Deathstalker War (20 page)

She knew the strain was killing her, and didn’t care. After enduring the horrors and agonies of Silo Nine, she’d sworn to die rather than be taken captive again. Blood leaked steadily from her nose and ears, and sprayed from her mouth with every harsh breath. Some of the pain began to die away as parts of her mind began to shut down, bit by bit. She didn’t know it, but her face looked like a grinning, death’s-head mask. And still she fought on, refusing to give in, refusing to be beaten, and slowly she began to gain a new sense of her opponent Legion, of who and what it was. Of what it had been made from. Brains from people she might have known and Wormboy’s worms. And Legion looked on her and knew who she was. The worms remembered her and what she’d done before. They were scared of her. Jenny Psycho laughed inside her head, and it was a terrible, unforgiving sound.

The invading forces pressed forward on all fronts, though more slowly on some than others. It was as though every man, woman, and child who could hold a weapon was out in the streets of Mistport, defending barricades and blocking crossroads, sniping from windows and hidden alleyways, making the troopers fight for every inch and pay for every victory in blood and death. Retreating defenders blew up and collapsed buildings as they fell back, to block off streets and slow the Empire’s advance. The rebels’ projectile weapons confused and scattered troops only used to dealing with the predictability and long pauses of disrupter fire until they learned to advance behind massed force shields, and the projectile guns were no use against them.

There were no espers operating now, in the sky or on the streets. Legion had proved too much for all but the strongest, and most of those were dead now. The defenders fell back, street by street, trying to follow Mistport’s ages-old plans for last-ditch defense, but the plans hadn’t been updated in years. Important routes had been blocked by street markets and new buildings, and some streets didn’t exist anymore, save on the oldest maps. The defenders did the best they could, falling back only when there was no other option, retreating slowly toward the vulnerable heart of Mistport.

The wounded and refugees traveled through the city on barges on the River Autumn. It was quicker and safer than trusting to the streets. The coal-fired barges chugged up and down the freezing river, their steel prows breaking through the newly forming ice on the surface of the water, their crimson bow lights burning like coals in the night. On either side of the River, buildings burned like coals in Hell. The Autumn meandered through the city, passing through Guilds Quarter to Merchants to Thieves, and barges came and went with quiet desperation. Passengers occasionally called out to other craft, anxious for news of missing loved ones or how the battle went, but the answers were often old, and rarely good.

There were running fights on the docksides as advance groups of marines tried to get to the barges, only to be fought off by dockworkers armed with barbed knives and grappling hooks. The longshoremen knew every inch of their territory, and were hard and savage fighters. Some barges became overcrowded with refugees and wounded, slowed down too much, and became easy targets for overhead gravity sleds. Unable to maneuver, the barges were blown apart by disrupters, scattering burning bodies in the dark waters of the Autumn. Burning remnants blocked the way and clogged the docks, and half-charred and ruptured bodies floated in the water and lay captured by the slowly forming ice on the surface.

The larger barges armed themselves with heavy-duty projectile weapons and taught the gravity sleds to maintain a respectful distance. Standard tactics for a gravity sled was to deflect incoming fire with its force shield, then lower the shield to fire back while their enemy’s energy guns were recharging. They weren’t expecting guns that didn’t need to recharge between shots. The Empire lost a lot of sleds till word got around. But the Deathstalker’s gift of guns and ammo had been widely spread and, therefore, were in short supply everywhere, while there seemed no end to the invading forces. The barge gunners huddled low behind improvised shelters, and vowed to make every bullet count.

Imperial marines made their way through the hard-won streets of Mistport, stepping over the dead bodies and tossing grenades into the few buildings that still looked capable of hiding snipers. They left the better areas untouched, of course, and even left a few men behind to guard against looters. When the Empire finally took control of this city, these areas would be reoccupied by the new, Imperially approved, leaders. But everywhere else, the buildings burned and fires rose up into the night sky like beacons of victory.

