Gregor was sitting on his huge rose-petal bed, clutching the sheets defensively around him. Half his oversize face was hidden behind a blood-soaked bandage, and Finlay smiled briefly. Evangeline had done well. But standing beside the bed, gun in hand, was a tall, slender figure, dressed all in black to show off his pale skin and delicate features. Valentine Wolfe. Finlay laughed softly, a disturbing, not altogether sane sound. Gregor flinched. Valentine didn't.
"Well, well," said Finlay. "It's all my birthdays come at once. The two men I hate most together in one room. There is a God, and he is good."
"You and I have never had much to do with Him," said Valentine easily. "We've always served a much darker master. But your timing is impeccable, as always. I came here to make an alliance with Gregor, on certain delicate issues that needn't concern you, and you choose this very evening to pursue your somewhat delayed vengeance. Well, I can't allow you to interfere, Finlay, so I'm afraid you're going to have to die."
Finlay laughed, and it was an ugly sound. Gregor whimpered, and Valentine moved forward to stand between him and Finlay. He put away his gun and drew his sword.
"I've heard many tales of your swordsmanship, Campbell. Let's see how good you really are. Man to man, blade to blade—let's finish what we started in Tower Campbell so long ago. What do you say?"
"I don't have time for this," said Finlay, and shot Valentine Wolfe through the chest with his disrupter. The energy beam punched through Valentine's chest and exploded out his back, throwing the Wolfe to the floor. Finlay sniffed once and turned to Gregor, who snarled soundlessly at him. Finlay strode forward, putting away his sword and gun, and grabbed Gregor by the shirt front with both hands. He hauled the huge distended body out of bed and threw Gregor on the floor. Flames from Valentine's burning clothes had set alight some of the surrounding furnishings, and the flames were spreading. The heat and flickering light and shadows added a suitably hellish touch to the proceedings. Finlay looked down at Gregor.
"You hurt Evangeline. You're a murderer, and a traitor, and a symbol of everything that's corrupt in the Families and in the Empire. The world will smell better when you're gone. Don't waste my time with threats or warnings. Your guards aren't coming, and I don't care what happens after I'm through with you. All that matters is that you suffer as you made my Evie suffer. I'm going to make you hurt so bad that when you finally die and get to Hell, the fires of the Pit will seem like a release."
He reached around his back and pulled the projectile weapon out from under his belt. He'd saved it especially for this moment. It was a simple handgun, with eight bullets. He took aim at Gregor's left knee and pulled the trigger. The kneecap shattered immediately under the bullet's impact, and Gregor screamed shrilly, clutching his bloody leg with both fat hands, as though they could force the kneecap back together. Finlay aimed carefully and shot out the other kneecap with his second bullet. Gregor screamed again, flailing his arms as though appealing for help that wasn't there. Finlay raised the gun and shot out Gregor's left elbow. Blood and splintered bone flew on the air, and the forearm swung back and forth at an unnatural angle. Finlay fired again, taking out the right elbow, and the right forearm was almost torn away by the impact.
Gregor was screaming steadily now, barely stopping to suck in new breath between each scream. His eyes bulged, and his mouth stretched impossibly wide. Finlay took his time aiming, and shot Gregor in his grossly distended stomach, just above the navel. This time the impact had a soft, muffled sound. Gregor howled like an animal. Finlay shot him in the groin, and blood spurted high up into the air. Gregor screamed and howled his sanity away, and still couldn't hide from the awful, horrible pain.
Finlay stood and listened for a while, smiling his death's-head grin. Half the chamber was on fire now. He looked around for Valentine, but there was no sign of the body anywhere. The Wolfe must have crawled away to die. He wouldn't get far with half his chest shot away. Finlay turned back to Gergor, still screaming like a soul newly damned to Hell.
"This is for you, Evie," Finlay murmured, and put a bullet through each of Gregor's eyes, blowing the back of his head away.
