The Emperor drew a concealed disrupter from his tall boot and shot Tel Markham in the chest. Tel cried out briefly as the impact threw him backward, but he was dead before he hit the floor, the front of his grubby tunic blackened and smouldering. Douglas already had his gun in his hand, but the Emperor just smiled, and put his gun away again.
"Relax, Douglas. Show's over. It had to be done; he betrayed me. And there's some shit I just won't put up with. Now it's just the two of us, as it was always meant to be. Tel didn't belong here, any more than Mr. Sylvester. They were only ever minor players in our drama. Are you wearing your esp-blocker?"
"Of course," said Douglas, slowly putting his gun away. He deliberately didn't look at the dead Tel Markham. "The most heavy-duty esp-blocker Diana Vertue could put together. And there's still no guarantee it will work if the uber-espers do show up in person."
"Oh, you know they will," Finn said easily. "How could they not? A chance to possess the two leaders of the city defenses, the two men who've done so much to defy them? They won't be able to resist us. I'm quite looking forward to seeing them again. They really are spectacularly ugly."
Douglas slowly ascended the dais steps to stand beside Finn's throne. He looked out over the empty court. For a moment, the two men were silent, remembering.
"Just like old times, eh?" Finn said finally.
"Not really, no," said Douglas.
"We had some good times here," said Finn, almost reproachfully.
"That was a long time ago, when we were very different people."
"You might have been different," said Finn. "I've always been just me. Though perhaps I'm a little more open about it these days. Do you like what I've done with the palace?"
"I hate it," said Douglas, not looking at Finn.
"You never did have any taste. I've done wonders with the place. A real makeover."
"It is very you. But don't worry. Once I've taken it back, I'll have cleaners working in shifts for weeks. No one will know you were ever here."
There was another long silence. So many unspoken words burned between them, of betrayal and murder and crimes beyond counting, but somehow that wasn't what they wanted to talk about. They had been friends, once.
"When this is all over," Douglas said slowly, "you could surrender to me. I can guarantee a life sentence in prison, rather than execution. For old times' sake."
"Prison would be death, to me," said Finn. "You could surrender to me, but I wouldn't advise it. I have all kinds of appalling things planned for you, if we both survive this. If… I do try to be optimistic, but it isn't easy. Things never go the way you expect, do they?"
"No," said Douglas. "They don't."
"So," said Finn. "You're the King of Thieves now. I'm Emperor. You never did think big enough."
"I was granted my title by popular acclaim. You stole yours."
"Best way," Finn said cheerfully.
Douglas turned and looked at him. "How could you, Finn? How could you do all the things you've done? All the terrible things…"
"It was easy," said Finn. "I just stopped pretending I cared. That's always been your weakness, Douglas. You do things for others; I do them for myself."
"No. That's my strength. You never did understand that. It's why my people stand and fight, and yours run away."
"But I run an Empire, while you only have part of a city. It's a vision thing, Douglas."
"How could I have been so wrong about you? We were friends, partners, comrades in arms for so many years… I thought I knew you."
"A lot of people have made that mistake," said Finn Durandal.
And that was when the uber-espers appeared, all at once, teleporting into the open space of the abandoned court, dropping into reality like so many rotten fruit. They all came at once, because none of them trusted any of the others to come alone. The temperature in the great hall plummeted as the materialization sucked all the heat out of the surrounding air. Douglas and Finn both shuddered involuntarily, not entirely from the cold. Finn rose up off his Throne, gun in hand, and Douglas stood at his side, gun at the ready.
Psionic energies discharged around the uber-espers in coruscating lightning forks, and crawled along the walls like bright actinic ivy. The uber-espers' presence hammered on the air, like a corpse at a wedding, like bad news in a maternity ward, like the cancer growth your doctor shows you on the scan. Five old and terrible monsters, come to Court at last, to claim it for themselves.
The Gray Train. Blue Hellfire. Screaming Silence. The Spider Harps. The Shatter Freak.
