Deathstalker Coda

  With Admiral Silence all but living in the command seat, Price had busied himself by keeping track of what was happening back on Logres. He and the comm officer, Charlton Vu, had rigged up a very secure link between the Havoc and one of the new rogue news sites now operating from the Rookery. Their editorial policy seemed to be, get the story out as fast as possible, and to hell with whoever it upsets. Price had actually talked to the main face of one news site, a charming if somewhat startling young lady called Nina Malapert, and in return for firsthand reports of the return of Owen {An exclusive! Nina said, loudly enough to make Price wince), she kept him up to date on the growing rebellion on Logres. She'd even promised to arrange a direct line with King Douglas. Price couldn't resist a small smile. That should put him in good with Silence. Price was pretty sure the comm channel hadn't been cracked by Finn's security people, because it was derived from alien tech, donated by the alien presence in the Rookery.

  Price hadn't even known there was an alien presence in the Rookery. You learned something new every day.

  (And of course, if things did start going really badly for the rebel fleet, Price could always hand this information over to the Emperor's people, as proof that he'd been working as a double agent all along. Price believed in thinking ahead, and covering his back.)

  He wandered around the lower decks for a while, but no one wanted to talk to him, and he was actually quite relieved when word came through that Lewis Deathstalker and Jesamine Flowers had finally returned from Virimonde. Price ran all the way to the designated docking bay, to be sure he'd be the first officer to greet them when they returned. People remembered things like that. They were both clearly physically and emotionally exhausted, and all they really wanted to do was get back to their quarters and collapse, but they politely made a little time for Price.

  "I have news of King Douglas, and the fight for freedom in the Parade of the Endless," Captain Price said grandly, and was quietly satisfied at how quickly that grabbed their interest. "I have established a very secure comm link with rebel forces in the Rookery. There is a young lady working a rogue news site there who can give you all the details, if you would like me to arrange something…"

  "Show us," said the Deathstalker, and there was something in his voice that made Price forget the rest of his speech and jump to obey. He patched his prearranged link into the viewscreen on the wall, and after being carefully rerouted through several masking connections and cutouts, Nina Malapert's face appeared on the screen. She saw Lewis and Jesamine staring back at her, and whooped loudly with joy, bobbing excitedly up and down in her chair while her tall pink mohawk flopped crazily from side to side.

  "The Deathstalker and the diva! Major exclusive! Oh, all the other sites are going to be so sick!"

  "If we could just keep the celebrations to a minimum," said Price, making sure he could be seen standing right next to the Deathstalker, "I don't think we should test the security of this link with a conversation one minute longer than absolutely necessary."

  "Yes," said Lewis. "Talk to me, Nina Malapert. What has happened to the city, since my enforced absence? What has happened to Douglas?"

  "And Anne Barclay," said Jesamine.

  Nina's face fell. "You haven't heard. I'm sorry. Anne Barclay is dead. Killed by falling masonry when Douglas busted out of his show trial and escaped. He was ever so upset about it. But the good news is that Douglas has made himself the leader of all rebel activity in the Rookery, and absolutely everyone is with him! He's so inspiring. All the rogues, con men, fighters, and criminals have combined into one great army, under his command. They're calling Douglas the King of Thieves these days, which is just so romantic! Did you want to speak to him? I'm sure I could set up something really quite quickly."

  Lewis and Jesamine looked at each other for a long moment. "Not just yet," said Jesamine.

  "I don't think any of us would know what to say," said Lewis. "It's enough that we're allies, for the moment."

  "Yes," said Jesamine. "Just tell him… we'll talk again, when we all meet in the Imperial Palace, on Logres."

  Back in their private quarters, Lewis and Jesamine sat in silence for a long while. They kept a cautious distance between them, separated by old memories and old hurts. The prospect of actually talking to Douglas had opened up feelings they'd been too busy to examine or even acknowledge, for far too long. Once upon a time there had been four good friends, Douglas and Lewis, Jesamine and Anne, bonded together by love and loyalty, determined to change the world for the better. But instead the world had changed them, shattering their fellowship; and now one of them was dead, and things would never be the same again.

  "I can't believe Anne is gone," Jesamine said finally. "She was always the great survivor. I thought she'd outlast all of us."

  "I still can't believe she let Finn get to her," said Lewis. "She was the smartest of all of us; if anyone should have seen through Finn, it should have been her. Why did she turn on us? We all did everything we could for her… and she betrayed each of us, in turn. There are even rumors surfacing that she had something to do with Emma Steel's death."

  "Perhaps… Finn listened to her," said Jesamine. "And perhaps we didn't listen enough. There were hints, towards the end, that she wasn't happy, and hadn't been for some time. That maybe we never understood her half as well as we thought we did."

  "Anne and I were kids together on Virimonde," said Lewis. "We did everything together. I thought we'd be friends till the day we died. We would have fought for each other, died for each other; and then… something changed. Perhaps we grew up. Grew apart. I always believed that when I finally got back to Logres, and overthrew Finn, I'd be able to talk her round. Bring her back to sense and sanity. Apologize for whatever it was I did wrong that drove her away from me. And now I never will."

