Deathstalker Coda

  Men, women, and children lay dead and dying in the streets, and the Church Militant soldiers marched right over them. Fires burned brightly against the dark, and explosions sounded in the night like the heavy footfalls of an avenging God. Anywhere else in the city there would have been nothing but panic, and people running blindly, but this was the Rookery, and the people here were made of harder stuff. Word passed quickly of the invasion, and all too soon the Church Militant advance ground to a halt in the face of implacable opposition. Men, women, and children came running from all directions to block the invaders' way, all of them armed with some kind of weapon. More people gathered on the roofs, to rain down debris on the enemy. There were snipers with energy guns at the higher windows, and fast-footed youths darted out of alleyways with improvised grenades.

  In the Rookery it was truly said: Any man against his neighbor, but every man against the outsider.

  Douglas, Stuart, and Nina worked tirelessly through the endless hours of the morning, organizing the rebel forces, sending people to fight where they were most needed. Diana Vertue and the Psycho Sluts struck the armed forces again and again, darting in and out in vicious hit-and-run tactics, leaving death and destruction in their wake. Even some of the aliens emerged onto the streets, for a chance to strike back at their persecutors.

  The Rookery rose up, combined at last into a single great force with a single aim. The Emperor had made himself their enemy, a threat to their homes and their lives, and they would never rest again till they had brought him down. The people surged through the streets, throwing themselves at the invaders in wave after wave, howling a hundred different battle cries in a single enraged voice. The end result of generations of people who had had to fight for everything in their lives. Guns blazed and swords flashed, and the Church Militant soldiers fell in their dozens, and then in their hundreds, and finally in their thousands. The people of the Rookery came from everywhere at once, to drag the fanatics down by sheer force of numbers. The Rookery rose up, savage and unrelenting, and all in a moment the invasion became a rout. The Church Militant abandoned their weapons, their orders, and their faith in Finn and themselves, and in ragged groups they ran for the Rookery boundaries. Of the hundreds of thousands of proud and arrogant zealots who'd marched into the Rookery, only a few hundred made it out alive.

  Nina Malapert got a lot of it on film, and broadcast every bit of it on her rogue news site, with the tech team using all their ingenuity to keep it on the air for as long as possible. All over Logres, and on worlds across the Empire, people watched as Finn's authority was challenged, and thrown back in his face. They saw the blood and the bodies, and whole families slaughtered by the Church Militant troops, and then they watched as Douglas Campbell and Stuart Lennox fought back to back against impossible odds, and never had those two looked more like heroes.

  Finn's censors shut down the broadcast, eventually, and there was nothing left but blank screens, all across the Empire.

  In the Rookery, the people gathered up their dead, treated the wounded as best they could, and put out the fires. They didn't feel much like celebrating. But at least now there was no doubt over whose side they were on. They stopped pursuing the troops at the boundaries only because Douglas sent messages to call them back. He knew they weren't ready to go head-to-head with Finn's armies. Not yet. Hot tempers subsided into cold, bitter anger as the people of the Rookery counted their dead and added up the damage. And hard-hearted and harder-headed men and women, who would never have come together for something as nebulous as a cause, now found themselves united in an aching hunger for revenge.

  And on worlds all across the Empire, and most especially on Logres, people regarded their blank viewscreens, and looked at the Emperor Finn and his shock troops in a whole new way.

  Finn was furious. He raged back and forth in his palace communications center, trying to summon up more troops, but most of his armed forces were posted as occupation troops in cities all across Logres. It would take hours to bring them all to the Parade of the Endless, and then, who would control the cities they left?… Finn had attack sleds, battle wagons, and even starcruisers at his disposal, but again it would take hours to call them in. Finn kicked out at the furniture—and any of his staff who didn't get out of his way fast enough. He couldn't understand how it had all gone wrong so quickly. How a rabble of outcasts and criminals could have wiped out his elite troops so easily.

  Douglas. It had to be Douglas.