Finlay Campbell lowered the empty gun and looked down on the dead body of his enemy. It comforted him. The flames were all around him, and no doubt sweeping through all the floors below. There were no windows in Gregor's private quarters, no way out. He could hear explosions everywhere. The Tower wouldn't last much longer. Finlay looked calmly around him. And wondered what he would do next.
CHAPTER SIX
Cry Havoc
The Empire, dangerously weakened in its transitional state between the new and old orders, found itself under attack from all sides at once. And everything went to hell in a handcart. Old enemies came howling out of the dark, falling like wolves on undefended colonies out on the Rim. A massive fleet of Shub starships burst out of the Forbidden Sector, brushing aside the quarantining starcruiser, and laid waste to every inhabited planet in its path. Powered by the new alien-derived stardrive, they were effectively unstoppable by anything save the few remaining E-class starcruisers in the Imperial Fleet.
The great golden ships of the Hadenmen appeared out of nowhere, striking viciously at unsuspecting planets all along the Rim in The Second Great Crusade of the Genetic Church. It soon become clear they were emerging from hidden bases deep beneath the surfaces of uninhabited worlds. The Hadenmen had recently established secret Nests all across the Empire, not wanting to place all their eggs in one fragile basket again. The Deathstalker's destruction of Brahmin II had proven them right, and spurred on by the elimination of what should have been their second homeworld, all the Hadenmen Nests opened at once. The huge golden ships of feared legend ranged the long night again, bringing death and destruction and worse than death.
The insect ships were back too. Gliding silently out of the dark like huge, sticky balls of compacted webbing, driven by unknown forces, they passed unaffected through planetary defenses and discharged crawling armies of killer insects, eating whole cities alive and leaving nothing behind save bare, gnawed bones. They made no threats, issued no demands, could not be talked to or warned off. They just descended from the skies in silent horror and fell upon everything that lived. Soon there were whole planets out on the Rim covered by scuttling, seething insects, crawling blindly through the ruins of what had once been human cities.
The Empire wasted remarkably little time springing to its own defense. Parliament organized Golgotha into one great communications and tactical center, alerted all planets and colonies in the path of danger, and rushed ships, men, and weapons to defend those not yet fallen or attacked. Luckily, though Shub, Hadenmen, and insects shared a common enemy in Humanity, they showed no interest in any form of alliance. They went their own way, chose their own targets, and did not cooperate, even when it was clearly in their best interests to do so. But they didn't attack each other either, sticking strictly to their own territories, for the moment.
Planets and colonies fell, one by one, all along the Rim, and the three attacking forces moved steadily inward, heading for the greater concentrations of Humanity and the vulnerable heart of the Empire: Golgotha. Some colonists tried, against all Parliament's wishes and advice, to strike deals with those attacking them. It did no good.
General Beckett's devastated Imperial Fleet did what it could, but its capabilities were limited from the first. The few surviving E-class ships with the new stardrive couldn't be everywhere at once, and worlds under attack cried out for help all the time. Beckett sent what was left of his Fleet darting all over the Empire, pulling in every last ship with a crew and working guns, even those patrolling the Darkvoid, and rushed them from one trouble spot to another, but all too often they got there too late to do any real good. He then tried splitting up the Fleet, dispatching his most powerful starcruisers to defend those planets in most immediate danger. But Imperial starcruisers caught on their own were quickly outnumbered and outgunned, and had no choice but to run for their lives, u
sually heavily damaged. Unnerved by the loss of too many irreplacable ships, Parliament ordered Beckett to regroup his Fleet and pull them back to protect the more densely populated inner worlds of the Empire. Everyone else was left to fend for themselves. Whole populations struggled to evacuate their worlds, cramming themselves into the cargo holds of any ship with a working stardrive. Many never reached their destinations. Many more populations stood their ground and fought, ready to die rather than give up the worlds they had made their own, through generations of hard work and sacrifice.