Blue Hellfire was tall and slender and the most visibly human, wrapped in diaphanous silks over blue-white flesh beneath. Her short spiky hair was packed with ice, and hoarfrost made whorled patterns on her corpse-pale face. Her eyes and lips were the pale blue of hypothermia. She looked like someone who had been buried in the permafrost for centuries, and only recently dug up. She smiled terribly on the King and Emperor, sucking all the remaining heat out of the air around her. She stepped slowly forward, one pace at a time, inexorable as a glacier. Her clothes made sounds like cracking ice as she moved, and she left a trail of burning footprints behind her.
The Gray Train no longer had a body, as such. He only existed as an individual identity through an ongoing concentrated effort of will. He manifested as a cloud of gray flakes that held a more or less human form, composed of dust and detritus gathered from his surroundings. He was only a memory of what he used to be, and if his concentration ever slipped, he wouldn't even be that. But there was still a power in him, fueled by his implacable will. Reality itself shivered where he walked, subject to his fleeting fancies. The world was whatever he believed it was, wherever he was.
Screaming Silence was a huge, unhealthily obese woman, vast beyond bearing; a good eight feet tall and half as wide. Her shape was grotesquely distorted, all the normal human characteristics buried under huge rolls of fat. Her wide face was gaudy with colors, her mouth pushed out into an endless rosebud pout by the pressure of her huge cheeks. Her tightly stretched skin gleamed and glistened with sweat and urine and other fluids, and was flushed with a disturbing heat. Her gray hair flared out like a dandelion, and her eyes were big and round and always hungry. Her thick stubby fingers constantly opened and closed, ready to grasp onto anything that came in reach. She wore nothing but lengths of steel chain, wrapped around and around her, the steel links puncturing her flesh here and there to hold them in place. She stank of sweat and musk and flowers left too long in the hothouse.
The Spider Harps were two withered homunculi with opened skulls, their fruiting brains exploded out into a giant gray and pink web of exposed brain tissues, that radiated away into nothingness. The two shriveled figures sat side by side on decaying chairs, their sunken faces dead and empty, apart from their eyes, still burning hotly with a vitality that would not diminish. Mummified in evil, preserved in hate. They held hands, the joined flesh fused together over many centuries. Two minds joined together for so long they had become one.
And, finally, there was the Shatter Freak. His physical existence had been shattered and scattered across time and space, by some ancient psychic trauma. His patchwork body was composed of different parts from different times, from past, present, and future, somehow combined in one constantly changing construct. The details of his torso, limbs, and extremities were never still for a moment, appearing and disappearing, growing and shrinking, slipping and sliding over and around each other, always being replaced by another. The Shatter Freak's face blurred and twisted as features dropped in and out, from child to ancient and everything in between, with only the eyes always the same: full of rage and pain, sorrow and horror.
"I was right," said Finn. "They haven't changed at all. Seriously ugly."
"Not to worry, Finn," said Douglas. "To me, you'll always be the greatest monster."
"Why, thank you, Douglas."
The uber-espers turned their full attention on the two men, and their presence filled the court, horr
id and overpowering. They were monstrosities, abominations, things that should never have existed. Their cold implacable will beat against Douglas's and Finn's minds, and both men cried out involuntarily. It felt like dead fingers pressing at the shutters of their minds, trying to force their way in. But they were protected.
"I cannot reach them," said the Gray Train, his voice like a never-ending sigh. "I am prevented."
"Then we'll just have to do it the old-fashioned way," said Screaming Silence, in a voice like a great grunting hog. "Tear them apart, and eat their brains."
"Yes," said Blue Hellfire, in a voice like a cold wind in a narrow valley. "Or perhaps I shall take them in my arms, and love them, and watch them burn with my cold blue flames. Watch their blackened faces slough off their disobedient heads."
"Kill them," said the Spider Harps, in one dusty voice. "Kill the King and the Emperor, and we shall rule here."
"No," said the Shatter Freak, in a disturbingly normal voice. "Something is wrong. There's something else here.