Kast and Morgan trailed happily along in the rear, hanging back to avoid the real action, keeping themselves occupied by shooting enemy snipers or anyone else who annoyed them. They killed anyone who even looked dangerous, men or women, and tossed grenades through windows if their prey tried to go to ground. Like the rest of the invading force, they weren’t interested in taking prisoners. That would come later, once the city was theirs. Kast and Morgan took time out to do a little quiet looting here and there, when no one was looking, but the pickings weren’t up to much, even in the few buildings that somehow escaped the fires and the grenades. Mistport wasn’t known for its luxuries, except in the most fortunate areas, and Kast and Morgan never got anywhere near those.

So they strolled unhurriedly down the narrow streets, ignoring the bodies and the smell and the blood-caked cobblestones, passing a bottle back and forth between them till it was empty, then acquiring another at the next opportunity. The wine was mostly lousy, but wine was wine, after all. They sang battle songs and vulgar ditties in between looting and killing people, but they couldn’t seem to get into the spirit of the occasion. Until they found the girl hiding in the ruins of a mostly overlooked house. The brickwork was blackened and scorched, and the windows were all smashed, but otherwise it had held together. Just the place for a frightened refugee to hide. Which was why Kast and Morgan had checked it out in the first place. The girl looked to be in her mid-teens, terrorized and trembling, all wide eyes and pleading mouth. Her clothes were torn and blackened by soot, and she looked about as appetizing as a half-burnt steak, but Kast and Morgan weren’t picky. They pushed the only door shut behind them and grinned at each other.

“Now this is what we’ve been missing,” said Kast. “An invasion never really feels like an invasion till you’ve dipped your wick.”

“Who goes first?” said the more practical Morgan. “And no, I’m not tossing for it this time.”

So they played scissors cuts paper till Kast won. He started undoing his trouser belt. The girl made a break for it. Morgan caught her easily, pulling her back. She went for his eyes, hands like claws, and he spun her round and pinned her arms to her sides. She still kicked and struggled, so he bear-hugged her hard, driving the breath out of her, and dropped her at Kast’s feet. He crouched before her, smiling easily, and she spit in his face. He backhanded her almost casually, and the strength of the blow threw her backwards. She fetched up against the far wall, breathing hard, her eyes darting from Kast to Morgan and back again. Blood and snot dribbled from her nose. Kast grinned at her.

“Struggle all you like, my dear. I enjoy a good struggle. If you’re good, really good, you’ll get a special prize at the end. We’ll let you live.”

And then both marines froze as a voice called their names outside in the street. They waited, hoping it would go away, but the voice came again, even louder. The girl tensed to scream, and Morgan hit her in the mouth.

“Damn,” said Kast. “All the people they could have sent looking for us, and it had to be Sergeant Franke. He won’t let you get away with anything. Thinks he’s officer material, the fool.”

Morgan shrugged, stepped forward, and cut the girl’s throat with an economical sweep of his sword. She slumped back against the wall, clawing at her opened throat with her fingers. Blood gushed over her hands, and she fell back, her hands dropping to her sides as the breath went out of her. Kast swore feelingly, and did up his trouser belt again.

“Never mind,” said Morgan. “There’ll be other chances. Franke can’t be everywhere.”

The two marines grinned at each other and went back into the street whistling jauntily. All in all, the invasion was going well.

In Tech Quarter, the starport had been thoroughly trashed. For a time its massed disrupter cannon, harvested from the crashed starcruiser
Darkwind
, had been enough to keep the gravity barges at bay. Up close, the cannon didn’t need its crashed computers for targeting. But the barges soon learned the limits of the cannon’s range, and stayed well back while they contacted their ship for reinforcements. The
Defiant
sent down six heavily shielded pinnaces to do the job. They came roaring down out of the night, too fast to track, and blew the cannon apart in an explosion that could be heard all across Mistport. With the starport defenseless, the pinnaces swept back and forth in strafing runs, taking out the ships on the landing pads like so many sitting ducks. And while they were doing that, the barges closed in on the control tower.