The invasion had actually begun to slow when Shub launched its new wave. Vast armadas of new ships made their appearance, without the new stardrive but built from the harvested metal trees of Unseeli. From these ships issued great armies of Ghost Warriors and Furies and the deadly biomechanical aliens they had looted from the secret Vaults on Grendel. Unstoppable, implacable, they existed only to kill. Dead men with computer implants. Steel machines in the shape of men. Aliens bioengineered by some forgotten race to be perfect killing machines. Horror troops. Terror weapons. Just like the insects, they overran Humanity's armies, leaving only blood and bone behind. But still Humanity resisted, forgetting old animosities and diversions in the face of a common enemy. There were victories as well as losses, but never enough.
The Empire was being invaded on three fronts, by its most deadly enemies, and the fighting was spread across worlds already sickened and weakened by the length and bitter fighting of the rebellion. Some just didn't have it in them to fight anymore. There were shortages of everything needed to fight a war, the ships and weapons that ought to have stopped the invaders having been used up when Humanity fought itself. Shub and the Hadenmen and the insects had chosen their moment well. But Humanity fought on, and thanked God that at least the alien Recreated hadn't made an appearance yet. Because there was no one left to watch the Darkvoid.
The people called out for their heroes, the great warriors of the rebellion, but most were dead, or nowhere to be found. And the four greatest, the four survivors of the Madness Maze, had been sent off on distant, vital missions from which they might not return.
The army of the rogue AIs of Shub came to the planet Loki, world of eternal storms, and were invited in by human traitors. Ghost Warriors strode unfeeling through the howling winds of Loki, side by side with the human turncoats. Outer settlements fell quickly, and the central city of Vidar, overseer of the extensive mining operations, sent out a desperate call for help. There were no ships available, but it was a valuable planet, so Parliament did the next best thing, and sent them Jack Random and Ruby Journey.
The Defiance dropped out of hyperspace over Loki, hung around just long enough to drop a heavily armored pinnace, and then it was gone again, needed urgently elsewhere. The pinnace, wrapped in four times the usual amount of protective armor, dropped like a stone into the violently swirling atmosphere of Loki. Inside, the two living legends and their accompanying marine crew clung desperately to every handhold they could find, their crash webbing swinging them crazily back and forth. There were warning lights flashing all over the place, and everything not actually nailed down flew about the cramped cabin like so much shrapnel. The crew of a half dozen marines hunched their heads down into their shoulders, and did their best to hang on to their last meal. Random did his best to look stoic and experienced, while Ruby swung happily back and forth in her webbing, whooping loudly with glee at every new drop and lurch.
"Now, this is what I call a ride!" she yelled over the din of the storm and the pinnace's straining engines. "You'd have to pay good money for a ride like this back in Golgotha's theme parks!"
"Can't you do anything to settle this ship down?" Random yelled to the pilot at the front of the cabin. The floor dropped out from under his feet again, and he clung grimly to a nearby stanchion with both hands. "I have been in crashing elevators that were less uncomfortable than this!"
"Spoilsport!" said Ruby loudly. "You're getting old, Random!"
"Shut the hell up and let me concentrate!" the pilot shouted back, entirely unmoved. "The gyros are useless in weather systems like this; the conditions are changing too suddenly for the computers to cope. The best we can do for now is drop like a brick and hope conditions improve as we get nearer the surface. Though I wouldn't put money on it. If you don't like the way I fly, there are parachutes under your seats. Of course, the storm lightning will fry you the minute you open the outer hatch, but that's your problem. Thank you for flying with us, and for God's sake try to get some of it in the sick bags."
"Let the man do his job," said the massive Sergeant to Random's left. He was a thirty-year man with a trim, muscular form and an impressive number of combat drops to his credit. Half the Sergeant's face was covered with a spiderweb tattoo, and golden skulls and crossbones hung from both ears. His name tab said MILLER. "He's made this drop twice before, which is twice more than anyone else has. He knows what he's doing."
