Owen stepped out of the transfer portal and found himself in a world of ice. Three inches of snow covered the floor, long icicles hung down from the high ceiling and thick hoarfrost made whorled patterns on the walls. It was bitterly cold, and Owen shuddered convulsively. He pulled his cloak tightly about him, folded his arms across his chest and watched his breath steam on the air as he tried to stop shivering. The others appeared behind him, and they all huddled together for warmth. Except Moon, who didn't seem at all bothered.
Owen's thoughts slowly returned to him, having been driven aside for a moment by the sudden shock of the cold, and he looked about him. The air was crisp and sharp, with only a slight haze of mist. The room wasn't all that large, compared to some of the rooms he'd walked through to get here, but it gave the impression of great size, as though the walls were not strong enough to contain everything the room held. In the middle of the room a bright shimmering light shone from the floor to the ceiling, a silver pillar of illumination, and in that pillar was a man, standing unnaturally still, held in the light like a butterfly transfixed on a pin.
Owen walked slowly forward, impelled by an impulse that was half curiosity and half awe. The snow crunched loudly under his boots, and he realized he was the first person to break the surface of the snow since it had first fallen, some nine hundred years earlier. He felt in a strange way as though he had stepped back in time when he entered this room, stepped into an earlier age when the Empire was still fresh and new, the product of great men and women, carved from the unfeeling emptiness of space with courage and audacity. There were heroes and villains in those days, when events were larger than life and everything had the stamp of greatness. Giants walked the stage of Empire then, and this was one of them. Owen stopped just short of the silver pillar and studied the man within.
He was as tall as Owen, but sparsely built, though his arms were curved with muscle. He looked to be in his early fifties, with a solid, lined face, a silver-gray goatee, and long gray hair held back in a scalplock. He wore a set of battered and shapeless furs, held in at the waist with a wide leather belt. His leather boots were starting to come apart at the stitching. He wore thick golden armlets and heavy metal rings on his fingers. He carried a long sword in a leather scabbard hanging down his back, and a gun of unfamiliar design hung on his hip. Overall, he gave an impression of strength at rest, and with his eyes closed he looked only as though he was thinking for a moment and might at any time open his eyes and look around.
"So that's him," said Hazel, and Owen jumped despite himself. He hadn't heard her move up alongside him. The others gathered around the silver pillar of light, giving it plenty of room, just in case. They seemed impressed by the morn, if not the man. Owen found himself thinking of an insect caught in amber.
"This is him," he said finally, careful to keep his voice calm and even. "The Deathstalker. The original Deathstalker, founder of my Clan. We still sing songs about his valor and his exploits, though the Empire banned them long ago. He's been here over nine hundred years, waiting for someone to come for him. Waiting, while the wheel turned and the Empire moved on without him."
"He doesn't look like much," said Ruby. "I could take him."
"Are we really going to wake him?" said Random. "He's been asleep a long time, and things have changed. He might find it very difficult to adapt."
"He was a warrior," said Owen. "And some things haven't changed at all. Family. Loyalty. Betrayal. I think he'll fit in quite well. Besides, we need him."
"You're right," said Hazel. "Some things haven't changed at all."
Owen started to answer her, and then stopped. She was as much right as she was wrong. He stepped forward and thrust his hand bearing his father's ring into the shimmering silver column. The light blazed up blindingly, and Owen had to turn his head away. He tried to fall back from it, but his hand was held firmly in the light. A slow rumble of power filled the chamber, as though ancient engines were awakening to life again. The floor shook, and icicles broke off from the ceiling, plunging down like swords. Then the silver light snapped off, gone so suddenly it was as though it had never been there. Owen looked back at his ancestor, standing there before him. The man's chest rose and fell slowly, and then he lifted his head and opened his eyes. They were a surprisingly mild gray, but his gaze was firm and direct. He studied Owen for a moment, and then shook his head.
"I don't know you, but you bear my ring." His voice was calm and assured, the voice of a man accustomed to power. "Are you Family, boy?"