The rebel ships on the pads exploded one after the other in sudden bursts of smoke and fire. Strange lights radiated briefly and were gone as stardrives collapsed and released their energies. The landing pads would be wildly radioactive now until the Empire could bring in heavy-duty scrubbers. Only the Deathstalker’s ship,
Sunstrider II
, survived, protected by superior Hadenman shields. The pinnaces marked it down for later attention, and moved on. They had more than enough other targets to keep them busy.

The control tower lasted the longest, with its reinforced structure and steelglass windows, but even that fell in the end, riddled by disrupter fire from the hovering gravity barges. The steelglass blew inward, transformed into deadly shrapnel that cut down everyone left inside the tower. Some still survived, so the barges set the tower on fire, and left it to burn. Their job done, the pinnaces and the barges moved unhurriedly away in search of other targets. People lay dead everywhere across the pads. Ground crews preparing ships for desperate takeoffs, and crowds of people who’d been convinced they’d be safest at the well-defended starport, or who had paid massive bribes to be smuggled offplanet. When the Empire ships came they were caught out in the open with nowhere to hide and nowhere to run, and they died screaming for help that never came. Wrecked ships burned on the cracked pads, and what was left of the control tower burned like a giant candle, its shattered walls running like wax in the great heat. The starport had fallen.

Young Jack Random led Owen and Hazel and Silver and his adoring followers back into the city, in search of people to help. The troops forced back from the southwest boundary had departed in search of easier ways into the city. No one doubted they’d find them. Random soon found a street barricade in danger of falling to an Empire attack, and moved in quickly to support it. The improvised barricade had been formed from furniture and other suitably heavy objects, dragged out into the street from the surrounding houses and stacked one by one on top of the other and lashed together till the resulting wall stood nearly a dozen feet high. Smaller furniture had been broken up to form jagged wooden spikes, projecting from the barricade to discourage the other side from getting too close.

Iron nails had been twisted together into caltrops, the points dipped in dung, and then thrown out into the street for the troopers to step on. Random’s small army lined themselves up behind the barricade, shooting crossbow bolts and bullets through the gaps in the wall to pick off any trooper who so much as aimed a disrupter at the barricade. It quickly became clear to both sides that only hand-to-hand fighting was going to decide the fate of this stumbling block. And since the barricade blocked the last main route into the city center, its control was vital to both sides.

And so the Imperial troops came charging down the street, sheltering behind massed force shields, firing their disrupters blindly as they ran. The energy bolts punched wide holes through the barricade, incinerating those fighters unfortunate enough to be in the way, but as many shots missed as hit, and the barricade still stood. The rebels fired at the troopers’ legs, unguarded beneath the force shields, and whole sections of the advancing force came crashing to the ground as they fell over one another, but still the charge came on. Until finally the two sides met at the barricade, and it was left to courage and desperation and naked steel to win the day.

Owen and Hazel fought side by side, still linked, feeling stronger and sharper than ever. They didn’t need Blood or the boost anymore. Something new was working in them now, granting them strength and speed beyond anything they’d ever known before. John Silver had taken the last of his Blood long ago, and now only guts and duty were keeping him on his feet. He’d got over his fear of Owen and Hazel. Whatever they had become, they were clearly the best bet for defeating the invading troops, and so Silver had taken on the job of guarding their backs. It seemed even gods needed someone to watch their blind spots. Interestingly enough, Silver couldn’t bring himself to give a damn about Jack Random. There was something about the man that made Silver’s hackles stand on end, though he couldn’t have told you what. Perhaps it was just that the man was too damned perfect. Certainly he seemed almost like a god, too, standing atop the barricade, swinging his great sword with both hands, defying the Empire to bring him down.

The struggle continued, fighting breaking out before and upon and behind the barricade. Owen and Hazel cut down every man who came against them, roaring their defiance, and dodging disrupter beams, which was supposed to be impossible. Owen’s battle cry of
Shandrakor!
rose above the din again and again, and was taken up by many of the rebels, almost as many as those who fought with Jack Random’s name on their lips. They pushed the Imperial troops back and back until finally the rebels came spilling up and over the barricade to drive the troopers back down the street.