" * * *
Outside the Imperial Palace, Stuart Lennox fought up and down the long entrance steps to keep the howling thralls at bay. He'd started out with twenty men to back him up, but he didn't dare look to see how many he had left. The steps narrowed as they reached the top, and the entrance doors to the palace, which gave Stuart and his men the advantage of limiting how many thralls could come up at once; but the thralls just kept coming, clambering over the bodies of their own dead to get at the enemy. Stuart and his men held the steps through sheer ferocity and fighting skills, but already they were growing dangerously tired. Stuart's sword seemed to get heavier with every blow and parry, and a slow insidious ache burned through his back and sword arm. He'd never been in a fight that lasted as long as this.
Stuart was wearing his old Paragon uniform and body armor, and his purple cloak flapped proudly about him. Jas Sri had used his media contacts to track the uniform down, and returned it to Stuart. (In these days of mass shortages and hunger, pretty much everything was being put up for sale somewhere.) Jas had cleaned and polished the uniform to within an inch of its life, and presented it to Stuart just before they had to leave the Rookery. Stuart had been touched, and he and Jas had held each other for a long time, knowing it might be the last time they ever saw each other again. Eventually they let go, and Jas helped buckle Stuart into the armor.
Stuart stood his ground at the top of the entrance steps, while his men fell about him, swinging his sword with a fierce and dogged energy. He faced impossible odds with a smile upon his face, and for the first time in a long time, he felt like a Paragon again.
Nina Malapert hovered behind him, sheltering in the open entrance doorway, popping out now and again to blast a whole clump of thralls into bloody pieces with her really big gun. Her news cameras were floating above the scene, broadcasting everything live to worlds across the Empire. She kept up a breathless running commentary, gun in one hand and sword in another, ready to rush out and guard Stuart's back when necessary. She wasn't much of a fighter, as such, but like every other able-bodied person in the Rookery, she'd been given basic weapons training. And she'd gone out with everyone else to fight, partly because she was damned if she'd miss such a great story, and partly because there was no place in the city now for observers. She had killed some thralls, and was ready to kill some more, but for now she felt it was more important to see that her news site covered what was happening. So that win or lose, the others worlds would know that at least Logres went down fighting.
Even Jas Sri, that slender and delicate media tech, had picked up a sword and gone out of the Rookery to fight. He was as much a danger to himself as anyone else with a sword in his hand, but he went anyway, because he was needed. Stuart had quietly arranged for Jas to be a part of one of the biggest armed groups, without telling him that of course, but Stuart and Jas both knew that there was nowhere safe in the city anymore.
The Psycho Sluts hovered in the sky above the palace, holding rigid formation as their minds linked together. Their leader, Alessandra Duquesne, had brought them here against Diana Vertue's specific orders, because much as they adored her, the Sluts had their own idea on how to stop the fighting, once and for all. They were going to pool and combine their power, and hit the uber-espers below with everything they had, condensed into one unstoppable blow. The uber-espers would lose contact with their thralls, might even be damaged or destroyed, and the invasion would be over. The young ladies of the Psycho Sluts had discussed this plan in earnest and at some length. They knew some or all of them might die during the attack, or after, but they had sworn a vow to be worthy of their idol, Jenny Psycho, and this seemed just the sort of thing she would have done. So they put their minds together, raised and harnessed their power till it crackled on the air around them, and then struck down at the uber-espers in the palace.
The attack went wrong almost immediately. Contact with the minds of the uber-espers blew their gestalt apart in a moment. The young espers just weren't prepared for the sheer otherness of the uber-espers. And they had no idea how powerful these five monsters had become, down the centuries. The Psycho Sluts' attack fragmented, the mental shards thrown back in their faces. A single whiplash of power smashed through the Psycho Sluts' defenses, ripping through their minds like barbed wire. Some went mad, pinwheeling away through the sky, screaming and howling words with no meaning. Some exploded into flames, burning inside and out, and fell to the ground like thrashing kicking comets. Three just exploded into bloody gobbets. And that left just the two most powerful minds in the Psycho Sluts: Alessandra Duquesne and her oldest and dearest friend, Joanna Maltravers. Alessandra fought off the mental attack, retreating deep into her mind and concentrating all her power into defensive shields. Her body convulsed with pain and outrage, but her mind held firm. When she finally felt the assault was over, she came out to look at the world again, and found that Joanna's defenses had failed. Someone else looked out from behind her eyes. Her face twitched and twisted as some small part of her fought the possessing mind, but she had already lost. Joanna smiled someone else's smile, and threw herself at Alessandra.
