"Why didn't you say so?" Lewis gathered Jesamine's barely breathing body up in his arms, holding her as though she was weightless, and rose to his feet. "Where's the tank?"
"In the corridor behind the reptiloid," said the robot.
"We'll move her," said Brett.
"I shall savor the taste of your meat," said Saturday.
"No," said Owen. "I'll take care of this. Lewis, get your woman to the tank while I kill this lizard."
He moved forward to face Saturday, and Brett and Rose moved in on either side of him.
"Our job too," said Rose.
"Of course," said Brett. "What are friends for?"
The three of them charged the reptiloid, and hit her together. Saturday had to fall back, unable to face three thrusting swords, and Lewis darted past her into the corridor beyond. The reptiloid bellowed her frustration, and her barbed tail lashed viciously around to slam into Rose's armored chest. The force of the blow sent her flying twenty feet. Brett howled with rage. He ran forward, climbed the eight-foot-tall reptiloid like a ladder, and used both hands to thrust his sword into Saturday's eye. She roared furiously. Dark blood ran down her face. She bucked her shoulders, and Brett went flying, leaving his sword protruding from her eye socket. He hit the floor rolling, and was quickly back on his feet. Saturday surged towards him. Brett drew a dagger from his boot and held his ground, standing between the reptiloid and the semiconscious Rose.
And then Saturday stopped abruptly, and looked back over her shoulder. Owen had hold of her by the tail. He yanked hard, and the reptiloid stumbled backwards, caught off balance. Her great wedge-shaped head swung round towards Owen, her mouth open, revealing teeth like knives. Owen let go of her tail, darted forward and grabbed Saturday's head with both hands. He twisted sharply, and the sound of the reptiloid's neck breaking was very loud in the sudden quiet.
Saturday hit the steel floor with a crash, and lay there stretched out and shuddering. She looked up at Owen with her one remaining eye. Her breathing was slow and labored, and blood drooled out the side of her mouth.
"Thank you," she said indistinctly. "A warrior's death. An honorable end, for…"
"Shut the hell up," said Owen. He bent down and slammed his fist into the reptiloid's chest. The armor plating cracked and collapsed inwards. Owen thrust his hand deep into the abdomen, grabbed the heart and ripped it out. Saturday convulsed, and then was still. Owen looked at the still-beating heart in his hand, and crushed it. Purple meat and dark blood oozed from his closed fist. Owen threw the mess away, and looked around him. Brett was tending to Rose, who was sitting up and looking rather embarassed at being taken out so easily. The Shub robot approached Owen, and bowed low to him.
"You are indeed the true Deathstalker."
"Don't you start," said Owen. A thought occurred to him, and he fixed the robot with a thoughtful gaze. "Is that why you didn't join in the fight? Because you wanted to see if I still had it?"
The robot just looked at him with its blank face. There was a groan to his left, and Owen looked round to see Captain Silence rising awkwardly to his feet.
"I must be getting old," he said glumly. "They didn't use to be able to sneak up on me."
"You just made a dent in a steel wall with your head!" said Brett. "That blow would have killed anyone else!"
"I'm not supposed to be anyone else," said Silence.
Lewis came back, with a repaired but still somewhat fragile-looking Jesamine on his arm. She held her tattered dress front together to preserve her modesty, and smiled weakly at the others. Lewis nodded respectfully to the robot.
"That is one hell of a regeneration tank you've got there. I've never seen the process work so fast. But if you ever wait that long again to tell me something I need to know, I will dismantle you with a blunt spoon. Do you understand me, Shub?"
The robot bowed to him. "My apologies to you, Sir Deathstalker. And to the lady."
Jesamine looked at the dead and eviscerated reptiloid, sniffed loudly, and gave the body a weak but heartfelt kick. "I never liked you, you overgrown handbag. You tore off one of my tits, you cow! I'm still not sure the new one matches the other."
"I promise I'll check them both thoroughly later," Lewis said solemnly, and they both laughed.
Owen looked at Lewis and Jesamine together, and then at Rose and Brett, and a slow cold tiredness ran through him, as he recognized in them the love he'd never known himself. Hazel's missing. No one knows where she is. It's been two hundred years… Owen met Silence's gaze, and they shared a moment of understanding. It's always hard to outlive the ones you love. She can't be dead. I'd know if she was dead.
To hell with all that, Owen thought abruptly. I've got work to do.
He summoned up all his power, feeling it seethe and boil within him, and sent his mind soaring up and out. He rose up from the planet Haden, blasting through the atmosphere, shining like the sun. The fleet and the Shub ships were spread out before him, like so many clever toys. Owen concentrated, and suddenly he was standing on all the bridges on all the starcruisers in the Imperial fleet. Not a holo image, but the real man himself, present on a thousand ships simultaneously. All the captains knew who he was immediately. Owen's presence burned like a star, suffusing the whole bridge. Many of the crews cried out, and fell from their seats to kneel and bow to him. Owen looked at them accusingly, like a father disappointed in his children, and said, Stand down.
And they did. All the captains on all the ships shut down their weapons systems, lowered their force shields, and canceled all invasion orders. Because this was Owen Deathstalker, returned in the hour of the Empire's greatest need, just as the legends always said he would. The captains rose from their command chairs, bent their knees and bowed their heads to him. Owen smiled on them.
Stand by.
He disappeared. Captain Price of the Havoc got to his feet again, and wondered vaguely why his cheeks were wet with happy tears. Admiral West was standing beside him, white-faced and trembling. She had not kneeled or bowed. She looked at Price.
"It's a trick. It has to be a trick. It couldn't be… him. Finn said… We have our orders! Order the invasion!"
"No," said Price. "It's over."
They're monsters! All of them! We have to scorch the planet! Destroy them all!"
"No," said Captain Price.
The admiral looked round the bridge, and saw all the other faces turned against her. Some of the crew even looked at her pityingly. Admiral West lunged for the controls to start the scorch herself, and Captain Price shot her in the back of the head.
Down in the workings around the Madness Maze, Owen Deathstalker looked at the Shub robot, and his voice held all its old authority.
"The Terror," he said. "Where is it now?"
The robot called up a navigation chart, and put it up on the viewscreen. "Here, Lord Deathstalker. Our projected course puts it not far beyond the remains of the dead planet Heracles Four."
"I can get you there in about two weeks," said Silence.
"Hell with that," said Owen.
He reached out with his power, gathered up all their minds and joined them to his. Lewis and Jesamine, Brett and Rose, Captain Silence and the AIs of Shub were all joined together under the force of his will as Owen leapt up from the planet Haden again, and shot out into the stars. They flashed across space at impossible speed, heading for Heracles IV
I always said you were the best of us, said Silence.
They came to the dead world. Owen and all the others hung above it, in spirit. Laid out before them was the wreckage of a ruined planet. Dead cities full of dead people. The scars of huge fires. The scarred hulk of a murdered world. Owen reached out with his Maze-boosted mind, and found traces of the Terror, still lingering. Traces so strong that Owen could still feel them… still recognize them. In that moment, he knew what and who the Terror was, and the shock of that recognition broke his concentration, and he and all the others tumbled back across space, and back into their own bodies aga
in. Owen looked at them all.
"My God," he said. "The Terror… it's Hazel."
Deathstalker Return Page 52