Deathstalker War

by Green, Simon R.

  Still, Jack Random was a legend, and legends were supposed to be above the petty problems of mere mortals. If that was who he really was. Owen was damned if he knew what he believed anymore. Certainly this man filled the legend better than the broken-down old man he’d found hiding in Mistport, claiming to be Jack Random; but Owen believed in people, not legends. He shrugged mentally as he cut down another Imperial trooper with a single savage stroke. Random wasn’t the only real warrior here.

  And whoever the handsome bastard really was, Young Jack Random was exactly what the city of Mistport needed right now. His name was a rallying cry, perhaps the only thing that could call all the disparate parts of Mistport together and make them fight as one. Owen decided he’d settle for that.

  Hazel d’Ark could feel her mind reaching out in strange directions. Ever since the Maze had changed her, her mental abilities had been slowly but steadily increasing, and since coming to Mistport, the rate of change had been increasing. She could tell now where every attack was coming from, even before it was actually launched, and her sword was always there in the right place to block the attack. No one could sneak up on her, even in her blind spots, and she could sense the weaknesses in any opponent the moment she saw him or her. It was beyond experience or instinct; it was as though she’d always known such things, and only remembered them now when she needed them.

  And more than that, as she saw the various possibilities opening up before her, other possible versions of herself began to appear around her. They blinked in and out of existence, sometimes only there long enough to deflect a sword or ward off an attack she couldn’t have stopped on her own. But as she fought, other different Hazel d’Arks began to appear, to fight at her side. Some had subtle differences, like an extra scar, or different-colored hair. Others were different builds, or races. One had a golden Hadenman hand. One was a man. At least one didn’t look to be entirely human. She smiled at some of them, and some smiled back. Together, she and her other selves pushed forward, forcing their way to the very front of the battle, and there they filled the main gap in the boundary wall and defied the Empire to get past them.

  John Silver saw the Hazel d’Arks fighting side by side, and thought he must have got a really bad batch of Blood this time. It didn’t usually give him hallucinations. It was only when a bald Hazel d’Ark in a bounty hunter’s leathers stopped an Imperial sword thrust that would have killed him, that he was forced to admit they were real. He didn’t let it bother him. Mistport was a crazy place at the best of times, which this very definitely wasn’t. But then he saw Owen Deathstalker striding through the milling crowd, cutting troopers down as though they were nothing, and Jack Random standing defiant and undefeatable amidst a pile of enemy dead, and a shivering awe flashed through him. In all his years, Silver had never seen anything like these three. It was like fighting beside gods.

  But it only took a moment for the awe to turn to jealousy. He was just a man, with a man’s strength and courage, doing what he could, while three inhuman beings made his best efforts look like nothing. He fought on, but some of the heart had gone out of him. Another surge in the fighting brought him forward, to Owen’s side. The Deathstalker threw him a quick, flashing grin, and Silver tried to smile back. And in that moment he saw a trooper’s sword heading straight for Owen’s back. The Deathstalker hadn’t seen it, too busy cutting down the two men before him. Time seemed to slow and stop, and it felt to Silver that he had all the time in the world to decide what to do next. He could call out a warning, or stop the blade himself, but in that moment he wanted the Deathstalker to die. For being more than human, more than him, for being closer and more important to Hazel than he could ever be. It would be easy just to stand there, and let the blade kill Owen. Afterward, no one would blame him. There was so much going on, and he couldn’t be expected to see everything. He hesitated, his mind churning in a dozen different directions at once. All the things that could be his, if only Owen Deathstalker was dead. And then time crashed into motion again, and there was no more time to think.

  The blade slammed toward Owen’s back, and Silver lurched forward, his sword blocking the blow. The sudden impact tore the sword from his hand, and it fell to the ground. The trooper turned on Silver, his sword drawing back for a killing thrust. Silver darted to one side, and the blade sliced across the side of his arm, just opening the skin. Blood ran down his arm. The trooper drew back his arm for another blow. Silver gathered the blood running down his arm into his hand, and threw it in the trooper’s eyes. The man hesitated for a moment, blinded, and it was the easiest thing in the world for Silver to reach down, pick up his sword, and run the trooper through.

