Deathstalker Legacy (67 page)

Lewis dragged the unconscious body, in its frankly appalling underwear, into the side room, locked the door, and then set off again, walking openly now through the corridors. He nodded calmly to other guards he passed, as he moved up from floor to floor, and they nodded back. Lewis couldn’t risk using his own voice, so he just nodded and grunted, and mostly the other guards just grunted and nodded back. Until finally, on the fifth floor, Lewis ran into two guards in modern uniforms, watching over the old steel gates that blocked off Traitor’s Wing from the rest of the Tower. They were wearing full body armor, and carrying energy guns as well as swords. They were playing cards on a folding table, but they both looked up immediately as Lewis headed unhurriedly towards them. One of the guards stood up, and stepped away from the card table to block Lewis’s way, one hand resting on the gun at his hip.

“That’s far enough. You know you historicals aren’t allowed anywhere near the Wing tonight. Give me the password, and then piss off out of it.”

“Right,” growled the other guard. “How many times do we have to tell you people? We don’t care how many years you’ve been making your rounds, or how historically significant it is; tonight the Wing is off limits. And if you’ve forgotten the password as well, I’m going to give you a serious slap, just for annoying me. Password!”

Lewis went as though to answer, and then broke off and coughed harshly, as though bothered by something in his throat. He tried again, and coughed even more horribly. He kept walking towards the waiting guards, gesturing helplessly, and the one who’d stood up sighed heavily and came forward to meet him. Lewis coughed even harder, making a big deal of the hacking and spitting, until the guard was in range, and then Lewis straightened up and punched the man right between the eyes.

Unfortunately, although the man stumbled backwards, making loud sounds of distress, he didn’t go down. Lewis jumped him, tore the gun from its holster and threw it aside. The other guard watched openmouthed, and then started to rise from his seat. Lewis was still grappling with the first guard, who turned out to be strong and fast and a bloody good fighter. Lewis supposed he should have known they wouldn’t choose just anyone to guard Jesamine.

He ducked a clawed hand heading for his eyes, and hit the guard hard under the sternum. All the color went out of the man’s face, and his legs buckled. The other guard was dancing around them, gun in hand, shouting and cursing and trying to get a bead on Lewis. So Lewis threw the first guard at him. The two of them went down with a satisfyingly loud thud, the second guard pinned under the first. Lewis stepped forward and kicked the gun out of the second guard’s hand, and then had to fall backwards as the second guard pushed the first off him, and surged to his feet again. He went straight for Lewis, who spun around and hit the man right in the forehead with a vicious back elbow. The second guard went down as though someone had kicked his feet out from under him. He lay still, twitching a bit, while Lewis walked around in little circles for a while, cursing and holding his elbow, which hurt like hell. Always go for the soft spots. You’d think he’d know that by now.

He glared around him, breathing hard. He had to work fast. Unless the other guards were all asleep in the control room, someone had to have seen the two guards going down, even if they couldn’t see him. He searched the two unconscious guards, and found the old steel key that opened the steel gates. He pushed them open and ran into Traitor’s Wing, calling out Jesamine’s name. He could still get them both out, if they moved fast. Only one cell had been opened, for the Wing’s first actual prisoner in centuries, but when Lewis got there, Jesamine wasn’t there. They must have moved her.

And then alarms went off everywhere at once, loud and piercing, and there was no longer any need for secrecy or stealth. The bait had been snatched away, and the trap was sprung. Lewis spun around, snarling, gun in hand. Whatever happened, he wasn’t going to be taken prisoner. No show trial, and public disgrace for his family. He ran back down the corridor, past the steel gates, jumped the unconscious guards, and kept running. Out into the next corridor, just in time to see a dozen or more armed security men come running into the corridor from an intersection. They cried out on seeing Lewis, with his old uniform and holo disguise, and demanded to know what was happening. And then they cried out again and scattered in alarm as he opened fire with his disrupter. No more bluffing. He wanted Jesamine.

He turned and ran the other way. He didn’t think he’d hit anyone. He hoped he hadn’t. They were just doing their job. But he would kill everyone he saw, if that was what it took to rescue Jesamine. If she was still here in the Tower . . .