"Yes, sir. I am Owen Deathstalker, your descendant. I am first of the Clan, though the present Empress has tried to strip that from me and declared me outlaw. I need your help, kinsman. The Empire has turned on me, as it did on you. It is time to take up the sword again."
"Maybe," said the Deathstalker. "How long have I slept?"
"Nine hundred and forty-three years, kinsman."
"Have things changed much since my day?"
"Surprisingly little, kinsman. The essentials are still the same. I've studied the Empire's past. I'm a historian."
The older man gave Owen a hard look. "What kind of occupation is that for a Deathstalker? What campaigns have you fought in? How many wars?"
"None, actually," said Owen. "I'm not really the warrior type."
The Deathstalker shook his head slowly. "I've been gone too long. The blood's grown thin. Let's get out of here, boy. Too damn cold here for my liking. Reminds me of the grave. You can bring me up to date as we go. And call me Giles. It was my name long before I gave my Clan the name Deathstalker."
He headed for the door, giving the others just enough time to get out of the way. Owen hurried after him, and the others scrambled to keep up with them.
"Historian," Giles said thoughtfully. 'Tell me, how much has science advanced in my absence? Are you still using disrupters?"
"Yes, sir. The Empire has kept a careful control on science and progress down the centuries. This helps to keep things stable and reserves what advances are made for the ruling classes. Just another way to keep power. We still use disrupters. Recharge is down to two minutes now."
Giles sniffed. "I suppose that's an improvement. Energy guns. Flashy things. Powerful but limited. Projectile weapons are much more versatile, but they were already being phased out of the Empire when I had to leave in a hurry. The aristocracy wanted them stamped out. Too easy to make, too easy to use, and far too much power to be left in the hands of the lower classes. Energy weapons are difficult to make and very expensive. So, they replace projectile guns, and the only effective weapons end up the property of the ruling classes and their enforcers. Good thinking. But I never believed in it, so I never went along with it. Which is at least partly why I ended up here."
He stopped before the portal, snapped "Armory!" and then stepped through and vanished. Owen looked at the others.
"Well, what do you think? Do we follow him?"
"He's your ancestor," said Haze. "Can we trust him?"
"I don't know. He's not what I expected."
"Put it this way," said Random. "What other choice do we have? We can't even find our way out of this place without him."
He stepped through the transfer portal, and the others followed him. There was the usual sudden shift from one view to another, and then Owen stopped dead in his tracks and looked about him. He was in another great hall, stretching away before him for as far as he could see, but here the walls were covered with more kinds of weapons than he'd ever seen in his life. There were handguns and rifles of all shapes and sizes, including several it would have taken two men to carry. None of them looked to be energy guns.
"What the hell are they?" whispered Hazel beside him.
"Projectile weapons," said Owen. "I've seen some of these in the older archive records. They were effective and efficient, but no damn use at all against force shields. They were also no match for the range and accuracy of energy guns. That's why the old style of weapon was replaced by the new. Officially."
"Shot for shot they were right," said Giles. "A disrupter can outperform any projectile weapon. But on the other hand, they don't have to stop and recharge between shots for two minutes. You can fire over and over again, as long as your ammunition holds out. You'd be surprised how much damage you can do when you're firing a thousand rounds a second. I have a gun here for every occasion, small and large. There are weapons here that can assassinate a single man in a crowd from up to two miles away, and others that could take out a whole town."
"Unless they have force shields," said Owen.
Giles grinned at him. "That's better, boy. At least you can think like a warrior. Force shields are fine, but they also have a built-in limitation: they only last as long as their energy crystals hold out. Once they've been drained by constant use, it takes forever to recharge them. So all you have to do is maintain a steady stream of fire, wait for the shields to go down, and then charge right in." He gestured grandly at the others. "Take a look around. See if there's something here that takes your fancy. You stay with me, boy." He waited for the others to move away, and then turned to Owen and lowered his voice. "Fill me in. How big is your army? How many men am I going to have to supply guns for?"
