Deathstalker Rebellion (57 page)

“I’m afraid so,” said Stephanie quickly. “Public relations can be a bore and a bind, but we can’t do without it. Public acclaim can often get you things that nothing else can. The
stardrive ceremony will be an important event, and I want it covered very thoroughly. After all, absolutely everyone will be watching. Grit your teeth and bear it, Daniel. It’ll soon be over.”

“That’s the spirit,” said Toby. “Cardinal, if you’d care to stand between the Wolfes, make a nice group for the camera …”

Kassar glowered at him, but moved obediently as directed to stand between Stephanie and Daniel. And though they stood close together, none of them so much as nudged another with their elbow. Toby bustled around them, raising an arm here, squaring a shoulder there.

“All right, people, just hold the pose while Flynn gets the lighting right, and then we’ll do a short interview. Nothing complicated, just how glad you all are the Cardinal’s here, that sort of thing. Fake the smiles if you have to.”

“You are aware, Shreck,” said Kassar coldly, “that your uncle is currently being investigated by the Church on charges of sedition and corruption on many levels?”

“Nothing to do with me,” Toby said airily. “You can haul him off in chains, for all I care. I’ll even supply the chains. Just give me some warning so I can get the rotten fruit concession.”

“He is the head of your Family,” said Daniel. “You owe him allegiance. Have you no honor?”

“Of course not,” said Toby. “I’m a journalist.”

“We will of course want to see all reports in their entirety before they can be transmitted,” said Stephanie. “So that they can be checked for bias and possible inaccuracies.”

“The Church censors will also examine all footage,” Kassar said quickly. “To check for blasphemies or disrespect. Standards must be maintained.”

Toby kept smiling, though his cheeks were beginning to ache from the strain. “Of course. Whatever you wish. Don’t worry about inconveniencing me. I’m used to working with people looking over my shoulder.”

He fussed the three of them about some more, partly to get the best grouping for the camera and partly just because he could. He’d expected some kind of censorship, but he could see that getting anything interesting off Technos III was going to take a lot of hard work, a little subtlety, and every dirty trick in the journalist’s handbook. Still, when in doubt let the material go over their heads. They can’t censor
what they don’t recognize. He had great hopes of what the Technos III material might do for him and his career, and he wasn’t going to let these three stuffed shirts get in his way. The day he couldn’t think rings around any censor they could throw at him, he’d give up journalism and go into politics. They’d believe anything there.

This was his first real assignment in too many years, after spending so long buried in the Shrecks’ Public Relations department, because Gregor needed him. The right kind of reporting here could make his reputation, establish him as a journalist and commentator in his own right. Toby wanted that. The essence of a good PR man is that no one should notice his work. Toby felt very strongly that he’d earned a chance to show off his talents on a wider and more visible screen. Of course, he couldn’t hope to make much of a splash just covering the events leading up to the stardrive ceremony. The real story lay in covering the Technos III conflict, the Wolfe and Church forces versus the rebel terrorists. And he was going to cover it, despite anything the Wolfes and the Church could do to stop him.

He looked back at Flynn, who nodded briefly to show he was ready. The camera on his shoulder studied the three dignitaries with its red owl eye, linked into Flynn’s eyes through his comm implant, so that he saw what it saw. Daniel and Stephanie and Kassar smiled determinedly at the camera, all friends together, ready for their interview. As in all politics, individual problems disappeared in the need to present a solid front to a common enemy.

The Church ship
Divine Breath
hung in orbit above Technos III, comfortably far above the seething weather, ostensibly on guard but mostly just goofing off in the absence of the Cardinal and his Jesuit enforcers. After all, they had nothing to do but watch a few sensors while they waited for the Cardinal’s troops to make short work of a few native discontents. Easy work. Everyone knew there wasn’t a rebel born who could stand against trained troops of the Faithful. So a soft duty for once, and the crew took advantage of it. Which was why when the giant golden Hadenman ship dropped suddenly out of hyperspace just above them, the whole crew took one look and all but shit themselves. The huge ship hung above them, dwarfing the Church vessel like a minnow next to a killer shark. The Church crew snapped
to attention at their posts, their hands moving desperately over their control panels. Shields slammed into place as guns powered up, and even those whose piety wasn’t all it might have been found a sudden need to send up prayers of the most fervent kind.