  "She was the best friend and manager I ever had," said Jesamine. "But she always made her own choices, and insisted on going her own way. Even when everyone who cared about her could see it was the wrong way. You know, she's the first person close to me that I've lost in this war. I feel… cold."

  "I lost my mother and my father, my Family and my home," said Lewis. "That's the nature of war: to lose all the things you care for most."

  "We still have each other," said Jesamine, looking at him for the first time.

  "Yes," said Lewis. He smiled at her, but secretly he was thinking Deathstalker luck. Always bad.

  "When we get back," said Jesamine, tentatively. "When we're back on Logres, and it's all over… what are we going to do, Lewis? About Douglas, about us?"

  "He was always my closest friend," said Lewis.

  "He was my fiance."

  "But did you ever really love him?"

  "I never meant to hurt him," said Jesamine. "He was a good man, a fine man. He deserved better than what we did to him."

  "I always believed I would tear my own heart out, rather than see Douglas hurt," said Lewis. "As his Champion, I vowed to stand between him and all harm. He was my friend, closer than a brother. And I hurt him like no one else could."

  "The things we do for love," Jesamine said tiredly. "How can something so good cause so much pain?"

  "Ah, hell," Lewis said, stretching slowly. "It seems like another life now. We were all different people then. If we do survive this war, all three of us… we still couldn't go back to our old lives, our old roles. We'd find them too restricting, too limited."

  "Now there's a frightening thought," said Jesamine. "After all we've been through, I'm still me; aren't I? I still feel like me. And yet… I can feel the changes the Maze made in me still working. Both of us are already much more than we used to be. When does the process stop? Does it ever stop? Are we going to end up Terrors, like Hazel? I don't want to be a monster, Lewis! I don't want to stop being me!"

  Her voice rose, growing harsh and frightened. Lewis was quickly at her side, holding her in his arms. "Hush, hush, love. We're not going to end up like Hazel. She was left alone, and half crazy. We
have each other."

  "But what if we lose each other, Lewis? What if one of us dies in this war, and one of us is left alone, and half crazy? What then?"

  "You're being far too optimistic," Lewis said dryly. "The odds are that all of us will be killed in the rebellion, and then we'll never have to worry about any of this."

  "Oh, ho ho ho," said Jesamine. "Deathstalker humor."

  Not all that far away, as hyperspatial travel went, the Emperor Finn's fleet was approaching the estimated position of the rebel fleet. The Imperial fleet was huge, made up of every fighting ship Finn could spare, all crewed by experienced fleet officers, backed up by hardcore Pure Humanity and Church Militant fanatics. Finn would have liked more of his own people in charge, but this battle was too important to be trusted to the loyal but limited zealots he'd used to infiltrate the fleet command structure. The Imperial fleet's orders were very simple. Stop the rebel fleet before it got anywhere near Logres, at whatever cost, and crush the rebellion before it got properly under way. No surrender, no prisoners, no quarter. Just dead ships, blazing and tumbling in the long night, and a victory so terrible it would crush the spirits of anyone who even thought of standing against the Emperor Finn.

  The rebel fleet had been easy enough to locate. Finn knew Lewis would go home to Virimonde; he'd always been the sentimental sort. And so the Imperial fleet sat and waited, hidden in hyperspace behind state-of-the-art stealth screens, until the signal stopped coming from the transmutation engines around Virimonde. Now the huge army of Imperial starcruisers were moving in on their unsuspecting victims, and readying themselves for battle. The captains were resolute, the crews highly trained and motivated. Finn had put together the biggest concentration of firepower since Lionstone's time.

  All the ships maintained strict comm silence. Ostensibly to maintain the element of surprise, and to prevent rebel spies from passing intelligence, but mainly so that the Imperial crews wouldn't be exposed to details of Owen Deathstalker's miraculous return. There were rumors of course, you couldn't stop rumors, but Finn wasn't taking any chances. The captains could talk to each other on a heavily protected channel, but that was all. That was enough.

  The Heritage, still recovering from her encounter with the Terror at Usher II, was now a part of the Imperial fleet. Both ship and crew were in urgent need of some downtime and repair, but… duty called. Captain Ariadne Vardalos sat wearily in her command chair, studying the makeup of the Imperial fleet on her viewscreen. As one of the last ships to join the fleet, she had a lot of catching up to do. She wasn't all that pleased with what she saw. The layout had a distinct air of improvisation. But then, it had been a long long time since anyone had fought a major space battle. She switched to a representation of the rebel fleet's structure, according to the most recent information, and shook her head slowly.

  "I know most of those ships," she said to her second-in-command, Marcella Fortuna. "I was at the academy with some of their captains! How could so many good people have turned traitor?"

  Fortuna shrugged uncomfortably. "Hard to say, Captain. No one ever considers themselves a traitor. We're all the heroes of our own stories." She considered the matter for a while, turning it over in her slow, methodical mind. "Must be something to do with Owen's return. If that was a Shub trick, as the Emperor insists, maybe the AIs brainwashed all those people."

