Deathstalker War (69 page)

“So, you’re finally here. My Captain, my Investigator, my Security Officer. Sworn to me, to death and beyond. Traitors!”

“No, Your Majesty,” Silence said quickly. “We are loyal to you. We always have been.”

“Then why did you keep secrets from me? Why did you try and hide what you’ve become? Why didn’t you tell me about the powers you gained on the Wolfling World?”

Silence and Frost looked at each other, and then at Stelmach, who shook his head. He hadn’t told. Silence looked back at Lionstone, and kept his voice even and calm. “For a long time we didn’t understand what was happening to us. It seems our time in the Madness Maze, brief though it was, was enough to change us on levels we still don’t fully comprehend. We have done our best to serve you faithfully while we struggled for some kind of control over our new . . . abilities.”

“And what about you, Security Officer?” said Lionstone. “I gave you specific orders to watch these two and report on them!”

“I have tried to do my duty as I saw best,” said Stelmach. His face was deathly pale, and his hands were shaking, but his gaze and his voice were unflinching. “It was not a simple matter. There were . . . ambiguities to the situation.”

“Words,” said Lionstone, leaning back on her Throne. Her cold eyes moved back and forth across the three of them. “Nothing but empty words. It’s too late for such evasiveness now. I won’t have it. The barbarians are pounding on the gates of Empire. I need weapons to hold them back while I plan how to undo my reverses. You’re going to be those weapons. Tell me about your powers. Tell me everything. Or die here at my feet.”

Just for a moment, Silence considered defying her. She had no real power over them anymore. All the armed guards in her Court couldn’t compel him or Frost to do a single damn thing they didn’t want to. Not after everything they’d become. But the moment passed, as he’d known it would. She was his Empress. He and Frost had kept their powers to themselves out of a very real fear of ending up as lab rats. Possibly even vivisected lab rats. But the time for such weakness was past. He could recognize fate when it came knocking on his window. So he told the Empress, as clearly as he could, of the strange strengths and abilities and intuitions that he and Frost had manifested since their time on lost Haden, also known as the Wolfling World.

It took a while, not least because Lionstone kept interrupting, pressing him for details and explanations he didn’t always have. As he spoke, two new figures appeared in the Court, breasting the sulfurous mists on their way to the Throne. First came Valentine Wolfe, the dandy in black with the long white face. He stopped a respectful distance away, quite happy to watch and listen while Silence spoke. His crimson mouth was stretched in its usual constant smile, and his heavily mascaraed eyes were fever-bright from the impact of the dozen drugs roaring through his veins. Valentine wasn’t used to losing, and his recent reverses had stunned him. His response had been to amplify his whirling thoughts with stimulant after stimulant, trying to force his mind to come up with answers to his problems. The end result had been something of a chemical stalemate, where his thoughts crashed emptily together, canceling each other out. And so he’d come to Court; not just for his own safety, but because that was in the end where all the real decisions of Empire were made. Whatever happened here, he was confident he’d find some way to turn it to is advantage. He always did.

He had hoped to call on favors from his previous dalliance with the underground, but it hadn’t taken him long to discover that the esper leaders had promised his head to Finlay Campbell, in return for the Campbell’s services. You couldn’t trust anyone these days. Still, it wasn’t a complete loss. Finlay might yet die during the rebellion, with a little help, and afterward Valentine was confident he’d find some way to bargain himself back into the underground’s good graces. Or, if things somehow went the other way, and Lionstone yet pulled off some miraculous victory, or more likely some form of compromise with the rebels, she would need someone to speak for her to the underground. Someone with good connections. And who better than the widely experienced Valentine Wolfe?

He laughed quietly, quite at home in Hell, and stood patiently before the Iron Throne, winking at the snarling maids. His body twitched and seethed with possibilities, his thoughts running a mile a second in all directions at once. So he stood still and said nothing. Let others speak. He would listen. He’d find a way to profit. He always did. And then let his enemies beware.