The Hadenman ship opened fire, and the
Divine Breath
shuddered as disrupter cannon hammered against their shields. The Church ship fired back as fast as it could get its guns to bear, but the golden ship was impossibly fast for its size, and the crew of the
Divine Breath
knew they were hopelessly outclassed. They fought on anyway, not through their faith as much as because there was nothing else they could do. They couldn’t drop into hyperspace without lowering their shields first, and the moment they did that the Hadenman ship would blow them apart.

The Captain watched his shields go down one by one and called for more power, though he already knew he was using everything the ship’s straining engines could produce. If he’d only had one of the new stardrives being produced on the planet below, he might have stood a better chance, and the irony was not lost on him. And then, as he searched frantically for something—anything—to do to hold off the inevitable, the great golden ship suddenly disappeared back into hyperspace, gone between one moment and the next.

The Captain blinked a few times, clutched at the crucifix on his uniform collar, and muttered a few Hail Marys, and then sank back in his command chair, cold sweat slowly evaporating on his forehead. His ship had survived, but he was damned if he knew why. When he finally got his strength back he canceled Red Alert, ordered full damage reports, and a complete sensor sweep of the surrounding space, just in case. He then wondered what the hell he was going to say to the Cardinal down below. He’d have to be told, even though he’d probably shout a lot. The Captain frowned, trying hard to come up with some viable-sounding excuse that wouldn’t get him court-martialed or excommunicated. There was no getting away from the fact that he and his crew had been caught with their pants around their ankles, but damn it, it had been a
Hadenman
ship! There weren’t many who’d seen one of those in action and lived to tell of it. The Captain and his crew worked hard on their various excuses and explanations, which was at least partly why
they never noticed the heavily shielded escape pod that the Hadenman ship had dropped just before it disappeared.

The pod hurtled down through the buffeting clouds and howling winds, battered this way and that by the storm’s fury, but still somehow holding to its planned descent. Inside the pod, Jack Random the professional rebel, Ruby Journey the ex-bounty hunter, and Alexander Storm the retired hero, clung desperately to their crash webbing and waited for the long drop into hell to end. The pod’s outer hull groaned and squealed from the pressures it endured, and the sensors blinked out one by one till they were practically flying blind. The webbing cushioned and absorbed most of the shocks the pod encountered as it fell on and on into Technos III’s turbulent atmosphere, but the three rebels were still flung this way and that in the webbings’ restricted arcs.

Storm gritted his teeth and tried hard to hang on to his last meal. Random ignored it all, concentrating on what he was going to do when he finally landed. It was his first time back in the business of armed rebellion, and while he was quite definitely looking forward to it, he couldn’t help but worry. It had been a long time, and he wasn’t all the man he used to be. Either way, it wouldn’t stop him giving this mission his all. And if in the end everything went to hell in a handcart, what better way for a professional rebel to die than with gun and sword in his hand, and a pile of the enemy dead at his feet? Random sniffed sourly. Actually, he could think of a dozen better ways to make his final exit, mostly including a good wine and a bad woman, but he doubted he’d see any of them. Rebels rarely died in bed.

Beside him, Ruby Journey was laughing and whooping loudly as she spun to and fro in her webbing, enjoying every minute of the trip down. Random smiled at her. How could you not love a woman like that? He checked the sensor panels again, but they were still out, the pod’s sensor spikes torn away by the shrieking winds. The proximity alarms sounded, harsh and strident, and Random braced himself. Either the ground was near, or they were about to crash into a mountain. Ruby whooped wildly. Storm had his eyes squeezed shut, as though that would make any difference. Random sighed and tried to remember if there were any mountains on Technos III. He didn’t think so, but it would have been nice to be sure.

