because they’re the only defense normal people have against espers’ invasion of their thoughts.”