He had to find her, and soon, but he didn’t even know where to look. She could be anywhere in the Tower, on any floor, if they hadn’t already bustled her outside. No; she must still be around somewhere. They wouldn’t risk taking her out while her fans were still rioting. Just the sight of her under arrest would escalate the trouble tenfold. Lewis ran on, plunging down corridor after corridor, as more guards came running from all directions. They’d seen his old uniform and holo face now, and knew who they were looking for. Some had guessed who he really was, and were using his name as a battle cry. They wouldn’t hesitate to kill the traitor Deathstalker. Lewis gripped his gun tightly, and his ugly face was very determined and very cold.

And finally, of course, he ended up in a dead end, with nowhere left to go. No doors, no windows, no hiding places; just blank walls and a corridor that went nowhere. Lewis spun around, sword and gun at the ready, like an animal at bay, and a whole crowd of armed and armored guards all but fell over themselves crashing to a sudden halt at the far end of the corridor. They saw they had their prey cornered at last, but they didn’t seem too pleased about it. They looked at each other, shifting from foot to foot, and hefting their swords and guns uncertainly. It seemed they at least suspected who was hiding behind the holo face. Lewis reached up to the collar at his throat, and turned it off. No more hiding. The holo face blinked out, and many of the guards actually groaned as Lewis’s familiar ugly features reappeared. He grinned at them, and growled deep in his throat, and was pleased to note that several of the guards’ faces went pale.

And then the guards raised their disrupters and pointed them at Lewis, and he understood they had no intention of even trying to take him alive. A dead traitor was much less trouble than a live prisoner who might insist on his innocence, and raise awkward doubts in the people’s minds. Lewis’s face flushed with anger as the force shield sprang into being on his left arm. It was a good shield, top of the line, but it would still only absorb or deflect a set number of hits before the energy crystal was drained, and then the force shield would collapse, and he would be defenseless. Had to be twenty, maybe thirty guards, and most of them had energy guns. Lewis calculated the odds coldly, and decided that what was left of his luck had just run out. No honorable end, no fighting chance; just shot down in secret, like a mad animal. He had a brief moment to regret all the things he meant to do, and never had, and that he’d never see Jesamine again, even to say good-bye; and then he heard more running feet on the way, and knew his time was up. So; if he was going to go down, best to go down fighting, and take as many of the bastards with him as he could. To be a Deathstalker, to the last. He looked at the guards, and saw some of them were still raising their guns. His reverie had only lasted a few seconds. What the hell . . . He raised his voice in the old family battle cry.

“Shandrakor! Shandrakor!”

And then he charged down the corridor, towards overwhelming odds and a certain death, smiling a terrible smile.

Most of the guards were so astonished they just stood there and watched him do it. A handful of them fired their weapons, the energy beams searing past Lewis’s head or ricocheting from his force shield, and then he was in and among them. He shot one man at point-blank range, and then he cut about him with his sword, and blood and screams flew on the air. For a moment they actually fell back before him, frightened by his face and his reputation and his ancient, deadly name; and then they remembered how many they were, and their training reasserted itself. They fell on him, unable to use their guns in the crush of bodies, slicing and hacking at him with their swords. Lewis spun back and forth, his blade a blur, constantly spinning to put his force shield between him and his enemies, but in the end he was only one man, and they were so many. Swords came at him from every direction, and he cried out as they cut into him. His blood jumped and ran, and spattered the walls and floor, but still Lewis stood his ground, refusing to be beaten, refusing to die. Fighting till the last, so that at least his family would know he died an honorable death.

And that was when Samuel Chevron came charging out of nowhere, and hit the guards from the other side. He was swinging the biggest, longest sword Lewis had ever seen, and the heavy blade cut through the guards’ armor like it wasn’t even there. Chevron cut down half a dozen guards before they knew what was happening, and then he was right in the thick of the fighting, killing men with cold, brutal, efficient skill. Suddenly Jesamine was there too, with a gun in each hand, and she shot down two of the guards nearest to Lewis. His heart leaped at the sight of her, and new strength filled his arms.