  Finn drove everyone else out of the comm center, and called on the ELFs for help. A large enough army of thralls might yet save the day for him. Suicide troops, driven on by outside minds, could still overrun the Rookery's defenses. But none of the ELF leaders, or the uber-espers, would take his calls. Finn sat down slowly in the empty room, his thoughts whirling madly, unable to settle. For the first time in a long time, he wasn't the one driving events, and he didn't know what to do. He must have missed something, but what? What?

  In the end, after it had been quiet for too long, the comm staff sent for Joseph Wallace. He calmed everyone down as best he could, with soothing words and rousing platitudes, and then he stuck his head gingerly round the door of the comm center. Finn was still sitting in his chair, thinking, ignoring flashing message lights on consoles all around him. Joseph decided this wasn't the moment to inform Finn that uprisings were breaking out on planets all across the Empire, inspired by what people had seen happening in the Rookery. Joseph gently closed the door, and quietly began giving orders in Finn's name. Security people came and went, putting together a depressing picture of what was happening everywhere at once. Joseph authorized vicious reprisals and clampdowns, but as fast as rebellion was slapped down in one place, it sprang up in another.

  Alarms sounded in the comm center, but Finn turned them off. The noise made his head hurt, and he needed to think.

  If he'd known what was going on with the ELF leaders and the uber-espers, Finn would have been even more disturbed. Behind the scenes, an even more bitter struggle was going on, with no quarter asked or given. The ELF leaders and the uber-espers had finally erupted into open war over who controlled the movement. Both sides had been secretly amassing great armies of thralls, to feed their power and back their play, and after what had happened in the Rookery both sides had decided that the time had come to break free from Finn, and go their own way.

  It was an esper war, fought on mental battlegrounds, largely unnoticed by the rest of the world at first, but nonetheless vicious and deadly for all that. The huge thrall armies were living power sources, reservoirs of mental energy that both sides could tap into as they fought their war. Telepathic battles raged back and forth as minds clashed with minds, on eerie inhuman landscapes created just for that purpose. Minds crashed and splintered, and esper attacks sometimes spilled over into the material world, in outbreaks of weird weather and probability fluctuations. Psi storms sleeted through the surrounding areas, destroying all unshielded minds in their paths. The two sides raged back and forth, neither strong enough to entirely overwhelm the other. But neither side would back down, and so the psionic pressure built and built, until finally the energies spiraled entirely out of control and blew one whole section of the Parade of the Endless apart in an explosion so loud and bright the echoes could be felt all over Logres. (Finn later blamed the explosion on rebel saboteurs. Because he had to say something.)

  The esper battle ended in a stalemate, with neither side gaining or losing ground, and so both sides retreated to lick their psychic wounds, and prepare for future battles. Both the ELF leaders and the uber-espers were determined to stand alone now, and follow their own destiny. They didn't need Finn anymore. They would rule Humanity on their own terms, and to hell with all alliances of convenience.

  Finn crushed the uprisings, eventually. It cost him time and money and manpower, far more than he could afford, but he had no choice. He had to maintain control. Planet by planet, city by city, the rebellions were stamped out with gun and steel, and
a slow sullen silence fell across the Empire, every bit of it now under strict martial law. Rebel bodies hung from lampposts in their hundreds, in every city, and heavily armed and armored troops walked the city streets, looking nervously over their shoulders.

  The Rookery was strictly off-limits. No one went in, and no one came out.

  Finn was more worried about the loss of his ELF allies. None of them would talk to him anymore, and all his contacts seemed to have disappeared underground. He'd relied upon their support for too long; his spy organizations were lost without their telepathically gained intelligence. Finn told Joseph Wallace that production of esp-blockers was now to have priority over everything else, but couldn't explain why. Unfortunately, it turned out you couldn't manufacture esp-blockers without the required esper brain tissues, and the cloning of esper tissues had always had a high failure rate. So mass production was going to be a slow, time-consuming process. (Joseph delivered that message over the comm, from a safe distance. He still didn't entirely trust Finn's temper.)