Owen looked at him blankly for a moment. "I don't actually have an army, sir. There's just myself, and my associates here. Our ship crashed not far from here. It's a wreck. We're all there is, sir."
Giles pursed his lips and nodded slowly. "Deathstalker luck. Always bad. Fortunately for you, boy, I have a ship. How big a force have you got on your tail? I assume the Empire was right behind you when you jumped to come here?"
"Yes, sir. Two Imperial starcruisers."
Giles looked at him with a certain amount of respect for the first time. "Now that's more like it. Don't worry, we'll be gone long before they can get here. Tell me about your friends. Are they good fighters? Reliable?"
"The best. Hazel d'Ark's a pirate and clonelegger. Ruby Journey's a bounty hunter, Jack Random's a professional rebel, and the disturbing-looking one is Tobias Moon. He's an augmented man."
"A cyborg? They were still trying to make that work when I left. Is he any good in a fight?"
Owen grinned. "Moon kicks ass. Anybody's ass. But I wouldn't turn your back on him too often. Augmented men often have their own agendas. And all of my people are good fighters."
"Can I depend on them? Will they follow orders?"
"Maybe. After all, they're outlaws, like me. And like you. Convince them that it's in their best interests to work with you, and they will. But don't just give them orders and expect them to snap to attention. They don't have much love or respect for authority in general and aristos in particular. But they're good people. Mostly."
"And what about you, Owen Deathstalker the historian? Can you fight?"
"I do all right," Owen said steadily. "I've been trained by the best, and I have the boost. I can take care of myself."
"The boost? That's another thing they were trying to make work when I left. You're full of surprises, kinsman. Unfortunately, I now have one for you. According to my computers, an Imperial starship has just dropped into orbit around Shandrakor. The Standing's shielded from their sensors, unless they've radically improved since my day, but your wrecked ship isn't. It won't take them long to spot it and send some heavily armed people down to check for survivors. I've downloaded your AI into my systems; pretty sophisticated, but not half as smart as it thinks it is."
"Oz!" said Owen. "Are you there?"
"Where else would I be?" said Ozymandius. "You should see the antiquated system they've dumped me in. Wouldn't surprise me if this junk ran on steam power. Give me a week or two and I'll be running things around here."
"Behave yourself. We're guests here. We'll talk later. For now, keep your eyes and ears open and make yourself useful."
"Got it."
Owen looked at Giles. "He's been with me a long time. He's a pain in the ass, but he's good at what he does."
"I heard that!"
"Shut up, Oz."
"Tell me, Owen," said Giles. "Why did you come here looking for me?"
"My only hope for survival is to mount a rebellion against the Empress. And for that I need the Darkvoid Device." With Giles' eyes boring into his, it never even occurred to Owen to lie. "Do you still have it?"
"No. But I know where it is. I only ever used it once, and a thousand stars blinked out in a moment, leaving nothing but darkness. The Darkvoid. Thousands of inhabited planets were left without suns; billions upon billions of people died. That's a lot of ghosts for one man to live with. I'd done many questionable things in my time as Warrior Prime, and come to terms with them, but that was too much, even for me.
"I'd sworn an oath to protect and preserve the Empire, not destroy it piece by piece for the pleasure of others. I created the Device almost by accident, while working on something else. I was the only one who could operate it. That made it my responsibility. So I did the only responsible thing left to me: I took the Device and ran. Hid myself here, where no one would ever find me except Family. And just as a safeguard, I stashed the Device somewhere else. I left it in the heart of the Madness Maze on the cold corpse of the Wolfling World, deep in the Darkvoid."
Owen looked at him for a long moment, searching for something to say. The Wolflings were a part of legend: the first genetically-engineered human beings. They were supposed to be living killing machines, the perfect soldiers, but unfortunately the Empire did its work too well. The Wolflings were unbeatable. The Empire grew scared of what it had created and wiped out the Wolflings while they were still trapped on their planet. It was lost to history when it became part of the Darkvoid. No wonder no one had ever found the Device, if it was hidden there. Few ships had ever crossed the Rim into the Darkvoid and come back to tell of it.
