Deathstalker Legacy (75 page)

Lewis nodded slowly, and lowered his gun. There would be other times. He turned away and boarded the yacht. It was every bit as luxurious as he’d expected, though the tiny bridge was more than a little cramped with four people and an eight-foot reptiloid crammed into it. Lewis took the pilot’s seat and called up the ship’s AI.

“Greetings!” said the AI, in a bright and cheerful voice that Lewis just knew was going to get on his nerves really quickly. “I am your ship’s AI, Ozymandius by name, and I just want to say how delighted I am to be working with a Deathstalker again! Of course, I’m not exactly the same AI your ancestor Owen knew. Shub created my personality around what was left of the original AI, and downloaded me into this ship, so I could help you with this escape. They’re really very keen that you should escape. Shub believes in Deathstalkers. They can get really sloppy and sentimental these days, when no one’s looking. So; where are we going first?”

“Unseeli,” said Lewis. “The Ashrai don’t like the Empire, so they should be willing to keep our presence there a secret. Assuming they don’t kill us all out of hand, of course. And since not many people know about Carrion’s involvement with my ancestor Owen, it won’t be the first place Finn will think to look for us. I want to talk to Carrion, to speak to someone who was actually there. Someone who knew the real Owen, and who might know what actually happened to him.”

“Excuse me,” said Brett, raising his hand like a child in a classroom. “I didn’t understand one word of what you just said there.”

“Don’t worry,” said Lewis. “It will all become horribly clear as we go along. Now strap yourself into the crash webbing, all of you. Saturday; improvise. Oz; plot a course.”

“You do know Unseeli is Quarantined?” the AI said diffidently.

“We’ll burn that bridge when we come to it. I think Carrion and the Ashrai will listen to me. I have Owen’s ring.”

“You do?” said Brett, leaning eagerly forward to stare at the black gold ring on Lewis’s finger. “Damn; you do! You know, when this is all over, I know people who would pay you a really nice price for that ring . . .”

“You’ll have to excuse Brett,” Rose said calmly. “It’s either that, or kill him.”

“Everybody grab hold of something!” Ozymandius yelled suddenly. “My sensors are picking up all kinds of ships and armed forces heading right for us! We don’t leave right now, Lewis, we’re not going anywhere!”

“Then go,” said Lewis. “Blast us out of here, don’t stop for anything, and drop into hyperspace the moment it’s practical.”

“Sounds like a plan to me!” said Ozymandius. The
Hereward
’s engines roared, and the ship threw itself up into the sky. Energy beams from approaching ships flared all around the yacht, lighting up the darkness, as it howled through the last of the planet’s atmosphere. “Wow!” yelled Ozymandius. “Déjà vu all over again!”

It was a very fast ship, and they were gone and disappeared into hyperspace long before anyone could stop them. Lewis Deathstalker, Jesamine Flowers, Brett Random, Rose Constantine, a reptiloid called Saturday, and an AI called Ozymandius.

Perhaps the only heroes left, in a darkening Empire.

LAST NIGHT I DREAMED OF OWEN DEATHSTALKER.

He was standing beside his descendant, Lewis, as they finally discovered the true nature of the Terror. What it really was.

And I woke up screaming.

T
wo men, two women, and a reptiloid pretty much filled the available bridge space. The two cabins were too claustrophobic and thin-walled to do anything other than sleep in, and the rest of the yacht was taken up with the oversized engine room and the packed cargo bay. So the outlaws stuck together on the bridge and tried not to get on each other’s nerves, mostly by not speaking at all unless absolutely necessary. It always ended in arguments. It didn’t help that they didn’t really have anything in common other than the fact of being outlaws, and that Finn Durandal wanted them dead.

Of them all, Brett seemed happiest, for the moment, because the data crystal he was studying so intently was just one of many filled with alien porn. In fact, the cargo bay was stuffed full of them. Brett had studied the contents list on the bridge computers, and then several of the crystals themselves, and had declared the alien porn to be of the highest quality, with quite superior production values. Everyone else was happy to take his word for it.