The guards wavered, caught between two implacable foes, both fighting like demons, and in a moment it was all suddenly too much for them, and the survivors broke and ran. Lewis slowly lowered his sword, breathing hard. End to end, the corridor was littered with dead bodies. He looked at Chevron, and the man wasn’t even breathing hard. And then Jesamine ran forward and took Lewis in her arms in a fierce hug, and he cried out despite himself as she hurt him. She let go immediately, stepped back and looked at him, and her eyes widened in horror as she took in the extent of his injuries.

“Oh Jesus, Lewis; what have they done to you?”

“Not enough to keep me from you,” Lewis said, or thought he said. He leaned back against a blood-spattered wall, suddenly weak and giddy. There was blood running thickly down his swordarm, and he had to look down to make sure he was still holding his sword, because his fingers couldn’t feel it.

“We have to get you to a regen tank,” said Jesamine.

“I’ve got one outside,” said Samuel Chevron. “Think you can hold together long enough for us to get you to it, Lewis?”

“Oh sure,” he said, with a confidence he didn’t feel. “You’re a real man of surprises tonight, Samuel. Even more than when you turned up at Court in that really ratty Father Christmas suit. What’s a retired trader like you doing here anyway?”

“I came here to rescue Jesamine,” said Chevron. “And to answer your next question; I got in here first because no one sees me unless I want them to. And because I had a little help.”

“Much help from mighty but unappreciated sorcerer!” said a familiar voice, and a small figure dressed in gray darted out from behind Chevron. “I is back!” said Vaughn. “Ex-leper, hero of old, and powerful beyond the dreams of people with really imaginative dreams! Save princess from evil tower, and chew gum at same time! Bow down ye mighty and despair.”

“You’re supposed to be dead,” said Lewis, too tired and too hurt to be diplomatic.

Vaughn shrugged easily. “I got over it. Being dead is
boring.
Knew you’d be here, told Chevron, here we are. You’ll get my bill later. Don’t forget gratuity, or I’ll give you boils on your ding dong.”

Lewis turned his head painfully slowly to look at Chevron. “Why? Why should a pillar of the community like you get involved in this mess, to help two traitors?”

“I’m here because I’m needed. I thought all that was behind me, but evil forces are on the move again, and it seems the past won’t leave me alone.” He glared at Vaughn. “Time we were moving, Deathstalker. The whole place is crawling with guards. They knew you wouldn’t be able to resist coming here; and someone wanted to make really sure you’d never get out of here alive.”

“Of course,” said Vaughn. “Lewis is Deathstalker, and damned important.” He made a long gurgling sound, and spat something juicy onto the floor. “Lewis save Empire, maybe Humanity too. Seen it in stars, and entrails too. Poor goat. Lewis is Deathstalker, like ancestor. I liked Owen. You’ll like him too, Lewis; when you get to meet him.”

“Doesn’t seem likely,” said Lewis. He winced as Jesamine tightened a tourniquet near the top of his left arm, to stop the flow of blood. “The AIs told me . . . that Owen was dead, long ago.”

“Oh he was. Saw him die, in Mistport. Very sad. But that was in past. In future, you and he will meet, and work together. I have seen it. Future is just like past, only in reverse. I met Owen in future; he gave me ring, to give to you now. I came back, to give it to you.”

Everyone looked at him for a long moment. Lewis recovered first, perhaps because he was too tired and too hurt to give a damn. “I’m definitely going to meet the blessed Owen? Alive and in the flesh, in the future?”

“Oh yes,” said Vaughn. “Owen’s coming back. Official. You heard it here first!”

“What the hell,” said Lewis. “You’re supposed to be dead, and you’re here. So why not Owen?”

“Death is overrated,” said Vaughn. “I can’t die, not till my purpose is done. Much like Owen, in fact. Destiny’s a real bitch, sometimes.”

“Fascinating as all this undoubtedly is,” Chevron said heavily, “we can’t stand around here chatting all night. More guards are on their way, and there’s a very real chance Lewis could bleed to death.”

“Knew I forgot something,” said Vaughn.

A gray hand with fingers missing emerged from out of Vaughn’s gray sleeve, and gripped Lewis firmly by the wrist. A sudden shock went right through him, and he cried out, though he wasn’t sure whether what he’d felt was pain or not. And suddenly he was strong again, breathing easily, his head clear and all his wounds closed. Nothing was bleeding anymore, and he didn’t need the wall to hold him up. He looked openmouthed at Vaughn.