  The Emperor had other problems too. He went to see Elijah du Katt, in his new laboratory set within the palace. (Finn had decided to keep his remaining allies close at hand, wherever possible.) There was only one du Katt these days. The Elijahs had tried to assemble their own power base and a new clone underground, and Finn couldn't have that, so he personally shot all the Elijah du Katts except one. He neither knew nor cared whether the remaining du Katt was the original or not. It didn't really matter.

  Ostensibly Finn was visiting du Katt to discuss the problems of cloning esper brain tissues, but as always Finn had an ulterior motive. The recent uprisings had demonstrated very clearly that he had a shortage of manpower, especially now that he didn't have the thralls to back him up any longer. He needed soldiers—armed men who would do what they were told without question. And he didn't have the time to find and train and indoctrinate them. So, the obvious answer was an army of clones. To produce such an army would require a huge protein base, but luckily there was no shortage of dead bodies lying around, just waiting to be put to good use. And this new army would be programmed to know no fear, and absolutely no independence. They wouldn't turn and run, like those so-called zealots he'd sent into the Rookery. Finn's blood still boiled at the thought of his men running from a bunch of outcasts and cheap grifters. He would have cheerfully called in his fleet and scorched the whole area from orbit, but there was no way of doing that without taking out the whole of the Parade of the Endless. He was still thinking about it, though.

  Finn expounded his plans for a new clone army at some length to the sole remaining and somewhat subdued du Katt. He strode up and down between the shining brand-new equipment, his ideas growing more extravagant by the moment. Du Katt just sat there, shaking his head slowly, until Finn told him to stop it. Du Katt wrung his hands together in front of him to stop them from shaking.

  "To produce the number of clones you require, on the time scale you propose, presents us with… certain difficulties, that no amount of tech or funding will overcome. Your Majesty, the end product will almost certainly be… damaged goods."

  "Be specific," said Finn, fiddling with a nearby piece of delicate and expensive equipment, just to watch du Katt flinch and twitch.

  "Well, Your Majesty, the end product will almost certainly have physical defects, including but not limited to, a certain amount of brain damage."

  "Sounds like a plan to me," said Finn. "Soldiers too stupid to rebel, and too dumb to do anything but follow orders. I can live with that. I'll take two million, to begin with. And use the cell samples I brought as the base for their genetic structure."

  "Whose cells are they?" said du Katt.

  "Mine, of course," said Finn. "I have decided I want children. Lots and lots of them." He laughed, and clapped the shaking du Katt on the shoulder. "Congratulate me! I'm going to be a father!"

  * * *

  His next visit was to another laboratory he'd had moved to the palace, for security reasons. The owner hadn't wanted to move, but it's amazing how persuasive a gun pointed at the groin can be. And so, that renowned drug dealer, alchemist, and complete head case Dr. Happy now worked exclusively for Finn, in a brand-new lab with every convenience money could buy. Much to the sorrow of his many other customers. It had to be said that Dr. Happy wasn't entirely the man he'd once been, before his long sojourn on Haden, in the proximity of the Madness Maze. But there was no denying he still possessed the most unique scientific mind in the Empire. And these days the good doctor labored tirelessly on a single project: the rebuilding of Anne Barclay.

  Anne had been very nearly killed by the wreckage that fell on her during Douglas Campbell's daring escape through the roof of the court. Anyone else probably would have died, given how long it took to get her to a regeneration tank. But the tank kept her hovering on the edge of death, while Dr. Happy turned his twisted mind to the problem. Finn had instructed Dr. Happy to go to any lengths to save Anne, so that was exactly what he did. What he could not cure or repair, he replaced or rebuilt, no matter how extreme the measures necessary. He worked wonders, pulling Anne back from the brink of the grave again and again, but unfortunately he couldn't resist the impulse to recreate her in amusing ways. The good doctor had been influenced by his prolonged proximity to the Madness Maze, and it showed in his work. He had also taken to using himself as a test subject for all the new drugs he developed, on the grounds that the only way to fully understand the effects was to experience them firsthand.