  Captain Vardalos scowled. "I know these people… If I could just talk to them, I know I could talk them out of this. Make them see how wrong they are. But we're forbidden to make contact." She could feel her hands clenching into impotent fists, and made herself relax. A captain couldn't afford to appear unsettled or uncertain before her crew. Especially just before a major engagement with the enemy.

  "Any point in talking to the admiral again?" said Fortuna.

  "No," Vardalos said reluctantly. "Admiral Shapiro is old school, strictly by the book. He'd shoot his own family if the Emperor ordered it. He wouldn't even question an order, never mind consider bending one."

  "The rebel fleet would appear to be a lot bigger than we were led to believe," Fortuna observed. "Though far be it for me to suggest that our intelligence is anything less than perfect."

  "Oh, heaven forfend," said Vardalos. "And just look at all those craft from Virimonde and Mistworld. I don't even recognize half of them. God alone knows what they'll be capable of in a fight. Or what nasty surprises they might have in store for us. Let us all pray very fervently that our stealth fields continue to hide us until the very last second before we attack. Because we're going to need every advantage we can get."

  "We have to stop the rebel fleet, Captain," said Fortuna. "And as quickly as possible. The Empire can't afford to be distracted, with the Terror still on its way."

  "I know that! Why don't they know that? A civil war is madness, under current conditions!"

  "Under any conditions," murmured Fortuna, with a significant look.

  "Of course," said Vardalos. You never knew who might be listening, these days. And making notes.

  "Almost makes you wish Owen was back, so he could deal with the Terror," said Fortuna.

  "Don't even go there," said Vardalos. "Matters are complicated enough as they are."

  "But what if… what if this battle wipes out both fleets, Captain?" Fortuna said suddenly. "What if there is no winner? Who then will protect homeworld? From aliens, and rebels, and the coming of the Terror?"

  "That's why we have to win," said Vardalos. "Damn those rebel bastards, for putting us in this position! The rebellion must be put down. For the sake of all Humanity."

  Admiral Silence knew the Imperial fleet was on its way. Their stealth fields couldn't hide them from his Maze-enhanced mind. Dead reckoning and a certain amount of creative thinking gave him a pretty good idea of where the other fleet was, and its composition. He'd shared this knowledge with the rest of his fleet, and was a little dismayed at how quickly they all accepted his word. This legend of his was definitely getting out of control. He had his comm officer send out messages of friendship and offers for truce on all channels, but no one answered. Not even when Silence spoke to them personally, trying to trade on the power of his legend.

  "They must be listening," he said finally, giving up. "Why don't they believe me?"

  "It is rather a lot to ask of them, Admiral," said Captain Price, who had somehow found a reason to return to the bridge. "Couldn't you… show them that it's really you? Perform some wonder to prove you really are who you say you are?"

  "I don't do wonders," said Silence. "What do you want me to do? Stroll across the open space between us and hammer on their door, demanding to be let in? Actually, Carrion probably could have done that. And Owen… but I'm just me, and I've been a man too long to give up its comforts. Still, the Imperial ships are definitely out there. I can feel them… some of my old abilities are beginning to surface again. I just know I could stop all this insanity, if I could only talk to them! We're all navy men. We understand about the madness of politicians. But it seems… there's no way out. Good men and women are going to die today, on both sides. God damn you to Hell, Finn Durandal."

  Price cleared his throat uncertainly. "If you can feel the presence of the Imperial fleet, Admiral, perhaps you could work with the ship's AI to plot out best guess estimates for enemy ship positions and capabilities?"

  "Not a bad idea, Captain. Ozymandias! Talk to me."

  They waited, but there was no response. Silence called again, but the usually chatty AI was silent. With growing alarm, Silence discovered that the ship's AI wouldn't respond to any form of communication, on any level. Basic computer services continued to take care of vital work like life support, artificial gravity and the engines, but all higher intelligence functions were gone. The machines still worked, but no one was home. Silence told his comm officer to check all the other ships in the rebel fleet, and sat scowling in his command chair as the answers came flooding back. There wasn't a starcruiser in his fleet with a working AI.

  "Cou
ld it be sabotage?" said Price. "Or some new weapon that Finn's turned up?"

  "No," Silence said slowly. "I think it's simpler than that. I think… something's happened to Shub. Every ship's AI is a subroutine of the AIs of Shub. It's been that way for so long that we just take it for granted."

  "But what could have happened to them?"

  "I don't know, Captain. But the odds are this is happening in the Imperial fleet too, so we're equally disadvantaged. I wonder if they've noticed yet. Price, get those backup systems on line, fast. We can't afford to be caught short when the battle starts."

  "Of course, Admiral." Price hesitated. "Even with all backup systems operating at full capacity, our options will remain distinctly limited. We'll be going into action crippled."

  "So will they, Captain. Serves us all right for growing too reliant on Shub. Take the command chair for a while, Price. I need to discuss this with the Deathstalker."

  * * *

  Silence explained the situation to Lewis and Jesamine, striding restlessly up and down their quarters. Lewis tried calling out to Oz through his mental link, but there was no reply. Silence finally ground to a halt, and looked hopefully at Lewis and Jesamine.

  "Sorry, Admiral, this is all news to us," said Jesamine. "Why would Shub abandon us?"