"I'm glad someone does," said Ruby, from the webbing on Random's right. "I mean, normally people who express an interest in visiting Loki of their own free will are immediately grabbed and locked up in a rubber room under industrial-strength sedatives, before they hurt themselves. Loki is the only planet in the Empire with worse weather than Mistworld. They only got colonists to come here by bribing them with massive land grants and more credit than they could spend in a lifetime. If the Empire needed an enema, this world is where they'd stick—"
"We had to come," said Random. "We're needed."
"I was quite happy back on Golgotha," said Ruby. "Living in a civilized city where the weather does what it's told, chasing down possible Shub connections. But no, Jack bloody Random has to go chasing off to be a hero again, and I get dragged along with him."
"You know we had to come," said Random. He looked back at the Sergeant. "You're sure Young Jack Random is down there somewhere?"
"Oh, yes. We've got holovid footage if you want to see it." Miller's mouth twitched as though he'd just tasted something sour. "The cameraman got fried before he could broadcast much, but we're pretty sure it's him. I thought you people said he died on Golgotha."
"He did," said Random. "Show us the footage."
The Sergeant made the connection through the pinnace's computers, and the holovid played back through Random and Ruby's comm implants, channeled directly through their optic nerves. The interior of the pinnace cabin vanished, replaced by a jerky, uncertain scene of a village in flames. Gusting winds fanned the fires, and black smoke thick with drifting smuts and cinders billowed through the still streets. There were bodies lying everywhere. Men, women, children, lying in great pools of blood. Not all the bodies were intact.
Ghost Warriors strode stiffly through the inferno, untouched by the intense heat. Dead men walking, their gray flesh rotting on their bones. And at their head, smiling and laughing, a sword dripping blood in one hand, was Young Jack Random. Tall, muscular, handsome, every inch the hero of legend. A severed human head hung by its blood-slick hair from his other hand. He stopped, suddenly aware of the camera, turned and struck a pose, standing half silhouetted against the crimson flames of a burning house. He smiled widely, showing perfect white teeth. His silver armor was running with blood, none of it his. He held up the severed head so it faced the camera, then laughed and gestured with his bloody sword. Two Ghost Warriors advanced on the camera. The footage cut off abruptly, and the pinnace cabin returned. Random and Ruby looked at each other.
"Well?" said Miller. "Is that him?"
"Oh, yes," said Ruby. "That's Young Jack Random, doing what he does best."
"So what's the story?" demanded the Sergeant. "Officially, the man died a hero, leading the street fighting in the Parade of the Endless. Unofficially, there were all kinds of rumors. Some say he was killed by his own side for betraying the cause. Others say you people killed him because he wouldn't go along with the deal you struck with Blue Block. Some say he never died. Just walked away in disgust from all the killing, but that he
'd return again in the hour of the Empire's greatest need. Lot of people liked that one. Word is, when he first appeared on Loki, people flocked to him as a savior. Until word came back with the few survivors that he was leading an army of Ghost Warriors and wasn't interested in taking prisoners. So, talk to me. If I'm going to have to face that man dirtside, I have a right to know."
"Of course you have," said Random. "He's not a man. He's a machine. A Fury. You can understand why we thought we had to keep that quiet."
"Jesus," said Miller. "But… he was a hero. He helped lead the rebellion."
"Shub was taking the long view," said Ruby. "If we won, they wanted one of their own in a position of power and influence. We only found out his true nature by accident. An esper colleague of ours destroyed his body completely. Flattened him out like metal roadkill."
"So how come he's back here making trouble?"
"It would appear Shub has built another one," said Random. "Another me. I suppose I should be flattered. It's psychological warfare. Just a little something extra to undermine human morale. Or perhaps a lure to bring me here, for some purpose of their own. When we find the Fury, I'll be sure to see what he has to say about it. Before I destroy him again."
"If we can," said Ruby. "Furies can take a hell of a lot of punishment. Julian Skye was a powerful esper. There's no guarantee we'll find anyone of his caliber dirtside."
"Julian Skye killed the original?" said the Sergeant, his face lighting up. "Damn, I watch his show all the time! He was a real hero!"
"Yes," said Random. "One of the few of us who really was. I wish he was here now."
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