  One of the drugs killed him. Another brought him back. Or so he said. Either way, the end result was that Dr. Happy was now a walking, rotting corpse, within which his slowly decaying brilliant mind misfired from time to time. Implanted tech from dubious sources and a whole series of experimental new drugs kept him going, but his flesh continued to slowly mummify despite all his best efforts to rejuvenate it. Dr. Happy didn't care. He savored the sensations of decay through preternaturally sharpened senses, and boasted that his new outlook on life—or rather death—gave him all kinds of new insights.

  The sight that greeted Finn, as he entered the heavily guarded laboratory, would have shaken and sickened anyone else. Gone were the days of shining new tech and pristine equipment. The shadowed chamber was packed with animal cages and stank like a slaughterhouse. Experimental animals peered dolefully from the cages, while others lay scattered across the lab tables in various states of completion. Dr. Happy had been taking them apart and putting them back together in interesting new combinations, to see what would happen. Mostly they died, but he said he was learning a lot in the process.

  Finn strode unhurriedly through the lab, peering dubiously at the latest assemblies pinned to the tables, and then looked up as Dr. Happy came tottering forward to greet him. The good doctor wore nothing but his chemical-stained lab coat over his emaciated, rotting body. Dark blotches covered the gray skin, and occasionally pale glimpses of bone showed through. Most of his white hair had fallen out, his sunken eyes were as yellow as urine, and his lips had drawn back from his teeth, turning his permanent smile into a rictus. He moved in sudden darting flurries, never still for a moment, filled with some terrible, remorseless energy.

  "So good to see you again, Finn! Yes! Yes! Oh, happy day… We're making progress here, definitely making progress. Don't look at the rabbit; I never expected it to work. The other head was just a whim. You've come to see Anne, I presume? Yes, yes, I know, no time for chat. I see ghosts, you know."

  Finn paused, and looked at Dr. Happy. This was a new turn. "Ghosts?" he said carefully.

  "Oh, yes. Spirits of the dead, restless souls of the departed, that sort of thing." Dr. Happy spun round in a circle, flapping his bony hands as though shooing things away. "They're always floating round the lab, getting in the way. Pestering me, when I have better things to do." He looked fixedly at nothing for a long moment, his head cocked on one side. "They're quiet, for the moment. I think you frighten them. I'm pretty sure some of them are people I came
back from Haden with. You remember."

  "The crew of the Hunter, and the scientists of Haden," said Finn. "The people you poisoned and drove insane."

  "It's not my fault they weren't strong enough to tolerate the miracles I fed them! I would have made them superhuman if they hadn't all died on me. People have no stamina these days. I blame late toilet training, myself. You don't think they blame me for their deaths, do you? How very unfair. But you're here to see Anne, aren't you? Come and see, come and see. I've made such marvelous progress since you were last here. You won't recognize the old girl."

  "That had better not be true, for your sake," said Finn, but Dr. Happy had already lurched away, and was pottering about his lab. He was heading towards the living quarters at the back, but he kept being distracted by various chemical distillations and computer displays. He gave his gene splicer an encouraging pat in passing, and beckoned imperiously for Finn to follow him. Finn sighed, and did so. The line between genius and madness was thin enough at the best of times, and being dead probably didn't help. He followed Dr. Happy on his erratic journey, pausing now and then when the good doctor stopped to talk to people who weren't there. More of his ghosts, presumably. Finn tried hard to see something, but couldn't. He hated to miss out on things. Dr. Happy whirled round abruptly to face Finn.

  "Now, this is interesting! This spirit claims to be you, come back in time from the future, after you died. I'd probably be able to understand him better if he didn't have his head under his arm."

  Finn made a mental note to get as much work out of Dr. Happy as he could while he still lasted. "How are you getting on with your new version of the Deathstalker Boost?" he said, loudly and clearly.

  "All right! All right! No need to shout! I'm dead, not deaf. The ears are still attached, see? And the Boost is going very well, thank you. I've already produced a viable prototype, and given it to Anne."

  "You've done what?" Finn said sharply. "I told you I wanted to test it myself first."