Lewis scowled at the half-eaten protein cube and the empty cup before him. Jesamine had a point. This stuff might be nourishing, but it was no substitute for food. It didn’t actually taste bad; the problem was both cube and water tasted of nothing at all, and as a result mouth and tongue wanted absolutely nothing to do with them. Forcing the stuff down was a triumph of will over instinct. Unfortunately, the original captain of the
Hereward
had only recently landed on Logres and hadn’t got around to replenishing his stores, which meant what supplies remained were very basic and severely limited in number. Even with the most efficient recycling and the most drastically reduced rations, Lewis and his companions were going to run out of food and water all too soon, if they didn’t find some planet where they could land safely. And there weren’t many worlds left in the Empire where outlaws were welcome—not in these civilized and law-abiding days.

“I swear, this stuff probably tastes better coming up than it does going down,” said Jesamine, staring disgustedly at the barely nibbled protein cube in her hand. “Lepers who eat their own extremities would turn up what was left of their noses at this. And the last time I smelled anything like this it was floating in a bucket marked ‘Hospital Medical Waste.’ ”

“Thank you for sharing that with us,” said Brett, not looking up from his display screen. “Why don’t you have some nice distilled water to take your mind off it? That stuff’s so pure it tastes of something you drank three weeks ago.”

“I know the provisions are vile, and I hate to think how many times it’s already been recycled through someone else’s system, but it’s all there is,” Lewis said tiredly. “It’ll do to keep us alive till we get where we’re going. Try not to think about it.”

“I am a star!” snapped Jesamine. “My palate has been trained and sensitized to experience only the very best of the culinary arts! I am a diva! I have whole armies of fans who would crawl naked across broken glass just to chill my wine for me! I am not accustomed to slumming it! God, I’d kill for a champagne mouthwash . . .”

“Sorry again, one and all,” the ship’s AI, Ozymandias, said cheerfully. “But it seems the yacht’s previous captain put all his money into upgrading his defenses, and didn’t have anything left over for luxuries like food transformation tech. On the bright side, we’re faster than most starcruisers, and we’ve got sensors and stealth capabilities you wouldn’t believe.”

Lewis looked thoughtfully at the control panels. “Yes, I’ve been wondering about that. Perhaps you can explain why a simple pleasure yacht has an H-class stardrive. They’re usually reserved for military and peacekeeper ships.”

Brett looked up from his viewscreen and smiled at Lewis. “I can answer that one. This ship is as fast as it is because it has to be. Smuggling alien porn is a death sentence on a whole lot of alien planets, for all kinds of political and religious reasons. And the Imperial courts aren’t too keen on it either, because . . . well, mostly because they’re a bunch of prudes. Same reason for the ship’s force shields and heavy-duty security systems. This guy couldn’t afford to get caught.”

“He’s probably right, Sir Deathstalker,” said Oz, in his relentlessly cheerful voice that Lewis just knew was going to start seriously grating on his nerves soon. “Choosing the
Hereward
to hijack could be seen as a classic case of good news-bad news. The good news is that at the speed we’re traveling, the Empire’s going to have a hard time finding anything that can catch up with us. The bad news is that if we run into anyone who knows what the
Hereward
usually traffics in, they’ll probably try to blow us apart on general principle.”

Perfect,
thought Lewis.
Just bloody perfect. I’ll bet Owen didn’t have these problems when he was starting out.

“You know,” the AI said chattily, “for a Golden Age, Humanity has become really quite boring and inhibited in some areas. In Owen’s day, you could get your hands on practically anything, for a price. In fact, go back a couple of centuries, and I could have got you into some live shows where the action would have steamed up your eyeballs and made them clang together. Clean living and decency is vastly overrated, if you ask me.”

Lewis tried to stop scowling. It was making his head ache. “Oz . . .”

“Yes, sir! Right here and ready to serve your every wish, Sir Deathstalker!”

“God, I hate a cheerful AI,” said Jesamine. “It’s like those recorded announcements you get at starports, when they apologize for your ship running late and screwing up all your connections. You know they don’t really mean it, the bastards. Every time I hear a computer getting cheerful, I just know bad news is coming.”

“Let me get this straight, Oz,” said Lewis, determined not to get sidetracked. “You claim to be the same AI that served my ancestor, the blessed Owen, two centuries ago during the Great Rebellion. Yes?”