  All this passed in only a moment or two. Owen Deathstalker saw none of it, being busy with his own problems. Silver gathered his wits together and fought on. He hadn’t done too badly, for a mere mortal. And if there had to be gods fighting in this battle, Silver was just glad they were on his side.

  The tides of battle swept him away from Owen, who cut his way through a crowd of bodies to fight beside Hazel again. It took a moment to realize it wasn’t the Hazel d’Ark he knew, and another to realize there seemed to be a small crowd of Hazels. And then someone in the back of the crowd was shouting “Retreat!” Other voices took it up, all of them Imperial troopers, and suddenly the invaders were melting away before Owen, turning and running. Everywhere he looked it was the same, as what had been a far greater force fell apart and ran for its life, its strength broken on the immovable rock that was Mistport’s defenders. The retreat became a rout, and in a matter of moments there was no one left to fight. The defenders raised a ragged cheer. Owen looked back at Hazel d’Ark and blinked a few times as he discovered there was only one of her there. She looked across at him, grinning broadly, and Owen decided he wasn’t going to ask. Not yet He wasn’t sure he wanted to know. The defenders were calling his name, and Hazel’s, but mostly Jack Random’s. He was their hero. They saluted him with raised swords, and glowing fervent eyes. They would have followed him into Hell itself, and everyone knew it.

  And then the war wagons opened fire with their disrupters. Now that they no longer had to worry about killing their own troops, they could fire with impunity. The disrupter cannon blew huge bloody holes in the defenders’ forces, and the air was full of blood and flying flesh. The crowd began to fall back, scrambling over the bodies of the dead. Jack Random raised his voice above the bedlam.

  “Stop, my friends! We can defeat these machines!”

  Owen pushed his way through the crowd to grab Random by the arm. “What are you, crazy? You can’t fight disrupter cannon with nothing but swords! We have to fall back and find some place we can defend!”

  “Damn right,” said Hazel, suddenly at Owen’s side. “You trying to get us all killed, Random?”

  “My apologies,” said Young Jack Random. “You’re quite right, of course. I got carried away for the moment.”

  “Fine,” said Owen. “Now shut the hell up and run.”

  The defenders fell back before the advancing battle wagons, but it was an organized retreat, not a rout. They spilled back through the narrow streets and alleyways, confident the huge bulking machines couldn’t follow them. The machines’ disrupter cannon swiveled from side to side, trying to find a grouping of rebels big enough to be worth firing on, but the rebels had already learned that lesson the hard way, and scattered into smaller and smaller groups as they fell back. So the war wagons opened fire on the streets themselves, blowing buildings and walls apart in showers of pulverized brick and mortar. There were shouts and screams as people disappeared beneath the collapsing buildings, and soon there were only piles of smoking rubble where the streets had been, over which the huge battle wagons pressed relentlessly forward.

  The Imperial troopers saw the triumph of the war machines, and began to re-form behind them. The defenders’ retreat began to turn into a rout after all. Owen and Hazel stopped and looked back. The war wagons surged toward them, guns roaring, de
vouring Mistport street by street. Above, the gravity barges hovered like vast storm clouds. Owen reached out a hand to Hazel, and she took it firmly, the same thought in both their minds. Their joined thoughts reached up and out. One of the gravity barges suddenly lurched in midair, as some unseen, implacable force seized hold of it. The engines roared and strained, and then overloaded, as something pulled the barge down out of the sky and smashed it into the war machines below.