They darted back and forth in the skies over the palace, swooping and diving and whirling around each other in cascades of pyrotechnic energies. They lashed out with physical and mental attacks, and psionic explosions ripped the air apart. Both Alessandra and Joanna took terrible injuries, and their blood rained down on the battle below. They threw rocks and stones and even corpses at each other, and lightning bolts stabbed down from a cloudless sky. Sleeting energies discharged around them, as they fought to get inside each other's heads, and in the end, possibly because the possessing mind was distracted by what was happening in the court, Alessandra forced her way past Joanna's shields, and crushed the madly beating heart in her old friend's breast with a remorseless psychokinetic hand. Joanna cried out once, and then fell limp and dead from the sky. Alessandra dropped after her, and caught Joanna's body before it hit the ground.
She held her dear friend in her arms, rocking her back and forth like a sleeping child, and then the last of the Psycho Sluts put her dead friend aside, and went walking through the city streets, blowing thralls apart with the force of her gaze, while tears rolled jerkily down her bloodstained cheeks.
Thralls were everywhere in the city now, filling the streets and squares. Baying mobs attacked the city's defenders on every front, crowding in from every direction, and still more came flooding across the city's boundaries. Only their lack of weapons and tactics gave the defenders any chance at all. And, every now and again, one section of the thrall army would break off fighting to attack another section, when one uber-esper thought another was doing too well, and carving out too much territory for themselves. They did not trust each other, and never would, even in this last battle for the heart and soul of Logres.
With millions of thralls under their command, the uber-espers now enjoyed whole new levels of power. Some of their thralls were manife
sting esper abilities on the uber-espers' behalf. Some projected terrible emotions, so that defenders cried out and howled and crawled with disgust, and did not know why. Some generated psychokinetic storms that sent razor-sharp objects hurtling through the streets ahead of them. Others sent telepathic illusions against the defenders; visions of rampaging aliens or monsters, or loved ones dying in horrible agonies. Buildings seemed to come alive, while awful things fell from a splintering sky. Sometimes these new espers even managed to turn one set of defenders against another. But none of these proxy espers lasted long. They burned out quickly from the pressure; often literally.
But there were always more to replace those who fell.
The defenders were forced back by sheer weight of numbers. They fought every inch of the way, and thralls fell dead and dying in their thousands, and hundreds of thousands, but it was not enough. Slowly, inexorably, the defenders were forced back towards the center and heart of the city, the Imperial Palace.
* * *
And that was when Lewis Deathstalker arrived with the cavalry. The fleet came howling out of hyperspace, and slammed into orbit around the beleaguered world of Logres. Thousands of pinnaces and gravity barges and war machines spilled out of the starcruisers, and descended onto the Parade of the Endless, followed by all kinds of ships, from Mistworld and Virimonde. The morning darkened as they filled the sky, and the defenders below raised a ragged cheer and fought on with renewed strength. The pinnaces and ships made landings all over the city, launching whole new armies of fighting men, already angered by what they'd seen on Nina's news sites. Gravity barges hovered over the thralls crowding into the city, and blew them apart with disrupter cannon. War machines moved to block all the entrances to the city, so that no more thralls could get in.
And falling out of the sky like avenging angels, flying under their own power and surrounded by halos of unearthly energies, came Lewis Deathstalker and Jesamine Flowers, Brett Random and Rose Constantine. Home again, to clean house. The thralls looked up, and from their massed throats came a single howl of rage and disbelief from the five minds that controlled them.
Deathstalker Coda Page 39