"We need the Device," he said finally. "Our rebellion hasn't a hope in hell without it."
Giles looked at him steadily. "And is your rebellion really so important?"
"You've been asleep a long time," said Hazel, suddenly there beside them. "You don't know how bad things have got. If you're rich or an aristo or connected, you can have anything, do anything, and no one can stop you. You can destroy lives, and no one can make you pay."
"They use and discard us," said Moon. "And no one cares."
"I've fought the Empire all my adult life," said Jack Random. "Fought and bled on a hundred worlds, only to see my war for truth and justice come to nothing. They have the ships and the weapons and the armies, and all we have is right on our side. It's not enough."
Giles looked at Ruby Journey. She was standing quietly at the back, arms folded. She looked bored. "What about you, bounty hunter? Don't you have anything to say to me? No appeals to my better nature?"
Ruby looked at him calmly. "I made a good living hunting down the Empire's enemies. Outlaws. Now I am one. Funny how things change."
"What changed you?"
Ruby smiled. "Hazel's my friend. She hasn't the sense to come in out of the rain, but sometimes the rain follows you no matter where you go. The Empire wants her dead, I want her alive. So to hell with the Empire. Besides, I was promised as much loot as I can carry if we win, and you'd be surprised how much I can carry when I put my mind to it."
Hazel smiled at her. "Ruby. I never knew you cared so much."
"Don't get cocky. If the reward on you had been just a little higher, things might have turned out differently."
Giles turned back to Owen. "If I led you to the Device, what would you do with it? It's not exactly a subtle weapon. You could use it to destroy whatever planet the Empress is currently using as a homeworld, but only by destroying a thousand other worlds with it. Could you do that? Create another Darkvoid, in the heart of the Empire?"
"You used it," said Owen.
"And look what it did to me. I thought I had good reason. I was wrong. What about you, kinsman? What price will you pay to win?"
"I don't know. I've seen enough killing already, and
none of it for a good enough reason." The young girl lay crying in the bloody Mistworld snow, her legs crippled forever by his blade. "Perhaps all I really want is to see the Device destroyed before the Empress can get her hands on it. She wouldn't hesitate to use it. I don't know, Giles. I can't make a decision like this. I'm just a historian, a hoarder of old books and records, not a warrior or a revolutionary. Ask Jack. Or Hazel. Ask anyone but me."
"That's what I said," said Giles Deathstalker. "But in the end, I did what I thought I had to, and so will you when your time comes. I'll take you to the Device. And let us all pray we get there before the Empire does."
"You have a ship?" said Hazel.
"Oh, yes," said Giles. "I have a ship."
"How long will it take to power it up?" said Hazel. "It's got to be in one hell of a state after spending so many centuries in mothballs."
"My computers began bringing it back to life the moment I awakened," said Giles. "It's been well looked after. I always knew I might have to leave in a hurry."
"Better be a fast ship," said Ruby. "Got a lot of determined people on our trail, most especially including the one in orbit."
"And I must beg passage of you," said Moon, and Giles looked at the augmented man interestedly. There had been a strange urgency in his grating, inhuman voice. "My people were created on the lost world of Haden. It stayed lost because that was not its true name. And because it was lost in the Darkvoid. Before my creators found and transformed its interior, it was called the Wolfling World."
"Now that's spooky," said Hazel. "The Darkvoid Device and the sleeping Hadenman army, both on the same planet? What are the chances of that?"
"Too damn small for my liking," said Owen. "If I didn't know better, I'd swear my father arranged it. It's the kind of thing he'd do."
"It's far more likely that I didn't hide my trail as carefully as I thought I had," said Giles. "And if someone found the Wolfling World once, someone else might find it again. I think it's time we got moving."
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