  The night was ripped apart by the force of the explosion, and flames roaring up from the tangled wreckage lit the nearby streets bright as day. The invading forces had to retreat yet again, or be showered by falling molten metal, thrown hundreds of yards by the blast. But none of the defenders were harmed. The tumbling debris seemed to fall well short every time, as though they were protected by some unseen hand. The rebels stopped running and stood and cheered, celebrating the good fortune that had saved them. Of them all, only John Silver knew to whom they owed their lives. He watched as Owen and Hazel came out of their trance, looked down at their linked hands, and grinned self-consciously. They let go, and moved off into the cheering crowds. Silver watched them go, and wondered again what they were. What they were becoming. And if, just possibly, they might grow to be so powerful that they became more of a threat to Mistport than the Empire ever had been. He moved off after them, shaken by his thoughts, but already pondering possible actions, should it prove necessary. And wondering if he’d done the right thing in saving the Deathstalker’s life after all.

  He’d always felt a little superior, because some humans feared espers for their powers. Now he knew how those people felt. He wasn’t top of the heap anymore. He wasn’t even sure he could see the top of the heap from where he was.

  Back among the retreating Empire troopers were Toby Shreck and his cameraman Flynn. They’d been put down to join the ground forces, and get close-up shots of the glorious invasion, only things hadn’t turned out that way. The moment it became clear things were going seriously wrong, Lieutenant Ffolkes ordered Flynn to recall his camera and shut it down. The live broadcast was over, owing to technical difficulties. To make it clear how serious those difficulties were, Ffolkes stuck a gun in Flynn’s back, and kept it there until the camera had safely returned to perch on Flynn’s shoulder again. Its single red eye went out, and it was still. Toby protested, but no one listened to him. He hadn’t expected they would, but he had to raise his voice anyway, or they’d think he was getting soft. Neither he nor Flynn doubted Ffolkes would have used the gun. He was white with fury at the invading forces’ defeat, and looked like he was ready to take it out on anyone stupid enough to upset him. So Toby and Flynn fell back with the retreating forces until Ffolkes was called away to be objectionable somewhere else. After he was gone, they got some great footage of the crashing gravity barge, and then had to run like hell as molten metal came dropping out of the sky like a deadly hail. As they trudged back into the snows outside the city, and temporary safety, Toby and Flynn gave up trying to interview the exhausted troopers after the negative replies escalated from the obscene to actual death threats.

  “Wonder where they’ll send us next,” said Flynn, after a while.

  “Somewhere where things are going rather better, I should imagine,” said Toby.

  “Assuming there is such a place.”

  “Bound to be. The defenders just got lucky here, that’s all.”

  “I don’t know,” said Flynn. “What were the odds of a gravity barge just happening to fall on the war wagons?”

  Toby looked at him. “What are you implying? That the rebels brought it down in some way? Forget it. They don’t have that kind of weaponry. And if you’re thinking of espers, even the infamous Inspector Topaz her own bad self couldn’t have brought down something that big. Espers just don’t come that strong. And that’s without Legion scrambling their minds.”

  “This is Mistport,” said Flynn, darkly. “I’ve heard things about Mistport. Never wanted to come here in the first place.”

  “It’s certainly full of surprises,” said Toby. “Did you see who was leading the rebel forces? Jack Random, looking just like his old holo pictures. Only, if that’s Jack Random, whom did we see leading the rebel forces on Technos III? That man looked a lot older, and harder used. And I don’t believe he could have got from there to here, in so short a time. Not without the Empire knowing.”

  “Maybe one of them’s a double. Or a clone.” Flynn scowled. “Either way, there’s a lot to this story that we’re not being told.”

  “Nothing new there,” said Toby. “If we run across him again, maybe we can pin him down for an interview. I could name my own price for a piece like that. Prime time, guaranteed.”

  “The powers that be, and intend to keep on being, would never let you show it.”

  Toby grinned. “Where there’s a wallet, there’s a way.”

  In the labyrinthian heart of Thieves Quarter, in the Blackthorn Inn, representatives of the esper union were fighting to keep track of what was happening. More people were arriving all the time, filling the crowded room, as news poured in from all over the city. The Council members, minus Albert Magnus, were still poring over the great map of Mistport, studying the situation with darkening scowls. The news was rarely good. The esper reps showed the positions of the gravity barges and sleds as small black shadows drifting over the map. Espers flying up to fight them showed as bright burning sparks. The sparks tended to blink out suddenly after a while, and no one needed to ask why. More shadows showed at the boundaries of the city, where the Empire forces had breached the boundary walls. The dark stains spread inward as the invading forces pressed on into the city despite all the defenders could do to slow or stop them. The shadows were holding only at the southwest boundary, where news of an unexpected victory was beginning to drift in.