The second figure to appear was, of course, the Lord High Dram, Consort and Widowmaker. He looked rather battered around the edges. There were tears and scorch marks on his clothes, and blood, too, some of it his. He’d been driven from the surface fighting by one rebel victory after another. When the war machines stalled and the Mater Mundi manifested, Dram knew a lost cause when he saw one. He deserted his men, disguised himself, and made his way back to Court. He felt angry rather than guilty. Lionstone kept expecting him to do things that only the original Dram, with all his experience, could have pulled off. While he was only a clone, barely finished, trying to learn on the run and stay alive while men died all around him. It wasn’t his fault he didn’t know how to cope with overwhelming odds and strange new weapons and espers with the powers of gods. Even the original Dram had never had to face a ubiquitous Mater Mundi. And so he ran away and came home to Lionstone, like a child beaten by bullies at school, hoping not to be beaten again for losing.

A viewscreen chimed, and Lionstone quietened Silence with a sharp wave of her hand. She activated the screen, and General Shaw Beckett appeared. He looked tired, beaten down. There was chaos on his ship’s bridge behind him, with people shouting and cursing and running back and forth. Alarm sirens were sounding. Beckett looked steadily out of the screen at Lionstone, and raised his voice to be sure his words could be heard clearly over the bedlam.

“Your Majesty, I have done my best to defend your Empire and yourself with all the powers at my command, but I regret to inform you that I have failed. The war in space is over. My fleet is scattered and destroyed, my ground forces have been overrun on all the worlds I can still get reports from, and I have nothing left to fight with. I can see no scheme or strategy that might enable me to overcome these reverses. Therefore, in order to save as many of my people as possible, in space and on the ground, I have contacted the rebel leaders and offered them my surrender.

“My advice to Your Majesty is to do the same, for the best possible concessions, while you still can. I will hand over control of the fleet to whatever authority replaces Your Majesty. I’m sorry, Lionstone, but I have my men to think of. There’s been enough death and suffering. Who knows; perhaps this was all for the best anyway. Good luck, Your Majesty. If we both survive, perhaps we’ll meet again in happier times.”

He signed off, and the viewscreen went blank while Lionstone was still drawing breath to scream abuse at him. She stared unseeingly about her for a long moment, beating on the arms of her Throne with her fists. The maids stirred uneasily below her, picking up on her mood. Finally her gaze fell on Silence and Frost, and she nodded slowly.

“I am surrounded by incompetents and traitors. But I still have you. My secret weapons. I place command of all my forces in your hands, Captain and Investigator. Defend the Empire. Slaughter the scum rioting in my streets. Don’t dare fail me.” And the rage boiled up in her again, and her voice rose in a frustrated scream. “Is there no one else to defend me from the rabble?”

“Well, there’s always me,” said Alexander Storm.

Everyone looked round, startled, as the old rebel came strolling unhurriedly through the horrors of Hell. Jack Random walked behind him, pulling along a heavily chained and restrained Ruby Journey by a leash around her neck. When she tried to slow down or pull back, Random just tightened the leash till she couldn’t breathe, and had no choice but to hurry and catch up. Alexander Storm came to a halt a respectful distance away from the maids, signaled Random to halt, and then bowed courteously to Lionstone and the others present.

“Your Majesty, honored guests; may I present my two prisoners, those most damnable rebels and traitors, Jack Random and Ruby Journey. Yours to do with as you wish.”

There was a long silence, and then the Empress Lionstone laughed and clapped her hands together girlishly. “You see, my friends? It’s not over till I say it’s over.”

Owen Deathstalker, his ancestor Giles, and Hazel d’Ark had arrived in the great antechamber that was the only access to Lionstone’s Court. A huge open chamber of gleaming steel and brass, with huge intricately carved pillars of gold and silver, it stretched away in all directions, vast and empty and echoing. Normally it would have been full of the movers and shakers of Empire, all waiting impatiently for the great steel doors to open, and their chance to gain the ear of the Empress. But now the great antechamber stood deserted and abandoned. Owen and Giles and Hazel stood before the closed double doors, and looked at them thoughtfully.

“Bound to be locked,” said Owen.

“Oh, bound to be,” said Hazel. “I take it you don’t have any codes for this?”

“Afraid not,” said Owen. “Don’t suppose you brought any explosives with you, by any chance?”

“Afraid not,” said Hazel. “Guess we’ll just have to smash our way through by brute force and ignorance.”

“Get on with it,” said Giles. “I’ve come a long way to be here, and I have much to do.”