The escape pod slowed desperately as the engines gave up the last of their power to cushion the landing. The three occupants were pinned helplessly in their webbing, listening to the inner and outer hulls cracking from the strain. The lights went out, replaced by the dull red glow of emergency lighting. And then the pod slammed into the metallic surface of Technos III, plowed a long path through the scattered scrap and debris, and finally came to a halt against a massive protruding steel spur. The pod rocked back and forth and then settled itself. The sky was dark and forbidding, the winds were rising, and the first snows were beginning to fall.

Inside the pod, Storm still had his eyes squeezed shut and was trying to remember how to breathe. Random lay slumped in his webbing and thought, not for the first time, that he was getting a little old for all this. Ruby Journey wiped at her bloody nose with the back of her hand and laughed happily.

“That was great! Let’s do it again!”

“Let’s not,” said Storm, still not opening his eyes. “I’ve had more fun in front of a firing squad. Next time, may I suggest we try and find a pod that’s a little less past its sell-by date? Oh, God, I feel awful. Somebody please tell me we are safely down, because I’m not budging an inch until I’m sure the drop is over. And I want it in writing. With witnesses.”

“Shut up, Alex,” said Random easily. “We’re down in one piece, and that’s all I ever asked from a landing. And for an escape pod that’s been sitting around in a Hadenman ship unused and untested for decades, I think it did pretty well.”

“Now he tells us,” said Storm. “I knew there was a good reason why I gave up personal appearances as a rebel.”

“Shut up, Alex,” said Random. “Ruby, the sensors are all out. Crack open the hatch and see what’s outside.”

Ruby disentangled herself from her webbing, threw Random a professional salute, and made her way carefully over the slanting floor to the one and only hatch. Random clambered slowly out of his webbing, wincing at several new bruises and a few old injuries, and moved over to persuade Storm to open his eyes. Ruby cracked the hatch and pushed it outward. The metal resisted a moment and then gave way, A blast of cold air and swirling snow swept into the pod, along with just enough light to fade the crimson emergency lights to a rather sweet pink color. Storm opened his eyes.

“Oh, wonderful. We’ve landed inside a birthday cake.”

“Shut up, Alex. Ruby, what’s it like out there?”

“Cold,” said Ruby brightly. “And there’s enough snow coming down to make an army of snowmen. Which is just as well, as there’s no sign anywhere of a welcoming committee.”

Random scowled. “According to the handful of instruments that are still working, we are in the right place, more or less. No doubt our contacts will be here soon. They must have seen us come down. Hurry up, Alex, shake a leg. We have revolutions to organize.”

“I never did like fieldwork,” said Storm, moving painfully toward the hatch. “Undercover is a young man’s work. Usually, a young man who won’t be missed too badly if it all turns pear-shaped.”

“Whinge, whinge, whinge,” said Random, half pushing Storm out the hatch. “Anyone would think you weren’t happy to be here, striking a blow for freedom and democracy.”

“Anyone would be right,” said Storm, and then shut up as the full force of the cold hit him.

The three of them huddled together in the lee of the escape pod, sheltering from the driving storm. The jagged metal surface was already disappearing under a thick blanket of snow, and the rising wind was whipping up into a blizzard. They all turned up the heating elements in their clothes, hugged themselves fiercely, and beat their hands together. The cold was sharp enough to take away their voices, and their breath steamed thickly about their heads. The snow was so thick the sky was completely hidden, as well as the sun. It was supposed to be midday, but there was hardly enough light to see by. Random could feel Storm shivering violently beside him and began to be concerned. Storm’s old bones couldn’t survive this cold for long. Random didn’t feel the cold too badly, but he’d been through the Madness Maze.

“This is undoubtably a silly question,” said Storm through teeth clenched to keep them from chattering. “But why can’t we get back inside the pod? It’s got to be warmer than this.”

“The pod’s heaters got knocked out along with everything else,” said Random. “And there’s a small but definite chance the batteries are leaking poisonous gasses. If you want to take your mind off the cold, keep your eyes open for our
contacts. In this blizzard they could walk right past us without noticing. But if they don’t come soon, we may have to risk the gasses. You can’t handle cold like this.”

“I can handle any cold you can, you old fart,” Storm said angrily. “I’m only six years older than you, I’ll have you remember.”