  Chance’s children lay huddled on blankets in one corner of the room, keeping up a steady, quiet babble of information and warnings as Chance moved among them, cajoling and praising and bribing them with bits of candy. Any one of them he left alone for too long tended to drift into waking nightmares, screaming and howling piteously. The esper union reps were hiding the Blackthorn’s position and inhabitants with their superior mental abilities, but even they couldn’t protect the Abraxus children from the horror of Legion. The never-ending scream, rasping in their minds and souls like the scrape of bone on bone, or the tearing of living meat No one knew bow the children experienced it, but the look on their small faces as they mewled despairingly and twisted in their blankets was enough to keep anyone from asking. Chance pleaded with the Council to let him sedate the children, but the answer was always no. They were too useful.

  A few espers teleported in and out with important messages, appearing and disappearing in puffs of disturbed air. Static sparked around them, discharging painfully through the nearest metal. They were risking their lives with every jump, and everyone knew it. Legion’s scream was interrupting their concentration. Some never arrived. Just blinked out in one location, and were never seen again. Some arrived at the inn in pieces, or horribly rearranged. One materialized half inside the tavern wall. He was still there, protruding from the brickwork. No one could figure out how to remove him without tearing the wall apart. Luckily he was dead, so they just draped a cloth across his face to hide the staring eyes and contorted mouth, and pretended he wasn’t there.

  And one man fell out of midair and slammed to the floor in a sticky mess of spurting blood and exposed organs. His journey had turned him inside out. Horribly, he wouldn’t die. In the end, Donald Royal cut off the head with one merciful stroke of his sword.

  The Council members and the esper union reps struggled to put some kind of planned defenses together, but things were happening so quickly all the time that all they could really do was react to the Empire’s actions and provide damage limitations. Raised voices were getting hoarse, and tiredness showed in everybody’s eyes. Cyder kept hot coffee and mulled ale moving among everyone in the room,
and supplied a steady stream of information from her own network of informers, people she used to work with in the past, before she became respectable. She tried not to worry about what had happened to Cat. And overhead, the roar of passing gravity barges shook the inn like thunder, never knowing how close they’d come to the heart of rebel resistance.

  Kast and Morgan dragged their prisoner through the chaos and fury of battle to see Investigator Razor, as he stood thoughtfully in the rubble of what had been the northeast boundary, watching his troops press deeper into the burning city, sweeping aside all opposition. He waited till the marines and their captive were almost upon him before turning and acknowledging their existence. His dark face was calm as ever, but there was a hot and brutal fire in his eyes that made even Kast and Morgan nervous. They bowed quickly to the Investigator, and hit their prisoner till he did, too. Razor studied the man in silence for a long moment. The prisoner dressed well, though his fine clothing was currently rumpled and torn and stained with his own blood. His face was bruised and battered. It seemed that Kast and Morgan had not been gentle in persuading him to come along with them.

  “And this is?” Razor said finally.

  “A traitor and informer, sir,” said Kast cheerfully. “Name of Artemis Daley. Something of a mover and shaker in Mistport, if he’s to be believed. He’s promised us useful, not to say vital, information if we’ll just avoid destroying the properties here he has interests in. He’s even volunteered to give us a map showing those properties. Isn’t that helpful of him? Under a certain amount of pressure, he also volunteered to draw us another map, showing exactly where the city Council is currently hiding out. In return for his life and continued well-being. So we brought him to you, sir. If he is who he says he is, and knows what he says he does, he could be very valuable. And if you were to see your way clear to giving my friend and me recommendations on the strength of that, sir, or even a raise in rank, well, we were just doing our duty.”