Owen and Hazel exchanged a glance, but before they could say anything, there was a bright flash of light and Jenny Psycho, Toby Shreck, and Flynn appeared suddenly out of nowhere. Jenny surrounded herself with a psionic force shield, then dropped it a moment later as she realized no one was attacking her. Toby and Flynn checked to see that their camera was still with them and looked around with open mouths. Toby realized who was standing before him, and where he was, and gestured urgently for Flynn to start filming.

“What the hell are you doing here?” said Hazel, not all that welcomingly.

“The Mater Mundi wanted us here,” said Jenny Psycho. “Any problems, take it up with her. Apparently she wants the downfall of the Empress shown live throughout the Empire. Why she wants me here as well . . . isn’t yet clear to me. No doubt I’ll find out shortly. So, bring me up to date. What lies between us and the Court?”

“Well, basically, these doors,” said Owen. “Personally, I thought there’d be more security than this.”

He broke off and they all looked round as they heard the sound of approaching running feet. There seemed to be a hell of a lot of them. Those who had them drew swords and guns. Jenny gathered her power around her till it crackled on the air. Flynn sent his camera up to the ceiling, made sure it was pointing in the right direction, and then moved quickly to join Toby in hiding behind the others. He’d barely made it when a small army of Lionstone’s personal guards came charging into the antechamber, armed with drawn swords and personal force shields. Owen took a firm grip on his sword. There had to be at least two hundred of them. Hazel glared at him.

You had to open your big mouth.”

“Surrender!” yelled the officer in charge of the guards. “You’re massively outnumbered. You don’t stand a chance.”

Owen grinned at Giles. “He doesn’t know us very well, does he?”

“Finish them quickly,” said Giles. “Lionstone could be trying to distract us while she makes her escape.”

“Can I just point out, in an extremely nonthreatening way, that Flynn and I are very definitely noncombatants,” said Toby, from the rear.

“Kill them all,” snapped the guard officer, and led the way forward.

Jenny Psycho levitated into the air, spread her arms wide, and lightning blazed from her hands, striking down the first dozen guards. Hazel d’Ark shimmered, and suddenly there were a dozen of her. Hazels that might have been from other timestreams, all of them grinning nastily at the prospect of battle. Giles teleported back and forth among the guards, striking men down and disappearing again before he could be attacked. Owen smiled and shook his head. Show-offs. He hefted his sword, boosted, and went to meet the guards with death in his eyes. Two men and two women went to war against an army, and the numbers were no problem to them, no problem at all.

At first. The rebels cut their way through the guards with grim efficiency, and soon dead bodies lay everywhere, getting underfoot. The rebels killed and killed, but still the guards kept coming. Owen fought on, swinging his sword with both hands, and no one could stand against him. He was boosting, and strength and speed sang in his arms, but for every guard that fell, it seemed there were two more pressing forward to take his place. They swarmed around him, coming at him from all directions, and soon there wasn’t enough room to swing his sword anymore, and all he could do was cut and stab. Backed by his boosted strength and speed, such blows were still devastating and deadly, but with enemies at his back as well as his front he couldn’t relax for a moment. He fought on, spinning this way and that, holding his enemies at bay, knowing that if slowed down or hesitated even for a moment, he was a dead man.

Quick glances around suggested his friends weren’t doing any better. The Hazels had become separated, scattered the length of the antechamber, but still fighting furiously. Owen had to smile. It seemed that whatever reality the various Hazels came from, she was always a hell of a scrapper. One of the Hazels was forced back in his direction, and Owen was glad to see it was the original. They moved quickly to fight back-to-back, and Owen was happy to have her there. They’d always made an excellent team.

He could see Giles fighting some distance away, roaring his ancient battle cries and bringing his huge long sword down like a hammer, guards surrounding him like attack dogs struggling to bring down a bear. He’d had to stop teleporting. There wasn’t enough space left among the fighters for him to teleport into. It seemed to Owen that there were even more guards now than when they’d started, for all the dead bodies cluttering up the floor. They must be bringing in reinforcements. The cheats. Jenny Psycho was still hanging in the air, wreathed in lightning, but didn’t seem to be lashing out with it anymore. This puzzled Owen till he saw the guards bringing in esp-blocker after esp-blocker, piling up the brains in their glass cases, trying to shut down Jenny’s amplified powers by sheer attrition.