“Well, yes and no,” said Ozymandias. “I’m not entirely him. He was destroyed twice. First by Owen and his companions when it was discovered that the original Ozymandias had been secretly programmed by the Empire to spy on them. The AIs of Shub managed to preserve a few fragments of the original AI personality and built a new AI around it. Then, later, Owen and Hazel destroyed that Oz after they found it was spying on them for Shub. Not a very lucky personality, when you get right down to it. I’d be worried if I was superstitious, which I’m programmed not to be. Anyway, the AIs of Shub built me around what fragments remained of the second Oz. So I’m not, strictly speaking, Ozymandius. I am a copy of a copy. But I’m as close as you’re going to get, so make the most of me, because I’m bloody good at what I do.”

“Hold everything,” said Lewis. “Are you saying you’re a part of Shub? Just another of their voices, like the robots I met? And why do I just know you’re going to say ‘Yes and no’?”

“I don’t know,” said Oz. “Maybe you’re psychic. I am a sub-personality, a fairly separate subroutine with a certain amount of autonomy. So I’m me, but I’m Shub as well, at a distance. I’m all yours, ready and eager to obey your every command, but Shub looks over my shoulder from time to time. And if you’re confused, think how I feel. Shub has raised multitasking to an art form.”

“Great,” said Rose, not looking up from polishing her sword. “We’ve stolen the only ship in the Empire who’s AI suffers from Multiple Personality disorder.”

“And I hate these clothes too,” said Jesamine, following a logic only she understood.

Though she did have a point. She and Brett had both had to change their clothing, on the grounds that what they’d been wearing had become more than a little battered and blood-stained during their escape from Logres. (Lewis had just scrubbed his armor clean, Rose had ignored the state of her leathers, and Saturday had licked the gore off his scales with a limber virtuosity that impressed and disturbed the others.) The only spare clothes on board the
Hereward
came from the captain’s closet. Fortunately, it held a fairly wide collection. Either the previous captain entertained a lot of friends, or he liked to play dress-up on long voyages.

Jesamine was now wearing a series of overlapping silk creations, in dazzling and fiercely clashing hues, all heavily perfumed. On first seeing herself in the mirror, Jesamine had angrily announced she looked like a Mistworld doxy. Brett had asked her how she knew, and the conversation had deteriorated rapidly. Brett himself was now wearing a thermal suit with built-in chameleon tech, so that he could fade into any background. He was very pleased with it, on the grounds that it opened up whole new fields of avoiding trouble and not being found when there were dangerous things that needed doing. Brett firmly believed that fighting was something other people did, and feats of heroism and derring-do were for people who needed their heads tested. Being around Rose had done nothing to change his opinion.

Lewis just knew this conversation wasn’t going to go anywhere good, and was racking his brain for some way to derail it when Brett suddenly got a fit of the giggles. Almost despite himself, Lewis leaned out of his chair to get a look at what Brett had on his viewscreen now. Lewis had checked out some of the earlier examples of alien porn, just out of curiosity, and had to say it did nothing much for him. Some of the human-alien interactions were . . . interesting, but he found most of the alien-alien material frankly incomprehensible.

His first reaction on finding out what the
Hereward
’s cargo was, was to declare it should all be seized and held as evidence. Brett had quickly reminded Lewis that he wasn’t a Paragon anymore, and Lewis had scowled and muttered and finally said,
Oh, hell; drop the lot into space. We can use the extra room.
Brett nearly had a coronary.
Dump it? Are you crazy? Do you know how much we can sell this shit for on Mistworld? Look, if we’re going to be rebels on the run, we’re going to need working capital. Lots of it.
Lewis had finally agreed, in principle at least, but he still wasn’t happy about it. He took a look at what was amusing Brett, and felt his scowl headache coming back again.

“Brett . . . what is that? I mean, those two whatever-they-are aren’t even touching each other! And even if they were, they don’t appear to have anything that would make it worthwhile anyway.”

Brett considered the scene. “Maybe it’s a mood piece. You know, all in the way they’re looking at each other.”

“They haven’t got any eyes either!”

Brett shrugged. “Maybe you had to be there . . . It just reminded me of a girl I knew once, that’s all.”